Part 20 (2/2)

After a while, she said, ”We had trouble before, this isn't our first trouble. I remember when foreigners entered our neighboring country. There were foreign tanks and everything in the street, and checkpoints. Like now, except there were so many more checkpoints. We lived like that for ten years, next to the foreign army.”

I said, ”That must have been very hard.”

She shrugged. ”Militias rose up and pushed the foreign army to the south, and there were rumors that the foreigners would leave. Lema was one and a half years old. I had a friend living in the south, so I went there, just to look at the foreign soldiers, to see what they looked like before they left. It was cold out, so cold, I remember, and everyone here was scared for me. They said to Baba, How can you let your wife go and do that? And take your child?'

”Coming back, in the taxi we were scared. The situation had gotten worse, you see. It was cold, so cold. We waited five hours in the garage for the car to fill up. The driver wouldn't leave without a full car, the donkey. After five hours, we had three pa.s.sengers and I told him, You'd better hurry up and go. Three's enough,' I said. So we went, it was so cold, and we kept getting stopped by the foreign soldiers at checkpoints along the way north. I remember one looked at Lema and made a joke about her. They knew some words in Arabic-open the window,' for example. They did bad things to our neighbors, they helped ma.s.sacre people. But I was looking at them, and looking at them. I thought they were so beautiful!”

Beauty. Men in foreign uniforms, whom you know it is wrong to like, and yet you do.

”I understand Ha.s.san,” Madame said. ”Me, I like to look, I like to be involved. But I'm not like Ha.s.san, I don't stay. I don't sign my name. A day or two, and I want out.”

I came to stand beside Madame at the window. It was dark now. We looked over the city, to the road like a black river; to the white glow of TV screens, strung together from apartment to apartment, like Christmas lights.

”Mama, what will happen to Baba?”

”I don't know.”

”Do you think he'll really sign the doc.u.ment?”

”I don't know, Bea, I don't know.”

”Maybe we can fix it.”

She gave me a long look. ”Don't try to fix anything.”

But, so much in me wanted to. Adel, I thought. Adel, who had done something. Could he really have fought Baba? I felt the secret care I'd harbored for him for so long slowly melt away; all at once, Imad was there instead. Imad, who had traveled all over England; who'd never hit anyone, that I knew of. Imad, who knew all about how to work with foreigners, which drew me to him, but made him suspect for the police. His kisses had come like thank-you notes, strung out after a long time behind our studying. He was not Qais. Still. Tomorrow I would see him, and we'd go together before his interview to the National Library, and this time maybe Imad would help me, maybe with him I'd finally read the astonis.h.i.+ng text. I had dreamed about crying over that text for so long, and now all of a sudden I didn't know whether I wanted to cry for the text's beauty, or so that Imad could comfort me.

”Mama, did you have boyfriends before Baba?”

”Yes,” Madame said, ”I had lots of boyfriends.”

”Who was your first?”

”The neighbor, when I was thirteen.”

”Who was your longest?”

”They were all very short.”

”How did it last with Baba, then?”

”We made a choice, we had to stick by it.” Madame was married when she was twenty-three.

Lema had come in while we were talking. She stood behind us, listening. ”Is marriage hard?” she asked.

”Very hard. Even though I loved Ha.s.san, there were a lot of times I thought of leaving. But, I made a choice.”

I thought of Baba, nights when he came home and we were so happy to see him. I thought of him in jail in a room without sunlight.

”Did your marriage with Baba succeed?”

Madame didn't answer for a while. Then she said, ”Yes, it succeeded.”

”Do you still think about leaving?”

”No, now it's much easier because it's become normal. Everything is normal.”

”Have you ever loved anyone after you loved Baba?”

”No, of course not. That is all done.”

In my head, I made exchanges: All the words I knew, for Baba's safety. All the books in my drawer, for this to be all right.

Lema asked, ”Mama, why did you choose Baba? He didn't have anything when he came to you. He'd just got out of jail.”

”His family lied to me. They said they would give him both factories, and money. But they didn't give him anything. He had to earn those for himself.”

Lema asked, ”What's your favorite thing about Baba?”

We were always so anxious for him. We waited for him in the evenings, and never wanted him to leave. And now, the doc.u.ment. I looked at Madame.

”What did you say, Mama?” She'd said a word I didn't understand. She said it again. Then she said, ”. . . and his patience.”

I was here to read an astonis.h.i.+ng text.

I'd studied so many words for love in Arabic.

Her favorite thing about him was a word I didn't understand.

THE WOMEN STAY, and the men go, and we don't know how to help, we don't know what to do.

Madame and Lema and I sat in the kitchen a long time, while Nisrine ironed. When it grew late, Madame went to put Dounia and Abudi to bed, and that is how she found my big bag beside Nisrine's mat on the floor in the bedroom, where we had once wheeled it, for when Nisrine could leave. She dragged it into the hallway.

”Bea, are you going somewhere?”

”No.”

Madame said, ”I thought this bag was yours.”

Nisrine stood watching. ”It's mine.”

I said, ”I gave it to Nisrine, to put her clothes in.”

Nisrine and I had both loved and talked to a policeman, and so we were both to blame, though only one of us was loved back.

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