The Beauty of Your Face

by Sahar Mustafah

  Mama lights a cigarette and leans her back against the sink, no longer listening as Baba tries to convince her. She’s looking right through them, emotion vacating her eyes.

  “It takes time, ya loolad.” Baba’s words trail behind Afaf as she heads to her room. Majeed has already locked himself in the bathroom. “You’ll see.”

  Afaf wishes, for Baba’s sake, and her own, that he’s right.

  The key kiosk sits on one end of the Pine Forest Mall and Afaf is grateful she is somewhat tucked away from the crowds of customers who sweep past her. A half dozen people show up during their lunch break each day. For the rest of her shift, she reads novels, learning to drown out the backdrop of echoes from the boring instrumental music incessantly floating from large mounted speakers, and the clacking of footsteps along the diamond-shaped slate tiles.

  It’s a pretty easy job for Afaf. She quickly learns how to adjust the blank key in a vise along with the original the customer hands her. It is a largely motorized process, but she takes her time, forcing a polite smile for the impatiently waiting middle-aged landlord, or a retired couple who need a set of keys for their adult grandchildren to walk their dog.

  “We’re going to Europe!” the chatty woman tells Afaf. The husband regards her with suspicion, nudges his wife into silence.

  One late October afternoon, Afaf lifts her head from her book and catches Rami Asfoor approaching from the western entrance. He’s with two other arrabi boys. Afaf’s cheeks flush, the sting of Rami’s slap returning, more intense now. She wishes she could shrink and disappear. But she’s stuck in this lame kiosk, soldered to a stool.

  “Hey, maybe you can make me a copy of your house key,” Rami taunts. “You know—so I can make sure you’re safe and sound in your bedroom, not whoring around in the streets.”

  “Doesn’t your brother give a shit?” one of the other boys chimes in. “That pussy only cares about baseball, huh? Wallahi, that’s fucked up, dude.”

  They laugh as her hands shake. She clenches the small counter that separates her from these horrid boys. “Listen, you ass—”

  “Afaf! You work here?” A soft voice from behind her.

  She turns around and faces Kowkab. She’s wearing a pink flower-patterned scarf and a beige peacoat over stone-washed jeans. She looks completely out of place at this mall. She smiles her crooked smile, her eyes bright. A surge of relief runs through Afaf’s chest.

  “Hi, Kowkab. Yeah. I just started,” Afaf squeaks, her fingers still trembling.

  “Mashallah!” Kowkab beams, as though duplicating keys is the most noble job Afaf could be doing.

  Rami and his friends suddenly look confused. Kowkab stares evenly at them, unblinking. Finally, they retreat, throwing a few icy glances at Afaf.

  Afaf turns away from Kowkab, fighting back tears and pretending to look for something on a shelf behind her. A hand on her shoulder pulls her around.

  “Forget about them. Only Allah judges,” she hears Kowkab telling her as she cries.

  “I’ve done a lot of dumb things,” Afaf whispers.

  “Yeah, but they don’t define you,” Kowkab says. “Mistakes make us better muslimeen.”

  Afaf tears a sheet off from a heavy roll of industrial paper towel she uses to clean the machine and dabs at her wet face and dripping nose.

  “Did you have fun the other night?” Kowkab asks her.

  Mall patrons pass by and Afaf catches their quizzical expressions, the nudges they exchange behind Kowkab’s back. “Sure. I mean, it was a little weird, you know?”

  “When’s your shift over?” Kowkab appears oblivious to the world around her, her smile never faltering when she speaks to Afaf.

  “Six.”

  “Do you wanna come over to my house and hang out?”

  Afaf can’t think of the last time she received an invitation from someone who didn’t want something in return. And one from a girl. Her last true friend had been Sameera. After that she’d hung out with the outcasts at the video arcade on Kedzie Avenue, or on a weatherworn bench at Marquette Park—a place she’s vowed she’d never return to after Rami had driven her there that night. At Hoover High School, she was among a social class of losers on the lowest rung.

  She gazes at Kowkab and remembers how Kowkab had led her to the line of worshippers at the masjid, how the other women had hugged and talked to her as though knowing her their entire lives.

  Afaf accepts, gazing at the pretty pink flowers blooming across her new friend’s dipped head as Kowkab jots down her address.

