“Liar.” He coughs. “You’re crying.”
“I’m not crying, it’s just a little hot.” She waits until Tika walks into the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen. “Okay, so the balcony. I was thinking we could do the blue apartment, your mom’s room. She smokes out there sometimes, right? There would already be old butts around.”
Zain spears a forkful of eggs. “She stopped doing that after the natour spoke with her. The ashes were falling into Mr. Azar’s plants.”
“What about Manar’s balcony?”
“No way. She’d kill us.”
“Yeah.” Linah slumps against the chair. “Anyway, Manar would tell if she saw us.”
“Would tell what?” They turn. Manar strolls into the kitchen, her book dangling from her hands. The pages flutter as she walks. Her T-shirt has a shamrock on it, a dancing leprechaun on either side.
“What are you reading?” Linah asks, trying to distract her.
“Faulkner.” Manar cocks her head. “Would tell what?”
“None of your business.”
“It’s personal,” Zain says.
Manar laughs. “Personal?” She opens the fridge, pulls out a Coke. “Like the bad-word club?”
“Go away!” Linah says, embarrassed. They’d made the fatal mistake of telling Manar about the bad-word club they’d started a couple of years ago. When Linah and Zain got into fights with the adults or were just bored, they would sneak off to one of the balconies and say bad words aloud, words they’d heard from television or their parents or the older kids at school. They delighted in them, like little knives in their mouths. When they told Manar, she laughed, called them juvenile.
“You’re a jerk,” Linah says to Manar’s receding back. “I can’t stand her,” she informs Zain.
He nods. “She thinks she’s a grownup.” It is a betrayal, Manar who used to play with them, write and orchestrate plays for the three of them to put on for the adults during school vacations.
“Are you guys finished?”
Linah jumps. Her father and Souad walk into the kitchen. Like Linah’s mother, they look worn out, exhausted. Souad is tossing a pack of Marlboros from one hand to another. Her shorts are frayed and there is a stain on her T-shirt.
“Hi, kiddos.” She smacks the pack against her palm, pulls one out. “Tika made you eggs? Karam, did you talk to the natour?”
“Not yet.” Linah’s father runs his fingers through his hair. “Yesterday he said the generator is broken. And the electricity is failing throughout the city. He thinks they must’ve hit some electrical plant last night. Pretty soon we’re going to run on a few hours.”
“Motherfuckers.” She perches herself on the kitchen counter, near the open window, and lights a cigarette.
“Souad! The children.”
Souad wrinkles her nose, takes a drag. “Go to the blue apartment, kids.”
They both protest at once.
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re the one who told us to come down earlier!”
“Jesus.” Souad slaps her palm on the counter, a thwacking sound. The gesture startles them, and they all fall silent, even her father. Of all the adults, Souad is the most relaxed, the one most like a child. When they build forts, she helps them make flags out of newspapers. In the plays they used to put on, she would always be the evil witch, making shrill, cackling noises.
“Enough. No more nagging, no more complaining. Linah, if I hear you bring up the beach one more time, I’m going to scream. And Zain, enough with the puppy eyes.” Souad’s voice breaks and she clears it, taking another drag. “Please,” she says. “Please. For me. No drama today. Just go upstairs, watch a movie. Didn’t you just get a new one, about that group of lawyers or something?”
“They solve crimes,” Zain says quietly.
“Okay.” Her voice gentles. “The group that solves crimes. Please, just go upstairs and watch it. Please.” She smiles. “I’ll run to the dikaneh later and buy you a tub of ice cream if you just don’t argue.”
Linah and Zain glance at each other, silently conferring. Zain nods, and they rise from the table. “Chocolate swirl,” Linah reminds her aunt. Souad sticks her tongue out at her.
Her father laughs, his voice carrying as they walk away. “They’re little masterminds, those two.”
“Little mobsters, more like.”
Linah waits until after they’ve walked through the living room, Khalto Riham and her mother barely glancing up from the television, until they are outside the green apartment, free in the hallway, before she nudges Zain.
“Now?”
He looks at her, hesitant. Then he nods. “Let’s go.”
They sneak down the stairs like the spies in their favorite movie, tiptoeing down each step. At the front entrance of the building, they peek around for Hassan, the doorman, but he is nowhere in sight. Linah steps out first, stands for a moment on the pavement, marveling at how easily they did it.
“We’re actually outside. What?” she asks, noticing Zain’s frown.
“It’s . . . empty,” he says, looking at the street around them, many of the stores shuttered, parking spots bare. The road is usually bustling with university students and older couples, men on mopeds zipping between gridlocked traffic. But now there is a lone car driving along, hurriedly, as though not wanting to be caught here. Linah thinks of the girl in the plane-crash movie.
“It’s like something from a zombie film,” Zain says.
Where the world has already ended, Linah thinks. She swallows. “We’ll go to Abu Rafi’s real quick and come back. He’s always open.” As she turns left, walking toward the ribbon of shuttered storefronts, she can feel Zain’s pause, his eventual capitulation, then hears his footsteps behind her.
They walk along the sidewalks, past the fancy hotel with lushly flowering plants flanking its entrance. The bellman catches her eye, tilts his head quizzically. What are these children doing out here? She looks away, quickens her pace. The air is queasy, a tarlike tension in the warm dusk. The few people that cross their path are men, scruffy-looking, as though coming from a day in a mine somewhere, their hair rumpled, clothes dirty.
When they reach the enclave of delis and bakeries, she thinks for a moment she was mistaken, everything’s closed, but then sees the door—a cracked white sign above announcing Abu Rafi’s—slightly ajar, the usual display of flowers and fruits outside missing.