Part 4 (1/2)

At Madame's, we watched the rallies from the window, and everyone wanted the best view. There was music and drumming. Dounia opened the window and almost hit Abudi in the head, which made him cry, even though he was nine, a big boy. Then Dounia almost cried, because she was so excited by the rallies.

There were men on the sidewalk, and the Quran playing. It blasted from boom boxes the men carried. Next, women came with their purses neatly on their arms and their good clothes on. They marched, arms linked, in simple scarves and low heels for a few minutes, before skipping out to go shopping. All the stores were open. The police had not blocked off the street. As people marched, they skipped between cars, flags sagging, and the buses were all diverted to bring people into the rallies, not out the other direction: these rallies were mandatory. You couldn't be seen on your balcony, it meant you weren't at the rally.

Madame's children wanted to join the rally. All their school friends were going. You could tell the schoolchildren in the crowd by their blue and pink s.h.i.+rts like bubble gum under gray uniforms.

I, too, wanted to join the rallies. I was excited, like the children. I listened and moved to the beat of drumming and dancing.

Baba was not watching the rallies; he was praying in the living room. His low chants mixed with the muted sound of rally slogans: G.o.d All-Knowing, in G.o.d's name.

At Madame's, we didn't go down to the rallies, but we watched them all the way up the street, and we followed them on TV.

Baba finished his prayers and sat down on the sofa between Lema and me. He made contented sounds at us, like a dove cooing.

”How does a dove coo in English, Bea?”

Madame came in. She sighed into a chair and smiled at us.

”Ooli, Beatrice. Didn't they teach you in America not to lie on sofas with strange men?”

”That girl's my daughter.”

”No, she's not.”

”I love her like one. OK, Lema-Baba, where were we?”

He began to talk about revolution. Madame hummed softly beneath his voice.

”The situation here is very hard,” Baba said. ”You see these rallies? They mean the government is worried. When the government is worried, you never know what will happen. There are times the police want me, I go out with my hands crossed before me. I give them my pa.s.sport. Take me.”

It was very brave of him. In America, I never heard about policemen who came to get you for talking. My father and my friends' fathers never mentioned arrest as a normal thing, while their wives hummed softly, and after they'd just made sounds like doves cooing.

I sat on the sofa, feeling the adrenaline of revolution. It came in small acts with big meanings: people who broke small rules like driving Amo Nasir, the Nelson Mandela of this country, in their car. People who went to jail for little things, indiscretions. In this country, there was no habeas corpus. If the government decided you were a threat, then you could go to jail for years without knowing why, and without a trial. Baba had once been jailed that way. Here, it took big minds to commit indiscretions.

The resistance wasn't made up only of young boys, but old men. Old men who smoked in cars and grew wise, and sometimes let their wives and children care about the money and the work and their meals. Old men with children and wives like Amo Nasir's wife, Moni, and Madame, who never cared very much about resisting, but was resigned to it.

Recently, Baba and his friends had begun to talk about a new plan. They were frustrated with the government, which often threatened them and was occupying the neighboring country. This country's government did not allow free speech, but Baba and his friends had taken their frustrations and were in the process of writing them all down in a brave doc.u.ment calling for an end to censors.h.i.+p, and free elections. When it was done, they would publish this doc.u.ment, and each man would have to make his own decision about whether to sign it.

This put Baba in a dilemma. He believed in the doc.u.ment and wanted to sign, but he worried for Madame and the children.

The men were only writing their thoughts; they were not taking up arms, or plotting to overthrow the government. Still, here writing could be dangerous.

I heard Baba discussing it with Madame at night.

”Don't sign, Ha.s.san,” she told him. ”What would we do without you?”

”I can't be a coward.”

”Yes, but think of the children. What would happen to us, if you were gone?”

Now, on the sofa, Lema said, ”I want the people I love close to me.”

Baba said, ”That's not real love. Look at the Americans. They love, but they say, Go. Go far away, and I'll call you and I'll love you, but I let you go.”

”The Americans don't love the way we do.”

”But they do, Lema-Baba, they do. Would you rather I locked you in a closet to show you I love you? Your problem is you're young. Look at Bea, how much she sometimes cries, I miss Mama, I miss America. Look at Nisrine. I would cry, too, if I were Nisrine's age. But now if I left tomorrow, I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't even call you, maybe.”

”Why not?”

”Because I am grown now. I don't think with my emotions, I think with my mind.”

I had only been at Madame's a little while, but I knew the person who cried most in our apartment wasn't Nisrine or me, it was Lema, because she was a teenager and going through a phase.

Whenever I thought of crying, I thought of the astonis.h.i.+ng text in the National Library. The text told the story of Qais and Leila, a legend that could be found in other books, too, but my professors always said the familiar content didn't matter, that it was the words themselves that gave this text its unique beauty. I imagined astonis.h.i.+ng words spread out before me. I imagined crying, for a single word's beauty.

Here, when you loved someone, you called her by your name.

On the sofa, Baba chucked Lema under her chin. ”What I want for you, Lema-Baba, is not to be a number. There are not one hundred bookbinders in this country, there are ninety-nine and Ha.s.san, you understand?”

Lema's father called her Baba, which was his name, and it showed he loved her like he loved himself. She was part of him as his own name.

JUST BEFORE BED, there was a phone call. Baba picked it up and stood for a moment, listening, then he went into the bedroom. We could hear him through the wall.

”They took Nasir.”

”They took him?”

But we couldn't hear his answer.

Madame said, ”I'll go see his wife tomorrow.”

Baba came back into the living room, having changed out of his pajamas.

Madame said, ”Nisrine, go fill up the water bottles.”

So Nisrine, Lema, and I filled up the bottles before our water cut off for the night.

Baba had his shoes on, ready to go. Nisrine served him water from a bottle we'd filled. Then he bent to kiss each of us once and went out into the city. The air was hoa.r.s.e with winter stoves, and the dusky, moonlit sky the same flat gray as cement.

We sat up for a while waiting. When Baba didn't return, Madame locked the door and took the children to bed. Nisrine poured milk in a cup for Dounia to drink before she slept, but Dounia didn't want to. She held the small layer of fat around Nisrine's waist and sucked it like a breast.

”b.o.o.by.”