‘You look very nice today,’ Bu Faisal suddenly said. I turned to him, but he was looking at the children.
I turned my face back to the playground. ‘Thank you. Sarah and I were at a tea party.’
‘That’s sweet.’
‘It was.’
‘Work is good?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ I replied, though he’d already asked that, and I glanced at him from the corner of my eye.
His brows were low and drawn together, mouth pursed into some odd facsimile of a frown, and I wondered if he suddenly wished he hadn’t called out to me. An awkwardness descended between us, one which was unfamiliar. I wondered if it was because we hardly ever saw each other outside of the office; the times when our families had traveled together felt very far away, like they’d happened to other people in other worlds. They didn’t seem connected to the person I had become, or to the relationship he and I had. Occasionally I’d run into him at the mall or grocery store or riding his bicycle on the seafront, and we would stop and say hello, but most of our interactions happened at the office or during business trips, which usually involved Yousef. Plus, there was a safety in being abroad, in being able to converse without having the sense that someone was always there to watch, to listen, to judge.
I couldn’t imagine Bu Faisal worrying about such a thing as the opinion of others, but the silence was stretching between us, and I felt an impulse to fill it with something.
‘Yousef asked me to marry him.’
It was the worst possible thing to say. It firmly pulled him into some murky, more intimate territory that I couldn’t name. He knew Yousef; why not tell Mona or Zaina, who only knew him as someone who occasionally joined us for coffee? I don’t have an answer for that. Perhaps a part of me wanted to push him into another category, wanted to reclaim that moment of intimacy from Germany, that sense of comfort and safety, which neither of us had tried to extend or explore.
I tried to laugh it off, but it came out as some pitiful half-sniffle.
‘Well,’ he said in a slow, measured tone, ‘that’s nice. I hadn’t realized … I mean, I didn’t know.’ He glanced at me. ‘You kept it well hidden.’
‘There was nothing to hide.’
His brows dipped further, and he tilted his head, dark eyes searching my face. For what, I didn’t know. I couldn’t stop now.
‘We’ve been under a lot of pressure … from our families … to marry. Separately, not each other,’ I rushed to add. ‘And getting married would put an end to all that. We would be able to relax and not be hounded about it all the time. It would be … like a back-up but in reverse.’
‘A back-up?’ he repeated, tripping on the unfamiliar term.
‘Yeah, you know, you make a deal with a good friend that if neither of you is married by a certain age, you marry each other?’
The look on his face told me he’d never considered nor perhaps even heard of such a thing. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ I shrugged, unable to argue. ‘What would such a marriage accomplish? You say your families are hounding you about marriage. Let them hound you! What are they going to do, drag you to a milach by force?’
‘Of course not, but—’
‘Everyone goes through this at some point, if they haven’t married early. It’s normal. The answer isn’t to have some joke of a marriage. That’s not something to take lightly.’ He shook his head, eyes on the children running in manic circles.
His disapproval, though its essence aligned with my instincts, wounded me. I felt his disappointment, like he’d expected more from me, and I rushed to restore my standing.
‘I said no, of course.’ He turned, scanning my face again, and I continued, ‘I told him it would be a lie, that I couldn’t live like that, that it would be … dishonest.’ I petered out with a limp shrug, unsure what I was fighting for or against.
‘That’s good,’ he said. I didn’t know if he was talking about my saying no, the reasoning behind it, or some combination of the two. In any case, I was unwilling to ask.
Sarah, who’d been chasing after some other girls, went tumbling into the dirt. I took a step forward to help her, but she just leapt to her feet and resumed running. I could see smudges and dust on her beautiful dress, what looked like a rip in her white tights, her hair was a mess, and I knew I was in for a lecture.
‘I need to get her home.’
13
What One Does to the Other
It took two weeks to shore up my courage. Two weeks of hand-wringing, web-searching, and abhorrent navel-gazing before I dared approach my parents with the idea of leaving.
