A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

  “Simon’s no good either. Come on.”

  They walk out into the night. Kyle has eyes like a deer and maybe this is why Amar had trusted him almost immediately. Kyle and Simon were childhood friends but lately they had begun to drift apart. Kyle thought Simon was being reckless by using and selling painkillers. Simon had even offered to supply Amar, but Amar had shaken his head. Whiskey and weed’s enough for me, he had said, I don’t need anything fancy.

  Now he steps into Kyle’s navy car and Amar gives him directions. He leans his heavy head against the window.

  “Look. I’ve loved Simon like a brother for years. But I don’t like him anymore. He’s always been kind of an idiot. You’re not an idiot, Amar. We all know that. But if a decent guy follows an idiot, what does that make him?”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” he mumbles, reading the names of streets until they become familiar. But something about Kyle’s words strikes a nerve: it reminds him of a saying of Imam Ali that his mother taught him. About how important it was for one to choose the right friends, that it was one’s friends who were the truest reflection of the self.

  “It’s obvious you love her. And I’m sorry your heart is breaking. Really, I am. But you can’t just show up at her house at this hour. You’re going to scare her. And you might not remember telling me, but you’ve said it to me before—that she wants someone straight-edge and religious. Look at you, man. You say it’s hard enough for you to chill with your family, how are you ever going to chill if you end up with a girl like that?”

  They are close to her home. He sits up in his seat and the seat belt stretches.

  “I’m driving you all this way, the least you can do is listen to me,” Kyle says.

  “I’m listening,” he snaps. “But I don’t expect you to understand. When I’m with her, it’s like I can live that life. I can be that guy. It’s like I want to. I don’t want this, I don’t care about any of this.”

  Amar can’t expect Kyle to understand because he can’t quite understand it either. All he knows is that if he were with her, he could be Muslim. He could try his best to practice, if practicing meant trying, failing, and then resolving to try again. Sometimes he suspected that it was not her he was fighting for so much as what life with her would represent and promise him: a respectable life. A daughter-in-law his parents would beam at. Sure, he could not see eye to eye with his parents now, but with Amira he could grow into that practicing believer: he could have children and take them to the Sunday school, make the weekly trip to the mosque, show his face at the community events, roll out prayer rugs, never stock their refrigerator with beer. If she were the one he would wake up next to, he would do it all. And eventually, he imagined, his father might even respect him. He felt like a dam waiting to break open and he wanted her, unfairly maybe, to keep him contained.

  “Do you have any gum?” he asks.

  Kyle sighs loudly, then tosses him a tin of mints. Amar drops mints into the center of his palm, pops them in his mouth, and then bites down on all four.

  “Just look at yourself.” Kyle grumbles. “She’s going to know. It’s one A.M. and your eyes are all red, for God’s sake.”

  He flinches at the mention of God. He hates if he’s high or drunk and someone begins talking about religion. And tonight is the eighth of Moharram—he had wanted to make a point to his family, had not gone with them to mosque on purpose, but now the realization that he is drunk on so important a night almost makes him panic. He pops another mint into his mouth, crushes it with his teeth. Breathes into his cupped hand and tries to sniff for any scent of whiskey. They are approaching her neighborhood and he tells Kyle to slow down.

  “Holy shit,” Kyle says. “She lives here?”

  Amar nods sullenly. Kyle whistles.

  “You didn’t tell me your girl was a queen. Don’t ever bring Simon here,” he says darkly. Amar is too nervous to ask why not.

  At the party, when he knew he was coming, Amar sent Amira a quick message to tell her he would knock on her front door if he had to. He would sleep in her backyard until morning. He would aim tiny pebbles at the rectangle of her bedroom window, like every fool in every foolish movie. She had to speak to him. She had to see him. Just once more, he begged, and then he swore to never bother her again if that is what she truly wanted.

  Amar steps out of the car, but before he shuts the door, Kyle ducks his head through the window and says, “Good luck, man. I might give you a hard time, but I’m rooting for you.”

