Chapter Nine

Three weeks later

Amman was cold, and it was grey. A brief nostalgia for the humid heat of New York passed over Zina as she closed the window and lay down on the bed, placing a cool hand over her burning forehead. All the travelling back and forth between New York and Amman, first for the engagement party and now for the wedding, hadn’t helped her illness. The various tablets that her mother had been eagerly plying her with over the past two days were evidently not working, despite the fact that Reema stocked more prescription medication in her house than most pharmacies. In the dark recesses of her mind, Zina began to consider the possibility that she did not have flu after all. Perhaps it was something more sinister. Glandular fever, or some form of chronic fatigue. Her new and palpable anxiety about this added to the other knots that gathered like a group of pernicious tentacles in the base of her stomach.

There was a cursory knock on the door before it opened, and Zina found herself scrambling up from the bed. It was her father.

She had forgotten that personal privacy was a non-existent concept in her parents’ house. It apparently never occurred to her mother and father that they might ever walk in on any of their children having sex, or smoking a joint, or doing anything that they should not be privy to.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘Come down, we’re having dinner in five minutes.’

‘With who? A hundred of our closest friends?’ Zina muttered. A glimmer of a smile flickered onto Omar’s face.

‘It’s just us tonight. Your mother, me and Tala. Lamia’s at home. She was tired.’

‘I’m sick,’ she managed weakly, but she could not even be sure that he had heard her before the door slammed after him. She listened. His quick steps rang out like wind chimes on the marble floors outside. Reluctantly, Zina rose from the bed and combed her hair. Her feet dragged through the mushy thickness of the white bedroom carpet. She looked down. That carpet was probably not helping her blocked nose and itching throat. Hadn’t her mother ever heard of dust mites? The two inch high shag pile was probably teeming with enough creatures to populate a small country. Zina scratched her arms and tried to relax. It was less than a week until the wedding, and then she could get out of here and back to the wood-covered floors and clean white walls of her New York apart-ment. She climbed back into bed and lay there, her breathing shal-low as she tried not to think about the years’ worth of dust and dead skin cells that were hiding in the sinister cradle of her pillow.

As she had hoped would happen, Lamia found her husband responding with intent interest to the small item of conversation she had quietly introduced as they sat at their own dinner table that evening. He had a tendency to prefer bad news over good, and when it came to talking to him she had learned to sift the events and conversations of her day accordingly. When faced with negative reports, he could indulge his appetite for delicate criticism of the parties involved which was satisfying to him and soothing to her. And in fact, Lamia had begun to require daily this reassuring reminder that she was better off than most others, that people around her were unhappy for reasons that Kareem could so easily and eloquently articulate. Listening to him speak, she felt certain that the taint of such problems could not touch them, and the idea dripped scant, small droplets of warmth into the cold, dark hollow of her chest.

‘Tala told you this herself?’ Kareem looked at his wife, gauging.

She nodded but could not glance up for she was so close to teasing out the last chips of feta cheese from her salad. The cheese was crumbly and creamy, and fragments of it stuck to everything, taint-ing the cucumber and even the lettuce with fatty residues. She felt sickened at the sight of the tiny white curds, bright and taunting against the fresh green of the leaves. Irritated, she pushed her plate away from her.

‘She told you she’s having doubts?’ Kareem persisted. He frowned at his wife’s plate. Once again she had left the mound of salad mostly untouched. He would have to tell the cook to make a smaller one each day.

‘Of course,’ Lamia replied tersely. ‘It wouldn’t be a proper engagement for her without doubts.’

Kareem ignored the sarcasm. He felt a twitch of possibility, an itch in his groin, and he wanted to find out if there was substance to this situation. For Kareem did not care for Tala’s fiancé. He was a loose cannon, a mould breaker, the kind of personality that could deteriorate quickly into an anarchist. And he was helping to run the country!

‘What doubts?’ Kareem asked. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him.’

