I would make my decision based on their voices. Nothing more. Not looks or height or body, not beautiful hands or trimmed toenails peeking out from open-toed sandals. Pausing just around the corner, I would wait for the man to speak, and then I’d make my judgment. I didn’t resort to any predetermined list; it wasn’t about tone or pitch or how nasal the voice was. It was something unnamed. Call it a gut reaction. I stuck with it.
This one was an immediate and unqualified ‘No’. I arrived in time to catch the end of some sentence about working at a bank, but it was enough. The voice was harsh and unforgiving, abrasive even. Like it was waiting to dole out some retribution. No.
The face that went with it was deceptively charming: straight, aristocratic nose, sun-burnished skin, wide smiling mouth. When he rose to greet me, I saw that he was tall with a broad frame that attested to some sort of regular athletic endeavor. Probably water sports, I thought, taking in his bronze face and hands.
Nadia was there to chase away the awkwardness with all manner of social niceties. She and the suitor got along perfectly. Mama and his mother got along perfectly. If only Nadia wasn’t married, it might have been a perfect match. It turned out they had both gone through the same bank branch back in the days before Nadia became a housewife, and they reminisced about crazy managers, dunderheaded office boys, and insane clients. Finally, she turned to incorporate me into the conversation, asking leading questions to which I gave small, unremarkable responses. Mama’s disappointment skipped across the sofa and into my lap, staring me in the face. But I was helpless to stop it. I couldn’t be the engaging thing she wanted me to be. I’m not my sister. Maybe at one point I could have been, but the moment was gone, and we couldn’t retrieve it.
My heart throbbed in my fingertips, and I pressed them into the fabric of the sofa. My scalp tingled like a million insects were crawling across it. This uncomfortable feeling, which I should have been used to by then, strangled me. I had an urge to bolt, to feign illness – and wasn’t I sick? – and leave. But I stayed put and struggled not to fidget.
He tried, asking me what I liked to do in my free time, and I confessed my illustrations. He seemed genuinely impressed and asked what it was I drew.
‘Monsters, mainly,’ I said, gritting my teeth when Mama’s fingers pinched the skin behind my knee. ‘Big hairy ones with ugly teeth.’
Mama laughed it off, pinched me again, then quickly changed the subject. She hadn’t seen my new Ariel obsession, only the Goyas that were multiplying on the walls in my room. She’d begged me to take them down, but I refused.
The Caprices. Eighty etchings in which Goya condemned the follies of eighteenth-century Spanish society. I often thought the Europe of that time was remarkably similar to twenty-first-century Arabia: the ignorance and shortcomings; vices and marital foolishness; the rationality infected by persistent superstitions. It was all there, in those grotesque images, with the anthropomorphized asses and the scheming witches and the yawning maws of terrible men. I’d printed out a third of them already, taping them to the wall even though Mama had yelled at me that it would ruin the paint, and why would I do that for something so hideous.
They were hideous; I couldn’t argue with that. At times, I confess, I struggled to see the ‘art’. But there was something there that stayed in my mind long after I’d stopped looking at the prints, and perhaps that was essentially what art was. It was not light and shadow – those belong to Doré – nor was it the playground of Blake, full of prophecies and symbols. It was not the chilling details of Dürer or the Gothicism of Harry Clarke. I couldn’t name it, but there was something there that required my continued attention.
When they were gone, Mama followed me upstairs to my room. I was already unzipping the dress, letting the petal skirt and cream bodice fall to the floor. I nearly tripped over it in my heels and did a little side shuffle in an attempt to stay upright. Mama watched from the door with a frown, but I managed to get the dress off the floor and into a heap on the bed without injury.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘he’s perfect, right?’
I chuckled, stepping out of my shoes and rubbing my toes. ‘That’s what you said about the last guy.’
‘He was perfect too, and if you had put in a bit more effort maybe you’d be engaged to a doctor now.’
‘So he was better than this guy?’ I asked. She made a noise of frustration and threw her hands up. I shrugged on a robe and let down my hair, pulling out the strong, sharp bobby pins to free the heavy curls. ‘Does it not matter at all who I marry?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘As long as it’s a good match, I don’t care who it is.’ I turned to her, eyes wide, and she crossed her arms under her breasts. ‘And if you don’t like my choices, maybe we’ll go to khataba and see who she can find.’
‘A matchmaker?!’ I gaped at her. ‘Are you insane?’
She shrugged. ‘Many people use them nowadays. What do you think, Dahlia, that there’s one perfect man out there for you? Do you think you’ll fall in love, and then he’ll come seeking your hand?’ It was on the tip of my tongue to mention Mona’s love match, but I swallowed the words down and yanked out a tangled pin, pulling three long black strands with it. ‘Children think that way,’ she continued. ‘You’re much too old for such nonsense.’
‘I’ve never said anything about a love match.’
‘Your actions speak loud enough! Tell me; tell me what’s wrong with this one? What do you object to?’
I shook my head down at the little mound of bobby pins before me, and I could only speak the truth. ‘Nothing.’
I didn’t have to look to know a smile had spread across her face. ‘So, I can tell his mother “yes”?’
The moment felt monumental. The expectations, Mama’s hopes and dreams, my fears and any courage buried in me seemed to dance in the air between us. It was not a dance; it was a battle, a frigid war I hadn’t agreed to. I could have said yes, if only to avoid another fight, on the off chance that he’d say no. I saw his warm brown eyes, his white smile, his nods and jokes. He wouldn’t object. And in any case, I couldn’t risk it, not with a voice like that.
I shook my head, and it was all she needed. Crossing the threshold, she took hold of my arm and jerked me towards her, grabbing my other bicep and shaking me hard.
‘Are you trying to kill me?’ Her fingers dug into my skin; I was not at all protected by the flimsy robe. ‘Why are you doing this to me, Dahlia? Why!’
‘I’m not doing anything to you.’ In my head it was a scream, but it came out as a whimper. ‘This isn’t about you.’
She was still shaking me, and she was so mad, when she spoke, I was hit with spittle. ‘Is this your way of punishing me? Tell me! You’re punishing me, aren’t you?’
‘No!’
‘Then give me one reason, one good reason to say no to him.’
‘I don’t have to give you any reason!’ I broke her hold, inadvertently shoving her away so she hit my dresser with her hip. The vanity swayed precariously, the big, heavy mirror threatening to tip over, until I rushed to steady it.
I was breathing hard. I didn’t look at her, my eyes focused on where mirror and table met, trying to keep it upright. ‘You can’t force me to marry him, or anyone, no matter how much you wish you could.’
She was quiet for a long moment. Long enough for me to set the mirror right. Long enough for me to pick up the toppled-over perfume bottles and tubes of lotion. Long enough that I no longer had an excuse not to look her in