Atef had warned that no one would want to come to a party. Everyone with Arab blood is mourning. But the guests arrive with flowers and trays of sweets. Many of the women wear iridescent dresses, the men well-tailored suits. They kiss Alia’s cheek and ask when Atef will arrive.
“Soon, soon,” she says laughingly and prays it is true. She ushers them into the house, the living room with an archway leading into the dining room. Other guests are gathered inside, sitting on couches or standing around the table, plates balanced in their hands. Chicken and lamb are arranged on platters of jasmine rice, little burners beneath to keep them warm. Ghazi laughs in the corner with one of his engineer friends. Alia feels a brief envy toward her sister for her noisy, unaltered husband.
Throughout the house, Bambi and Priya have placed vases of roses and gardenias, giving the rooms a heady perfume. Shallow bowls of nuts and cherries cover the tables. Even the yard behind the dining room, normally desolate and untouched, has been swept. Through the large windows, Alia sees a constellation of chairs, candles dancing between them.
The house fills. Widad puts on a record, and some women begin to sway in the living room. It looks like a home, Alia thinks. She asks people if they want pomegranate juice, laughs at their stories. Yes, some of the men have gathered outside, where Alia knows they are discussing the war. But otherwise it feels as though she has stumbled into someone else’s living room, where everyone is having a perfectly pleasant time.
At half past nine the doorbell rings, and Alia smiles at the group of guests she is speaking with.
“At last.”
She pauses at the mirror in the foyer, finds her wild-haired reflection satisfying. Arranging her face in a half smile, she opens the door. Samer, Atef’s coworker at the university, and Samer’s American wife, Maryanne, beam at her from the doorstep. In the corner is a blur in the dark. Alia squints.
“Hello,” she says in English.
“Look what we’ve brought you.” Samer grins, holding out a vase with one hand and pulling at the blurred figure with the other.
“Oh, how beautiful, thank you,” she says, taking the vase. Flowers spill from the edge, tangled in delicate nets of baby’s breath. And: “You!” she says gratefully as the figure steps into the light.
“Your husband’s quite the dedicated professor,” Samer says. “We found him in his car still thumbing through books!” There is a pause while Atef glances at Alia, his eyes inscrutable.
“My little bibliophile,” she says dully.
“You look beautiful, as always,” Samer says, and Alia forces a smile.
“What a dress,” Maryanne joins in, then tries for Arabic: “Like the moon!”
“Please.” Atef holds an arm out, and the couple walk inside. He steps in himself and kisses Alia on her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he begins. “The thought of coming in . . . all these people—”
Alia shakes her head, lifts a hand to his cheek. The gesture feels illicit; they rarely touch these days. “I know.”
At the archway, they stand watching the guests laugh and talk.
“They’re having fun. Can you believe it, the lamb’s almost finished.”
“I see Majed’s here,” he says, nodding toward the young, hairy man laughing and snapping his fingers at the dancing women. He is from the university, Jordanian, a bachelor.
Alia smiles. “I don’t think there’s a girl over thirteen he hasn’t flirted with.” Atef lets out a roar of laughter, like his old self.
“It’s a wonderful party.” He pulls her to him, and she instinctively places a hand on her belly. Soon.
“Wonderful,” he repeats.
“Atef!” one of the men calls out.
“The host has finally arrived!”
“Come, Professor, the meat has gone cold.”
Atef looks down at her questioningly, and she laughs.
“Go,” she says, warmed by his pleasure, and watches him walk to the men.
Alia and Widad are dancing together. Their feet are bare, and the blue Persian rugs are soft beneath them. The other women dance around them, the air rippling with dozens of perfumes. The lights are dimmed, candles in silver candelabras casting shadows across the walls. The maids have cleared the dishes and trays, setting fruit and little cakes atop the dining-room table.
“That’s plenty,” Alia told them afterward. “Go enjoy your party.”
The music is lusty and fast. Alia is dizzy with it. She twirls once, twice, then lifts her arms for Widad to do the same. Above the archway, the clock reads nearly eleven. In an hour, it will be a new year. The thought brings an unexpected lump in her throat, the sobering thought of Mustafa. She will become older than him. She will watch the world tumble into yet another year. Without him.
“Ya habibi.” Widad sings along, her face close to Alia’s, close enough for Alia to see the lashes coated in mascara, the reddening from her eyebrow threading this morning. She looks younger, girlish, with her flushed cheeks and bare feet. Impulsively, Alia leans in and kisses her cheek.
Widad smiles, startled. “Habibi inta,” she sings even louder. Around her, the women laugh and clap.
You have your sister, Alia, her mother says on the telephone when they speak. And your husband. You cannot forget them in your grief.
“Aywa, Widad!” Majed weaves his way between the women, snapping his fingers and wiggling his bushy eyebrows. Widad blushes but continues singing and moving her arms back and forth.
Slowly, Alia stops swaying. Her arms drop to her sides. She steps out of the dancing circle, away from the living room. Her chest aches with want; it catches at her throat, dwarfs her.
She misses Mustafa. Like a city after a tsunami, the earth is altered without him, wrecked. They never found out how he had died, just that he had, somewhere in an Israeli prison. And yet she continues eating éclairs and gathering hairs from the shower drain. In the back of her mind, that terrible, treacherous voice, the one that possessed her while she watched the war on the television screen—If one of them has to die, if I could pick—a voice she hates. She clamps the heel of her palm against her rib cage as though to quiet it.