The Pact We Made

by Layla AlAmmar

  It was a long silence. Her soda fizzled and snapped. The fro-yo started to melt. My heart pounded, and I had trouble thinking. Her foot jiggled under the table, tapping mine with every other beat, but she must have thought it was the table leg. The people were loud; they passed in front, behind, and around us. They yelled out orders to friends heading to the counter. They laughed about things we couldn’t hear. They scraped back chairs and rapped knuckles on tables.

  ‘If that was a colleague or friend, you would have said so,’ I finally managed, but my voice felt like it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t know where the words came from.

  ‘Dahlia …’

  ‘Why didn’t you just say that?’ I asked, shaking my head ‘Why didn’t you just say that?’

  She mirrored the shaking, her eyes going shiny, and I thought to myself she’d better not cry. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘What?’

  She repeated herself, but it didn’t get through. I leaned towards her. ‘Are you sleeping with him, whoever he is?’

  The look she gave me was very close to pity. ‘Dahlia …’

  I nodded, feeling foolish. ‘How long?’

  ‘Please—’

  ‘How long?!’ I tried to keep my voice down, but there was adrenaline and my fingers trembled.

  She shook her head down at the table. ‘A couple of months.’

  My brain stuttered again. I leaned back in my seat, crossed my arms and covered my mouth with my hand. It was not possible. This was some bizarre dream. My best friend couldn’t be one of those people, the kind we heard about all the time and shook our heads at. Mona put her elbows on the table and pressed her palms to her ears, like she was trying to block out the noise around us or contain her thoughts.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘What’s there to understand? Rashid is perfect.’

  She flopped both arms to the table and scoffed. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘Clearly,’ I sneered. ‘I can’t believe you would do this. I honestly can’t believe this.’

  She reached forward to grip my hands, but I recoiled. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Are you even listening to yourself?’ I barked. ‘What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Look.’ And now she had her ‘be reasonable’ face on, the face that managed to convince anyone of anything, and I turned my head to avoid it. ‘I made a mistake, okay? An awful mistake.’ I snorted, but she continued. ‘Things have been rough with me and Rashid these last few months and I made a mistake. But I’m going to end it, okay?’ I looked at her. She looked sincere. I wanted to believe her, but she felt like a stranger. ‘Just don’t tell Zaina, please. I’d die if she knew about this. I’m going to end it.’

  ‘If you don’t want to be married, tell Rashid you want a divorce.’

  ‘I love him.’

  ‘Give me a break,’ I replied, shaking my head again. ‘You wouldn’t treat him like this if you loved him.’

  She leaned forward, eyes darkening. ‘You don’t know anything about marriage, Dahlia, even less about love. You don’t know what my relationship with him is like, so don’t sit here lecturing me about what love means.’

  I sat back and crossed my arms, averting my gaze. ‘I’ve been in relationships.’ She made a sort of mocking sound. ‘I have,’ I insisted.

  ‘Who?’ she replied. ‘That Fahad guy? That lasted like two seconds.’

  ‘Not Fahad,’ I said, my voice low, my eyes on the strangers passing by, on their way to regular lunches on a regular Saturday at their regular mall.

  She followed my gaze, chastened. ‘Hamad.’ She nodded. ‘That was real.’

  It had been real. My first boyfriend: we’d met at my first job when he spent a few months interning there. He’d reminded me of Rashid in a lot of ways, and perhaps that was why I’d said yes to him when I’d never so much as entertained the thought of anyone before. He had the same prominent nose, kind, sleepy eyes, and a full mouth that was always smiling. Only his build was different – slighter than Rashid’s tall, broad frame. He was patient and gentle, eager to please and reassure.

  Slowly, so slowly, he coaxed me out. His kisses were praising and yielding. His hands the hands of a follower, a supplicant, never demanding more than I would give.

  We spent hours in his green jeep, parked in dark, empty lots, at the beach, or on empty side streets. We would talk about life, about leaving Kuwait, about religion and Ancient Egypt. He told me about Istanbul, the only place outside of the Middle East he’d ever been, and I told him about our family trips to anywhere Baba could think of. We sang along to the radio and played thumb-war and tic-tac-toe on the fabric of my jeans.

  We discovered that when he kissed me behind my left ear, I’d make a sound I hadn’t known I was capable of. I discovered that my hands didn’t tremble when I wanted to touch a man. I learned not to panic when his weight settled on me, that his hands would not bring pain.

  I’ve always had difficulty remembering events of an intimate nature. I can never remember full sequences, only little snapshots. I don’t remember everything that happened in Hamad’s green jeep. Whenever I think of those nights, all that comes to mind is blue cigarette smoke, lights on the console, and his breath on my shoulder when he decided to write on me with a ballpoint pen. I hear the knocking of innocent limbs against dashboard, his hum against my pulse, and the interjections of the Turkish singer blaring from the stereo.

  What we had (love?) was art, and we made each other art.

  At one point I told him what had happened to me.

