The Lovers

  ALSO BY YUMNA KASSAB

  The House of Youssef

  Australiana

  FOR IBN BENITO ALMAGRO

  Let fate have its hand

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Beginnings

  The Letters

  Endings

  Copyright Page

  THE OPENING

  What Amir loved most about Jamila was that she smelled of money. There was the perfume she used at her neck and wrists, there was the cream she rubbed into her skin, there was the shampoo that cost more than he made in a week. She was always in a gown that was from overseas and she would open it to him and say, ‘Come to me.’

  He could have died a happy man beneath her love, believing himself an entrant to Paradise at last but had she been local, chances are she would have been unworthy of a second glance. Amir knew this as he caressed her, he knew this as they joked about a future in which a child of theirs was born. They bantered over devotion and eternity but he knew if she found herself carrying a child, she would deal with it as efficiently as her gardener tended the perfect lawn.

  Women like her did not stay, women like her only joked until it was time for her to return to her home. At best it was a dalliance, a sweet pleasure to enjoy until it dulled and then she could pack up her things and follow whatever light her circumstances offered her.

  He watched her and wondered how much time was left to them. Was it a week, was it a month, would they see out the year together before she tied her robe again, and left him with a decaying memory of a fragrance that was hers? He told himself he would leave before pleasure turned to suffering, before their romance turned to ash, but he knew he would stay as long as Jamila would have him, as loyal as a servant, panting over her like any old dog.

  DELUSION

  I absolutely love this place. That is what Jamila said.

  And what exactly do you love about it? Is it the building missing its ear or its side? Is it the electricity that only comes on in six-hour blocks? Is it that people must live with their parents because they have no other choice? Perhaps it is that we can’t trust our government so it is left to us to limp along as best as we can? Is it the lawlessness of the roads, that obey no rules of reason or logic that can be deciphered by a rational mind? Is it that families do not speak to each other for generations over a slight you would take in your stride? Or perhaps it is that a university education is to no avail and in the end you will live a farmer’s life?

  The people are so much happier here.

  You say this about the person who is begging in the streets because that is the only way they can get by. You say this about the refugee, the child of refugees who were also born to refugees, stretching all the way back to 1948. They live in shacks that have no water, no electricity, their possessions in bags because tomorrow the government may move them on. You say it about the daughter who has none but her family to fall back on, who leaves with only the clothes on her back—even her children belong to the husband—and there is nothing to say she has the right to ever see them again. She is not happy, she has no future, she smiles because it is a reflex and she has been taught her lines so well. You say this about the one who agonises in his bed and then passes on suddenly because no one knew how sick he was. He was not peaceful but his disease was undiagnosed so it had no name and therefore did not exist.

  I sense so much possibility.

  You sense it because you are used to another life. You have money but will you sense possibility when your money runs out? Even if it does run out, you can take your suitcase, fill it with your things and return to that other country, and you can trust that between fortune and your government, the conditions are provided so you will prosper again. There is no possibility here, only that forced by people with their bare hands. The truth is we live like this because we have no choice, and if given a choice, we would choose to live our lives according to the pattern you live by overseas.

  RAGE

  Jamila was at breakfast. Her mother and aunt sat opposite her and they broke the conversation to have a bite. It was a temporary ceasefire and now was the time to regroup her troops. Her best defence was silence and to avoid their eyes. If her eyes met theirs, they would sense her uncertainty and redouble their attacks. It did not matter how many times they did this. Each time it was the house of cement collapsing on her head.

  A woman with your possibilities, with your education, your wealth should not lower herself like this.

  You could have your pick of men and you choose Amir who steals into your room in the night.

  Don’t kid yourself. He comes for your money, not your love.

  And then the variations on this, tiny words changed, the order mixed up, their artillery launched onto her plate.

  Lucy came in with a tray—milk, bread, fruit—and she had added rose petals because that was what Jamila had taught her to do.

  She distributed the contents of the tray and then left, humming as she went.

  Lucy herself had a love back home and when the time was right, she would let her family know. It would be simple, Lucy explained. The boyfriend was saving, together they would get a place, have some children, what more could we want?

  Jamila thought of Amir, of how she used every weapon in the book to make him believe their love had a future, that—world aside—they had a hope.

  Most nights he nodded his agreement, not because they were on the same page, but to keep the peace. She had the rage of a dragon. It made him fearful, it made him come alive. He kissed her and said, ‘Be at peace. We still have the night.’

  Her mother poured milk in the tea even though Jamila had repeatedly said she did not want milk in her tea. Jamila grabbed the tray and launched it out the window and waited for the crash. Then there was their silence and she decided it was time for a quiet cigarette outside.

