A Word For Love Part 26

Lovers always know if their love is true.

Even if we make mistakes, that's OK, as long as you tell me.

In Love and Feeling, she is the best teacher.

You're a maid. You are in charge of the children's moral education. You tell them, Don't lie and swear. After the bathroom, Wash your hands. So you teach me in love. Because you're honest and pure. And when you love, you love truly. This is the first time I've said that to you, but I felt it. Today, I felt it. If we weren't in love, would we feel that?

And let me be among her wards.

Don't those children have to drink their milk? And don't you feed it to them? I want to drink it! Feed me like your children!

Because she is the most beautiful teacher, And in strength, she won't be forgotten.

I can't forget you.

In our first words When we first met She was the one who offered.

You drove up to the station. You offered me apples.

And the children of the desert, You know the children of the desert, they're the ones who've grown in the desert. But here, it means this city.

In a place no one enters but the weak.

Meaning the police station. Who enters the station? Criminals and past criminals. What are criminals? They're weak of morals, this makes them weak.

And the cruel, deranged.

In the prisons, you see a lot of cruel, deranged men.

And heaven's meek.

The criminals come to the station, and here they are made meek. I'm describing the station to you.

And they ask, scared and humble, Like all humanity, calling.

They are scared. They ask, Will I die here? Will I live to be free? I'm describing the station. But I don't like to say the word "station," so I describe it to you instead.

And in that place, in her offering, I found happiness.

You gave me apples. My friends were going for cigarettes. I told them, Cancel! Cancel! And I watched you-What was your position? You were sitting here. And Mohammed, here. And I came and stood next to your car, and you should have given the apples to Mohammed, he looked like the one in charge because he had the most b.u.t.tons, but you didn't, you gave them to me, and your face was just like a jasmine. I'm coming, Nisrine. Please believe me, I'm coming. There's trouble. I read it today, in the interview with Bea's tutor; he gave away Baba, he gave information, did Bea tell him? Don't worry, I've taken that interview, I'm going to hide it, but I worry the police have already read it. If they come, I will be with them, I'll protect Baba, like I protect you. Wait for me, Nisrine, I can still feel your kisses, they bloom inside me, I will always protect you, I will always come for you, and I will never leave you. I'm a policeman. I'm your policeman, I'm coming!

And, if only he had come. If only we would have seen this poem, had some news, some warning-of course, we didn't. Before Adel could send it, his father found it. It was only sent years later, without the interview, when Adel came upon it and, having a different view of words and poems by then, bundled all of them up together and sent them to the only person he knew who might still love them: me.

WE WAITED ALL NIGHT and the next day for him to come for Nisrine. A whole day was the longest Adel had ever been gone from the roof.

But, we were hopeful.

We didn't know what had happened, and so we said to each other, "It's taking a little longer, that's all." He had ridden a rope to see her. "He'll come."

SNOW.

AFTER THE RAIN IT SNOWED, just as we thought spring was here. It never snowed in this city. It never snowed in April.

The snow came early in the morning and stayed until evening, a faint white dusting. On the news, they warned of death from the temperature drop. At Madame's, we all ran to the kitchen window to watch the snowflakes. Nisrine and I looked for Adel.

The children wanted to go down and see the snow. They opened the window and stuck out their fingers to feel it. Dounia opened another window and hit Abudi's head in her excitement, which made him almost cry.

To make up for locking me in yesterday, Madame let me take the children down to buy tampons and junk food. Nisrine helped us put on our hoods. Dounia whined for us to wait while she tied her shoes. We waited. Lema helped her. Madame videotaped us getting ready. Dounia waved at the camera and danced around like a snowflake. We crossed the street to the convenience store and asked for Tampax, and potato chips and gum. Then, we came straight back to the apartment because we knew Madame was watching, but Dounia didn't want to go in yet, she wanted to play longer in the snow. It was falling on our hair. It was falling on the balcony, and Madame's camera. It left dirty marks from the dust where it landed on Lema's white veil.

"Come on, Dounia." Abudi and Lema and I got in the elevator. Dounia stood outside looking at us. We closed the elevator door and rode up to the apartment without her.

Madame opened the door.

"Where's Dounia?" So Abudi went down to get her and bring her back up, while Lema and I shivered and giggled and stripped off our layers, cold and happy from the unexpected snow.

Nisrine found me in the hallway. "Did you see him?"

She meant when I was down in the snow, had I seen Adel? I hadn't. I had looked.

She sighed. "He'll come. Anyway, he promised to send a sign if there was trouble."

The snow came, and like the rain, it brought police. Moni called to tell us the police had surrounded our building. Nisrine and I looked at each other. Adel had promised to help her and Baba. Yesterday, those promises had seemed possible. Now, I took them out in the glare of the melting snow and looked at them again; could a young policeman do all this?

Madame sat silently at the table, sipping her afternoon coffee. First she drank her cup. Then she drank Baba's because he was too busy.

There was a knock at the door. The phone was ringing. In the living room, Baba, who had been to jail before and knew his whole life that at any moment the police might come again, put a finger to his lips to silence the children. He hunted in the closet for his pa.s.sport.

"Lema," he said, "get your scarf." Then he called for Madame to get water and her scarf, too.

I said, "We'll help, Baba."

Nisrine stood behind me, pale but hopeful.

Moni called again. Another friend was also being taken.

"What do we do?"

"We get him out," and Baba, having just signed a doc.u.ment, holding his pa.s.sport and wrists as if shackled in front of him, walked straight to the door while Madame in her veil and bathrobe prayed and sprinkled water for good luck behind him: he let the policemen in.

