He went out with his schoolmates. If he had known you were coming . . . .
I didn’t say anything.
Coffee, Sayyid?
This time I did not glance at my watch. I didn’t make a point of looking as though I had to check on how much time I had.
But perhaps you were getting ready yourself to go out?
No . . . no . . . I’m here . . . I’m staying here, she said, getting up and straightening her skirt again.
She was on her way to the kitchen and I stole my usual glance, quickly at first, and then a second and slightly less fleeting look. Still, it was just a tiny glimpse. She wouldn’t turn back and see me do it, I was certain, even if by chance it occurred to her suddenly that there was something she wanted to say. I was confident of this because I had an inkling that she sensed it, falling on her, that look, there, trained on the expanse of bare leg which she had left uncovered.
From in there, and before she lit the flame under the coffeepot, she said something to me about Bilal. When I didn’t answer, she repeated it in a louder voice. He’s been getting his things ready for the past two days. He’s going to the camp with his mates.
Are they schoolmates?
She didn’t answer right away. Then she said that they were all in his year.
I thought about going in to where she was. About going into the kitchen. This time I will get up, I told myself, willing myself to pair the thought in my head with the movement of my body. To get up, exactly at the moment when it occurs to me to get up; to not stay as I am, only thinking about moving and instead staying absolutely still precisely where I am and waiting for her to return.
I got up. I had a strong urge to take these first few steps of mine, here, that she would hear. That she would hear as different, and then that she would see. She would see that I had really taken these steps. She would take her eyes off the coffeepot to see it. I did take those steps that, once they headed me in a certain direction, could not swerve or retreat. These steps of mine that resounded with all of the heaviness that was in me, mounting from my abaya and my turban and my beard, but not ending with this foolhardy venture of mine, an attempt to appear to her somehow differently, and as she had never known me.
To do something there, to employ my hands in some useful way, in whatever way they would help me out. But the cups were already there on the tray, and the coffeepot was on the burner. The sight of it stopped me at the doorway into the kitchen, a pause heavy with my own expectations, waiting for myself to say something, or to hear something.
Is anything upsetting you, Sayyid? She spoke without lifting her eyes from the coffeepot which she was monitoring closely.
This initiative on her part, which was meant to help me out, wasn’t coming this time from her strength, I thought. It was a response to the discomfiture we both felt—she and I alike—at how close I was standing to her.
The coffee has boiled, she said, but more as if she were talking to herself. She set the coffeepot down on the tray next to the cups; but then she paused as if she had to think about what she should do next.
I’ll carry it in, I said, taking a step forward.
No, no . . . , she said, her hands gripping the tray firmly as she turned toward me. Now I was the one who didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know whether it was better to step aside so that she could go by me, or to walk ahead into the sitting room to clear the way for her.
Ahlan wa-sahlan to the Sayyid, she said, striding forward and leaving me to follow her. She repeated her words of welcome as she bent to set the little tray down on the table between us. And I, who could understand that very ordinary welcome in any way I pleased, was thinking that my sitting here, this time, somehow must not be a copy of all my previous visits.
Are you upset about something, Sayyid? She had already sat down and was bringing the coffee tray closer.
For the second time she had substituted upset for afraid. What she should have repeated was that very first question of hers: Afraid . . . are you afraid? She looked at me, wanting to see, as well as to hear, how I would respond. What I would say about how upset and frustrated I was, and how it was my whole life that upset me, not just my feelings on this day that had driven me to her home so unexpectedly.
Upset . . .
I didn’t know how to answer, even though by phrasing her question in this way she had steered the conversation to where I wanted it to be. Now it was up to me to confess my feelings of weariness and frustration. That was exactly what I wanted to do and what I meant to do. Perhaps like nothing else, such a confession, or complaint, like this one could be a means to carry us away from our usual cautious and circumspect exchanges, which kept us so very far apart from each other, each in our own solitary space.
Upset, yes, and other things, I said, not knowing quite how to launch my quest for something that could form the beginning of a real conversation. I was immediately conscious that I hadn’t prepared anything to say to her. And, worse, that I was not capable of inventing anything. All a man like me could do was to try his best to come a little closer to her. To be less detached, only as far apart as the space that brings her hand close to his. That is, to begin from the place where I yearned to begin.
That’s what she was waiting for. I knew it from the way we were silent together. It was a silence that held the two of us in suspension, as if we had already surrendered to a certainty that what we were doing was going to lead us to something other than speech. I knew also that when she got to her feet after that spell of silence, holding her cup of coffee between her hands, she would go out of the room but only to reappear a moment later. She would be giving me another chance to make my attempt.
What I must begin with is her hand . . . or her hair. I could just put my hand up and brush it lightly against her hair. I could run my palm across the top of her head and downward the whole length of those evenly cut locks of hair.
She came back and sat down a little closer to me. But not so close that I could be certain of anything. It was as though she was letting me know that this first step, which meant shouldering the responsibility for whatever might arise from the recklessness of it, had to be mine.
She wanted to preserve the weight of the silence between us. She didn’t break it in order to say just anything. Only her hands moved, in synchrony, grasping the little coffee cup and raising it to her lips and then lowering it to sit motionless once again in her hands.
In that instant—the moment when caution collapses into risk—the pale skin of her hand and the bright red color she had painted her fingernails were what brought my hand closer. Desire, rather than a decision taken to go ahead. Desire. That was what pulled my hand to hers. I enclosed her hand in mine and our clasped hands dropped to hang halfway between us in that emptiness between us. I noticed how she turned her face to me, but I couldn’t tell if her expression and the tilt of her head meant she was annoyed or simply quizzical. But she kept her hand in mine, motionless and inert as though the force I had seen in her lived only in my fancy.
It only lasted a few seconds. Her hand slipped out of mine and encircled her coffee cup, which must have been empty by now. Her face, which should have told me something, displayed only that confusing smile that didn’t help me to understand anything, since it gave no explanations.
Had she wanted her hand in mine? Had she accepted this from me? Did she accept it but want to say that this was enough for one day? Had she left her hand to me out of pure embarrassment? Or was this just one of those signals women give that entice men at the same time they warn them off?
Even before she got up to look out the window, pausing before she opened it to let in some air, I already knew it would not be good for me to repeat what I had done just now. But at the heart of my confusion, spurring my questions, was the reality that she had let her hand rest quietly in mine for two seconds, or maybe three, or four or ten or more, it didn’t matter