A Word For Love Part 27

"Nothing." I was sorting parsley.

Madame said, "Don't cry on it. It's unsanitary. Here, give those to me." She took the stems from me and began to sort them herself.

If you loved them, then you would not ask questions about Baba's life before jail, his first family, or Nisrine's Indonesian family, because you did not care about past lives, this was your life now, this was important. You may fight, but only inside. You would always take their side, and you would not talk about them to tutors or police, or anyone outside the house. They were your life now, talking about them to others would only hurt yourself.

I wiped my eyes.

After a while, Madame sighed and patted my cheek. "I think having Ha.s.san in the house depresses me. I used to have cheeks just like yours before I was married, Bea. I had full cheeks, just like yours."

NISRINE DID NOT TRY to call like I did, she knew this was useless. She sat, looking pale and thoughtful.

"Why didn't he come?" she asked. "I thought we understood each other. I thought, when he came to me across the sky, that he was something greater than myself." Together, they had been making a new language.

She shook her head.

In the evening, we got a call from Moni confirming that Baba would spend the night in jail. When she got off the phone, Madame searched her purse for money. She searched her underwear drawer, and all Baba's shoes and his jeans and even his dirty shirt pockets and between the covers of his books. Then, she came to me.

"How much do you have?"

"How much do you want?"

"Well, we need to eat."

I handed her my purse and she dumped all of it onto the table. Then we went through my pants pockets and my underwear drawer, and I gave her the money we found.

That night, Nisrine gathered up all the poems Adel had written, and the children and I watched her tear them, one by one, and release them over the balcony, where the wind took them.

"I miss him, Bea."

I felt a pain in my heart for the poems. They danced before our window like snow.

"Look how light they are. I want to be light like that." She had wanted to fly off like them.

"Words," Nisrine said, "only words."

IT WAS THE NIGHT my mother was supposed to call.

Madame said, "Don't tell her about what happened today, just say everything's fine."

"Everything's fine?"

"You can't talk about it, Baba's in jail. If you talk, Baba might get in more trouble. You wouldn't want to put him in more trouble."

"No."

"Just say you're well, and we send kisses. Tell your mother I send kisses."

My cell phone rang. It was my mother.

"How are things there, Bea? Are you still thinking of coming home? I hear on the TV there's been unrest."

"Everything's fine."

Madame blew kisses at the phone.

"Madame here kisses you."

My mother was flattered. She made kissing sounds. "Here's for you and Madame." She made more kissing sounds. "Is Dounia there? Does she send kisses?"

Dounia was twirling around like she'd been doing since the morning, being a snowflake.

"She's here. She sends kisses."

"Well, kiss her for me, then, too."

With Baba gone, there was a bed for each of us, and we each had our new place to sleep. I no longer slept with Lema; Lema slept in Madame's bed, because Madame was not sleeping, she was on Baba's sofa in the living room, watching TV. All night she sat with the TV tuned to the religious stations, a bottle of water between her clean feet. When I woke for the bathroom, she turned off the TV very quickly, and pretended to fall asleep.

WAITING.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS when someone goes missing: your body shrinks, and the missing grows.

When my parents divorced, I got a stomachache that lasted and lasted, and wouldn't go away, and for a little while it felt like I became my stomach; the rest of me shriveled, and all I could think about was my little pain.

The next morning after Baba was taken, there was a thin line that ran between Madame and Nisrine and me, and as we did the housework, or played with the children, I could feel them where they were, thinking about Baba, and I could feel me where I was, thinking about Baba, and it was as if all of us, Madame and Nisrine and the children and me, were one big brain that thought, Baba. We had not forgotten our differences, but for the moment, they were put aside, and we moved about the house like birds together, migrating from room to room. When someone was hungry, we ate. When someone was tired, we rested.

We carried our waiting. Like Nisrine's gas, it clung to my sweater drawer and Arabic books, and our bras and pajama pants and underwear, which was all we wore around the house now because there was no need for shirts, when Abudi was still young and Baba was gone. His absence granted us this small freedom.

Free women, we waited, and as we waited, the missing grew. I searched again and again for people to call on my cell phone. I looked for Adel on the roof of the station.

By afternoon we became so bored waiting that even little things and sad things, like death, became scandalous. The widow who didn't cry when her husband died. Our neighbor's daughter, who beat her chest and threw her veil. We laughed, sighed, shook our heads.

Madame made long lists of the suitors who came to engage her before Baba, and she pinched Dounia's toes for each one: Simsim who lived in Maisaat. His shoe size was very large.

An old man who owned twelve buildings, but he was so ugly she couldn't look at him. He sat in front of her high school every day, reading the Quran.

Her cousin, but she didn't like him, so she told him, Put one of your houses in my name. Of course, he wouldn't. She knew he wouldn't, that was why she said it. How else do you refuse your cousin?

One whose mother refused Madame, but he wouldn't have anyone else, so he didn't marry for two years.

One who had an old wife already and just wanted children.

