Inside is an unkempt brown woman standing in front of the cheese aisle. Somehow, unmistakably, Linah knows she is a maid, Sri Lankan, although she is dressed oddly, in neither a uniform nor one of the pretty saris Linah has seen clusters of maids wear on their days off. This woman wears an ill-fitting dress, falling past her knees, the shoulders and bust too large for her. It is as though she just tried it on to see what it would look like. Her dark hair spiders past her waist, a handful of liras in her fist.
The store is empty save for the woman and Abu Rafi, looking grim and cheerless behind the cash register. Many of the shelves are bare. Sometimes, when she and Zain come here, running errands for their parents, Abu Rafi slips them a Snickers or a Fanta, but now he looks at them blankly.
“What is it? Tell your parents we’re out of meat. Milk too. Sold the last of it this morning. Those idiots at the port promised a new shipment, but the bastards have blocked the ships.”
Linah finds she cannot speak. Their adventure suddenly seems so stupid. To her astonishment, Zain clears his throat, steps forward.
“A pack of Marlboros. The green ones. For my mom,” he adds when Abu Rafi hesitates. The man shrugs, pulls out a pack.
“One fifty,” he says.
Zain offers him a trickle of coins. Linah watches with amazement as Abu Rafi slides the cigarette pack across the counter and into her cousin’s hands.
“Now, run along. This isn’t a babysitting service. Hey!” Linah and Zain jump. They follow Abu Rafi’s glare to the dark-skinned woman fingering a packet of peanuts. “No more wait-wait, you understand?” he says in broken English. “You pick something, you leave.”
Linah has never seen an expression like the woman’s: frantic, vehement. They watch her grab a motley of items—spicy nuts, a bag of pita, a wheel of soft cheese—with a brisk nervousness, an animal foraging during drought.
Something keeps Linah frozen in the doorway, Zain by her side now, the pack of cigarettes in his grip; something keeps them watching as Abu Rafi piles the groceries in front of him, punches numbers into a large calculator. The woman stares at a spot on the floor.
“Fifteen, twenty-three—forty-eight thousand lira,” he concludes. Then, in condescending English: “Now you pay.”
The woman drops the crumpled bills on the counter, her eyes still downcast.
“What is this? A joke? This is just ten.”
The woman remains silent.
“Speak up, girl. You think this is a charity? You go tell your madame that she has to—”
“No madame!” the woman suddenly explodes. Her hair shudders around her as she snaps her head up. “No madame, no sir. They leave.”
“Well, that’s none of my business,” Abu Rafi grumbles in Arabic.
“They leave five days ago.” Now that she has begun talking, it is like a levee breaking, crests spilling from the woman’s lips, her hands moving wildly. “I wake up, they gone. I wait. Wait for lunch, then dinner, then sun goes down. I stay awake one night, two nights. I wait. I take the laundry down, soak the rice. But they no come back. They hear the war and they go. They go—” Here, her voice falters. “They leave me behind. Here. I look everywhere for passport, no find. I try to call embassy, they say no one can help. They say stay inside, away from windows. I cannot call my children. I cannot go home. The food is finishing. There is no electricity.”
“We should go,” Zain whispers. But Linah is rooted in the doorway, her flip-flops glued to the linoleum. Abu Rafi and the woman stare at each other.
“There is no money,” the woman says simply. “They left.”
The man’s face darkens with anger, disgust, exhaustion—exhaustion at his store being the only grocery open, at another long day of telling people there is no more flour, cursing the Israelis every time the rumbles begin from the south.
“Forty-eight,” he repeats. Linah wants to punch him. “Or get out.”
“But madame and sir—”
“Forty-eight! You think I don’t have children?” He lets outs a long string of Arabic curses. “You want help, you find it somewhere else. Not here. Look around.” He gestures at the paltry supplies on the shelves. “Someone wants bread, they pay. Eggs! Apples! Cheese! They pay. They pay!” Spittle dots his lips. “I help one Sri Lankan, ten more at my door tomorrow.”
The woman flinches. She stares at the crumpled bills. With one hand, she smoothes her wiry, bristling hair from her face. Her profile could be on a coin, the nose straight, the forehead uninterrupted.
“The bread,” she finally says. “Only the bread.” Her voice could cool molten glass. This is who you are, she seems to be saying to the man, look at this wrinkled bill on the counter, my unwashed hair. For the rest of your life, you will remember this moment.
It is not until the woman has paid, swung by Linah and Zain with her bag of pita—she smells of sandalwood, perspiration—as though they are invisible, and left, the door slamming shut behind her, that Abu Rafi finally notices the two of them. He looks at them for a long moment.
“Go,” he says. “Run along home.”
They rush down the streets, the pockmarked asphalt and snarl of telephone wires overhead suddenly unfamiliar. What an ugly place, Linah suddenly thinks. She longs for Boston, the manicured lawns that light up during December, the community pool with an ice cream stand, her classrooms’ perfume of chalk. At the hotel, the same bellman catches Linah’s eye. This time she doesn’t look away.
At the building entrance, the natour is carrying a jug of water. “What are you two doing?” Zain crosses his arms to hide the pack of cigarettes.
“Errands,” Zain manages, then ushers Linah into the entrance and up the stairs. She has the vaguest sense of vertigo.
“Blue apartment,” she reminds him. This whole time, they were supposed to be watching a movie.
The apartment is empty and dark. “Quick,” Zain says. “Make it look like we’re watching something.” They draw the curtains shut and turn on the television, put the detective movie on. They toss the cushions on the floor, arrange them between small piles of unwashed clothes—Souad is a dreadful homemaker—but there is a funereal quality to their movements, like children playing children.
Zain is still holding the cigarette pack. “Gimme,” Linah says, taking it and stuffing it in her shorts pocket.
The room is gloomy and hot. The movie begins, but Linah’s attention wanders; the image of the woman’s downturned mouth, her dirty hair. Halfway through the movie, the electricity cuts off abruptly. The television hums off. Neither of them speak for a moment. Linah can feel Zain’s eyes on her, his concern.
“We could set off the sparklers.”
Linah looks at him with respect. When he wants, Zain can get interesting. They’d bought the sparklers last summer. Her father and Souad lit them on the rooftop. Stand back, they’d called, and the sticks made a shh-shh sound, dissolving in a shower of embers. Yes, she thinks. The sparklers would change things.
“They’d freak out.”
Zain shrugs. Linah wants to hug him. “You still have them?”