A Word For Love Part 11

Nisrine had Adel's poem. She stood by the stove, and I stood beside her, bent over it, quietly reading.

Abudi was a big boy. He poured tea into a gla.s.s by himself, without asking.

Abudi said, "Oh, the tea!"

Nisrine said, "Abudi, you naughty boy! You think your fingers're tough like mine? Water's all over now, you always make work for me."

Abudi ran. Nisrine grabbed him.

"When you need something, ask me."

"Mop it up, Indonese."

But Nisrine pointed out the window, at the police station.

"You see that man? He knows what you do. That man loves me. He knows if you're a bad boy with me, he's watching you."

Abudi wriggled.

Madame came in. She said, "Nisrine, you're scaring him."

Abudi was wriggling and wriggling. He kept wriggling until he wriggled all the way out of his shirt, and as he did, he knocked against Nisrine and me, and the poem flew out from between us onto the floor, and Abudi left us alone with Madame in the kitchen: his shirt, Nisrine, the poem, and me.

Madame came over and picked up the poem where it had landed. There was tea on one side of it; she wiped it off. From her angle, she couldn't see which of us had dropped it.

"Is this yours, Bea?"

"No-yes."

It was Nisrine's. I wasn't going to betray her.

"It's for my studies."

Madame raised an eyebrow. The poem was faceup. Across the front was written, To My Flower, the Jasmine.

"Are you writing love poetry for your studies, Bea?"

I glanced at Nisrine.

"To practice vocabulary."

"Oh! To practice vocabulary." Madame looked between us. She handed me the poem, and watched while I carefully put it in the binder I took to my lessons, between my grammar exercises.

Madame said, "You know, that's an old trick, to practice Arabic with love poetry, your tutor's not the first. Men are always saying about how there are ninety-nine names for love in Arabic. Don't believe them. Those names are love for G.o.d, Allah. There are ninety-nine names for Allah, and his name means love. That's different than romance."

While we were still in the kitchen, Lema came in. She was on the phone with her friend who loved a Christian boy. Her friend got in the car alone with him. She'd dyed her hair for him, which meant he'd seen her without a veil. When Lema got off the phone, she tried to decide if she should tell her friend's mother about the Christian.

I said to Lema, "I don't think you should. She trusted you, love is something secret."

Madame said, "This is a girl who needs to be stopped."

I said, "Maybe she'll learn on her own to stop loving him. It does no good to tell her mother."

Nisrine said, "Her mother will lock her in the house."

"No, she won't." Madame gave her a hard look. Then, she gave me a hard look. She turned to Lema. "Why don't you let me talk to her? Bring her over here and let me tell her what she's doing is wrong."

"No, you stay out of it," Lema told her mother, but Madame could not stay out of it, she had to be the center of everything.

In the evening, we all sat around the living room drinking tea, and Madame flirted with Baba. When he asked for sugar, she gave him her pinky.

"Bea's writing poetry in her cla.s.s," Madame said, looking at Nisrine.

Baba raised an eyebrow. "You remember the story of Qais and Leila, Bea?"

Of course I remembered it.

Baba reminded me anyway. "Qais was exiled to the desert because he wrote his love poetry."

I said, "It's for cla.s.s. To practice vocabulary."

Abudi quoted, "To my flower, the jasmine.'"

Baba said, "Careful, Bea. Tutors are like ex-prisoners. They talk to the police."

Nisrine responded to Madame's suspicion with worry. Her brow furrowed. "Do you think Mama suspects?" she asked.

I was unsure.

"Do you think Mama won't want me anymore?"

I was still feeling jealous; even so, I couldn't imagine anyone not wanting Nisrine. But Nisrine shook her head, still worried. "I can't stay here if Mama doesn't want me. I have to make her want me."

"She wants you."

Just as I couldn't imagine not wanting Nisrine, I couldn't imagine Madame's without her. She was a part of this place to me, the way Baba's books and the sky were part of it: integral, close to my heart. A policeman didn't change that.

And Nisrine had so many reasons to stay: her family, whom she sent money to, her house, her contract.

Anyway, it had just been one poem.

Nisrine said, "My father works for other people. In my family, we all work for other people. But it is a point of honor with us, we only work where we are wanted. We are good, we are always wanted. I have to try harder."

"She wants you." But it was true that Madame had begun to watch us.

I felt a deep affection for Nisrine, who was so good, and had so much honor. I decided to try harder, too, like her.

BUT WE WERE NOT DONE with worries.

The winds blew up from the north and over our small mountain, and brought Baba home, worried: new friends had been taken. He couldn't meet anymore with other men in dark parlors, there weren't enough of them left.

"I think there's a rat," Baba said. He meant an informant.

