The cake is a spongy pink, strawberries and cherries arranged in a circle around the border. Her name is written in the center.
Karam flips the light switch off, plunging the room into darkness. Alia feels the same panic of waking. As though sensing this, Atef finds her hand and Alia squeezes. They sing and she watches the flames, mesmerizing licks of orange and red. First they sing in Arabic, then English, then Manar and Zain and Linah sing in French. The baby wriggles in Manar’s arms as she sings. In the candlelight the grandchildren are beautiful, tanned and animated. Everyone applauds when they finish, even Alia.
“Happy birthday,” they all cry out. When Souad leans down to kiss her cheek, she whispers something about love and her eyes glitter with tears. Her daughter. She once stayed out all night and Alia slapped her face. Alia remembers that like a dream, like a story that happened to a neighbor.
“Here’s to a hundred years,” Riham calls out as she and Umm Najwa cut the cake, an oozy pinkness appearing as they slice into it.
A hundred years. The baby would be an adult, perhaps wed. Alia finds the thought oppressive.
There is laughter and talking. The grandchildren tell stories and the adults act dismayed, shaking their heads. Zain and Linah sit cross-legged on the rug. Abdullah and Atef wave their hands around, amiably arguing about politics. Abdullah calls some politician a megalomaniac, and the other grandchildren agree. Everyone talks about how delicious the cake is. They agree to try the cheesecake next time. Alia smiles and opens a parade of beautifully wrapped gifts—scarves, jewelry, a photo album—and holds the baby when Manar hands her over.
“She loves her teta,” Manar says, smiling.
Finally Karam catches her eye from across the room. “Mama, you’re tired, right?” he asks softly and she nods. Her darling boy.
Umm Najwa stands above her bed with a glass of water, her palm cupping a rainbow of pills. She hands them to Alia one by one. When Alia has taken them all—blue, red, orange—Umm Najwa sets the cup down and turns the light off. There is a sliver of light from the streetlamps.
“Good night,” Umm Najwa says. “Happy birthday.”
Alia feels the familiar relief at being alone. Beneath it, throbbing; some discontent closer to grief than anger. She thinks of her mother—the wishing hollows her, for her mother to appear—what she might tell Alia if she were here. Sleep now. The morning will heal.
It’s better than fire.
Her mother knew something on the eve of her wedding day. Alia remembers the tightening of her lips, the downward glance. But she, self-involved and joyful, had said nothing, making a note to ask later. But later was elusive; there was the dancing and lights, her wedding night, then the whirlwind years of being a wife, then the war, Kuwait, Mustafa—the thought of him empties her lungs of air, nearly fifty years later. Mustafa. She is decades older than he ever was. And life, life has swept her along like a tiny seashell onto sand, has washed over her and now, suddenly, she is old. Her mother is dead. There is no one to ask the questions she needs to ask.
Alia wakes to the sound of someone moving in the bedroom. Atef. She listens to him getting ready for bed, clothes folded and put away, the dishdasha he still wears to sleep. He goes to the bathroom, a strip of light visible below the door. She hears the sound of running water, the toilet flushing.
When he lies down next to her, he is careful, thinking her asleep. The delicacy of his movement is heartbreaking.
“Atef,” she says.
He turns to her, his face barely visible in the dark. There is a honk outside, the city fitfully settling into sleep.
“Atef, I liked the flowers. The yellow ones.”
She can see his teeth as he smiles. His hand travels the landscape of the blanket and finds hers. He loves me, she thinks. Atef in the garden, glancing up at her. It has been a lifetime. They are teenagers. Atef, always, loving her. She moves toward him, her body heavy and graceless. She puts her hand against the side of his face. She wants him with a ferocity. I’m young, she thinks, and she is. Their lives are beginning.
“Alia,” he says, but she cannot bear his voice. She tells him to be quiet. She pulls him toward her, dreamlike, her lips finding his, the air sour between them—her breath? His? She is embarrassed by the stale odor of her body—as they kiss. Her hip cramps but she ignores it; she tugs and tugs until finally he yields, his weight atop her, his hands skimming her thighs and stomach. She gasps and touches her own breasts, so withered and papery, but she will not think of it now, will not think of anything.
“God.” The word falls like water from his mouth.
She clasps between his legs until he grows hard and she pulls him into her, the sensation painful at first, bodies remembering their dance. They heave and arch until, finally, a wetness erupts inside her and Atef gasps like the wounded.
They lie silently afterward. Eventually, the silence gives way to the steady breathing of Atef’s slumber. Alia turns to her side, feeling the wetness between her legs. She doesn’t want to wash. She wants this fragment of Atef to remain.
Alia thinks of the cake, the voices singing for her. She half dreams of canvases, someone plucking her eyebrows bare. A boat capsizes and she imagines the sound of a baby crying, faraway. The sound is replaced by the whooshing of a car outside. Alia wakes and blinks. The baby cries again, louder this time, and Alia realizes the sound is real.
She rises from the bed. The baby is alone, she thinks. She will feed her.
She takes cautious steps, steadying herself on the hallway wall. The living room is dark, though the balcony door is open, and the light of streetlamps bathes the sofas and table, the television’s blank screen. The crying is louder, coming from the balcony. Alia feels indignant—how could they have left the baby alone?
But when she steps onto the balcony, she sees the mother is out there, rocking back and forth on the swing. She whispers to the child cradled in her arms. The swing makes a creaking sound each time the mother pushes back. She is guiding the baby’s mouth to her breast. Her dark hair has fallen, covering her face, and she doesn’t see Alia. The mother’s naked breast is visible and the sight of it, of the moist nipple, is startling. She steps back quickly into the living room.
She sits on the armchair near the balcony door, the nighttime air cool. She should bring the baby a blanket, sit with them outside, but suddenly she is too tired to move. There is a mewling sound and then silence, and Alia knows the baby has latched onto the breast, feels the phantom sensation in her own nipples, remembers strikingly that relief.
The woman begins to sing, her voice husky.
“Yalla tnam, yalla tnam.”
The words are familiar as water, as Alia’s own hands, which lift now to her face, against her cheeks.