A Word For Love Part 5

But, though I tried this, Baba's late nights got in the way of the Milo, for me.

Living here, there were certain things you learned about dictatorship. Everyone knew that the only newspaper was the government's newspaper, and the only telephone company was the government's company, as well as the bus company and the oil company. Even the language school was government run. I was not to say anything bad about the president to our neighbors, or the bus drivers, or the phone operators, because they all worked for the president, who was the former president's son.

There was only so much you could say under a dictatorship, and so there was lots of silence, and that was why the TV was always on. The president's picture was in every shop, and on our mantel, and all the billboards. Sometimes a policeman followed me when I was walking because I was foreign, but it didn't matter because danger came in talking, not walking, and so if I was silent, then he was my safety. I could walk past large groups of men at three a.m. and it wouldn't matter because he was there, and he was always watching. I learned that here there was no Facebook or YouTube, and that if we got Facebook or YouTube (as in the past few years this country had gotten cell phones and Internet), then it would be because the government had found a way to monitor Facebook (as it monitored my Internet), and so I must not post provocative statements about the depressed economy. I learned that the walls had ears, and so did the neighbors, and because I was foreign, I was especially suspect, so I must compensate by always saying how much I loved this country, and the neighbors would compensate by always trying to engage me to their sons for citizenship, and I should never, ever tell them that I was scared because Amo Nasir gave an interview and now he was in jail, and there'd been talk of a secret doc.u.ment, and phone calls in the night, and these things were small, but we felt their danger. Baba left without telling us where he was going, or when he would return.

Madame said, "Bea needs something to do. She's restless because she's bored."

And she gave me the chicken to clean.

I stood in the kitchen, peeling away the skin of the chicken in small pieces, while Lema held back my bangs so I could see. Lema said, "Bea wants to study. The university still hasn't called her."

Madame said, "You want to study, Bea? I'll be your tutor. I correct you all the time. You should be paying me!"

I said, "No, thank you. I'll find my own tutor."

But Madame called up Baba anyway, to ask him for suggestions.

On the phone, Baba thought this request was very funny. He joked, "I hear Arabic tutors have many girlfriends."

Madame said, "What's the matter with that, dear?"

"I mean girlfriends in the English sense, dear."

But, he promised to look for me.

In the meantime, Madame sent me out to the National Library for a second try, just to see.

She said, "Come back soon, Bea. If you come back in the afternoon, I might fall asleep, and then you'll be stuck, who'll open the door?"

I walked along streets littered with paper and lost shoes from the rallies.

At the library, the same woman behind the desk greeted me. I was trying to grow my heart, so I said h.e.l.lo very nicely, and wrote down a request for the astonishing text. Then, I got out a book from my purse so I could read while I waited, but the librarian stopped me.

"No outside books."

"This is a library. It's a place for books."

"Not in the waiting area." She meant the cage.

"Then what will I do while I wait?"

"You can recite books."

Here, children memorized books. Girls Dounia's age could recite the whole Quran.

I hadn't memorized any books. The librarian was surprised.

"None?" She didn't know what to do about this. "Then use your imagination. You must have an imagination, you read."

I waited in the cage all day without a book, trying to use my imagination. At the end of the day, the librarian came to the cage, empty-handed, to let the scholars and me out.

When I got home, Madame was disappointed: a second time failed.

"Did you flirt, Bea? Did you give them a gift?"

"No."

She shook her head. "What did you expect, that they'd give you a book for free?"

I hadn't heard from the university, and I was having trouble with the library.

So instead, Madame sent me down to the garden with Dounia and Abudi. We could see from the window the garden was almost empty, that was why she let us go. "Don't talk to anyone," she said, because of Baba's revolution, while we waited for the elevator, which was slow and crippled and wheezing without a door so you could see the cement walls and each floor as you went down. "Don't tell anyone where we live. Come back up right away if there are too many children."

There was only a woman and her little girl in the garden. Dounia and Abudi ran around the swing set at once, brushing the dirt off the seats. Then they each took a swing, and began twisting.

The other little girl took the swing between them and said h.e.l.lo. Dounia and Abudi looked at me. We weren't supposed to talk to anyone. They all swung around some more, on their bellies. They twisted and untwisted in a line, facing me.

The other little girl said, "What's your name?"

Abudi looked at me. I didn't say anything. I took out my book, and began to read.

"What's their name?" the little girl asked.

I said, "Abudi."

She said, "Abudi."

Abudi looked at me.