  I see that conversation in snapshots too. Wretched silences. Bursts of rage, fists on a black steering wheel. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ A dead sky. ‘I know, but …’ Tears dripping onto the backs of my hands. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ A prominent nose in profile, sleepy eyes looking out of the sunroof. ‘I know, but …’ Hand moving, fingers inching across the center divide. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Fists on thighs, clenched. ‘I know, but …’

  A couple of years later I was reading the newspaper, and my eyes drifted over the back page. His name was there, in bold black print, his much-too-young age in brackets next to addresses for the men’s and women’s funerals. Over the next few days I would see the small article about the accident, and the picture with the charred green jeep flipped on its back, and everything would feel terribly, terribly pointless.

  I shook the recollections from my mind and returned my eyes to Mona. The anger flared in me again, like the catching of a candle’s wick. ‘It’s not about love,’ I said. ‘It’s about respect and affection and the fact that he doesn’t deserve this. And even if I don’t tell him or Zaina—’

  ‘If?!’

  ‘It won’t change the fact that you did it. That for months, you lied to him, to all of us. I mean …’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘What kind of person does that?’ Her eyes were shiny again, but my sympathy was nonexistent, and I couldn’t look at her anymore. I stood and grabbed my bags.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ she said, but I was already moving.

  The worst thing about knowing of Mona’s infidelity was that nothing changed. For the whole of the following week, she continued to participate in our group chats with Zaina as though the betrayal meant nothing. She sent pictures of the record player Rashid had purchased (her husband squatting at its side and pointing at it with a big, goofy grin) because he’d suddenly decided to start collecting vinyl. She cracked jokes and suggested evenings for us to come to her place.

  I’m lying. That wasn’t the worst part. It was her nature to avoid an issue by pretending it didn’t exist. We had that in common, I think. But this thing … the idea of adultery had 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 recognize the reflection. I don’t mean in the way older people sometimes see their younger selves; I mean, I don’t recognize me. The way my eyes, dark brown no matter the light, dip down at the inner corners like commas on their sides strikes me as new each time. I look at my hands and knuckles and think them strangers. The single tiny hair that sprouts from the top of my right foot is not mine.

  I need reminders that I’m here, that I exist, that this isn’t all just a dream within a dream.

  Seeing myself bleed is real. Blood is a living thing you can’t explain away. It pushes out, sticky and inconvenient. It demands attention. Simple and real. I only cut myself a few times, back in the days when I couldn’t get the feeling of fingers creeping along my thigh out of my head, when I couldn’t stop feeling the squeeze of a hand on the barely-there rounds of my newly adolescent butt, or the sensation of slimy rubber lips brushing my cheek. I swore I wouldn’t make the cutting a habit because a) I liked the feeling; the pain (that was real), the blood, and the mark it left behind, and b) even then I knew it was something that would demand escalation, and I have a fear of scars.

  I find a perverse delight in accidental bleeding, though. I cut my finger on a bit of broken glass once. It sliced through the knuckle, skinning
me clean. I stood at the sink, finger under the tap, and let it bleed and bleed. The red streaming from my fingertip, swirling pink in the drain, felt more real than the wooziness in my head, more real somehow than the pain in my hand. I could see it. And I often believe what I see over what I feel.

  My feelings are like my reflection, like the commas in my eyes and the hair on my foot. I struggle to verify them.

  Thursday. Another dress on my bed. This one was cream with a floral pattern, big pink roses splashed across the bodice and down the full skirt. It was even frillier than the last, and I wondered whether Mama knew me at all, or whether she thought that was the mold I had to fit in order to land a husband, after which I could revert to being myself, the way some married women eventually stop shaving their legs.

  I rubbed the fabric between thumb and forefinger. It was new, strong, and rich. Which shoes would I pair it with? In the closet was my black dress, fresh from the dry cleaners. I ran my hand over the comforting organza, fingering the small buttons down the front, and wondered if it was possible for a dress to be disappointed in me. Pulling it off the hanger, I spread it on the bed, pulling and draping until it covered the other one, until the flowers appeared more mauve than pink.

  I would always hear them before I saw them. The suitors. Mama entertained them in the formal living room downstairs before I made my entrance. Even though no one could see me coming down the stairs, that was where the jitters hit hardest. My palm would get clammy on the banister, my heart would shiver in my throat, and the dress would suddenly feel too tight or too short or too low in the front. There was a moment, two or three steps from the bottom, where I was convinced I’d either fall or pass out, and I always hoped it was the latter because that, at least, could be blamed on something other than clumsiness.

  I would make my decision based on their voices. Nothing more. Not looks or height or body, not beautiful hands or trimmed toenails peeking out from open-toed sandals. Pausing just around the corner, I would wait for the man to speak, and then I’d make my judgment. I didn’t resort to any predetermined list; it wasn’t about tone or pitch or how nasal the voice was. It was something unnamed. Call it a gut reaction. I stuck with it.