A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  That is so fucked-up.

  Rez saw his friend drive away and two thoughts punched each other in his brain. But they are right, but they are wrong. They are wrong. This is wrong. But cheating is wrong. Arash is not wrong. Until they exhausted themselves and turned into a long-repeating question. What is wrong? What is wrong here?

  Beside him Fatima kept spitting out short, angry sentences, her voice getting weaker and weaker with each one.

  This is so fucked-up. His life is fucked now. His parents are going to freak out. He doesn’t deserve this. Paul asked him to do it. Paid him.

  Fatima’s face was tense, pulled at the edges, on the verge of cracking open.

  You know those guys. Can you please tell me what the hell is going on?

  Her wide black eyes were glossy and the smooth surface of her cheeks turned pink and then red. Rez had no words for her, nothing for the kids who shuffled past them and whispered Oh, shit and Where’d he go?, nothing for his parents later that night as they sat in shock around the dinner table unable to untangle the wrong from the right. Rez shook his head back and forth at Fatima and turned away from her and walked to the edge of the campus and then down PCH to the bus stop to be alone and think about events and the way they led to other events and the events that followed after those.

  16

  Fatima lived in an eight-bedroom mansion on the high cliffs above Dana Point. Her father dealt some sort of commodity from an office in Irvine. Every morning at dawn a driver picked him up in a limousine with tinted windows, and after midnight the same car and driver brought him back. Between those hours the house hummed like a train station. Fatima, the youngest of three sisters, one in university in Paris, the other in Damascus, was the last child left. The mother’s family filled the house. When Rez and Fatima arrived at the door, her grandmother greeted them with a gold-and-alabaster grin and cupped their faces and waited for a kiss. Rez didn’t do it at first, unsure whether he was supposed to touch the old woman in her copious black robes, but then Fatima tilted her chin at him and he kissed the thin skin of the old lady’s cheek and just like that she called him habibi and moved aside to let him in. Beyond the grandmother was an enormous living room with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over the cliffs and the ocean. The television spread out like a tapestry across a wall and was only and always on one of two stations, the Home Shopping Network or Al Jazeera. If it was on HSN, then the room was full of women, aunts and cousins, who sat with tea and telephones and ordered whatever struck their fancy. If it was the latter, the room was full of men with tea and telephones who texted people not in the room, not in the country, and spoke little to one another. The men and women came and went separately, peacefully, taking turns with the room and leaving the children and the old people to themselves. Fatima’s mother stayed in the kitchen all day and looked over the work of the two Salvadorean cooks while she talked on the phone. Ellie is what everyone called her but Rez called her Mrs. Hassani and she never hung up the phone when he walked in, just nodded at them and then looked back at the cooks and the ledgers in front of her, everything, the talk, the type, in Arabic. She wore colorful silk headscarves, Hermès or Gucci, pulled back just enough to show her golden hair. Rez wondered why she bothered. She took Fatima’s kisses on one cheek and then another and winked at Rez, and when it was time, it was her voice that called Ok! in a thick accent that brought everyone together in the dining room to eat and smoke and speak to one another in a language Rez didn’t understand. He watched Fatima smile and laugh and listened to her speak in Arabic. She turned to him.

  This is how we live. Clan-style.

  And made sure to remind everyone who asked that, yes, this was her chemistry tutor and if she planned to pass the AP exam and skip her first year of science in college then she needed to study. Ok, ok, you know best, habibi, they all said, and Rez looked back at them and tried to seem honorable, tried to sit and eat like he was intelligent.

  They never even opened their books. She had an A- in chemistry, out of laziness more than anything, and after the first awkward session when they spent most of their time on her bed, watching TV, talking about Arash, arguing about this and that, accidentally brushing body parts against each other until the electrical currents in the room fused mouth to mouth and crotch to crotch, and chemistry was never even discussed. They fucked and then went to the balcony attached to her room and smoked and looked over the ocean and the small green-yellow sliver of Laguna Niguel canyon, where coyotes could be seen if the moon was full enough. After the first time they didn’t watch television and stayed off the Web and seemed content to press themselves together with a heat born of their deception and then to peel apart and fall asleep or do some other homework or play games on their phones. She always drove him home before eight and his parents left him alone to ride the high and he’d sleep and dream about waves, or mountains from landscapes he had yet to see.

  The next day Rez would meet her at lunch, in the parking lot, and go to classes, where they sat together and answered no questions and refused to socialize with anyone who thought what happened to Arash was fair or just. Their silent protest caught no one’s attention but it made for loud sessions of sex in the back of her Lexus SUV. Rez thought about her, her thin body, the black hairs against the pale skin of her arms and thighs, her crazy hair, and wanted her all day long, but kept it to himself until they were naked and together again to fight it all out by fucking with a quiet vengeance.

