by Tahereh Mafi
And now he was coming home.
I didn’t know how to feel.
I didn’t know that I wanted to feel anything at all.
I sighed as I turned over, pressed my cold face against the cold pillow. I was curled up like a fiddlehead, my frozen feet tucked against each other. No matter how hard I tried to create friction under the heavy covers, my body would not warm. I shivered, squeezed my eyes shut, listened to the faint ticking of the clock above my desk. Listened to my racing heart.
It had never stopped pounding.
My heart was still beating so hard it was beginning to scare me, beginning to hurt. It thudded dangerously in my chest even now, in the dead of night, made it somehow impossible to breathe. I did not know how to describe what I was feeling, what I was thinking. I’d been trying to disregard the entire night, trying to bury it the way I buried all else that troubled me, but this—somehow this was different. I had lost my head when my heart was most exposed, easily pierced. Recovery, I realized, would be slow.
I thought of God.
I had broken a rule by kissing Ali, had snapped in half a piece of dogma, kicked to the ground a religious guidepost. It wasn’t the first time I’d done as much, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but I was disconcerted nonetheless.
Even Mehdi, I knew, would’ve been stunned.
Mehdi was three years older than Ali, and the two of them had grazed each other’s lives in the way those of their stratum did. Ali and Mehdi were that specific vintage of beautiful Muslim teenager who showed up at the mosque only occasionally, usually for major events and holidays, and often forced into attendance by their parents. They found religion equal parts compelling and ridiculous, and were generally uncertain about God. But it was precisely their lack of firm conviction that made it easier for them to assimilate—made it easier for them to belong to many groups, as opposed to one.
I’d always envied that kind of freedom. It would’ve been easier, I often thought, to have been exactly that variety of half-hearted Muslim, one who could more easily walk away from faith in order to be accepted.
What was it like? I wondered, to slough off this skin when convenient, to be looked upon by the world as something other than a cockroach. I feared I’d never know. I’d always carried with me a burden of conviction I could not set down. I could not deny the beliefs that shaped me any more than I could deny the color of my eyes.
It made for a lonely life.
There was no refuge for my brand of loneliness. I was neither Iranian enough to be accepted by Iranians, nor American enough to be accepted by my peers. I was neither religious enough for people at the mosque, nor secular enough for the rest of the world. I lived, always, on the uncertain plane of a hyphen.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.
Even now I could feel Ali’s lips against my throat, could smell him as if he’d been trapped here, against my skin. My eyes flew open.
I had finally proven Zahra right.
I’d finally crossed the line she’d always feared I’d cross. I’d finally ceded control, given in to myself. I had no intention of telling anyone what happened between me and Ali tonight, but I pictured Zahra’s face nonetheless, imagined her outrage.
For the very first time, I could not bring myself to care.
Last Year
Part IV
It had been a strange, exhausting day. I’d woken up late, rushed to school, worn the wrong sweater, fought with my best friend, fumbled my way through classes. I’d started the day wrong and spent the rest of it trying to catch up, hoping to salvage what was left of the afternoon. And up until fifteen seconds ago, I thought I’d done just that. I thought I’d survived the worst of it. But now—now I wondered whether this day might kill me after all.
Can we talk?
I’d been staring at his message for the last fifteen seconds. I just stood there, frozen in the middle of my room, paralyzed by indecision.
Today, after months of tension, Zahra and I had finally managed to find our way back to something like normal. Things had been shaky between us for so long—her mood swings were particularly hard to navigate—but I was beginning to hope we could fix things. Zahra had been, at times, shockingly cruel to me, but it wasn’t difficult to forgive her lapses, especially not when I understood why she was struggling.
We were all struggling.
It was an awful time—politically and emotionally—for everyone in America, but there was a special pain in being made to feel like we weren’t allowed join in, like we had no right to mourn alongside our fellow citizens. American Muslims had a great deal to mourn—more than most people bothered to imagine. We were gutted not only by the horrible tragedy that had befallen our country, but by the disastrous fallout affecting our religious communities, and the personal losses we suffered—friends and family dead, missing—in the wars overseas. But none of that seemed to matter; no one wanted to hear about our pain.
Most days, I understood why. Some days, I wanted to scream.
It was a lonely, isolating time. I didn’t want to lose Zahra; I knew too well how difficult it was to find a true friend, especially now.
But Ali was my friend, too.
I looked up then, looked out the window. My phone vibrated.
I can come by
Zahra was wrong. Her accusations were baseless. There was nothing going on between me and Ali, we had never hooked up, had never done anything inappropriate. But the truth didn’t seem to matter. It had become increasingly clear to me that the only way to keep both siblings in my life was to keep Ali at a distance—a task proving harder to accomplish than I’d ever imagined. A low-voltage charge had existed between the two of us for as long as I’d been old enough to understand it, and some time last year that charge finally sparked, caught fire. I’d been trying desperately to ignore it. Ali had not.
Just for a few minutes? I wrote back.
Okay
Another buzz.
