Part 1 (1/2)

A Word for Love.

Emily Robbins.

FOR MY PARENTS AND ARTHUR, WITH LOVE.

BEFORE.

THE BOX ARRIVED ON MY DOORSTEP, small and una.s.suming. It was addressed to me, but only with my first name. The letters stood up painfully, without any slant, as if the person who wrote them was not used to writing English. This was my first clue. I thought it might be a box from Madame. I had left some books with her when I lived with her years ago, and ever since, she had been promising to send them. But when I lifted the box up, I found it was too light to contain books. In the corner was a foreign postage stamp, and beside it, an insignia that I recognized as the police's.

I opened it slowly, and papers poured out: poems, printed text messages, calling cards ripped in half. I lifted them and smoothed them; Kleenexes bought by the packet to write on. This was a box from a policeman; he knew the importance of doc.u.ments. I had once been told that he was a real Qais, which meant a deep lover. I heard a story that he once clipped a poem to the ear of a teddy bear and sent it. The bear was for love. The poem was his doc.u.ment.

I want to record in my hand-Bea, do you remember your Arabic?

I want to record in my hand. Anything I've done after 20-01, 2005, until today, and after today, if it is romantic, it is only for Nisrine. Because I can't speak or do to any girl-only her. There isn't anyone other than her. And I record it here, in my name, too: My name is Adel Ibrahim Ammar Talbani, that's my identification. I'm known to some as Abu Talib, that was my name at the police station. And among the boys, I am Ammar, they call me Ammar. But my name is Adel, and I was a policeman. And I write this to Bea because, like I said, I cannot do for any girl-only Nisrine, and my love for her will never change, if I change it's only for the better. And Bea knows all this, because she knew Nisrine, and Nisrine knew everything, and from my heart, I wish her all happiness.

Adel, 21 January, 20-.

I had gone to Adel's country as a student of Arabic, and I returned, six months earlier than expected, thinking that I would never leave home again for a foreign country. Nisrine was my reason. I wanted to lock myself in my room for a long time and not come out, so I couldn't accidentally make trouble for anyone. I tried to bury my guilt. I blamed myself.

And Bea knows all this, because she knew Nisrine, and Nisrine knew everything . . .

The madam of the house where I lived always said that if you can write, it means you have a clear conscience. I took up the policeman's poems, one by one. I sorted through his doc.u.ments. I laid them all out, so I could see them as I was working. I began this story, in the hope that I could do it justice, and clear my conscience.

MEETING.

THE RAINS CAME to the foreign city with red skies. All over, people watched the fiery night above them, brushed their palms across their foreheads and muttered, ”Tomorrow will bring rain.” The clouds were restless with the wind. The next day rain did not come. Nor the day after.

Two weeks later, though, it came as the people promised. Men at the mosques washed their feet in the rain, catching the water from the faucets with care, one hand holding their coats to s.h.i.+eld their heads from the sky. The drops of moisture were stars on their foreheads, s.h.i.+ning as they ran down wrinkled faces, into the whites of cloudy eyes. In them the town saw heaven, and it was gray.

For a while, the rains took the power with them. The people in their houses sat in the dark of candlelight. The sky was bright outside. And the planes flying overhead through the night did not know they were pa.s.sing over a city.

In the morning, the rains were gone and when they cleared, there was a holiday. The people streamed into the street and watched the leftover water run off the cobblestones. The sun was glowing and pulsing. The water made off with the dust and the stray garbage bags and ran out to the highways and sand hills. Above it were the sigh and flap of rugs as they dried out the windows. Wet coats, strung from hangers on the balconies, leaned low over the morning city.

The rains came, and with them the police. They stood about in the sun after it cleared, tan as wheat, smelling the cobblestones. The police dragged wet sandbags to dry in the sun on the streets. They made a small gray mound, right in the middle of the traffic lane. There was a sweet smell of sandbags drying, and the policemen brought more for the other lanes so, as they were drying, the sandbags made a blockade.

The cars were all stopping by the sandbags and the policemen were leaning against them, checking licenses and back plates. We were seven in the car, coming from the market, and no one had a seat belt. Madame was in the front seat with Abudi, and Baba was driving. Nisrine and I were in the backseat with Lema and Dounia, the little girls. We talked about bribing the policeman.

Madame gathered up our apples and put them in a bag.

”Here, Bea, you give these to the policeman.”

I didn't want to.

Madame wasn't listening.

I said, ”Here, Nisrine, you give these to the policeman.”

We stopped at the sandbags, which stretched from the station to the public garden, and Baba rolled down his window.

”Now, Bea.”

Nisrine and I got out of the car, giggling, and handed the bag of apples to the policeman. Then we got back in.

The policeman opened the bag to inspect it. He had blond hair beneath his gray cap; in the sun it was glinting. He looked through Madame's window into the backseat where Nisrine and I sat, giggling.

He checked Baba's license.

”Go through,” he said, holding the apples, ”go through.”

We didn't go far. We rolled past the blockade and parked on the other side, in front of our building. I turned around to look for the policeman.

In the rearview mirror, Baba caught me turning.

Baba said, ”I see Bea likes blond men.”

In the backseat, Dounia caught my giggling.

Madame said, ”Shh, Dounia. It's not nice on young girls to giggle.”

Later, I would learn that the blond policeman was also watching. He followed us with his eyes all the way out of our car, and he found us again, five floors up on our balcony, airing our shoes. Dounia's shoes were too small; they were patent-leather white and they almost slipped through the railing. He saw Nisrine bend to retrieve them.

His friends stood around, checking cars and license plates. They wanted to buy cigarettes.

”Come on, Adel,” they said to the blond policeman.

But Adel was still holding our apples.

Another car rolled up, and he thought he heard someone giggle in it, so he let that car go through, because he liked the sound.

BEA.

MADAME AND I WERE INTRODUCED by an agency that found families for a fee. I was twenty-one and studying abroad from America. Before I came, my university paid the agency and the agency paid Madame my first month's rent, which was US$150. It was Madame's first time as a family-for-a-fee. It was my first time as a paying student in a foreign country.

We lived in an apartment with five rooms and a balcony that looked out over the center of the city. From it, we could see over the gray tops of the buildings, to the large bridge that ran north toward the president's house, to the minarets of the mosques and their green lights at the edges of the highways. Across from us was the police station, which was a tall, gray building like ours, with five stories. From our balcony, we saw the policemen standing guard at each corner of its long, flat roof, legs apart. In the center of the station roof were an open shed and a little turret with a chair and a phone in case the policemen needed to be reached. We could hear them on the phone in the afternoons, ordering up tea. Behind the station, cement buildings lined up in uneven rows, the same way Baba's friends lined up their shoes at the door before they went into the parlor to talk politics. When the men were all inside, Madame and Nisrine and I squatted by the door to straighten their shoes. We brushed dust from the leather tongues. We folded their socks and set them beside the children's, neatly. Madame judged men by their feet; a man who took care of his shoes would take care of his family.