A Word For Love Part 2

I said, "I've come to study."

There were no computers in the library, only a card catalogue. Students and scholars weren't allowed around the books. The woman gave me a note card to fill out, with my name, my purpose, and the t.i.tles I would need. I put down the t.i.tle of the text I'd come to this country for. When I was done, the librarian took my purse from me, and led me empty-handed to a small open room in the center of the stacks with wooden slats like a cage all around. This was where I would wait for my book.

Inside the cage were five scholars with long beards. None of them had books. None of them acknowledged me.

I sat down at an empty wooden desk to wait. I could see my purse hanging on a hook beside the librarian's head.

The scholars pa.s.sed the time by reciting poetry, and verses of the Quran. They held their hands palm up, toward G.o.d, the way Madame's children held their palms when they were asking for something.

After an hour of waiting, I went to the front of the wooden cage and waved at the librarian.

She didn't seem to notice.

"Excuse me?" My voice echoed across the empty stacks.

"Yes?"

I said, "I'm waiting for a book. Has it arrived?"

The librarian told me that when it arrived, she would call me.

So, I sat down to wait again.

I waited and waited.

When it was time for the library to close, the librarian opened the door of the cage and let the scholars and me out. None of us had our books. I went up to the librarian to ask about mine again.

She said, "Come back tomorrow, we'll get it for you."

"I waited all day. I was hoping for it today."

The librarian looked annoyed. "Good things take patience. Didn't they teach you that when they taught you to read?"

BUT DESPITE THE LACK OF BOOKS, or the strange jokes, or, like Nisrine said, feeling lonely, what I remember most about those days is their beauty.

In the mornings, sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows, refracting sharply off gla.s.ses of milk as if it could break them. Nisrine boiled the milk and skimmed off the skin. In each cup, she stirred one teaspoon of Milo, and the children wanted more, but they had no time because there was a rush to dress for school. We took Dounia's hair in our hands to braid it, and Nisrine was the fastest. She gathered the short hairs underneath and wet a brush to remove the tangles before braiding, in a hurry, exhilarated, while I kneeled beneath Dounia and tied her shoes.

Baths at Madame's were an adventure. They happened once a week. Baba was the head of the house, so he bathed first, even though he was the most dirty, and made the tub dirty. Madame sent Nisrine in afterwards with soap and a rag to clean it, quickly, so the rest of us could bathe, youngest to oldest because the youngest went to bed first. Afterwards, we lounged in our bath scarves, talking. Madame was the only one allowed to take the scarves off. She slipped a cold finger under the side to feel my hair.

"Not yet," and even though I was twenty-one, paying rent, I was consigned to keep playing with the children in the living room, with the radiator on even on warm days, so we would not catch a cold.

Nisrine had too much hair. Hers was the most beautiful and the straightest, but also the thickest.

She was the maid, so she bathed last, and last time, she'd used too much water on her hair, it took too long, so Madame told me to cut it.

She brought me the scissors and held Nisrine's hair in two handfuls, which made it uneven.

I didn't want to. I said to Madame, "I don't think I'm good at this."

Madame wasn't listening. She watched the open bathroom door to make sure Dounia didn't make a mess of the tub.

We were used to doing what Madame asked, without complaining; to taking our turns standing before her, while she tied white scarves like snowflakes on our just-washed heads.

I looked down at Nisrine to see if all of us were joking.

"OK, here we go!" I joked. "It's a salon, who's up next? Chop chop."

Nisrine sat very still beneath me. She reached up to brush away a loose strand, then brought her hand back down.

I said again to Madame, "You do it, Mama. I don't think I'm good at this."

Madame just handed me Nisrine's hair in two ponytails. Its weight surprised me.

"Nisrine, do you mind?"

Nisrine had been my first guide here. We had been in the process, she and I, of becoming close.

She sat very still. After a moment, she cleared her throat. "No."

Madame said, "Come on, Bea, someone has to do it."

So, I took each handful of hair and cut it at the nape of the neck, just where Madame showed me.

When it was done, Nisrine went to the bathroom to look, and came out wearing her veil. She and Madame and I gathered up her hair and threw it off the balcony. It floated down like smoke in the night to our garden, where it caught in the bushes.

Madame said, "It's OK, Bea. I'll take her to the stylist when I take the girls."

