One Hundred and One Nights (9780316191913) (17 page)

20

Sunday

TODAY MARKS THE FOURTEENTH
day since Layla’s visitations began. Also the thirty-second day of business for me since I moved to Safwan. Things move quickly now, too quickly. Suddenly I find I have too many irons in the fire. The life of the last month, spent watching the American convoys on the overpass move north, move south, toward Basra or Umm Qasr, toward Kuwait City or toward Baghdad, is a thing of the past. I still count them, but only in the background of my mind, like a soothing song playing over and over. Sixteen north. Eighteen south. The convoys are an afterthought as I deal with my impending engagement to Ulayya, as I deal with Seyyed Abdullah pushing me forward on a plan I have only half conceived and that I even now only half imagine I will really follow to completion. I deal with my dreams of Layla and I deal with Layla in waking reality, when her dirty, living, street-rat embodiment visits my shack. And now I deal with Abd al-Rahim as well.

The visitor who knocks on my door to wake me in the morning is Abd al-Rahim, the youthful nephew of Seyyed Abdullah’s new wife. He is eager and pleasant and not at all the contentious warmonger I expected. He is surprised when he first meets me, recognizing me from the haranguing outside the mosque. Seyyed Abdullah must have spoken well of me, must have threatened his nephew with all sorts of ostracism should he not follow me and obey me with perfect respect. Otherwise I think Abd al-Rahim might have been more difficult.

Nevertheless, I keep the boy busy for most of the morning on this day, which is our first day together. I keep him busy in order to keep him away from me and away from my shop and my life. That way I can pretend, even if just for a little while, that everything has returned to normal, that today will be just one day among many. Despite my best efforts, around noon I can no longer find suitable busywork. By this time I have already watched the idiot Mahmoud make several sweeps along the overpass to guard my shack. By this time I have already sold more mobile phones and equipment than I usually do in a whole week of normal sales, due in part to the huge size of Ali al-Hajj ash-Shareefi’s extended family, all of whom seem suddenly to find themselves in great need of mobile phones and satellite dishes. By this time I have already watched the cars come and go and the people come and go and the shadows on the street grow short as the sun rises. I have been stable, watching the world from my shack. But I can no longer think of relevant errands to occupy Abd al-Rahim’s time. I can no longer think of a task for an assistant that would keep him far from me.

Thus Abd al-Rahim lounges outside my shack, a moon in close orbit to its mother planet. He retains the fine black shoes he wore when he spoke to the small crowd outside the mosque. He has freshly shaved what small amount of hair his neck and his cheeks produce, as if his new job as a phone salesman requires pristine rose-pink skin. His
dishdasha,
in the summer heat, shows on its white surface nary a blemish. He wears his dark and reflective American sunglasses. He is far too fine, far too well-mannered and well-groomed, to seem like a natural part of the market.

He annoys me.

I am a little hungover from my whiskey, and his pristine healthfulness annoys me.

I plan what I will say to Sheikh Seyyed Abdullah about Abd al-Rahim when I next see him. Of course I cannot bluntly tell Seyyed Abdullah how the boy fails to disguise himself and how he perpetually reminds me, just by his mere presence, of my own foreignness. Neither can I express to Seyyed Abdullah the prickly feelings Abd al-Rahim’s manners elicit in me. Both would be poor form, though I can certainly find words that hint at something less than perfect pleasure. Having lost my battle to fend off the boy from me, and having lost it quickly, I now feel obligated to either make the arrangement work to my advantage or, at least, to tell Seyyed Abdullah that the arrangement does indeed work. And that, as the boy is proving to me, will be a complete falsehood: I send him first thing in the morning to get a broom to sweep out the space on the sidewalk in front of the shack, he returns with a garden rake; I send him for screws and a screwdriver to more securely fasten the corrugated shutter that protects my front window, he returns with a hammer, fingers greasy from eating kebabs; I send him to the civilian border-crossing point, where the goods flow in from Kuwait, in order to determine whether any shipments have arrived for my shop, he returns with a fresh brown box from his uncle Seyyed Abdullah’s house. I do not want the box anywhere near my store, what with British and American patrols likely to pass through, possibly to stop anytime and peruse the market; and what with Hussein’s group of Hezbollah, who would know no limit to their curiosity should they find an item as taboo as whiskey smuggled into town. The boy has been an utter failure at all these tasks.

