A Word For Love Part 4

At Madame's, we watched the rallies from the window, and everyone wanted the best view. There was music and drumming. Dounia opened the window and almost hit Abudi in the head, which made him cry, even though he was nine, a big boy. Then Dounia almost cried, because she was so excited by the rallies.

There were men on the sidewalk, and the Quran playing. It blasted from boom boxes the men carried. Next, women came with their purses neatly on their arms and their good clothes on. They marched, arms linked, in simple scarves and low heels for a few minutes, before skipping out to go shopping. All the stores were open. The police had not blocked off the street. As people marched, they skipped between cars, flags sagging, and the buses were all diverted to bring people into the rallies, not out the other direction: these rallies were mandatory. You couldn't be seen on your balcony, it meant you weren't at the rally.

Madame's children wanted to join the rally. All their school friends were going. You could tell the schoolchildren in the crowd by their blue and pink shirts like bubble gum under gray uniforms.

I, too, wanted to join the rallies. I was excited, like the children. I listened and moved to the beat of drumming and dancing.

Baba was not watching the rallies; he was praying in the living room. His low chants mixed with the muted sound of rally slogans: G.o.d All-Knowing, in G.o.d's name.

At Madame's, we didn't go down to the rallies, but we watched them all the way up the street, and we followed them on TV.

Baba finished his prayers and sat down on the sofa between Lema and me. He made contented sounds at us, like a dove cooing.

"How does a dove coo in English, Bea?"

Madame came in. She sighed into a chair and smiled at us.

"Ooli, Beatrice. Didn't they teach you in America not to lie on sofas with strange men?"

"That girl's my daughter."

"No, she's not."

"I love her like one. OK, Lema-Baba, where were we?"

He began to talk about revolution. Madame hummed softly beneath his voice.

"The situation here is very hard," Baba said. "You see these rallies? They mean the government is worried. When the government is worried, you never know what will happen. There are times the police want me, I go out with my hands crossed before me. I give them my pa.s.sport. Take me."

It was very brave of him. In America, I never heard about policemen who came to get you for talking. My father and my friends' fathers never mentioned arrest as a normal thing, while their wives hummed softly, and after they'd just made sounds like doves cooing.

I sat on the sofa, feeling the adrenaline of revolution. It came in small acts with big meanings: people who broke small rules like driving Amo Nasir, the Nelson Mandela of this country, in their car. People who went to jail for little things, indiscretions. In this country, there was no habeas corpus. If the government decided you were a threat, then you could go to jail for years without knowing why, and without a trial. Baba had once been jailed that way. Here, it took big minds to commit indiscretions.

The resistance wasn't made up only of young boys, but old men. Old men who smoked in cars and grew wise, and sometimes let their wives and children care about the money and the work and their meals. Old men with children and wives like Amo Nasir's wife, Moni, and Madame, who never cared very much about resisting, but was resigned to it.

Recently, Baba and his friends had begun to talk about a new plan. They were frustrated with the government, which often threatened them and was occupying the neighboring country. This country's government did not allow free speech, but Baba and his friends had taken their frustrations and were in the process of writing them all down in a brave doc.u.ment calling for an end to censorship, and free elections. When it was done, they would publish this doc.u.ment, and each man would have to make his own decision about whether to sign it.

This put Baba in a dilemma. He believed in the doc.u.ment and wanted to sign, but he worried for Madame and the children.

The men were only writing their thoughts; they were not taking up arms, or plotting to overthrow the government. Still, here writing could be dangerous.

I heard Baba discussing it with Madame at night.

"Don't sign, Ha.s.san," she told him. "What would we do without you?"

"I can't be a coward."

"Yes, but think of the children. What would happen to us, if you were gone?"

Now, on the sofa, Lema said, "I want the people I love close to me."

Baba said, "That's not real love. Look at the Americans. They love, but they say, Go. Go far away, and I'll call you and I'll love you, but I let you go."

"The Americans don't love the way we do."

"But they do, Lema-Baba, they do. Would you rather I locked you in a closet to show you I love you? Your problem is you're young. Look at Bea, how much she sometimes cries, I miss Mama, I miss America. Look at Nisrine. I would cry, too, if I were Nisrine's age. But now if I left tomorrow, I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't even call you, maybe."

"Why not?"

"Because I am grown now. I don't think with my emotions, I think with my mind."

I had only been at Madame's a little while, but I knew the person who cried most in our apartment wasn't Nisrine or me, it was Lema, because she was a teenager and going through a phase.

Whenever I thought of crying, I thought of the astonishing text in the National Library. The text told the story of Qais and Leila, a legend that could be found in other books, too, but my professors always said the familiar content didn't matter, that it was the words themselves that gave this text its unique beauty. I imagined astonishing words spread out before me. I imagined crying, for a single word's beauty.

Here, when you loved someone, you called her by your name.

On the sofa, Baba chucked Lema under her chin. "What I want for you, Lema-Baba, is not to be a number. There are not one hundred bookbinders in this country, there are ninety-nine and Ha.s.san, you understand?"

Lema's father called her Baba, which was his name, and it showed he loved her like he loved himself. She was part of him as his own name.

JUST BEFORE BED, there was a phone call. Baba picked it up and stood for a moment, listening, then he went into the bedroom. We could hear him through the wall.

"They took Nasir."

"They took him?"

But we couldn't hear his answer.

Madame said, "I'll go see his wife tomorrow."

Baba came back into the living room, having changed out of his pajamas.

Madame said, "Nisrine, go fill up the water bottles."

So Nisrine, Lema, and I filled up the bottles before our water cut off for the night.

