You are surrounded by the living, her mother says. Housing one of them too, Alia thinks. Her hand flutters over her belly and she wills movement. Anything. But it is just a hand atop silk. Last week at the doctor’s office—the kindly man she has been seeing furtively—she listened to the heartbeat through a stethoscope. At four months, the doctor said, the eyelids are fused shut; sound cannot yet be heard. The thing—sightless and cloaked in fluid; does she feel her mother’s grief? Does she drink it like soup?—sleeps, will not turn for weeks.
“God.” She pants. She knows these moments well; the despair is a lake she must move across, water in her lungs. She thinks of Priya and Bambi, the maids and drivers dancing in the Little House, stirring pots of spiced stew. The thought of their happiness steels her, and she finds her shoes before moving quickly toward the yard.
She fumbles for a second with the sliding door, the bottom slots jamming. Through the screen door’s mesh, Alia sees Atef sitting with the other men. Smoke from their cigarettes rises into the night. They talk animatedly but stop as the door opens, greet her.
“Alia!”
“The lady of the fortress!”
“Is Majed still making a fool of himself in there?”
Alia smiles and leans against the door frame. She feels a craving for men, familiar from girlhood, a need to sit with them and listen to their talk. Behind her, the music is loud, brassy.
“He certainly is. And all of you, still cowering out here?”
The men laugh appreciatively.
“She knows us too well.”
“We are unfortunate men, Alia. We can’t dance!”
“Nothing terrifies us like music.”
Alia laughs. “And you?” She turns to her husband, his face relaxed in the candlelight. “Are you also afraid?”
Atef grins at her. “I’m the biggest coward of all.”
His smile fills her with nostalgia. It is like seeing a ghost. Alia extends her arm to him, palm upturned. “Just one.”
“You’re a lucky man,” one of the men says. “My wife wants me out here.”
Atef stands. “I am lucky,” he says softly, walking to Alia, his own hand out until his fingertips close over hers.
“Come dance,” Alia says. “Those shoulders.” She brushes his shoulder lightly. It is a tease, a reminder of their wedding day, when he’d jounced them to music.
Atef chuckles and brushes her forehead with his lips. “I’m a terrible dancer,” he says. He takes a drag from the cigarette, smoke trailing as he speaks. “You go on.” His fingers unlace from hers and he lowers his hand, grazing the dress over her hip, giving her a secretive smile.
“What romance!”
“Oh, the perils of young love,” one man says.
“You were young once?” another man asks him.
Atef glances at the men and turns back to Alia. “You go on, habibti.”
Alia forces her lips upward. When she is back inside, the disappointment capsizes, suddenly, into anger. She strides through the house, pausing at the living-room archway. The women and Majed have made a dirbakeh circle, shoes—magenta, blue, silver—strewn by the couches, the faces flushed.
The kitchen is a mess, gloriously so, the kind of mess that implies something happened. Stacks of dishes, platters of uneaten rice, a large bowl of tabbouleh.
“For the love of God, someone put some Fairuz on,” Alia hears Majed call out, then a bout of female laughter.
She picks up a dirty spoon and plops it into the rice, suddenly ravenous. She eats quickly over the sink, swept with an urge familiar to her these days, as though her body is a cavern to be filled.
“I always loved watching you eat.”
Alia startles and the spoon falls on the counter. Grains of rice scatter. She turns to find Atef in the doorway, smiling sheepishly.
“From that first dinner, in your mother’s garden,” he continues, walking toward her slowly. “She’d served soup and fassoulya. You ate like you were going to battle.”
Alia smiles, remembering. “I’d been with Nour all day, in the shops.” Atef had worn a white shirt that evening, lending him a swarthy air. When she’d finished her mango juice, he’d poured her some more, rising to reach her glass. Being near him woke something reckless in her.
He comes to her now, kisses her once, twice, full on the lips. “I’m a fool,” he says. “You still want to dance?”
Love rustles her. And gratitude, for this miracle of a man. The one who returned to her. She feels ashamed of that earlier voice. She kisses him back hard and turns to face the sink. Atef wraps his arms around her and pulls her against him. The counters and walls are beige. The window above the sink frames a view of the driveway, the sky, a film of dust clouding the glass.
“Darling.”
Her eyes prickle, the window swimming.
“You look beautiful tonight.”
They fall silent, listening to the music and laughter in the other room. We’re like castaways from a shipwreck, Alia thinks. One of the glasses in the sink has red lipstick on the rim.
“It’s like a circus in there.” Atef’s lips move against her hair. “Even Widad! Did you see that?”
Alia smiles and turns to him. “She looks so happy.”
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. Went back outside and told Ghazi he had to see his wife. It’s amazing what a little music will do to a person.”
“I miss him.”
Alia hears her voice as if from a distance. The words hang like tiny detonators in the air.
Beneath her head, she feels Atef’s chest rise and fall. There is a long silence. He holds her more tightly, his arms hurting her rib cage. Alia thinks absently of the baby, cramped between their two bodies.
“Atef,” she begins tentatively. “In Amman—”
“We’ll be happy here.” Atef’s voice breaks. He sounds desperate. “The people are kind; my work is good. We’re near your sister and it’s safe, no one will bother us here. It’s a little bare, I know, and the heat can be hard, but after a few years we’ll be settled. We can start a new life. In Amman, it’s the same people, the old neighbors, the people we grew up with. How can we return to that? How can we look at them without remembering”—he lets out a sound, laughter or a sob, into her hair—“what we lost.”
Alia turns to face him. His expression is frenzied. As she looks into his imploring eyes, a truth alights: All is lost. There will be no Amman. He believes Kuwait will save him, she realizes. Us.
“Go in the summers,” he pleads. “You could go every summer.”
The finality of it steals her breath. Since Atef’s return, she has lived what feels like centuries, reimagining their lives, one fantasy after another of untying the war from themselves, shaking it out like sand from hair. It hadn’t occurred to her before this moment that there might be something waiting for her in Kuwait, years with their summers and mornings and birthdays stretched out in front of her. Watching her husband’s face, Alia feels something deep and instinctive within tell her this will be their life.
“Yes,” she manages. “In the summers.”
She excuses herself to the bathroom and leans against the sink. The porcelain is smooth and cool, and she places both hands flat upon it. She sees Atef’s frantic eyes.
From the other room, the women’s voices begin to call out the new year. Alia flees the house.