The day stretches long and busy before me, only a few hours past noon, and I find myself occupied both by planning proper words for the lies I must tell Seyyed Abdullah and by thinking of work for a now-idle Abd al-Rahim, gathering wool outside the shack, commenting on the unhurried flow of people in the market, in contrast to the hurried flow of people in Baghdad; unspoiled, in contrast to the barricaded souks of Baghdad; unpolished, in contrast to Baghdad, completely un-whatever, in contrast to Baghdad. He rambles on at no short length about Baghdad, Baghdad, Baghdad.

At least he keeps away Ali ash-Shareefi’s relatives—they don’t know him, so they won’t approach too closely. Instead they stand across the street and wait, and wait, and wait for me to dispatch him, for me to find him a new task. So I am caught between the desert and the sun. I have no shade and my feet are bare. On the one hand it is Abd al-Rahim, left to idle. On the other hand it is this flock of family from the ash-Shareefi clan, all having been commanded by the head of their family and hurried by their own curiosity to visit me and to buy from me and to ask me as many questions about my past and about my impending engagement as their impertinent minds can invent.

At last I strike upon the perfect solution for this double dose of unwanted attention.

I say to Abd al-Rahim, “Do you know, boy, that I plan to marry?”

“I have heard it spoken of,” he says. “But how is that relevant to the larger task?” He emphasizes the word
larger.
He emphasizes the word
task.
I am not allowed to pretend I misunderstand him. He has been dropping hints all day, as though somehow what I do here in the mobile-phone shack leads toward and builds toward a greater purpose. Or, as he would say, a
Greater Purpose
.

“It isn’t relevant,” I say. “But those people across the street—”

“The group of women?”

“Not just women. They have a man among them, a man I know only vaguely but who is, I suppose, one of the many cousins of the ash-Shareefi clan.”

“What of them?”

“They distract me from the Purpose.” I emphasize the word
purpose
in the very same way he emphasizes such words, purring it, making it pop.

Abd al-Rahim perks up at this. “Yes?”

“They are all relatives of my soon-to-be fiancée. Nosy people. They are making a nuisance of themselves.”

“What do you propose?” As Abd al-Rahim says this, his eyes narrow. He looks as if he would do anything I now ask, anything at all, since whatever task it might be is somehow, if only vaguely, related to the Purpose.

“I think they would make an excellent group of advisers for the engagement presents I must buy, one present for each day from now until the engagement ceremony, which is scheduled for next week.”

Abd al-Rahim looks a little deflated at what I have said. But he offers: “I will call to them. I will tell them to give you some advice.”

Quickly, trying to keep his spirits up, I say: “No, that will only make matters worse, all of them crowding and blocking my view of the overpass…”

I stop, having said that. I know I have said too much. Abd al-Rahim whirls around, looks at the overpass. He sees Mahmoud the guard, who still walks along the railing with his rifle on his shoulder like a toy soldier. He sees an American convoy in the distance, moving from north to south like so many toy trucks. The lead vehicles of the convoy move off the main highway and onto the bypass, where they will skirt the town on its western edge and go into Kuwait, across the border. He judges the distance from my shack to the convoy’s turning point, less than a kilometer. He judges the distance from my shack to Mahmoud’s guard tent, ten meters, maybe twenty. And when he turns back to face me, he smiles.

“I will take the relatives of your bride into the market downtown. I will prevent them from obstructing you. How much would you like me to spend on these gifts?” he says.