Except that he’s an anarchist, he thought, and worse, about to become a son-in-law to Omar and Reema. About to step up to the same footing that Kareem had spent the past few years enjoying alone. Kareem had earned a certain trust, a certain familial bond with his parents-in-law that he did not relish sharing with anyone else, especially someone like Hani, who sometimes had trouble understanding the subtle hierarchies of families and communities.

‘I know there’s nothing wrong with him,’ said Lamia. She herself found Hani extremely handsome and very courteous. His manners were underlaid with real consideration; there was the assurance of depth beneath the surface and she found it inexplicably attractive.

‘But she’s not sure she feels passionately about him.’

Kareem snorted. ‘Sometimes I forget she’s older than you,’ he said to Lamia. ‘She’s like a teenager. Passion!’

Lamia touched her forehead. She felt the stirrings of a headache between her eyebrows.

‘It’s not bad to want passion,’ she said, trying to keep the tone of accusation out of her voice, and succeeding only modestly. She felt a pulse of apprehension at his potential response and was already preparing her defence (her head was pounding, she felt ill, she was only talking about Tala…) but luckily, he had not appeared to notice. His gleaming eyes were thinking, focused on his plate as he placed forkful after forkful of fragrant food into his mouth.

Lamia felt dizzy with hunger, but the idea of the slaughtered lamb and cloying rice concoction sliding down into her stomach was too disgusting to contemplate.

Kareem finished his meal and Lamia waited while he reached for a piece of flatbread. She watched, her mouth slightly slack with tiredness, although she could not fathom what she had done all day to create such exhaustion within herself. As usual, he broke off a large piece of bread and then wiped his plate clean. First the right hand side, then the left, with a final sweep down his favourite part, the lamb juices in the middle. With an air of satisfaction he then placed the moistened bread into his mouth and sat back to chew.

He felt tensely invigorated. He looked at his wife.

‘What shall we do tonight?’

She swallowed. Might she ask? She essayed a smile, a quiet smile laden with promise. ‘What about if we just go to bed early?’

It was the response he would have wished for, had he been capable of articulating to himself that he had sexual impulses at all.

His occasional carnal urges inspired within his own mind a curdled mixture of desire and disgust; for at the moment of ultimate sexual release he felt completely lost and uncontrolled. It horrified Kareem that the world might begin to crash down around him and he would be powerless to do anything but make a final, groaning thrust towards the fulfillment of his own, gross animal instincts.

‘You’re going to shower first?’ he said, and she nodded. She had showered but two hours ago, after her session at the gym, but if she was to receive any hope of satisfaction herself, she would need to clean herself again. She stood up from the table, which was already being cleared by their housekeeper and walked into the bathroom to undress.

Much worse for Tala than the daily battles with her mother over clothes, accessories and other wedding-related paraphernalia was the insomnia. Once again, in the weak, early hours of the morning, she awoke, hot and angry, as though snatched from a nightmare, although she could remember no immediate dream. She lay still within the warmed cotton sheets of her bed, keeping her breathing even and calm, trying to reduce herself back to that rare, soothing, restoring level of drowsiness. It was no use. Her mind brushed off the tricks she tried, and she opened her eyes and watched the weak light of dawn cast its slow illumination into her huge bedroom.

The lazy luminosity of the sun on the ancient wall-hangings, on the carved bookshelves, on the softly-veined marble of the fireplace, calmed her. It was in these fragile moments of solitude that she succumbed to thoughts of Leyla. More than anything else, Tala held onto the memory of the night in Oxford, of the gentle fall into slumber when she had felt Leyla’s arms about her. She could still recall the essence of that high emotion, of that exhausted happiness, and the knowledge that such an ecstatic feeling had to be so fleeting brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

At times like this, it was inconceivable to her that she should be even contemplating marriage to Hani. And yet it was inconceivable that she should consider building a life with Leyla, or with any woman. What lay between the two possibilities was a grey swamp in which she had been floating for all of her adult life, into which she had fled after each broken engagement, and from which she felt unaccountably sorry to have been rescued by each new fiancé. She was dimly aware that the events of her everyday life – work, friends, travel, the confidence with which she met the world – successfully covered the unpalatable fact of her inner, emotional flailing.