Same spot?
Guilt briefly seized my mind, paralyzed my fingers.
Twice. Twice we’d met up before. Only twice, and only in the last month, but somehow we’d already acquired a spot. Ali and I had spent a lot of time together over the years, but we’d never arranged it, never aligned our lives with the express purpose of being alone together. Not until he’d texted me that first time—
Can you come outside?
And I’d run out the door.
“What’s going on?” I’d said, racing toward him. I was out of breath and confused, trying to read the look on his face. “Is everything okay?”
“Wow.” Ali shook his head, smiled. “Okay, I didn’t realize someone had to die in order for me to have a minute alone with you.”
I’d gone suddenly, unearthly still. “What?”
“I just wanted to see you,” he’d said. “Is that okay?”
“Oh.” I could not seem to steady my breathing. “Oh.”
He’d laughed.
“You just”—I frowned—“you mean you don’t have anything important you need to tell me?”
He laughed again. “Not really.”
“You just wanted to see me?”
He smiled at the sky. “Yeah.”
“But we see each other every day.”
Finally, he looked me in the eye. Took a deep breath. “Shadi.”
“Yeah?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, nodded toward the sidewalk. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Walk with me.”
That was the first time.
The second time—I had no good excuse for seeing him the second time. The second time was probably a mistake, the kind of decision born of simple, reflexive desire. I liked to tell myself that nothing happened, because nothing happened. I’d been doing homework while shaking a box of Nerds into my mouth when he texted me, so I closed my binder and tucked the box under my arm.
We went on another walk that day, passing the candy between us as we went. We didn’t mean to go anywhere in par
ticular, but ended up at the library near my house, which was where I always told my mom I was going anyway.
I quickly lost track of time. We were sitting on a bench outside the building, talking about all manner of nothing. At one point I laughed so hard at something he said I nearly choked to death on Nerds, after which I tried harder to be serious, an effort that only made me nervous—and that forced into stark relief the unnamed body of truth that sat between us.
Ali didn’t mind the quiet.
He stared at me, unspeaking, and I felt it, felt everything he did not say. It was there in the way he breathed, in the way he shifted beside me, in the way his gaze dropped, briefly, to my lips. My hands trembled. I dropped the box of candy and its contents went flying across the street. My heart raced as I stared at the mess, at the pink and purple pebbles settling into cracks in the concrete. My every instinct was screaming at me, screaming that something was about to happen.
I’d just looked up at him when my phone rang.
It was my mom. My mom, who, after angrily pointing out that the sun was nearly gone from the sky, demanded I return home. I hung up and felt not unlike a dying light, flaring bright before burning out. I couldn’t bring myself to meet Ali’s eyes.
I didn’t know what to say.
I’d never have said what I was really thinking, which was that I wanted to stay there, with him, forever. It was a shocking thought. Terrifying in scope, in the demands it placed upon our bodies. Somehow, he seemed to understand.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Me too.”
I took a deep breath now, looked out the window again. My chest felt tight, like my heart was pushing, pulling, trying to escape. The mere sight of his name in my phone inspired in me a paroxysm of emotion I could not ignore. But one way or another, something always forced me to walk away from him, and I knew—knew, and didn’t know how—that this, the third time, would be the last.
Yes, I typed back.
Same spot.
I stepped out into the light of a falling sun.
The weather had changed its mind again, the skies clearing, heating up in the second half of the day. It was an early evening in late September, the air warm and fragrant, the glow only just beginning to gild the streets. It was one of those rare golden hours, full of promise.
I’d been so certain of my commitment to see Ali for only a few minutes that I hadn’t even told my parents I was leaving. We lived in a safe, sleepy neighborhood—the kind of place you didn’t drive through if you didn’t live there—which meant that, for the most part, the streets were empty. Quiet.
I’d disappeared into the yard, slipped through the back gate; I figured I’d be back before anyone even noticed I was gone. I glanced at the sun as I walked, felt the wind shape itself around me. On days like this I imagined myself moving with grace, my body inspired into elegance by the breeze, the flattering light. Most of the time, this sort of quiet made me calm.
Today, I could hardly breathe.
I felt nothing but nerves as I neared the end of the street. I was trying, desperately, to steady my pounding heart, to kill the butterflies trapped between my ribs.
Ali was sitting on the curb.
He stood up when he saw me, stared at me until he was blinded by a shaft of golden light. He shielded his face with his forearm, turned his body away from the sun. For a moment, he looked like he’d been caught in a flame.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
Ali said nothing at first, then took a sharp breath. “Hi,” he said, and exhaled.
We found a patch of shade under a tree, stood in it. I looked at leaves, branches. Wondered how fast a heart could beat before it broke.
Ali was staring at a stop sign when he said, “Shadi, I can’t do this anymore.”
Impossibly, my heart found a way to beat faster.
“But we’re not doing anything,” I said.
He met my eyes. “I know.”
