The Pact We Made

by Layla AlAmmar

  The idea that Yousef might have been facing the same pressures was a new one, and I found myself looking at him differently. That his parents hounded him about marriage struck me as impossible. He was young; he had plenty of time for all that. More than that, he was a man. Unlike me, his eligibility didn’t plummet further each year. If anything, he would become more desirable as more and more women remained single for longer. Why were they, our parents, so eager to push our lives forward? Why were they so keen to see the next phases of our lives start? What if there was no next phase? Certainly there were people – even here, where being alone struck such fear into the chest – who never found anyone to share their lives. Surrounded as we were by the divorced and cheated on and jilted, all slinking back to the family home, often with multiple children in tow, was it even worth it?

  Did it not make more sense to just give up on the whole enterprise?

  11

  Tantalus

  My mother went to the market every Saturday to load up on provisions for the week ahead. She loved it – scrutinizing the fruits and vegetables, haggling over the price of fish and meat, seeing what spices and oils were on offer. On Saturdays she could pretend all was in order with the world, she could pretend there was nothing for her to worry about. She headed out early to ensure she was home by the time the noon prayer was called.

  Finally dragging myself from the warm covers, my coffee and I joined Baba in the yard. I settled in my wicker chair while he surveyed his kingdom. The tomcat had been in the herbs again, but my father didn’t seem as annoyed by it; he just shook his head and repositioned the nets. It was overcast, not as nice as it had been. The sky was a suede blue, tentative and blobby with clouds, sun barely peeking through. It felt like spring was coming to an early end; it had been a mild one.

  Like clockwork, we heard her pull up around the other side of the yard, rolling to a stop and popping the trunk. The maids climbed out of the back seat and went to get the groceries. Minutes later she came over to the front garden. She was pleasant with Baba, smiling and telling him about the massive shrimp she’d found at the market. She hadn’t seen me yet, and I remained quiet, watching her unguarded behavior with him, wondering if this was what they were like when we weren’t around. There was a young quality to their interaction, a washing away of years when all they needed to discuss were pesky cats and the best way to cook fish.

  She saw me and the moment was over. The smile was replaced with a frown and she marched towards me as visions of calls with Um Khaled flashed through my mind.

  ‘Ta’alay,’ she said, wagging her finger as she approached the porch. ‘Come here, you – we need to talk.’ Baba returned to his plants, though he was still within earshot, and I tried to suppress a sigh. ‘Where were you last night?’

  I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Last night,’ she repeated, standing in front of me with her hands on her wide hips, her abbaya bunched up between her fingers. ‘Where did you go?’

  I glanced at my father, but he still didn’t seem to be paying attention. ‘I went to the memsha.’

  She shook her head, scowling down at me. ‘Was that before or after you had dinner with some man?’

  My head whipped up. Baba’s eyes flicked over to us at the mention of ‘dinner’ and ‘man’.

  ‘Your cousin Ahmed saw you there, having dinner with some man. Who is he?’ And then my father was wandering over to join her, propping one foot up on the porch, hands at his waist.

  I shook my head. ‘He’s no one, just a guy from work.’

  ‘Just a guy from work,’ she mimicked, trading a look with Baba. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Just a friend. Yousef. We’ve worked together for years. He’s the one that goes with me on business trips.’

  ‘Men and women can’t be friends,’ she shot back, shaking her head. ‘Tell the truth, Dahlia. What are you doing with him?’

  I snorted and shook my head in turn, wondering how she would react if I told her that Yousef had proposed. ‘I’m not doing anything. He’s a friend from work and we had dinner, big deal.’

  ‘Do you embrace all your male friends from work?’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘Embrace?’ Baba repeated, looking from me to Mama, a definite frown on his face.

  ‘He said she was embracing him.’ She gestured at me with an open palm of accusation, like I was a whore she’d found loitering outside her house. Baba looked to me for an explanation.