I knew about informants; they were the reason we didn't talk in taxis, or to bus drivers, because the bus drivers and taxi drivers often talked to the police.

Madame had once told me a story about how her mother had almost gone to jail because of an informant. Her mother studied to clean this country's first airplanes, but she fell in love with a man who hung on her every word, and so repeated everything she said to his policeman friends. It turned out, some of her words were dangerous.

"What happened?" I asked.

"They took her for questioning, and when her lover realized what he'd done, he was so upset, he wanted to die, he hadn't meant to inform on her. In the end, my mother was released. She never talked to him again."

I thought about this story, and how here, talking could get you in trouble. Baba and his friends were secretly writing their free elections doc.u.ment, but they could not write it and finish it if one of them was a rat, or the government would find out before they were done. I imagined them publishing that doc.u.ment; if you could go to jail for talking, then what might writing about elections do?

Whenever I thought about these things, I felt a small tug at my heart for Baba, who did what he wanted despite the danger.

Like Madame and Lema, I was both proud and fearful for him: proud that he was creating a brave doc.u.ment; fearful of what that might mean for him, and us. Just as I could not imagine life without Nisrine, I could not imagine this house without Baba.

And yet, in his own way Baba was also an informant; an ex-prisoner, he had his interviews with the police.

"Yes," Baba said when I asked about this, "but everyone knows this about me. They know when my interviews are and what I'll say. I'm not the dangerous kind. What's dangerous is not knowing."

"Not knowing?"

"Sometimes, people can be rats without wanting to be, because they slip up at the wrong time, or they're friends with the wrong person."

Like the man who informed on Madame's mother because he was blinded by love, an accident.

"This is the most terrible part of our country, Bea," Baba said. "That it is possible to be a good, brave person, and still also a rat without knowing it."

AFTER THAT, Nisrine and I tried very hard with Madame. Neither of us wanted to be rats. She sang to Dounia and braided her hair every morning, while I made the beds.

There was an attic above the kitchen that you needed a ladder to get to. Nisrine didn't like small s.p.a.ces, and she didn't like ladders, but she followed Madame up to sort the jars in it. They squatted inside, backs hunched, and separated the olive oil from the jam. (Nisrine muttered, "I will not have an attic in my house.") I stood at the bottom of the ladder, and sometimes they handed me down a jar. Nisrine's hands shook when she did this, because of the small s.p.a.ce. Sometimes, though, from up above, I heard laughter. They talked about boyfriends. "Who was your first?"

"I was thirteen, the neighbor."

Nisrine said, "My husband is a rooster. He likes too many women. When he liked me, he left a rooster in my yard to crow his love. All day, I sat inside with my mother and listened. I thought it was very romantic. I should have known, once a rooster, always a rooster."

Madame said, "The first time Ha.s.san saw me, he said, You are like wine.' He had come to give me sad news. I was good, I didn't drink wine, I'd never tasted it. I thought, G.o.d is Great and against drink, but now I have to taste it, Ha.s.san said I was like it. After a while, I decided I could love Ha.s.san like he loved wine."

After the attic, Nisrine cleaned inside all the other cupboards. She took a ladder and a cloth to dust the ceilings. Still, Madame walked in to find the freezer door open and Nisrine's face pressed against the window.

"What are you looking at?"

"Toward the river."

"The river's the opposite direction."

MADAME WASN'T THE ONLY ONE who suspected foreign women of having lovers.

At the end of the week, my student ID expired, so I went to the library to get a new one. At the security window before the entrance, a young policeman attended me.

"Name."

I gave him my name.

"Address?"

I gave him my address.

He looked up.

"Across from the police station!" he said about my address.

"Yes."

He looked me over. "They say the policemen there like foreign girls. Where did you say you were from, again?"

"America."

He shook his head in admiration. "America!"

I said, "I think you're mistaken. The policemen don't like me, they like a different foreign woman."

But, this policeman couldn't be convinced. He stamped my papers and told me to come back for my new ID in two weeks.

"Two weeks? Can't you make it sooner?"

He smiled, shook his head again. "America," he said, "you have policemen lovers. If you want a fast card, ask them."

I tried to stamp out the blond one from my heart. I was always on the lookout for him; when I saw him, I turned my back.

I loved Nisrine for her singing; for her determination, and her jokes. We were working together, to try harder so Madame would be happy and not suspect, but I still envied Nisrine her shoulder blades, like two birds kissing while she folded the laundry.

Nisrine tried to include me.

She guided my arm back and forth before the window.

"Wave, Bea. He'll wave back."

When I first met Adel, I was told he was a real Qais, which meant a deep romantic. I had first liked him for this image, even before I knew him; before I read his perfect poems and understood how he loved words and meaning, just like me.