  It’s not until he feels his face go numb in the cold air that it occurs to him how much he has had to drink. He concentrates on keeping his steps steady. He aims mint after mint at her window until a light turns on. When her face appears he sparks his lighter and waves the small flame. Amira disappears and a moment later her room is dark again. Anything to be able to tell himself he did everything. That he tried again. The sliding door downstairs opens, slowly, announced by the squeak and the reflection of the moon shifting slightly. She walks toward him on tiptoe, barefoot. He did not know his heart could even beat this hard.

  “Have you absolutely lost your mind?” she hisses.

  She has been crying. Even in the dark he can see her eyes are puffy and small. For the first time since the tunnel meeting, it occurs to him that maybe she has also been hurting. She looks frail. He reaches for her face and holds it between his hands. She is startled, and for a moment, silent—he has never been so bold, so abrupt. She does not step back from him.

  “They were right,” she says. “You’re drunk.”

  “Amira.”

  “You are,” and her voice is shaking. “You were never going to change.”

  It was true. He was drunk. He holds on to her face to steady himself.

  “I only drank because we’re not speaking anymore. I promise I will stop.”

  “Lie to everyone else, Amar, but don’t lie to me. You’re being selfish.”

  He lets go. Only his father had ever called him selfish. He doesn’t care what anyone says but he does care what she says. She takes a step back. He is about to say: I won’t do it again. I don’t need to drink. I don’t need to smoke. I don’t need anything. But I can’t lose this.

  She looks past him to the thicket of trees where they once played hide-and-seek, where he watched her take a drag of her first cigarette. Her arms are crossed and held tight against her body. Then she looks up at him. There is a soft bruise, just beneath her eye; but maybe it is just a shadow. When he reaches out to press it carefully with his thumb, she recoils, swats his thumb away from her face like he is a fly.

  “Go away, Amar. I’ll be in trouble all over again.”

  “Everyone gives up on me. Give me one more chance.”

  Her feet are pale in this light. This is the very lawn he stood on year after year, pausing while playing soccer to look up, hoping for that glimpse of her.

  “Have you been lying to me all these years?” she asks quietly.

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you really believe you could do this, become who you needed to be, send a proposal properly one day?”

  He sighs. And then, “I tried harder to do that, be that, than I’ve tried to do anything before.”

  “Did you want to?”

  “I wanted you.”

  “But that life—did you want it?”

  He says nothing. She nods slowly.

  “Do you believe in God?” she whispers. Her voice is so small.

  They had asked each other a hundred questions. How had they missed this one. He looks from the dewy grass to her bare feet and searches his heart for an answer, his honest one.

  “Not like this,” he says at last. “Not my father’s God.”

  He is not sure what he means, but instead of stiffening, her face softens to him.

  “Now you don’t have to try, to pretend.�
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  He was never pretending about wanting to be with her. That was exactly, unequivocally, the one thing he wanted. But he cannot deny the exhalation in him—that he has spoken aloud what he so feared to be true, that he could speak the words and still continue to exist.

  “Amar, maybe I’ve been keeping you from becoming yourself,” she says, and he can tell she is being very gentle with him.

  He stares at the tops of the trees, black this time of night, and feels how he had that one night years ago, as though he were venturing out from his old world into a new one, where he would be entirely alone.

  “Say something?” she asks him.

  “What will it be like?”

  It had been their game since the note she left on his pillow: one of them would ask the other, what’s it like, and the other would give a response, never specifying what “it” was. Tonight he has altered their line. What he wants to know now is how he is going to live without her. She says nothing. She reaches her hand up and touches the side of his face. She has never done this before. She has never initiated touch. The strongest wind through the tallest branches makes a sweeping sound. The longest silence is hers.

  And then, after a while, after he leans his face into her warm hand, she says to him, bravely and without a hint of uncertainty, “Amar, I know this will mean nothing to you now. But I do believe that even your father’s God, even He, would forgive you. To know you is to want to let you in.”

