Zaina nearly choked on her chicken, and my laugh caught the attention of the guys at the neighboring table. Mona leaned forward, and we followed suit. ‘I said to her, “I can find unmarried girls, but beyond that I make no promises.”’
The boys shifted their torsos towards us, leaning forward and back around each other for a better view at what had us laughing so hard. We pulled in even closer to one another, Zaina’s hand covering her mouth as she giggled uncontrollably. I shook my head at the nonsense our aunties were capable of speaking. Finally, we composed ourselves, calm and quiet in a moment, reduced to a dome of decorum, and Zaina asked Mona about her job. I wasn’t listening though; I kept thinking about what Mona’s aunt had said. I wondered what it would be like if the Yelwa cloth could somehow detect non-virgins, like if the fabric started to smoke when I held it. I imagined the pointing, the gasping, the shaking of heads as the fabric burned my fingers. I wondered how many girls it would smoke for; would I really be the only one?
Later that night I lay panting in my bed. There was a vise around my lungs, squeezing tight. It burned. I sucked in air through my nose and mouth, great big gulps, but it didn’t help. My lungs continued to sting like acid. I flicked on the lights, turned on some music, needing as much stimulation as possible. Maybe it would distract me from the sensations, from the certainty that I was, at that moment, dying.
There’s this lore, or perhaps it’s superstition. It’s about a demon called a yathoom who comes to you in the night. He sits on your chest, feet splayed in a squat, growing heavier and heavier until you wake because you can no longer breathe. Even waking will not save you; he’ll cling while you gasp and scratch at your breasts. When you feel on the brink, like you can’t take it anymore, the yathoom rolls off and back down to hell. He’s only supposed to visit on Thursdays, which is both arbitrary and unexplained.
I’ve had one for years. He adheres to no schedule and cannot distinguish day from night. His splayed feet bear claws, sunk into my chest beneath my armpits. He is a compression on my lungs that I can’t shake. Some days he gives me respite, curling on my diaphragm so I’m hardly aware of his presence, but it’s never long before he’s back, slathering my lungs with his black cement tongue. I tip my head back every so often, mouth open in a silent scream, but nothing startles him. He just hugs me tighter.
Sometimes I think my yathoom is my loneliness in form and function. Something my subconscious has obsessed over so much, it’s been made real, like that mythological monster who only exists because you believe in him. Maybe that’s true of all monsters, I’m not sure.
‘So I’m going to start a film club,’ Yousef said, plopping himself down on the corner of my desk and sending documents drifting to the floor.
I scowled and bent to retrieve them. ‘Like a movie club but pretentious?’
‘Ha ha,’ he replied. ‘No, seriously. I want to start a club and every month we’ll screen a film and discuss it. And it won’t be blockbusters or even festival darlings, it’ll be little-known movies and adaptations … like that Tempest film we watched. That was fun, right?’
I nodded. ‘Sure.’
It had been fun. He’d set up a projector in the apartment he had created for himself by converting the basement of his parents’ house. He had low, squishy sofas that swallowed you when you sat in them and a large blank wall onto which he projected movies. The copy had been of poor quality; he’d said it was from the 60s and had been meant for television.
Less fun had been the discussion, though it was more of a lecture, that had followed the film. We’d both read the play in our respective schools, but he maintained that sixteen-year-old me couldn’t have hoped to contemplate something so complex. I couldn’t say twenty-nine-year-old me fared any better, but I could see how into it he was. He spoke of how the sprite Ariel and the monster Caliban were facets of Prospero’s identity – how Prospero wanted to protect his daughter, Miranda, while also lusting after her in some subconscious beastly manner. Putting his psychology degree to some use, Yousef went on about ids and super-egos and the renunciation of power and dominance.
It was all well and good, but such concepts flew right over my head. All I’d gotten from the film was a strange crush on the actor playing Ariel, captivated by the shapes his body made as he flung himself around the rudimentary set. I was left with a desire to sketch him – the pointy ears and sharp features and wiry hairs sprouting from his blue-silver head.
‘So, yeah, I’m going to start one out of my house. Spread the word,’ Yousef said, twisting his torso so he could see his reflection in the window of my cubicle. He wore fancy shirts to work, with slim-fitted jackets and pocket squares and tapered pants, instead of the standard dishdasha. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him in one, and I always suspected it was more to do with not wanting to wear the ghutra, which was notorious for causing premature baldness, in order to preserve the thick, black hair he kept gelled in a perfect wave rising up and away from his forehead.
We left my cubicle and headed for the staff room. Yousef busied himself making a pot of coffee while I dug around in the cabinets. As the coffee started brewing, Yousef lit a cigarette and started smoking out the open window, trying not to set off the smoke alarms.
‘You’re going to get in so much trouble one day,’ I said, shaking my head.
He shrugged like trouble was inevitable. ‘I forgot to ask,’ he said, tapping the cigarette against the window sill, ‘did your mom bring that guy over to see you?’
‘Yeah,’ I replied with a grimace.
‘And?’
‘Disaster.’
He chuckled. ‘As expected then?’
‘Yeah,’ I said with a little laugh.
He nodded and poured out half a cup of coffee. Taking several puffs from the cigarette, he put it out on the sill and tossed it in the trash. He held out the pot of coffee, but I shook my head. ‘Well, I wouldn’t worry about it.’
‘Why would I worry?’ I asked with a frown.
‘Just because …’ We made our way back towards the office, and he paused at the elevator. I was going up two floors to a meeting. ‘You know …’ I did know. I adored Yousef, but I felt like stabbing him with a pen. Forcing a smile and a nod, I waved him away.
Yousef, like everyone else, it seemed, was tremendously worried about my next birthday. Still months away, and its significance had already grown to mythic proportions. If I remained prospectless at thirty, I may as well give up on life entirely; the pool of acceptable men, already quite small, would shrink further as they set their sights on younger and younger girls. My aunts would start calling with questions like, ‘Is it okay if he’s a divorcé?’ and ‘How do you feel about raising another woman’s children?’ As though these were questions with clear-cut answers.
With arranged marriages you’re asked to pass judgment on people you don’t know and on situations you don’t fully understand. Those initial queries of interest have nothing to do with personal compatibility. They’re as impersonal as questionnaires. I wondered what potential men were told about me … ‘Well, she doesn’t wear the hijab – is that okay?’ ‘She’s a bit tall for a Kuwaiti girl.’ ‘No, I don’t know how much she weighs, but I’ll ask.’
Bu Faisal was there