Outside, she moves quickly down the pathway of the compound, past the cars out front, the palm trees skeining above her, toward the small hut. Foreign, lilting music is playing inside, punctuated by laughter. Alia knocks on the door, lightly at first, then pounding, until, at last, she hears the sound of a lock unclicking and the door swings open.
It is Priya, her moon-shaped face peering at her. Behind her Alia sees a swath of colorful candles, dark women and men dancing. There is a table covered with plates of rice, the leftover meat and chicken and fish from the villa.
“Madame?” Priya says, a furrow of concern on her forehead. She looks different, and it takes Alia a moment to understand why—the maid’s uniform is gone. Instead, Priya wears a sari, peacock blue, her hair in waves over her shoulders. Shame drops over Alia, for interrupting the party, for standing here like a madwoman.
“Ajit,” she blurts. “I need Ajit.”
“Madame?” Priya asks again. “Is something wrong? We will come now if you need us to clean—”
“Ajit,” Alia repeats and begins to cry. “Please, bring me Ajit.” Priya looks alarmed. She turns and calls out something in her language.
Within seconds, Ajit appears in the doorway. He wears a silver-threaded robe; a white hat caps his bald, brown head. He is carrying a teacup.
He looks at Alia for a moment without speaking and seems to understand. He turns to Priya, speaks in low tones, and hands her the teacup. Priya nods and glances once more at Alia. The door shuts behind Ajit, his eyes not leaving Alia’s face. She is no longer crying, feels oddly soothed.
“Please,” he says, bowing his head. Alia follows him down the pathway. They pass the parked cars, Alia averting her eyes from the villa. For the first time, she notices the noise the palm leaves make as they rustle against one another, like the sound of lace against lace. In the moonlight, Ajit’s robe seems to glow.
When they reach the sedan, Ajit pulls the keys from a hidden pocket in his robe—are they always with him?—and holds the back-seat door open for Alia. As she climbs in, her heart is pounding, her throat dry. Like a fugitive, she thinks.
They sit in silence for a while, Ajit in the front, the engine murmuring. Finally, Ajit clears his throat.
“Where would you like to go, madame?”
The question dangles in front of Alia and her mind blanks, then races off. Lemon-colored bedrooms, an armoire full of summer dresses. A hidden pathway behind a schoolhouse, the sound of boys yelling, her own feet bare over cool, moist earth. Garden—before its ravaging—at sunset, mint tea. Running wet cloths over tiles, the marble sparkling like gems.
“The water.” Her voice is astonishingly clear. “Take me to the water, please.”
“Yes, madame.”
Ajit drives through the compound. The identical villas blur by, the boulevard swallowed into darkness as they turn onto the main road. Streetlamps are interspersed at wide intervals, and for whole minutes at a time, all Alia can see are the shadowy edges of palm trees, telephone poles, the occasional villa.
Impulsively, she rolls down the window. The wind is cool, rushing against her face, swirling her curls against her cheeks, her lips.
On the seventh night after Atef’s return, Alia had woken to find the bed next to her empty. She walked through the dark, silent rooms of Widad’s house looking for him, finally seeing a strip of light beneath the guest-bathroom door.
She’d hesitated outside it. It occurred to her that he might wish her away. Since his return, Atef sat for hours without speaking.
“Tell me,” she would say to him. “Tell me.” She wasn’t sure what exactly she wanted but longed to hear it.
Instead, Atef was silent. He rarely ate, his cheeks hollowing. He slept until afternoon and seemed to move as though underwater. When he spoke of Mustafa, his voice was flat, detached.
“I don’t know when they killed him. Or where. They just told me he was dead.”
This is what Alia thought as she stood in front of the bathroom door: Mustafa, dead. Every incarnation of him, young and old, had to be folded away. What she had, then, what remained, was on the other side of that door. Atef was hers; he was alive. The sound of rushing water was audible. Alia opened the door.
Blood was everywhere.
This was the first thought Alia registered: a marveling at the blood, crimson around Atef in the bathtub, streaming down his chest. She blinked, her eyes adapting to the light. The blood wasn’t from a single wound, she saw. No. It had gathered in the bathwater where Atef sat naked. Dozens of cuts ornamented his back, his shoulders, his chest.
Glass was her next thought. But Atef turned to her, his eyes not crazed but soft, staring up at her with a childlike helplessness. Looking down, Atef lifted his arm from the pinkish water and found a healing wound on his chest—Alia saw that between the streaks of blood were long, scraggly scabs—dug with his nail, and let out a sigh as he tore the scab, ripping it carefully from his skin.
Instantly, red flowered. He dropped the scab into the bathwater, where it floated on the surface. He’d been doing this often, she understood in that moment, the gesture practiced. The strips on his torso were raw and pink. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen her husband’s body, his nudity, since his return; she hadn’t known this new skin.
Alia made a sound—stifled, aghast. A wave of nausea. She felt a powerful urge to turn away. Return to the bed or leave, the fantasy coming to her unbidden, the desire to walk out into the blank, desert night, walk until her feet blistered, walk until she reached the dunes.
Shame composed her. It sobered the sound in her throat, moved her legs toward her husband, the door shutting behind her.
As Ajit drives, Alia keeps the window open, watching the city go by. Something about the landscape, transformed in the dark, is haunting; she has never seen it so late at night. Kuwait is usually a metallic blur of sunshine to her, the ugly buildings and concrete exposed in the light. Midday, the city is absurdly male—the local men draped in robes, street vendors, taxi drivers, construction workers—all men, all turning to Alia with alert, hungry eyes.
But now, in the first hour of the new year, the city is ghostlike, almost tender. As they drive past the banks and the university, the buildings seem welcoming. Alia is comforted by the lights of the mosque, the surreal quality of the streets. Emptied, the city is feminine.