Oh, the tedium! Like dust, it climbed the walls, sat in the hall, in the locked door we kept waiting for Baba to open. Waiting, we lost our sense of connection. We did ch.o.r.es to pa.s.s the time. To keep up appearances, we washed Baba's pants and hung them on the balcony to dry, as if he still needed them.

Small people, small battles.

Madame said, "I told you it would be warmer today," and in her voice was satisfaction. "You want me to put your sweater inside for you, Bea?"

"No, I can do it."

It was the time I usually met with Imad.

Madame looked at the kitchen clock. "No lesson today?"

"No."

"Good, stay here with us. I'll take you to the National Library."

Madame told all of us to dress, even Nisrine. With all that had happened, we could not leave her behind in the house. There was a flurry not to be the last one ready. We got down the children's good shoes from their boxes in the closet, and looked for gifts to give the librarian. Madame searched for the perfume I once gave her.

"You said the librarian was a woman, Bea?"

There were six of us ready at the door, which was the number Madame's family had been before they gained me, and we were all in our outdoor skirts and outdoor jeans, even Nisrine. For this event, she had taken off her pajamas. We crowded into the elevator, talking and giggling, and pushed the b.u.t.tons over and over. We hadn't gone on an outing like this before, it was an adventure.

On the way down, we talked about car bombs. Madame said, "Who'll start Baba's car for us?"

Abudi was a big boy, almost ten. He volunteered.

Madame wouldn't let him. "You're too short," she told him. "You have to be taller than the dashboard."

We walked out of the elevator, joking about short Abudi, so Abudi hit Dounia in the chest. He ran back inside and wouldn't come out until Madame went to go get him. While we waited, the rest of us jumped over small puddles the sun made on melted snow. It had gathered under the bushes and beneath the swing set. Dounia jumped in a puddle and splashed Nisrine.

"Dounia!"

The sun shone yellow like summer. She slipped off her coat.

Madame came back with Abudi, and we returned to who was driving.

Not Lema, she wasn't old enough.

Not Madame, Baba never taught her.

Not Nisrine, not me- "Why not?" Madame asked. "You drive in America, don't you, Bea?"

For a moment, I thought about car bombs. Then, I thought of the library.

"OK." I held out my hand for the keys.

We approached the car cautiously. At the curb, Madame told the children to stay back. She wanted me to start the engine alone, in case there really was a bomb inside, she didn't want multiple casualties. "One's enough!" she joked, toes over the curb, brightly.

I didn't think it was very funny.

I walked over to the car. While I unlocked the door, the children shouted encouragements.

"Don't worry, Bea, Americans are bombproof!"

"Don't worry, Bea. Matt mat. You can join your tutor, he's already dead, haha!"

I sat down and put the key in. "Here I go," I said.

At the last minute, Dounia wriggled away from Nisrine, who had been holding her, and ran toward me as I started the ignition-"Dounia!" But it didn't matter, because then Dounia and I were still alive, and the car was running. I drove down the block with the children trailing behind me, joking, no longer worried about bombs.

We began our outing. I was driving, with Madame and Abudi in the front seat, and Dounia and Lema and Nisrine in the back where the sun came down strong, so Lema complained about her complexion. She hid under Dounia's skirt to stop the sun. We rolled down all the windows and hung our arms out. Dounia sang songs in Arabic while the rest of us clapped along.

And, as I gripped the wheel, my fingers tense with excitement, I noticed a similar feeling in Nisrine. She looked around at a city she had seen only from above: the dirty sidewalks, the glittery pavement, the wavy head-sized top of a garden bush. I watched her roll down her window and reach out to those now life-size objects, trying to brush the sides of them as we pa.s.sed. This city was teeming with life and color: purse yellow of the chamomile flowers, deep red of the store awnings, blue of a religious woman's coat. She thrust her head out, opened her arms wide, pushed back her veil to greet it.

"h.e.l.lo, beautiful!" she called. Across the sky, white clouds moved like wings.

In Arabic, the word for freedom is hurriya. I remember first learning this word as a beginning student, and memorizing it by its nearness to the English word "hurray."

The joy it brought me.

I had also never seen our city like this. Watching Nisrine, I gained new eyes. We pa.s.sed by lemon trees, a pale fountain. I had never sat in the front seat of a car here; as we drove, the wind lifted our hair to the beat of Dounia's singing. We made our way down the street, hands out the window, and were not stopped by any policemen.

Nisrine said, "I want always to feel this," about the wind.

The National Library was gray and foreboding in the sun. Lema, who had never been, took one look and said, "Bea, are you sure this is where you want to go?"

We traipsed in quietly. At the door, Madame told us to wait while she went up to the desk. She put the perfume we had brought in the front pocket of her purse, ready to give, then started slowly forward.

The rest of us held our breath. When Dounia coughed, Lema put her hand over her mouth. We watched Madame approach the librarian, whose head was bent over a book.

"Excuse me," Madame said.