Baba had his shoes on, ready to go. Nisrine served him water from a bottle we'd filled. Then he bent to kiss each of us once and went out into the city. The air was hoa.r.s.e with winter stoves, and the dusky, moonlit sky the same flat gray as cement.

We sat up for a while waiting. When Baba didn't return, Madame locked the door and took the children to bed. Nisrine poured milk in a cup for Dounia to drink before she slept, but Dounia didn't want to. She held the small layer of fat around Nisrine's waist and sucked it like a breast.

"b.o.o.by."

"My Dounia," Nisrine said. "My baby, my baby, my baby." She took a teaspoon and fed Dounia the milk. "One gulp, one suck, Dounia. One gulp, one suck."

Madame came in. She said, "Nisrine, you're spoiling her."

We carried Dounia to bed. Nisrine took her hands, I took her feet to swing her, in fun.

Abudi was already tucked in. He filled the room with the soft smell of sleeping.

"b.o.o.by."

Because it was late, there was no noise outside on the street. We listened a moment for a car, but there was none.

Nisrine had mostly forgiven me for her hair, but there was still sometimes a strangeness between us.

I wanted to ask if she was worried about Baba.

She cuddled Dounia. When the little girl wouldn't go to sleep, Nisrine cooed, and told her a story. It was about the young heroine who could change into a bird.

By now, Dounia knew this story. "Tell me a different one."

"A different one?" Nisrine thought for a moment. Then, she said, "We had trouble in Indonesia when I was young, just like here. We had car bombs, too. And riots in the streets. One day, I woke up and our door was burned down."

"What did you do?"

"My father is a smart man. Like our Baba here, he's very intellectual. He went out and bought my mother flowers. He told me don't tell, it was his surprise. When he got home, my mother was sleeping. He snuck them through that burned door and put them in her wedding vase on the table, then he went to take a nap. My mother woke up and she didn't see them. She made dinner in the kitchen. She read on the front steps. My father woke up and she still didn't see them, until she set the table. Oh, there're flowers here. Who did that?' My father was in the bedroom, but they were his flowers, so I didn't answer. My mother said, Nisrine, who put these flowers here?' Like he'd never done that before. My mother went to the bedroom. Salem, there're flowers on the table.' Well, yeah,' my father said. My father is like that."

I imagined Nisrine: young, with a vase of flowers, an accomplice to her father.

Dounia didn't understand. "Why did he buy flowers?"

"To give us something to love," Nisrine told her. "He knew, even with a burned door, if he bought flowers we would have something growing. It's important to have that. Within you, too. That's why, here, I'm still trying to grow my heart." She gave a little laugh.

"Isn't your heart big enough already?"

"No, it won't grow. I keep trying. I need something to ground it."

"Like what?"

"A plant." She laughed again. "My father's flowers. Or, a man. Something to care for."

I asked, "What about Dounia?"

"I care for Dounia, don't I, Dounia?"

Dounia was almost asleep. Nisrine quietly kissed her.

What about her husband?

This question went unasked, and unanswered.

But, as if Nisrine could read my thoughts, she said, "You know my husband has funny feet? I remember when we were married, we both sat on the lap of my father; I looked down from my father's knee, and I saw my husband's feet stuck out in a funny position. I asked, Were your feet always like that?' I had been so busy looking in his face, I never noticed them before."

"Blinded by love!" I joked, which was sometimes how my mother explained the years she spent with my father.

Nisrine shrugged. She had loved her husband from a look. She was a maid in a house, he came to deliver a package. She saw him at the door and knew he was her fate, so she looked at him, and he loved her. Though, later there were problems.

"You loved just from a look?" I'd asked when she first told me.

I had never met anyone who loved just from a look.

I had read stories about heroines who loved that way.

I looked out at the police station.

Nisrine sighed. "I miss love, Bea. It's good to love, it makes you feel a part of something."

I had never been in love. I had liked men, but the ones I liked didn't always like me. I sat on the bed and thought about this fact, and about Nisrine, far away from her husband, in a house working for revolution, trying to grow her heart. I thought it had to do with how much she missed home; trying to miss it less, and care about here more. That way, she wouldn't lose a sense of herself while she was away. Like me, I thought, Nisrine wanted to feel deeply.

"Nisrine, how do you grow your heart?"

"I don't know."

In the dark bedroom, she and I both leaned against the headboard, feeling for our hearts. Then, Nisrine took my hand and put it over hers.

"I can't feel it, can you?"

So, through her hand and her chest, I felt for Nisrine's heart. It was true, the beat was hard to find. We both knew it was there.

"It's because here is so small, every day is the same."

"Do you think you'll find a way to grow it?"

"I don't know, I hope so. I have to, to want to stay."

I hoped so, too. Nisrine had a contract; it seemed to me, she had little choice in when to leave, and she was saving up money to send her child, and for a house. Still, I hoped she and I would both find reasons to stay, and large hearts.

IN THE MORNING, Baba was still gone, and so the walls of the apartment closed in on us, one by one. First it was the fake window in the bathroom. There were no windows in the bathroom, but we'd hung a curtain over the water stain to pretend. First that got to us. Then slowly the ceiling and the squat door frames, until we smirked sourly like Nisrine smirked when she was mad at Madame, as if at our own terrible, private joke that was not at all funny but we laughed anyway, until finally after breakfast we really laughed, because Baba came home.

A GROWING HEART. I set out to find a way to grow my heart; that is, to feel more, and to find more things to love.

I looked for this first in the small things. I took time to appreciate the Milo we drank in the mornings, the richness of the chocolate and cream.