He did not know he wanted to know until he asked.
“It was difficult for him. Just him and his mother after that. Every time I visited them it seemed he had aged. Trying to be responsible. Trying to care for his mother. Very hardworking boy. But you know your father. He is a man who does not show on his face what he is going through. His father was like that. Maybe you are like that? But he would visit me many times. Always brought me sweets on Eid. Hand-delivered me his wedding invitation. Came to my house before he moved here. I felt like I was saying good-bye to a son. Then my own son, years later, moved us all to Arizona. And your father visited us anytime his work brought him there, even if he had to rent a car and drive two hours to do it. And why would he? Just because I had been friends with his father. Me—an old man to him. A rare man, your father. Not many men like that anymore.”
Listening to this man praise his father, Amar felt as if a balloon were growing in his chest and he was afraid if it popped he would cry. He had been cheated out of knowing the best of his father; his father had reserved his kindness for others. Amar looked around, preparing to excuse himself, but he wanted to do something for the old man.
“Can I bring you something, some food or drink?” he asked.
The old man refused. His grandson was waiting in the food line for him.
“Anything?” Amar insisted, and he wondered for a moment if he wanted the old man to think that what he appreciated in his father had also been passed on to him. The man smiled.
“If you can bring me tea without my grandson Jawad seeing…They keep me on strict lockdown. It is surely a sin to live if it is like this, no sugar, no rice, no—” and he began to list what he could not eat anymore, but Amar stood.
“Two spoons of sugar, please,” the man said, and winked at him, “and listen—generous spoons.”
Amar rushed—partly because now Amira would be waiting, and partly because he wanted to bring the tea soon, so the man could savor it before his grandson returned. The food line was moving slowly, Mumma was occupied with checking the dishes and determining which needed to be refilled. And though he hoped he was the kind of person whose intentions were pure, he caught himself looking for his father as he carried the teacup back to the old man, hoping that his father would see who he was bringing it for.
* * *
HUDA SET PLATES down on the small table that had been set up for Hadia and Tariq. Tariq began to eat immediately and Hadia moved rice into the tikka sauce and blew at the fork before taking a bite. It was delicious but she had no appetite. The sound of the hundred guests talking echoed.
“I really like Amar,” Tariq said between bites.
“Everyone likes Amar,” she said.
Tariq stopped speaking, sensing sadness in her tone. She had kept Amar from him—both his full story and its effect on Hadia, and Tariq knew not to pry, to wait instead until she was ready to share. The sense of dread that had seized her as she watched her brother merge into the crowd was gone, but its aftertaste remained. She moved the food on her plate around with her fork. It was true. Everyone liked Amar. To know him longer was to complicate the adoration one felt for him, the desire to do something that would make life easier for him, and that ache of knowing that there was little that would. She pressed the white napkin against her lips and dabbed.
“You have a brother?” Tariq had asked her, the first time she mentioned Amar to him years ago. “You only talk about Huda.”
It stung. There was something false to Hadia about the way she spoke to others about Amar, and so the more years that passed, the less she ever spoke of him. She found herself wanting to omit any hint of herself in the stories, so the undercurrent of them would be about Amar’s untrustworthy nature, Amar’s unhealthy tendencies, Amar’s secrets. But omitting herself had the opposite effect of what she might have wanted: instead of her friends being able to comfort her, absolve her, tell her that everyone’s choices in life were their own and Amar had unfortunately made tragic ones, she would hear their sympathies and feel nothing. Their words failed to reach the guilt she carried that she had hidden from everyone, even Huda.
Hadia could draw no straight lines to the past. Could not pinpoint which of the many times he had leaned in to whisper into her hair, Don’t tell Baba? and she had whispered back, I won’t, and say to herself: this was the moment I first failed him, this was my part in his pattern. She could not say she had kept his secrets when it would have been better for him if she had told them, or that she had given away the ones she should have guarded. She could not excuse her competitive nature nor could she fault it. She could not say it was that Baba had given her the watch and not him, because she had always wanted it, had done everything to become the child who would receive it. The only guilt she could carry without questioning it or pushing it aside, the only thing she could land on with any certainty, was the simple facts of their lives tonight: that it was she who sat beneath the chandelier light adorned in jewelry, and her brother who roamed the hall wishing he were elsewhere—or worse, wishing he could be back and feel as loved, as welcome, as at home.
2.
AS AMAR APPROACHED THE COURTYARD HE FELT THAT FAMILIAR rush from years ago, the fear of being caught quickening his step, the promise of seeing Amira that made his entire body a single heartbeat. Clouds passed rapidly, hardly any stars were out, and the moon was so bright it seemed to have been placed just to shine a spotlight on them. Had he, even once, in the years he had been gone and the months before when they no longer spoke, doubted that he still loved her? Amira was seated on the cement floor. The red of her outfit appeared burgundy, the green almost black, the bells chimed when she moved, her lips were purple from the dark or purple from the cold, her hair pulled up tight in a bun, just a few stray hairs lit silver, and when she stood to greet him, the movement of her body attracted his entire attention, and though she waved shyly her smile was generous.
Impossible. Impossible that he had ever stopped loving her. Not since his love for her first announced itself at that party years ago, when she looked up from the soda she sipped through her striped straw, and then walked to where he had been leaning against the wall, minding his own business. She had asked the first question and he, who did not like speaking to almost anyone, answered and then asked his own. He was only seventeen then. He had carved their initials into his windowsill that very night.
“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind,” she said.
“I thought maybe I had too.”
He did not know why he lied so totally but it made her laugh.
“How much time do we have?” she asked.
Not nearly enough. But he shrugged, and they took a seat on the cement, cross-legged and not quite facing each other. This was where the hotel staff likely came to smoke; it was tucked away from the hotel and any window.
“Let’s make the most of our time then and speak honestly,” she said.
She was still Amira: taking charge, forming her plans out loud, so deliberate that anyone around her would be convinced they had wanted it before she even suggested it.
“How long has it been?” he asked.