The Lovers, page 2
He watches her and then raises a hand and calls out her name.
She stops. He is a stranger. She will not know him for another life.
He wants to say something to her, to tell her he understands, that she is the only one he will truly love but he is cautious about forcing the hand of fate, how a slight tinkering could alter the course of their lives.
She waits for him and he says I am sorry, I thought you were someone else. She continues on her way, his love so young, and he returns to his home and thinks I am the luckiest man fate has played with since the start of time.
SHARK DREAMS
Lately a shark disturbs her dreams.
She is by the sea and she is standing on the shore with her dress hitched above her knees. She wades in, holding her dress, watching the roughness of the surf, wondering why she doesn’t go home. It would be easy. Walk home, change her clothes, then warm her toes, but she finds herself shivering, asking if this is the day she will drown, the day that danger edges closer to threaten her.
The waves buffet her and she releases her dress. It is pointless to hold it. In these conditions, she is going to get wet and she should be prepared to stand unprotected before the grey terror of this wintry world.
She has heard a rumour about a shark and she knows better than to believe a shark can be tamed, that she can do anything except tend it briefly, release it and hope she doesn’t lose her nose or a toe.
She finds the shark lying like a dead fish on its side. Chances are it has already expired. She is weighed by her dress but she tries to use it to her advantage, tying it to the shark’s tail and tugging it back to shore.
What does a shark need so it doesn’t suffocate before the fireplace? She bathes it with warm water, she sings it a song, she calls it to breathe and take to life. Days of no response and she senses the futility of her actions. She promises she will only keep it one more day before she buries it outside but she can’t bear to do so, not when she has run her hand over its body, not when so many nights she has cried.
She arranges the burial, she takes the shark outside. She wraps it in the dress that was a sign of the time she hoped before life proved her hope a lie.
She tells herself to begin, that the shark is dead, but she can’t bury it so she leaves it in the grave she’s made and walks away.
Always she wakes to a knock at the door and it is her love, carrying her dress and asking to be allowed again the warmth of the fireplace.
SILENCE
The greater the water she pours, the greater his emptiness seems. She had thought by now he would have been filled to the brim, that there would be a break but instead his demands grow and she now believes them to be without end.
He cannot satisfy her, he will never satisfy her, he should have left Jamila to other men.
He compares his ankle with hers and he wonders how such a small-footed creature could cause him so much pain. He holds up her hand, he envelops it in his own, and he wonders how defeat can be exacted with her as the tiniest dose. He stands by her—he hovers actually—and he is uncertain before her other men. He asks her about them and she offers them like pearls that will make him choke. Her transparency, her ease, these he counts as qualities he loves, but about her past, he wishes she weren’t so free. He wishes she kept the details to herself, that she did not have this crushing capacity to share.
What can he give her, what can he offer, what can he do to make her promise to stay at his side for the rest of their lives? What is there? Is there his lack of money, is there his absence of knowledge about the world, is he to keep her with his ordinariness (because, let us be honest, she has her choice of men)? What is there? Are there the details of his past? Is there his family which is more dysfunctional than most? But here she disagrees. His family is no worse, no better than her own.
He wakes in the middle of the night and she asks him where he is going. He kisses her before leaving quietly into the night, thinking about the life he knew, the life that awaits, how he never outgrew his uncertainty. He has carried it with him and he is unsure how to shed this solitude that is more comfortable than a home. How is he to do this? How is he to leave his past behind so he can meet her somewhere to give her the kindness that she deserves?
There is him, there is the night, there are his questions and his only answer is the silence all around.
PLEASURE
He emerges from her bedroom, he knows not to what world. Hours he has drowned and it all started with her saying, ‘Come, my sailor, let the captain teach you a lesson in ownership.’
Amir has heard stories of men driven mad by women, a woman taking complete possession and then refusing to release her hold, and he called such men crazy, inhabitants of the imaginary, creatures as unreal as fairytales told to children at night.
She whispers something in his ear, and he wonders if it is a dare, a challenge, a promise or all of the above? He is afraid that these pieces will break asunder and he will be like Humpty Dumpty in the nursery rhyme. He will not worry. That is a trouble for another night. Instead he goes to sleep smiling, and he thinks of pleasure, its texture, how it is desire bringing love to life.
FEATHERS
It had been another night of cards. Samir served them their drinks, the ashtray on the table was clean, and there were the small snacks they didn’t notice themselves eating. They kept a tally of winners and losers, the playing pairs to which they belonged, but they played for so many hours that he threw down his cards and yawned and said he was slowly going blind.
They laughed and said it was as good a time as any to have a break. Samir’s children filtered through, swapping glasses, emptying the ash tray, and he asked them what else they had in the fridge, if there was something other than coffee and tea. He poured them soft drinks, they all agreed it was getting late, and Samir said that before they went he had a story for them.
And so the story went.