She turned over and stared at the gold travel clock her parents had given her for her last engagement. It was still only six thirty.

She was sure that her father would be awake, sitting alone in the vast salon downstairs, drinking the thick, brackish coffee he loved, watching the business news on the oversized television, speeding through the newspapers; but she felt unequal to making conversation with him. She wanted to think out this problem further, to test the ground over which she was so reluctant to tread. Her head felt thick with weariness, but she forced herself to consider her situation.

People, girls especially, often went through phases. At her boarding school, several girls in her class (herself included) developed passing crushes on one teacher or another, and one or two of those teachers had even favoured certain girls; a constant frisson, a shivering undertone of desire that made her believe that such excitement must be a natural part of female interaction.

But to be definitely, irretrievably homosexual would be extremely inconvenient. Back at university, in the grasp of that first, heady passion, she had gone as far as to imagine sharing her possible sexuality with her mother and father. In these imaginings, she was never back home in Amman; instead her parents would be visiting her, and at a louche coffee house somewhere near her university campus she would sit with them, relaxed, confident, burning with righteous determination. And she would begin the conversation:

‘Remember you always said you wanted us to be happy?’

And then the dream would pause, for she could not actually recall them having said such a thing. Happiness was a concept that seemed to have passed her parents by. It was certainly not deemed a good enough reason to enter into the important transactions of life – such as work or marriage. She believed differently, or so she liked to think. But if she was not sure she would be happy with Hani, what was she doing marrying him?

Quickly, she rose from the rumpled sheets and walked across to her bathroom, turning on the shower while she brushed her teeth and undressed. The ready jets of hot water created damp wisps of soft vapour that rose about her head. She watched her reflection in the mirror. The breaths of steam were already touching the sparkling glass surface, slowly making opaque the area around her face until the white translucence of it obscured her features entirely.

Zina awoke sniffing, anxious to discover whether her symptoms had retreated. Since early childhood she had been cursed by a hyper awareness of herself and others, which had left her sensitive and nervous for much of her life, particularly since she had decided (at about the age of eleven) that her mother had no real or abiding interest in her wellbeing. She had taken this maternal apathy personally at first, until her early teenage years brought the revelation that her mother’s attitude extended to each of her daughters equally, after which Zina felt not only rejected herself, but outraged on behalf of her sisters. Unequal to discussing any of this with Reema, Zina had instead rattled quietly between tense irritation and quiet despair with occasional excursions into moral outrage for anything that caught her attention as unjust. She began a regime of demonstrations, small and varied, during her early teens. At boarding school she resolutely refused to eat chicken because it came from battery farms, while on holidays back home in Amman, she spent long periods in the industrial-sized basement kitchen, explaining the concept of trade unions to Reema’s army of bewildered Indian staff. By the time she cornered the halal butcher, after one of his deliveries of fresh carcasses to the house, in order to convince him that his methods of slaughter were inhumane, Reema had been forced to decide that her youngest child could not be allowed to remain in Amman until she had learned some decency and respect. After that, Zina spent the bulk of her school holidays with Tala or Lamia in America or London before she moved to New York to do her degree, and to think over, in freedom, the lasting effects on her psyche of the mortal pierce of her mother’s rejection.

And now, she lay in bed heavily, lacking the will to get up. More disturbingly, she realised that this sapping of her inner strength had been going on for some time, and therefore could not conveniently be blamed on Amman, or her family, or the old friends she had been meeting here and who struck her now as so entirely alien. Maybe she was depressed. Depression was an illness, at least in the States, although here it was just deemed to be bad manners. She could not reconcile herself, however, to the idea that depression-as-an-illness might require drugs, and worse, therapy. Her family would never countenance it; they would categorise her as a psychotic loose cannon, which would be manifestly unfair and rather ironic, since this was how she had been forced to categorise half of them over the years.