  They tried to visit Arash every afternoon but only made it three or four times a week once he moved up the coast to live at his brother’s house on the beach. They’d show up with bags of burgers and half-melted milk shakes and Arash opened the door with his hair messed up and his eyes zoned out from too much sleep or too much TV. The TV was always on. Al Jazeera. BBC. CNN. Anything as long as it was news. If the room didn’t have a TV, then the radio was on, tuned to an all-hours news station. The end-of-the-world tone in all the voices of the hourly broadcast annoyed Rez and he waited for the ten or twenty minutes it took for Arash to get distracted by the food or Fatima and then Rez would mute the TV and turn down the radio and Arash always caught him and said, Hey, man, I was listening to that.

  If the food and the company cheered Arash up enough, Rez could convince him to go to the beach and the three of them threw towels over their shoulders and walked the ten steps off Javad’s porch and onto the sand, where they dropped their towels and went into the water. In the water everything was good again. Rez floated and swam around Fatima, who walked in hip-deep water and dragged her fingers behind her. He kept sight of her long back and the way her wet black curls snaked down it. If she turned around and caught him staring, he grew shy and tried to look away before she smiled, the white of her teeth glinting bright like the light off the water. Arash came and went, floated and kicked and splashed and dared Rez to race him in the butterfly or backstroke, strokes neither of them knew how to do, and the circus of their bodies flailing around the shallows broke the tension every time.

  They dried out on the warm sand and Rez dug in his feet and watched the seagulls and rolled a jay. Groups of girls, in their twenties or younger, in high school and middle school, walked by in bikinis and every time Arash averted his eyes. Rez watched him to make sure and each time was the same. This is not what Arash had done at pool parties or on rooftops in Vegas last summer, he gazed as long as the rest of them at an ass, at tits, a waist and hips. Rez offered him a hit and Arash shook his head back and forth.

  Nah, man. I am taking a break.

  Really? This is the Cush you were always so excited about, Omid got some from his brother. I can get you—

  No thanks. I’m good.

  Fatima held it between her fingers and took a long pull as if it were a cigarette. After a few minutes it always made her pee and Rez waited to watch her stand and shake the sand off her thighs and ass and walk back to the house, her hips swaying side to side from the uneven footsteps in the sand. Her hair, almost dry now, flew
up and over her head in the wind, black coils raging all around her, and Rez kept a hard and steady gaze until Arash said something.

  Looks like you two are hanging pretty hard these days.

  Arash smiled, slightly, more than he had in weeks.

  Yeah. She’s cool. It’s easy.

  I’m glad. I should have guessed she was your speed.

  Rez thought about that. Speed? She smoked, she was smart, she had a fast tongue that didn’t let anyone get away with anything. Still, the word didn’t sit well with him and he stared at the ocean where a few sets of waves crashed in front of them.

  Fatima and I are going out tonight. That chick Emma is going to be there. The French exchange student, the one you sat beside in physics. Wanna come with?

  Arash picked up fistfuls of sand, held them up, and let it drain through his closed fingers. His profile was as it always was for Rez: straight lines, perfect alignment, no contradiction, no clash.

  Thanks. I am going to stay in. Javad is coming home early. It is Friday.

  Ok. But there is nothing a little pussy won’t—

  In an instant Rez felt stupid saying it, it sounded like an old man’s word, a word from old rap songs, and before he could finish his tease, Arash interrupted him.

  Everything is not about sex. It’s not good to think like that. These are our sisters. We have to respect them.

  Arash kept his eyes on the horizon in front of them and Rez saw the profile align and set.

  And women have to respect themselves too.

  The words were sour. The expression was sour. All of it was not Arash, was not normal. Rez held his hands up and moved his torso back.

  Wait a minute. What? I am sorry about what happened, but you need to figure out a way to chill out, if it’s not girls or herb, then something …

  Rez watched Fatima’s lanky figure walk toward them from the house. Rez nearly got hard just watching her, the long white body in the one-piece with cutouts along the sides and back, the red lips that she never painted and the big black eyes. The turn-on made him feel bad for Arash but Rez was still pissed at him too, for being so sour, for being so serious, for not being nice-guy Arash. Rez stood up and grabbed his towel and flip-flops.

  Come on, Fatima, we’ve got to go. I forgot I had soccer drills this afternoon.

  What are you talking about? It’s Friday …

  I forgot. Special spring practice.

  Fatima looked at Rez and he looked away from her, one glance and she’d know something was up. She probably knew anyway. She bent down and looked at Arash.

  You ok, habibi?

  Yeah. I’m good.

  Her face warmed and opened toward Arash and she threw a cotton dress over her swimsuit and grabbed her bag and towel off the sand. As they were walking up the steps back to the car, she said nothing and he said nothing until the engine started and the windows were down.

  What crawled up your ass and died?

  Dude, Arash is going a little kooksters. You should have heard what he said when you were in the bathroom. And what is it with the news, and Syria and all that shit? Do you think his brother is brainwashing him? Is he going to start doing the prayer push-ups now?

  She drove and said nothing, did nothing to break open the tension with an answer, one of the soft chatty explanations she had when she told him things that had never crossed his mind.

  You’ve never been back, have you?

  Back where?

  To where your parents are from.

  Oh, come on …

  Wait, I forgot. That’s right. You are American. Just a regular American.

