You must have said something to your mother because she leaned against the table and laughed. She looked so at ease. She lifted her hand up to cup her mouth, the way our daughters laughed timidly and yet loudly. You were good in that way too, making anyone around you laugh. I could never quite figure out how you did it. You splashed the drops of water into the sink, wiped your hands on your clean shirt. You disappeared. You reappeared. You and your mother placed plates and bowls of steaming food onto the table. All the while your lips moved, your expressions changed, whatever you spoke about engaged you both. And I thought of how I know only silence. Huda appeared and took a seat at the dinner table, her head bent over the phone in her hand. And I saw you try to read over her shoulder, the exaggerated expression on your face so I knew you only wanted to tease her with the illusion of interest, or you wanted to make Layla smile. Huda swatted you away, her hair flipping around her when she twisted her neck to glare at you after she caught you. Up close, these things bothered me, but from out here, it wasn’t so bad, it was all done in play. Huda must have complained to Layla then, because Layla shrugged, that smile still on her face that I feared would fall if I entered.
My family seemed complete, save for Hadia, who was in undergrad by then and would not be back until the following weekend. The wind rustled the leaves in the trees and the neighbor’s dog, a few houses down, barked. I had never thought of leaving your mother. The thought of divorce never once crossed my mind. But that night, you sat in the seat that was my seat. This is how my home must be without me in it, I thought, and it looked just fine. Warm and bright, the three of you there, talking animatedly together. Huda had put her phone away, she tied her hair up, and sat with one leg tucked beneath her. You helped spoon food onto her plate. Layla was still smiling a little. You took your hat off and hooked it on your knee. And that was when the thought first occurred to me, that I could go, I could leave, I could walk alongside the little tomatoes and mint leaves and step through the gate back into the driveway, the metal lock clicking shut behind me. Say I left that night. Would you have been able to stay, then?
* * *
AFTER ABBAS ALI passed away, I grew deeply worried for you. I had really liked that boy. He cared for you and he looked out for you and I trusted him. I was at peace anytime the two of you were together. After his death, I began to fear that the little that connected you to our faith would be severed and eventually I organized a trip for our family to do ziyarat in Iraq. I wanted there to be nothing I did not introduce you to that could be a tool for you and your spirituality.
When I first brought the trip up with you, you asked if you could stay back at home, but when you saw the look on my face, you quickly said you did not mean it, you would come. I could see how one might deny a night at mosque but could not fathom turning down an invitation to go to the holiest of places. Once in Iraq, my girls wore black abayas over their clothes. They looked luminous and almost unrecognizable. Even you, who respected nothing, seemed in awe. That first day in Najaf you walked wide-eyed through the streets. Men sold tea in the street from giant steaming vats, piles of sugar heaped in bowls where flies buzzed. Wheelbarrows heaped with fruit. We were patted down at checkpoints every few miles. Children ran barefoot and asked us for sticks of gum and spare change and you never mastered the art of saying no, you reached into your pocket for a bill and by the time you had pulled it out you were swarmed by other children. The markets and the hot sun and the dust and the fluttering ends of the black abayas, and soon we looked up and could see the golden dome of Imam Ali’s shrine, which stood brilliantly against the blue sky.
Peace be upon you, Amir-ul-Momineen, leader of the Faithful, I whispered, and I looked to my right and to my surprise, your lips were also moving. Once inside, the ladies had to go to one side and men another. There was nothing to do there but pray, in organized groups or alone, by reading prayer books or just by speaking openly from one’s heart. You were in the notebook phase that I hoped every year would leave you. I did not like it. I did not hide my dislike. I did not want you, an already sensitive man, to dwell even more in your sensitivity and become further removed from pursuing a respectable, well-paying career. But there, I did not mind it. I read from my prayer books outside while around me birds hopped from prayer mat to prayer mat, and next to me you scribbled away. In a country where we knew neither the language nor the customs and could not spend the day with Layla and the girls, you and I had no choice but to be at ease with one another, even if it was in silence.
When the rush surrounding the zari of Imam Ali dulled, we could easily approach his shrine. It stood proud beneath a chandelier that threw lights on the decorated mirrors of the walls, and we could hold the rounded metal of the gate, close our eyes, and pray. I rested my forehead against the metal. It was cool. I prayed for the things I always pray for, but there, in that place, so close to my Imam, whom I had spent my whole life hearing stories of and hoping to be like even in the smallest of ways, I felt even more strongly the possibility of being heard. I opened my eyes. You were still holding on to the zari. I had never seen you afford that attention, your eyes closed and eyebrows knit together.
“What did you pray for?” I asked later, when you took a seat beside me outside.
You sat holding on to your knees. You were eighteen then. You looked so handsome that day and so much like my father, the tips of your hair beginning to curl slightly.
“That God will forgive Abbas’s sins,” you said.
I nodded.
“He will,” I said.
You looked at me. Your face was sincere and full of concern, as if you were asking me how did I know.
“God is merciful. We must not forget it. Abbas was a wonderful person.”
My answer did not comfort you. You watched a bird that had landed by our feet. You reached your hand into your pocket and I predicted you would pull out a piece of that very thin bread we ate while there.
“But he sinned,” you said.
You did pull the bread from your pocket. The bird cocked its head to one side and then hopped closer. You tore the bread into tiny pieces and tossed them one at a time. Like Layla, chopping up the apples for the horses. If we, just humans and entirely limited in our thinking, could think to break resources into smaller pieces so our children could feel the joy of scattering slices a little longer, then what generosity was our creator not capable of?
“Amar, God is so merciful that on Judgment Day He will forgive so many souls that even shaitaan will have hope for his own salvation.”
“That’s sweet,” you said. You gestured “all done” to the bird but the bird did not go.
I lightly hit my own cheek to say tauba.
“Only you would find the devil sweet.”
You smiled and glanced at me from the corner of your eye. I chuckled. We were getting along. Perhaps in wanting to impart fear of God and therefore adherence to His laws, I had not done enough to show you the side of God who was, above all, merciful.
“Did you have a nice time?” Layla asked when we found her at the appointed meeting spot.
“We did,” you answered before I could.
You turned to watch boys in the street playing soccer. They were barefoot and most of them were children. Layla and Hadia wanted to search the markets for akhiq rings and Huda wanted an akhiq necklace.
“Can I join them instead?” you asked me, and gestured to the group.
They had made goalposts out of piles of bricks. One boy jumped to knock the soccer ball with his head into the goal and they cheered. You had asked me. You had cared about how your actions would affect me.
“Yes,” I said. “Go.”
And I squinted as you stepped, it seemed, toward the sun.
* * *
AT A WEDDING many years ago, you told me you were going to say hello to the younger Ali boys—Kumail and Saif. At this time, Abbas had recently passed away. I made small talk with the person seated next to me and eventually realized that a long time had passed and you still had not returned, and the Ali boys had taken seats by their father. I was suspicious and slightly worried, and I excused myself and went looking for you. You were not in the parking lot. You were not in the bathroom. And then, as I took a glass of mango juice from the drinks tray and scanned the hall while sipping it, the elevator door that led to the rest of the hotel opened and out stepped Amira Ali.