by Puja Guha
Keep calm.
She dropped the purse on the floor and opened the closet door.
Tareq was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed. “Mariam, please join me downstairs.”
Mariam followed him, trying to control her breathing on the way. They reached the living room and she almost tripped over the edge of her long nightgown as she stepped onto the area rug under the ornate glass coffee table.
“Sit down,” Tareq gestured toward one end of the couch.
She stepped past him to take a seat and watched as he sat down in his armchair across from her.
He must have found the book.
Her heartbeat drummed in her ears as she racked her brain for any excuse.
“You left your purse on the couch,” he said in a flat voice.
“Yes.”
“You know how I like everything to be put away.”
Mariam’s breathing steadied.
This is just about leaving the purse out.
“I’m sorry,” she answered. “I won’t let it happen again.”
“Good. Did you put the purse away in your closet?”
“I did,” she gave him another nod, and her eyes looked past his head toward the staircase.
When will he let me go?
“I noticed there was a green plastic bag inside.”
Mariam shrank back into the couch, she had no idea what to say.
Maybe he didn’t look inside?
She clung desperately to that glimmer of hope.
“Do you know what was inside the bag?” Tareq’s words shattered the last remnants of hope that he hadn’t found the book.
Why did you leave it out?
Mariam rebuked herself again, unsure of what to say. Anything she came up with might make the situation worse. She finally made a feeble attempt at an excuse, “It was a gift from one of the girls. A friend of Reema’s. I didn’t open it, but I couldn’t say no.”
“Why do you lie to me?” Tareq’s voice sounded even more eerie than usual, with an element of cunning, as if he were calculating his next ten moves and luring her into a specially designed trap. Mariam shut her eyes for a moment. She felt like the little boy in The Jungle Book, which she’d watched a few days earlier with Reema’s three-year-old toddler. The snake was encircling her, just as it had in the movie, ready to pounce when its prey was most vulnerable.
“How many times have I told you that you aren’t to read inappropriate books?” Tareq continued.
“I couldn’t say no,” Mariam repeated as a Hail Mary pass. Perhaps if she said it enough times, he would start to believe her.
Tareq approached and grabbed her left wrist to pull her into standing position. She winced, the bruise was still so sore. He towered over her, glaring at her, and the seconds protracted as he stared her down.
Mariam avoided eye contact, still hoping to defuse the tension somehow. “If you aren’t comfortable with me reading it, I won’t.”
“You thought I would let you read The Godfather?”
“I heard it was a good movie, that’s all,” she protested. “I’m sorry. I won’t read it, I promise.”
Before she could say anything else, Mariam felt a searing pain across her cheek as he smacked her with the back of his hand. The heavy gold ring he wore cut into her skin, and she doubled over the couch. She touched her cheek gingerly, the open wound stung, and she could feel the drops of blood. Maybe he’s done for tonight. She stood up, praying that the sight of the blood would get him to stop, “I’m sorry.”
He stepped back from her, eyes narrowed, then grasped her shoulders and shook her. A few seconds later, he opened the sideboard to reveal the green plastic bag. He took out the book, handing it to her. Mariam looked down at the title, The Godfather, embossed in gold text on the maroon cover.
“Tear it up,” Tareq said.
Mariam looked at him and back down at the cover. Tear up the book? Her mother had always said that books were precious, that they were to be revered. How could I tear it up? She closed her eyes, and a tear trickled down her cheek.
There’s only one way to survive this.
Mariam opened the book in the middle. She tugged at one side, and a slim crack appeared down the spine. She pulled at it again, but heard her mother’s voice in her head: Books are always to be respected. Never forget that, Mariam… You can love them or hate them, but never disrespect them. When someone writes a book, they put a piece of their soul on paper. Her hands froze, and her chest shook. A piece of their soul, the words echoed through her head again. Her voice quavered, “Please—don’t make me tear it up. I’ll give it back, don’t make me destroy it.”
Mariam saw the look in his eyes and tried to run this time, but before she could get more than a step away, another blow struck her head on the other side. She fell and crashed into the coffee table and the glass shattered around her. Her head slammed into the edge of the couch and then ricocheted onto the ground, smacking the joint between the carpet and the ceramic tile underneath twice before she stopped moving. Then everything went black.
WHEN MARIAM CAME to sometime later, the only thing she could hear was the sirens blaring outside. She squinted, “Where am I?” Her vision came into focus, and she saw a man next to her.
“Hold on, you’re going to be okay,” he said in Arabic. “You fell, but we’re taking you to the hospital.”
Who is this man? Where am I? Her head pounded, and she let her eyes close. The sirens were so loud… Make them stop, she wanted to shout, but the effort of forming the words seemed too daunting. She drifted back into the black, the sirens still screaming through her head.
Washington D.C., USA – December, 2015
Dinah Qatami hung up the phone in frustration and drained the last few sips from her coffee cup. The cold, bitter brew made her even grumpier, and she headed one floor down to the Nespresso machine to make a fresh cup, all the while pondering, Why is Mariam always so stubborn?
