Riham’s eyes widen. “Baba, did you hear that?”
He rotates his shoulder gingerly. “It doesn’t hurt,” he marvels. “You should become a mass—”
A cry interrupts him.
“No!” The voice is small but strong. From the other side of the house, a door slams. Then flat-footed, decisive strides: Souad’s. Of all the children, her footsteps are the loudest.
“Your sister’s up,” Atef says to Riham and they both wait, listening. Atef can make out angry tones—Souad defiant and Alia’s voice rising in return.
“Nooo!” Atef braces himself. Souad rampages into the living room, running in that absurd, leggy way of hers, her hair riotous, sticking nearly straight up. She is wearing underwear, a yellow sock on one foot, and nothing else.
Still hollering, she runs straight for Atef, in the manner of someone seeking her protector. “Baba!” she howls, her fingers outstretched. When she reaches the couch, she wraps her arms around his neck like a vise. Atef lifts her, smothering a smile at her tear-stained face.
“You banshee, what’s all this?”
“No dress!” Souad yells. She buries her head in his neck as Alia appears in the doorway. Alia’s lips are set in a tight line, a frothy dress hanging from her fist. She shakes it in Souad’s direction. A pale ribbon jounces maliciously.
“Atef, you tell that barbarian daughter of yours to put on this dress or she’s spending the day in her room.”
For a moment Alia glares, then catches sight of Riham. Her face softens; she tosses the dress toward Atef—slightly too hard, he notices, and remembers again the previous night’s argument—and holds her arms out.
“Darling, happy birthday.”
Riham hugs her mother, smiling as Alia brushes the shoulders of the dress. As they speak, Atef turns to Souad.
“Turtle,” he whispers. “Why won’t you wear the dress? See how pretty Riham looks.” This grabs Souad’s attention and she examines Riham. She shakes her head.
“Too itchy,” she declares. She has a bizarrely older voice, nearly sensual, a lounge singer’s voice, hoarse, as though she has spent all of her five years drinking whiskey and lighting cigarettes.
In Souad’s features, the dead flicker. His father in the almond-shaped eyes, the color of wet bark—a father Atef barely remembers, knows through old photographs his mother kept in Nablus, the man looking directly into the camera. And in the mouth, the quirk of lips when she smiles, is Mustafa.
She is the child they hadn’t intended to have, surprising them and toppling the neat symmetry of their family—Karam and Alia, Riham and Atef—so that even in babyhood she arrived in mutiny, with reincarnated features. Atef furrows his brow as though pondering this. “Where does it itch?”
“Here,” she says, pointing at her neck. She grimaces. “I want the mermaid.” A polyester nightgown adorned with mermaids, Souad’s favorite garment.
“But Turtle,” he says, “it’s Riham’s birthday. Don’t you want to make it special for her?”
Souad’s brows lift together. “The mermaid is special,” she says flatly.
“It’s okay,” Alia sings out. “Souad can stay in her bedroom while we all go o-uut.”
Desperate, Atef reverts to a timeworn practice—bribery.
“I’ll give you two dinars if you wear the dress,” he whispers to Souad. She considers, a shrewd expression on her face. She nods. Atef cheers. “She’ll wear it!”
Riham applauds and Alia snaps up the dress from Atef’s lap. “Finally,” Alia says, holding it toward Souad. “Hands up.”
“Baba does it!” Souad cries out. Atef sees the brief wounded look in Alia’s eyes, but she moves her head.
“Mama, can you braid my hair?” Riham asks, always astute.
“Fine,” Alia says, “let’s go to the bathroom.”
After they leave, Souad scrambles down and lifts her arms in a V, like a gymnast. “I’m going to buy a camel with my dinars,” she informs him.
Atef cannot quell the blossom of pride in his chest, though he knows it is wrong, wrong to feel so pleased with being the chosen one among his children.
Alia is not like most mothers. She is rash, impulsive, sometimes settling into daylong pouts when things don’t go her way. Compared to Widad and the other wives they know, Alia is childlike, sleeping late in the mornings, sprawling with Karam in the sunroom to paint his wooden creations. She is carelessly affectionate, brushing her lips against Atef’s beard at random moments, swooping down to kiss the children on their foreheads. But there is an absent-minded quality to her love, as though she is only just remembering this is her home, her husband, and her three children. Other times, she moves through their house with impatience. Atef had thought at first it was a temporary reaction to leaving Nablus, or to her first pregnancy, that she was overwhelmed with it all. But the preoccupation never quite abated.
The children, Atef believes, sense it. Even as babies, they seemed to understand—intuitively—the restlessness of their mother.
Several weeks after Riham was born, Atef arrived from work to the baby’s wails reverberating through the house. He panicked, thinking that Alia had fallen and couldn’t get to the child, but when he entered their bedroom he found Alia standing over Riham’s bassinet, watching the bawling infant.
At his entrance, Alia turned around. “I don’t know what she wants,” she’d said, her hands balled up at her side, genuinely at a loss.
Priya has sliced some strawberries for breakfast, the table spread with pita bread and labneh and jam, a bowl of cut tomatoes with cucumber in the center.
“Look at this!”
“Omar at school wants me to make him a dinosaur.”
“Just make sure you have your father cut the wood.”
“I know, Mama. Omar wants it to be green and yellow.”
“Souad, have some strawberries.”
“Strawberries have worms.”
“Suit yourself.” Alia turns to Atef, pops a piece of bread in her mouth. Flour dots her lower lip. “What’s the plan for today?”
Atef catches Riham’s eye and smiles.
“We’re going to the dunes,” he announces to the table.
“What?” Alia frowns; Atef immediately sees his mistake. He wishes he’d spoken to her earlier. “In this heat? The car ride out will take so long. And the scorpions.”
“Scorpions sleep during the day,” Riham says quietly and Atef’s heart clenches.
“I want to take her,” he says, harsher than he intended. “It’s still early.”
Alia gives him a sidelong look, a glint in her eyes. You want to do this in front of the children? After years, the two of them are fluent in this wordless language.
“Riham.” Alia turns to the girl with a coaxing smile. “Wouldn’t you rather go someplace else? Like the toy store. Or the shops? We can buy you a new dress.” She reaches over and tucks a stray hair into Riham’s braid.