The next morning I made the bed and did the dishes, which made everyone uncomfortable. Nisrine took my bed apart and made it up again.

"Let me do it, Bea. You don't know how to do it."

I said, "It's OK, no problem."

Madame came in. "It's OK, Bea. Nisrine will do it. Don't you have to study?"

"It's OK, no problem."

When Nisrine was young, her hair had been short; she'd told me her parents cut it often, because they believed that way, when it grew, it would grow back thicker. That had been when she was young.

Nisrine said, "Yes. Don't you have to study, Bea? You don't know how to do it. Leave it for me."

AT MADAME'S there were certain things we talked about, and certain things we knew to leave.

Madame was always asking about my mother. She wanted to know all about how my mother became a veterinarian, and my lack of siblings, and my favorite foods to eat. My mother called up from America once every other week, and when she did, Madame invited her and invited me, even though I was already here.

"Say h.e.l.lo to your mother, Bea. Don't be an ingrate. Pa.s.s the greetings on! And give her a kiss. Come bring your mother to visit. Tell her our house is always open, she's a guest. You're not a guest, you're family. Really, you're family. I see you not as American; you dress long, you speak like we speak, Bea, when are you going to get married? I want to see the children you turn out, Bea, when your studies are done, you don't have to leave. Tell your mother to come here instead. Welcome! It's boring here without you, mashallah. You get used to someone, they live with you, you love them, and then they're gone."

When I called up America, Madame gave all her love to my mother and my unborn children, and if she was feeling generous, she said, "Fine, even your father, give him my love, it's OK with me if it's OK with you."

When my mother called me up, I gave my mother's love to Madame and the children, and if I was feeling generous, I gave her love to Nisrine. To Baba I gave nothing. On the phone, we didn't mention husbands by name. Madame didn't mention the health of my father, and she didn't ask about my studies. If she did ask, I would have told her: My father lived in New York. I saw him every summer.

I liked Arabic for its precision, the way the words leafed out like spring from three-letter roots. In Arabic, there is a root for knowledge, and from this root, you can make the words for world and tenderness. There is a root for friends.h.i.+p; from it, you can make the word for being true.

In the dresser drawer that Madame emptied out for me, between my book pages and my underwear, I had lists and lists of the texts I wanted to study, and I had other lists of famous places in the city I wanted to go: the biblical street called Straight; the famous Knights' Castle; the National Library, in it were texts you couldn't find anywhere else.

When I decided to come here, the study abroad officer wanted me to know it might be hard. This wasn't an official program, it would just be me. I'd have to find my own Arabic teacher, and work on an independent research project. If it was good, then I could get credit when I returned home.

But, I wasn't thinking about hard. I was thinking about the Arabic root for togetherness, how from this root, you could make the words for university, and Friday prayer.

Before I left, my mother worried for me. "Don't you want to go on an official program?" she asked.

On an official program, I would be with a group of students, and we'd have scheduled cla.s.ses.

But this country was less well-known, and its government did not get along with the US government, so it didn't offer official programs. I wanted to be in this country.

I dreamed of fitting in, in an Arabic-speaking family. And, there was another reason.

My Arabic professors in America all talked about one ancient text that made everyone who read it cry, it was that astonis.h.i.+ng. This is the test of a language: you know it when it moves you. Someday, when I had studied enough, I wanted to go to the National Library and read that text, and then I would cry, because Arabic moved me. That was why I had come to this place.

AT MADAME'S, we were always talking about beauty. In the evening, Lema turned on the TV and wanted to know which singer was pretty. "Do you like him, Bea?" He was fat and ugly. "Do you like him, Bea?"

None of us liked the TV singers, they were all a little fat and ugly, so Lema turned the game outside on the police. We sat by the window, watching them at the station.

"Do you like him, Bea?" But I didn't like him, he wasn't tall like the blond one. "Do you like him, Bea?" After a moment, Lema turned away in frustration. "Bea only likes the blond one because her hair is light like his."

Lema's hair was brown and as curly as mine, but you wouldn't know it, because she was always straightening it before she left the house, even though when she went out, she always wore a veil. Lema had dark hair and dark eyes, and her skin was darker than Madame's and mine, though not as dark as Abudi's. There is a word in Arabic for Abudi's skin, it is called sumr, and it means tan, the color of sand hills, or thyme leaves when they're drying, or almost as dark as Nisrine.