When Dinah reached the machine, she searched the cabinet below for the pods but came up blank. She rummaged through empty boxes—normally the cabinet was well stocked, but she had no idea where any extras would be kept. That should have been lesson one for this job, she pursed her lips and did a final sweep. The hits just keep on coming, she gave up and returned to her desk, beleaguering for the umpteenth time that the closest coffee shop in the embassy’s vicinity was a Starbucks. While she didn’t mind the atmosphere, she couldn’t say the same for the coffee, a far cry from the Italian espresso shop she would frequent in London.
Dinah sighed and stepped into the bathroom to call John, she needed to vent before she could return to schedules and bureaucratic paperwork.
“Hi, darling.”
“What happened?”
“How did you know?” Dinah’s eyebrows scrunched, he could always read her voice, even before she had the chance to tell him that anything was wrong. “It’s Mariam,” she said before he could answer—the question had been rhetorical anyway. He was a former MI-6 case officer, so it was no wonder his observation skills were off the charts, although he had given up his commission a few years prior to his posting in Kuwait, before they had even met.
“Dinah, if she doesn’t want to come to the event, you can’t force her.”
“It’s not just the event—I don’t care about that, I’d be fine if it were just you and me, but why can’t she come visit? When we decided to move here, I thought I’d get to see so much more of her. Austin isn’t far away but she refuses to make the trip.” Dinah replayed her last conversation with Mariam in her head. What could I have said? She missed her cousin, missed how close they once were. “I even checked the list of attendees when she said that she was worried someone would recognize her. Big surprise—there’s no one we know on the list! But when I told her she just came up with another excuse.”
“I’m sure she’ll come around, babe. It can’t be easy though, for her, you know, especially if it means attending an event at the embassy.”
> Dinah let out another sigh, she knew exactly what John was referring to even if he would only allude to it on an open line. Her cousin had cut ties with her Kuwaiti identity, so coming to an embassy party seemed like something of a stretch—although Dinah had hoped the event’s exclusivity would still be a draw. “Come on,” she protested, “it’s just a party. There’ll be food and music, and it’s not as if she didn’t escape the invasion. Why wouldn’t she be able to commemorate the end of the Gulf War?” Even as she spoke, she recognized that it wasn’t that simple, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted Mariam at the event, wanted them to be there together. “I just need her there with me. We got out of Kuwait together, we took care of each other, saved each other at that camp. Is it really too much to ask?”
“It isn’t, but you know it’s not easy for her,” John replied with a deep tenderness in his voice. “You saved each other, but you also went through a huge trauma. People deal with that in different ways. You have to give her time, my love.”
“Why are you always right?” Dinah said with a small smile. “Thanks for letting me vent.”
“Of course, silly. I’ve got to run to a meeting, I’ll see you at home later, okay? Love you.”
“Love you, too.” Dinah hung up and was on her way back to her desk when she passed Nadia, a new hire. On the corner of her desk sat a box of Nespresso pods: exactly what Dinah had been craving. On a normal day, Dinah never would have said anything, but she was frustrated and overwhelmed by Mariam’s behavior, so she stopped. I need this.
“Hi, I’m Dinah,” she held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met properly yet. When did you start?”
The woman at the desk looked up, meeting Dinah’s gaze with pale hazel eyes, highlighted by a dollop of black eyeliner and silver matte eye shadow. “I’m Nadia, nice to meet you.”
After exchanging a few pleasantries, Dinah worked up the courage to ask about the coffee. “Normally I would never ask…but I’ve had quite the morning, and they’re out of Nespresso pods at the machine downstairs. Is there any way I could impose on you?” She gestured toward the box.
“Of course, please, help yourself. Actually, I’ll come with you,” Nadia stood and followed Dinah down the stairs.
Although she tried to make polite conversation, Dinah couldn’t help but wish that she could have just taken the pod and gone on her way. She wasn’t in the mood for mindless small talk.
After a few feeble attempts to break the intermittent silence on their way downstairs, Nadia asked, “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine of course, but is everything okay? You seem upset about something.”
Dinah hesitated, she probably shouldn’t talk about it, but what harm could it really do? It’s not as if I’m going to use Mariam’s real name. “An old friend of mine, we grew up together, like cousins—I really wanted her to come to the Liberation Day party, but she keeps saying she’s not up for it.”
“Really? My whole family is vying for all of my invites—parents, crazy uncles…” Nadia rolled her eyes.
“Don’t talk to me about crazy relatives, I’ve got more than my fair share.”
“This one’s different, he was a prisoner of war, released a few years after the liberation. I think he went mad in there, he gives me the creeps,” Nadia shuddered a little.
Dinah relaxed, perhaps she could let her guard down a bit. She hadn’t made many friends yet in Washington, and while John was wonderful, she was yearning for more female companionship. She considered talking about Mariam, but instead redirected the conversation to the move from London. As they both sipped their coffees, Dinah started to feel better—maybe Mariam wasn’t the only woman she could connect with, after all. Maybe John’s right, her optimism returned, Mariam will come around.