I would leave on the pretext of going to school; I’d found several graphic design programs – some undergraduate, some of the continuing education sort – both in America and Europe. Going to school was a smokescreen, though. I’d get a degree, but I would also find a way to stay there – a job, asylum, anything. Anything so I wouldn’t have to come back to this. Perhaps thirty was a sell-by date of sorts; take control of your life by then or forfeit any right to happiness. No, that couldn’t be it. There were plenty of people floating along on the whims of others who seemed perfectly happy. Were they happy or did they just seem it? Was there such a thing as ‘happy’? Were they in fact following the whims of others or had they made their own choices? Nadia married the first man Mama presented her with; did that mean it wasn’t ultimately her choice?
I wasn’t sure. There was a lot that I wasn’t sure of. I probably should have gotten those things straight in my head before approaching my parents, but I hadn’t. I jumped in with little to commend me aside from some printed-out pages from university websites.
And then they sat there, at opposite ends of our L-shaped sofa, staring at me like I was a puzzle they had no hope of ever deciphering, like I was an alien they wished they could strap to a table and dissect, like they couldn’t fathom how a few minutes of copulation had resulted in this thing who thought and spoke in all those ways that they didn’t condone. I empathized; often I couldn’t understand myself. My thoughts, my actions, seemed strange to me, to spontaneously be rather than emanating from some clear source. I struggled to understand my past and the series of events that had made me what I was. Likewise, my present could feel just as foreign, just as tenuous, just as delicate.
‘What do you need more schooling for?’ Mama asked, breaking the silence.
‘You can never have too much education,’ I mumbled in reply.
She puffed out a breath, not bothering to turn from the television. They both ignored the papers on the coffee table.
‘What’s wrong with your job?’ Baba asked.
‘It’s not …’ I began, my voice too timid for my liking. I took a deep breath and tried again. ‘It’s boring. It’s not challenging enough or interesting enough. It’s just not … enough.’ What I meant to say, but could not say, was that life here, in this country, wasn’t enough.
He scrutinized me for a long moment. ‘That’s no reason to give it up,’ he finally said. ‘You’re doing well there. They keep promoting you, and the job pays well.’
‘Not everything is about money,’ I replied, shaking my head. ‘I never chose that job, Baba. I took it because everyone expected me to work in finance.’
‘Because I wanted you to have a good job, and those are the best. There’s no other option.’
‘Maybe not then, maybe not ten years ago, but there are now.’
‘It’s too late to change your career now. Why go through all the trouble? You have to learn something new and start at the bottom all over again. If you’re bored, find something to do outside of work.’
A perfectly reasonable response. ‘I want to go back to school,’ I said, nudging the papers their way, ‘to learn.’
He picked up the stack, going through the pages one by one, though I couldn’t tell whether it was just a token gesture or not. In the long silence of his contemplation, Mama switched channels, refusing to involve herself in the discussion. When Baba was done, he look
ed at me again, eyes dark and unreadable, a deep wrinkle marring his brow.
‘Abroad?’
‘Of course, abroad,’ I replied. Mama shook her head, but she let my father do the talking. I had no idea where this sudden shrinking violet persona of hers had come from, but it unnerved me.
He shook his head as well, held up the papers, and said, ‘This isn’t anywhere near your field. This is art.’
‘Art?’ Mama repeated, turning to him and glancing at the papers.
‘Graphic design,’ I said.
‘What is that?’ she asked, wrinkling her nose.
‘It’s art,’ Baba replied with a frown. ‘We agreed that art was a hobby.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you decided art was a hobby and I didn’t disagree with you then, but I am now. It can be a job now, Baba. Look at the career prospects.’ I gestured to the papers again.
‘What prospects?’ he huffed, dropping the stack back on the table. ‘You leave a good respectable job in a respectable field to work in what, an advertising agency or a magazine or something?’
‘We don’t want you mixing with those sort of people,’ Mama added.
