Part 2 (2/2)

”Say h.e.l.lo to your mother, Bea. Don't be an ingrate. Pa.s.s the greetings on! And give her a kiss. Come bring your mother to visit. Tell her our house is always open, she's a guest. You're not a guest, you're family. Really, you're family. I see you not as American; you dress long, you speak like we speak, Bea, when are you going to get married? I want to see the children you turn out, Bea, when your studies are done, you don't have to leave. Tell your mother to come here instead. Welcome! It's boring here without you, mashallah. You get used to someone, they live with you, you love them, and then they're gone.”

When I called up America, Madame gave all her love to my mother and my unborn children, and if she was feeling generous, she said, ”Fine, even your father, give him my love, it's OK with me if it's OK with you.”

When my mother called me up, I gave my mother's love to Madame and the children, and if I was feeling generous, I gave her love to Nisrine. To Baba I gave nothing. On the phone, we didn't mention husbands by name. Madame didn't mention the health of my father, and she didn't ask about my studies. If she did ask, I would have told her: My father lived in New York. I saw him every summer.

I liked Arabic for its precision, the way the words leafed out like spring from three-letter roots. In Arabic, there is a root for knowledge, and from this root, you can make the words for world and tenderness. There is a root for friends.h.i.+p; from it, you can make the word for being true.

In the dresser drawer that Madame emptied out for me, between my book pages and my underwear, I had lists and lists of the texts I wanted to study, and I had other lists of famous places in the city I wanted to go: the biblical street called Straight; the famous Knights' Castle; the National Library, in it were texts you couldn't find anywhere else.

When I decided to come here, the study abroad officer wanted me to know it might be hard. This wasn't an official program, it would just be me. I'd have to find my own Arabic teacher, and work on an independent research project. If it was good, then I could get credit when I returned home.

But, I wasn't thinking about hard. I was thinking about the Arabic root for togetherness, how from this root, you could make the words for university, and Friday prayer.

Before I left, my mother worried for me. ”Don't you want to go on an official program?” she asked.

On an official program, I would be with a group of students, and we'd have scheduled cla.s.ses.

But this country was less well-known, and its government did not get along with the US government, so it didn't offer official programs. I wanted to be in this country.

I dreamed of fitting in, in an Arabic-speaking family. And, there was another reason.

My Arabic professors in America all talked about one ancient text that made everyone who read it cry, it was that astonis.h.i.+ng. This is the test of a language: you know it when it moves you. Someday, when I had studied enough, I wanted to go to the National Library and read that text, and then I would cry, because Arabic moved me. That was why I had come to this place.

AT MADAME'S, we were always talking about beauty. In the evening, Lema turned on the TV and wanted to know which singer was pretty. ”Do you like him, Bea?” He was fat and ugly. ”Do you like him, Bea?”

None of us liked the TV singers, they were all a little fat and ugly, so Lema turned the game outside on the police. We sat by the window, watching them at the station.

”Do you like him, Bea?” But I didn't like him, he wasn't tall like the blond one. ”Do you like him, Bea?” After a moment, Lema turned away in frustration. ”Bea only likes the blond one because her hair is light like his.”

Lema's hair was brown and as curly as mine, but you wouldn't know it, because she was always straightening it before she left the house, even though when she went out, she always wore a veil. Lema had dark hair and dark eyes, and her skin was darker than Madame's and mine, though not as dark as Abudi's. There is a word in Arabic for Abudi's skin, it is called sumr, and it means tan, the color of sand hills, or thyme leaves when they're drying, or almost as dark as Nisrine.

When Baba came home, he wanted to know all about what we were doing, and it made him laugh. ”Careful, Bea, the blond one is famous. Everyone knows all about him.”

I wanted to know what everyone knew.

”His name is Adel. They say he's a real Qais. His father paid good money to make him city police.”

”See?” Lema said. ”Bea goes for blond and she gets corruption.” When it was Lema's turn to pick the prettiest policeman, she only liked the brown-haired ones.

In my drawer were long s.h.i.+rts and loose pants out of respect, but at Madame's everyone else dressed tight, even Nisrine. Madame shot an appraising look at me. She cinched my s.h.i.+rt from behind and rolled up my sleeves. She pushed back my hair, let it hang down, squeezed my unpierced ears, lightly. ”Have you ever had a boyfriend, Bea?”

The most beautiful one in our apartment was Nisrine. She had large dark eyes, and you could see the bulge of her thick hair beneath her veil before I cut it.

Her face was perfectly round and smooth, and every now and then a wisp of hair would come out of her veil and curl across her forehead like a crooked finger. She was beautiful, and she chopped very fine parsley.

The night after I cut her hair, while we played prettiest policeman, Nisrine did the laundry. She went to Madame in the kitchen.

”I found dirt in her underwear.”

Madame said, ”She'll learn, she'll learn.”

Nisrine said, ”She's old enough to know better.”

Madame said, ”She'll learn, she'll learn. Bea, when you go to the bathroom, you use water, then paper, not just paper, that's dirty, you understand?”

”I know, I'm sorry, Nisrine.”

”See, Nisrine? She knows, she's sorry. She'll learn.”

MADAME SAID, ”Don't change in front of the window.”

She nodded at the police station.

”They can see in. And don't open the door to strangers. You don't know who is out there. The president's brother opened his door, that's how he became a martyr.” The front door didn't have a handle, only a key. Madame locked the door from the outside whenever she left the apartment. That way, we couldn't open it to strangers while she was gone.

”And only change when you are alone. Tell us when you want to change, and we'll leave. You want to change now?” She pushed Abudi out of the bedroom in front of her so Nisrine and I could change alone with the blinds closed, because we were both foreign.

When Madame left, Nisrine opened a window.

Madame's apartment was in the center of the city, but I knew Nisrine had never really seen the city, because like me and like Madame, she rarely left the apartment. What we knew of this place was the air above us when we went out on the balcony. We knew the fresh cheese that Baba brought from the market.

On the dresser beside the mirror was a can of deodorant. Nisrine sprayed the deodorant and twirled around in it like perfume.

Between us were the open window and my embarra.s.sment about her hair. Nisrine was twirling and twirling.

After a while, she said, ”Here, Bea, you want some deodorant?”

”Yes, please.”

So she sprayed some for me, and we both twirled around in it.

Dounia opened the door on us. The room smelled of damp tile floors and deodorant. Dounia started to shut the door, but Nisrine sprayed some for her, so she came in, too, and the three of us twirled around.

We lived by a police station, so we were always watched by idle men. I once climbed with Abudi to our own flat roof, to check our water tank when we thought the neighbors were stealing. From up there, Abudi and I could see everything and we, like the police, were the center of all of it, we with our indoor slippers and pajama pants, they with their tilted caps and young boredom. We were the heart of the city, alive and beating. We looked out over the world and watched the small breaths of plastic bags on the sidewalk, the in-out of the bags' bellies. We looked over the rooftops to white satellite dishes peppered with dirt, tangled up in antennas and telephone wires, and the absence of birds.

Baba had said, His name is Adel. They say he's a real Qais. His father paid good money to make him city police.

I didn't yet know about Adel, but I knew about Qais. He was a young man from a famous Bedouin tribe. His love story went back for generations, and everyone here knew it and looked to it, the way in English we look to Romeo and Juliet. In the story, Qais falls in love with the beautiful Leila, and writes her poems. He sings songs outside her tent. He falls so deeply in love, and he is so open with his love, that the tribe stops calling him Qais, and instead calls him Crazy for Leila.

This is the story I had come here to read that made everyone who read it cry. The astonis.h.i.+ng text.

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