‘Once—this was years ago—there was a farmer who wanted to keep a bird. He put together all the money he had and went to the market and bought himself the most beautiful bird. It came with a big cage and the seller told him if he fed the bird apples, it would begin to speak. “That is how I’ve trained her but I make no promises because she is unreliable like all the daughters of Eve.” So the farmer took his bird home and he praised its colours day and night. He occasionally let her out, he had this fantasy she was a rich princess and one day she would let her song be heard. He fed her as many apples as he could afford but that bird never said a single word, so he became angry that he had been taken for a ride and all he had was this ordinary bird. Mind you, it had the most glorious colours and the seller made a point that the bird might not sing. The farmer knew deep down he had bought the bird for her colours rather than her words but if you see the same colours every day, you tire of them, and suddenly you want to hear some words. He thought, I have given her apples and now I shall ignore her and she can starve in her cage for all I care, but he had the sense to leave the door open because he did not want her death on his conscience. He reasoned that he could explain to God her escape had been an accident, if a misfortune later befell the bird. And of course there was a misfortune. The bird became more and more miserable, she shrunk into herself and finally lost her feathers. The farmer was so furious he took the cage outside and he hoped to God that in the morning he’d wake and find he was rid of so miserable a bird. He got his wish in a way. The next morning, there was a woman frozen at the door of the cage, and he knew she had been the bird. So he did what we’re all meant to do: he carried her to a quiet place and buried her in the ground, wondering why he couldn’t be content with feathers, why he had also demanded the song. If only, if only . . . but this is an old story. The world giving you feathers, the feathers you prayed for, and then you discover what you really want is a song.’
They were silent for a second and then they made jokes about Samir and his story. ‘Tell us more about the feathers of the bird.’ ‘You can play cards, you can even serve coffee but yours are the stupidest stories I have ever heard.’
Samir said nothing but the next night there were no jokes about birds, women, feathers, storytelling or anything else. Jouad’s missing wife had been found in a neighbouring village and it was said she had been starved to death.
Samir let them play a round and then he said he needed to go to bed. They left silently and wondered about the stories, how fact and fiction both use the same words.
The previous night he went to visit Jamila. He had expected her to be home but she wasn’t. When he spoke to her in the morning, she said she had been out with friends. She volunteered no other details and he thought no more of it until Jouad was found beaten so badly that his mother was inconsolable when she saw her son’s face. It was nothing, he told himself, but casually one time he asked her what had happened to the baseball bat she kept by the fireplace.
‘Some kids borrowed it. Who knows? Maybe one day it will be returned.’
Eventually Samir had them around again for cards and they stuck to games except when Samir was in the mood to tell them a story. Amir came to hate the stories, bracing himself for what he was about to hear, but he told himself they were only stories, to tolerate them, push them from your mind, and that was what he told himself each night so that he was peaceful enough to sleep.
SHAME
PART I
He wonders where Jamila’s going with this, if this is an instance of letting a storm wear itself out . . .
‘The first boy I loved, properly loved, did not care for me the same. I was driven to desperation and you would not believe the lengths I was driven to, how badly I wanted to impress, how I wanted him to want me above everything else in the world, but in the end, I couldn’t make him or any of the others stay. Every single love died and I wondered if it was worth the heartache and the pain.’
‘I dressed for him, I danced for him, I plucked myself till I was bare and there was nothing else I could do.
‘Before I slept with him, I slept with someone else, learning tricks, wanting to torture him slowly on that bed but what was any of it really worth? It makes me sad to think of myself, so young, so full of desire, and how all I wanted was for someone with a bit of attention to spare.’
‘This story repeated itself so many times till I was sick with the weariness of it, with these romantic defeats. I wanted no more, I wanted to wash my hands, to say enough is enough, but it is a game I like and I find myself returning again and again, stepping in to play. Would I change it, would I change what I did, who I pursued, who I allowed into my life? I find it hard to regret my life in this way. Yes, there was much pain, yes, I wanted to die, but at least I tried, I loved, and it made me feel so alive.’
‘I wanted to tell you this. I wanted you to understand. For once in my life, I wanted to be motivated by promise rather than worry that the one I care for means to escape. I know I cannot make anyone stay. I know this. We all know this but tell me how much of what we do is logic and reason, how much is persistence in the face of contradictory evidence?’
‘This is the first time I have told anyone this, this is the first time I have let my guard down in this way. It makes me fear where we might go from here but if I don’t do this now, when will I do it? Do I grow older, older, hiding because of my very human fears?’
PART II
She wonders where Amir is going with this, if he will exhaust himself given enough time . . .
‘I gave her everything. I would have given her my life if I could and all I wanted was something small, a nice word, occasionally a smile, but she was like a storm, constant, and there was no calming her down. It hurts later when people say I told you so, when they say that you shouldn’t have wasted your time, that you were trying to give breath to a dead animal that cannot be brought back to life. What help is that to me? What good does it do for me to be reminded of this? Really I loved her and all the love in the world was not enough to make her smile just once in the morning and once before she slept in the night.’
