The Wanting (27 page)

“Why? I just thought …”

“It’s getting dark. What’s the point of being out here in the dark?”

“Why not?” I demanded.

“I have to get home, Amir.”

“Why? Because of Nadirah?”

“Of course because of Nadirah.”

“Why is it always Nadirah? Nadirah, Nadirah, Nadirah! What about us?”

“ ‘Us’?”

“I mean …”

He crossed his arms. They might as well have been two scimitars. “It’s time to get over it, Amir. For everyone’s sake.”

“Over what?”

“Oh, Amir!” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve been trying to be patient, but you just … I have to say something. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. I think maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time with Nadirah and me anymore. Maybe that would be best. Yes, I think it would definitely be best. You have to stay away from us, Amir. Nadirah and I, we need some privacy, you know? Can you understand that? Amir, you can’t be with a person you don’t like.”

“But I do like you. I love you!” I cried.

“Not me, you idiot. Nadirah. You don’t accept her. Everyone knows that.”

“But you’re my cousin,” I replied miserably.

“She’s also your cousin. And she’s my wife. She will be the mother of my children.”

“I know that.”

“No, I don’t think you do.” He now took five steps back, and with each step receded deeper into the darkness of the approaching night. He held up his hand as if to wave good-bye, but actually it was just a shrug, as if there really were nothing more he could possibly say to me. He walked off in the direction of the village, and before I could say a word he was swallowed up in the misty blackness of that night, and I was left alone in our wadi with the water trickling over my shoes and the first flutter of bats swirling over my head.

You see? You see? This is exactly what the Prophet, Sayyidina Rasulullah, Allah’s blessing upon him, warned: Beware of suspicion, do not find fault with each other, do not spy upon one another, do not compete with one another. But I was filled with envy! Strange feelings bit into my heart and strange thoughts interrupted my sleep. Even now, I feel the pangs of envy creep into my phantom groin. But what is it I covet? Even as I look down upon Dasha Cohen in her brilliant silence, in her magnificent stillness, I cannot say if it is she I desire, or my lost life, or simply the black freedom of death. Perhaps if she would speak my name, I would understand why I tarry. Perhaps if she cursed me, spit at me, if she blinked her eyes, one time for disgust, two times for vengeance, I might at least make sense of the connection between us. Shattered and pale, her hair a tangle of thorns, her nails clipped like a boy’s, her legs slightly parted, her neck exposed to the collarbone, one ear protruding from her hair like a slice of ripe pear—

Pear.

The months passed, the season turned to winter yet again, and I marched off, as I now did every day, in the direction of the garage and then, as always, detoured onto the Street of the Four Wells and then cut through the alley behind Nasser’s vegetable stand, said hello as always to abu-Mahmed, who always seemed to be
wherever I was, and bent under the banyan because I loved the smell, and anyway it was always raining this time of year, taking a minute to shake the water from my hair and pull my shirt from my back, and then I skirted the rear of the houses hiding myself under the eaves and pressing up against the walls because I wanted to remain as dry as possible. And then, at last, I reached the Tomb of Nadirah, which is what I now called the house in which she and Fadi lived, and there I placed myself beneath the window—that is, whichever window opened upon the room in which she happened to be, of which there were two, the kitchen where I had first seen her, which was also the main room with its one sofa and one chair upon which she sat to watch television, and the bedroom. In the last days, this was where I always found her, lying atop the half-made mattress of the wedding bed Fadi had given her as a bride price. She had one leg bent like a pyramid upon which she balanced her ashtray. As usual she was wearing her blue jeans with white stitching on the pockets and a heart of white sequins sewn upon the hem of her right leg, the leg which was now stretched to the edge of the mattress, her bare foot and bright orange toes dangling over the side. When she walked the streets in those jeans, old women and religious men yelled at her. Today she had been reading something, but the book was already lying open on her breast, an abandoned butterfly, rising up and down with each breath. I loved her blouses. Today she wore the T-shirt that said
BON JOVI
:
BAD MEDICINE
. I read enough English to see that. And anyway, everyone knew Bon Jovi. One sleeve was torn on purpose to reveal a slice more of her shoulder, the V where it came down into her arm like the mouth of a river. I knelt beneath the casement still as a rock.

