He'd heard about such places—cafés where women and men could dine together without being confined to family sections. It was a family restaurant, yes, but women were not expected to veil their faces, only their hair. More surprising, women could dine alone—but men could enter too, as long as they had female company. Nayir heard that men hired Filipino girls for the sole purpose of helping them gain access to these cafés. Once inside, they could flirt with any girl in the place. Basically, they were pickup joints, and he hoped to Allah that this wasn't one of those. How would he ever explain that to Othman?
As they walked past storefronts displaying perfumes and trinkets, his palms began to sweat. He felt foolish searching for a café that the authorities had probably shut down just as soon as it had opened. But after a few more paces they spotted a metallic sign hanging over a doorway:
THE BIG MIX—FAMILIES WELCOME!
"This is it," she said, suppressing her excitement.
He stopped walking. "I don't think this is—"
"Don't worry," she said, looking slightly amused. "It's not what you think." Before he could reply, she turned into the doorway and began to climb a flight of narrow wooden stairs. He followed, wondering if she was leading him into a trap. He imagined a plot: she had decided he was lonely, inept at meeting women, unlucky enough to have no family to arrange a marriage for him. So she'd come up with a plan to drag him here, hoping a spark would catch. If that's what she was thinking, then she didn't know how misguided she was.
At the top of the stairs they entered a glass-walled waiting room. "A friend of mine has been here before," she said. "She told me the food was excellent." A maitre d' greeted them and motioned them into the dining hall.
The room was an enormous glass-domed atrium with a splashing fountain at its center. Filtered through the high windows, sunlight dappled the blue carpets and the glass-topped dining tables in the middle of the room. Beyond those, a set of regal stairs led to separate seating areas where more tables, large and small, were placed for privacy, each shielded by potted palms. The maitre d' told them they could sit where they liked, so Miss Hijazi led him to the top of the room, where a table for two seemed waiting to receive them. Nayir cast a quick glance around. There were a few men in the crowd, but they were far enough away, and busy eating.
Miss Hijazi laid her toolbox on the floor, sat down at the table, and raised her
burqa.
Having no other choice, he sat across from her and wondered how he would survive a whole lunch with her exposed face in front of him. But she wasn't looking at him; she was staring at the crowd—men, children, women with their faces revealed. "I almost don't believe it," she said. "I've wanted to come here for the longest time, just to see if it was real."
Nayir too took in everything, scrupulously avoiding the exposed female faces, looking instead at the men. There didn't seem to be a single bachelor in the crowd; all of the men were sitting with wives and children. They looked happy and relaxed, not concerned that their wives' faces were exposed in public. Daring a glance at one or two women, he noticed that they were conducting themselves modestly. Most wore cloaks and headscarves and kept their attention focused on their families. He felt relief, mingled with surprise that a restaurant as modern as this one would be filled with good people acting appropriately.
From the corners of his eyes, he noticed Miss Hijazi grinning. She'd been oohing at the silverware and admiring the chandelier, and he was pleased to realize that for all her independence, she was in some ways still a sheltered woman.
Then he realized that this was the first time he'd ever been with a woman in a restaurant. It was a milestone somehow, but it was too fraught with guilt to appreciate fully. He slid a hand into his pocket and touched his
misyar,
the fake marriage license. He would have to pencil Miss Hijazi's name into the box in case they were caught, but even that felt like a guilty act.
"What do you think?" she asked.
He withdrew his hand. "It's a nice place."
"It's cool, too," she said. "Not cold, like so many stores you go into. And now comes the best part." She stood up. "You can actually get your own food."
"I'll be right there."
She gave him an odd glance but headed down to the buffet. Once she was gone, he took out the
misyar
and reached into his pocket for a pen. It occurred to him that he'd had the
misyar
for years, had anticipated its use as a momentous occasion, and now it was happening without warning, and with a woman who was completely unavailable to him. It felt like a sin to put her name in the box. It wasn't what he had wanted.
