“No, not bad at all,” Huda says quickly.
Hadia shoots her a look. The kind of look he has always been bothered by, the look of their secret language, but right now it does not annoy him and when they turn to him again they both look a little like their mother. Hadia asks what happened. He thinks of the gray light. Of Grant’s smile with his head tilted back. And how he could not break free of Brandon’s grip on him. How there was a moment, after kicking and kicking, when he relaxed, let it happen, how it was easier after that exhaling, after telling himself to allow anything. Grant’s bruised fists and Mark’s bloody mouth. And how Amar threw up after they dropped him, and kicked him, and walked out, how he was shaking as though a violent wind had passed through the room, how he kept spitting blood, tiny bubbly pools on the cement floor. How he thought he was going to cry. But he did not cry, not until Mrs. Rose pointed a finger at his chest, where it did not hurt, and said, you are a brave young man.
“Who did it?” Huda says. Her eyes burn like she is ready to fight.
“Three boys from my school. I don’t know them that well.”
“Why?”
Amar tells them they told him to go back to his country. He does not say that he threw the first punch. Or that Mark was among them. He especially does not say what was suggested about their father. It would make it all worse somehow. Huda leaves to get him ice. Something makes Amar feel as if they are all young again, as if they have come together to play a game.
* * *
THAT SUMMER THEY meet in places enchanted, if only because there they are alone. Some afternoons on nearly empty library floors, in sections hardly frequented, paused between shelves, Amira holding a book in her hand so no one would doubt she was there to research for a project. They discover bridges where no cars they know cross, and the tunnels below them with their long shadows and walls covered in graffiti. If they are feeling particularly bold, they meet in a booth at a restaurant no community member would visit—not many vegetarian options and a too-large bar. Each place becomes their place, their secret, imbued with the tenderness and excitement of knowing this is the extent they will go to just to see one another.
On rare days, when they have hours to spend, Amar suggests a meadow near a secluded park. Their spot is past the swings and monkey bars, past rows and rows of trees; beneath a sycamore tree that looks out at a stretch of grass that eventually descends to reach a small river. They compose excuses for their families, bring food to offer one another, sweatshirts to sit on, stories they have saved and are now eager to share. Amira’s mother is on a day trip to meet with vendors who sell her clothes, so no one will know Amira is not home until just after sunset, when her father will return from work. Amar thrives on the thrill of approaching their meeting spot and the magic of being by her that never dulls. The park was a long and winding bike ride for her, but she was happy when he suggested it. “I love watching you here,” she had said to him once, “the way you carry yourself. The way you speak. The things you think to speak of. You’re happy.”
Today, she peeks her head out from behind their tree as he approaches. He does not call out her name, she would be angry if he did, so he lifts his hand to salute her, and her laughter catches on a breeze to reach him. She has set up a fleece blanket, placed rocks on the four corners to keep it from lifting, a plastic container full of blackberries and green grapes, another one of baby carrots. There is a drop of blackberry juice beneath her bottom lip. He grabs a baby carrot and sets down his own contribution: two plastic forks and a pasta salad he spent an hour making after reading three different recipes and combining what seemed like the best parts of them.
“Mumma and Baba came to me with a proposal last night,” Amira says when there is a lull in their conversation. She looks down at her hands, rolls a grape between her thumb and index finger.
“I said no, of course.”
She looks up at him quickly and then away. It isn’t her first proposal and it won’t be her last. She is young—only seventeen—but it was not unusual for a girl like Amira to have a future spouse secured by eighteen. The proposals were usually from young men older than Amar and much more accomplished—doctors or lawyers—from wealthy and well-connected families with untarnished reputations. He knew how it worked. His sisters had spent years thwarting their own proposals, Hadia excused now only because she was in medical school, and Huda because she insisted on waiting for Hadia. He lifts a nearby twig and snaps it in two, and then in four, and tries to snap it into eighths but it is too small.
Amira offers him a palmful of blackberries but he is no longer hungry. He catches a falling leaf in his hand, tucks it into his pocket. He will put it in his antique keepsake box when he goes home. Once the box was filled with basketball cards and his journals, but now it is filled with mementos of Amira, all her letters and some photographs. It is a risk to keep any record. But the box has a lock and he has hidden it deep inside his closet.
It is terrifying to be reminded that the only thing standing between this moment—where his whole body still buzzes just from having walked up to her—and that blow—her life with another person, her destiny determined so irretrievably—is her continued decision to refuse these proposals.
Every time Amira came to him with news about a suitor, he grew quiet, regardless of whether she was complaining or joking, or describing the disorder that ensued when she said no. When they first began meeting regularly, deepening the way they felt about each other, Amar promised her he would come to her doorstep when he had made himself into the kind of man her father would seek for her.
“I will do it the right way,” he told her. “It will be right for you, for us, and they won’t suspect we have loved each other.”
She sometimes felt that they had made a mistake—rushing forward into their secret the way they had—that it would have been better not to sin, not to deceive, and that God might have looked kindly upon them if they kept Him and their parents in mind, and would have bestowed on them a good qismat, a happy destiny. She was betraying her parents by being loyal to him, risking their dishonor by joining him here. But he assured her it would all be made right, wanting only to have as much time with her as he could. She looked at him with an expression of such certainty, such belief, even though he was not sure he could pull it off—go through community college, transfer to a good school, force himself to study something he did not want to and did not know if he could do well at, get a promising and respectable job. But he would try, because it would be his best chance at winning her parents over, because then it would mean he had not broken his promise to her.
“I don’t know how others do it,” she was saying now. “I would never want to get married like that. To someone who just saw a picture of me and sent a proposal—who has already made his decision and it doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do, what I say or don’t say, he’s just going to accept it. I want it to be me because of me. Me because of what I have said and done and thought. I want it to be him not because of his job or good family but because of how he thinks about the world, how he moves through it. And how we feel about each other.”