They all swung in a row, facing out. The little girl asked, "How old are you?" They were all between four and nine. Dounia asked, "Is your mom veiled?" The little girl said yes, she's over there. No one looked where she'd pointed, they all faced out, toward me. In the margins of my book, I doodled Arabic. I made a perfect B.

Dounia said, "Who'll play on the slide with me?"

All three of them ran over to the slide. Instead of sliding, they picked up used straws. I told them not to put those in their mouths. They told me they'd only draw with them. I said those are very dirty. They put them down. They picked them up again. I said, if they were going to play like that, we'd have to leave. I hoped Madame wasn't watching from the window, because we still weren't supposed to talk to anyone, and Dounia was going to tell for sure that we played with straws and talked to a little girl, but then a man's voice came from behind me.

"Don't play with those, baba, give them to me."

I turned around.

It was Adel, the blond policeman.

I felt a warming in my stomach and my knees.

He walked over to the sandbox and collected the children's straws, firmly. Then he turned and dropped them in my lap.

"We don't let children play with straws here," he said, "they're dirty."

Adel stood at the bench looking down, very close to me. The only time we'd been closer was when Nisrine and I gave him apples. His leather jacket was open to a vest with bra.s.s stars. Underneath, he wore a white T-shirt, like the ones Abudi wore at night to sleep. A single blond curl peeked out from the shirt's neck.

He was looking at my book, which was still open in my lap.

"Where are you from?" he asked. "America?"

"Yes, America."

The children clumped to one side of the sandbox to watch us. They sat with their bodies facing the street and their mouths open.

Adel said, "I have a cousin in Wisconsin. You know Wisconsin?"

We weren't supposed to talk to anyone. I was trying hard not to talk to him, but everything he said made me want to agree. Like he had just asked me out to a movie, or Friday night coffee- "Yes, Wisconsin," I said, trying to look serious for the children.

"You might be neighbors."

I had never been to Wisconsin.

"Yes, we might!" I agreed.

The policeman smiled down at me. He had little dimples in his cheeks, like stars.

"What's your name?"

"Bea."

"You write Arabic, Bea? I've never met an American who writes Arabic."

In their box, the children ran their fingers through the sand, bunching it up, letting it fall from their fists like rain.

Adel sat down on the bench beside me.

"I write, too," he said. "I write poetry."

"You do?"

He took my book, turned the page, and wrote a word down in the margin.

"This is what I write for the girl I love, do you know it?"

Later, I would know this word. I would know that it was often used in poems in the Middle Ages, and it comes from the root ayn-sheen-qaf, which means the deepest feeling.

I didn't know it then.

Adel told me, "It means a poet's love."

I couldn't believe my luck. Here I was, trying to mind Madame's children, and suddenly I was talking about love with the blond policeman. I thought of Nisrine, whose husband had loved her with a look. I tried to look at Adel; his face was wide and sunny, it burned a hole right through my chest. So, I looked instead at the word he'd written. Its letters lined up soft and full by the printed page. They curved close to one another, like an embrace.

I didn't know where to look after that thought.

I said, "Your writing is very pretty."

"It's pretty? Your eyes are the pretty. The Arabic language is very deep, there are ninty-nine words for love alone in Arabic, did you know that?"

I felt my red cheeks.

Adel didn't seem to notice. He wrote another word in the margin, then he took out a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was a verse of poetry.

"Can you read it?" he asked.

Carefully, I took the paper from him.

To My Flower, the Jasmine, it read. Peace to the one with hair like dusk falling. Even her Sweat smells Sweet.

"Can you guess who it's about?" Adel asked.

There was a strange feeling in my throat.

"A girl with dark hair?"

I had light hair- But before Adel could answer, we heard a shout from above.

"Bea! Abudi!" It was Madame. She had seen the children playing with straws, and she had seen me talking to the policeman.

I stood up. "I have to go."

Adel stood up, too. "It was nice to meet you, Bea." He held out his hand and for a moment our fingers touched, and then the children and I were running away across the street.

In the elevator on the way up, the children and I were giddy. We shared our recklessness in talking to a policeman and sucking on used straws, two great secrets. Abudi said, "Bea, Dounia used to be scared to go up the elevator alone. She used to be too small to reach the b.u.t.tons."

There was sand everywhere, on all of us, and I was trying to brush it off. I turned Dounia around to brush her backside. I ran my fingers through my hair and the pages of my book, and the paper with the policeman's poem fell out.

Abudi stopped me.

"What's that?"

I picked it up. In my rush, I'd forgotten to give it back to him. For a moment, my finger lingered over the letters.

This is what I write for the girl I love.