Black Book of Arabia (15 page)

I was constantly thinking of ways to be able to aid my Adnan in affording our dream. I worked part time as a tutor after my full-time job, as exhausting as it was, but the savings were never enough. Teaching children and college students is mentally taxing, especially after maintaining the business and private tax accounts of those who needed me. Then
one day we were joking about ways of making money, and Adnan casually said, “Selling a kidney or going into slavery are the only options I have left to be with you.”

The desperate idea was born.

I laughed it off at first, but then I began toying with it. It involved risk, but so does love. It involved danger, but I was brave. I had exhausted all other possible solutions to be with the man I wanted to have a family with and grow old with. He was the love of my life, and I, his. We would be together finally; all else seemed distant and unimportant.

I began to dig into the procedure. When I first discussed it with Adnan, he told me that I was barking mad and that many have died after donating a kidney because the body simply cannot handle it. He could not do it due to the physical demands of his job, but he did not know of any other way for us to be married. I said that if I had to be the man in the relationship, I would buck up and do it. He never thought that I would go through with it, and yet he never stopped me from discussing my plans with what we would do when I received the payment for my kidney. I was brave, rash, and headstrong. I decided that this was the fastest way to rectify my situation and hasten my happy ending with my prince.

Adnan showered me with love after I made that decision for our relationship, but I knew that the procedure needed to happen quickly in order for the marriage to occur amidst our family differences.

I went to the hospital with my passport and registered as someone willing to donate my kidney for a price. With
trembling hands I signed the consent form that began, “I consent to sell/donate my kidney.”  The date for the surgery was set in one week. There were many people on dialysis who were dying, slowly withering, or delaying their death and waiting for a savior, a spare kidney. It dawned on me that should my remaining kidney fail or falter, I would be in the same line, lying in bed for hours every week. The urea would rise in my body, and I would suffer, but I was strong and had never suffered from any illnesses so I hoped it would never come to that.

I began to pray harder and deeper after signing away my spare kidney. I was afraid of death. I was afraid of everything around me, but love pushed me forward. I did not inform my family, as they would surely try to stop me. I entered the operating theater one week later, and Adnan stood there holding my hand as I drifted into a deep sleep. Hours later, I woke up dizzy and drowsy. It was done. I did not feel a thing.

My kidney was sold to a fifty-three-year-old butcher. He had gone to the Philippines to buy a kidney but after his surgery, his body had rejected it. He returned home to Yemen, thinking it might be a better idea to obtain a local kidney because it might adjust better. He was a good man, feeding many poor families with his charity. He would send extra meat for stew to the orphans so they would have at least one decent meal per day. I felt that by giving my kidney to a deserving man, I would be doing something for the greater good. That helped calm me down in the midst of my reckless storm of thoughts.

His family came to see me and give me the check. They called me their daughter, and his grandchildren kissed my hands and called me their sister. It was a beautiful feeling to be able to give life to someone so loved. I imagined them as mine and Adnan's grandchildren one day.

Adnan visited me in the hospital but he said he was afraid of the sick and dying and felt overwhelmed. He cried like a baby, and I was too weak to calm him. I gave him the check, and he began speaking of how this was going to be our new start, our home, and that he would spend his life making it up to me.

After he left that day, I suffered from nightmares. I was hoping I would be able to leave the hospital that night, but I fell ill with a fever and had to stay. I returned home the next day, giving my family the excuse that I had fallen sick with all the exhaustion of teaching classes to children and adults and had spent the night with a friend. I remained bedridden for two weeks. Adnan never called me, and I was either asleep or feverish so could not go inquiring after him. I did not have credit on my phone and my body was battling to survive with one kidney. My family thought I was dying. I never told them the real reason I was sick for fear that they would hate Adnan or think of how desperate, crazy, and obsessed I was about being with him.

When I was strong enough, I went to his home and knocked at his glass door. He lived with his parents and four brothers, and I was hoping his parents would not attend to the door. I wanted to know where the man I risked my life for was. Why did he not call, send after me, or visit me?
Why didn't he at least send a friend or bring his family to propose properly? There were no excuses—absolutely none—for his delay. I thought that maybe he wanted to go and buy the ring, but we had already chosen our rings. We had named our pets, our children, and even grandchildren, if our children would let us. We had an understanding, but one I did not understand anymore. I was weak and frail and I wanted him to take care of me. I felt the tears welling up, but I did not want to cry before learning where he had been all this time and why he was not with me.

A young lady opened the door. She was short and plump with a round nose and round eyes. She was very fair and had a beauty spot on her upper lip. She had her hair in a turban, so I wasn't sure if she was the part-time maid or his cousin over helping his mother in the kitchen, as obviously she was comfortably dressed to be a part of the household. I was dressed in a long white skirt and a light jacket, as I was always cold. Conversely, she was dressed in every color of the rainbow and looked at me like I was either a spy or a saleswoman trying to force her to buy my chutney or sweets.

“Can I please see Adnan?” I asked reluctantly and shyly.

“Who are you to ask about my husband?” she snapped.

“I . . . er . . . What do you mean? When?” It was hard. Harder than losing a kidney and waking up dead in a grave. I trembled and leaned on the wall. “Please. Gently. I need to understand. Where is Adnan?”

I was in a shock so backbreaking I felt it slam my head, body, and soul with the force of a boulder crashing down a mountain. I was in shock. The ramifications
were too much, and I slowly lost control of my balance and fainted.

The neighbors were there to witness the incident. The woman slammed the door, and I could hear yelling and swearing inside. The neighbors took me in, and I could still hear a distant yelling over the phone as it seemed she was calling both her family and my Adnan to better understand the situation. His neighbors explained to me that Adnan had received an offer to work abroad and the employer had sent him the salary a month in advance. He had used the money to marry his cousin.

