“He doesn’t steal; he doesn’t fight. He’s never in trouble like the other boys.”
Of the children, Karam is her favorite. It is unspoken, but Atef can hear it in her voice, the way she spends hours admiring his handiwork. In less forgiving moments, Atef mentally supplies the reason: The boy demands less than the girls. He is unobtrusive, his moods easier to manage than Souad’s tantrums and Riham’s anxiety to please.
“So you went for the birdcage.”
The boy looks up, a smile unfolding across his face. Grinning cartoon wolves dot his pajamas, which, Atef notices, are too small, inches of skinny ankle exposed. “And this. It’s still drying.”
Karam lifts something near the birdcage. Atef leans in. A wooden bird, the size of his son’s hand, with a tapered beak.
“Kiki,” Atef breathes out. “It’s beautiful.”
“Blue’s her favorite.” Karam’s face is radiant. “I know because she always picks blue notebooks for school.”
“It is,” Atef agrees. “She’s going to love it.” He feels a tenderness toward his son, happy in his sunlit closet. Karam’s a gentle heart, Alia likes to tell people.
“But I still need to paint the cage.” Worry ripples his voice. “She can’t see before Khalto Widad’s party tonight.”
Atef suppresses a smile. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll distract her until breakfast.”
In the living room, Priya has placed a silver tray on the table, along with a bowl of cherries and the hearts coffee mug. Atef sips his coffee. Years ago, Alia decided the living room was too beige and changed nearly all the furniture. Now, the room pops with yellow and green and blue. Each of the pink couches is strewn with overstuffed pillows the shade of banana peels. Even the walls are painted an unearthly pearl. To him, the effect is garish; he’d found the beige soothing. The colors make the room glisten, as though everything—the varnished wood, the walls—has not quite dried.
The cherries are fat, beaded with water from Priya’s washing. Atef decides to wait for Riham and turns on the television. The news is on, and Atef resolutely changes the channel. Not on Riham’s birthday, he tells himself—he is careful with the news; an image of flags burning or a row of corpses can set him trembling for hours. He switches to a soccer game.
As the jerseyed men jog onto the lawn and begin kicking the ball back and forth, Atef hears the familiar padding of feet—light, careful. Each child has his or her own stride, a concerto as distinctive to Atef as their voices. He hears the steps get louder, pause, Riham’s voice calling out, “Good morning, Priya,” and Priya’s muffled reply.
Finally, she appears in the doorway, her hair wet and already curling. Atef’s heart fills—she wears a dress he bought her, the lilac silk tied in a bow around her waist.
“All this sugar!” Atef cries, leaping to his feet dramatically. The shameful truth is that Alia isn’t alone in having a favorite—he loves Riham beyond reason, a love tinged with gratitude, for when she was first placed in his arms, tiny and wriggling and red-faced, he felt himself return, tugged back to his life by the sound of her mewling. The arrival of Riham restored something, sweeping aside the ruin of what had come before.
“You look like a queen! A thousand happy returns.” Riham ducks her head, embarrassed, but a smile sneaks across her face. Atef bows to her, extending his hand. “My lady, may I request a twirl?”
“Baba!” She giggles, the taffeta rustling.
“My lady, I must insist.” Atef mock frowns. “Such beauty cannot be allowed to pass without twirling.” Riham shakes her head, still giggling. Finally, she takes his hand, and he twirls her once, twice.
“Cherries!”
“And strawberries for a certain someone’s day.” They sit on the couch and begin to eat. “So,” Atef says, spitting a pit out. “We have Auntie Widad’s at five. Before that, the day is yours. Anything you want.”
He watches her chew. She is the plainest of the children, with a high forehead and slightly bulbous nose. But her eyes are extraordinary, flecked with honey and green, a fringe of thick eyelashes. Bit of a waste, those eyes on that face, Atef once overheard Alia say wistfully to Widad, and he’d wanted to shake her.
“Anything? Mama said so too?”
Atef remembers the argument last night after the children had gone to sleep, one of those spats that blaze in their marriage like grease fires. You spoil them, Atef. He’d countered, You barely notice them. Her hurt, furious face floats back to him now.
“Yes, habibti,” he tells Riham. “Anything you’d like.”
Riham chews her lower lip, stained red. “Even if it’s far?”
He knows in a flash what she is thinking of: the dunes. Last month, he went with some of the men at the university far beyond the reaches of the city, where the sand stretched uninterrupted for miles and miles, gilded with sun. Some local Kuwaitis joined them in the evening, building a fire and roasting chunks of camel meat. Atef had told Riham about the starry sky, the way the locals plucked scorpions from sand and flung them into the fire, causing sparks. The girl listened attentively, the way she always did to him, her eyes spellbound. Afterward, she’d pored through her encyclopedias, looking up scorpions and Bedouin.
“Even if it’s on the moon.”
Riham looks at him solemnly. “We would die. There’s no oxygen.” Atef eats another cherry, hiding his smile with splayed fingers.
“That’s true. So no moon.”
“Could we go to the dunes?” she asks, looking down at her hands. “Is it too far?”
“That’s it?” Atef feigns relief. “I thought you were going to say Istanbul, Hong Kong. Paris!” Riham giggles. Atef tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Of course we can.”
“And we don’t have to worry about scorpions, because I read that they hate lavender, so we’ll take that spray Priya uses for laundry.” Her face lights up. “I’ll tell Karam! He’ll be excited.” She is nearly out of the living room when Atef remembers the birdcage.
“Riham!” She turns. At a loss, he blurts, “Can you do my shoulder?”
Atef sits at the edge of the couch, his left arm held out like a scarecrow’s. Riham balances on the cushions behind him and holds on firmly to his elbow. Like a seesaw, she pulls and pushes.
“Akh, you’re getting too strong,” Atef says. For years, his children have done this, yanking at his limbs, pulling and hefting like tiny construction workers. Sometimes Atef imagines how he must appear to them, enormous and long-limbed, with his backaches and creaking joints. Especially his shoulder, an old dislocation never properly healed, from where a soldier yanked him to his feet. The children never ask him why or how. They accept it, like air or bread, their father with his ailments.
Riham puts forth a burst of strength and, surprisingly, his shoulder pops, air resettling in his joints.