The Pact We Made. Layla AlAmmar
pose for the obligatory gate shot: ‘Later, when the rain stops.’ It was before the renovation, before that geometric-patterned, glass monstrosity was installed overhead. He pushed us past Ancient Egypt, past the idols and the hybrid gods with their perfect posture. He allowed no more than a pause before the hieroglyphs. On through to the Assyrians, to something we could claim, as though our family roots were in Iraq and not central Saudi Arabia. We stood before reliefs of military campaigns, of hunting with chariots, of demons and human-headed bulls, while Baba talked about what he knew of Mesopotamia. Nadia got into it; she had wanted to study history at university, and she started arguing with him about the city of Ur, only for him to spin it into a discussion of Ibrahim and Nimrod and a fire that didn’t burn.
Mama and I left them there and meandered through Greece and Rome, past the amputated statues and more white reliefs showing battles and processions. Mama admired the drapes and folds wrapped around the sculptures, the way they looked like real fabric, and I stood over the shoulder of a girl as she sketched what she saw before her – hands and arms, tilting heads, and warrior poses. I watched her hand, the deft and sure movements, and the way she looked up, then down, then up again – drawing as she watched, and watching as she drew. It was mesmerizing, like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Mama took my hand and we stepped into the Parthenon, our footsteps loud in an otherwise hushed room. We went down the line quickly, hardly stopping to look at the chariots or centaurs or horses. ‘They all look the same,’ she said. I allowed her to pull me along; those headless figures didn’t interest me. And then we reached the end of the room and came face-to-groin with a statue of a man, his privates on display, hanging there like forgotten fruit. My eyes went wide, and my mouth fell open at the sight. Mama gasped, this choked sound that seemed to bounce off the marble and multiply. She clapped her hand over my eyes as she urged me to the door, but my hearing was heightened and all the way back to Baba and Nadia, I heard her stifling her laughter.
For the remainder of the day, every time I caught her eye or she mine, we would giggle behind our palms like schoolgirls.
Mona’s husband, Rashid, joined us at the mall for lunch on Saturday. Architect by day, sculptor by night, I liked him from the first time I met him. I hid it well, my affection for him. Even Mona, with all the years she’d known me, with the very way in which they’d met, had never realized it. And on the occasions when he joined our outings, or nights in, or the odd time – like that Saturday, when I became a third wheel – I was careful to remain distant so as not to sound any alarms.
After lunch we went our separate ways, Rashid to the furniture stores while Mona dragged me around the shops. She tried on outfits while I oohed and aahed on cue. I tried on shoes while she thumbed-up or thumbed-down. I endured a makeover at the makeup counter, docilely accepting lipstick and mascara while trying not to think about communicable diseases and whether there was such a thing as eye herpes.
The mall was a series of shop-lined walkways that fed into wide, octagonal spaces where you could pretend it wasn’t as claustrophobic as it seemed. You could imagine you didn’t feel the need to curl into yourself, smaller and tighter, until you were a ball of no consequence. On weekends the malls were packed: high school and college kids in their designer clothes loping from one end to the other; girls in their sky-high heels pouting their lips and flipping their hair; the brunch groups taking pictures of their food and asking the waiter to take one more shot of them. For each group like these you’d find one of the more traditional sort, women in full niqab with their little girls covered up in the hijab and their husbands with the long beards and short robes moving from one end of the mall to the other like it was another kind of pilgrimage.
There was so much there, stimulants bombarding you from all sides: bright lights bouncing off gleaming floors; neon in all the windows, on the people; shouting and laughing and music and shopkeepers asking ‘Can I help you?’ over and over. Try the new fragrance from so-and-so, the new moisturizer from this-and-that. Buy, buy, buy. Maybe if you consume enough, you can fill all those holes in your heart and head and soul.
Too much. It was too much. It attacked me from all angles until a circuit tripped in my brain. And then, a fog would descend and I could pretend, for just a moment, that I was like all the others. Normal and in desperate need of an edible food basket for a friend’s birthday.
They didn’t often believe me, on those rare occasions when I divulged my anxiety; people sought justification, saying it was impossible to feel panic on, say, a lazy Saturday at the mall. ‘Besides, you don’t look like you’re having any kind of attack,’ they’d say, gesturing at how still I was when inside I was malfunctioning. They didn’t understand how, at those times, it wasn’t so much that the panic was taking over as that the calm was evaporating. And I had to reach and grab for it like the string of an escaping balloon. Sometimes I’d catch it; I could bring it back down and hug it to my chest. Other times, it just floated away.
In any case, I had a firm grip on it that day as we walked through the crowds. Past the perfume corridors and café eyes, we wound up at a fro-yo place. Mona took a seat, giving her shopping bags over to the empty chair beside her, and turned to face the people walking by. She liked to be prepared. We’d already run into two former colleagues of hers and a girl we’d gone to university with. Saturday at the mall, it was unavoidable, and Mona liked to see before she was seen.
It was my turn to choose, so I stood in line, looking over the options, while she scanned the faces in the crowd. By the time I’d picked our toppings, she was on the phone. I shoved two spoons in the swirled yoghurt and fruit and headed back to the table. As I slid into the seat on her other side, she mouthed ‘Rashid’ while pointing at the phone and rolling her eyes. I smirked, imagining he was trying to convince her they needed a new coffee table or corner piece. She listened mainly, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but not much more.
And then it happened. Just like in the movies. My spoon even froze halfway to my mouth and my brain stuttered like it had hit a speed bump. Rashid walked by, with that purposeful New York City stride he’d never lost, head down and eyes on the store catalog in his hands. Mona turned to see what I was looking at, her mouth dropping open then sucking her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth. I could still hear a male voice, tinny and far away, yammering into her ear. But it was not him.
It was not him.
Rashid didn’t see us and kept walking. I returned my spoon to the bowl and stared into the crowd. Mona hissed and snapped into the phone before hanging up and dropping it into her open purse. She steepled her fingers, a ring on every one so you could hardly see the wedding band, and met my eye.
It was a long silence. Her soda fizzled and snapped. The fro-yo started to melt. My heart pounded, and I had trouble thinking. Her foot jiggled under the table, tapping mine with every other beat, but she must have thought it was the table leg. The people were loud; they passed in front, behind, and around us. They yelled out orders to friends heading to the counter. They laughed about things we couldn’t hear. They scraped back chairs and rapped knuckles on tables.
‘If that was a colleague or friend, you would have said so,’ I finally managed, but my voice felt like it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t know where the words came from.
‘Dahlia …’
‘Why didn’t you just say that?’ I asked, shaking my head ‘Why didn’t you just say that?’
She mirrored the shaking, her eyes going shiny, and I thought to myself she’d better not cry. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘What?’
She repeated herself, but it didn’t get through. I leaned towards her. ‘Are you sleeping with him, whoever he is?’
The look she gave me was very close to pity. ‘Dahlia …’
I nodded, feeling foolish. ‘How long?’
‘Please—’
‘How long?!’ I tried to keep my voice down, but there was adrenaline and my fingers trembled.
She shook her head down at the table. ‘A couple of months.’
My brain