“Mama.” Souad sees Zain’s brow crease.
“I love that shawarma place, Mama,” Zain says in a rush. “Those fries are the best.” Zain smiles, eager and shining. It breaks her heart to hear it—that tone, that enthusiasm, carefully prepared for her.
They walk down one flight of stairs to the apartment where Karam and Budur are staying for the summer. The building is old, with a shabby but charming fa?ade. Near the Corniche, it overlooks shops and endless, winding traffic, and it’s steps away from the American University. The apartments are full of professors and their families, most of whom have been friendly to Souad. Their two apartments, on the fifth and sixth floors, are high enough for them to glimpse the Mediterranean between telephone poles and buildings.
“It’s a summer house,” Riham had said about the Beirut apartment when she called Souad. “I barely ever use it, Mama and Baba go for only a couple of weeks every year. It’s just sitting around, collecting dust. You’d be doing me a favor.”
The doors to the two apartments are identical, both with intricate woodwork. Souad knocks once, twice, though she knows it is unlocked.
Alia lets out a snort. “What is this, America?” She pushes the door open and calls out, “Karam!” Souad looks, briefly, heavenward. “Karam!” Alia strides in and the children and Souad follow her into the foyer.
“Karam’s not here.” Budur appears, wearing her bathrobe, hair disheveled. “Morning of lovelies,” she exclaims. “Linah’s inside, habibi.” Zain darts past her, and Manar walks toward the balcony in the living room. Budur gestures for Souad and Alia to follow her into the kitchen. Where Riham’s place is painted blue, the walls in Karam and Budur’s apartment are a lush green, and they refer to the apartments as the green one and the blue one.
“The house smells like cigarettes.”
“I’ll tell Tika to open the windows, Auntie,” Budur says smoothly. Souad admires her equanimity, the way Budur steps deftly over conflict as she would an overturned shoe. “Tea?”
“With sugar.” Alia sits at the kitchen table. “Souad’s glasses are filthy.”
“They’re not.” A vessel throbs behind Souad’s left eye.
Budur slips by Souad as she gets a mug, squeezing her arm. “Easy,” she says in a whisper. Raising her voice, she tells her, “The dress looks good, Sous.”
Souad tugs the hem. At the store last week, Budur insisted she buy it as Souad cowered in the dressing room, aghast at her cleavage.
“She looks like a hooker.”
“Mama!”
“What?” Alia shrugs innocently. “You do.”
“I think she looks lovely. Vibrant.”
“Vibrant.” The word is lethal in Alia’s mouth. “What divorcée wants to look vibrant?”
Budur holds a hand up. “Please. Have you seen the women in this city?” She pours a cup of coffee for Souad. “It’s practically a niqab compared to what they wear.”
Alia snorts. “A city of whores.” Their distaste of Lebanese women is something that unites Alia and Budur.
“You two,” Souad says, taking the mug, “are single-handedly murdering feminism.” More caffeine can only help, she thinks.
From somewhere farther inside the apartment, there is a crash, followed by silence, then an explosion of laughter. Budur and Souad catch each other’s eye.
“Linah,” Budur calls out.
Linah appears in the doorway, still in her pajamas. Nine years old, she is only months younger than Zain, though she looks much younger, petite for her age and skinny, with hair so fine it is always slipping out of her braids and ponytails, scattering across her shoulders. Little button nose and those enormous eyes, Riham always says. Even when Linah was a baby, Souad felt drawn to her, with her tantrums, her wolfish grins, difficult but so dear, so touchable, in a way Manar—whose body went slack when held—never was.
“What was that noise?”
Linah hides a smile. “Nothing.” Zain appears behind her.
“Zain, habibi, what was that noise?” Budur asks.
Zain hesitates, looks at Linah. “We dropped a picture frame. But we’re cleaning it up.”
Linah glares at him. “Shhhh.”
“Good boy,” Budur says. “Linah, what did we say about lying?”
Linah ignores her mother. “Can I have some of your coffee?” she asks Souad.
“It’ll give you a mustache,” Souad says. She remembers that line, oft repeated by her mother and Khalto Widad in Kuwait. It used to terrify her, the idea of waking up with a bristly mustache like her father’s.
“No, it won’t!” Fists on her hips, legs splayed out. Even Alia laughs.
“It’s hot,” Souad says, tipping the mug carefully toward her little face. Linah purses her lips, drinks. Grimaces.
“It tastes like dirt,” she announces.
“The last thing that child needs is caffeine,” Alia observes.
“Caffeine!” Linah yells. “Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine.” She jumps up and down, hopping toward her mother like a rabbit. Zain laughs, delighted at the antics of his younger cousin. Budur doesn’t yell or rebuke the girl, just shakes her head and opens her arms. She holds Linah, still hollering, between her legs and redoes her braids, the dark hair flashing quickly between her fingers. When she finishes, she lays her cheek, briefly, against the top of Linah’s head, then releases her. Linah dashes out of the room, Zain following her.
“Get dressed,” Budur calls. “Souad wants to leave.” She looks at Souad, raising an eyebrow. “That girl is a terrible influence on Zain.”
The building is fourteen stories high, with an apartment on each level and an ancient, wrought-iron elevator that skids between floors. In the lobby, it stops an inch higher than the floor, and Linah and Zain make a production of jumping down. Manar follows, ignoring their chatter.
Souad’s hope is that somehow Beirut will fix whatever hungry, invisible malaise she felt in Boston after Elie left. At first she’d thought it was because she was aging, at the end of her twenties, but no, it was something larger, an epiphany at a gas station one February evening, as she stood holding the gas pump, breathing in that addictive scent, and suddenly she understood that this place was the malaise. It was in the sprawling malls, the highway lights, the tax season, suburban America itself, in whose veins she’d lived and slept and woke for years.
Beirut called to her. She wanted somewhere new. She wanted to go home, she told Zain and Manar, though Manar just stared at her and said flatly, What home.
Home as in somewhere familiar, somewhere people look like us, talk like us, where you guys can learn Arabic and be near your grandparents and never come home asking what raghead means.