  * * *

  “I’M SORRY, REALLY I am,” Kyle keeps saying as they drive back to the party. Amar isn’t sure what about his demeanor is making Kyle look over at him at every stoplight. Amar is just quiet. Mumma had begun to look at him in that way too. Like he was disappearing right before her eyes. He had been eating very little and sleeping in very late. Anytime Simon called him with a plan for the night he agreed without asking any questions. Kyle parks the car and Amar tells him he wants to stay at the party. He has nowhere else to go.

  He does not love her any longer.

  He only loves her.

  He will leave and never return.

  He will wait, by the door, until he is invited inside again.

  On and on he thinks in opposite extremes, until he is not sure who he is or what he wants. Once inside, he sinks into the couch beside Simon and the guy from the basement. The dancing is over. People speak slowly and laugh easily in the dim light. He asks the guy from the basement what coke feels like.

  “Like flying,” he says.

  Amar does not care for a thrill. He turns to Simon and flicks one finger against Simon’s chest pocket, where Simon keeps the smallest bag of pills.

  “What’s it like?” he asks.

  Simon thinks for a moment.

  “Like nothing exists. Not even you.”

  Kyle watches him from the doorway. His eyes are gentle and big. Amar cannot look back at him, he is not quite sure why. He looks instead at the knuckle that he has been kneading with his thumb, the one that is now redder than the rest.

  “How much for nothing?”

  Simon throws his arm over Amar’s shoulder and pulls him close for a moment before letting go.

  “For you my brother, your first time, nothing will not cost you anything at all.”

  When he looks back at the doorway, Kyle is gone. Simon drops a round pill in his palm, white and weightless. Amar thinks that at least with this he is certain there will be no smell.

  * * *

  LAYLA PARKS IN the empty cul-de-sac, and though she knows Amar is in the middle of his chemistry exam, she still looks around before stepping out from the car. Slowly, the Ali house comes into view. The trees surrounding their property sway so that the house with its balconies and rows of glinting windows stands like a rock in comparison. Every jashan and majlis hosted by the Alis was a production, and it was no effort for Seema—she was calm when the guests arrived, her hands soft—having hired people who did the work and catering for her. Sparkling Christmas lights wrapped around every pillar and curved banister during their jashans, and even the trunks of trees that led up to the driveway twinkled. Those nights it looked like stars had fallen from the sky. Now it looks like any other home. Layla pauses at the edge of the driveway. She had not anticipated feeling anything other than determination, but as she approaches the house that impulse to tuck the car away, enter and leave without being seen, unnerves her.

  Seema said she would be home alone and seemed surprised when Layla wanted to meet. Their friendship was one born of circumstance and routine, and because of this, they rarely met outside of mosque or an event, and never alone. There had been a hint of worry in her voice and Layla wondered, bitterly, if she was afraid that a proposal would be sent on Amar’s behalf for the girl, and Seema would have to bear the discomfort of denying her. The Ali girl received ten proposals after any event she went to. Seema would complain in the way that people would when they wanted to brag but disguised it as a burden.

  “And yet Amira says she’s not ready,” Seema would say, lifting up her hand in frustration and shaking it. “What has gotten into the girls these days—saying they are ‘not ready’ as if there is something else, something more important they’re waiting for, and only after that will they consider marriage.”

  Layla would give Seema a hollow laugh. Her daughters also received proposals. But the Ali girl was only eighteen; Layla’s daughters were already twenty-three and twenty-four, and getting older every month. She dreaded the thought of their prospects dwindling as they aged. They insisted not only “not yet” but also “not him”—with no reason given. Every night she prayed God would continue to shower them with the blessing of respectable proposals and then would immediately pray for her daughters to develop some common sense. What was the use in one if they so lacked the other?

  An hour ago she packed walnuts in a clear plastic bag for her son. She sliced a green apple. She filled his water bottle with cold water.

  “For your test,” she said as she handed him the brown bag. “For you to have energy to do well.”

