Part 17 (2/2)
He had tried many things to help her over the past weeks: talked to her, tried to love her, given her his cell phone. None of it seemed to matter. Adel couldn't think what else to do. When Qais lost Leila, had he felt this? Was it what drove him crazy?
He went home to his parents, and didn't eat dinner. His mother noticed the change, how her son looked gray as the station. She went to her husband. ”Talk to Adel. Tell him about loving.”
So that night, Adel's father came to him.
”What's the matter?” his father asked.
”Nothing.” Everything.
”You don't guard the way you used to.”
”Baba, have you ever seen someone in trouble who you love, and you found when it came time, you couldn't do anything?”
The father looked at his son, in love with a woman he would not approve of. Adel's father had reared and groomed him to be a good guard, not to bend the rules, to know right from wrong.
”Adel, you're a policeman. You can always do something.”
f.c.u.k.
IN THE MORNING BEFORE MY LESSON, Imad called: there had been more gunshots, and there was talk of more sanctions. Maria got scared by the sanctions, and she left for home on an airplane.
On the phone, I was surprised. Flights were something I planned for, asked my mother for, bought ahead.
”You can leave like that? One day, and you book a flight?”
On the other end, Imad's voice was urgent.
”Are you still coming, Bea? My students are my life. You have to come. Maria's gone, you're all I have left.”
My lesson this week was on a cla.s.sic love poem, by Ibn Arabi. I sat alone with Imad in his echoey apartment and read the poem with all the voweling. The poet talked about love that left him with a green heart. He called his heart a garden among the flames.
In the middle of the lesson, Imad got a phone call.
On the phone, he said, ”Where would you like to meet? The Old City?”
I was sure it was a new student. The Old City was where all the foreigners lived.
Imad said into the phone, ”I am not in the Old City right now.” He was speaking very clearly, like he did for his students. ”I will meet you at six thirty Friday, then.”
He hung up.
”That was the government's Security Services.”
I looked at him. ”What do they want?”
”I don't know, they want to talk.”
”I thought you talked to them every other week.”
”I guess this is a special talk.”
We began cla.s.s again.
We moved to discussing the poem's imagery. We discussed the image of a green heart, and the image of the poet's love's hennaed eyes, which stood for marriage.
Imad said, ”I'm sorry, but that call is bothering me.”
I asked, ”Should we stop?”
But he told me to continue with the hennaed part.
Imad said, ”I'm not political, Bea. I'm a teacher.”
”I know.”
”Foreigners always leave. When it got hard for Maria, she went home. But who's left? Imad. He's been to London. He knows foreign girls, but he's from here.”
We turned back to the poem.
Imad said, ”I'm just worried about this Security thing. I have a business to look out for. I can't have problems with Security.”
I thought of Baba. ”I know you can't.”
We read another verse. I was having trouble with it. Imad said, ”Ma'an. Together. With ayn. That's a first-year word, Bea.”
I said, ”Sorry,” but I was still having trouble with it.
Imad threw himself down on his workout machine.
”All I want is a British girl with f.c.u.k underwear, and a small bit of product in her hair, who is clean, and has smooth legs, and I want us to lie around for a long time in our underwear, I don't want to take off her underwear for a long, long time. Is that too much to ask?”
Silence.
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