They didn’t often believe me, on those rare occasions when I divulged my anxiety; people sought justification, saying it was impossible to feel panic on, say, a lazy Saturday at the mall. ‘Besides, you don’t look like you’re having any kind of attack,’ they’d say, gesturing at how still I was when inside I was malfunctioning. They didn’t understand how, at those times, it wasn’t so much that the panic was taking over as that the calm was evaporating. And I had to reach and grab for it like the string of an escaping balloon. Sometimes I’d catch it; I could bring it back down and hug it to my chest. Other times, it just floated away.
In any case, I had a firm grip on it that day as we walked through the crowds. Past the perfume corridors and café eyes, we wound up at a fro-yo place. Mona took a seat, giving her shopping bags over to the empty chair beside her, and turned to face the people walking by. She liked to be prepared. We’d already run into two former colleagues of hers and a girl we’d gone to university with. Saturday at the mall, it was unavoidable, and Mona liked to see before she was seen.
It was my turn to choose, so I stood in line, looking over the options, while she scanned the faces in the crowd. By the time I’d picked our toppings, she was on the phone. I shoved two spoons in the swirled yoghurt and fruit and headed back to the table. As I slid into the seat on her other side, she mouthed ‘Rashid’ while pointing at the phone and rolling her eyes. I smirked, imagining he was trying to convince her they needed a new coffee table or corner piece. She listened mainly, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but not much more.
And then it happened. Just like in the movies. My spoon even froze halfway to my mouth and my brain stuttered like it had hit a speed bump. Rashid walked by, with that purposeful New York City stride he’d never lost, head down and eyes on the store catalog in his hands. Mona turned to see what I was looking at, her mouth dropping open then sucking her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth. I could still hear a male voice, tinny and far away, yammering into her ear. But it was not him.
It was not him.
Rashid didn’t see us and kept walking. I returned my spoon to the bowl and stared into the crowd. Mona hissed and snapped into the phone before hanging up and dropping it into her open purse. She steepled her fingers, a ring on every one so you could hardly see the wedding band, and met my eye.
It was a long silence. Her soda fizzled and snapped. The fro-yo started to melt. My heart pounded, and I had trouble thinking. Her foot jiggled under the table, tapping mine with every other beat, but she must have thought it was the table leg. The people were loud; they passed in front, behind, and around us. They yelled out orders to friends heading to the counter. They laughed about things we couldn’t hear. They scraped back chairs and rapped knuckles on tables.
‘If that was a colleague or friend, you would have said so,’ I finally managed, but my voice felt like it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t know where the words came from.
‘Dahlia …’
‘Why didn’t you just say that?’ I asked, shaking my head ‘Why didn’t you just say that?’
She mirrored the shaking, her eyes going shiny, and I thought to myself she’d better not cry. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘What?’
She repeated herself, but it didn’t get through. I leaned towards her. ‘Are you sleeping with him, whoever he is?’
The look she gave me was very close to pity. ‘Dahlia …’
I nodded, feeling foolish. ‘How long?’
‘Please—’
‘How long?!’ I tried to keep my voice down, but there was adrenaline and my fingers trembled.
She shook her head down at the table. ‘A couple of months.’
My brain stuttered again. I leaned back in my seat, crossed my arms and covered my mouth with my hand. It was not possible. This was some bizarre dream. My best friend couldn’t be one of those people, the kind we heard about all the time and shook our heads at. Mona put her elbows on the table and pressed her palms to her ears, like she was trying to block out the noise around us or contain her thoughts.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘What’s there to understand? Rashid is perfect.’
She flopped both arms to the table and scoffed. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’
‘Clearly,’ I sneered. ‘I can’t believe you would do this. I honestly can’t believe this.’
She reached forward to grip my hands, but I recoiled. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’
‘Are you even listening to yourself?’ I barked. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘Look.’ And now she had her ‘be reasonable’ face on, the face that managed to convince anyone of anything, and I turned my head to avoid it. ‘I made a mistake, okay? An awful mistake.’ I snorted, but she continued. ‘Things have been rough with me and Rashid these last few months and I made a mistake. But I’m going to end it, okay?’ I looked at her. She looked sincere. I wanted to believe her, but she felt like a stranger. ‘Just don’t tell Zaina, please. I’d die if she knew about this. I’m going to end it.’
‘If you don’t want to be married, tell Rashid you want a divorce.’
‘I love him.’
‘Give me a break,’ I replied, shaking my head again. ‘You wouldn’t treat him like this if you loved him.’
She leaned forward, eyes darkening. ‘You don’t know anything about marriage, Dahlia, even less about love. You don’t know what my relationship with him is like, so don’t sit here lecturing me about what love means.’
I sat back and crossed my arms, averting my gaze. ‘I’ve been in relationships.’ She made a sort of mocking sound. ‘I have,’ I insisted.
‘Who?’ she replied. ‘That Fahad guy? That lasted like two seconds.’
‘Not Fahad,’ I said, my voice low, my eyes on the strangers passing by, on their way to regular lunches on a regular Saturday at their regular mall.
She followed my gaze, chastened. ‘Hamad.’ She nodded. ‘That was real.’
It had been real. My first boyfriend: we’d met at my first job when he spent a few months interning there. He’d reminded me of Rashid in a lot of ways, and perhaps that was why I’d said yes to him when I’d never so much as entertained the thought of anyone before. He had the same prominent nose, kind, sleepy eyes, and a full mouth that was always smiling. Only his build was different – slighter than Rashid’s tall, broad frame. He was patient and gentle, eager to please and reassure.
Slowly, so slowly, he coaxed me out. His kisses were praising and yielding. His hands the hands of a follower, a supplicant, never demanding more than I would give.
We spent hours in his green jeep, parked in dark, empty lots, at the beach, or on empty side streets. We would talk about life, about leaving Kuwait, about religion and Ancient Egypt. He told me about Istanbul, the only place outside of the Middle East he’d ever been, and I told him about our family trips to anywhere Baba could think of. We sang along to the radio and played thumb-war and tic-tac-toe on the fabric of my jeans.
We discovered that when he kissed me behind my left ear, I’d make a sound I hadn’t known I was capable of. I discovered that my hands didn’t tremble when I wanted to touch a man. I learned not to panic when his weight settled on me, that his hands would not bring pain.
I’ve always had difficulty remembering events of an intimate nature. I can never remember full sequences, only little snapshots. I don’t remember everything that happened in Hamad’s green jeep. Whenever I think of those nights, all that comes to mind is blue cigarette smoke, lights on the console, and his breath on my shoulder when he decided