STEPS
“What the hell were you doing in there?” Amir’s voice is a controlled shout close to my ear, so quiet that the smokers leaning against a car in the parking lot barely look up. He is skilled at not drawing attention to himself. “Are you trying to shame your family?”
“New place, new rules.” Emmy’s phrase doesn’t sound as tidy in my native tongue, but the meaning is still clear. “I’m just fitting in,” I say more gently. I can’t forget that I need him. “What are you doing here?”
Amir’s face flushes, and he looks away. He’s embarrassed.
I laugh. “I think that maybe you came for the same reason I did? Just to see for yourself?”
He scowls, but it’s an embarrassed scowl, and there’s humor twitching underneath. He kicks at a cigarette butt on the ground and hides his smile. He also tries to hide his small peeks at me. This sparkly, satin version of me is new to him, too.
I need to encourage this. To make Amir my ally—in curiosity, if in nothing else. “It’s certainly different here, isn’t it?” I keep my voice light, teasing. “Can you imagine that happening back home?”
Finally, he’s willing to show me his smile. It’s crooked—interrupted by a scar that traces from his sharp cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth. It’s not unattractive. He’s not unattractive, I realize.
Focus, Laila.
“The people here are children,” he says. “All of them. Even the grown-ups.”
I wonder how many people not from his own country he has actually spoken to since moving here. “They’re not so bad,” I say.
“Yeah, I could see in there that you think quite highly of them. One of them in particular.”
He’s still trying to shame me, but I don’t react. I have been shamed by men far more powerful than Amir. Besides, why should I feel shame? It wasn’t me in there. I was just acting a part, trying on someone else’s skin.
“Do you want to sit down?” I nod toward a graffiti-scarred bench close by. “It’s a beautiful night.”
Amir tilts his head and squints—without his anger, he lacks direction. He shrugs his agreement.
He sits, but I have to tug down my short skirt so that I can join him without exposing too much of myself. Once I do sit, he scoots away several inches. I pinch my lips together to keep from laughing. Perhaps I’m adapting to my new American home better than I thought—I’m already making other foreigners uncomfortable.
“I haven’t seen you in a while.” I direct the conversation before he can.
He shrugs again and I can see that I’m still making him uncomfortable, that he finds my words as forward as my dancing. What does she know? How much can I say? I can practically hear the questions he’s asking himself in the silence of his hesitation.
Finally, he speaks. “Your mother is trying to insert herself into something she has no business being a part of.”
His tone is gruff, final, but I can’t let him finish there. I know better than to blurt out my questions the way my new American friends would, though. Instead, I sit demurely, my hands folded in my lap and my ankles crossed and tucked out of sight under the bench. I ask him to continue with my eyes, not my voice. But for my moonstruck shoulders and three inches of bare thigh, I could almost pass for the girl I was raised to be.
He was also raised with certain expectations, and my silence makes him fidget. Has he ever sat like this with a girl? I wonder. He gives in first. “Perhaps if she weren’t so impatient. Or if her expectations were more realistic. She wants us to trust her, but she’s done nothing to prove herself.”
I tease apart the information contained both in and between Amir’s words. Impatient. Expectations. Trust. My mother is scheming, that much is clear. To what end, though, I can’t even guess. But at least Amir has given me an opening.
“It’s hard for her, you know? She doesn’t know how to act here. Everything has changed so much, but she’s trying to do what’s right.” I hope Amir doesn’t hear how vague my statements are. “She wants to start over. She knows she needs to earn your trust.” I’m fairly certain my mother does not actually think any such thing, but I say what he needs to hear.
Amir stares at me for a long minute, his dark eyes narrowed. Finally, he sighs. “I’ll discuss it with my cousins,” he says. “We’ll have to think about it.”
Cousins. Not father, not uncles. Now I at least know something small about him. I know that his family has holes in it, too. I suspect that Amir plays a very small role in his cousins’ decisions—he is the boy among men. But I allow him the charade. “You’re welcome in our home anytime. I hope it will be soon.” I resort to formalities in the hopes of cementing our discussion.
Amir just nods, and the silence between us grows awkward. He sits back and looks up at the sky, giving me a moment to study him unnoticed. His face is angular and lean, and his jaw is shadowed with the faint beginnings of stubble. I realize that I don’t know how old he is. I had assumed he was the same age as me, but there’s a hardness about him that makes him seem older.
I should be angry with him for pulling me out of the dance. What business was it of his?
But I’m not angry. In my culture his action would be considered protective. Caring, even. He cared enough about me to guard my honor. Just as the sultan cared enough about his daughter’s honor to kill for it.
The thought twists my stomach. Everything has been turned upside down since we came here—my family, my head, and my heart. At this point I can’t even recognize what caring is anymore. Is it the hands gliding over my body, owning me with touches, or is it the hand pulling me away from temptation before I do something I might regret?
I jump as the gym doors bang open. Amir flinches, too.
“Laila? Ian said you were out here. My dad’ll be here soon to pick us up. You still want a ride, right?” Emmy’s voice is tight and she looks annoyed.
Amir looks away, not even acknowledging her presence. He knows he has no part in this conversation.
