A Word For Love Part 29

But, Baba was taken.

He would have gone to jail at some point, no matter what, he had signed a doc.u.ment. But, because of me and my tutor, he had gone now.

Of course, I wanted to make it up, to undo what I spoke, I saw how fluency isn't vocabulary- Madame stopped me. There was more.

"Moni says the blond one is no longer police. There's a rumor that his father beat him, because he found out about a love affair. They took away his uniform."

And now we all looked at Nisrine, who had relinquished Adel, whom we had watched tear up his poems one by one.

She stood beside me, her arm in my arm. I felt her stiffen.

So, this was why he had not come for her, because they had been found out. In the end, it was not Madame who we needed to hide their love from, but his father who had beat him. We could see the pain of this information.

And, I know now how it all connected: A simple sentence, He's at the Journalists' Club.

A simple confession, to save a tutoring business.

A simple report, in the wrong blond man's hands: Adel had been reading Imad's confession; it had been on his desk, he had seen the note about Baba, and he had been planning to help us, when his father came in. His father, who was already angry at his son for loving the wrong woman.

If he had not loved that woman; if she had not loved him back; if I had not loved them both, would the rest have happened?

Qais wrote poems for Leila, and when he lost her, he went crazy. I am sure afterwards, regrets ran through his head: If he hadn't sent Leila poems, then. If he had worked harder and kept more sheep, then. If he had been kinder to her father, then. If he hadn't stood before her tent so obviously, what might have turned out differently?

In Arabic, like in most languages, these thoughts are called the subjunctive, and they are formed by combining the past and future tense. And I am sure the same thoughts that occurred to Qais so long ago also occurred to Madame and Nisrine in that moment, like they occurred to me.

If we had not- If I had not- If our hearts were not what they were.

Nisrine did not like the subjunctive.

Adel had once said, If I could touch you- And she'd stopped him, When you touch me.

If you love me- Hush, I do.

All this time, Nisrine had waited in a house where she loved, but also hurt; where she cared, but did not always feel wanted; a house that had closed in around her, that she could not seem to escape.

From the astonishing text, she had taken this lesson: that missing is everywhere, and grows large. That love cannot always help; that sometimes we must simply take hold ourselves; that it is better not to be Qais and Leila, but rather to be like the bird in her own story who flew when she needed, and followed her own heart.

From Madame, she had learned that a man she loved lay hurt, maybe in need of her, beaten for her love. She must have felt the responsibility of this, too.

And here, because I don't want to tell what happens next, because I want so badly in this story, like in life, to delay the moment-I will tell you instead, this: that love is a wide-open s.p.a.ce. That it can be friendship and pa.s.sion and leaving and unrequited all at once. That I have loved and kissed many times in my life, but no love has changed me like Nisrine.

It was too much. Earlier, she had said, It's an impossible situation.

I stood still that day, and listened to my part in Madame's information.

Nisrine didn't, she moved.

She squeezed my hand, then ran to the front door. "Adel!" she cried. It was locked. Madame tried to grab her, but she slipped away; her veil caught for a moment, then unraveled and her hair fell out. She made for the balcony, and I don't know if she meant to call to Adel again, or to climb hand over hand on a rope like he had, or if she only wanted to stay a moment outside, to feel cool air on her face-I will never know, I can only guess.

The balcony was wet with melted snow, and the rail jiggled.

"Nisrine," I called, wanting to help, to share in this moment. She didn't look back.

She went out with her arms open, slipped, knocked against the rail, which gave-loss stretched out before me.

She fell, her veil a white wing behind her, five floors down to the garden below.

AFTERWARDS, I remember very little. I seemed to float. Men came and went in formal uniforms. Madame took care of them. Eventually, she called Moni, who came to get me in her car and take me to my agency, where they called my mother to send a plane ticket for me, and just like that-even in that state, I felt the injustice of this-I flew home.

AMERICA.

ALL THIS HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO, yet it is still vivid. Memory comes when you least expect it, jogged by simple things-the way my older mother holds a knife, just as Madame used to; translucent purple, the color of parsley in iodine; the sound and shape of so many words that remind me of Nisrine.

This is the problem with missing: it doesn't stay in one place, but spreads out and changes the landscape.

Memory takes the smallest detail, and turns it luminous, so you miss even the mundane parts of a person, the ones you didn't know you would.

Nisrine had a knowing air about her, sometimes. Like Madame, she used little things-housework-against me, and because she wouldn't tell me why, she left me with no way to make it up.

She knew more about love than me, she'd had more experience, and she let me know this, not by saying it, but by her silences, her tsk tsk gestures, like I sometimes let her know I'd had more opportunity for Arabic cla.s.ses; we didn't want to be that way with each other, we just were. It was part of what made us, us.

And yet, Nisrine had the ability to end any fight she wanted, this is true, I'm not exaggerating-she was simply that funny, I remember the rub like warm coats on our stomachs, falling over each other, laughing-and she was that kind, and I loved her that much.