“Not too much,” I say. “But not too little, either. Ali ash-Shareefi’s family is wealthy and Ulayya must not feel slighted. Buy on credit. My name is now known a little in this town, it seems. I should have credit on my own and, if not, I am sure that this coming alliance I will make with the town’s wealthiest family must be good for the necessities.”

With this Abd al-Rahim leaves me, finally, and both he and the family of ash-Shareefi, the hordes of family, the herd of water buffalo, remain absent long enough to give me time at last to collect my thoughts.

I think: I am about to get married.

That thought is followed by a period of silence during which, in the background, I hear my mind churning with all the myriad details of the engagement and the wedding to which I must soon attend: the gifts that Abd al-Rahim is now arranging; the rental of a tent for the engagement party and for the marriage-contract party; the reservation of a band, dancers, food, fees to register the marriage in the town hall;
baksheesh
distributed to anyone with anything approaching an official role in the ceremony;
zakat
and gifts of food for the poor; arrangements with Ali for something more than just a token dowry; deeper legal wrangling over Ulayya’s assets, ownership of her house, guardianship of her children, their financial support, and future dowries for the girls born from her first husband, Zayed. I briefly wonder about taking a vacation with Ulayya, a honeymoon, as they call it in America. Perhaps we could go to France. Perhaps to Salalah for the cool rainy season of the
khareef
. Not to America. We won’t go there.

I think: I will never see America again.

Yet behind that thought, weaving among the silence as the rays of the sun finally start to dip, finally start to cast their slanting light through the market, in that silence I
do
see America. I see all the places of my memory, all of them at once—the university, Chicago, baseball stadiums, snow. More strangely, in each scene I now see Layla, too. I see her standing with me in the ER, standing in the corner like a ghost. I see her holding my hand as she and I walk out of Wrigley Field amid the throng of fans leaving a ball game. I see her everywhere. It makes the image of America painful and blurry and more difficult to clearly observe.

I expect, any moment, during all this thinking, to hear Layla’s voice, to see her suddenly before me with her questions and her songs and her bird-bone anklet. I expect to see her face shining and clouded and troubled and wondering and wondrous. I lean on the sill of my shop, staring into the western desert and waiting for her arrival. I expect to see her but I do not. She does not come.

So it is with a little sadness in my eyes that I greet my friend Bashar when he arrives at my store. I should be surprised, pleased, amused that he has made the trip away from his café to the outskirts of town, where I work. I should be pleased that he comes to talk to me after the angry ending of our last conversation, when I accused him of telling Hezbollah about Mahmoud and Michele. The reversal in our journeys, in our meetings, should please me, he having come to find me and greet me and spend a few moments at my shop. But I am sad and he doesn’t expect the sadness he sees in me.

His first comment—“I hear you have been very popular with your mobile phones today, my friend”—falls a little flat, fails to end on the optimistic note of teasing laughter he had intended.

He wants to ask me what it is that bothers me, but I see he cannot find the words.

Instead, he continues, saying, “I have brought you a plate of falafel and I have brought you a cup of the tea you like. I thought you might be too busy today with all of your new in-laws to find time to eat at my café. I wanted to hear all the details of your good news firsthand.”

So I tell him of the things agreed between Ali ash-​Shareefi and myself. I tell him of the gifts that Abd al-Rahim is now arranging, the errand that Abd al-Rahim is at that very moment in the process of performing in order to distract all the ash-Shareefi aunts and sisters and cousins. I ask Bashar for his recommendation on the rental of a tent for the engagement party and for the marriage-contract party, which will occur a few weeks after the engagement. I ask him which musicians to reserve, which dancers. I ask him to cater the food for the party from his café. He is flattered. He is pleased. He starts to compile lists of various foods and drinks he will provide. I inquire about fees for registering the marriage. He suggests a wedding official, a
qadi,
from the town of Az Zubayr, with its famous mosque, just a few miles up the road. He offers to lend me money for the
mahar,
the dowry, so that I can provide something respectable, a few thousand in American dollars, and he waives the fees for his catering.