Seema’s mouth is open and she appears completely shocked—maybe assessing if Layla is telling the truth, maybe processing what she had not predicted. Besharam. The word is like a slap. Modesty—the highest value a woman can embody, and the most crucial. Without it, a woman is nothing. They have drilled the importance of it into their daughters since they were little girls, as it was once emphasized to them. Guarded themselves from the gaze and touch of men until their wedding night, and warned their daughters to remain guarded. Nothing was worse for a mother than to realize her daughters had grown and abandoned regard for what she had most desperately wanted to instill.
Layla pulls a photograph from her purse. It was a risk to take it, but it was one of many. She wanted Seema to see proof. In it, Amira is smiling, her eyes dreamy, her lips glossy and one finger playfully resting at the corner of her bottom lip. Her arms are showing, her shirt is cut low, exposing her collarbone and the unmistakable line of her breast. The girl did not know what she was suggesting when she mimicked the photographs of models and actresses in magazines but it was clear to any viewer.
“We are lucky to catch this before anyone else. Now no one has to see it,” Layla says as she tears the photograph very gently. Seema will have to rely on her words, scold her daughter in a general way that Amira would be unable to deny but also be unable to trace back to Amar’s box.
Seema is offended. That much is clear. But more than that, she is humiliated—and she shakes her head in disbelief, maybe hoping that Layla will have no more to say. Layla knows what it is like for one moment to change your understanding of your child drastically. For a stranger to come into her home to tell of her daughter’s doing—it is no easy blow.
“It is clear they have lied to us both and clear that they meet—I don’t know how often. I left the letters as they were, but they gave me reason to believe there is much more to be concerned about.”
Layla sips her tea. There is satisfaction in bringing down the woman who, at times, has made her feel small. Who had once made a comment about Hadia and Huda being already in their twenties and still not engaged, whose husband had in recent years been one of the men who pointed out to Rafiq the sight of Amar smoking beneath a streetlight, or asked why Amar did not participate in any of the youth events at mosque. The hypocrisy of knowing that the Ali boys also smoked. But Layla feels for Seema too, and does not want to hurt her so much as show her that neither of them were without children who would bring them pain and lower their name, or above having secrets that carry shame. To say to her—look more closely at what your daughter has done before you point a finger again at my son.
“I had no idea,” Seema says. “I had noticed her gone for hours at a time and never doubted her.”
“We would have heard about it if someone else had seen them. But it is only a matter of time.”
Seema nods.
“I am afraid I know my son—he hardly listens to us in the small matters, he will not listen to us if we tell him to end this. It will have to come from her.”
“Of course. I will speak to her.”
“We do not want to push them in a way that inspires them to take this…friendship…any further. I imagine that if I went to Amar and he decided not to listen to me, he could ask her to—God knows what.”
Run away. It seems an impossible implication, but these things do happen. Seema drags her hands down her face. A tired sound escapes her.
“Boys will be boys,” Layla says, the line they all know. “Especially in the face of apparent temptation.”
She has gone too far. Even she feels sour at having said it. But Seema only has Layla’s word to rely on and what she is imagining now will likely be worse than what the box contains. She does not want Amar to be accused of anything other than falling for Amira’s advances. Seema swallows, lowers her gaze; she shakes her head in disbelief at some thought she does not voice, a glazed look on her face.
“I wish I could doubt you, Layla, but instead I feel as though I’ve always known this was coming. When—years ago—Amar would come to see my boys, Amira would always try to join them. I would tell her it was inappropriate but—you know, it is hard to get them to realize the weight of what you are saying. I would tell her, over and over, Amira stop, Amira there is no need to follow them around, Amira what were you doing sitting with him on the couch?”
“Amira is a fine girl,” Layla offers. “They are just being children. Amar is working very hard now on his studies—I do not want him to have any distraction. Especially not a distraction like this.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“Only my husband. But no details—he does not know about the pictures or the content of the letters.”
“Thank you,” Seema says, and for a moment she looks like she will cry from relief. “I will only tell mine too.”
“I ask one favor.”
Seema looks at her.
“Please do not tell Amira how you found out. My son has a temper, and it has been a rough few years. He has just recently become responsible; I am afraid that if he thinks that we were the ones who told her to end it, he will react against us, and will not believe that Amira truly wants it to be over. He will try more to win her over. He can be so stubborn.”
Seema looks horrified at the idea of him winning her over, of both of them abandoning all decorum and continuing their childishness until it ruined them all.
“I understand. I for one have no problem with Amira knowing just how angry we are. We have never doubted our children. We have always trusted them. Now we know.”
“It will be all right. They will learn from this.”
“Yes,” Seema says.
There is a long silence and neither wants to find something lighter to speak of.
“If our daughters act this way,” Layla says, rising to her feet and placing the unfinished cup of tea on the table, “what hope can we have for our sons?”
* * *
IT WAS WHAT Hadia had said once in passing that Layla could not shake. You have no idea what he does and what he hides. It returned to her as she snipped eggplants from the stem, as she chopped onions and watched them brown in hot oil. Where would her son hide what he wanted to keep secret? She remembered that birthday years ago, that box with a lock. On six different occasions she had checked if he had left it unlocked while he was out. On the seventh try, when she saw it was ajar, the spare comforters thrown over it messily, she felt only excitement and an overwhelming curiosity. It was her right to know. She was his mother.
When she looked through the journals and the photographs, the letters and the trinkets, she felt ill. Tickets to concerts he had never told them about. Neon wristbands to places she did not want to picture. For a moment, Layla glanced at Amar’s journals, but she could barely make sense of his handwriting. Each deciphered sentence threatened to unravel her understanding of him and carried with it the threat of more secrets. It did not matter that she was his mother. What she could ever hope to know of him was just a glimpse—like the beam of a lighthouse skipping out, only one stretch of waves visible at a time, the rest left in the unknowable dark.
Hadia and Huda were their father’s daughters. It was their father they tried to impress, his approval they sought. If he made a joke or even gestured toward a joke they would laugh. She had known this when they were little girls at dinnertime glancing at him to see if it was safe to speak, had known it from the way their eyes delighted when he let them climb onto his back. He could switch seamlessly from playmate to parent, whereas Layla was stuck in the one role, and was not given much authority even within the one.