And, how do you come back from that love, or, once lost, the missing? Once changed, how do you return to a previous, pristine world? In the Quran, like the Bible, the changed world is earth, the place the first lovers went after they were banished from Eden, and there, they found sorrow and pain. They were taken aback, cried out, This is not what we expected! But of course, this is the curse of knowledge: to see all earth's imperfections, always.

And, isn't there some truth to this story, even now? That the act of knowing is really just the confrontation of sorrow; the gathering of our forces, and finding a way forward, toward love, still? Isn't that, anyway, what we hope?

And, what if the love that we found was not meant to be shared just between two people, but by many; a fiery, starry substance that grows when it's kindled, so that the more you love and are beloved, the more light?

What if we really can hold all the hearts we ever wanted, and when we die, we are able to flit among them-the person who dies is able to visit any country where there's someone who loved her, and so for Nisrine, whose loves spanned continents and ages, then there is infinite travel, infinite coming and going, an infinite amount of light. What if death were not death, but adventure? Would I miss her, then, this much?

I RETURNED TO AMERICA EARLY, still in loose pants and long shirts out of respect, and swaying like a lost leaf under this uniform. My mother took one look at me and put me to bed, and that is where I stayed for much of the summer. Nisrine stayed with me. I closed my eyes and felt I was in a foreign country; my body had flown, but my mind could not.

Fall came, and my mother, with her st.u.r.dy Midwestern sense, sent me back to university. There, I felt very little-I didn't want to feel. Months pa.s.sed like that, until I finally learned again to respond to my cla.s.smates in discussion and lose myself in books. I did this mostly out of instinct, because I was alive, and it is our job, when we are alive, to try to keep living. Eventually, instinct became habit, and from habit, I learned again to be myself, though always a little different, like the sound of your voice in a new language, which is always a little high or low.

Now, when I find it hard to wake up, I remember Nisrine, and I try to set my teeth like she did, stare out the window, try to make myself as light as possible, like swimming through slow water. I think, If I am here, then I will float; if I am destined always to carry this place, these people with me, then at least let me carry them forward. And I have. I am studying for an advanced degree, to be a scholar, something Nisrine always predicted for me. I search for meaning in deep words. In this way, I keep her close.

LIKE I SAID, I don't remember the end of Nisrine's death. That time has flown.

I do know that the following week, Madame learned Nisrine's whole name and her family's name from the Indonesian emba.s.sy, and while I sat on a plane barreling across the ocean, Madame gathered up the money she owed Nisrine and wired it, minus the fee, to her family. She did this on her own, without Baba or me to help her. It was very hard for Madame to go out; every time she did, she had to take all the children with her, and none of them could drive, so they rode the bus, which was dirty.

She says that Nisrine's family was gracious. A sister thanked her in Arabic. They had already learned of Nisrine's death from her emba.s.sy, who had shown up almost at the same time as the doctors, and taken over. In life, Nisrine had been Madame's maid, but in death she became again, foremost, a citizen. The emba.s.sy gathered her up and sent her, along with a few belongings, home. There, finally, her family met her, their mother, their wife, their daughter, their sister, and mourned.

ON THE PHONE, Madame is always the same. She gives her love to my mother, and I give my love to all her children, who are grown now, but in the beginning lined up one by one so she could put the receiver to their ears, one by one, to hear that I missed them.

She has never reproached me for my part in Baba's jail, or Nisrine's death. Perhaps she hears in my voice already the way these two faces give me sleepless nights, unspun days. Or, perhaps she is simply too busy; she's raised three children alone.

Over the years, Madame and I have learned again to laugh and tease. I have heard all about Lema's suitors, who began to come the year after I left, though Madame wouldn't let her marry until she turned eighteen. They sat in the parlor with Madame and Abudi while Lema served the tea. One of them was much older than Lema, twice her age, so she called him Uncle by mistake, but he still liked her. It became a joke between them, and now they have a son. Madame says motherhood has been good to Lema, she has grown very pretty. "What about you, Bea?" she asks. "Are you next?"

And I laugh to hide my discomfort. In Madame's country, I am very old already not to have a husband and child. Both of us know this.

Madame says, "I hope it's not anything you saw here, which discourages you," and I tell her it's not. Her house, I tell her, is where I learned about love. Having learned this, it's hard to settle for anything else.

So, Madame doesn't ask about husbands, and though I want to, I don't ask about Baba, because on the phone, we still don't mention husbands by name. Instead I wait, and trust that if there was news, if Baba was released, or if Madame was allowed to see him, then she would tell me. Two years after I left he was freed briefly, but he began his activities again and was rearrested.

The doc.u.ment he signed is now famous. A very brave declaration, it was one of the doc.u.ments that gave his fellow countrymen the courage to call for a new government. They are still calling for this.

As I write, Madame's country is at war, like much of the Middle East.

For the first year of the war, Madame stayed. When she and I talked on the phone, we each wanted to know what the other knew. She thought because I was American, I must have special information. I thought because she was there, she must have special information, but Madame stayed inside, and in America I stayed inside, and we both watched the same news.