I nod and stand up. Amir won’t meet my eyes, so I can only hope that we have an agreement. “I’ll see you soon?”
He turns back to face me but doesn’t say a word. It’s as close to an answer as I’m going to get. Our liars’ tango has come to an end, and I’m left wondering which one of us was leading.
Emmy holds the door open until I walk through, then links arms with me as we head back into the thumping music—one more set of hands touching me, caring and possessive.
“I just want to sit down somewhere until your dad comes. I have an awful headache.” Finally, one thing I don’t have to pretend.
Emmy pouts. “Are you sure? There’s still time to dance to another couple of songs.”
“Yes,” I say, and it’s just about the only thing I am sure of at the moment.
WINKS
At first I can’t open my eyes. I panic at the sensation and paw at my face before I realize it’s just the mascara I forgot to wash off making my eyelashes stick together. It’s a surprisingly claustrophobic feeling.
I want to shower, but Bastien is already in the bathroom. I pound on the door and he yells at me to go away.
“Is the king sitting on the throne?” I tease him in English.
“Shut up, Laila!” His English is even better than mine now—Bastien is a sponge for all things American.
I pull on a bathrobe and go out to the living room. As usual, Mother is sitting on the couch drinking tea. She’s as constant a fixture as the floor lamp in the corner lately.
“Good morning,” she says. “You looked beautiful last night.”
I squint at her through my clumpy eyelashes. “How do you know? You were already in bed when I came home.”
She smiles. “I was watching out my window for you. There are very few advantages to having a bedroom that faces a busy parking lot, but I seem to have found at least one.”
For my mother to acknowledge her new circumstances, much less joke about them, is a new thing. I hope that it means she’s in a good mood—she’ll be less likely to tell me no if she is.
“It felt strange to be so bare. Can you imagine if I had dressed like that back home?” We rarely talk like this, my mother and I. I find that I want to enjoy it first, to savor the moment of lightness, before I turn back to darker subjects.
“Bah.” She wrinkles her nose. “You looked exactly the way a girl your age should look. Your father always listened to his brothers too much. Their beliefs got in the way of their senses, and they forgot how to appreciate a beautiful woman, the poor fools. I wanted to take you shopping with me in Paris more often, but they convinced your father that you’d be completely ruined by the experience. I suppose they were trying to protect you from terrible things like short skirts or winks from handsome French boys.”
Her sarcasm sounds strange to my ears, like she’s letting her composed fa?ade slip. I giggle—something that probably sounds equally strange to her.
“So, this is hardly Paris,” she continues, “but did you get any winks from handsome American boys at your dance last night?”
I debate how much to tell her. She may be liberated as far as clothing and curfews go, but I can’t imagine that even she would approve of the groping and grinding that passes for dancing here. I decide not to say anything at all. Instead, I give her a flamboyant, exaggerated wink.
“Ah, I’m glad. This is what I hoped for you, Laila. For you to wear what you want and maybe even kiss a few boys you choose for yourself. Back home things are just getting worse and worse. Ever since—” She stops abruptly and takes a deep breath before continuing. “Ever since your uncle took over, he has been enforcing the religious laws more strictly than ever. It’s no place for women there.”
She surprises me more and more these days, my widowed mother. That she wanted something different for me—a sentiment she’s never expressed before. That she knows anything at all about how things were going back home. That she doesn’t think that home—her home—is a place for women.
Could this mean …?
It’s a question I haven’t dared to ask, not even of myself. I’ve been too focused on just surviving. “Do you want—” I stop to rephrase. Want has very little to do with reality. This is a fact I know too well. “Do you think we’ll ever go home? I mean, not now, obviously, but ever?”
“Of course we will.” She says it quickly, firmly, not even needing a moment to consider the question.
I’m caught off guard by her answer. How? Why? When? What about what I want? I don’t ask any of the questions that race through my mind. Not yet. It’s too soon.
First I need to figure out exactly what it is that I want. Besides, I already have an entire mountain of questions that I can’t even begin to climb until I take care of our more immediate needs.
“Oh.” I try to sound casual as I change the subject. “I ran into Amir. At the dance.” I stop for her reaction.
She raises an eyebrow, and her teacup pauses halfway to her lips.
“He said his cousins feel bad about the way things went the last time they were here. They want to talk again, but they feel awkward initiating it. Amir said they’d definitely come if you just make the first move by inviting them.” I make a show of retying the knot of my robe as I say this so she can’t see from my face that I’m lying. “You should call them.”
She huffs into her tea, dismissive and proud.
“Mother.” Gansler’s threat floats through my thoughts. Even if she’s right that we will go back eventually, we can’t go back now. Too many things need to change before we can even hope to survive there. “You need to call them.”
I see that she still wants to dismiss me, so I push harder. “How much money do we have left?”
She sets her cup down with a clatter. I’ve struck a nerve. I strike again. “Is there enough left for another month? A week? A day? Or is it gone already?”
She glares at me, and I know that it’s gone. Our survival money spent on a handful of luxuries.
“Call them. Tomorrow.” I stand up and snatch her cup from the table. I can only stomp off a few meters in this cubbyhole that is our apartment, but my point is made nonetheless. She’ll call. She has to.