The Pact We Made

by Layla AlAmmar

  I flinched. ‘There’s something going on between you two, and she doesn’t look pleased.’

  ‘We’re just fooling around.’

  I didn’t know if he meant us at that moment or him and Aisha, but I replied, ‘Does she know that?’

  She sent daggers at me, then turned away with a flick of her long chestnut hair and flounced back out onto the veranda. She nearly knocked over Mona, who scowled at her as she dragged her boyfriend into the house. She looked around then met my eye with a slight shake of her head and a quizzical look. I replied with a mirrored shake of my head that no, I didn’t know where Zaina was. She frowned, shrugged, and let herself be pushed to the drinks table. Sultan tried to pull me to a vacant armchair, but I refused to budge. He brushed the hair off my face, his fingers stopping to feel the scar in my brow and I backed out of his grip, turning my face away when he tried to kiss my lips. He gave a frustrated sigh, but returned to my neck. Mona and her boyfriend were pouring drinks for each other, laughing and joking with an ease I couldn’t emulate, much less feel. And in that moment I was Tantalus, just like in illustrations I’d seen, standing in a barren well, craning my neck to the fruit, but never touching its sweetness. I saw Yousef out of the corner of my eye; he was hovering by the sound system, looking through the stacks of CDs there. Sultan opened his mouth against my shoulder, biting down on the skin there. I yelped in shock and pain and shoved him roughly to the side so that he bumped against a table.

  And then, many things happened at once.

  Sultan was righting the glasses and bottles on the table when a flurry of activity erupted by the front door. We watched, all of us frozen like a paused film, as a troop of men – uniformed and non – burst in and began shouting orders.

  Yousef yelled something I didn’t catch, and then he was a bolt of lightning, streaking past me and out the sliding door into the night. Shouts of ‘Police!’ rang out as people tried to get out of the house. Yousef’s escape over the veranda scattered everyone on the beach, and all I saw were blurry streaks of color as they ran for cars or somewhere to hide.

  I was frozen where I stood, and Mona came to me rather than flee with her boyfriend. Some in the living room managed to slip away, but the rest of us stood under the watchful eyes of three officers. The others were systematically moving through the house, yanking sobbing girls and arrogant, big-talking boys out of rooms.

  ‘Where is she?’ Mona hissed.

  I just shook my head as one of the officers came into the room, followed by Zaina and the guy she’d been found with. Her face was folded in on itself, blotchy with tears and snot and saliva as she sobbed uncontrollably. The guy behind her was nursing his jaw and cursing under his breath. The officer glared at her like she was filth.

  We were allowed to go to her, and Mona and I formed a cocoon around her, which only made her wail harder. The music cut off with a suddenness that left a vacuum of silence in its wake, but it was quickly filled with more barked orders, Zaina’s sobs, and Mona’s soft, comforting murmurs.

  In the lieutenant’s office there was the lingering smell of sweat and saffron and fried food. The walls were yellow with water stains, the furniture bulky and an ugly taupe color, like a cracked desert plain. The desk and coffee table and filing cabinets were arranged like blockades, as though the dough-faced man before us expected a battle.

  We sat in a row in front of his desk, Mona and I with crossed arms and legs – little signs of continued defiance – Zaina quietly crying between us. The lieutenant’s lips were massive, made more so by the smallness of his other features – beady eyes and flat nose. The lips protruded far off his face, turned down like those of a grouper fish, and I could focus on little else but how they flapped and flopped with his words. In my mind I was already sketching them, trying to figure out the mechanics of how he could function every day with such an encumbrance. Vaguely I heard him speak about shame and tradition and fathers who had been called and were on their way. Sarcastically, he asked if we knew that alcohol was not only illegal but forbidden by God himself, and had we not been paying attention during our religious studies classes at school? He said that as young women we were the bearers of family honor, and what damage such actions would do to our reputations and that of our family name, and did we not care about such considerations?

  ‘Obviously not,’ he grumbled in answer to his own question. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have been found in such a place.’ He leveled a dark gaze on Zaina. ‘Or in such a situation.’

