The Night Counter (6 page)

IT TOOK ZADE
a few seconds every night when he entered the café to realize he didn’t have to wait to be seated in this crowded, cologne-infested capitalistic enterprise. He owned it. In those few seconds, Zade’s eyes would rest uncomfortably on a large poster bragging of Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc.’s, matchmaking powers.

Despite Scheherazade’s Diwan Café’s romantic darkness—carefully orchestrated by Giselle with the haze of smoke from the water pipes, the red velvet couches, and the dim chandelier lighting—no one could miss the poster. It hung over a tiny stage where the Ali Baba Band-Its were covering a Raghib Alami song. In it, Zade and Giselle’s lips nearly touched, the Washington Monument rising between their heads. The girls in the café giggled when they recognized Zade from it. He had no energy to go welcome them, although he knew any other sane male would have taken full advantage of his café star status.

“Zade, we need to order more apple tobacco for the hookahs,” his almond-eyed hostess said. Her hair was wrapped in a coin-trimmed scarf supplied by Giselle. He tried to put on a dimpled smile as he forced his eyes away from the poster, but then he remembered he was the boss and didn’t have to be all that nice.

“I’ll order some more tomorrow,” he told her. “Any other problems?”

“My boyfriend’s a dickhead, but other than that, it’s going pretty good.” She smiled.

“What?” he said. He hoped she wasn’t flirting with him.

“Just kidding, boss.” She laughed. He had told all his employees during
the first interview that they had to keep their personal problems to themselves. It was enough that he had to listen to the customers’. He had been raised to disdain the majority of his clientele: the Arab elite’s children, rich through business or family name, shallower, his father once remarked, than the plates of hummus the café served.

As usual, Zade went straight to the office with the E
SCORTED
G
UESTS
O
NLY
sign on the door. An escorted guest was already seated, mesmerized by a poster of Zade and Giselle as they waved to the camera from the Key Bridge. “There are more than 1001 stories of love—the possibilities are infinite” was written above their heads. It was the only decor in the office.

Zade and Giselle had parted 142 days short of having reached 1001 days together, but no one knew that aside from himself—and his mother, Nadia, who was now in charge of the business part of the business even though she opposed profiting from other people’s loneliness. She was opposed to profiting in general.

His wasn’t an enterprise in which he could display his heartache to his clients, and so he politely nodded at the Qatari businessman sitting across from him. His job barely had begun for the night, and he was already set for it to be over. The Qatari was smoking the hookah with one hand and sipping cardamom coffee with the other. He tightened his diamond cuff links and pointed to the poster with his right hand while placing his left hand on his heart.

“I want that,” the Qatari said, marveling. “
Love is my law and remedy, whether hidden or revealed. Blessed my eyes that gazed on you, oh, treasured revelation.
”

Zade knew that this was poetry from
The Arabian Nights
, but he did not let on. Although he spoke perfect Arabic, in business he chose English because Arabs always thought they were getting a better deal in English. Inferiority complex, his socialist parents used to say.

“You both fear and wish to be your oppressor,” Elias once had explained to the delegates gathered at an Arab American Institute convention at which Zade passed out the bibliography of his father’s speech.

“The girl is as beautiful as you are handsome,” the Qatari continued
as Nadia walked in, her tailored suit as sharp and crisp as her makeup and polished pumps. Zade believed his parents were the best-dressed far lefties he had ever met. He saw his mother’s mouth start to open, a process that sadly never seemed to stop once it started.

“If I were the kind of mother who interfered in her son’s business,” Nadia began as the Qatari exhaled smoke and gave her his full attention, “I’d tell Zade’s clients that some people are only truly lovable when they are in well-designed posters.”

Nadia said this in classical Arabic, the kind studied in school but not actually spoken by real people.

“Your mother is not Arab?” the Qatari asked Zade.

This always silenced Nadia. It shamed her that she was a widely quoted expert on Middle Eastern languages yet was much more convincing as an American.

