Part 9 (1/2)

His images were dust and desert and the full moon. There were no trees in his poems, and no ocean, he rarely saw those things, and he wrote from what he knew: a vast desert, a gray station. Here, white was a rare color and so he wrote and wrote about jasmine, because the only white he'd found to describe Nisrine's heart was the jasmine flower in bloom.

ADEL'S LOVE STORY

ADEL'S PARENTS WERE IN LOVE. He believed in romance. Now, he was in love with a dark-haired maid who had a husband and a child, and whose time was not her own. But he believed in equality, and simply loving. If he loved Nisrine, she would love him, too, and that would be enough for them, she would need no more than his affection. He'd keep loving her and she'd keep loving him, and through their love everything else, like jobs and children and education, would fall into place. He believed in his parents' love, and it gave him courage to believe in his own.

He told his mother about her.

”I'm in love with a foreign girl.”

His mother said, ”Foreign. Paris?”

”From the East.”

”New York. Does she like our big city?”

It was not New York.

”She loves it. She never gets out.”

His mother said, ”That's your fault, donkey! You take her out. I'll give you money. Is she blond like you?”

”No, dark haired.”

”Dark hair, light skin?”

”Face like the full moon.”

His mother said, ”I like those girls. She loves you?”

”I love her.”

”If you love her, then she must love you.”

Adel realized that, like his friends at the station, his mother did not understand what he meant by foreign. So he tried again the next evening. His aunt was over with her maid. They sat in the living room and sent Lilene to get tea in the kitchen.

”Kiss for your boy, Lilene,” Adel teased. He turned to his mother. ”Mama, why's the maid sulking?”

Adel's aunt said, ”Do you know what Lilene said to me today? She said, I'm slow, Mama, because I didn't get a shower.” She laughed. ”She plays me like a child.”

”Did you say that, Lilene?”

Lilene didn't answer.

His mother said, ”Lilene's been eating wool.”

”Are you eating wool, Lilene?”

”And after all my sister feeds her,” Adel's mother said. ”Adel's in love with a foreign girl.”

”A foreign girl? What's she like?”

And he could have told them, but they were worried about Lilene.

THOUGH WE DIDN'T KNOW IT THEN, Baba met Adel twice in those months through his own dealings with the station. Any man who'd been in prison signed a contract when he got out to go to so-and-so station at so-and-so hour twice a month, to report on all he'd seen and done, and this contract lasted the rest of his life.

At the station, it was the young policemen who interviewed ex-prisoners, because it was a brainless job: they asked questions and recorded the answers, they didn't judge or think. Adel had interview duty three to four times a week. He sat at a tin desk in the station's bas.e.m.e.nt. The men came in and took a number from the red number dispenser (the visa lines in the American emba.s.sy used the same number dispensers), and when Adel was ready he called the next number in line as if the men were waiting for a service, to refill their cell phone minutes or buy a blender, but instead they gave information.

When Adel did his interviews, he didn't judge; he simply asked appropriate questions and recorded the answers in a thin notebook with puppy dogs on the front.

Now, I have this notebook. It sits before me.

Ras.h.i.+d Halwani, Adel wrote, height 1.83m, age 25.

Work: Still no news. Suffers from unemployment.

Activities: Neighbors had to leave, grandmother died? Destination unknown. Back Sunday night. Sat.u.r.day was Sheraton Club. Russian women danced with him, he didn't buy them drinks.

Money spent: 10,000 lire. Whose money: Father's.

People seen: Mahmood al-Ikhwan, Kerim Morsi, Simo Mustafa, Firas al-Kurdi.

If Baba came on the right day, Adel interviewed him, too: Ha.s.san al-Bakari, height 2.1m, age 66.

Work: Bookbinder, 25 orders filled last month.

Binding: Book for children learning to pray, Positions of Prayer Made Easy, new edition.

Adel didn't ask Baba about the women of the family. It was not polite, and these interviews were only cursory. He asked about business, who Baba had seen, and where he'd gone. They were interviews to record movement, to find out revolutionaries, to make sure that Baba loved his government. They were not to ask the health of the family maid.

Nevertheless, after Nisrine, Adel began to take a special interest.

By Baba's name, he wrote: (Sir) Ha.s.san al-Bakari. Height 2.1m.

He added little notes to himself, character judgments.

Work: Bookbinder (of the Quran the Karim).

Orders filled: 25 (smart man!).

Adel ran through his list of questions twice, and then looked up at Baba. He didn't want the interview to end.