A Bouquet of Rue

by Wendy Hornsby

  On Wednesdays, Ari taught several after-school remedial math and science sessions at the Islamic Community Center. The routine he and Jean-Paul worked out was for Ari to drive to the train when he left in the afternoon, leaving the car in the lot for Jean-Paul to drive home again in the evening. I was happy that evening that I would be spared the walk home because I felt safer within the flimsy armor the car provided than I would out in the open.

  Charles parked behind our car, got out and opened my door. I accepted the firm hand he offered to help me out and thanked him when I was again on solid ground. He and Jean-Paul exchanged a quick embrace and a back pat or two, and we turned toward our car.

  “Monsieur Bernard, Madame,” Charles called. We turned and watched him pull our shopping bag off the floor of the backseat. I hadn’t realized until I saw the bag that during all the chaos I had held the damn thing tight against me until we bailed into the car, where I dropped it unaware that I had it. Odd what we do in a state of absolute panic. Jean-Paul laughed when he saw it, and I began to cry.

  For a few minutes, we sat in our car, clutching each other, until we were able to breathe normally again. When we had ourselves at least outwardly composed, we started home. The evening was warm and wonderfully fragrant. I rolled down my window to let it in. As we approached our driveway, I heard music, a plaintive violin so far away that it floated on the air as softly and subtly as the scent of flowers in the yard. And then Jean-Paul pushed a button and the garage door rolled up and both perfume and music were gone.

  First thing, we went upstairs and showered away the oily smudge and bits of debris from our hair and bodies. In fresh clothes, looking somewhat normal again even though we felt anything but, we went back downstairs. We were still in the kitchen unloading the shopping, marveling that everything except for the bread was intact, when Dominic came in with the usual burst of energy. He told us that he heard there was another car bomb in Paris, this time outside the Mouffetard markets. So far, he said, there were five confirmed dead and many casualties. Were we anywhere near there? Jean-Paul paused from opening a bottle of wine to shoot me what I took for a warning glance and said, “We saw the smoke.”

  Relative quiet returned when Dom, glass of wine in one hand, book bag in the other, went upstairs to wash before dinner. In the quiet left in his wake I heard the music again.

  “Where is that coming from?” I asked Jean-Paul as I headed for the salon to open all the doors. There was Nabi, sitting on the patio in the gathering dusk with his back to us, playing his violin. ­Azadah Diba, his grandmother, was stretched out on a chaise beyond the pool, eyes closed, maybe listening, maybe napping. A pile of stuffed duffel bags next to the guest house door let us know that something had gone terribly wrong for them, yet again. Jean-Paul came up beside me and handed me a glass of wine. We looked at each other, shrugged, and stayed where we were to hear the boy play. I did not recognize the piece, I only knew it was beautiful and sad, and that Nabi was very talented. At the end, Nabi sat still with his violin under his chin until the last notes faded to nothing. When he put down the bow and rested the instrument on his knee, we stepped outside.

  Jean-Paul broke the silence. “Nabi?”

  Nabi turned, saw us and rose. With our first look at his face I gasped, Jean-Paul groaned, or maybe he growled. Someone had pummeled the kid, leaving his left cheek so battered and swollen I doubted he could see much out of that eye. And then, for good measure, it looked as if someone had dragged him across a pavement face down. A large adhesive bandage covered the back of his right hand, his bow hand; a defensive injury?

  “Oh, Nabi,” I said, walking to him. Azadah Diba rose as soon as she heard our voices and came to her grandson’s side.

  “Monsieur Bernard, Madame MacGowen.” Nabi, clearly embarrassed and uncertain, took a small step toward us. “Ari told me we could wait here until he finishes at the center. I hope it’s all right.”

  “If Ari invited you,” Jean-Paul said, “of course it’s all right. Is this your grandmother? We’ve not met.”

  Nabi made the introductions in French. Jean-Paul responded in English, remembering that the woman did not speak French, offering her his hand and giving her a little bow when she accepted. She then offered me her hand and said she was happy to see me again.