I have since dreamed of this day. The police came, and I did not understand all they were saying. They dressed in gray. They were tan skinned. Their pants sagged around their backsides, hid their b.u.t.ts but not their sweat. There were wet marks beneath their armpits, and it reminded me of Imad, or Nisrine when she'd been working. As I watched them sweat, I was aware of the fine points of bone in my crotch and my cheeks.

When I replay it all at night in my sleep, the police have batons, but in real life, they had guns. Every time that I had walked home from Imad's along the street, I pa.s.sed the policemen and their guns. I pa.s.sed the plainclothes officer who always stood before the garden. He hung his rifle from his neck with a sling for a broken arm, as if he had three arms to be broken. Sometimes as my gaze brushed him under the shadow of his weapon, I was aware of the same points in my cheeks; it meant they were reddening. Sometimes, I felt a pressure beneath my arm, and I thought it was his finger-whose finger? Imad's finger? Adel's gun finger?-or perhaps the pressure of his gun against the garden gate. This is the power of a rifle. You feel it in all the corners of your body. I walked past him and did not touch him anyplace he bulged, I did not touch him- We stood to one side. Four of them entered. We waited for more, a blond head, a wide smile- The last one shut the door.

Adel had not come.

Madame said, "Stay together," while Baba faced the policemen.

She wouldn't let the children wander off to the rest of the apartment; she didn't want them alone near the police. She refused Dounia when she had to go to the bathroom, but then Dounia became angry and restless and slapped at Madame's abdomen, so Madame sent Lema and Abudi and Nisrine and me with her to pee.

"Stay in there," Madame said, and she closed the door on us. Nisrine knocked to get out. She wouldn't open it. Nisrine had been locked in once before, and she had kept repeating for the last two days, Never again. But, here she was. She threw herself against the door. Adel was supposed to help us. Madame didn't open.

We huddled in the muggy leftovers smell of the bathroom, while Dounia sat to pee in the middle of us. Outside, we could hear boots and Madame praying. "Aya, aya," Madame prayed, her voice rising.

Dounia sat peeing.

Over her noise, the rest of us stood ears to the door, listening.

Dounia reached for the orange hose beside the toilet to wash her pee when she was done, then she used a sheet from the dirty laundry pile to dry.

Dounia asked, "Bea, you know him up there?" She pointed to the bathroom ceiling.

Lema said, "Hush, Dounia."

"You mean the neighbors?"

"No. In the sky."

"You mean G.o.d?"

Lema said, "Haram, don't say it in the bathroom. It's dirty."

Outside, the front door opened and closed. There were more boots and voices. Madame was still praying.

"He was supposed to come," Nisrine repeated, "he was supposed to come."

We had been trying for so long to think up plans, Nisrine and I. For her to grow her heart, so she could stay. For her to leave. For me to grow my heart. To help Baba, to fix things, and they had all centered on Adel. He had been the middle of all of them; our hopes had curled around him like soft petals around the yellow center of a flower. Nisrine loved many people, she fit them all in her heart, but Adel had been her only hope, here. He had been the one who would help us.

Slowly, her knees gave way and she sank, small and pink in her pajamas, to the damp tile floor. The children and I crowded around and breathed on her like trees.

We sat together and listened to the sounds of Baba being taken.

After a little while, Abudi had to pee, so because he was older and a boy, Lema and Dounia and I turned our backs on him. Nisrine's head was already bent. Then, when Abudi was done, I had to pee, so the children and Nisrine all turned their backs for me, and I crouched over the toilet, moisture on my eyelids, feeling the sloppy waste smell in my pores. Halfway through, Dounia became curious. She wanted to look, she wouldn't turn away, so Lema grabbed Dounia and forced her head to her stomach so I, too, could pee in privacy, my nose at Dounia's back, my elbow beside Abudi, my eyes on the tips of hair that had escaped from Nisrine's and Lema's white veils.

WHEN MADAME LET US OUT, the apartment was quiet and empty.

Dounia asked, "Where's Baba?"

"He went with the police." Madame was filling water bottles for the night in the kitchen. Nisrine and I stood palely beside her, not helping.

I asked, "What do we do now?"

"We wait."

"Aren't you going to call someone?"

"Our phones are watched. He'll come back if he's not taken."

But I wanted to call someone, anyone. It was not yet dinnertime, and I was full of bathroom smell and police and we must do something, I must call someone.

In the morning, it had snowed. In the afternoon, police had come, and in the s.p.a.ce of that time we had lost Baba.

The phone rang. Madame picked it up. "We're fine. Yes, everything's fine. Can you believe the snow?" She said it over and over again, into the phone. "Can you believe the snow?"

When she hung up, I said, "I could call my emba.s.sy, to see what they say."

"The emba.s.sy only helps Americans."

"Maybe not. Maybe they help everyone."

Madame looked at me. "Our phones are watched."

Here, it was always if you loved them, then.

In America, I relied on the government when I had a need. In natural disaster or unemployment, our government was supposed to have programs to bail us out. But here, there was no low-interest loan from the bank, no government aid, so people relied on their families. Perhaps that was why every day we told the same stories, about family ties and duty, and if you loved them, then you would call. If you loved them, then you would help. If you loved them, then you would stay with them for a very long time and never leave, and you would listen, and you would tell, you would tell them they're kind to you, you would tell them you loved them, and they would comfort you when you were sad, they would comfort you if you cried, which could be often because you were American, and a woman.

Madame washed parsley to eat with cheese. She gave me a bunch, and I sat at the table, to sort the yellow from the green.

I had come here to cry for an astonishing text.

Madame said, "What's the matter, Bea?"