‘I told myself I will be this good person, I will be a good man, I will not be like those who seek to control the woman in their life but her behaviour honestly drove me near out of my mind. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep and I knew that nothing, absolutely nothing, would be enough.’
‘I had this fear that another man would come along and she would run off with him. It was completely unjustified. She was many things but she was not the type to play around. Still I couldn’t shake this fear, and I thought, I will get my kicks while I can, I will have a woman on the side, and I went so far as to look around, but Samir, he pulled me aside and said, “If you can’t love her properly, if she does not feel the same, then it is better each person goes their way, that you don’t force yourself through a torture when you can have peace of a different kind.”’
‘We have gone far, we have come close, what is there that remains to be said? These hurts of the past will not protect us from the future, they will not protect us from being hurt again but we go forth in life, we dance as best as we can. This is the bargain we accept and it follows us from our birth till we breathe our very last breath.’
POSSIBILITY
Jamila considers the people around her. There is the family nearby, eating quickly as if in a race. There is the pair, a young couple, away from parental eyes for a moment. She remembers times like this when she stole away, how she still steals away, how her lover is a shadow in her life, how she denies the presence of permanency.
What happens once we become used to each other, once we become bored, once we anticipate each other’s moods like the seasons cycled in a day? What happens when you are tired of me and I tire of you? What keeps us together except the routine of a child and the boundaries of marriage and the law?
She considers the waiter, a man in his fifties who places bread on each table, who fills up each cup until it almost overflows. In the time she has frequented this breakfast place, he has always been here. She does not believe he takes a day off. She wonders if he has a wife, children, and it is likely. She imagines them warming themselves in the evening by a fire. He probably starts at 6, giving him an hour to prepare before the first customers appear, then finishing at midday when the doors shut for the day.
There is an old woman alone. Her hair is uncovered and she wears four necklaces over her jacket. Jamila has seen this woman so many times they often say hello.
Jamila has come with Amir on the days he does not work but she tends to frequent this place alone. It is a ten-minute drive and the food is always the same. Her aunt reprimands her: the wastefulness of having breakfast out when you can eat as well at home, and she shrugs because we take nothing into the next life except our bodies and the weight of what we did with our life.
She asks for another coffee. The waiter serves her with a smile, he asks after her plans for the day and she gives him a vague answer, one that satisfies his question but gives nothing away.
She drinks this coffee slowly. She thinks about the day ahead, she thinks about the night with him that has passed. She studies the family and imagines herself breakfasting with him in this way, a child of theirs at her side or his, or maybe one each for them to tend to, to drive them up the wall. She considers it, wondering about the longevity of such a fantasy, if it will have any life beyond a day, if it won’t be strained, if subjecting it to the regular strains of life wouldn’t ultimately break the camel’s back of love. She wonders if it’s worth the risk, if the storms that arise will be storms weathered, if they can see them to the other side. Why can’t we stay happy like this? Why is it the human condition to seek the greenness of spaces outside our current life?
She considers and her mind makes its turn. She wonders about discussing it with him, the one who insists repeatedly that she commit to a future, to know he wants to spend the future at her side.
THE LUXURY OF SUICIDE
Here suicide is a quiet thing. There is no drama, there is no outward yell. It is the sigh trapped inside that has been forgotten by the world.
Amir considers it. There is the one who swallowed poison and climbed into bed to die. There is the one who drove the truck off the cliff. The family insist it was an accident. There is the gun, the rope, the chair. There is the romantic version—Hollywood—where the mourners gather and they are allowed the solace of tears, and he considers the days of darkness that have been his, how he never considered jumping off a bridge, falling to the rocks at the edge of a polluted sea. He could lie down on the train tracks but the train has long since stopped running, and the fuel required to set himself on fire is fuel needed to keep his family alive.
When she lent him her car, he considered again the subject of suicide. It would be romantic, it would be a statement to the world, but he was in another place now and besides, the car was hers, not his, and the last thing he wanted was to inconvenience the one he loved who told him daily that she loved him too.
THE BOYFRIENDS
Um Bilal, we remembered her as a girl of fifteen even though she is well into her forties. We heard about that marriage overseas, the one that did not work out, and how a lesser woman would have retreated from life and waited to die, but eventually she returned here, and she brought with her a son, a boy of four or five, and she gave the vaguest answers about who had fathered him. We all asked but she never said anything that satisfied our curiosity. She lived with that boy alone above the bakery, and from that time she received men into her bed. Some said she did it for money, others said it was to battle the loneliness of the nights, others still that she was a light woman, not much upstairs, or else she would see how people called her every name under the sun, that when they were particularly spiteful, claws out and swiping, they said them to her face and even to her son. This son was not Bilal but another and I know for a fact that Bilal lived with his father overseas and you know how you sit in the night, the fire is low and the tongue a little loose, and we would wonder—all of us did—what sort of mother leaves her son overseas and then is able to hold her head up and speak normally to strangers in the street?