  “Come inside, please,” Jean-Paul said, gesturing for them to lead the way in. “Tell us what happened.”

  First things first, both of our guests visited a bathroom, Nabi to the hall bathroom upstairs and Azadah Diba to the powder room off the entry. In the meantime, I filled the kettle for tea, made an icepack for Nabi’s shiner, found the acetaminophen, and carried it all out to the salon on a tray along with a plate of sliced poulaine bread and Camembert from my grandmother’s fromagerie. When everyone had assembled in the salon and had a drink in hand, Nabi told us about his very bad day, a day that was exactly what he expected it would be without Ophelia there to protect him. The harassment began early, he said, and escalated as the day progressed, more kids joining in, girls as well as boys. He was accused of doing something to Ophelia, kicked and taunted for being Muslim, and then before his last class of the day, beaten by some footballers—soccer players, that is—just because he was Nabi. The new principal—la directeur—was summoned to restore order. She took Nabi to the school nurse, who, at the insistence of la directeur, called the police. And then things only got worse.

  “What did the police do?” Jean-Paul asked, sitting forward.

  “They drove me home,” he said. “But my grandmother’s employer was already back from work. When she saw me get out of the police car looking like this she went crazy. She said we had to go. Now! She didn’t want a troublemaker near her family.”

  “She said ‘terrorist.’” Azadah Diba interjected. “She called my Nabi a terrorist. Can you imagine? He’s not the terrorist, it’s those horrible boys who harass him who are.”

  “She fired you?” I asked her.

  A deep sigh. “Yes. What do we do now? It was difficult to get that job, but without a good reference, who will hire me? How will we live?”

  “First,” Jean-Paul said. “We’ll have some dinner. Madame Diba, Ari strictly adheres to halal dietary rules. Do you?”

  “No,” she said after taking a moment to calm down. “We do not eat pork, of course, and other haram foods, or drink alcohol. Please, may I help prepare the meal? Nabi and I do not want to burden you.”

  Jean-Paul and I exchanged nods because letting her help simply made sense; I had no idea what we had to offer that might be haram and therefore forbidden. The ham we dragged home from the market was absolutely forbidden, but other than that I was uncertain. Azadah Diba and I repaired to the kitchen while Jean-Paul spoke with Nabi in the salon. I heard Éric’s name mentioned, and Detective Delisle’s. I opened the refrigerator and invited Diba, as she asked me to call her, to take a look.

  “Oh, yes,” she said when she saw the roast chicken left over from last night. The chicken was followed to the counter by a variety of salad vegetables and a plastic tub of feta cheese. The fresh herbs we bought that afternoon were in a jar of water next to the sink. As she snipped sprigs of dill and oregano she asked, “Have you an onion, garlic, olive oil?”

  I opened the pantry for her and she began pulling out ingredients to make an Italian-style soup from canned tomatoes. Dinner, then, would be salad with cold chicken and soup, followed by cherries and cheese, always cheese. My part in the enterprise was to chop, slice, and mince as instructed, and to hold up one end of the conversation. As she relaxed, Diba began to open up to me. She liked to cook, but her now-former employers, the Australians, stuck to a strict Paleo diet, meat and raw vegetables, which made no sense to Diba. No bread, no rice, no potatoes? No wonder they were so skinny and so ill-tempered. Most Australians she knew were such happy people. How did she have the misfortune to draw these two? There was no bitterness in her tone when she spoke about them, only a sort of mystification about people who refused to even taste he
r famous honey cake when she made it for the toddler. At least they let the children eat real food.

  The conversation moved from there to concert tours with her violinist son until an injury put an end to his career. And then he taught. Nabi, she said, was his best student. So eager to please his father. I told her my mom, the mom who raised me, had once been a concert pianist and still taught. I was her worst student; Isabelle, I was told, was tone deaf. It was a friendly conversation, and in short order the meal was ready.

