He parked the car and walked to the pool’s edge, looking for the moon in the murky sky, but the desert’s debris had blackened out where the moon should have been. Kneeling down, he untied his leather-laced topsiders and sat down on the pavement. The concrete warmed the parts of his legs not covered by his khaki shorts. He let the heat work over his body before dangling his feet in the water. Coolly, it reached between his toes, giving the illusion of human touch. The compound slept, all the lights extinguished. He closed his eyes and sat in darkness.
IN THE DARK
the swimming pool was lit from within, the water glowing a rich aquamarine so that as Faisal swam his laps, he felt as if his body were being bathed in liquid jewels. It was one reason he chose to swim at night rather than during the day when it was warmer. He also preferred the deep silence of the late hours, when Al Dawoun slept. At that hour of the night, Rosalie and Abdullah would never see him practicing his laps and think for a moment that he missed anything at all about boarding school or Bern. That is, unless Abdullah stayed out late with Dan, as he was doing that night. Whenever they went out together, Faisal gnashed his teeth but kept silent. He knew Dan was a bad influence, but what could he do?
In truth, Faisal did miss Bern, with its cold Olympic pool where he and the other boys had learned how to tread water and swim their paces. He’d always been good, swimming in a few meets, the judges’ whistles echoing off wet tile and the stink of chlorine strong in the air as he collected medal after medal. His coach had been shocked by his natural skill and had loved telling a joke about Arabs and water that made Faisal smile. Lately, he was experiencing an unfamiliar insomnia, and he found that swimming a few dozen times end-to-end in the family pool was just enough to drain the last stubborn energy from him so that he could sleep. In the pool, there was no little sister pestering him, no mother to bumble and fumble around him, no father to miss, no father’s second wife to despise and then defend, all in the same minute, all in his upside-down brain. In the pool, there was no one but him.
In the two years since Abdullah’s secret marriage to the Palestinian, his father had made countless trips to Doha, where Isra had lived in a magnificent condominium with a view of the seaside. Faisal knew it was magnificent because his father had taken him along on one of his trips several months earlier. He had introduced him to Isra and told him that there were some things that were just between men. When Faisal met Isra, he could not help but wonder at all the things his mother must have done to make his father seek out another companion. Obviously, she had failed their family in some grave way, and so he carried the secret of Isra around in his heart, where the burn and weight of it made him feel both happy and sad, and therefore utterly confused.
Now, for all of those reasons, Faisal cut patiently and methodically through the pool, his arms brushing by his ears as he pulled them close to leverage himself through the water. Every second stroke, he turned his face to the side and sucked in a long breath. He felt he could go forever, or at least halfway through the night. Above water the only sound in his ears was the slapping of his palms as they met the surface, which by now, thirty-eight laps in, was churning and peaking with his movements. Underwater, he only heard the noises he made, and he found that comforting. He chose a prayer and repeated it in his head as he swam until the incantatory rhythms of the prayer matched the movement of his body.
As he closed in on the fortieth length, Faisal shut his eyes inside his goggles and waited for the edge of the pool to rise and meet his reaching fingertips. Few things were as satisfying as the moment when he put his elbows over the pool’s ledge to hang there exhaustedly until he caught his breath. After his heart rate slowed, Faisal hoisted himself out of the water and sat for a moment, his knees tucked close to his chest, the wind off the Dahna wicking the water from his back. Shivering, he watched the water slowly return to stillness until nothing remained of his swim except the wet spot on the concrete where he sat. He stood and shook the water from his head, dried his face with the towel.
Inside, the house was silent. Faisal tiptoed to the stairs and started up. When he passed his mother’s room, he listened for the sound of movement within. Over the last several nights, as he’d stolen downstairs to the pool, he’d seen the light beneath her door and heard her restless clattering. Now there was silence.
