The Pact We Made. Layla AlAmmar

that they should come over that night, or that I should participate in this ritual. The only thing I had chosen was my dress. It was my go-to number. Black. Simple – ‘Boring,’ Mama said – and straightforward. I’d worn it so many times that the buttons down the front had gone a bit loose and the organza layers of the skirt had dulled. It was the polar opposite of the one Mama had laid out on the bed. That one was colorful and frilly and not me. She’d bought it the previous spring because I’d needed to ‘get in touch with my roots’. The dress was cocktail length, but designed to resemble a dara’a, with multiple layers of cotton and chiffon and thick silver embroidery in the shape of Arabic calligraphy. The fabric was rich, weighty with expectation, and I imagined for a moment that I could read my future in those curling, twisting letters: noon for Nasser, the name I’d always assigned to the hypothetical husband I might one day have; ain for wedding, the word that would return to everyone’s lips over the next few months; sa’d for patience, which people always told me would be rewarded.

      I’d squashed it into a heavy, loose ball and shoved it deep into a drawer.

      ‘Her father considered medicine long ago, but I confess that I talked him out of it,’ Mama continued, shaking her head. ‘It was selfish, but I wanted him home at normal hours, not spending his nights with dying people.’

      ‘A natural instinct,’ the suitor said, inclining his head like he was at an interview, which I suppose he was.

      The sadu carpet under the coffee table was woven in thick strands of black and white and bold red. Geometric patterns bordered by thick blocks of color. An Arab’s idea of neutral. I picked a thread at random and followed it down through the weave. My eyes tracked it up and over the ziggurats, sliding down the incline of a diamond, hopping across little interruptions of white. The pattern was a choice someone had made, the will of another that the thread was obliged to bend to. If you picked the right thread, you could follow it back to the beginning. Thread Zero, the one that started it all, the one holding it all together, that one element upon which everything was built.

      Did my life have one such string? If I pulled at it, would it all come crashing down?

      Later, when our guests had left with promises of forthcoming calls, I headed to a complex of restaurants by the water. It was a beautiful night, clear and calm, with that sweet, clean scent that was such a rarity. The parking lot was full of Porsches and BMWs growling with impatience; I’d borrowed the Jag, and I handed it over to the valet despite knowing Baba wouldn’t like it.

      I left the line of rumbling cars behind and walked the long corridor of the open-air compound. There were portable heaters dotted around the outdoor seating areas, their flames high and orange. A Mexican place had tiki torches instead, but they didn’t seem to do the trick judging by the people in their coats and wraps. There was barely any conversation to be heard over the clinking and clattering of plates and glasses, the obsequious tones of waiters, and the tinny music dropping from the speakers. Hardly any of the people at the tables were even facing one another; instead their chairs were directed at the aisle I was walking down. They fiddled with their phones and watched the people passing by; sometimes they turned to their companion to comment on something – a skirt too short, a blouse cut too low, or a patently ridiculous choice of footwear. I was wholly unremarkable, I knew, with the boring black dress and my sensible slingbacks that didn’t have red soles. I passed unnoticed, eyes barely sweeping my form before moving to the next person.

      I moved through the outdoor seating area of the Italian restaurant where I was meeting the girls. The queue was five groups deep at the door, but I spotted Zaina seated at the far end of the area and the hostess waved me through.

      She gave me a big hug and said, ‘Mona’s running late as well.’

      I took the seat across from her, facing the water. The restaurant jutted out over the shore, slightly away from the main complex; it was quiet away from the hullabaloo at the start of the compound. For a moment I could almost imagine I wasn’t there, but at a café on the South Bank, watching lights play over the Thames. But it was Kuwait, and the moon was out, low and slinky in the sky, trailing a long, blurry milky way in the water. A light breeze played with my hair and ruffled my dress, but it really wasn’t too cold.

      A waiter materialized at our side seeking a drinks order, his gray and white uniform crisp and glowing in the light. I asked for water. Zaina already had a Coke in front of her, and she barely looked up to tell him we were waiting on a friend when he tried to shift to food orders. She tapped at her phone, and I stared at the water. Minutes passed. I got my water, and our table got a bread basket and a plate of vinegar and olive oil before she put it down.

      ‘So, how’d it go?’ she asked, coffee-colored eyes turning to me.

      ‘Same old, same old.’

      She scowled and leaned forward, elbow to table, rounded chin in palm – the picture of attentiveness. ‘Well, what happened?’

      I was too tired to rehash it all, but I knew she wouldn’t let up, and it was better to get it out before Mona joined us and spun it into a whole thing. I never knew where to start with such stories, so I just said the first thing that came to mind. ‘We talked about … scuba diving.’

      Her brows rose against her pale forehead. ‘Why?’

      I shrugged helplessly.

      ‘I mean, what got you there?’

      I shrugged again. ‘We were talking about that Gutentag Red Bull thing—’

      ‘Flugtag,’ she corrected with a laugh.

      ‘Whatever, and that led us to talking about extreme sports in general, and that took us to scuba diving.’

      She frowned thoughtfully, her fingers playing with the gold hoops in her ears. ‘Is scuba diving an extreme sport?’

      ‘In my book, it is.’

      ‘And did you tell him you’re scared of open water?’

      I shook my head. ‘Mama was giving me her agree-with-everything-he-says-or-I’ll-kill-you look.’

      ‘Ah,’ she said, nodding along with the sympathy of someone who’d been on the receiving end of such a look. ‘So, not a love match, then?’

      I let out a mirthless laugh, my eyes straying over the water. ‘That’s not really the point, is it?’

      She leaned back in her seat, pulling her olive-green scarf tighter around her. ‘I guess not.’

      The water rolled in and out. Our eyes met, and I could tell she was about to force this cloud away. It was a familiar routine. ‘Well,’ she finally said, ‘maybe he’ll want to see you again, and it’ll go better.’

      I pulled a slice of bread from the basket and started tearing it into small squares I had no intention of eating. ‘You do realize we were talking about this same shit when we were in college? Ten years, Zaina.’ She nodded along, eyes glazing over, and I knew she was thinking back to those hours in the cafeteria where all we could talk about was which of our classmates we’d consider marrying. ‘I was so naive. I just assumed that by the time I was thirty I’d have those things we went on and on about, like it was a given. But look … it’s a decade later and nothing is different.’

      ‘I know.’

      But she didn’t know. Her gold wedding band, tucked under the five-year-old engagement ring, bore silent witness to the fact that she might have understood what I was talking about intellectually, but she didn’t really know. How could she? I shook my head again and turned back to the water. She was preparing a more elaborate reassurance, I could tell, but Mona showed up before I had to hear it.

      ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Traffic was a nightmare,’ she said, bustling around the table to drop kisses on our cheeks before taking a seat.

      Mona was all flashing lights. If I found solace in blending in, Mona was my opposite. She lived for the flash, loved the spotlight, craved all those appraising eyes, confident they always found her