She hauled herself into the bathroom as she considered all this, and then slung on a robe. She had to get out of this room and downstairs. She had to see Tala properly. God knows, it was almost impossible to talk to her alone, when the house was always filled with some person or another dropping by to offer congratulations or gossip.

It felt like a wonderful stroke of fate, then, when Zina stepped down from the last step and into the high-ceilinged living room to find Tala alone, ensconced on the sofa. Abu Ali was bringing her tea. He had been with their family for thirty years, and during this time, they had heard news of seven children and fifteen grandchildren.

Abu Ali had proudly arranged the marriages of every one of those children, not infrequently to their own first cousins, ‘to keep what belongs to the family in the family,’ he would stress. Zina wondered if Abu Ali had ever considered the disparity between the upbringing of his own daughters and the way in which she and her sisters had been raised. His sons worked fifteen hour days and his daughters were all at home with their small children, cooking, cleaning, often pregnant, absorbed in the challenge of scraping a life from the mea-gre incomes their husbands brought in.

She sank into the cream leather of the imposing sofa and leaned across to meet Tala’s hug and kiss. Ironically, it was her sister who actually looked sick, Zina thought. Perhaps it was just exhaustion and the nervous tension that was a natural consequence of being trapped in the same house (however large) with Reema for three weeks; and even worse, only a few days before a wedding. There was a strong element of mental torture about it. The endless dinner parties at which the prospective bride was paraded like a prize heifer. The regular, inspirational words of advice on pleasing men that Reema felt it her duty to put out. Zina felt a pall of moroseness settle onto her.

‘Is life really so bad?’ Tala asked, smiling.

Zina shook herself and turned to return the smile, for the sentence was nothing more than a greeting, but she found herself weeping uncontrollably and inexplicably. And then she was aware of nothing except the comforting, childhood smell of the sofa, and the warmth of Tala’s arm and chest against which she found herself pulled. Tala’s low voice muttered something to Abu Ali, and she felt the old man move away. Within a few minutes Zina’s sobbing had relaxed and softened to slow, silent tears, but she remained where she was, with her legs and back awkwardly twisted, because the pure consolation of her sister’s arms was too hard to give up. Tala said nothing, just held her youngest sister to her, and waited.

To Tala there seemed to be something fitting and almost inevitable, about Zina’s breakdown. The emotional outpouring seemed to suggest everything that was occurring in her own heart, it seemed reflective of the taut, delicate wires of stress that they all felt strung up inside their chests. And weddings, Tala thought, are supposed to be happy affairs. She felt a pointed prick of guilt. The happiness was supposed to start with the bride and groom and emanate out to everyone else. She kissed the top of Zina’s head. Was Zina, who lay weeping in her arms, a reflection of her own misery? Had she somehow infected her sister with her own confusion and despair?

‘What is it, habibti?’ Tala asked quietly. She repeated the question at occasional intervals, while Zina cried quietly. She did not expect an answer yet, but instead used the words as a kind of soothing mantra, a reassuring reminder to Zina that she was there and that she cared.

Abruptly, Zina shifted and sat up, wiping the hot tears from her cheeks with her hands until she saw the box of tissues that Abu Ali had discreetly slipped within her reach. Tala leaned forward and touched her hand.

‘What’s the matter, habibti? Please tell me.’

Zina swallowed and blinked away the remnants of salty mois-ture from her aching eyes. ‘David broke up with me,’ she said. She frowned. It was not what she had planned to say, not right at this moment, nor did the sentence come close to expressing all the reasons for her current anxiety and sorrow. But it had spilled from her under the kind weight of Tala’s eyes, and so Zina imagined the recent split from her boyfriend must have a deeper meaning than she herself had attributed it.

‘Is he mad?’ Tala said, and Zina had to smile at her sister’s in-dignation, so genuinely grand in scale, despite the fact that she had never met David. ‘Why?!’

‘Because he’s Jewish. And I’m Palestinian.’

Zina watched as Tala sat back and frowned for a moment, though her mouth had a suspiciously smile-like pucker at the edges.

‘Jewish?’

‘Yes. What’s so funny?’