He folded the
misyar,
placed it back in his pocket, and went down to the buffet.
He spent twenty minutes exploring the dazzling selection of fruits and pastries, hot sandwiches, skewered meats, vegetables, rice. Yogurts and ice creams. Ten kinds of tea. Coffee, black or American-style. Hot chocolate. Cold chocolate. Ice—ice!—in buckets on every display. When they finally returned to their table, Miss Hijazi was silly with excitement.
"I could come here every day," she said, whipping open her napkin and picking up her fork. Nayir tried to picture her there with Othman. She was so happy that her mood might infect him too. And perhaps that's what he liked about her—this carefree side to leaven his dour moods. Nayir imagined them coming here years from now, their young children sitting at the table around them, and he wondered, would she still be this happy then?
He dared a glance at her face and saw a child's excitement in her eyes. He imagined that a joy like that could last. She smiled, not at him exactly, but in response to his attention, and somehow he allowed the future to become his own. He was sitting at the table with her, surrounded by his children, himself the recipient of that generous smile. It thrilled him, and it choked him.
Allah, forgive me. I am a sinful, selfish man. This wouldn't happen if I had a wife.
"I think it's safe to assume she was kidnapped," Miss Hijazi said, returning to the subject of Nouf.
"Maybe."
"But who did it?" She took a bite of her lunch. "Maybe we should think of it this way. What did Nouf do that was most outrageous? She got pregnant. Now who would that upset the most?"
"Her family, if they knew."
"Let's say they knew," she said. "Qazi would have found out on their wedding night that she wasn't a virgin. He would have divorced her. So maybe the family took her out to the desert just to spare themselves the shame of a public discovery of her condition."
"It's not likely," Nayir said.
"It's not quite an honor killing," Miss Hijazi went on. "It's an honor abduction, except they don't take the blame. If they make it look as if she ran away, then it's all her fault, and people will say that
she
was trying to avoid the wedding." She fell silent, chewing.
"But how could they do that without killing her outright?" he asked. "There would always be a chance she would find her way back, and then what?"
"You're right."
Her speculation made him uneasy. She seemed to notice, because she ate in silence for a while. Nayir had considered the honor-abduction theory in the desert, and again with Uncle Samir, but every time he tried to imagine it, it seemed ridiculous, a piece of comic theater in which a few neatly polished upper-crust gentlemen attempted to haul a camel into the back of a pickup truck without sullying their expensive desert boots, in which they managed to smash their sister over the head with a pipe and drag her out to the desert without splattering their designer shirts with blood. He didn't think they had it in them to murder their sister, especially not for "honor."
"Nayir," she said, "what do you really think about this case?"
Caught off-guard, he wasn't sure what to say.
"Oh, come on. Doesn't anything bother you?"
"Well, yes." It took him a moment to organize his thoughts. "Nouf was going to marry Qazi just to leave the country. That bothers me. She was going to abandon him on their honeymoon."
Her smile vanished. "I know it's awful. I think she must have been desperate."
"Can you imagine what would have happened if she
had
managed to dump her husband and run off with some American guy? Her family would have gone crazy. Who knows what they would have done to Muhammad? He would have lost his job, at the very least. The family would probably have sent someone out to find Nouf and bring her home. Don't you think he knew that? Don't you think Nouf knew that?"
Miss Hijazi nodded. "It seems her escort cared about her more than he cared about himself."
"Or he was getting something out of it."
"What if he just felt sorry for her?"
"Why?" he asked. "She had everything. Her family let her ride around on a jet-ski. They gave her an escort so she could go shopping. And I know she had money of her own."
Her face showed how little she thought of his assessment. "But she couldn't do the one thing she wanted! They didn't like the idea of sending her to school, and I doubt they would have approved of her having a career—particularly one working with animals. You really have no idea, do you? Nouf had everything her father
let
her have."
He wiped his face with his napkin. "Most people would be glad to have half of it."