  ‘It wasn’t an embrace,’ I said, dragging out the word in a mock sing-song. ‘We said hello and goodbye, that’s all.’

  ‘La, ya mama,’ my father said, shaking his head, eyes dark and disappointed. ‘You can’t do things like that. You know better.’

  ‘Of course she knows better,’ Mama chimed in. ‘But does she care? No! She wants to ruin her chances any way she can.’

  It was like she refused to acknowledge how ‘ruined’ my chances already were. It was like she denied all that had happened, denied that it might have had any sort of permanent effect on me, denied that a man might not want someone who’d been through that. It was like she rejected reality, living in her little world of tradition where if you were good and followed the rules, you were rewarded.

  She still believed in a life that made sense.

  ‘You can’t do things like that,’ Baba was saying. ‘I don’t care if he’s your friend or work colleague, you mustn’t embrace men in public. Ever.’ He shook his head and scratched at the patchy hair there. ‘And perhaps lunch after work we’d be able to explain, a lunch meeting or something, but dinner … No, dinners are too suspicious.’

  ‘Suspicious?’ I barked back. ‘I was sweaty from the memsha and he’d just come from the gym! Obviously, it wasn’t a romantic thing.’

  ‘People don’t know that,’ he retorted.

  Mama looked horrified. ‘You went to a nice restaurant straight from the memsha?’ She shook her head, unable, yet again, to fathom her daughter. She looked at Baba and splayed her hands out in a gesture of astonishment. Then, she turned to go inside, shaking her head the entire way.

  ‘That cousin doesn’t take long,’ I remarked once the door had shut behind her. I crossed my arms and legs, trying to take up as little space as possible in the chair, hoping my father would smirk like he always did and return to the garden.

  But he didn’t. He stood there, hands still on his waist, inscrutable look on his face. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and it troubled me.

  ‘I’m not doing anything, Baba.’

  He scratched his head again and sighed. ‘You know that, I know that, even your mama knows that,’ he said, gesturing to the door. ‘But people don’t. People will see you, and they’ll talk.’

  ‘So what if they do?’ I replied, leaning forward, arms crossed like I was doubled up in pain. ‘Who cares if they talk? Do you honestly think a harmless “hello” in public is the worst thing anyone is doing? At least when I “embrace” men,’ I added sarcastically, ‘it happens in public where people can see the nature of it rather than in private where who knows what’s happening.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing it in either case,’ he said, in that tone that said he was uncomfortable and didn’t want to continue talking. He moved off the porch as though if he tried hard enough, he could shuffle out of his problems. He wore an imploring look that asked why matters with his daughter couldn’t be as straightforward as the garden, with its segmented plots and predictable fluctuations.

  When we were nineteen we took small, escalating steps to rebellion. They were not pre-planned, these things we did, but they might as well have been. We had our driver’s licenses and were heady with freedom. We stayed out too late, talked to boys, and tried anything that was handed to us. Our evenings that year followed a predictable pattern. At around six one of us would pick up the others and we’d stop for a caffeine fix. By eight we were on the road again, doing circuits on the Gulf Road while Mona figured out where we were headed. The night
usually culminated somewhere we weren’t meant to be – at a party too loud to talk in or a chalet of dubious repute.

  Mona had befriended a new group at university – guys who’d gone to different, wilder high schools, girls who didn’t give a damn about societal rules, and Kuwaitis who’d transferred home in a post-9/11 world. We moved en masse across campus like some primordial sludge, attending the same classes, getting lockers in the same corridor, descending on the cafeteria as one. We congregated under gazebos and laughed at the girls who came to class in coiffed hair and a full face of makeup. We tried to ignore how our guy friends ended up dating a lot of them even though they’d laughed right along with us.

  We developed a reputation; the ‘good girls’ talked about us behind our backs, and the boys called us sluts for running around with so many guys. It didn’t matter that none of us – not me nor Mona nor Zaina – had any interest in the males of the group, it was decided that we were fooling around with some, if not all, of them.