In the bathroom at the end of the hallway, Faisal felt the cool Carrara marble beneath his feet. He thought about taking a bath. Perhaps the laps wouldn’t be enough, not with Ali’s words rattling around in his head. He flushed, remembering the afternoon at Majid’s house. The afternoon had started out harmlessly enough. Hassan had asked how Mariam was doing, so Majid and Ali had started making loud kissing noises, smacking their lips together and circling the blushing Hassan. Finally, they’d tackled him to the tile floor, mussing his hair and kissing his cheeks like overbearing aunties. “How
is
Mariam, ya Faisal?” Majid asked with exaggerated curiosity, folding his hands and putting his chin on top of them. “In Hassan’s head, they’re already engaged,” Ali cackled. “He and Umm Hassan are already planning the wedding. Gulf Hotel. Big reception. All paid for by Abu Faisal, of course!” Hassan had loved Mariam since they had all played together in the yard of the big house while growing up, for so long that it no longer bothered Faisal.
But then, Ali had grown bored with their tired routine and veered into new, awful territory: “So, we heard that your father finally went out and got himself an Arab wife,” Ali had said. “A Palestinian, no less. It seems Sheikh Abdullah is trying hard to make up for the American!” His cascading chins wobbled as he laughed.
“Shut up,” Faisal said. “You’d better shut up.”
“Or what? You’ll beat me up? I could sit on you and squash you into the next world.”
Majid’s older brother, Jalal, was playing music upstairs. Certain notes and a heavy drum line drifted down to them.
“That’s something to be proud of?”
“At least every roll of my fat is Arab fat!”
“Ali, stop,” Majid said.
“I don’t see why you waste your time with him,” Ali said. “He’s Amreeki through and through.” He grinned, his chubby cheeks bunching into little round apples below his eyes.
“Q’us umich!” Without thinking, Faisal punched Ali in his soft stomach. After standing doubled over for a few minutes, Ali had straightened up and laughed at Faisal, right in his face. So his punches inspired merriment. That was the kind of man he was—a fool, a rube, an ineffectual loser. How, then, would he be able to resist taking over the family business that had made his father so morally soft? If he planned to deny himself the power of that money, he couldn’t become a man whose punches set others giggling. At that moment, he was determined to make himself into something harder.
“You know I’m right or you wouldn’t be so angry,” Ali said.
Swiftly, and without so much as a sound, Majid’s knuckles cracked against the bones of Ali’s face. Ali thudded to the ground and lay squirming, his face turned toward the floor, saliva pooling on the tiles.
“I said, stop it,” Majid said. He gave his right hand a shake, as if to relieve a cramp.
Although Faisal was supposed to stay for dinner, he left without finishing his tea. It was not the first time Majid had to stick up for Faisal, and he doubted it would be the last. Majid’s mother, Umm Jalal, had made lamb because she knew how much he liked it. Now he felt like an idiot; she must have invited him out of pity. All of Al Dawoun seemed to know about his father’s second wife. Everyone knew that she was a Palestinian and a rumored secularist who had lived in Paris, and that her existence had purportedly made Rosalie so angry that she had ripped half of the hair from her own head. His friends relished being able to tell him the latest gossip.
But then again, Faisal was never spared their teasing. There was always his face, his not-quite-Arab face.
Amreeki
, they called him. He supposed they teased him because he was such an easy target—quiet and so very rich. But there was also Majid—Majid, who never said a word against him, who would break his own hand to stop the bullying once it had gone too far. After so many years spent in talk and silence, motion and stillness, love and anger, they were the truest friends, their little child hearts growing together until one day they had awoken to find themselves young men. Faisal trusted Majid more than he trusted anyone.
The moon was high and bright, and inside his upstairs bathroom, Faisal could hear nothing but the wind outside the window. In the shower, he rinsed the chlorine from his body, then dried himself and put on his undershorts. Back in his bedroom, he opened his closet door to look at the row of medals hanging there, the blue and red and yellow ribbons with their gold medallions flat against the wall. He knew it was prideful to keep them displayed like that, but in the end he decided it was all right since nobody else knew they were there.
Faisal walked to his desk and picked up his grandfather’s dagger, which he’d taken down from its spot on the bookshelf in his father’s study. He ran his hand along the dagger’s blunt spine, back and forth, until he could feel a small heat building between the pads of his fingers and the metal. He was sixteen. Soon he would move out of his house and away from his family. He was eager for that day. It seemed, more and more, that he no longer knew these people who called themselves his parents. He glanced at the crumpled black-and-white photo of his grandfather, Abdul Latif, which Faisal kept as a reminder of where he’d come from. There was something reptilian to the set of his grandfather’s face, his eyes far apart and his nose hooked like some sort of egg-cracking beak. It was the face of a pack leader, an alpha dog. Faisal hoped there was still time for him to earn some of Jadd Abdul Latif’s fearlessness.