‘Just picturing Mama and Baba’s faces if it had worked out.’

But Zina could only sigh as more tears welled up.

‘He can’t imagine being married to a non-Jew,’ she sniffed.

‘You mean, he won’t imagine it,’ Tala returned, but Zina shook her head vehemently.

‘His Jewish culture is a huge part of his identity. He’s being open about not wanting to give it up.’

‘Were you asking him to?’

Zina shook her head. ‘But he wants Jewish kids and Hannakah and Passover..it would be impossible.’

‘Then why on earth did he even bother going out with you?

What kind of person gets emotionally entangled in a relationship, and even worse, lets you fall in love with him, when he feels there’s no way forward?’

‘Don’t you ever make mistakes?’ Zina asked, desperately. ‘Sometimes you don’t stop and rationalise everything so perfectly. Don’t you ever just do something, even when you know deep down it’s going to cause a problem?’

Zina felt unaccountably guilty, because she sensed a shift in her sister as she finished this last comment, felt a sudden discomfort emanating from Tala’s side of the sofa, and all this from a moment’s exasperation about her own mistakes with David. She was at a loss as to what she had said that could have bothered Tala so much, and her repeated questioning of her older sister yielded nothing except a tired smile and Tala’s insistence that she was fine. By the time Zina looked up to see Kareem walking in, she had decided that she would give Tala some time and try to talk to her again later. In the meantime, the arrival of her brother-in-law, suavely impeccable in a suit and immaculate white shirt, only irritated her.

‘No two women should look this amazing at seven in the morning,’ he said, grinning.

His opening compliment appeared to have not even the slightest effect on either sister.

‘You’re up early, Kareem,’ Tala said.

‘I wanted to stop by and say hello to your father before I go to the airport,’ Kareem paused to give their anticipation a moment to build. ‘Sami’s coming in from New York for the wedding.’

‘I haven’t seen your brother in years,’ Zina said, conversationally.

‘Does he still like musicals?’

Zina felt the hard prod of Tala’s foot on her own, but when she looked at her sister, who appeared intently focused on the newspaper now, she saw again the hint of amusement in her mouth.

‘I don’t know,’ Kareem said curtly, adjusting his watch. ‘But I’m sure he’s looking forward to seeing you, Zina.’

‘Why?’

God, she was irritating. But luckily, Kareem noticed, she also seemed to be leaving.

‘Will you excuse me? I have to get dressed,’ Zina said, with barely a glance at him. He nodded, politely, and waited for her to leave before sitting down, keeping the creases in his trousers correct. He smiled at Tala, noting that she looked exhausted and nervous.

‘How’s Lamia?’ Tala asked him.

‘Lamia’s in bed. She likes to take her time in the mornings.’ With a delicate gesture to Abu Ali, Kareem signaled that he would like some coffee.

There were many more avenues of conversation open to her with her brother-in-law – his work, his family, his views on almost anything – but all of them spoke to her of a tedium she could not bear this morning and so she smiled and looked to the end of the cavernous room, where the wall was made up of two storey high sheets of glass that looked onto the gardens, the fruit groves and the hills beyond. The sun stroked the tops of the trees, and they could hear birds conferring, breaking the still silence of the morning.

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ Kareem had followed her gaze and was carefully attempting to establish a common interest, a connection between them that he now realised was generally lacking. She had never appeared to like him much, he felt, although it was hard to state such a fact definitively. After all, they attended the same family dinners, and laughed and joked together, but they existed in the same space rather than actively forming a relationship. This had never concerned Kareem before now, but he realised that if he hoped to achieve the status of confidante to Tala, he would have to make her feel trusting and warm towards him. It was one of those requirements that women had.

‘It’s lovely,’ she agreed, her eyes fixed on the view. She stifled a yawn. ‘I’m not sleeping any more,’ she said.

Now this unsolicited confession was good fortune indeed, he thought. ‘Really?’ he said. He sat forward on the deep leather couch, a look of genuine concern etched into his handsome features.

‘Why?’