  FREEDOM

  Once Jamila had believed that if she left, she would be free at last. So she left but she carried the stupidity of their world inside her.

  Once she believed if she had enough money, they would leave her alone but no matter how high she built the fortress walls, they were family and they wormed their way in with a trick and a plea.

  Once she believed she could move across the world and there at last she would be left alone. Alas, they followed her and said, ‘Did you think you’d get away so easily?’

  Once she believed in freedom but now it sits in a disused box. Not the United Nations, not the president, God or all the King’s men had the power to intercede on her behalf.

  ATTRACTION

  Amir was not an attractive man. Even Jamila said it. And then she whispered, ‘But I love you all the same.’

  He thought of saying something that would shut her up, that would silence her for the rest of time.

  Your ears stick out. A dentist could help you with your smile.

  The words were on his tongue. They would have slipped out if it weren’t for his restraint.

  Anything he said would wound her ten times more than the words he’d heard from her. It was likely she wouldn’t forgive him, that she would walk out. And perhaps the drama, the excitement, would be satisfying for a minute, but the effort to win her back would be too great.

  So he touched her hair and said soft things.

  He soothed her every night.

  He counted her fury as charming, he made note of every time she laughed.

  He called her beautiful and incredible and he felt her quieten at his side.

  When she said to him, ‘Without you there is no light in my life,’ he thought, But when you leave, I know I will want them to bury me alive.

  Better a thought than words where they would torment him, and her, robbing them of the flavour their tim
e together still had.

  PLAY

  Samir invited the boys around for cards and they played till after one. He regretted that his partner was Mohammed who was the weakest player and together they lost round after round.

  The night was getting on and Amir wondered about Jamila home alone. He thought about the wife he’d once had and the varieties of failure the universe can provide. Their families had smiled upon their marriage but if they had lived on an upper floor, he would have thrown his wife off the balcony.

  Lucky there were no children. Lucky. Even these three friends said it. Some relationships are fated. Others operate outside the universe’s control.

  Mohammed lost them another round and Amir excused himself to go outside. When his wife went screaming to her parents’ house, his mother said, ‘You need to go get her. Her life is at your side.’

  Why was it that she offered this advice so easily when it tripped him as if his ankles were tied? Amir retrieved her like a pet, like a suitcase, like a car that had been misplaced. She came willingly but that night, the boys knew better than to ask about his wife. Even their women had stayed away and avoided his eyes.

  He remembered when the marriage was done how he played at Samir’s house till the sun came up, how he smoked so heavily he couldn’t breathe, how he cleared every memory of her until there was no evidence that once upon a time a wife walked on this floor.

  Another wife, his mother urged, but the thought sickened him and he imagined a lifetime ahead—alone—and how in such solitude there would be satisfaction of a peaceful kind.

  Samir was the one who called it a night, who told them it was time they went to their beds, that they could come around tomorrow at the same time again.

  As he was leaving, Samir stood close to him and said, ‘It’s good to see you looking alive once more.’

  He thought of those words as he drove away and he thought of visiting Jamila so late. He could walk through the gate that squeaked, that was a dead giveaway for the neighbour who spied.

  It did not take him long to make up his mind and turn the car so that he would be with her when the sun next showed its face.

  She was asleep when he arrived but she woke and patted the bed at her side. ‘Where have you been this night?’

  She welcomed him beneath the sheets and when she whispered in his ear, he smiled and thought, This is paradise.

  NEUTRALITY

  Capitalism is not bad. It depends how it’s implemented. Communism is good, in theory, but people mess it up.

  A nuclear bomb is neutral. It comes down to how it is used.

  Their sentences floated over her head. They chased her down the hall. She ate them with her breakfast. She took them into the shower and pretended they weren’t acidic as she bathed.

  Sometimes she cried. Sometimes. Mostly she was silent. Mostly she stayed inside.

  These words on the TV, these were the words in the books. Her head was a dreamcatcher pulling them to tangle inside her whenever she went outside. Lately she goes between people who say that religion is not all doom and gloom.

  Religion is like a political system. Any issues are related to its misuse.

  Jamila thought of her father beating her mother nightly. It is written. It is my right as a man.

  She thought of women as the greatest soldiers of war, more than those who were on the frontline.

  She saw the women she knew cooling their heels, then settling down to whatever life dished their way.

  She considered the weight of fabric, considered the endless justification of history.

  It is called peace but the truth is we are more often asked to submit.

  Peace. Submission.

  Pick or choose.

  Her mother said this as she put a patch over an injured eye. He is not a monster. Do not blame the crimes of man on our religion, which really means peace.

  Every night she dreams. It is inevitable, no?