  Kowkab’s house is a small bungalow with a tidy browned lawn. Small urns of orange and yellow chrysanthemums line the short flight of cement steps to the front door. It’s the kind of house Mama’s envied for years, the kind with a finished basement and two and a half bathrooms, and a nice yard where you could grill in the summertime. When Afaf steps inside the living room, she’s greeted by an enormous cross-stitched rendition of the Dome of the Rock hanging from the center wall. There are school portraits of Kowkab and her sisters; she and the oldest one are wearing graduation caps over their headscarves, bearing the same crooked grins. Baba went to Woolworth’s for a cheap wooden frame and nailed a picture of Afaf holding her diploma above the sofa bed. Mama had watched him from the hallway, smoking a cigarette, as Baba hammered away.

  “Ahlan, ahlan, habibti, Afaf!” Kowkab’s mother embraces her, kisses each of her cheeks.

  Kowkab’s sisters Nadia and Muna are watching TV. They look up at Afaf, polite smiles pasted on their faces. For a moment Afaf wonders if this is a mistake. She’s sure Nadia, a year older than her and Kowkab, knows all about her bad reputation. Why would she approve of a girl like Afaf to hang around her younger sister? Nadia says hi and returns to watching TV.

  Inside their home they are bareheaded, and Afaf marvels at their ink-black hair. Kowkab’s wavy strands are loose around her shoulders; her mother and sisters have pulled theirs back in low ponytails. She looks like a different girl and she chuckles at Afaf’s bewildered expression.

  “Do you think we live and sleep in hijab?” Kowkab says.

  “Let’s eat!” Kowkab’s mother ushers her into the kitchen, where a table is laid out for six. Kowkab’s father is already seated at one end of the table and tucks his newspaper on his lap. “Welcome to our home, ya Afaf,” he tells her. “You light up our table.”

  Afaf smiles, embarrassed. Kowkab’s parents welcome her without reservation. Kowkab motions to Afaf to sit beside her, her sisters opposite them and her mother on the other end, closest to Kowkab.

  “Bismallah,” her father recites, and they all lower their heads. “And with the blessings of Allah I begin.”

  Between bites of musakhan Afaf’s eyes dart around the table as Kowkab and her sisters engage in actual conversation with their parents. With work and practice schedules, Afaf and Majeed rarely sit down at the same hour for dinner. Afaf usually carries a dish full of rice and cauliflower, or mahshi with yogurt sauce, into her room and eats alone, headphones on, a book propped open on her pillow. After practice, Majeed turns on the portable television in the kitchen and watches the middle innings of a game while he eats. Mama used to wait for Baba and they’d sit across from each other, mostly quiet, eating together. Ever since Baba began praying, Mama leaves him a plate covered in foil in the microwave. Baba sits alone; the nightly news, turned up high, streams out of their bedroom, breaking the silence of the kitchen.

  Kowkab’s father asks them about their day, how Nadia’s internship at the social services agency is going. Kowkab’s mother updates them on the latest events at the Islamic Center. Even Muna, the youngest, has something to contribute about her volunteer work at the day-care center.

  “And, elhamdulillah,” Kowkab’s mother adds. “The state has finally approved the children’s free milk program.”

  “Elhamdulillah,” the others respond in unison.

  Kowkab’s father asks Afaf about her job at the mall, and it seems like such a trivial thing compared
to what’s been shared over crisped chicken topped with tangy sumac and onions. She’s glad when the subject changes to the recent hijacking.

  “It makes life difficult for God-fearing people in this country,” Kowkab’s father says.

  Afaf remembers the other day when she stopped at a 7-Eleven across from the bus stop after work. A newscast from a portable television set behind the cash register blared the latest on the terrorist investigation. She’d overheard a white man joke, TWA—Trouble With A-rabs.

  “Inshallah peace,” Kowkab’s mother sighs.

  “There won’t be peace until the U.S. fixes its foreign policy,” Nadia declares. “Until the Palestinians are fully recognized.”

  “I understand, yabba, but violence only breeds violence,” Kowkab’s father counters. “We’re a civilized society. Once talks break down, we’re all lost.”

  Afaf listens and eats, observing each small, intimate gesture exchanged at the table—Kowkab’s mother tucking a strand of her sister’s hair behind her ear, Kowkab’s father refilling his youngest daughter’s plate with rice before she asks for more. Dejection thickens in her throat, making it difficult to swallow her food.