The refreshments arrived at this moment, giving Kareem time to think of a follow-up question if this one should be met with mute-ness. Tala sprinkled a small spoon of sugar into her glass of mint tea and stirred it. The sweet, vegetal scent of the liquid was comforting to her. She looked at Kareem.

‘I guess pre-wedding jitters and all that.’

‘Anything serious?’

To give the suggestion that the question was simply throwaway, Kareem did not wait for an answer, but brought his own tiny cup of Arabic coffee delicately to his lips, successfully avoiding his thin moustache.

Tala smiled wanly. ‘No.’

‘Good.’ He sat back again, as if satisfied. ‘Because this is not a step to take lightly. This is the rest of your life. You have to be sure of what you’re doing.’

She was surprised. She would not have expected him, of all people, to stress the importance of certainty over form. On an impulse she turned to him.

‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘Were you absolutely sure when you married my sister?’

He grinned roguishly. ‘I had to be, or she would have killed me.’

Once again, the attempted charm fell flat, the lightness of touch was too heavy. She sketched a half smile in acknowledgment but then sat watching him with ethereal, dark eyes that unsettled him.

‘Of course I was sure,’ he said, matching her serious look. ‘I had not one doubt that this was the girl I wanted to be with.’

‘Why?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Because I loved her so much. Because our characters were suited, our values. All the important things.’ He leaned in to her slightly, and his voice dropped. ‘I think if I had felt even a slight doubt, I would not have done it.’

Their eyes met and stayed locked together for a moment. She could see within them only honest concern and kindness; a decency she had not previously credited him with. She blinked, and spoke quickly:

‘What if the doubt is misleading? What if you couldn’t find a rational reason for that doubt?’ It felt strange to be so open with Kareem of all people, but her nerves were at breaking point; she was desperate for advice, and Zina was so much in the depths of her own misery that it had not felt right to bother her.

‘Are doubts supposed to be rational? Is love?’ he replied with a sage smile. ‘I think you need to trust your instincts, Tala. I’m all for rationality, but there are times when you know in your heart – in your gut – what to do. Even if you can’t justify it in your head.’

Tala was shocked and now regarded him with suspicion. ‘You’re telling me to break it off?’

‘No!’ he said, alarmed at his aim being so clearly articulated.

‘Yes, you are.’

‘You’re telling me you have doubts…’ He cut himself off, nipping his petulance in the bud and laced his hands together, giving the impression of deep thought. ‘It’s not wrong to go against the grain, Tala. If you marry Hani, I’ll be the first one dancing at your wedding. But if you don’t, I’ll support you every step of the way.’

Abruptly, Kareem stood up. ‘Anyway, I should be going. I don’t want to keep my brother waiting.’ He paused to look into her eyes once more with a nod of understanding. ‘If ever you want to talk about anything, I’m here. Okay?’

Tala nodded, hesitantly, and tried to appear grateful, but she was too caught up in her own racing thoughts to pay attention to form.

She heard the ringing tones of Kareem’s steps walking briskly out and through the hallway to the front door.

Tala looked away, out of the windows, at the garden. Her own family, except perhaps Zina, were evidently aware of her doubts – she had spoken quite openly to Lamia about them – but not one of them had stepped forward to talk to her seriously, to offer support or advice, except for her brother-in-law, and his concern was so uncharacteristic that Tala was certain he must have some ulte-rior motive. She felt alone, marooned in the centre of a seamless stream of parties and dinners. People were whirling past – people whom she had known for all or most of her life and who apparently cared about her – and they laughed and talked and argued about politics and ate and shopped and congratulated; but not one had paused and looked into her eyes. She wanted a lifeline, the reassurance that someone, somewhere understood her, but there was none to be found. Again, she thought of Leyla, and the focus, however fleeting, awakened a yearning within Tala. Leyla would understand, of course, but Tala could hardly picture her features any more; the girl already seemed to belong to some past life; in fact, she might have been nothing more than a dream, an enveloping, pleasurable, warming dream that had passed too quickly and left Tala gasping in the icy reality of wakefulness.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 640