SHE IS IN the living room when she hears the arguing: Amar and Baba, though she can’t make out their words. She sets her mug down. She had told Baba he could not get angry. She had made it absolutely clear. They needed to proceed carefully, thoughtfully. She looks back at Mumma, who has been preparing dinner in the kitchen, and Mumma has also heard. They meet each other’s gaze and it is clear neither knows if they should run upstairs and separate them. Mumma sets down the bowl, massages the back of her neck.
Then there is the sound of a loud crash: the thud of a body hitting a wall, a human noise that chills her because it sounds so animal, then glass crunching, and another crash Hadia imagines is a frame falling to the floor. Hadia thinks she will be sick. Mumma rushes past Hadia and up the stairs, and Hadia stands absolutely still, not wanting to climb the steps and look her father in the eye, not now that he has revealed himself to be a man who cannot control his anger even in the face of so fragile a moment.
When she finally does climb the stairs, Baba is standing in the hallway, a dazed look on his face. Amar’s chest is heaving, he stares unfocusedly at the carpet, all the scattered glass. She was right: it had been the sound of the large frame falling to the floor. Mumma kneels to pick up the shards of glass, drops them one by one into her cupped hand.
Mumma is the only one who speaks, her voice so hoarse and unsteady it frightens Hadia. “Enough of this now. I’ve had enough.”
* * *
IT IS ALMOST dawn when she is woken by the sound of a closet door being opened and the creak of Amar’s floor.
“What are you doing?” she whispers when she opens his door and sees him, though it is clear what he is doing: he grabs shirts and jeans, he discards some clothes on the floor and throws others into a black duffel bag. After he has finished rummaging through the drawers, from bottom to top, and left them open like a thief, he takes a step back, rests one hand on his neck, and scans his room as if checking what else to take.
“You know I can’t stay here anymore.” He speaks with his back to her.
She shuts the door gently behind her, intending to reach out and touch his shoulder, pick up the clothes from the floor, and return them to the drawers, but she stops herself. What surprises her is that this is a moment she recognizes. Not that she has seen this sight. But that maybe she has always feared that one day this is how he would react, that there would come a time when there were words exchanged and actions executed that neither he nor their father could recover from. And maybe there is a part of her, cruel and unforgiving, that has been waiting for Amar to realize what she has sensed all along: that there is no place for him in their home.
Amar looks wildly around the room. He is trembling. Very soon it will be time for fajr. Just a day ago she had returned at this hour and thanked God for the sight of him sleeping. Now she wonders if she was called home not to intervene but to say good-bye. She takes a seat on Amar’s unmade bed, pulls a pillow toward her, and wraps her arms around it. Amar kneels on the floor and zips his duffel bag. He puts on the jacket with the ripped inside pocket. He grabs his backpack, steps up to his window and touches the surface of his windowsill.
When he finally turns away he takes a seat beside her. They do not speak. He seems at this moment so much taller than she.
“Tell them I went for a run if they ask.”
Only Amar would think a lie like that would be believed. Her pride or fear keeps her from asking when he will return.
“At night, if they ask where I am, tell them I am staying at a friend’s house for a few days. When they want to look for me tell them I’ve left. I’ve moved. I’m not coming back. I’m sorry, Hadia, but can you do this for me?”
She will come up with what to tell them herself, but even so she repeats his steps. Gone for a run, gone to a friend’s house, gone to a new city. Moved, not coming back, leaving them, leaving her.
“Hadia,” he says, and his hand grips the strap of his backpack so tightly it looks like he is forming a fist.
She shakes her head. She does not want to hear his explanation, does not want to be convinced he is right to do this.
“What are you waiting for? If you’re really going to go.”
She speaks so sharply she surprises herself. And it has worked: she has hurt him. But there is something about the determined look in his eyes that hurts her more, something that tells her he is serious, that there will be no dissuading him. Once she glimpses her fear, she follows it to its worst conclusion, and now she wonders, What if this is the last time I see my brother?
“We both know what it is you are doing,” she says, kindly this time. “Do you think leaving will help you? That if you leave you can have a healthier—”
She stops. She had thought his face would harden. But he considers her words.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But if I stay, I’ll only continue to hurt them.”
He watches her profile. Soon the dark outside will begin to blue.
“You should go before they wake for fajr,” she whispers.
Amar nods. He has been waiting for her to give him permission. Her words are enough for him to know she will do what he has asked of her. He stands and lifts his duffel bag.
“You have a plan?” she asks. “A place in mind?”
“I’ll be okay.”
She has no more money to offer him.
“You will call me? If you ever need anything.”
He nods and twists his mouth. He looks like a boy afraid, having made a decision he does not know how to execute. He stands in the doorway with his backpack hanging over one shoulder.
“If I could make myself change, Hadia, I would. If I could be like you, or Huda, if I had a choice, I would change in an instant.”
“I know, Amar.”
“I know it is hard for them. But it is hard for me too.”
“Maybe it will be easier where you’re going. Or maybe it will get easier for all of us in a few months, or years.”
He smiles a little. She does too. Then they are quiet again. She can tell he is stalling, that there is something he is trying to find the words for.
“You’ll take care of them?” he finally asks.
She knows what he is asking of her, to be there for their parents not only in the aftermath of his departure, but also in the distant future—and isn’t this exactly what she had wanted as a girl: to be the one they depended on, for there to be no difference between daughters and sons? Now she cannot even look at him as she nods. She blinks and blinks and refuses to let herself cry. She tells herself that when he leaves, she will not go to the window as she has before. Will not want to watch him get into whichever car has come for him, knowing he hasn’t asked her to leave his window open. She’ll fall asleep in his bed, and Amar will continue on with the friend she doesn’t know, on his way to the city he doesn’t offer to name. There is no time for him to walk out beneath the Quran. And she does not know if he would even care to. But still, she steps forward, raises her finger a little and asks, “May I?”
He nods. He ducks a little so she can reach and then closes his eyes. She traces it slowly, tries to get the Arabic exactly right, wishes she knew the prayer her mother would whisper to accompany the gesture. He does not flinch. He looks peaceful, even. Please God, she begins her own prayer.
9.