A Word For Love Part 6

"Nothing." We were already in trouble. I searched my pocket for change. "Here, Abudi. Don't tell your mother. Get yourself a treat."

MY SECRET POEM.

It stayed all day in my pocket, while Madame looked us over and p.r.o.nounced us dusty; while we rolled up our pant legs and our sleeves, and trooped carefully through the clean house so Nisrine could help us wash on the balcony.

In the evening, while the children got ready for bed, I helped Nisrine dry the dishes, and afterwards, I slipped out the poem, smoothed it across my leg like he had, and laid it before her.

"What's this, Bea?"

We both bent over it. Nisrine reached out to trace the letters. I reached with her. There was something about the poem that made you want to touch it.

"It's pretty," she said. The paper was thin and gauzy. When we held it up to the light, it glowed. "It's beautiful."

I thought so, too.

"It's special. Who wrote it?"

There was a noise behind us. Lema came in. Nisrine had been holding the poem. She handed it to me, and I tried to slip it quickly under a dish towel, but it was too late. Lema had already seen it.

"What's that, Bea?"

Reluctantly, I held it out for her. There was a smudge of ink in one corner, and I dabbed it carefully with my finger. Lema leaned on my shoulder and read the poem out loud, while we listened.

"To my flower, the jasmine. Peace to the one with hair like dusk falling.'"

"It's pretty," she said. "Where did you find it?"

I was hesitant. "The garden."

"Look at its perfect letters. The poet's quite a Qais." Meaning, it was a deep poem. Lema continued reading. "Even her sweat smells sweet.'" She looked up. "That's strange. No girl's sweat smells sweet."

At Madame's, we all used the same deodorant, so we all smelled the same: the first days after our baths, we were sweet; after that, we became stinky. When I lifted my arms before the mirror, I could see salty half-moon marks, which were the same marks I saw on Nisrine's pajama shirts and I had begun to see on Lema's dirty bras. This was how I knew Lema was growing. She was no longer a flat line beside me beneath the covers at night; she grew round, her hips stuck out.

In Arabic, the word for a woman's sweat is arak, from the root ayn-ra-qaf, which is also the name of a liquor made from dates or anise seed. The date liquor is bitter. It's clear like sweat, but burns when you swallow.

Baba kept a bottle of arak behind his fresh-bound books in the closet. He used it in his factory, to warm his men in winter. They took small sips from porcelain cups, like tea.

Baba once gave me some arak as a joke, and laughed when I coughed. Now, I could still call up the burning feeling; it pierced and pulsed like the poem did, arak, arak-or, like Adel did, a warm insistence that spread through my limbs like sun.

Lema traced the letters. "Do you think it's about Nisrine?" she asked.

I had been thinking about arak. I thought I hadn't heard Lema.

"What?"

Lema said, "Hair like dusk falling.' Nisrine has dark hair."

I glanced at Nisrine. Her eyes were very bright. Her hand rose absently to her veil, and then she remembered. And I remembered. The flat back of her veil, where her bun used to be.

There was a moment of silence, while I tried not to care that Nisrine had dusk hair, and she seemed to be trying not to care that I had cut it.

The moment pa.s.sed.

Lema handed the poem back to me.

I couldn't stop looking at Nisrine's bright eyes, which would not meet mine; they followed the poem.

Reluctantly, I waved it toward her. "Do you still want to see this?"

"No, you can keep it."

So, I put it away in my book.

Madame came in and said it was time for bed.

After we brushed our teeth, I lay beside Lema, her leg against my leg, my arm up against her arm, thinking.

"Bea," she asked, "what do you know about men?"

I didn't know much. When I imagined having a boyfriend, I had always imagined someone who knew both Jane Eyre and Ibn Arabi.

Lema said, "I had a boyfriend once."

"You did?"

"Yes, he was very sweet, he got me a stuffed soccer ball with a heart sewed on it. I had to lie to my mother about where I found it. He broke up with me, though, when he found out who my father is."

She meant when he found out her father worked for revolution.

I said, "I think your father is very brave."

"He is," Lema said. She paused. The station lights came through the window. "Sometimes, though, I don't want a brave father. Sometimes, I'd rather have a boyfriend."