  Our parents found out about all this at various points through the year, with predictable if dissimilar results: Mona’s parents shrugged it off – they were progressives who rejected the conservatism of society anyway; Zaina was repeatedly reprimanded; and my parents just sighed a lot. They were still walking on eggshells around me at the time, and I got away with a lot. We all did.

  It was anarchy, and we moved like a pas de trois of dissidence.

  There was one night. The party was at a house out by the water; it was a big house, big and white with a wide concrete veranda. An infinity pool spilled off it, down towards the beach below. The house was all lit up with spotlights shining down on white marble and multi-colored strobes darting in and out of sliding glass doors. Music blared from all corners, a loud, thumping bass that took up residence in your head and would stay there for days after. The house had no neighbors, standing alone along a stretch of desert road halfway between town and the beach house district. It was a popular place for this sort of thing, and we’d all been there before.

  We separated quickly, like always. We wouldn’t be at a party five minutes without drifting away from each other. It just happened, almost as though we were ashamed to let each other hear the words we said or see the things we did. Mona’s new guy found her and dragged her out towards the beach, Zaina plopped onto one of the sofas with some girls, and I migrated towards a loaded table in the corner.

  The party swelled to mammoth proportions, too quick for the eye to catch, more and more people streaming in through the wide doors. The air grew thick and heavy with smoke and scents and the sweat of bodies in motion. The walls and floor and windows throbbed to the bass; it hammered my ribs and settled at the base of my skull. I fell into a happy haze, moving from sofa to chair to the floor in the corner where a small group played some game involving matchsticks and dice. I lost track of Zaina; she’d left the room and Mona hadn’t come in yet.

  I leaned against the entertainment center and let the beat fill my head until my brain shook. Eventually the party splintered, half heading outside while the others stayed and opted for a game of poker. I was never one for card games, so I went for a refill.

  That was when I met Yousef. I was pouring some questionable-looking orange juice into my glass when over my shoulder I heard someone say, ‘The music sucks.’ This was a common opener, a complaint I was used to and sick of hearing. Rather than turn, I just replied, ‘So change it.’ In the pause that followed, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His black hair was cropped short at the sides and stood straight up on top. He wore a too-tight shirt and too-tight jeans gripped by a belt with a shiny brand logo for a buckle. He also wore an expression of thorough befuddlement, as though taking matters into his own hands had never occurred to him.

  Turning on his heel, he marched over to the sound system. He was small, half a head shorter than me in my heels, and narrow with a tiny waist. The hard rap stopped, to the protests of many, and was followed by some rapid-fire dance number sung by an out-of-breath female. He danced back over to the table, out of time with the beat and clearly uncaring that people were bemoaning his choice. Nobody changed it though, and he returned to my side with a sigh of, ‘That’s better.’

  I disagreed but kept it to myself.

  ‘Having fun?’ he asked.

  ‘Oodles,’ I replied, taking a swig of my drink and gagging at the sourness of the juice.

  He carried on bobbing his head to the music, still on the downbeat. ‘You don’t look like it. Your face is all …’ He froze, his features still and bland, like a half-finished statue.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s a party on the inside,’ I replied, tapping my temple. I emptied my cup into the punch bowl and surveyed the bottles on the table.

  ‘I got this,’ he said. He picked up bottles and sniffed at their contents before setting them aside or putting them back. When he was satisfied, he poured and mixed and found some lime to squeeze into the glass before mixing it all some more. Finally, he dropped a maraschino cherry into the pale green liquid and handed it over.

  ‘Not bad,’ I said after a sip.

  ‘De rien,’ he replied with a theatrical little bow.

  Before the song ended I was privy to many of the more salient details of Yousef’s life: I found out he was the lone boy among five siblings; he had a thing for clothes and wanted to open his own boutique one day; he was studying psychology at one of the universities because FIDM in LA had rejected him; he was still upset about this but had to hide it because no one knew he’d even applied. He talked and talked, and I found out more than I probably needed to know. We stood against the wall and he tried to get me to gossip about what people were wearing or how they’d done their hair, but I couldn’t tell what worked from what didn’t, so I just nodded and laughed at what seemed to be the appropriate moments. Rap music came back on and he gave a groan of annoyance, knocking his head against the wall behind him and complaining about the lack of originality.