"No. Most people wouldn't be happy." She spoke quietly, and he recognized the change in her speech: the quieter the voice, the stronger the statement. He braced for it.
"Imagine if you couldn't go to the desert," she said. "You couldn't even leave your house without someone's permission. You'd have money and things, but if you wanted to
do
anything, you wouldn't be allowed. The only thing you could do is get married and have kids."
Nayir wanted to tell her that that was the thing he really wanted, but it was beside the point.
"I don't think they would have forced her into marriage," he said, trying not to become heated. "She chose to accept the wedding arrangements."
"But that doesn't matter," she replied. "If she didn't marry, she still wouldn't have been able to fulfill her dreams. She was allowed to fulfill only the dreams her family had for her—being a good daughter or wife."
"And that made her angry enough to run away?"
Miss Hijazi had stopped eating and was toying with her food. "I think it probably did."
"Then it's especially vindictive that she was planning on abandoning her fiancé. I suppose it was her way of spitting in her parents' faces."
She said nothing.
"Instead of simply leaving the country," he said, "she was going to drag her fiancé into the whole mess. She didn't care if she broke his heart. She didn't care if she disappointed her parents. You know, she could have left the country on her own—she had enough money. She could have paid someone to smuggle her to Egypt. It would have taken her less than a day." He realized that he was letting his anger show, and he stopped for a minute, took a breath. "What she was planning seems cruel."
Eyes lowered, Miss Hijazi nodded. "You're right. She could have left another way." She stared down at her water glass. They were silent for a while, and her speechlessness frustrated him. He marveled at the way it seemed to cast a pall over the entire room.
Slowly they resumed eating. His attention wandered to her hands, and he had a sudden image of them stroking Othman's cheek. He felt a deep tremor of shame.
He looked around at the other diners, men like himself. People acted decently only on the outside; inside, they were probably all just like him, longing for things they shouldn't. He was ashamed of himself for admiring her hands. It just went to show that men and women were not meant to be friends. Wasn't that the whole idea behind all the rules and laws? That men and women had different places in the world? It wasn't human design, it was God's message, and the basis for systems of philosophy and law. Who was he to reject it? Some kind of infidel.
Miss Hijazi seemed to sense the change in his mood; her eyes flickered nervously across his face. "But don't you feel the least bit sorry for Nouf?" she asked.
He nodded. "I do, yes. But I don't think that makes what she was planning okay. Would
you
ever do that—marry a man just to get an exit visa?"
"I don't know."
"Come on—make all of those elaborate arrangements, for what? To go to school? They have women's schools here, you know."
She struggled with her next words. "I would marry a man if it meant I could have all the freedom I wanted. If I were Nouf, I suppose I might have done what she was going to do."
Nayir wondered if that was what she was doing—marrying Othman so she could have the freedoms Nouf had had, the money and escorts and lavish shopping sprees. He wondered too if she would wind up like Nouf, dissatisfied with her wealth, hungry for even greater liberties, not caring anymore about her family or her husband, only for herself and her insatiable appetites. That's what they were, he realized now, Nouf's
appetites.
"You could be wrong," she said. "Maybe Nouf really loved someone. Maybe she loved the father of her child and she was just trying to be with him."
"Do you think so?"
"You know, going to America, that just means that she wanted to be like American girls. It doesn't mean she was a whore."
"But—" He sputtered. "She was pregnant."
"Maybe with a man she truly loved."
"Okay, maybe she was in love," he said, "and she wasn't running away to go to school, but if that's true, then she wasn't as oppressed as you'd like to believe. Maybe she wanted to be a wife and mother after all."
By the look on her face, he could tell that this idea astonished her, or perhaps her own inconsistency surprised her. "Well," she said, "just because a woman wants to be a wife and a mother doesn't mean she gives up her dreams of a career." She looked at him steadily. For a second their eyes met, but he saw a plea for understanding in her face, and all at once her defiance seemed like a clumsy front for a vulnerability that he hadn't noticed before. As he recognized it, he felt a sudden instinct to protect her.