Amira because of how she thought. Amira because she was capable of being wildly goofy one moment and poised the next, and he could never figure out how she moved from one self to the other so effortlessly. Amira because no room was lit until she entered it. Amira because if it would not be Amira, it would be no one. She had the aura and confidence of someone who was so beloved by all who knew her that it emanated from her even when she was alone, and any stranger who came across her could not help falling under a spell she had no awareness of casting.
“Maybe it’s not a flawed system—just one that will not work for me.”
“Has it caused a fight?” he speaks at last.
She looks down at her hands and reaches for another grape. She bites only half and wipes away the juice on her lip with a knuckle, and he can tell she is being careful with her words. “Baba is hurt because it is his oldest friend’s son, and I am not even considering it.”
“Did they ask why?”
“I told them I am not ready. I am not at a place where I can decide.”
She turns to him and gives him a wistful smile.
“Have you signed up for your classes yet? Do you know how many credits you need this semester to transfer quickly?” Her voice is lighter, there is a strained hopefulness to it.
He has not. He nods yes. His fourth lie that summer. But it wasn’t a lie—or at least not a malicious one. And it did not count as a lie if he simply withheld information. Like the nights he still snuck out to go to parties at his friends’ houses. She would be hurt if she knew. She never judged him or admonished him but she did express wanting a future in which he wouldn’t, and she had begun to assume, and he allowed her to continue to believe, that since they had become more serious he did not really drink and did not smoke anymore either. In some ways that was true. In the months after Abbas died, before he and Amira acknowledged what was happening between them, he would leave the house in the middle of the night with only the intention of altering his state as quickly as he could, any way that he could, anger driving him there, God knows what pulling him back. Now, he seldom drank and weed was just a way to feel how his mind zipped through a moment or slowed to focus in on it.
There is the sound of a branch snapping and she turns. She is skittish whenever they are together, even when they know no one will come. The repercussions are always worse for a woman. He decided long ago that he did not care who he disappointed, how tarnished his reputation was, or even how it would reflect on his family. If it was between his reputation and another afternoon by her side, he would choose the afternoon. But he waited in fear of the moment it would occur to Amira that for her the stakes were different, that the community gaze would not be as forgiving.
This is the summer Abbas has been buried for over two years, but Amira’s loss still strikes her and there is nothing he can say, nothing he can do but give her space to speak of it.
“I cheated in Scrabble,” she had said once, “and swore I hadn’t, and Abbas Bhai held me down as a joke, because Saif and Kumail were so mad I won, and he said, swear you didn’t cheat? Swear? I had been careless and stupid, I had picked the q and the z and the k and the x and the j too, I think, and I said I swear I didn’t I swear I didn’t, and he believed me and released me. Do you think he knows now that I lied to him? That he has access to knowing things like that wherever he is?”
“I don’t know,” Amar had replied. “But to be honest, I’m sure he knew it as you were denying it. No one can get the q and the z and the x and the j.”
She laughed. Only when she spoke of Abbas did she avoid looking at him. And only when seeking to comfort her could he look directly at her. He shares with her too. She has become the one to whom he confesses the fights with his father, the fights that make him want to leave, to forget that he ever came from this family, and she quiets his anger with a brief touch of her hand on his arm. She tries to tell him that what he feels is not all anger, that one day that anger will burn out and he will be left with what he can’t see right now: a sadness, an ache. Amar dismisses this, even as he hopes it might be true.
Loving Amira was not just loving a young woman. It was loving a whole world. She was of the same world he had been born into but had only ever felt himself outside of, and sitting by her was the closest he came to feeling harmony with his own home.
Their bodies are so close, their arms almost touching. And if they do touch it is accidental, or it’s a hug to comfort her or say good-bye or move the hair from her eyes—he never dares ask for more. Once it occurred to him that she was not ready, that she was not used to thinking of her body as hers, he made a point to not extend even the slightest touch that might cause her sadness or guilt later. She had had years of being told that there would be nothing more shameful than to follow the desires of the body, that any impulse was the devil’s temptation. She would have to decide what she believed for herself, what she wanted for herself. He would never ask her to think about it for him, never even try to reach over and kiss her. He would wait, follow her cue.
“I want to tell you why I wanted us to come here,” he says. He leans forward and brushes the hair from her eyes. She looks at him and then away every time he does. He has a sudden, sickening feeling that they will not be back here, not together.
“I’ve come here before, when I was very little.”
He rises to his feet and asks her to walk with him. She stands and brushes off her jeans, tugs her shirt to straighten it over her hips. Weeds scrape against their legs. Today, the birds circle around the sun and the cold comes sooner than they’d like. He looks to her to commit her to memory: how she hugs her body, how she has pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail that sways as they walk down the hill. Soft dirt comes loose as they walk. They follow a small path and soon they are at the river. The water has risen. It moves forcefully around large rocks and over the surface of others.
“This is where I remember being the most happy,” Amar says, pointing out at the water. He removes his shoes and socks and rolls up his jeans and steps in. It is cold. It feels wonderful. He looks back at her and she gives him a certain look, a blend of courage and tenderness, a look, he hopes, a woman wears when she is falling in love.
“I always thought we came here because it was tucked away from the traffic, far from anyone we knew. And because it was beautiful.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t remember why, exactly, I just know I felt so happy here. This tree,” he points to a tree behind her, then gestures at the river, “this water. I only have a vague memory, but sharp enough to be sure it was this place. In high school, I went to every park near my home where there was a creek, in search of here. I didn’t tell anyone in my family. I asked strangers who might know it. The librarian at my school. I looked at a map. When I finally found it, it was like stepping into an old dream.”
He is silent then. She watches him. She does not ask any questions. He looks out at the cuts of water, how jagged it is, how fast it is moving, how it gushes around the rocks, how the sunlight catches to highlight every peak.
“My mother and me. I asked her to join me in the river, and she did. I remember she did.”
* * *