  They chase her, they drag her by her hair, by her feet, by whatever part of her they can reach. They laugh as they destroy her. It is destiny. We are mere agents delivering on truth.

  It is a nightmare, it is a nightmare, she dreams and dreams, and even when she wakes, she knows she has not escaped.

  PEACE

  Amir stood on the edge of the mountain. Amazing. This mountain had stood over every day of his life and he had not noticed it before. It surprised him to consider an alternative life in which this mountain did not exist. Say he looked to the east—his eyes could see into the horizon—and for as long as he could remember, this mountain has been the companion to his hopes and dreams.

  When he was younger, his parents talked about taking the car and making a trip of it. A caravan of cars, out for the day, breakfast, lunch and snacks so that they could find a spot on the side of the road and then spread out.

  Someday, someday, and he had grown up and it had taken till he was a man possessed to abandon the day and head up to see what the mountain had to say.

  The place he stands is rocky, the ground is unstable, but he has no recklessness in his heart. Jamila is the reckless one, the one who may drive her car off a cliff, who may take her grandmother’s only cups and smash them on the floor. That is her style, not his, but she gave him the keys and said, ‘Go for a drive.’

  Go for a drive and there is so much to do.

  Go for a drive, solitary, when I could be with you.

  Go for a drive without knowing how the journey ends or even if it begins.

  He brought nothing to drink, nothing to eat. This was an hour stolen away but standing alone, the sea blue as far as the eye could reach, he understood at last that his heart was at peace.

  He wondered at Jamila trusting him with the car that was her pride and joy. It was the only one of its kind in the country and it was better suited to arriving at nightclubs than a trip to the mountainside. Over every bump he winced as the dust kicked up, he worried over how he would wash it before returning it to her. But for now he stood and breathed and when the hour was up, he went back to the car and drove leisurely down. In their town, people came out to watch, they noted who was at the wheel. He did not beep a hello, he did not wind down the window to wave and chat. He did not want to attract any more notice than he already had.

  When he arrived at her place, she was sitting in the sun, her hair curled, her nails freshly done. She smiled at him as he arrived, she blew a kiss and waited for him to park. He came over to her, a thousand apologies on his tongue for the state of the car. He had rehearsed the sentences and the words needed only to be said.

  Before he could speak, she pulled him to her—she was always like the sun—and said I hope you enjoyed yourself and after that, he couldn’t remember what he’d meant to say.

  TORMENT

  Amir meant to love her. It was his intent. He would love her completely, he would love her like summer air. Everything he had would be hers on a platter and tell me, what is nicer than the ability to serve?

  He brought his wife home like a treasure, he unwrapped her like a gift on their bed. He kissed her hair, he kissed her hands, he marvelled at her from night till dawn and then for the hours beyond.

  If there was a lesson, it was that their love was not his alone. He could shower her with his love as if it were all the gold of the world, he could build her a palace with his bare hands but his love was not shared and like a puddle of water, given time, it would evaporate.

  His great love was met with a war.

  His affection was met with a bite.

  His desire to serve her was mocked.

  Her words were like weapons and down they rained, and he told himself he was unsurprised but the truth was their fights had not been in his plans. He kept away, he avoided her eyes, he steered clear of the room she was in, and he began to pray.

  He asks himself why he resorted to prayer at such a time, he who had learned the rituals but never prayed genuinely in his life? With his prayers was the hope they go their separate ways, he on an
alternative path, she to whatever lay in wait. The world was filled with examples of great love being extinguished by an anvil called circumstance or chaos, depending on your frame of mind. It was possible this would not be the rest of his life.

  He extracted himself as best as he could but where there’s breakage, there’s damage, and although time heals, he knew he’d always bear her memory as a trace. She left without a goodbye and he believed he could now begin his separate life.

  People urged him to women again, that relationships were prescribed as much as the setting of the sun, but he was spent, he was emptied, and he did not believe he could love again until he met Jamila in the summertime.

  Some call it destiny but it does not matter how it is named. It had the feeling of ease, it had the weight of fate and it was a love only the heavens could have arranged.

  MY LOVE SO YOUNG

  Religion should not be transactional. Dear God, give me this and I will obey. Dear God, I need an extra suit because this one is worn and in return I will pray double time this week. He knows it is not meant to be like that but he finds himself praying and Amir wishes he could have known Jamila when she was young, before her face was lined and she touches the white in her hair and laughs, waiting for him to say it adds to her beauty anyway.

  I want to have known her when she was young so I can understand.

  He wonders what he will have to pay for the granting of this wish but never mind, they are both alive and she is so young but it is still her, make no mistake. The only difference is she smiles more and age has not yet begun to soften her shoulders and make them round.