  We did not know what situation he was talking about; she’d been far too upset to say anything during the drive, but Mona and I could certainly guess. Then she started talking and she said all the wrong things. Lies about how it was the first party we’d ever gone to. Lies about Aziz giving her a drink that tasted funny, and more lies about what he did to her in the back room, how he’d groped and touched and she’d fought him off and how grateful she was that someone had shown up before something terrible had happened.

  Lies. Mona and I stared at her, gobsmacked and silent. She and Aziz had been sniffing around each other for months; there was no way she’d needed to be forced into anything. Lies. Her fabrications sickened me – they trivialized what I’d gone through, what she knew I’d gone through – but the lieutenant ate it all up. Those grouper lips nearly wrapped around his chin as he switched to a tone of compassion and understanding, pouting and clucking his tongue. He told her young men were evil and that was why our society was built on firm segregation of the sexes, that it was to prevent these sorts of situations. Mona scoffed and shook her head, bringing his anger back to us. He decided that we were a bad influence, that Mona and I had led Zaina astray (and who knows, maybe we had). He reprimanded us in language we only ever heard from our mothers. We’d shown poor judgment in going to such a place and poorer judgment still while we were there. He asked what sort of person allowed their friend to just wander off, who didn’t then check on her to see that she was all right. He told Zaina she ought to rethink her friendships, that she had to choose very wisely the people she decided to spend her time with.

  ‘May Allah conceal your sins,’ he grumbled as we were led out of his office – a figurative veil for three girls who refused to wear one.

  The arrival of our fathers brought more yelling and cursing and demands that Aziz be presented to Zaina’s father, who felt he deserved to exact his own revenge. The fact that there was no rape to avenge didn’t sway him; he still wanted a shot at that ‘son of a whore’. He was still fuming when we were led away fifteen minutes later to sign our pledges – the pieces of paper wherein we confessed our sins and promised not to repeat them. I didn’t know what such papers were meant to accomplish, but it appeased everyone to see us sign them.

  And weeks later her father continued to rage when Zaina had to recant her story because he’d contacted a lawyer and was searching for a legal charge to level at the ‘swine’. He was glorious in the defense of his own. He swore up and down that he would not let such ignominy stand, that he would see Aziz and all the other men at that party in jail. She was forced then to say what Mona and I already knew – that none of it was true, that she’d participated in it all, that the mistake had been hers.

  We learned all this from overheard conversations and the single sides of phone calls that happened between our parents. We were forbidden from calling, much less seeing, each other. Mona and I avoided Zaina at university even, so furious were we at the havoc she’d wreaked.

  It was a long time before we invited her to another party, and they were invitations she never accepted. Some people don’t repeat their mistakes.

  12

  He Cannot Make Her Out

  Zaina’s little girl took afternoon tea very seriously. My niece Sarah and I realized this as soon as we were shown into the living room. A pink and cream floral tablecloth was draped over the low, square coffee table, and squat pink and blue stools were arranged at the four sides. A short, round vase with pink and red roses sat in t
he center of the table. The splash of color stood in stark contrast to the minimalist, monochrome look of the room, with its gunmetal grays, chromes, and dark chocolate tones.

  Mariam acted like she was receiving the queen, taking my niece by the hand and pointing out the four little bone china plates, cream with blue embellishment, with their matching teacups and saucers. She exhorted her not to pick up the buttercup yellow sugar bowl – ‘It’s real and delicate. From China.’ Zaina and I exchanged smiles as Sarah oohed appreciatively. We’d all dressed the part: Mariam and Sarah both had on pink, puffy dresses, almost matching but for the Peter Pan collar on Mariam’s (they both had on Mary Janes as well, and I began to wonder if Zaina had called Nadia to coordinate); I’d broken out the floral cocktail dress Mama had bought me for when suitors came by, and Zaina was wearing a navy blue dress with mint green polka dots.

  Tea was served promptly at four. Sarah and I were made to sit on the stools while Mariam carefully loaded the mini-sandwiches, slices of cake, and jam cookies onto the three-tiered serving tray. Zaina poured out the tea, and in no time we were sipping Earl Grey and nibbling on cucumber sandwiches.