  She pushed the engine harder and the car sped up.

  Please. Give me a break. You are kidding yourself if you really believe that. You can only be American if you turn into one. Which means a new name, a new nose, new skin, new tongue, new everything. Otherwise you are an immigrant, or the child of an immigrant, and this is not your home.

  Now the car was going so fast down Highway 1 that the traffic next to them seemed asleep or drowsy as they passed, the drivers staring ahead into the dimness of their sunglasses, necks craned forward. Rez looked out at the streets and the ocean beyond them, a view he had been looking at all his life. He had spent every one of his days on this strip of land next to the sea; it was beautiful and it was home and he hated Fatima for her question, for thinking anything but what he knew was true. They passed the Jack in the Box in Laguna where he and Matthews sat in the drive-through at six A.M. waiting for it to open so they could have something in their stomachs before they surfed. The lady who took their order was always in a good mood. Always greeted them with Buenos dias, guapos.

  Give me a break. You, Arash, all your shit. Whatever. You’ll never be American because you can’t stop being something else. Next thing I know you’ll come back from freshman year all covered up like your mom.

  And then it was out of his mouth and he couldn’t take it back. The words smashed around the car like a trapped bird and Fatima drove even faster. She stared at the road and kept both hands on the wheel and Rez wished she would at least turn to him and see that he was sorry.

  She stopped in front of his house and he got out without looking at her or touching her neck or saying good-bye. Later that night he got a text.

  What you said about my mom was rude. Check yourself.

  Rez wrote out an apology, probably the longest text he’d ever written, then erased it and turned off his phone. He felt bad and went to the living room and watched television with his dad, an old movie, black-and-white, with corny jokes and corny acting.

  I used to watch this movie when I was a boy. I must have seen every screening at the tiny theater in our town. I couldn’t even imagine it—the men and woman, talking together, going to dinner in fancy restaurants. Everyone with a car. Unbelievable to me as a boy …

  His father trailed off and Rez didn’t hear anything. He thought about Fatima and felt shitty that he had said something so rude. He wasn’t a rude person. Even when he hung out with the apostles and they wanted him to be rude and it was cool to be a dick and make fun of other kids, Rez couldn’t do it. And now he had, and he’d meant it in the moment and didn’t want to mean it ever again. There was no reason to be that way. He wanted to be a better person. A right person. A person in line with the good and the true. A person whose heart would never let him say a hard word about a mother or a friend.

  At dinner he watched his mother set down the plates, pick up the plates, wash the plates, in the same gestures she had done all his life. They ate in silence and he thought about Arash’s house and Fatima’s house and how noisy they were with guests and talk and laughing. It was never like that at his house. Rez’s father did not like to entertain and Rez’s mother was not allowed to have her own friends. When the family sat together at the table, they did not talk beyond the necessities of the day.

  At the end of dinner Rez followed his mother to the kitchen and stood as she cleaned. He wanted to help, her small frame thinner and thinner every year, the lines of exhaustion, once temporary, now permanent, across her face, but he just stood there, and said, Thanks for dinner, and went to his room. He wrote out a simple text to Fatima: I am sorry. It wasn’t right. What I said about your mom. After fifteen minutes he got a text back: It’s ok. He put his phone away and thought of Fatima, her face and the swirls of hair, the puffy lips and wide eyes with their gaze that pulled him to her regardless of where they were, or when. He jacked off and then fell asleep, his whole body soft, expansive, open to whatever came next.

  17

  They paddled out until it was calm and straddled their boards. No one was in the water, it was the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday, and the seniors, less than a quarter away from graduation, got half days on Wednesdays because all the acceptances had come in and no one could concentrate anyway. Rez usually went up to see Arash, but Fatima was having her wisdom teeth removed and he didn’t want to be alone so he texted Matthews: Surfy? Matthews texted back: Y
ou suck. Long boards at old mans? They spent twenty minutes in Matthews’s garage looking through his dad’s boards and then twenty minutes in the parking lot at the beach, listening to Queen and getting high. By the time they made the water they realized there was absolutely zero swell, but they didn’t care. It was a warm day for spring and their suits fit snug and the sunlight twinkled on top of the water like diamonds.

  Maybe we’ll see a dolphin.

  Maybe you’ll turn into a princess.

  Rez was so happy to be kidding again, to be joking and laughing and shooting the shit. Matthews paddled his feet around and around until he was rotating in slow circles and Rez whispered, Faster, faster.

  The horizon did not change. Nothing came in and they goofed off and caught some whitewash and then paddled back and fucked around some more.

  UC Berkeley, not bad. Not as good as USC.

  Ah, yes, but my dad isn’t on the alumni board. Ahchoo! Nepotism! Rez teased his friend, who laughed. You see, when you get a full ride you don’t need someone to chaperone you in.

  Matthews shook the water from his hair until he looked like a porcupine.

  True that. It’s all bullshit in the end. Four years of partying before the real school starts. And it’s good you are going up north. I can drive up, hang out in the Bay, surf Mavericks, meet some nerdy girls.