‘What sort of people?’
‘Good people from good Kuwaiti families don’t work in those kinds of places; why should you work there?’
‘Because … it’s what I like to do.’
‘And we’re not saying don’t do it,’ my father said, his frustration beginning to show. ‘Keep drawing, do exhibitions, sell your pictures even. You don’t need to go to school for that.’
I hadn’t told them about the exhibit Yousef had pushed ahead for me. He’d confirmed the date and I’d already taken my sketches down so Zacharia could see them. He’d shown me the space and we’d talked about how best to show them. Telling my parents about that wouldn’t help my case; they’d see it as confirmation of their argument and a subsequent weakening of mine. ‘There are techniques,’ I said instead. ‘Technical things I want to learn.’
‘And you need four years abroad to learn it?’ Baba retorted.
‘Four years?’ Mama exclaimed, turning her full attention on me.
‘It’s another bachelor’s degree,’ he said, tossing the papers back on the table. ‘You’d be starting over, like the last seven or eight years were just a waste of time.’
It felt like they had been. Like with Mama’s suitors, my job was just another play I was acting in. It felt like my life had been just a series of situations that I’d fallen into, like I had no agency or control over anything. I was through living like that.
‘Four years abroad? Are you crazy?’ Mama said. I leaned back against the cushions and crossed my arms. ‘No, Dahlia.’
‘What do you mean, “No, Dahlia”?’ I said. ‘We can’t even talk about it?’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she said. ‘You can’t live somewhere, alone, for four years. I’m having a hard enough time getting you married with you here all the time.’
And there it was. What we always came back to. The damnable event upon which my entire life hinged. The big disappointment. The one concession I’d been unwilling to give my parents. I traveled to the future, envisioned a future me who married, a marriage of convenience – with Yousef or one of Mama’s choices. It would be an unhappy marriage, one that would naturally end. A part of me was beginning to believe I wasn’t made for another person. Was that kind of marriage the only way to secure a life of my own choosing?
‘You’ve never said anything about this before,’ Baba said. ‘Why now?’
‘Because I’ve worked for a while now, and I think it’s time for a change.’
‘You want a change?’ my mother replied. ‘Get married, that’s an enormous change.’
‘Mama …’
‘Be serious,’ Baba added.
‘I am serious,’ she said, turning my way. ‘You would be thirty-four or thirty-five when you got back – who’d marry you then?’
I shook my head. ‘There are more important things in life than marriage.’
‘Like what, art school?’ she said. ‘That’s a stupid answer, Dahlia. Do you want to live in this house your whole life?’
‘I definitely don’t want that.’
‘Don’t be disrespectful,’ my father said, and there was genuine sadness in his eyes. I turned my face from it and stared blankly at the television.
‘Four years is too long,’ Mama said. ‘It’s impossible. People will forget you exist.’
I should be so lucky, I thought. ‘What about one of the shorter programs,’ I asked, gesturing to the papers, ‘would that be better?’
‘No, it wouldn’t be better,’ said Baba. ‘Who will take care of you, living abroad? Who will protect you?’
‘Protect me from what?’
He had no response. He stared at me for a moment then turned his dark eyes back to the television.
‘You can’t take care of yourself,’ my mother added. ‘Here, everything is done for you. Who will cook for you, who will clean your room and wash your clothes?’
‘I’ll learn.’
She made another scoffing sound. ‘You have this dream of going away. You think it will be like the movies. You have no idea how difficult it will be.’
‘Neither do you,’ I snapped. ‘You went straight from your family’s house to Baba’s family house, so don’t pretend you know any more about it than I do.’ When she opened her mouth to retort, I cut her off: ‘You might think I’m useless, but I can learn how to do all those things for myself.’
‘And what will I tell the family?’ my father asked. ‘Your aunts and uncles? How will I tell them that I let my daughter go off to America by herself, like I don’t care about her well-being?’
