It is Nablus and she is eighteen. Outside the window, fig trees are beginning to sprout their olive-green leaves. The air is light and delicious. Beyond the window is the day, vast and unfolding, a banquet hall filled with people awaiting her. I’ve asked for candles surrounded by flowers, her mother has told her. A dozen for each table. I want the air to be sweet as sugar.
The anticipation is thrilling. Mustafa will walk her to the car, they will do a zaffeh and she will spin in her white dress. And Atef. He is waiting. She imagines him nervous, his habit of popping a peppermint candy into his mouth, and smiles.
She must do her hair. She squints in front of the mirror, her curls messy and frizzed. She should’ve listened to Salma and soaked them in olive oil, but it is too late. There is a brush on the armoire and she yanks it through her hair. She frowns at the creams and perfume atop the dresser. Where is the kohl, the vermilion lipstick? She finally finds a pot of rouge in one of the drawers and rubs it onto her lips, then her cheeks. There is a crumbling eyeliner pen and she makes circles around her eyes.
She is beautiful. The reflection brings tears to her eyes. She admonishes herself not to ruin the makeup.
You’ll be bright as the moon tonight, her mother has told her. Suddenly she is filled with longing, missing her mother powerfully, though she is in the next room, dressing and picking out a veil. A thought nags at her, like a moving creature in her peripheral vision. But she shakes her head, returns to the reflection.
In the closet, dresses hang. The colors are polite and subdued. They have moved her clothes, she remembers, much of her things already in the small house two streets down. The house she will enter as Atef’s wife.
She rummages in the closet until her fingertips dart against something satiny. She pulls it out, a dusky dress without sleeves. A different dress, she thinks, a new one.
It fits around her hips but catches halfway up and she tugs, finally fishing her breasts out, fitting them in the dress. She gives her hair a pat, sniffs at her armpits. There is the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Farida, Alia thinks, or her mother. A knock, then a male voice saying her name.
Atef!
Alia feels herself blush, her hands instinctively at her exposed collarbones. Before she can call out to him, the door opens. She turns slowly, exposing herself like a flower, her eyes shyly on the floor.
“You can’t see the bride yet,” she teases. “Mama will be furious.”
There is silence. Alia hears it as awe. After a moment, she lifts her eyes to his. He is still. His face has changed, she sees. His hair is gray. Perhaps it is chalk or dust. He must bathe. She suddenly has the urge to lean in, though she has never kissed before, not with anyone. She steps toward him, stops only when he bows his head. When he lifts it, she is stunned to see tears mottling his cheeks.
“Alia,” he says, and she hates her name, abruptly, for being able to carry such sorrow, such unbearable weight. “Alia.”
She knows if she hears her name once more from this man—for she sees that he isn’t Atef but a stranger—suddenly she knows that she will not wed, that Nablus and the party, the candles, the white dress, all of it will be ruined. She will be ill, will begin to shriek, will throw every last one of the beautiful perfume bottles against the wall. And so she turns and, ignoring the agony in her hip, rushes to the bathroom and locks the door. She stands for a moment, breathing heavily. Her reflection does the same. She sees and cannot remember and weeps.
It takes a long time for them to convince her to open the bathroom door. Even then she refuses to let in Umm Najwa or Atef. It is Linah who finally murmurs her way inside. She helps Alia change into a nightgown. Alia sits on the closed toilet seat while Linah wets a towel, wipes the makeup off her face. Linah rinses the towel in the sink; the water runs red and black.
“Close your eyes, lovely,” Linah says, her breath warm against Alia’s face. “Just a couple more swipes.”
“You smell of cigarettes.”
Linah looks startled. She winks at Alia. “Our little secret, then.”
“Where’s the baby?”
“June? Manar’s with her. She’s putting her down for a nap.”
“I want to go home.” Her eyes spring hot.
“Oh, Teta.” Linah stops, the filthy towel dangling from her hand. She looks at her sadly. “I know.”
Linah eases her onto the bed. The door shuts quietly behind her. The air in the room is heavy, the sound of traffic audible. Alia watches the sun make tribal patterns on the ceiling until she falls asleep.
In her dreams a man is pouring tea into glasses, then methodically pouring the tea out onto a beautiful Persian rug. The room is cavernous, white everywhere. Alia watches him with horror, the burgundy and cobalt rug soaked with tea.
You’re ruining it, she tells him.
He looks at her with amused eyes, turns over another glass deliberately. The tea spills.
It’s better than fire, he says.
Alia wakes breathless, her heart thumping. The room is dim and gray and for an awful moment she thinks she has lost her sight. But it is just the setting sun, the light being leeched. She has slept for hours.
Something about that spoiled rug makes her ache. She hates dreaming, hates the people that populate her dreams, arriving for brief slivers before vanishing, leaving her with bits and pieces out of which a whole can never be made.
Alia walks carefully to the living room, leaning on the wood-tipped cane they brought her. It is a sign of acquiescence. At the doorway, she stands unseen for a moment before rapping the cane against the wall. She walks into the room.
Flowers. Dozens of them, clouds of purple and blue. Hibiscus and jasmine and several long stems of yellow roses. A bouquet of balloons is tied to the chair where Karam sits. They are all there, Manar and her baby, Zain and Linah and Abdullah on the sofa. The names come to her instinctively. Effortlessly. Riham is carrying a cake into the room; Souad and Atef talk to each other in lowered tones. Their voices are merry.
“There she is!”
“Lovely as the moon!”
“Oh, Mama, thank you for using the cane.”
“Zain, help her sit.”
“Teta, take my arm,” Zain says. “We brought the party to you.” He seats her next to Atef. “Since you weren’t”—he clears his throat—“since you weren’t feeling well, we wanted to celebrate here.”
“Do you remember what today is, Mama?” Riham asks her.
“My birthday,” Alia says.
The smiles are authentic now. There is a relief that ripples through the room, like a gust of wind. The voices relax.
“We got a cake with raspberry icing.”
“And cherries!”
“And cherries. Coconut too, I think.”