Outside, a car door slammed. Faisal peered out the window. The wooden gate that separated the Baylani compound from the road swung open, triggering the outdoor lights. From behind the gate, his father appeared, walking slowly toward the house. Faisal could see Dan Coleman’s car backing up into the road.
Abdullah tripped over nothing, then stood examining the spot on the ground. When he straightened and started walking again, he looked blind, like a lumbering animal. Faisal didn’t like seeing his father like that. Who else saw him in such a state of sin that he couldn’t control his movements? It was embarrassing. Ya Allah, how much longer did he have to wait for his father to find his way back to the path? It was feeling lonelier and lonelier there without him.
Ever since Dan Coleman had moved back to Saudi Arabia with no family, he had taken to hanging around the house, and Faisal didn’t like it. Abdullah had started going to Bahrain more, and Faisal found a small stash of liquor under the staircase, the gin bottle half-empty and whiskey unopened. He’d thrown them both away. Once, in the kitchen of the big house, Dan asked Faisal if he knew that Dan was the one who had introduced Rosalie and Abdullah. “Kid, if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be around.” Dan seemed confused when Faisal shook his head and left without a word. Lying in bed that night, Faisal had mouthed the name
Dan Coleman
and then the word
hate
, just to see how they sounded together.
Now the front door opened and closed. Faisal tucked the photograph of his grandfather in the band of his shorts and then moved silently along the corridor, thankful for the thick carpet. At the top of the stairs, he paused, listening for Abdullah below. He wasn’t supposed to know that Abdullah slept downstairs, but one morning he’d risen early to pray and had seen his father emerge, disheveled and robed, from the spare room.
Faisal floated down the stairs and into the kitchen. On the counter near the phone, the letter about his sister’s latest problem at school lay open, the headmistress’s telephone number circled in red pen. He doubted Rosalie had called; she’d been far too preoccupied with her own issues.
Dear Mr. Baylani:
As you know, we were forced to send Mariam home from school because she refused to wear her abaya while walking to and from the school building. Now, please try to understand: we have this rule in place for the girls’ safety. We do not want our students harassed or threatened in any way. Please speak to her and remind her that it is for her own good. Additionally, her religious studies teacher is concerned about the state of her faith, as she relentlessly questions Mrs. Zaynab during lessons and Mrs. Zaynab recently confiscated three books from Mariam’s bag. We’re not sure how she came by these texts, but we cannot have books of that nature in our school. Finally, we hear that she is going to start a Weblog. I’m not sure if you are familiar with such things, but I can assure you, it is not the proper forum for a young woman to express herself, as one can never be sure who is reading it. Please see that you attend to these pressing issues. Our school’s reputation, and your daughter’s, depends on it.
Sincerely,
Headmistress Shideed
It was funny to read about his little sister behaving subversively. Faisal had never considered that she was an actual person outside the home. To him, she lived a purely interior existence, her chattering of little consequence to either her or her family. To think of Mariam acting against authority made him laugh. He heard of a young man whom the police had tortured to death years ago after catching him with banned books, but Faisal doubted the same fate could befall a girl. One thing was certain: his mother had done her best to ensure that neither he nor Mariam would ever fit in.
Faisal moved toward the door of the guest bedroom door and pressed his ear against the wood. Carefully, he leaned down on the handle so it made no noise as he turned it. Curled into a ball in the middle of the expansive bed, Abdullah snored loudly. Faisal approached the bed, the light from the hallway falling in a stretched yellow triangle over the sleeping man. Before he could reach the bed, he stubbed his toe hard. He heard sloshing and then felt the cool of liquid against his bare feet, but his father slept on, peacefully. Faisal leaned down to try to see the mess he made, but before he could see it, he could smell it. Whiskey. The bottle had emptied completely, the stain a dark circle against the white carpet. His toes felt cold and clean, as if he’d performed wudhu. Kneeling on the carpet, he prayed for his father. He wanted to wake him from his drunken sleep so that he would be forced to try to stand up straight and explain his swimming eyes to his son. It took audacity to return to your family that drunk.