‘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 to write on me with a ballpoint pen. I hear the knocking of innocent limbs against dashboard, his hum against my pulse, and the interjections of the Turkish singer blaring from the stereo.
What we had (love?) was art, and we made each other art.
At one point I told him what had happened to me.
I see that conversation in snapshots too. Wretched silences. Bursts of rage, fists on a black steering wheel. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ A dead sky. ‘I know, but …’ Tears dripping onto the backs of my hands. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ A prominent nose in profile, sleepy eyes looking out of the sunroof. ‘I know, but …’ Hand moving, fingers inching across the center divide. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Fists on thighs, clenched. ‘I know, but …’
A couple of years later I was reading the newspaper, and my eyes drifted over the back page. His name was there, in bold black print, his much-too-young age in brackets next to addresses for the men’s and women’s funerals. Over the next few days I would see the small article about the accident, and the picture with the charred green jeep flipped on its back, and everything would feel terribly, terribly pointless.
I shook the recollections from my mind and returned my eyes to Mona. The anger flared in me again, like the catching of a candle’s wick. ‘It’s not about love,’ I said. ‘It’s about respect and affection and the fact that he doesn’t deserve this. And even if I don’t tell him or Zaina—’
‘If?!’
‘It won’t change the fact that you did it. That for months, you lied to him, to all of us. I mean …’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘What kind of person does that?’ Her eyes were shiny again, but my sympathy was nonexistent, and I couldn’t look at her anymore. I stood and grabbed my bags.
‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ she said, but I was already moving.
The worst thing about knowing of Mona’s infidelity was that nothing changed. For the whole of the following week, she continued to participate in our group chats with Zaina as though the betrayal meant nothing. She sent pictures of the record player Rashid had purchased (her husband squatting at its side and pointing at it with a big, goofy grin) because he’d suddenly decided to start collecting vinyl. She cracked jokes and suggested evenings for us to come to her place.
I’m lying. That wasn’t the worst part. It was her nature to avoid an issue by pretending it didn’t exist. We had that in common, I think. But this thing … the idea of adultery had always been very far away, an alien concept I never needed to concern myself with. But then it was there, a stranger sitting between us. I didn’t know what to do with it. I kept quiet in our chats, but then I thought that seemed suspicious, so I overdid it. I spun plates on sticks while it seemed like Mona couldn’t care less. I obsessed over the real-life implications of it.
I used to try and picture Mona and Rashid having sex. The first time was the night of the wedding, after they had walked out of the ballroom – him in his gold-lined black bisht and ghutra, her in a body-hugging lace number cut low in the back. Later, when I was home, in bed, with hairspray-stiffened hair and a full face of makeup I was too tired to wash off, I wondered how they would proceed. She’d told us, me and Zaina, that she and Rashid had done ‘everything but’ in the time they’d been together: she’d told us about the first time she blew him, in the front seat of his car, and how she’d cried after because it was the first time she’d done that and it wasn’t supposed to happen like that and what would he think of her; Zaina and I could recount, with disturbing accuracy, every detail of their first kiss – right down to the song playing on the radio when it happened (Meatloaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’, which we teased her about mercilessly); we knew when and where she’d let him touch her. We’d even been go-betweens when they fought, a two-headed Switzerland shuttling messages and apologies back and forth.
She’d said she was saving herself for him, or rather for whomever she’d end up marrying.
Would it be fast and frantic? Or slow and gentle, Rashid showing off his stamina? Would she cry that first time? Would he be patient when she tensed, or would the frustration show on his brow, in the line of his lips, the strain in his neck?
But