I THOUGHT ABOUT THE POEM, and wondered who it was for, and carried it around in my pocket, but I found no more chances for conversation with the blond policeman, and I had no new ideas about the dusk-haired girl.

We still weren't supposed to talk to anyone. Baba worked for revolution. There was trouble on the streets.

But it was hard not to talk. Everyone was curious about Americans and I didn't want to be impolite, so I talked with a neighbor in the elevator who wanted to engage me to her eldest son.

"Where do you live?" she asked.

I pushed the fifth-floor b.u.t.ton. I said in perfect Arabic, "Madame's."

An hour later, the woman knocked on our door. She'd brought her son.

I hid in the bedroom.

"American?"

Even Nisrine was scandalized. "Bea, mothers-in-law won't bring you love."

In the hall, we could hear Madame. "Shoo, get out. She doesn't want to marry you. Go on."

After that, I wasn't allowed to tell people I lived at Madame's.

"They're nosey. They don't need to know. If they ask, tell them you're a governess."

"A governess?"

"But you leave at night, you don't stay."

"So, where do I live?"

Madame looked at me, exasperated. "For G.o.d's sake, Bea. You're American. Tell them you live alone."

There was a list of things I wasn't allowed to do: Go down to the garden with the children. I might come back married.

Do my own laundry; I mixed the whites with the colors and turned my sweater pink.

Stay out late.

Wear my shoes on the carpet.

Say the word "G.o.d" in the bathroom.

Play with the children when they should go to bed.

Wear the traditional scarf for men.

Drink from Abudi's purple cup.

WHEN I FIRST CAME TO THIS CITY, it was all in color. The green points of the mosques at night, the bright seeds of the pomegranates that Nisrine split and peeled like rubies for me to eat. This city seemed to me like Arabic; how many words I learned, those were all the shades of color I could see.

After the colors, though, I began to see the dirt. It was wedged between my fingernails, gray and muted green.

I began to feel dirt, caught between my teeth with the pomegranate seeds.

In my American college, I had learned to be thoughtful and value good scholarship. I knew how to read a work of literature and isolate a theme, and I thought one way of becoming wise could be by reading books.

When I first arrived at Madame's, I had thought that my long days in the house would be temporary. I planned to gain a university and a tutor, and eventually to read the astonishing text.

Of course, I was beginning to realize that what had seemed like simple goals were actually quite difficult. Even for citizens, this country did not work quickly. I thought of my friends in their college cla.s.ses, the meaningful discussions they must be having.

At Madame's, I began to sneak small freedoms: Extra paper in the bathroom. A sip, when Madame wasn't looking, from Abudi's purple cup.

Nisrine had said, It's good to love, it makes you feel a part of something.

I had wanted to be a part.

But, the poem had brought back the strangeness between us.

To make up for cutting Nisrine's hair, I went out and bought two bottles of perfume, one for Madame, one for Nisrine. Madame took both of them. They were both the same size.

"Don't worry, Bea, I'll find something you can give her." And she rummaged in her closet for a cheaper gift to give me, to give Nisrine.

At the end of the month, there was a polite fight about paying rent.

"No no, I couldn't," Madame said.

"You must, you must."

"You're like family."

"You must, you must. I insist!"

I wanted to pay. With Madame, paying was how I still felt free.

ONCE A MONTH, I took out money from the American emba.s.sy, and when I did, I was supposed to bring back a bottle of whiskey for Baba and a box of Virginia Slims for Madame, from the emba.s.sy store. But then one day, before I could give Baba his whiskey, Madame took it and gave it to Nisrine, who hid it, and this was how I knew things had changed. Another of Baba's friends was taken and beaten. Baba called often now to tell us not to wait on him for dinner, he wouldn't be home.

We lay widthwise across the bed, talking.

Nisrine said, "I don't think Lema will ever marry. Husbands are too depressing."

Madame looked at her. "Nonsense, it's just my luck. Her luck will be better."

I asked, "Would you marry again, Nisrine?"

"I can't, I'm already married."

I was still making up to Nisrine. "Isn't he waiting for you?"

"Yes, he waits for me. He doesn't care for my child. My mama cares for my child."

Madame said, "That's just the way men are. They can't do the caring. They give you money."