Rage inexplicably bubbles within Souad. How dare she, this tiny exquisite thing, click her tongue and look sad? Séraphine’s face is grave, her eyes on the television, on images of troops barricading the city. Souad wants to shake her. How dare she gaze mournfully at the screen?
You can’t leave me, she’d told Karam yesterday, her voice breaking. You can’t.
Sousi. You can’t imagine what it’s like here. Everything’s gone.
“They’ve burned everything” is all Souad says now, repeating herself, and the other woman hugs her, abruptly, enveloping Souad in the scent of something spicy, like cinnamon or pepper.
One news report replaces another. The volume remains muted while French-language updates about the invasion travel across the bottom of the screen. As the rest of them watch, Souad looks around at the faces of the Libanais. She remembers her bitterness toward Séraphine and feels ashamed, small. Sami, she knows, went to college on a scholarship; his family lives in a small house in the city’s center. They would have no money to leave. Marcel’s brother worked with the royal family—no one has heard from him since the day before yesterday. Missing, assumed dead; Souad remembers the phrase from history class, the line that emerges during any catastrophe. She says, again, a quick prayer for her family, her friends, her aunt Widad, Budur, all those still alive.
Everyone talks of news back home, stories of their families, the people they know in Kuwait. The French, émile and Séraphine, remain respectfully silent, listening.
“I heard they’re looting the hotels.”
“They’re saying the soldiers barricaded the roads.”
“My sister can’t get out. They’ve shut down the electricity.”
“The water too. He’s making the sick die of thirst in the hospitals.”
“And in the outskirts? They’re going to start eating sand out there.”
“America will come in.”
“Fuck America. It’s because of America that son of a cunt has power.”
The voices swirl and become louder, people arguing, their eyes never leaving the television. Ivan pours them shots of vodka, refusing to take their coins. Souad wonders what the other patrons must think of them, with their raised voices and Arabic.
Hours pass. The men continue their talk; Séraphine braids the tassels of her scarf. Turkish blue, Souad thinks. She drinks one, two glasses of wine, stealing glances at Elie. He has fallen strangely silent. She needs to get back to Mimi’s. It is nearly two. Her aunt and uncle will be worried, and she is suddenly tired of it, tired of going back, always going back. She wishes she could have, just once, an entire night for herself, a blank stretch of road. The way the men do, the way Séraphine does.
Amman darts into her mind. Her drunken head throbs. A life with her sister and parents, without Karam, the endless arguments about curfew and college classes. She thinks of Riham and her quiet garden, little Abdullah with his anxious eyes, Riham’s boring husband. It makes her want to scream.
The television shows another scene, a new one. A park, blazing.
“Vous êtes certain? Je peux le changer. C’est trop triste.” Ivan speaks to Elie, his brow furrowed in concern.
“Non, non, c’est bien.” Elie keeps his eyes fixed on the television screen.
They fall silent watching the fire. A sentence moves across the bottom of the screen: Le parc a été dans les premières heures de ce matin.
“Bastards,” Sami says in Arabic.
Séraphine drains her glass. She frowns as she stares at the screen. “It is sad, of course,” she says in accented English. “But what is a children’s park when homes are being destroyed?”
Souad is suddenly angry. She remembers an afternoon during Eid, when she was six or seven, when her father took her to the zoo, as he always did—she loved to feed the giraffes, thrilled at the sandpaper tongues on her hand as she fed them crackers and seeds—and then afterward to the park.
“There are these little statues in the park,” she says, and then fumbles in French. “Comme des anges. Avec des petits chapeaux.” Everyone is watching her and for once she doesn’t care about her meager French. The eyes of the Libanais men are afraid, she realizes, like children’s. Dwarfed in the face of this. “Je les aimais.”
“Des figurines,” Elie adds, then switches to Arabic, speaking only to Souad. He looks grateful. “We used to go as children as well. You remember the entrance? That little gate.”
“The latch always stuck.” Souad feels his sorrow. “My father would have to jiggle it loose.” She has something that Séraphine doesn’t. Only she knows what is being burned, what is being taken in Kuwait. Elie shares this with her alone.
“My father too.” Elie smiles at her. “I’d forgotten, all these years.”
They spill onto the streets. The men roll hash cigarettes, the air pungent with the scent. Séraphine takes a puff and in the ethereal light of the streetlamps, she looks like something mythical. It is late. Far too late. Khalto Mimi will know she stayed out later than Lara; there will be questions in the morning. And they might smell the whiskey on her.
She lights one of Elie’s cigarettes, leaning into the flame in his hand, and smokes as they walk down the narrow, fairylike streets. Kuwait is burning; her mother is packing their house right now, as Souad walks.
Séraphine does a little skip, loops her arm through Sami’s. The tassels of her scarf sway back and forth, her hips moving like water. It reminds Souad of Khalto Widad, how she plaits her hair into one long braid after showering, the tip like a serpent’s tongue. They will go to Amman as well, Khalto Widad and Ammo Ghazi, everyone. Except Karam, who will go to some faraway city. Souad sniffs. It is too much.
They reach the Quartier Latin courtyard, where a woman is playing the violin next to the fountain, and two other women are singing. In her tipsiness, Souad first mistakes them for the women she saw hours ago, but, of course, they are different. Different beautiful women in this city of beautiful women.
“Let’s sit,” Séraphine suggests and they do, sprawling on the stone steps across the courtyard. The stone is cold, and Souad lifts her knees to her chest, Elie at her side. He puts his arm around her shoulders.
The women are singing Pink Floyd, their French accents shaping the English lyrics into an elegy.
“Your heroes for ghosts,” they croon. Souad thinks of the map on her wall at home. For the first time, she realizes sharply that it isn’t her wall anymore. The house is gone.
The music dips and rises, their little group swaying to the rhythm. One of the singing women wears a loose dress and she twirls, the skirt flaring, during the chorus. “Wish you were here.” They finish with a flourish, and the men whistle, their applause echoing down the street. The women curtsy.
“‘Je ne regrette rien,’” Séraphine calls out and when the violinist plays it, they all begin to sing along. “Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait.”
Even Souad, with her deep, graceless voice. She watches the musician, the singers, the fountain burbling water in the streetlamp light. Kuwait is a planet, a lifetime, away.