  So this is how a family is, she thinks as Kowkab’s mother offers her a plate of glossy green olives and pickled beets. But would they be the same if they’d lost a daughter, a sister? Would their closeness suddenly shatter like a glass that slips through their fingers?

  By the end of the meal, a familiar anger ignites in Afaf’s belly. She holds it in, this fireball of rage and jealousy, wanting to spew it at this loving, well-intentioned family, though she hungers to be a part of this togetherness as long as possible. Kowkab’s mother tasks Kowkab and Afaf with clearing the table and Afaf’s fingers tremble as she gathers the silverware, forks clattering on plates. Kowkab looks up at her and smiles.

  In Kowkab’s room, stuffed animals crowd the top of a wooden dresser, and posters of the Bangles, George Michael, and Cyndi Lauper hang on the wall. Nadia’s room is across from her parents’ master bedroom. Kowkab and Muna have matching sky-blue comforters on their twin-sized beds.

  Kowkab sits on the carpeted floor, quiet for the first time since dinner, as if she can hear the anger roaring in Afaf. She joins Kowkab on the floor, pulling her knees to her chest, huddled against the hurt she’s terrified will leak out. They don’t speak. Kowkab pulls at the fibers in the carpet.

  “Time for salat, ya banat!” Kowkab’s mother calls from the hallway.

  Kowkab reaches over to the bottom drawer of the dresser and pulls out prayer clothes. She holds out one set for Afaf. “We can do wudu together.”

  “Why do you want to be my friend?” Afaf blurts out, her cheeks hot, a lump of tears gathering in her throat. “I’m not like you. I’m a rotten person.”

  “You’re not rotten. You’re just lost,” Kowkab says. She reaches a hand out to Afaf, and Afaf looks up into a face of sheer sincerity. The word lost turns into something else. It’s not wrapped in the same hopelessness as when Mama calls her that. “You just need to take your time and Allah will guide you. He wants us to be happy.”

  Afaf wants to know if prayer and fasting and charity could magically change her mother and make them a family, though really Afaf has always known they’ve never been a close-knit family, even before Nada’s disappearance. Had religion been the missing force, the thing that could weld them to each other so that when something terrible befell Afaf’s family they would be unbreakable?

  “You’ll see.” Kowkab stands, extends her hand to Afaf. “Now let’s get ready for salat.”

  Afaf takes her new friend’s hand and pulls herself up from the floor, repelling the gravity of her self-loathing, at least for a little while.

  Mama’s scrubbing a pot, one arm disappearing to her elbow. “Where have you been?”

  Afaf wants to tell her mother about Kowkab and her family but doesn’t. “At the library.” Kowkab’s mother had insisted on driving her home. Before they pulled away, she looked over the driver’s seat at Afaf. Say hello to your mother, habibti.

  No more questions from Mama, only the sound of steel wool scraping the bottom of a pot. “There’s maklooba in the fridge. Why do I even bother cooking anymore?”

  Majeed’s probably at the indoor batting cages, and Baba’s at the Center, where plans to build a proper mosque are still under way. Kowkab’s father had mentioned the fund-raising was close to its goal.

  Afaf shuts herself in her room, kicking off her sneakers, tossing her bag aside. Lying on her bed, she stares at the ceiling, Kowkab’s words hanging above her: It’s never too late. Every day we can be better. There’s no limit. No end. You only have to believe, Afaf. She said these things to Afaf after they prayed with her family.

  It seems too easy, like the keys she duplicates at the mall. You’ve got the original one, then you make a copy that’s identical in every curve and cut. Can she really be someone else, in this same body? Is change possible?

  She reaches for her bag, pulls out a book she started today—The Unbearable Lightness of Being—and tries to focus on the typed print, her eyes trekking from word to word but her brain incapable of absorbing meaning. She turns the page, only to realize she doesn’t know what transpired paragraphs before.

  She mutters, lays the book on her chest. It’s not like she didn’t enjoy herself that night at the Center, the rain beating against the windows while bodies fell into prayer. More than that, it had been a strange feeling at first, but a natural one, like instantly mastering a new skill she’d never imagined she could. And at Kowkab’s house, nestled between her new friend and her sisters in their family room, their bodies facing east, the same sensation washed over her: it was like coming home for the first time.

  She thinks about Kowkab, how she wears her headscarf like a badge of honor—defiance, even. Afaf is impressed; she’s tried hard her whole life to be like amarkan, only to be rejected and used.

