A Word For Love Part 15

At the car, Nisrine opened the door herself, and got in between us. This time, Dounia sat on her lap. Madame said, "They don't have any other maids right now. We have to keep this one."

In the backseat, relief came off of us like sand.

I had wanted Nisrine, we had wanted her. Now, she was back, we hadn't believed she would really go away.

We rode home, pinching her arms to make sure she was there, and hugging her. Nisrine was quiet. When we touched her, though, we felt her warm skin like silk, and she patted us back.

By the time we got home, the children and I had begun to pretend that this had never happened, and Nisrine had never almost left. We brushed our teeth, and Dounia hung off Nisrine's waist.

In the kitchen, Nisrine set her bag carefully on the floor; we brought her warm milk, and again we hugged her; we were all hugging and laughing, when Madame came in. "What's so funny?"

Nisrine turned around. She said, "I'm sorry, Mama. It won't happen again. I'll do better."

Madame went up to Nisrine, and sniffed her beneath her neck, at her collarbone. "You stink, haha. You stink, that's funny."

Nisrine grew very still in the center of us.

Baba asked Madame, "Where are you going?"

"To check on the was.h.i.+ng."

"Come back afterwards and sit with me," but she wouldn't. All that evening, Madame wouldn't sit down in a room where Nisrine was, she complained Nisrine stank.

The night pa.s.sed. We were all happy Nisrine was back, except Madame. For Madame, she could not get rid of the gas. It was all she smelled when Nisrine entered a room, and it lingered and thickened, until finally in their fights, we began to forget how happy we were, we forgot how we would have missed her if she had gone and, like Madame, all anyone could smell anymore was gas.

The next day pa.s.sed. We had aired the house and Madame told Nisrine about using the stove again, but the smell lingered on and on.

LEILA.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE GAS, Adel dreamed of Nisrine. She was wearing a red sari-in the dream she said, "We're Muslim, we don't wear saris!"-but that was how it went: red cloth, a green mango, her child against her chest. He could see how the cloth hung off her shoulder, and he imagined the small white lines that marked the rapid growth of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s after her baby, her dark nipple like soil.

Later, Nisrine would wonder to me about the things he said: the mangoes, the stretch marks. How did he know about stretch marks? Was this his way of showing her he really was worldly, he knew about women? She was struck by how even in his dreams, he imagined imperfections. Like old men she knew in her country, who left imperfect lines along their hand-blown gla.s.s, not to attract the devil. Like the Arabic phrase mashallah, which wards off the evil eye from beauty, a superst.i.tion. In his dreams, he dared not dream too much; he gave her stretch marks, bitten lips, a bad ear, a blue toenail, as if these small troubles might charm away any larger ones. As if, with delicate white scars like lace on Nisrine's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, then he and she would both be free to love whom they wanted, when and where they wanted, for the rest of their lives, and their love could reach perfection.

Police are human, they like security, and they like when they feel it often. For months, Adel had watched Nisrine every day; he had waited for her in the morning, his toes at the very edge of the roof. She was a maid, her routines were not her own, and so very soon in their love, he had come to predict her-to know at six, she would be in the bedrooms; at seven, she would check the gas on the stove. Predicting was a way he loved her; he knew all her angles through the window, the shadows her arms made when the sun hit them; and he claimed this knowledge, the way other men might claim a woman by the taste of her skin.

When the gas happened, Adel was on duty. He watched the family gather in the kitchen. He saw us behind a gla.s.s window, a horrifying picture. Nisrine faced Madame, her back to him. He knew she must be worrying. He waited to see if we would hit her, if we did he knew he'd feel it as if we'd hit him. He wondered if he should call a policeman. This is the power of love, it made him forget, he was a policeman.

Do you guard foreign women? his father had once asked.

I guard everyone.

So Adel watched, and did nothing.

He was alarmed by his inaction. He loved Nisrine, deeply. He sat down on the roof to think, put his head in his hands, then stood up ready to help, but his father's words came back to him: Do you guard foreign women? Adel was a lover, a real Qais, a policeman, his father's son.

To his great embarra.s.sment and horror, he watched Nisrine leave that night, and still he did nothing.

She was gone two hours. Adel didn't go home to dinner with his mother, he waited on the roof to see what would happen. He watched our darkened windows, and as he watched, he felt the cement of the roof and the sky slowly close in on him, until there was no room for breathing. His heart swelled and swelled, until it was so full it stopped, because there was no room for beating. So he did his work without a heart, and without breathing, until finally at the end of the night Nisrine returned, and he saw her again with her little bag through the kitchen window.

She came out to him with her arms open. In his heart, he jumped into them.