  ‘This song is pretty popular,’ I said. It was the closest I would get to admitting I liked it.

  ‘This song is shit.’

  A couple were going too far on the couch – she looked Indian, with skin like caramel, while he was a luminous white with fire-engine hair – and people started snapping photos. Freeze-frames and flashes: fingers danced down torsos – flash; tongues flicked out and in – snap. She bit his earlobe and the crowd roared their approval. She threw her head back and laughed, a loud, piercing sound, and he took it as an invitation to suckle at the skin of her neck like a babe seeking a teat.

  ‘What a whore,’ Yousef said, tilting his head so that it rested lightly on my shoulder.

  ‘She’s free,’ I replied.

  ‘Hey.’

  It was Sultan. Too-cool-for-school Sultan who flitted in and out of our group like he couldn’t decide if he liked us or not. He liked me though; since we met he’d been trying to make something happen. He flirted with us all in a natural, unthreatening way – a hand on the arm, a touch of lips to temple, innocuous little actions that bothered no one – but the attention he paid me was more intense and less divided than that which he gave to the other girls.

  I was both flattered and repulsed by his attention. Flattered because he was good-looking in the most obvious way possible – tall, athletic, sharp features perfectly balanced in a tan face. Repulsed because he touched too freely, too easily, without any thought as to whether his touch was wanted. As though it baffled him, the idea that his touch was unwelcome … perhaps it never was with anyone but me. The other girls, even Mona and Zaina, giggled and beamed when he favored them with a tickle to the ribs or a rub of his big hands across their shoulders. I was the only one who gave him any trouble.

  ‘Hey,’ I replied, leaning forward to accept his kiss on my cheek. His lips felt like rubber, waxy and soft.

  I introduced Yousef, and Sultan’s dark eyes swept over him once before apparently deciding he wasn’t a threat. He leaned against the wall on my other side, cr
adling his drink to his chest, and we watched the show.

  Things with the couple were progressing. Her shirt was pushed up her torso, revealing flat white skin and the edge of a hot pink bikini top. Their audience had grown bored though, talking over one another, tossing nuts and chips at the couple and yelling at them to get a room.

  ‘Looks like she’s having fun,’ Sultan murmured near my ear.

  ‘Hmm.’ I had hoped this would sound apathetic, but it came out breathier than I intended.

  ‘We could have some fun,’ he said, louder this time as someone had turned up the sound system.

  I glanced at Yousef, but he just lifted his brows and drifted away. I turned back to Sultan, gripped by a sudden urge to scratch the smirk off his face.

  ‘Who’s the lady boy?’ he asked, nodding towards Yousef’s retreating form.

  ‘I just introduced you.’

  ‘I meant, who is he? I haven’t seen him around.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I replied. ‘We just met.’

  ‘He wasn’t trying something with you, was he?’

  ‘The lady boy?’ I asked in a mocking tone. I shook my head, eyes on the couch. ‘Not everyone moves as fast as you.’

  His laugh was a dark rumble that made me lean closer to him. I didn’t understand myself. I let him drape his free arm around my shoulder and when those rubber lips ghosted over the shell of my ear, I didn’t pull away.

  ‘Why do you torment me like this?’ he whispered. The movement, the breath against the delicate skin of my ear made me shiver. He delighted in my reaction, pulling me closer, letting his arm fall and tighten around my waist. He pressed lazy kisses to my neck, his nose burrowing in the mass of my hair.

  ‘Aisha’s getting upset,’ I said, my eyes falling on the girl glaring at me from the doorway.

  ‘Hmm?’ he mumbled, opening his mouth against the point where my neck met my shoulder.