“All of this, all of you, this joke of a conversation. A group of middle-class Arabs, most of them more American than Arab”—here he looked pointedly at Souad and at the tank top that showed the tops of her breasts—“from the comfort of a mansion, speaking about the plight of the poverty-stricken. As if any of you have stepped foot in a refugee camp. You barely speak Arabic with your children.” Again a glance toward Souad, Budur, Karam. “You’re fair-weather Arabs, all of you.”
“He’s got a point!” Karam tried for a joke. “We’re addicted to American television, that’s true, but I don’t think it’s a crime.” Uncertain laughter rippled. Riham caught Latif’s eye; he looked away.
Abdullah turned to Karam. “Do you know the words to the Fatiha?”
“Abdullah!” Both she and Latif spoke at the same time.
“What? Is it wrong of me to ask? To be concerned about the spiritual fate of those around me? My family?” The word dripped from his tongue. “If I don’t speak, no one will. This is exactly the problem. Arabs go over to the West, fall in love with their fake gods, their starlets and music stars, drink their poisoned water—”
“We have a Brita,” Souad muttered.
“It’s disgusting.” Abdullah ignored Souad. “We lose our culture. We sell our souls. Instead of getting fat off of their land, we should be fighting them, arming to the teeth. We should be returning to Allah. The people who are going to save us, they aren’t those spineless politicians. It’s the men inside the mosques.”
Abdullah sat back in his chair, looking satisfied. He lifted his teacup and slurped. Silence.
“If you think that, you’re a fool.” Alia’s voice rose, sharp. Riham was shocked by the ferocity in her voice.
“Mama—”
“Those men hand out lines like candy; they’re trying to brainwash our boys.”
“Mama—”
“No, no. You listen to me, boy.” Abdullah lifted his eyes reluctantly to meet Alia’s. “You listen to me. What those men are trying to do, what they’re trying to sell you, this idea that you’re lost and they’re saviors and the rest of the world is evil, that what you need is to bow and surrender and fight, they’ve been doing that for decades. You think you’re their first one? They’ll pick up anyone hungry enough to listen. So don’t sit there thinking you’re special. Don’t sit there thinking you have some great secret. We’re all a mess. Iraq’s a mess, Lebanon’s a mess, don’t even get me started on Palestine. But if you think those hypocrites are going to save anything, those liars wearing God like some gold to attract boys . . . well, then you’re an idiot.”
No one spoke. Latif eventually cleared his throat, asked about Boston, and Souad answered with visible relief, told him of the children’s school. Rosie brought out coffee, and everyone spoke of other things. Abdullah remained silent, ashing his cigarette into the wildflowers, though they’d asked him dozens of times not to.
Riham didn’t say anything. She watched her mother. She remembered her uncle, dead for decades now. Riham remembered how, when she was a girl, she would listen for mentions of him, would look at photographs of the wickedly handsome man smiling in the sun. She fell in love with him, in a way. She would wonder about his voice, if he’d ever loved anyone, what songs he’d sung when he was happy.
Abdullah was five when she wed Latif. Latif had spoken about him matter-of-factly, telling her about his son just as he’d told her about the house that waited for her in Amman. At the time, everyone thought her mad.
“But he’s so old. And with a son . . .” her childhood friends would say, trailing off uncertainly. Her father suggested that she might wait before deciding. Souad was most direct, telling her she was making a mistake.
“You can’t just enter a child’s life and pretend you’re his mother.”
But they had been wrong. For years and years, they were wrong. Within a few months in Amman, Riham learned tidbits about the woman before her, Abdullah’s mother, dead for most of the child’s life. Whatever memories he had of her must have been dim and few. Somehow, the fact that she wasn’t Abdullah’s biological mother didn’t dampen her love for him. It made it fiercer. As he grew, she’d look at him sometimes, watch his dark head bent over the dining table, and her chest would fill with love. Latif worked constantly; the boy had been raised by a string of maids. No father, no mother. He was hers, hers alone.
She fretted, as Abdullah grew older, about what she wanted for him. More and more, it seemed like the fate of mothers was to lose their children to other cities, to London or Istanbul or Los Angeles. She spent years worrying that she would lose him to the place she’d lost her siblings, to America, that he would grow up without Allah.
She needn’t have worried about Abdullah leaving. She should have worried about what was happening right in front of their faces. The Fixture, the mangled bodies.
It was 1991. The Gulf War had ended, and Riham was always afraid. Every night she dreamed of islands, something shining—necessary, imperative for her to reach—across the water. The world, as she knew it, was over. So much of her parents’ money was lost, the Iraqi forces shutting the banks down. They used the inheritance that Salma had left behind, selling her apartment and buying a small house in Amman, filling it with new furniture, carpets, teapots. Karam was in America, speaking of snow and highways over the staticky telephone line. And Souad had taken the most bizarre turn of all, remaining in Paris, a hasty wedding, moving out of Khalto Mimi’s house and into an apartment with Elie.
In the evenings, Riham gathered with her parents and Latif, watching news reports. Abdullah usually fell asleep with his head in her lap. Latif began speaking about the influx of refugees, how the hospital was swamped.
“People are rotting waiting around for antibiotics,” he’d say. “Something needs to be done.” Riham watched his jaw clench and knew something was coming.
In the end, how could she not love him for it? For his generosity, for his power, this man who put his hands on others and healed them. These refugees entered their lives abruptly, bringing lice and night terrors, the endless smell of antiseptic soap and Dettol. They slept in the Fixture, where Riham unrolled carpets and laid out clean sheets. She made pots of stew. How could she begrudge them—with their open mouths and ashamed eyes—Latif?
She couldn’t.
(But the truth is that she begrudged them anyway. They reminded her of the black splotch on her soul that she’d glimpsed that day—years and years ago—in the water, the ways in which she was impure. She has been scrubbing, after all. Every day since.)