  I hadn’t really spoken to Zaina in a couple of weeks. I’d been avoiding her, fearful of letting Mona’s cat out of the bag. I eased into it, letting her rant about a new employee she was supervising and filling her in on my boss’s missive about wanting to put together a company-wide recycling initiative – never mind that our tiny department wasn’t in a position to enact anything company-wide. She told me about her summer plans, and I talked about a gym I might join and Yousef’s film club that nobody was actually into. Our talk happened in dribs and drabs, bending to the rhythm and whims of the children.

  I gave her a summarized version of the trip to the matchmaker, and she was appropriately horrified. She refused to believe my mother would have dragged me somewhere like that, and remained in that state of disbelief until I started listing the questions we’d had to answer.

  ‘That’s insane,’ she said, when I recited the question about skin tone.

  ‘That’s my mother.’

  She shook her head, scraping jam off a cookie and onto her plate before she took a bite. ‘What’s gotten into her?’

  ‘She’s panicking,’ I replied. I shouldn’t have had to explain this to Zaina.

  ‘So, you’re turning thirty? Big deal,’ she said. ‘She’s overreacting.’

  ‘You think?’ I asked sarcastically, though a part of me knew Zaina would be singing a different tune if she’d still been single on the cusp of thirty.

  She shook her head again and finished off the cookie. ‘But a khataba? That’s like a last resort.’

  ‘Many people use them these days,’ I said, mimicking Mama’s voice.

  ‘Not that many,’ Zaina replied disapprovingly. ‘She better not go around telling people you went to a matchmaker. That really won’t look good.’

  I shrugged again. ‘Whatever. I don’t even care.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ she exclaimed, replacing a cookie on her daughter’s plate with a cucumber sandwich. Mariam, deep in conversation with Sarah, didn’t notice. I took a long drink of tea, hoping I didn’t have to reply, but Zaina wouldn’t let it go. She glanced at the girls and said in low voice, ‘This isn’t about …’

  I looked up when her sentence trailed off. ‘God, no!’ I replied. ‘No, not at all. I’m just sick of it. The whole thing’s such a sham. I hate feeling like my whole life hinges upon this one event, like if it doesn’t happen, then I’m just taking up air.’

  She shook her head in sharp, tight jerks. ‘No one thinks that.’

  ‘Mama does, or she seems to at least.’ I played with the sandwich on my plate, pulling out the cucumber slices and eating them first.

  She looked at Mariam. They were talking about a clown day Sarah’s school was having the following week and how she hates clowns and didn’t want to go. Zaina and I smiled as Mariam reached over to give a consoling hug, explaining to Sarah that there was nothing to be scared of.

  ‘Maybe I’ll just go away to school,’ I said when the girls had quieted down again.

  ‘For a master’s?’ Zaina asked, distracted by the mess her daughter was making. She tsked and leaned over to reposition the napkin on Mariam’s lap.

  ‘Or something,’ I replied, thinking there was no way I’d get into a postgraduate graphic design program and that I’d probably have to start all over. Panic flared in my chest at the thought.

  ‘That’s a lot of money and time to spend just to get away from your mother.’

  ‘It’s not just about her,’ I murmured, pushing the remnants of sandwich around on my plate.

  ‘What then?’

  I shook my head, unable to articulate my thoughts. How could I explain to her that nothing in my life felt real? That in a country like Kuwait, where everyone knew everything about each other, the most monumental thing to ever happen to me was buried and covered over? For the sake of my reputation, my future, my sister’s and cousins’; the family honor sat on my little shoulders, so no one could ever know what he’d done to me. Society would never have shut up about it.

  The result was that my life was not real because society had no idea what had happened to me. And I was left to play the part of a normal, late-twenties woman. I was supposed to care about clothes and makeup and getting lip fillers and fake lashes in the hope of catching the attention of men everywhere I went. I was supposed to put my best face forward at receptions and weddings, get up and dance and show off in the hope of snagging the attention of some woman with a marriageable son in mind. I was supposed to care that I wasn’t married and should be actively pursuing the goal by doing the rounds at popular spots and events around town and splashing my face all over social media.