  He was nervous. She had never seen him so driven, so concerned about his education. The sight of him with books in the crook of his arm filled her with pride. Her prayers for him had been answered. He had finally developed ehsas—an understanding of his actions, of the impact of them. She wanted him to do well. She wanted nothing to hinder him from becoming the man she believed he could become. As she wondered what to say to him she remembered the purple light of an old classroom, and Amar’s sweet teacher who had succeeded, albeit temporarily, in encouraging him.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just a test. As long as you do the best you can, we will be happy.”

  He nodded slowly, considering her words. Then that dark look of his took over and he said quietly, “It’s not just a test. I have to do well.”

  Layla sighed. She had asked Rafiq to stop pressuring him and Rafiq, tired of Amar’s batamizi and the hostility between them, had reminded Layla that he only spoke to Amar when it was absolutely necessary.

  Layla held a Quran above his head as he stepped out the front door, for luck and extra confidence. She shielded the sun from her eyes and watched him leave before preparing to drive to Seema’s house. He would be affected for a week, a few months, but he would recover. What was the heartache one felt in youth? Nothing but a dream. By the time he was an adult he would hardly remember it. And what was heartache when compared with public humiliation? Heartache was the quick touch of a flame. But for one’s inner life to be gossiped about and judged by the entire community—it was like holding one’s hand above fire until it left a scar.

  She had been stunned and sickened by the contents of Amar’s keepsake box. For months she knew he had been hiding something: smiling to himself whenever his phone buzzed, guarding his phone and barking about privacy if anyone came near him. It was difficult enough to see her son step so willingly toward
sin; she imagined it would have been unbearable if her daughters had done the same. How had she failed to pass on to one child what was so instilled in the others? This was the question that haunted her. They had all heard the same speeches, listened to the same stories and lessons, and yet.

  Layla lifts her fist and knocks. Seema appears before she can exhale. Seema smells faintly of perfume when they embrace and Layla follows her inside. Instead of the family photos that Layla has hung in her home, the Ali family has decorated their walls with ornate mirrors, purposeless tables, paintings Layla does not find beautiful. Canvases painted blocks of red, stripes of light yellow and black. Layla glimpses her reflection in a mirror as she passes and for a second it alarms her.

  Biscuits have been placed on little plates in the living room. Colorful napkins stacked. Seema asks Layla if she would like tea or coffee and then disappears to prepare it. The house is very quiet. Soon she can hear the faint gurgle of the water boiling, then the whistle. Layla’s heart thuds in her chest and she twists her orni around her finger. Their secret—Amar and Amira’s—would come out eventually. If only the surface were considered, it was Amira who would be chastised. It was her innocence that would be compromised. But Layla knew that when the shock of a woman’s begharti subsided, the root of the scandal, the reason why the parents did not just rush to make it a halal match, would be because Amar was not the kind of man worthy of marrying the Ali girl. Once they were bored with the questions of how could she, the more sinister question would rise up to sting Layla: What had she seen in Rafiq and Layla’s boy?

  Seema and Brother Ali would laugh at the proposal if it were to be sent. They would nip it in the bud before word of it even reached their daughter. They had wealth and they had beauty, they had noble lineage and the respect of the entire community. So often someone from their mosque, including Brother Ali, would report to Rafiq that they had seen Amar smoking in the parking lot, or that he had stepped away as soon as the adhaan began, as though the call to prayer called everyone else but repelled him. One man from the community even had the gall to tell her husband that red eyes were the sign of a man who took drugs. They thought they were doing Rafiq a favor, and Rafiq would solemnly thank them, but at night he would be unable to sleep, and Layla would have to prod him just for him to speak about it. What can I do, Layla? Rafiq would ask her helplessly. Layla would be unable to comfort him. Her own spirit had been broken by not being able to deny the rumors. She too was disheartened when her son came home with a sway to his step, smelling strongly of stale cigarette smoke and cheap body spray. If this is what reached Layla and Rafiq, she could only imagine what people whispered among themselves.