How many times had I come here? After school, before school, in the early evening before Fadi returned, whole seasons had I come, four months, six months, eight. Spring had turned to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter. He thought I hated her. I did. Yet if I did not make my pilgrimage to the altar of her window each day, I was consumed with mourning for the day that was lost. What had she been wearing, what had she been reading, what
had she cooked, what had she listened to, who among her boring girlfriends had visited her; and if she had not been home, where had she gone? And oh! if she was not home how my heart raced with anxiety. I would drop from her window, which then would seem just a stupid window on Fadi’s house, and run first to Saliah’s house, and if she was not there, then to the apartment building where I knew Adeela lived, where I would have to wait a block away and watch for the door to open and close, which it did almost constantly, but rarely with Nadirah coming through; and if not there, to Rima’s or Monique’s or Jala’s; and if not there to the juice bar or the café or the bakery or the cultural center. One time I waited three hours near the movie theater, and when the film let out and she was not there, I was abject to the point of tears.

Today I was lucky. She lay with her eyes closed, the book splayed upon her chest, the ashtray upon her knee, the toes hanging over the edge of the bed, and I was happy. Then she stirred, placed the ashtray on the blanket, lay the open book beside it, let her feet come together on the floor, and pushed herself up. She stood with her back to me, yawned, extended her bare arms above her head, fingers spread out like dancing puppets. She disappeared behind the curtains that led to the toilet. I counted the seconds, stretched my ears to hear the slightest intimation of sound, any little crinkle, echo, swoosh, anything coming from her secret body, or even from her feet scraping along the floor, or, especially, the slap of her belt buckle as she reset it on her waist, or a sigh, or the gritty clang of the chain that would tell me what’s what, that my wait was over and I missed the whole thing. The heart in my stomach cried out: to see you in every way possible! I would give anything. I would give anything. Instead, I heard someone come into the yard, a heavy, lethargic step. Abu-Mahmed! Again! He was like a shadow on the face of the sun, following me like the cat you once fed out of pity and now wouldn’t let you alone. Why did I ever say hello to him, anyway? He was almost blind and practically retarded. Who else said hello to him? Only Amir. I decided I wouldn’t even look at him. My eyes would be two stones aimed at the curtain behind which Nadirah was—

“What? You think I don’t know you’re there? Come out of there! You want to see me? Here I am!”

My ears went crazy, and I didn’t know where to look.

“You think I can’t see you? I can see you right through the bushes, you moron. Come out.”

It was Nadirah, her arms folded like a locked gate.

“Well?” she said.

I climbed out of the mulberry bush. “What is it?” I answered. “What do you want? I’m busy.”

“You’re busy?” She held up her magazine to protect her hair from the rain, exposing the underside of her arm.

“I lost something. I lost Cat,” I said.

“Cat?”

“Cat is the name of my cat, in case you don’t remember.”

She placed her other hand on her hip and leaned on one leg, the way she did when she scolded Fadi. “Do you lose this ‘Cat’ every day?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“He runs away all the time,” I explained.

“He must not like you very much. Maybe because you never bothered to give him a real name.”

“Cat is a real name.”

“So is Amir the Peeper.”

“Who’s peeping? Who cares about you? You’re so conceited!”

“All right. Come in. You’re wet all through. It’s time to talk.”

“I have to look for Cat.”

“Come in anyway,” she said.

“I’m too busy.”

“Amir, enough.” She reached out, and there was nothing in the world more beautiful or more frightening than this hand extended toward me, the tendrils of darkness in the folds of her knuckles, the sand-hued palm that was suddenly, impatiently, turned upward, the beckoning, rain-dappled, iridescent fingers with bright orange nails. The lids of her eyes were lowered ever so briefly. I was unsure of their meaning, only that I could not resist the pressure
of that lowering, as if her lashes had slipped under my feet to scoop me up and set me down in her kitchen. Then, abruptly, she turned and walked back to the house. I followed her, chained to her eyelids, and also to her footprints in the soppy ground, which I copied step for step.