I was taken for a fool. There was no employer; Adnan had used my kidney money to marry his cousin. He had been engaged to her since his first year in university, and his family disapproved of women who were liberal like me, who studied and worked with men. They never would have accepted me. He had led me to believe that he was serious about me and that all would be all right in the end. Instead, he took my money and sold my love.

Voodoo in New York

The landline phone on the marble pedestal rang midmorning. Maryam, pregnant with her first child, gave the phone a suspicious look. She had asked her husband, Khalifa, to add caller ID to their account. Busy with his PhD studies in urban design and architecture in the Middle East at New York University, he had put off the request for a couple of weeks. Exasperated, Maryam had called the phone company herself and ordered the service, but was told it would take a few days to activate.

The phone rang again. It was not Khalifa; he would have called her on her mobile. It could be her mother calling from abroad, or it could be someone trying to reach Khalifa about his work. It could be something about their apartment building, or a bill, or clothing ready to pick up from the cleaners. It might even be one of the new friends she had made in yoga class. Maryam decided to answer. Why is movement such a feat when you are pregnant?

It was him. The foreigner.

“I must speak to you. Please. I don't want to frighten you, but . . .”

Maryam took a deep breath the way she learned in yoga class. Breathe in, breathe out, ever so slowly and
completely. In a couple of days she would have caller ID and would never have to hear that voice again.

The caller spoke English with an accent that seemed to Maryam to be from the Arabian Gulf. She recognized those accents. A hushed voice that sounded husky and rough, hard-edged. Or maybe that was his personality. When a woman is pregnant, she is too tired to analyze. Quietly end it—no discussion, no quarrels, no explanations. Just hang up.

She had thought that maybe he was one of those scammers who made money by keeping you on the line, but then she was not dialing out. He was dialing in, so there should not be a charge on her bill. Still, maybe there was a way to secretly reverse the charges. There were technology wizards all over the world who would rather make easy money off of hardworking people than to apply their skills to something worthwhile. Where were the typical honest and hardworking early birds who worked 9-to-5 jobs, as opposed to hackers, swindlers and quacks? Where were the people who wanted to make the world a better place for the next generation?

“I need to speak to you,” he whispered. “Are you alone?” He sounded serious and the news he wanted to share, urgent. Maryam paused for a few seconds and then put the phone down quietly.

Whatever he had to say was going to raise her blood pressure, and she was still a few weeks away from her delivery date. She was not in any hurry to nurse a premature baby. She had read that the longer the baby gestates, the better its health and the larger its size at birth.

She patted her growing baby bump. The man had sounded menacing. She was not frightened for herself; she was afraid for her baby. They call it adrenaline, the fight-or-flight hormone: If you are strong enough, you fight. If you are weaker, you take flight. She felt her pulse begin to slowly rise from the urgency in his tone and felt a cloud of bad news descending around her. She did not even want to know whatever it was that she should avoid. Sometimes the stress preceding a warning is enough to give you an early delivery, and she was not ready to deliver yet. Khalifa was not due home for at least another two hours.

It did not seem realistic to think that anything could touch her in her home, a fifty-second-floor apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City. She had moved there with her new husband a year earlier. It was an arranged marriage that had gone well, but happiness always requires persistence. After all, relationships are a continuous job of making them work once one ails or gives up and the other runs on the memory of the good times.

When she looked out the window, she felt like she was at the top of the world, seeing everything from a new, lofty perspective. As she looked down at the streets, she at once felt the eccentricity of the magnificent city that seemed to embrace her—a sense of promise of a new life that beckoned in the city the world affectionately calls The Big Apple.

New York was even bigger and better than she had pictured. Movies could not capture the fresh, crisp breeze
when you went for a brisk walk in the park or the squirrel that rushed past you and up a mighty tree that looked older than your grandparents. The feeling of snow delicately falling on your hands and melting instantly. The gentle crushing of snow and slush beneath your feet. How you could not wear sandals or fashionable heels in the winter: No one could teach you things like these, or even begin to explain them. Only time and experience revealed the atmosphere of the buzzing city that never sleeps.

Maryam loved how she could latch on to her husband as they walked for warmth and exaggerated intimacy and further enjoyed that he would not view it as needy or choking him. She would smile until her cheeks blushed at the secret delight that he never knew; walking arm-in-arm was her stolen pleasure. It was part of American culture, she thought, and she was learning, drinking up what she enjoyed and helping herself to whatever suited her in her new lifestyle.

She knew about towers, but the towers of New York were mountains that housed people from six continents. Tens of thousands of people lived and worked in the buildings, and every day she would see new faces in her block. The daily adventure of rediscovering the same path with new faces was exciting, although she sometimes missed the familiarity of seeing the same faces every day. There was no time or place to be racist or biased against any one religion or color or political belief, because New York was too much of a melting pot for anyone to be deemed odd or out of place.

She became friends with The Halal Guys, a caravan of healthy Arab fast food located on every other block that sold the best shawarma in the city. It was homey, it really was. The staff would acknowledge her and give her a free helping of extra dressing, telling her New York would grow on her eventually. She prayed that it would be soon, because she was still trying to find her niche, her familiar spots, and her comfort zone in The Big Apple. The simple and unique comfort of walking anywhere you wanted to get whatever you needed was liberating. People were unaffected by your appearance regardless of whether you were smartly dressed or barely decorated. There was a place and time for everyone, and everyone had his or her own niche and home base. There was no possible way to feel lonely, or was there? The city was always alive, always busy. People were always ready to chat for ten seconds and then casually walk away. Comments like “How many months are you along?” and “Where about are you from?” were as common as “How are you?” and “Have a nice day.”