The Pact We Made. Layla AlAmmar

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СКАЧАТЬ always been very far away, an alien concept I never needed to concern myself with. But then it was there, a stranger sitting between us. I didn’t know what to do with it. I kept quiet in our chats, but then I thought that seemed suspicious, so I overdid it. I spun plates on sticks while it seemed like Mona couldn’t care less. I obsessed over the real-life implications of it.

      I used to try and picture Mona and Rashid having sex. The first time was the night of the wedding, after they had walked out of the ballroom – him in his gold-lined black bisht and ghutra, her in a body-hugging lace number cut low in the back. Later, when I was home, in bed, with hairspray-stiffened hair and a full face of makeup I was too tired to wash off, I wondered how they would proceed. She’d told us, me and Zaina, that she and Rashid had done ‘everything but’ in the time they’d been together: she’d told us about the first time she blew him, in the front seat of his car, and how she’d cried after because it was the first time she’d done that and it wasn’t supposed to happen like that and what would he think of her; Zaina and I could recount, with disturbing accuracy, every detail of their first kiss – right down to the song playing on the radio when it happened (Meatloaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’, which we teased her about mercilessly); we knew when and where she’d let him touch her. We’d even been go-betweens when they fought, a two-headed Switzerland shuttling messages and apologies back and forth.

      She’d said she was saving herself for him, or rather for whomever she’d end up marrying.

      Would it be fast and frantic? Or slow and gentle, Rashid showing off his stamina? Would she cry that first time? Would he be patient when she tensed, or would the frustration show on his brow, in the line of his lips, the strain in his neck?

      But now there was this nameless, faceless man to contend with. This nameless, faceless man pressing down on her, taking what she’d decided to give so freely. This usurper, this pickaxe scraping at their marriage. I hated him. I hated him for catching her eye, for worming his way in, for being whatever she thought Rashid wasn’t.

      I chewed over her insistence that she loved her husband, worrying at it like a chipped tooth. Intimacy and trust, I’d learned from a young age, were very different from sex or what passed for it in our society. It was easy enough to divorce one from the other, but for her to have that trust with Rashid, to say she loved him, all while giving her intimacy to someone else … I couldn’t fathom it. My brain refused to process it. No, that’s wrong. My brain had no trouble comprehending it. The part of me that struggled was something else. Something mobile. Something that slithered from my mind and sat heavy on my sternum.

      Baba walked around his little kingdom, hands clasped behind his back like a general inspecting his troops, and admired the green shoots and little buds sprouting all over. His skin was darker than usual from hours spent in his garden while the weather was agreeable. He stomped up and down every so often, pushing to test the firmness of the dirt. If it was too soft, I heard him grumble about the houseboy over-watering – ‘Leaves the hose on and goes to talk on the phone, that donkey.’ Every so often he called to where I sat in my white plastic chair, soaking up the sun, and said something like, ‘Look how tall the tomato plant has gotten,’ and I would nod and smile like an indulgent parent. ‘The radishes will start popping up soon,’ he said, squatting low to the ground for a better look. When everything was deemed satisfactory, he pulled up a chair by me, sinking into it with a ‘Ya’Allah,’ and a happy sigh.

      We sat in comfortable silence for a while. Unlike Mama, my father never felt the need to fill pauses with mindless chatter. I inherited that, and some of my fondest memories of him contain no words – just blessed silences. That morning wasn’t one of them, though.

      ‘So nothing came of that boy then?’

      I kept my eyes closed, feeling the sun through my lids. ‘I guess not.’

      ‘Your mother hasn’t heard from them …’ I couldn’t tell if that was a statement or a question; either way I chose not to respond. ‘It’s fine.’

      ‘I know it’s fine.’

      ‘I think she has another one lined up for later this week.’

      My heart pounded, once, twice, all jangly, and I suddenly felt like crying. ‘She hasn’t said anything to me.’

      ‘You know how she is. She likes to wait till the last possible minute to tell you. I think she thinks it makes you less likely to find a way to escape.’

      ‘I don’t know why she thinks the situation is so desperate.’

      He chuckled, folding his arms over his gut. ‘Your birthday is just around the corner.’

      ‘Have you approved of the guy?’ I asked, pushing my fingers through my tangle of curls.

      ‘On paper, yes.’

      I nodded; it was important for things to line up on paper. ‘Do you know when they’re coming?’

      ‘Thursday, I think.’ The houseboy passed us on his way to the gate, talking on his phone, and Baba took the opportunity to yell at him about over-watering and how he’d break that phone if he kept doing it. The houseboy pocketed it, nodding like a bobblehead, and scurried out the gate. Baba leaned back in his seat, attention once more on me, and said, ‘Shidday hailich.’

      ‘What does that even mean?’ I replied, sitting up and turning to him. ‘Can you stop and think about that phrase for a minute? Really think about it. What exactly am I supposed to “try harder” at?’

      ‘You know—’

      ‘No, Baba, listen. You and my aunties and Mama, you spit out that phrase like it’s no more than a punctuation point, like it doesn’t cut me every time I hear it. How am I supposed to try harder at something I have zero control over?’ I said, slicing the air with my hand. ‘I sit here waiting for someone to choose me. Not only does the mother have to approve of me, but then I have to appeal to the guy. How can it work with odds like that?’

      He accepted my mini-rant with a pensive nod, looking back out over his garden. My eyes followed. Was he thinking, like I was, how much simpler it would be if life followed such sure rules as seeding, watering, and reaping? Was he wishing he could control all our lives with such certainty?

      It had worked with my sister. Nadia had played by the rules; she had never so much as had a personal conversation with a man until she’d met the one she would marry. Their marriage was arranged by Mama and her sisters when Nadia was twenty-three, and the first time she’d met Sa’ad had been at our house when he’d come to see her. Baba had given him an ultimatum; he could talk to Nadia on the phone for one week, by the end of which they would either make their engagement official or sever contact. Four months later they were married. That was fifteen years ago; Sa’ad had given her a beautiful house and an easy life, and Nadia had given him two sons and a daughter.

      It had all worked out exactly as it was meant to. As sure as the cycles Baba went through with his garden. Almost too easy, some would say, which is probably why they got me.

       4

       A Marauding Heart

      I am the tree that falls in the forest, needing proof of my own existence. When I look in the mirror, I don’t always СКАЧАТЬ