“Stand there,” she said.

She had placed herself on her chair at the small green table they used to cut up vegetables. In a plate on the table was a half-eaten pear. The bite marks had left its flesh browned. She shifted her body sideways so that she was facing the window through which I had been gazing for what now seemed to me my entire life. Her eyes hardened upon me, and even in the chill of December, with my clothes soaked and my shoes leaking, my neck felt as hot as if the sun were bearing down on it.

She said, “What’s the matter with you?”

At that moment, as far as I could tell, the whole world had gone to sleep except for what was happening in this room.

“Why are you just standing there,” she said.

I took one step toward her, but then took it back.

“Take your hands out of your pockets,” she commanded like a schoolmaster. “Are you deaf? Take your hands out of your pockets. I’m not going to bite you. You can come a little closer. That’s enough. Now, this is no time for lies, Amir. If you lie, it is all over. Do you understand? I will know if you lie.”

I glued my hands to my knees.

“You were looking in my window today, weren’t you, Amir? Only the truth. No truth, we’re done forever.”

The nodding of my head felt strange to me. My head was an object I controlled only tenuously, as if with a rubber band.

“And this is not the first time, is it?”

By now my head felt more like a balloon, wanting to fly off.

“You have done it time and time again.”

I nodded again.

“And what have you seen? Amir, tell me.”

“You,” I said.

“How?”

“Just you.”

“No lies today, Amir.”

“Drinking your Coca-Cola!” I blurted. “Dancing to ABBA. Eating hummus. Smoking cigarettes. Talking to Jala Idris. Making tea with tea bags. Tying your hair with ribbons and letting it out again. Kicking off your shoes. Losing your lighter over and over again. Writing in your notebook. Never finding your pen. Practicing balancing on one toe. Washing the clothes.”

“You mean my underwear.”

“Yes,” I answered with pride. “Blabbing with Adeela. Reading your romantic books. Crying for no reason. Breaking eggs in the frying pan. Stacking things. Eating … your pear. Mopping the floor.”

She looked at me a very long time and said, “I don’t read romantic books. It’s literature. Sahar Khalifa. Have you heard of this writer? You’re not too young to read her anymore. You just act young. When I’m done with it, I’ll give it to you.”

“Thank you.”

“ ‘Thank you,’ ” she repeated, rolling the words around in her mouth as if they were made of syrup. Then she said, “Amir, what do you want of me?”

And it just came out of my mouth: “I want to kiss you.”

Suddenly she bit her lower lip and smiled.

She stood up, walked over to me, one step, then two, then three, until the space between us was so small that if you put an olive leaf between her breast and mine, it would not fall.

She placed her hands on my hips, locking her fingers upon them so I could not move one way or another. She looked straight at me, straight into my eyes. But then she looked down. A strange smile appeared on her lips. And with sudden horror I understood what she was looking at, even though I had been praying that she would not notice, or if she happened to glance, it would not show, but it was showing—a pole holding out my pants like a tent.

Why did I never have money for blue jeans like everyone else? Why did I have to always wear these stupid loose trousers? The tighter she held my hips, the worse it grew, but I couldn’t help it. I
almost didn’t want to help it. But my knees were sand giving way beneath the weight of this enormity, and the whole of me was one massive, inexplicably pleasant humiliation.

“Why are you trembling?” She laughed. “Are you hungry? Do you need a bottle of milk?” She shook my hips. “Look at it bounce! No! Don’t you dare pull back!” Her laughter was like a blade clenched between her teeth. “Amir! Amir! How will you ever dance with a girl if you do this with your thing all the time? Don’t you know she’ll be disgusted? You’ll never even get to the dance floor. Everyone will laugh at you. Look, it still won’t go away. You can’t make it go away! Ha! Can’t you see how disgusting it is? You’re pathetic, Amir. You’re … you’re … so”—she searched her mind and finally exploded with delight—“
gauche
. Do you even know what that word means?” It was obvious I did not. She laughed again and said something else, but by now everything she said was all gibberish anyway. The whole world was gibberish, swirling, drunk. But I had never been so close to her, and the smell of her, the heat of her.…