  “Oh, I made too much food,” Diba said, watching me place serving bowls on a tray to take outside. “I was once accustomed to cooking for a big family. Talking with you I must have gotten carried away. On autopilot you could say. But thank you. It felt so wonderful to remember how it was with my family, if just for a moment.” She dabbed at her eyes, picked up the salad bowl and quickly left the room.

  We ate on the terrace under an arbor strung with lights. Dinner conversation was a bit stilted at first, but when Dom and Nabi began to talk about school and plans for university everyone relaxed and joined in. Nabi, who was three years behind Dom, hoped to be admitted in the fall to one of the regional conservatories of the arts to study music. He had requested the school in Paris where he thought there might be more tolerance than in the suburbs. I glanced at Jean-Paul, remembering what one of Jimmy Jardine’s guests had said about anti-Semitism in Paris schools. Could music overcome bigotry? Besides, in our suburb, so far at least, no one had detonated a car bomb.

  When Ophelia’s name came up, I asked Nabi, “Why does your friend run away?”

  “When she can’t take it anymore at home, she goes,” he said.

  “What is it she can’t take any more of?”

  “The fighting,” he said. “Her parents hate each other. She says they hate her, too. They want a puppet, not a real girl. At least, she says, not one who can think for herself. So, sometimes she just has to get away.”

  “Where does she go?” I asked.

  “She used to go to her friend Ambre’s house, just to cool off. But one time she lied to Ambre’s mother and told her she had permission to stay overnight, but she got caught and Ambre got in trouble, too. They weren’t friends after that. Without Ambre, she didn’t have anywhere to go. At least, nowhere she felt safe; scary people come out at night. One time—” He paused to glance at his grandmother. “There’s an apartment over the garage in that big house where Grandma and I have been living. No one goes up there. One time, I gave Ophelia the key.” He glanced at Diba again. “For one night, that’s all, I promise.”

  “Oh, Nabi,” Diba moaned. “I could have lost my job.”

  He reached his hand across the table toward her. “I’m sorry.”

  She took his hand and drew a breath and forced a smile. “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Jean-Paul asked, “Could she be in the apartment now?”

  Nabi shook his head. “I looked when I got home yesterday.”

  “Where else would she go?” I asked.

  “I keep trying to think, but I don’t know.”

  “No boyfriend?”

  Again, he shook his head. “She hates boys.”

  “Except you?” Dom asked.

  “Well, me and our music teacher. And her calculus teacher. Sometimes she pretends she needs help with an assignment so she can go after school to talk to Monsieur Gold.”

  We were still at the table, picking at cheese and cherries after the meal, when Ari arrived home and saw that everyone was taken care of. He caught Jean-Paul’s eye, put his palms together and made a little bow, a small gesture that said volumes about his gratitude. Jean-Paul’s response was to pull up another chair. But before he sat, Ari went over to Nabi, took his face in his hands and examined the shiner. Gently, he palpated the cheekbone under his eye, raised the boy’s chin and studied all the scrapes and scratches, lifted the bandage on his hand and looked under it. When he pressed his palm against Nabi’s ribcage Nabi flinched and paled but said nothing.

  “Show me where it hurts most,” Ari said.

  Nabi put a hand on his back just at his waist.

  “You were kicked there, perhaps?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you pissing blood?”

  “Some.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Who patched you up?”

  “The school nurse.”

  “You should have been sent right to a doctor. After you finish your meal, we are going to the hospital for X rays.”

  Ari was quietly furious. Jean-Paul rose and started toward him when the telephones in our pockets chimed.

  “Doorbell,” I said, pulling out my phone to see who was there. “Detective Delisle. Excuse me.”

  Our detective looked even worse than she had the night before. She wore her work clothes, a tailored suit and low pumps, and she had her hair in its bun again, but all of her sharp edges seemed frayed.

  “Is Ahmad Nabi here?” she asked in lieu of Hello.

  “He is.” I ushered her inside.

  “I thought he might be. I want to talk to him about an incident at school today, but the people at the address I have for him said that he and his grandmother left in a taxi without saying where they were going. This seemed the likely place.”