In the second year of the war, it became difficult. There were shortages and price hikes. Abudi, who was sixteen, no longer a boy, reported men in long lines before bread ovens. Sometimes, he would go out in the morning for food and not get home until evening. Madame no longer had to skim cream off the top of the milk for Dounia's diet, the milk just came watery. There was no money. The children went out and wandered the old markets, but the markets were empty. Bombs fell where the family could feel them, and Abudi agitated to fight. He no longer went to school, he searched out soldiers in the streets and so, though Baba was still in jail, Madame decided they must leave. She lives now with Baba's sister and waits, like I do, for news of him. There is a note for him on the kitchen table, where Nisrine's notes and my notes used to sit. It's written on small lined paper in Madame's neat hand: Ha.s.san, leave the house. Be sensible, come for us. It stays there, hoping like we do, waiting for Baba's release.

THERE IS A VERSION of "Qais and Leila" in Farsi that I have found many American students know. In this version, the lovers never kiss, but they meet again in heaven, where they don't part, even for a moment; when one is hungry, they are both hungry, when one is tired, they both sleep, and so in the end, there is a merging and a reckoning, and this justice lasts for eternity.

How to trust that justice will be done?

There was an inquiry into Nisrine's death, but Madame's country has poor building codes, and so no one was found to blame. Still, many people felt bad. When she talked to Nisrine's sister, all Madame could say, over and over, was how sorry she was. Despite their sadness, the family continued to be gracious.

"What will you tell her child?" Madame asked.

On the phone, there was a pause. Then, the sister answered, "We will tell him that his mother is like any heroine."

The word, which means a maid who travels, and a house that moves, and the protagonist of an adventure.

"We will tell him she's on a long journey."

Now, Nisrine's son is almost twelve. I have written letters to him, and his aunt has helped him to write back. I imagine him, growing strong and firm like she was. I imagine the happiest life for him; patience like his grandfather's to buy flowers beside burnt buildings; strength like his mother's to travel to far-off places, to give up control of her child and her pa.s.sport, to love languages, even those forced upon her, to love Dounia and Adel, to love me, to love home.

I imagine her son, waiting patiently for his heroine-mother. Of course, he is older now. He knows that hers was a journey from which one can't return. If his family is religious, then they've tried to comfort him: You'll see her in the next life.

Even so, I imagine a small part of him still waits for her in this one. He knows she is gone, but can he ever truly stop hoping? If he can't, if he does wait, does hope, does watch for the end of a journey, birds like sooty fingerprints at the edge of the horizon-then, this is something he and I share.

Regardless, I imagine the happiest life for him. Nisrine believed in a G.o.d and a powerful fate. He won't forsake her child.

We both remember the story of the woman who once flew to the rainbow: if she can make it there, she can make it back.

THE SHEPHERD LOVED, and he lost, and out of his loss came words, because he had nothing else to give.

I have memory, and it follows me, but we don't choose our memories, only how we carry them, and so in an effort to carry differently, I write.

I never talked to Imad again; I suppose I am not as good at forgiving as Madame is. But, I do keep in touch with Adel. He called me soon after he recovered. Through the phone, I heard the same rough edge of guilt and sadness that I also felt, and though I worried for him, it comforted me. We cannot lessen each other's missing, but together we stave off its loneliness.

Like me, Adel has never married. In the aftermath of Nisrine, he wandered, lost. A policeman no more, he stayed squarely on the ground, walked low streets, but of course he thought only of what lay above, of a love on a high-up balcony. He found he no longer knew how to live beside other men, he was used to looking down on treetops, not up, and everywhere he turned he thought he saw her.

Eventually, Adel's father, who had taken away his son's first job without asking, also without asking found Adel another one. He enrolled his son in pilot school, and now Adel flies airplanes that carry mail.

In the end, this is a job he likes very much. He soars above the city, strapped with millions of words on thin pieces of paper. He no longer writes himself (after Nisrine, he has found he cannot) but he likes to handle other people's letters.

Anyway, he says his own decision to stop writing came not from death, but from love. He hasn't written a new poem since the day he met Nisrine in our little apartment, in the children's bedroom. He says that day, he learned a new kind of writing, and he hasn't wanted to go back to the old kind, since. I believe, though, that words became hard for him after her-when they became too hard, he gathered them up, and sent them all to me, the contents of a young life in a single box.

The astonishing text was a text of loss, and loss has defined my life, but I still sometimes take refuge in love. I linger among my books, and try to remember happier times, the excitement of small things I took for granted: Arabic Hair, Adel's blond wink through the window, Nisrine's hand in mine. I am comforted by the fact that she knew great loves in her life, before she left it; that she was able to grow her heart-by her example, I grew mine.

And I cannot help but be glad, too, that, though Qais and Leila met only in heaven, Nisrine and Adel did steal one precious afternoon (the one when we were locked in) on earth.

Let us return to that day. It is the day, Adel says, he found a new kind of writing.

He had just crossed our balcony's threshhold; they had just reunited up close, and run to the bedroom. I sat in the kitchen trying not to listen. Nevertheless, now, years later, I enter. Adel's letters lie here before me, allowing me to.

The bedroom was small, with a bunk bed, child-sized pencils, her mat on the floor. Among these objects, Adel stood for the first time, all alone, and faced the woman he loved.