the master of her ticket window now, and I had no choice but to stand in line like any common person, like the hoi polloi, the dregs of society, the lower class, waiting my turn, which might well never come.
Fadil had inspired the burning taste of envy in my throat since our earliest childhood. Hiba had worshipped him when she was little and now here she was, leaving to marry him. Son of her maternal aunt, a boy with greenish eyes and light hair—their boy. At the time, there was no boy I hated the way I hated him. He just made me so mad with the way he rode a bike so well, how good he was at it, when I never could do it with any skill. And if there was not a boy in the world who had the right to claim superiority over me, the spoiled and childish girl, then how could a boy have his sort of swagger? That was why I would stir up his rancor by saying those damning words, Hey, you American you! For children who woke up and went to sleep to the anthem Death to America on Radio Iran every day, this insult of mine was a completely unacceptable dishonor, but for Fadil it was a disgrace that could not be refuted. Its scandalous signs were so blatantly there, and could not be veiled.
Of course, Hiba would travel with him abroad when he had a work assignment somewhere. She would drive their car, she would give birth to four children, and she would traverse all of God’s wide world. She would summer in Paris, stare full on at the Mona Lisa’s smile, make snowballs and fashion a snowman with a cap and red nose … and so, what else, Hiba? She might barely remember an old friend now and then, a cousin, no less, flicking the dust off that face and sending her a postcard from the last capital city she happened to visit.
Her jelly-like face pains me. Her silence pains me—she who has never been silent. If only she would say something!
Anything
. How can Fadil alter her to this extent when he has not been close to her, has not revealed himself to her, and has not occupied her very being yet? He has not even put an engagement ring on her finger! How can she suddenly be so much older, with secrets and private matters and things that I have no right to unlock and know, when only yesterday she left all the drawers in her chest open for me to riffle through? Why didn’t she teach me from the start how to spy and steal, so that now I would be able to know what she was thinking, why she was as silent and still as a wall, her life as secret as a solitary holy man’s hidden cell? Now I am the stranger in the room, and I curse my presence, even though not long ago, our phone conversation had been all I needed to make me feel like I was alive.
Say something, Hiba! Anything!
If only she had not spoken!
She dropped her head onto my shoulder, and I could no longer pick up anything but the murmur of lips wanting to say something but stumbling over the words. I put my arms around her and what I heard was like a mighty kick that struck a distant spot behind her ribs. She held my hand tightly and said, I want to call him … we need to agree on some things. And I want … I want to do that without my family knowing. I don’t want to cause him any embarrassment when we don’t agree. Are you going to help me? Can you let me use your cell phone? And stay with me, I mean, while we’re talking. I don’t want to feel like I’m committing some crime.
Half minutes, or quarter minutes, went by between the end of one of her sentences and the beginning of the next. Heavy—that is how the time going by felt against my body, and a mix of bitterness and sorrow stung me. Something drove me to feel relentless pulses of sorrow, feelings of regret that I did not understand at all, a sensation like that left by an old betrayal. I pushed her far enough away from me that I could look her in the eye. I explained to her that I could not be a third party in a moment so intensely intimate as this. I left my phone with her. I promise you, she said, I will not spy on
Fadil had inspired the burning taste of envy in my throat since our earliest childhood. Hiba had worshipped him when she was little and now here she was, leaving to marry him. Son of her maternal aunt, a boy with greenish eyes and light hair—their boy. At the time, there was no boy I hated the way I hated him. He just made me so mad with the way he rode a bike so well, how good he was at it, when I never could do it with any skill. And if there was not a boy in the world who had the right to claim superiority over me, the spoiled and childish girl, then how could a boy have his sort of swagger? That was why I would stir up his rancor by saying those damning words, Hey, you American you! For children who woke up and went to sleep to the anthem Death to America on Radio Iran every day, this insult of mine was a completely unacceptable dishonor, but for Fadil it was a disgrace that could not be refuted. Its scandalous signs were so blatantly there, and could not be veiled.
Of course, Hiba would travel with him abroad when he had a work assignment somewhere. She would drive their car, she would give birth to four children, and she would traverse all of God’s wide world. She would summer in Paris, stare full on at the Mona Lisa’s smile, make snowballs and fashion a snowman with a cap and red nose … and so, what else, Hiba? She might barely remember an old friend now and then, a cousin, no less, flicking the dust off that face and sending her a postcard from the last capital city she happened to visit.
Her jelly-like face pains me. Her silence pains me—she who has never been silent. If only she would say something!
Anything
. How can Fadil alter her to this extent when he has not been close to her, has not revealed himself to her, and has not occupied her very being yet? He has not even put an engagement ring on her finger! How can she suddenly be so much older, with secrets and private matters and things that I have no right to unlock and know, when only yesterday she left all the drawers in her chest open for me to riffle through? Why didn’t she teach me from the start how to spy and steal, so that now I would be able to know what she was thinking, why she was as silent and still as a wall, her life as secret as a solitary holy man’s hidden cell? Now I am the stranger in the room, and I curse my presence, even though not long ago, our phone conversation had been all I needed to make me feel like I was alive.
Say something, Hiba! Anything!
If only she had not spoken!
She dropped her head onto my shoulder, and I could no longer pick up anything but the murmur of lips wanting to say something but stumbling over the words. I put my arms around her and what I heard was like a mighty kick that struck a distant spot behind her ribs. She held my hand tightly and said, I want to call him … we need to agree on some things. And I want … I want to do that without my family knowing. I don’t want to cause him any embarrassment when we don’t agree. Are you going to help me? Can you let me use your cell phone? And stay with me, I mean, while we’re talking. I don’t want to feel like I’m committing some crime.
Half minutes, or quarter minutes, went by between the end of one of her sentences and the beginning of the next. Heavy—that is how the time going by felt against my body, and a mix of bitterness and sorrow stung me. Something drove me to feel relentless pulses of sorrow, feelings of regret that I did not understand at all, a sensation like that left by an old betrayal. I pushed her far enough away from me that I could look her in the eye. I explained to her that I could not be a third party in a moment so intensely intimate as this. I left my phone with her. I promise you, she said, I will not spy on
Similar Books