I wanted to sit down. Lie down. My mind wasn’t entirely certain what was happening, but my body—my faint, feverish body—had no doubt. Even my skin seemed to know. Every inch of me was taut with fear, with feeling. I had the strangest desire to find a shovel, to bury myself under the weight of it all.
Ali looked away then, made a sound, something like a laugh. Three times he opened his mouth to speak, and each time he came up short. Finally, he said—
“Please. Say something.”
I was staring at him. I couldn’t stop staring at him. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I was horrified to hear my voice shake when I said, “Because I’m scared.”
He took a step closer. “Why are you scared?”
I whispered his name and it was practically a plea, a bid for mercy.
He said: “I keep waiting, Shadi. I keep waiting for this feeling to go away, but it’s just getting worse. Sometimes I feel like it’s actually killing me.”
He laughed. I couldn’t breathe.
“Isn’t that strange?” he said. I saw the tremble in his hands before he pushed them through his hair. “I thought this sort of thing was supposed to make people happy.”
Something unlocked my tongue then. Unlocked my bones.
“What sort of thing?”
He turned to face me, his arms dropping to his sides. “You know, I don’t even think I know exactly when I fell in love with you. It was years ago.”
I thought, for a moment, that my feet might be sinking into the earth. I looked down, looked back up, heard my heart beating. I took an unconscious step backward and nearly stumbled over the base of a nearby tree, its overgrown roots.
“Shadi, I love you,” he said, stepping closer. “I’ve always loved you—”
“Ali, please.” My eyes were filling with tears. I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Please. Please. I can’t do this.”
He was silent for so long it almost scared me. I watched him swallow. I saw him struggle to collect himself, his thoughts—and then, quietly—
“You can’t do what?”
“I can’t do this to her. To Zahra.”
Something flickered in his eyes then. Surprise. Confusion. “You can’t do what to Zahra?”
“This, this—”
“What’s this, Shadi?” He closed the remaining distance between us and suddenly he was right in front of me, suddenly I couldn’t think straight.
My heart seemed to be screaming, pounding fists against my chest. I wanted desperately to touch him, to tell him the truth, to admit that I fell asleep most nights thinking about him, that I found his face in nearly all my favorite memories.
But I didn’t.
Couldn’t.
The sun was streaking across the sky, painting his face in ethereal ribbons of color, blurring the edges of everything. I felt like we were disappearing.
I couldn’t help it when I whispered, “You look like a Renoir painting right now.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I—”
“Shadi—”
“Please,” I said, cutting him off. My voice was breaking. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“I’m not making you do anything.”
“You are. You’re making me choose between you and Zahra, and I can’t. You know I can’t. It’s not a fair fight.”
Ali shook his head. “Why would you have to choose? This has nothing to do with my sister.”
“It has everything to do with your sister,” I said desperately. “She’s my best friend. This—us—it would ruin my relationship with her. It would ruin your relationship with her.”
“What? How? What would we be doing wrong?”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s complicated—she—”
“God,” he cried, turning away. “I fucking hate my sister.”
I felt the fight leave me then. Felt the emotion drain from my body. “Ali. This is the problem. This is the whole problem.”
He spun back around. “For the
love of God, Shadi, just tell me what you want. Do you want me? Do you want to be with me? Because if you do, that’s all that matters. We can figure out everything else.”
“We can’t,” I said. “It’s not that simple.”
He was shaking his head. “It is that simple. I need it to be that simple. Because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t see you every day and just pretend this isn’t killing me.”
“You have to.”
He went suddenly still. I watched it happen, watched him stiffen, then straighten, in real time. And then, two words, so raw they might’ve been ripped out of his chest:
“I can’t.”
I thought I might actually lose my head then, thought I might start crying, or worse, kiss him, and instead I racked my mind for an answer, for a solution to this madness, and seized upon the first stupid thought that entered my head. I spoke recklessly, hastily, before I’d even had a chance to think it through.
“Then maybe—maybe it would be better if we didn’t see each other. Maybe we just shouldn’t be in each other’s lives anymore.”
Ali recoiled, stepping back as if he’d been struck. He waited for what seemed an eternity for me to speak, to take it back, but my lips had gone numb, my mind too stupid to navigate this labyrinth of emotion. I did not know what I’d just done.
Finally—without a word—Ali walked away. Disappeared into the dying sunset.
I realized, as I cried myself to sleep that night, that I might’ve hurt him less had I simply driven a stake through his heart.
December
2003
Seventeen
I kicked off the covers, dragged myself out of bed.
I couldn’t sleep, likely wouldn’t sleep with this pounding, tangled mess of a head, heart. I wrapped myself in my blanket, quietly opened my bedroom door, and padded downstairs. All the bedrooms were on the same floor, which left the living room fair game at night.
Once downstairs, I switched on a light.
The scene flickered to life, the unbroken hum of electricity filling me with a vague sadness. Dining room, kitchen, living room. It all felt cold without my mother in it. I collapsed onto the couch and burrowed into my blanket, hoping to numb my mind with a reliable opiate.