"Nisrine, where did you go? I thought I'd lost you. My heart's breaking!"

She laughed it off, shrugged. It had been her mistake, she didn't want to talk about it. "Run away with me?"

"Anytime you want, darling."

An old joke between them.

He knew something was wrong, or she wouldn't have gone. Because Nisrine left our apartment so rarely, it made two hours seem like a very long time.

She must have known he was upset, he was gray as the station.

Adel looked out and saw for the first time how vulnerable the woman he loved was. How small-her stomach barely came up to the railing, she was barely taller than the children. When she leaned against it, her elbows stuck out like ungrown wings.

And then, from deep inside him he felt another feeling-growing, spreading through his legs and chest.

He wanted to touch her.

Theirs had always been a faraway love. She'd taught him the power of a look, of two eyes ready, waiting to be given.

He needed to touch her.

She had once made a dirty joke about the shape of the ayn, his letter. That joke had stayed lodged in him for days. He wanted her to make another. He opened his mouth to ask her- "Nisrine, can I put it in?"

"What?" She was still distracted by the evening.

He felt the heat rise to his cheeks. But, she hadn't said no.

"I said-can I put it in?"

In the old stories, like Qais and Leila, there is a faraway kind of intimacy. These lovers rarely touched. But they made love with their eyes, and poetry, which was the same way Adel's father said angels made love in the Quran. It was the way the Archangel Gabriel made love to the Virgin Mary, from afar, and gave her a child.

Nisrine said, "I thought you were a virgin."

He was. "I am if you want me to be, Nisrine, can I put it in?"

Nisrine moved to the edge of the balcony. She had been distracted, but now she leaned out the way she had when they first loved. When, to give her his eyes, all he had to do was touch them and she would understand.

"Run away with me, Adel, and we'll really love."

"Can I put it in?"

"You love me, Adel?"

He wanted her here, now, even this way, imperfectly. That was how much he loved her.

In the Quran, even virgin love begets children.

"Can I put it in?"

"You can put it in."

"Nisrine, I love you so much, I can feel your soft soul all around me, it's like being covered in the most beautiful flower."

Afterwards, he leaned against the wall of the roof, and she leaned on the railing, sweaty and heated.

The worry had come back to her face, so he complimented her to distract her.

"There's a donkey here who thinks you're so pretty, he could write a poem."

"Is there?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"Yes."

"What do you think of him?"

"He's a donkey." But she said it sweetly, and they laughed and laughed.

He opened his arms to her. "I love you so much, honey, don't ever leave me, my heart's breaking."

They had once played a game where she was in trouble, and they thought up all the ways he could save her.

"Flying!"

"With a fire hose!"

"With wings!"

Now, she said about his broken heart, "Don't say that!"

"But it's true."

Silence. She said, "Bea thinks we're like Qais and Leila."

Leila had left, and Qais had done nothing.

He held out his hand.

"See me shaking? That's not weakness, Nisrine. I shake because I love."

THAT NIGHT, I helped Nisrine put Dounia to bed, and our rituals seemed very sweet because we had almost lost them. Nisrine took Dounia's hands, I took her feet to swing her, in fun.

We peeked through the curtains into crocheted shadows of streetlights.

Nisrine said, "Bea, I have a problem."

I knew this. I could tell by the way she held herself, and Madame held herself, that in our house, there was a problem. I had felt this problem coming for some time, but I was still trying not to have the knowledge. I tried to live in the sweet moment.

"I don't know how to stay here. Mama no longer wants me."

"It will get better."

She had a contract and a child, and her father's honor: We only work where we are wanted. In a strange country, what are we without our honor?

"You've been trying, you just have to try harder."

But, I could see a faraway look in her eyes.

Nisrine said, "Do you think if I went to a new house, I could still see you and Dounia and Adel?" I did not think so, I did not like the idea of a new house.

Of course, Nisrine didn't think so either. She sighed, looked at me worried that she might leave, and for a moment, we felt all the differences between us. I had grown up in a world in which, when things got bad enough, you could leave, you had that choice; in which I expected challenges, not hards.h.i.+p.

Nisrine had seen each member of her family live a full life, yet still work jobs they would not have chosen, like she worked in a job she would not have chosen. I had chosen to be here. For a moment, this fact alone threatened to overwhelm us.

Then, she smiled. "Don't worry, Bea. I can't leave unless they let me."

Which was not completely true, but it relieved me. She said, "But my honor."

Once, a long time ago, Nisrine had taken my hand and put it over hers, to feel her heart. Now, I took Nisrine's hand and put it over mine, over my chest. She knew what I was doing. She felt for its beat.

"My, Bea, it's a strong one! Who's your lover?" Joking.