  Afaf drops her book to the floor and rolls onto her stomach, the pillow cool against her face. What more does she have to lose?

  Um Zuraib embraces her with the same exuberance as before, delighted that Afaf has returned. Baba is pleased, too. He pats her back and heads toward the men’s congregation. Majeed made up an excuse about extra practice this week. “I knew you would come back. Everyone always does. Inshallah you’ll be blessed for the rest of your life.”

  Kowkab’s mother kisses her on each cheek. “You’ve come on a great evening,” she gushes. “We’re baking ma’moul in honor of Ibtisam’s newborn son, mashallah.” The other women nod and wave at Afaf.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Kowkab tells her, lightly touching her arm. Her sisters nod at Afaf, their smiles more sincere than yesterday. “Here, put this on.” She hands Afaf an apron and they sit at a long retractable table covered in a plastic sheet. There’s a large bowl of mashed, pitted dates, a container of Crisco, and a long silver pan already lined with the first batch of cookies. Cinnamon and cardamom waft toward her, a warm and calming aroma.

  “Like this,” Um Zuraib instructs Afaf, pinching a small portion of dough from a large, kneaded ball. The older woman flattens it in her palm and spoons a dollop of the mashed dates onto the dough, then seals it. She grabs a juice squeezer that now functions as a mold and presses the filled dough inside it. When she plops it out, the dough looks like a small, flattened spaceship with ridges. “Now you try.”

  Afaf is afraid she might ruin the batch, but Um Zuraib takes her hand and repeats the process, guiding Afaf’s fingers. The buttery dough feels good in her palm.

  When the final batch is in the oven—they’ve baked five dozen ma’moul—it’s time for salat al-maghrib, the evening prayer.

  “Are you ready?” Kowkab asks Afaf, holding out a set of mismatched prayer clothes.

  Something stirs inside Afaf—it’s small and feeble, like a narrow shaft of light straining under a heavy, sealed door. “I’m ready,” she says.

  Nurrideen School for Girls

&nbs
p; HE DIDN’T hear the bullets leaving the chamber. Like lyrics suddenly dropped from a sound track, then the treble fading out. All that was left was bass: bodies thudding to the floor. He reloaded without pause, the action of his fingers as automatic as the rapid discharge of his weapon.

  The first girl to look at him didn’t have a chance to scream. His shooting wasn’t haphazard, sloppy. He examined each target before pulling the trigger, keeping his hand steady. He took his time. The teacher, a tall and thin woman in a lilac headscarf, pushed a few girls through a nearby door. Only moments before, she’d been at a piano, one hand conducting the students. He aimed at her and held the trigger until her right arm nearly separated from her torso.

  The students, heads shrouded in white, were like swans bobbing on water. It almost moved him. He thought about their parents for the first time and what it would be like to lose your child. Did it matter how? Was it less tragic if it were a car crash or a drowning? Did the grief of a mother or father lessen in the how rather than the why?

  He didn’t think about the futures of these girls, telling himself that he didn’t care as he surveyed their bodies on the floor, a few gasping for breath until they were silent.

  He walked out of the music room, closing the door behind him. The faint wail of sirens was drowned out by the screams of girls in the hallway, a deafening, numbing noise only his gunshots could penetrate.

  He wanted them to see him, too, but they would not turn around, so he shot them in their backs as they clogged the stairwell, and watched them fold over each other on the steps. He made his way over their bodies and down to the first floor where the janitor’s closet was located.

  It might have been different for him—maybe if he’d never left Wisconsin—and perhaps someone else would be here and now in his place, the rifle at his side, boots clopping across the linoleum floors of the school. If this wasn’t his destiny, would someone else claim it? Could events be altered, time distorted to undo them?

  Decades ago, Chicago had opened up like a giant clam that threatened to swallow him. He felt utterly alone in the city. The elevated trains kept him awake until early morning. He’d park at the Adler Planetarium and sit on the hood of his car, watching the sailboats pass on Lake Michigan. Couples sauntered by, hand in hand, or pushing strollers. Teenagers usually waited until dusk before they pulled up in cutoffs and jean jackets, carrying brown paper bags of alcohol under their arms, rock music playing loudly from their car stereos. They sat on the hoods of their cars, passing the bottles until a cop cruiser crept up.