“An American wife.” The Qatari nodded. “Your father was wise. The girls back home want too much. They want you to be rich, handsome, from a good family, generous, worldly, and ambitious.”

“Dude, you are all those things,” Zade proclaimed while his mother pursed her lips and left for the back room. He soon heard her banging on the computer as she prepared his 2003 tax returns, for which he’d filed for an extension. These were the business matters he used to count on Giselle for, as she, like his mother, had more of a thing for work than he did.

“In return for being all that I am, I want my bride to be nice to me,” the Qatari continued. “Americans—aside from their government—are so nice,
quayseen khallas
. That is why I want my second wife to be American. Yes, Arab for our children’s sake, but yes, nice American for my sake.”

“Like my mother,” Zade offered in case she was eavesdropping. “My friend, have you divorced your first wife first?”

“Why should I do her any favors?” the Qatari asked.

This was Zade’s first client who was already married. “Huh … there is the possibility that your first wife and the second wife might end up liking each other more than they like you and gang up on you,” he cautioned.

“My wife has given me five daughters and no sons,” the Qatari countered.

“Well, perhaps one should remind oneself of secondary school biology,” Nadia called out in classical Arabic from the back room, “during which most good students learned a man’s sadly perceived biological misfortunes are his own doing, not his wife’s.”

“I really don’t understand your mother’s accent,” the Qatari whispered loudly.

Nadia banged on the computer harder, making Zade’s dimpled smile appear as he reviewed the Qatari’s questionnaire.

“So basically, sir, you want a nice Arab-American bilingual highly educated virgin not opposed to wearing the
abaya
and conversant in French cuisine,” Zade read.

“Yes.” The Qatari beamed. “I am a simple man looking for a simple woman. But she should be nice.”

“Of course,” Zade agreed. “Any woman in my database who’s not nice, I will not even put in the potential
habibti
section of your profile. Now, what kind of plan would you like?”

“I’d like her ready by Monday,” the Qatari said.

“I was referring to the payment plan. We have the six-months-for-the-price-of-five or the month-by-month plan.”

“Monday is still this month,” the Qatari answered. “So I guess we’re on the month-by-month plan.”

“There’s the American part of the word
Arab-American
” Zade reminded him. “Marriage is one of the few things Americans do at a slower pace than Arabs. I recommend that you go with the six-month plan.
Affendi
, you know our girls. They’re a little shy about this service. That’s why I don’t do the online thing. But if you want the very best, I would go with the six-months-for-the-price-of-five-months plan. We prefer MasterCard or Visa. By the way, is your visa in order? That’s very important.”

“Fine.” The Qatari sighed. He pointed at the poster. “Just get me that.”

“My mother arranged my meeting with Giselle,” Zade said, shocked that all it took to make him persistent in a sale—for once—was the thrill
of knowing it was devastating his mom. “That’s the way our family does it. And now you’re part of our family.”

“Is that your mother when she wed?” the Qatari said, pointing to the black-and-white photo of Fatima in her wedding dress, which Zade kept on the desk for ambience. Nadia banged extra loudly on the computer keys. “Actually, that’s my tayta, married sixty-five years,” Zade said. He did not mention his grandparents’ divorce. But if his Tayta Fatima and Jiddo Ibrahim had died in their seventies, like Giselle’s grandparents, they wouldn’t have lived long enough to get divorced. Perhaps he and Giselle would not live as long as his grandparents.

“
Mashallah
, God be praised,” the Qatari said, looking at Fatima’s photo with a squint, as if she might reveal the secret of love if he looked harder. “I will be patient.”

“Yes, yes.” Zade nodded.