‘It’s a little late to be caring about my well-being.’ The words launched themselves from my mouth before I had even thought them.
It was below the belt, I knew that. The words hit their mark and sliced deep, right into a very old, very infected wound. My parents stared at me, speechless for once. And when the shock receded, the expression that settled on my mother’s face transcended anger. If expressions could speak, I imagined hers would have said something like, ‘I wish you weren’t here.’ On my father’s face was something I couldn’t articulate, but it cut me as deep as my words had cut them.
I took back my papers and retreated to my room.
We are, all of us, accumulations of memories, reservoirs of revised history. Like magicians, we pull stories from our pasts – some we remember, some are pieced from the memories of others, some are partially or entirely appropriated.
There was a time when I saw evil eye talismans everywhere – nazars and Hamsas, blue and white and shiny, everywhere. I found them tucked into pillowcases, dropped into sock drawers, affixed to silver and gold chains. My memories are distorted; at times I don’t quite recall my own life. Perhaps the talismans were Zaina’s. She has a belief in the occult that some sheikhs might find uncomfortably close to blasphemy. Are the Hamsas hers? She used to wear one, with a diamond for an eye, around her wrist. The memories might be hers; I sometimes feel like the three of us have a shared pool of history, a common pond that we dip our toes into when recalling stories of our childhood. Mona tells the story of Nadia pushing her off the top of a slide, but the scar cuts through my eyebrow, not hers. I have a strong memory of emptying a jar of strawberry jam when I was six, digging my fingers into the gooey sweetness and licking and licking till it was all gone. I feel the sticky pips and pulp on my face, around my lips, I see the redness under my fingernails and in the grooves of my palms. But I’m allergic to strawberries and always have been.
We like to think of ourselves as a well-traveled, cultured, and thoroughly modern people. Xenophiles who welcomed expats long before Dubai. We are the ones gamboling from Knightsbridge to Mayfair; we’re the ones who love, who’ve adopted, Beirut with an unbridled passion; and we’re the ones who brought cellphones and commercial airlines to the Gulf. We’re the ones on a constan
t search for the new, the wondrous, the techtastic.
It’s a kind of masked secularism though. Lurking in the breast of every Kuwaiti are the superstitions of our pearl-diving days. We have a hundred different phrases to ward off evil. ‘Istaqhfir Allah’, and ‘Mashalla’, and ‘Hamdilla’ – rapid responses for any comment that crosses our path. ‘Bismillah’ to bless our food or protect our footing on unsteady terrain. The ritual of a sneeze entails the exchange of three phrases. There’s the miming of spitting at the thing you wish to protect from evil eyes. All these rituals are second nature now, but beneath them are very real fears, very concrete beliefs. Who knows if they work; I suppose the comfort alone must be worth something.
I was possessed by a demon as a toddler. Most two-year-olds are, but mine necessitated the intervention of a holy man. He prescribed a ritual that entailed the reading of Quranic verses and the sacrifice of a sheep whose blood would then be smeared on my deviant form.
Knowing my parents as I do, their deference to a holy sheikh seems unlikely. Baba never had time for such things; he’s a rational man for whom the only unprovable thing to believe in is God. Mama had some superstitions, but they were mild and mostly asserted themselves when something vital was at stake. A blood ritual seems over the line for her. Nevertheless the story is there, lodged in my consciousness. I see the white kashi tiles of our old yard, the grayish wall with its crayon graffiti, and the black iron gate. I can see the sheep, also grayish, by the driveway, where the blood can be easily hosed out into the street gutter. I hear its bleating, that distressed sound that doesn’t say ‘let me go’ so much as it says ‘I’ve seen the knife’. If I put my mind to it, I can feel the blood, warm and slick and metallic, painted across my forehead and dotting the apples of my cheeks.
My parents swear it never happened, but the memory has been with me for ages. Is it a repression? An appropriation of other stories? Or an utter fabrication?
The Pact We Made Page 12