  If society had known what I’d been through, no one would have expected me to play along. They would have given up on me from the very start.

  ‘You know what we should do?’ Zaina broke into my thoughts, turning back to me with an excited look on her face. ‘This girl at work was telling me about this woman who reads fenjals.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s a coffee reader. You drink Turkish coffee and then she reads the grounds and stuff left behind.’

  ‘Reads them?’

  ‘Yeah, like reads your future or helps sort out things in the present, I don’t know … alerts you to things you might not be aware of.’

  ‘Like the fact that my friend believes in such rubbish?’

  She grinned. ‘Come on! If nothing else, it’ll be fun.’

  ‘Fun?’ I replied, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Sure. It’s been ages since we did something silly. I’ll get in touch or make an appointment or whatever.’

  ‘Mommy!’ Mariam whined, grabbing her mother’s sleeve. ‘Tell her that the prince in the movie is the one who cut Rapunzel’s hair, not the witch!’ Sarah was glaring at her, arms crossed, with the kind of conviction only four-year-olds are capable of.

  ‘I think it’s time to talk about something else,’ Zaina said, smoothing her daughter’s hair.

  ‘No! Tell her, tell her.’

  ‘Khalas, mama,’ she said in a sterner tone. ‘No arguing.’

  Mariam subsided with a huff and Sarah smiled triumphantly, but soon they were diverted into a discussion about spring shows at their respective schools. Sarah started singing the song from her school’s show. And then they were up, bunching dresses in their tiny fists, showing off and comparing the dances they’d been practicing.

  ‘I can’t believe we were ever that small,’ Zaina said, smiling as we watched them bounce across the floor.

  ‘Yeah, crazy.’

  On our way back we stopped off at the grocery store where, in my distracted state, I allowed Sarah to wander through the aisles at my side munching on mini-chocolate cookies from a little tub. Her mother would be furious at my giving her that much chocolate, but I was too distracted to stop her. I found myself considering Yousef and h
is suggestion.

  A part of me was tempted by it. We were very good friends – best friends, you could say – and it would have been a fairly easy arrangement. He came from a family comparable to mine: same tribal origins, same religious sect, same class, etc. On paper, it all lined up perfectly – and didn’t I say it was important for things to line up on paper? He’d come to the house with his mother and sisters; they’d chat with my mother, who would already be aware, of course, of how Yousef and I know one another. ‘I knew it was a date!’ she’d probably hiss at me triumphantly at some point, to which I would have to blush and smile and pretend to be coy.

  And that would have been it. If we’d put our minds to it, we could have been married inside of two or three months.

  As Sarah and I left the store I heard someone calling my name and turned to see Bu Faisal coming towards us, his mouth twitching into a grin. He greeted me with an easy smile then directed his flowery praise to Sarah, asking her name and age and all those other things you ask children while she shuffled and hid behind me in embarrassment. That done, he and I traded pleasantries; he inquired about work, I asked if he had any trips coming up and he said he was staying put for a couple of months. Sarah quickly grew bored of our conversation and started pulling at my skirt, pointing at the playground between the store and parking lot.

  ‘Oh, no, baby,’ I said, shaking my head down at her. ‘We need to get you home.’

  ‘Please, please, please,’ she whined. ‘Just five minutes.’

  ‘Haram, let her play,’ Bu Faisal said, winning a beaming smile from Sarah.

  ‘Fine, but only for a little bit.’ She took off before I finished speaking, and I had to holler after her. ‘Be careful with your dress!’

  We followed at a slower pace, Bu Faisal offering to take the bags from me, but his hands were full as well so I didn’t let him. We ended up at the boundary of the playground, right where hard pavement turns to soft, green mats. There were kids crawling all over the place, climbing the jungle gym, swinging from monkey bars, screaming down slides. Some parents stood on the sidelines watching, but most of the adults were Indian and Filipino nannies who talked to one another or texted on their phones.