“I bought a little vacation farm in Jordan two summers ago,” the Qatari continued. “It has many olive trees. One day, I asked the gardener why he was letting the olives fall off the tree. Why not make them into olive oil? He told me that these ones on the ground were not worthy of becoming olive oil, that we had to wait for the others still on the tree to blossom and they would one day make wonderful oil. He promised, and he was right. On the day he brought the olives back from the press, we sopped up that crystal-green liquid with bread for dinner, and it was the finest meal I ever ate. These women of yours are also fine olives; they cannot be pressed until they are ready. Along with the $29.99 for this month’s service, I’m going to throw in another thousand to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters in America who want more than just an olive that falls on the ground early.”

He stood up and left with an impassioned handshake. Just when Zade had been ready to dismiss the Qatari as what his father called another sad product of the Gulf social welfare system for millionaires, the man had to go do something kind—odd in its poetry, but still… How much work would it really take to give him a chance at Aladdin and Jasmine, Inc. love?

He looked at the check, opened his computer file, and added to his questionnaire: “How do you feel about being a second wife? (a) abhorrent (b) mildly abhorrent (c) acceptable if there is no other option and I still want to get married.”

Zade looked over the first part of the list one more time:

• Name:
  

• Age:
  

• Family Name:
  

• Paternal Grandfather’s Name:
  

• Maternal Grandfather’s Name:
  

• How would you best describe your family roots (a) peasant (b) city (c) Bedouin?
  

• On a scale of 5 to 10, how important is that he/she is from a “good family”?
  

• Education: (a) Ph.D. (b) M.A. (c) less than an M.A.
  

• Would you like children? (a) Yes, but I’m physically unable to do so (b) Yes, less than five (c) Yes, more than five.
  

• Are you (a) Arab-born (b) American-born (c) other (please specify country of birth)
  

• What type of Arab do you prefer to date (circle all that apply)? (a) Mediterranean (b) Egyptian (c) Persian Gulf (d) North African (e) East African
  

• What religious constraints work for you (check all that apply)? (a) Arab Muslim (b) Arab Christian (c) non-Arab Muslim (If also seeking non-Arab Christians, please see Match.com or eHarmony which will allow you a selection far beyond the reach of our core clientele.)
  

• How much Arab blood does the person have to have? a) 100% (b) 50% (c) less than 25% (d) irrelevant as long as she/he wants to be with me for reasons other than money or a green card.
  

• Muslim Women Only: Do you wear a hijab? (If you need a translation of hijab as “head scarf,” the answer is no.)
  

• Muslim Men Only: Indicate whether you prefer a woman who (a) only uses sunscreen as extra coverage (b) wears a hijab (c) wears an abaya (d) covers her face (e) covers her hands
  

• Do you have your parents’ permission to date or will this be in secret? (All clients, regardless of age, must answer this if parents are still living.)
  

• Approximately how many relatives and family friends do you expect to attend your wedding? (a) 500 (b) 1,000–2,000 (c) over 2,000
  

• If a U.S. citizen, do you exercise your right to vote? (a) yes (b) no (c) why bother as it is all run by the Israeli lobby? (d) I would if someone would tell me how.
  

• Do you support the war in Iraq? (a) kind of (b) no way
  

Zade felt his mother in back of him. “So much for Arab unity,” he said with a shrug as she looked over the questionnaire on the screen.

Nadia didn’t laugh. Arab unity had been the point of his father’s existence, his true passion, aside from Nadia and, consequently, Zade and his sister. His father now was spending a semester as a visiting scholar at the American University in the emirate of Sharjah. The money couldn’t be turned down, not that his parents would ever admit that a lifetime of roving academia and near-communist politics in the Reagan era had left them unprepared for impending old age. Nor would they admit that their son was doing well enough to take care of them, although Nadia had the numbers in front of her every evening. Nadia’s own teaching commitments had not allowed her to go with Elias, and Zade consequently had inherited her evenings. She had chosen to handle Zade’s taxes rather than stay home alone. Being alone reminded her of the six months she had lived in Lebanon while trying to secure Elias’s freedom from those who had kidnapped him off the Beirut University College campus when her children were small. She felt lucky that Zade had no interest in doing his own taxes.