Her mother sighs and waves her hand out of the window, letting another driver pass. “Riham, we’re here for only two more weeks. Every minute you spend with those girls, you act like your teeth are being pulled out. This is what girls your age do, they go out together, they have fun, they talk and—”
“Aloush, leave her,” her grandmother says. She turns the car radio on. Riham sees her mother’s brow furrow in the mirror.
“Mama, I’m not punishing her. I’m trying to get her to enjoy herself.”
“She is enjoying herself. Aren’t you, dear?”
“Yes,” Riham says as enthusiastically as she can.
“I’m not!” Souad calls.
“Listen.” Salma holds up a hand, and they all fall silent. A newscaster’s voice fills the car with urgent tones.
“In southern Lebanon . . . Several shot dead . . . Tanks have rolled over . . .”
Her grandmother clicks her tongue and lowers the volume. “That poor country. All that slaughter, and now Israel’s joined the party.”
“They said an entire village was burned to the ground. The bodies stacked high.”
“Mimi’s cousin is saying they’re lucky if they get an hour of electricity a day there. Most of the time it’s just candles. Even the water’s filthy.”
“Riham,” Souad whispers and Riham looks over. Her sister is smiling mischievously as she chews on a strand of hair. Between her fingers is the rolled-up tissue, twisted and elongated to look like a cigarette. Souad puts the tip of the paper between her teeth, still chewing on her hair, and purses her lips. At ten years old, Souad is all curls and full lips: Riham has begun to envy her sister. Souad pretends to blow out smoke.
“Don’t chew your hair,” Riham says automatically. Souad has always chewed on pens and toys and her fingernails. For a while, her mother dipped Souad’s fingers in hot sauce, but Souad stubbornly learned to like the taste.
Souad lets the curl fall out of her mouth. She clamps her lips around the fashioned cigarette, pretending to inhale. “Wooooo.” She exhales, tilting her head back like an actress.
Riham laughs in spite of herself. Her sister is a foreign, beguiling creature. Last year they’d all gone to an aquarium, and one of the rooms had an enormous tank lit from within. Inside there was a jellyfish and several other fish rippled by. One fish was purple, veined with brilliant, iridescent scales. Watching it dart through the water, Riham thought: Souad.
“I’m making smoke rings,” Souad says, oblivious to tanks or burned villages, oblivious to her mother and grandmother deep in conversation about war, to anything but her lips releasing invisible coils of smoke.
The car ride takes hours and by the time they reach Aqaba, Riham is already tired and vaguely nauseous. At the beach, families have laid out bed sheets and towels, fruit and sandwiches spread between them. Groups of boys kick around a ball, the air punctuated with their cheers and groans. A flock of veiled women have pulled up their skirts and ventured into the water up to their calves. Riham’s stomach knots at the sight of so many slender bodies.
“There.” Alia points. They follow her toward a trio of colorful towels, Khalto Mimi and the girls lying on them.
“The water is incredible,” Lara calls out as they approach. She has rubbed oil all over, her skin shimmering. Between the towels are an assortment of oils and lotions, a large bottle of water.
“Honey and labneh sandwiches,” Salma says, setting the basket down.
“Bless your hands, Auntie,” Khalto Mimi says. “I’ll be starving soon.” Her mascara is clumpy and the roll of flab around her midsection, bulging against her Lycra bathing suit, reminds Riham uncomfortably of her own.
They roll out their own towels, and Khalto Mimi rummages through her bag for a pack of cigarettes. “Did you hear about Beirut?”
“I was telling Mama, this is exactly what the Israelis want,” Alia says.
Souad kneels and picks up a bottle of lotion. There is a smiling coconut tree on the front.
“You want some, ma belle?” Lara asks. One hand shields her face from the sun. Mira and Lara’s nickname for Souad—“my beautiful.”
“Yes,” Souad says. “I want a lot.”
“Off,” Mira says, smiling, and Souad lifts her dress over her head and tosses it on the sand. Her bathing suit is green, faded.
There is a tightness in Riham’s chest as she watches her sister flop down onto Lara’s towel, brown limbs everywhere, then lifts her hair with both hands so Lara can rub oil on her shoulders. Souad has fit in easily with the older girls; they seem entranced by her. Riham lies down on her towel, careful not to let her dress rise up.
“Gimme,” Alia says, turning toward Khalto Mimi with her arm out. Riham notices the tightness of her mother’s thighs, only the slightest puckering when she turns, her compact torso beneath the bathing suit.
“Your lungs are turning black, girls,” her grandmother chides as Alia lights a cigarette.
“I know, Auntie,” Khalto Mimi says with mock shame. “We’re terrible.”
“Only in Amman, Mama,” Alia says, blowing out a ribbon of smoke.
“They’re leaving,” Khalto Mimi says as her daughters get up. “They can’t sit with their poor, overheated mother for more than a half hour.”
Mira rolls her eyes and turns to Riham, the tiny divot in her collarbone beautiful, collecting a pool of oil. “We’re going to get some lunch. You want to come?”
The question has an artificial lilt to it and Riham knows Khalto Mimi instructed her to ask.
“I need to get some reading done,” she says, gesturing uselessly at her bag.
“That’s too bad.” Riham hears the relief in Lara’s voice.
“Riham,” Alia begins pointedly, but Salma interrupts her.
“It’s hot,” Salma says, rising. “I need some water from the shop. Riham, will you help me?”
“Mama, you should let her—”
“Are you okay with that, dear?” Salma speaks over Alia, looking at Riham. She can see her grandmother understands. The way her father would if he were here. Riham nods.
The shop is at the corner of the parking lot, a hut with a metal roof and a man selling drinks and falafel sandwiches.
“This weather,” her grandmother says as they walk across the sand. Riham can feel the heat, like fire, between her toes.
“Thank you.” Riham keeps her eyes on her toes. She sees her grandmother glance toward her. Salma clears her throat and speaks gently.
“Are they mean to you?”
Riham shakes her head, tries to think of the right words to describe it. “It’s like we speak different languages.”
Salma laughs. “When I was your age, I knew girls like that. They would call me names and I’d cry and cry. Sometimes they pulled the ribbons from my hair and threw them in the trash.”
“Really?” Riham loves being alone with her grandmother, the snippets of her life that are revealed. She loves to imagine the life her grandmother had, a peasant girl by the sea, before everything changed.
“It was because I was different. They knew it. I didn’t, not until later.”
“Different how?” They reach the shop and her grandmother gestures to the man behind the counter.
“Dear, a large bottle of water, please.”
“Yes, Auntie.”