  “Everyone’s is out on the terrace, eating.”

  “Merde,” she muttered. “Sorry. It is the dinner hour, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Have you eaten?” I asked.

  “Eaten?” She gave a sad little chuckle. “What’s that?”

  “You might as well join us. Nabi’s grandmother made enough to feed the multitudes,” I said, gesturing toward the doors. “What will you drink, water, tea, or wine?”

  “Kind of you, but—” She shuffled her feet, looking anywhere but at me before she pursed her lips and let out a puff that sounded like Pooh, as in Winnie the, with a lot of air behind it. “Oh, what the hell. Sure. Yes. I’m starved. And wine. Plenty of wine, please.”

  “Go outside and pull up a chair. I’ll get you a plate.”

  I went to the kitchen for two place settings, one for Delisle, the other for Ari. Just as Ari had, Delisle examined Nabi’s face. She pulled out her phone and took pictures.

  “Who did this to you?” she asked, looking into that swollen eye. When he stubbornly shook his head, refusing to answer, perhaps afraid to snitch on the bullies, she said, “Was it Louis Roussel?”

  Reluctantly, he nodded.

  “And who else?”

  “Maxime and Octave.”

  “I know who they are. Who was the girl?”

  “Ambre.”

  “This was in the schoolyard between classes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was the directeur who broke it up?” When he nodded, she gave his shoulder a gentle pat and walked around the table to take the chair between Diba and Ari that Jean-Paul held out for her. Accepting the salad bowl from Diba with a little bow of the head, she glanced over at Nabi and said, “Don’t go to school tomorrow. The directeur is holding an all-school meeting and she thinks it would be wise if you weren’t there. She promises things will change and I promise I will help make that happen.”

  While Ari translated what she’d said for Diba, I handed the detective a bowl of soup and asked, “What happened to the old directeur? He seems to have simply disappeared.”

  “That’s a question for the education ministry.” She took her first spoonful of soup and smiled for the first time. “This is delicious. Reminds me of a visit to Italy.”

  There was nothing on Ari’s plate. Jean-Paul set the bowl of cherries in front of him. “The season is short, enjoy them while you can.” Ari helped himself.

  “Nabi,” I said, “how is Ophelia able to protect you from these kids? Are they friends of hers?”

  “Not the boys. I mean, Louis has this thing for Ophelia, you know what I mean?”

  “He has a crush on her?”

  He
nodded. “His mother is sick so Ophelia is nice to him. I mean, she isn’t openly cruel to him, but she avoids him. He follows her around sometimes and that annoys her. Ambre was her best friend until that thing happened between them. Ambre wanted to talk it out, be friends again, but Ophelia blocked her.”

  “Are Louis and Ambre jealous of your friendship with Ophelia?” I asked.

  “That’s what she said. I think they are a little afraid of her.”

  “Kids,” Dom said, as if at the ripe age of eighteen he was past all that sort of nonsense. “What can you expect?”

  The adults chuckled, and he grinned.

  “With your permission, Diba,” Ari said in English after discreetly spitting a cherry pit into a napkin. “After we get Nabi checked out at the hospital, I want him to stay with me overnight so I can keep an eye on him. I’m worried there may be a mild concussion and a broken rib or two, and the blow to the kidneys didn’t do him any good. But for you, maybe a hotel?”

  “Oh, I can’t—” Diba got no further. “I lost my job today, Doctor Massarani. I can’t afford a hotel, and I won’t let you pay. But if you’ll keep Nabi tonight I can go to a shelter, and I will be fine.”

  “Nonsense,” Jean-Paul said. “The two of you have been through enough for one day. You’ll stay here tonight, Diba. Tomorrow we’ll try to sort things out, yes?”

  “Thank you,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Okay, then. Everyone’s set.” Detective Delisle drained her glass for the second time and stood. “The meal was lovely, thank you very much. I needed the fortification because now I get to go beat up a bunch of toughs, in a legal sense anyway. Nabi, you aren’t the only kid who will be missing school tomorrow.”