When Baba came home, he wanted to know all about what we were doing, and it made him laugh. "Careful, Bea, the blond one is famous. Everyone knows all about him."

I wanted to know what everyone knew.

"His name is Adel. They say he's a real Qais. His father paid good money to make him city police."

"See?" Lema said. "Bea goes for blond and she gets corruption." When it was Lema's turn to pick the prettiest policeman, she only liked the brown-haired ones.

In my drawer were long s.h.i.+rts and loose pants out of respect, but at Madame's everyone else dressed tight, even Nisrine. Madame shot an appraising look at me. She cinched my s.h.i.+rt from behind and rolled up my sleeves. She pushed back my hair, let it hang down, squeezed my unpierced ears, lightly. "Have you ever had a boyfriend, Bea?"

The most beautiful one in our apartment was Nisrine. She had large dark eyes, and you could see the bulge of her thick hair beneath her veil before I cut it.

Her face was perfectly round and smooth, and every now and then a wisp of hair would come out of her veil and curl across her forehead like a crooked finger. She was beautiful, and she chopped very fine parsley.

The night after I cut her hair, while we played prettiest policeman, Nisrine did the laundry. She went to Madame in the kitchen.

"I found dirt in her underwear."

Madame said, "She'll learn, she'll learn."

Nisrine said, "She's old enough to know better."

Madame said, "She'll learn, she'll learn. Bea, when you go to the bathroom, you use water, then paper, not just paper, that's dirty, you understand?"

"I know, I'm sorry, Nisrine."

"See, Nisrine? She knows, she's sorry. She'll learn."

MADAME SAID, "Don't change in front of the window."

She nodded at the police station.

"They can see in. And don't open the door to strangers. You don't know who is out there. The president's brother opened his door, that's how he became a martyr." The front door didn't have a handle, only a key. Madame locked the door from the outside whenever she left the apartment. That way, we couldn't open it to strangers while she was gone.

"And only change when you are alone. Tell us when you want to change, and we'll leave. You want to change now?" She pushed Abudi out of the bedroom in front of her so Nisrine and I could change alone with the blinds closed, because we were both foreign.

When Madame left, Nisrine opened a window.

Madame's apartment was in the center of the city, but I knew Nisrine had never really seen the city, because like me and like Madame, she rarely left the apartment. What we knew of this place was the air above us when we went out on the balcony. We knew the fresh cheese that Baba brought from the market.

On the dresser beside the mirror was a can of deodorant. Nisrine sprayed the deodorant and twirled around in it like perfume.

Between us were the open window and my embarra.s.sment about her hair. Nisrine was twirling and twirling.

After a while, she said, "Here, Bea, you want some deodorant?"

"Yes, please."

So she sprayed some for me, and we both twirled around in it.

Dounia opened the door on us. The room smelled of damp tile floors and deodorant. Dounia started to shut the door, but Nisrine sprayed some for her, so she came in, too, and the three of us twirled around.

We lived by a police station, so we were always watched by idle men. I once climbed with Abudi to our own flat roof, to check our water tank when we thought the neighbors were stealing. From up there, Abudi and I could see everything and we, like the police, were the center of all of it, we with our indoor slippers and pajama pants, they with their tilted caps and young boredom. We were the heart of the city, alive and beating. We looked out over the world and watched the small breaths of plastic bags on the sidewalk, the in-out of the bags' bellies. We looked over the rooftops to white satellite dishes peppered with dirt, tangled up in antennas and telephone wires, and the absence of birds.

Baba had said, His name is Adel. They say he's a real Qais. His father paid good money to make him city police.

I didn't yet know about Adel, but I knew about Qais. He was a young man from a famous Bedouin tribe. His love story went back for generations, and everyone here knew it and looked to it, the way in English we look to Romeo and Juliet. In the story, Qais falls in love with the beautiful Leila, and writes her poems. He sings songs outside her tent. He falls so deeply in love, and he is so open with his love, that the tribe stops calling him Qais, and instead calls him Crazy for Leila.

This is the story I had come here to read that made everyone who read it cry. The astonis.h.i.+ng text.