Washington D.C., USA – December, 2015
Nadia drove home on Saturday morning, exhausted, with her stomach in knots. She had spent the last two nights on Tinder dates, a fact that she was now regretting since she could have used the extra sleep. Her mom had insisted that she come home for the weekend, which meant only one thing: another set-up. There wasn’t much that she wanted to do less than meet whomever her mother had decided was a good match for her. On top of that, she wasn’t looking forward to seeing her uncle either, who was also visiting. Her parents were conservative enough, they didn’t like that she refused to wear a hijab headscarf or the fact that she occasionally wore mini-skirts, but he took it to a whole other level. One time when her uncle had been visiting, she had arrived at home in a button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone. Even though she hadn’t shown much cleavage, he had given her a harsh lecture on the inappropriateness of her behavior. She’d been twenty-one at the time, in her last year of college, and had talked back to him, but the look in his eyes had silenced her. For a moment, she even thought he was going to hit her, but her mom had returned from an errand just in time. Nadia spoke to her about it later, but her mother discounted it as a figment of her imagination, “I know he would never hurt you, he just has strong beliefs. I agree he could express them better, that he could be more level-headed, but think about what he went through. We are so lucky that he’s still alive.”
Nadia paused at a stop sign and considered how fortunate she was that her family had been on vacation in New York at the start of the invasion. Her father had been able to find a job there with the help of a few contacts, and the family returned to Kuwait two years after liberation. A year later, her uncle was released, although Nadia was so young, she didn’t remember much from that time. She and her parents finally moved to D.C. shortly after her sixteenth birthday, and he had seldom visited until her mom processed his immigration paperwork to move to the United States while Nadia was in college. He lived on his own in an apartment outside of Baltimore, but Nadia’s mother was always trying to convince him to move in with them.
Hell no. Nadia pushed the thought aside, wondering why she had such a visceral reaction to her uncle’s presence. Just as she had told Dinah, there was something off about him—maybe the darkness had come from his time in a Baghdad prison, or from being captured in Kuwait. Or he’s just a misogynist, maybe even all of the above. The prospect of bringing him to the embassy party in a few weeks left an even more bitter taste in her mouth. We’ll have such a great time if he comes along.
The drive passed quickly as she turned onto Canal Road and sped away from D.C. When she took the Potomac exit off Highway 270, Nadia practiced her fake smile. Why do I do this to myself? she pondered, but she had started to accommodate her mother’s extreme requests years ago, and she was not yet willing to deal with the inevitable tension that would come with re-establishing her boundaries. I don’t even live with them, so I don’t have to deal with it every day. Nadia chuckled to herself as she recalled how her mother had tried to convince her that she could live at home now that she had taken a job in D.C., Oh, Mom…
She parked on the street a short walk from the house, practiced her smile one last time and headed for the door.
Here I go.
DURING THE INITIAL spree of questions about her first two weeks at work, how she was adjusting to life in the “unsafe” atmosphere of Washington D.C., and exactly what she had eaten that week, Nadia had already drained her first mug of coffee. She fidgeted with the empty cup as the discussion shifted to whether she had been able to procure tickets for the family to attend the embassy party alongside her. After explaining for the third time that this was difficult to request given that she had only just started at the job, she excused herself to the kitchen, claiming that she wanted to make herself a fresh pot of coffee.
Nadia leaned back against the wall as she waited for the percolator to brew, which would take about ten minutes. She couldn’t smell the coffee yet, but the kitchen was already full of the enticing scent emanating from her mother’s lamb stew that was slow cooking on the stove. This is why I come home. Nadia took in the aroma, imagining the deep Ras Al-Hanout spice, along with the saffron rice her mother
had already put out on the table.
She was still basking in the scent when her uncle appeared in the kitchen. Nadia stood up straight, “Is there anything I can get for you, Uncle?”
“I’m fine,” he turned to examine her mother’s spice rack with a frown. After switching two of the bottles, he looked back at Nadia, “Make sure you put the percolator back in the cabinet when you’re done. I spent three hours cleaning in here yesterday—your mother keeps her kitchen so disorganized.”
Nadia waited until he departed to curse under her breath. Who the hell does he think he is? And Mom wants him to move in? She clenched her right fist, the leeway that her mother gave him was so ridiculous. After several deep breaths, her blood pressure had cooled, and she sipped on her coffee, prolonging the quiet as long as possible. She was almost through her cup when the doorbell rang, and her mother called from the living room, “Nadia, could you answer that? Maybe they will join us for lunch.”
Nadia almost choked on her last sip, her mother was trying for a new level of deception with this particular set-up. She set the mug on the counter, conflicted—on some level this attempt was hilarious, but on the other hand the deception made her even more frustrated—and went out to the foyer. Time to start the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner game.
Austin, USA – December, 2015
Mariam finished the story of how she had escaped from Kuwait and looked at her therapist. “That’s how it happened. Raj told the officials that I was his wife, Ritika Ghosh, and I’ve been her ever since. I took some Bengali and Hindi classes after we got to Mumbai so I could get by. When I filed my name change paperwork with my citizenship, I filed it as Ritika Mariam Ghosh so that I can still go by Mariam.”
The therapist looked up from her notes, “What happened to Dinah?”