Three Daughters: A Novel (25 page)

Throughout the ride, he crooned the cheerful songs Marwan had taught him.
He must hear me
, he thought.
He must.
He didn’t have a clear memory of all that happened next. Only that they wanted to take the body from him and he resisted with all his might. He felt horribly responsible for the tragedy. He should have asked to go home—this would have distracted Marwan from his quest for danger. He shouldn’t have given in to Marwan and ridden with him. He should have persuaded him to stay at the camp. He could have saved his friend. Over and over, he heard that startled cry—“
La!
No!”—and saw that small palm thrust out, pushing death away.

Within days he was returned to his family. He asked for Marwan’s curved knife, his
rhumb
, and kept it close to him day and night. It had the smell of Marwan and the sweat of his hand on the handle. It was the last thing Samir touched at night and the first in the morning. Even in later years, when his months with the Bedouin were nothing more than a distant memory, touching the knife gave him comfort.

20.

I KNOW WHAT HE SEES IN YOU.

A
hulking Botsford guard was running in front of him and Samir stopped to dribble, blocking the tackle with his shoulder. Each time he moved the ball, he looked around quickly, but there was no free man, so he sped up and pretended to charge for the goal. The guard grinned, baring oversized teeth.

“You large boys should be playing rugby,” hissed Samir.

The guard continued to smile but his eyes remained on the ball. Samir saw Phillips fifteen feet to his left and did a little quick step, passing with the outside of his foot, then ran upfield. As the ball was returned to him, he grinned at his bewildered guard. In that fatal second, a green Botsford shoulder sped by, a foot hooked the rolling ball, steered it away, and kicked it high in the air. It rose sharply, sailed overhead, and landed at the feet of the opposing inside center, who scored.

“Pride goeth before a fall,” croaked Phillips at his side.

Samir shrugged. “It’s what I deserved. But it’s not over yet.” He looked up at the clump of FGS girls who always attended home games and served tea afterward to the visiting team. In the second tier, next to Margaret—they were always together—sat his cousin Nadia with an expression . . . was it an ill-concealed smile?

He had the ball and kicked it far, running after it to the action. Stefano, the right wing, killed it with his chest, dribbled toward the Botsford goal, and lost it. Samir caught up with the advancing attacker and lunged at him, forcing a change of direction. The boy tripped the ball up his leg and batted it to a waiting teammate with an inhuman rotation of his knee.

As the receiver prepared to kick, Samir was so close that the ball smashed into his knees and ricocheted to the middle of the field. It was about to bounce again but he dove horizontally, raising his head just enough to give the ball a solid send-off. Stefano took off and scored as Samir hit the ground in a painful slide, scraping the side of his face. From the ground he looked up at the second tier. She had not seen any part of it! She was glancing at a book! Margaret pointed to her cheek to indicate his wound, frowned with concern, and then blew him a kiss. Just then the horn signaled the end of the second quarter and the teams retired for halftime.

The FBS boys had two moral obligations during their stay at the school. The first was to replant the olive trees that the Turks had burned to fuel the railroad. The second duty, optional and more personal, was to purchase (with money earned doing menial tasks) the sturdy chairs made by the orphans at Schnellers for the dining room. During sporting events, Samir, wearing a wooden tray suspended from his neck, sold ice cream wafers to the crowd of locals who attended the games.

Margaret waved. “We’ll take two, please,” she called across the aisle. He finished a transaction and climbed to the row below the girls. “That’s a nasty scrape,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “But for a splendid cause. You’re marvelous with the ball,” she gushed then reached down to him. “Here, let me blot your wound. My handkerchief is clean.” She dabbed at his cheek, wetting the cloth with her tongue. “Don’t mind me, they say saliva has healing powers. Well, it must be true. Animals use it, don’t they? They’re always licking, licking, licking over any little wound.”

He was enjoying himself and Nadia was having a fit. She was bouncing her fist against her chin in agitation and looking away as if the scene was too much to believe. Samir grinned and gave Margaret the wafer. Her hand lingered on his cheek and then on his fingers as she took her ice cream. “Here’s a pound,” she said. “Keep the change.”

“That’s much too much.” Nadia spoke for the first time. “The wafers are only thirty piasters.”

“It’s to buy the orphans’ chairs, isn’t it?” Margaret waved away the change. “Perhaps this will make his quota.” She pronounced it
qwoatah
, which made it sound silly.

“It’s too much money,” Nadia said accusingly, as if Samir was taking advantage of Margaret.

“Well, it’s my money, now, isn’t it?” said Margaret.

Nadia shrugged.

“I’m doing the tea later,” Margaret whispered, dabbing once more at Samir’s cheek. “I baked the scones myself. Stop by.”

“I will.”

“That was a daring save. You know what they say about soccer players, don’t you?”

“No. What do they say?”

“My father says it’s a sport that requires neither height nor heft so much as valor, perseverance, and daring. Nadia, wasn’t it daring—diving into the air like that?”

“I missed it,” she said. Her jaw was set and two red spots showed on her cheeks. Samir looked at the book on her lap.

Margaret looked at one and then the other. “He wanted you especially to see it,” she chided Nadia, whose mouth became a thin red line of displeasure.

Samir stepped down to another tier. “I thought the girls were here to lift our morale,” he said lightly.

“No,” insisted Margaret, realizing she had hit on something interesting, “you were watching for Nadia’s reaction. You looked at her twice from the field.”

“Perhaps he was looking at you,” Nadia shot back.

“That would be lovely, but it’s you who have hurt his feelings.”

Samir smiled enigmatically, looking above their heads at the crowd. A slight gust of wind ruffled his hair and he sighed and lifted his chin.

Her peevishness is no longer charming
, he thought, stepping back onto the field.
She’s grown up. Her mouth has grown up, too. If she would relax and forget herself, her lips would . . . part open from the . . . sheer bursting weight.
He felt warm. It took no effort at all to imagine the healthy pink glow of her face over the rest of her body. Over her long strong legs. Her parted lips, glossy with desire, insinuated themselves into his brain. He bit down hard on his own lower lip and looked for the ball.

It was wrong to think of her in that way. It was disloyal. It was second-rate. They lost the game.

“You can go to hell,” Nadia said and then slumped down in defeat. “How could you?”

“What are you so huffed up about? If you have no interest in him, what’s the difference?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yes, it is. Perhaps you’re afraid of rejection. If you had some idea of winning him, you’d show your true feelings.”

“Oh, Margaret, just stop it.”

“As it turns out, your way is a good strategy. The idea is dawning over his brain like the sun rising over the Mount of Olives.”

“What idea?”

“The idea of you.” Foolishly, Nadia allowed that thought to root in her imagination. The look on her face was enough to encourage Margaret. “The burning issue is, why you? Why should this perfectly splendid boy/man be smitten with you? You’re not a classical beauty.”

The words stung. Once. Twice. Margaret had hit on the exact issue that did burn in her heart. Samir did, at times, act friendly. Was it just that she was familiar to him? And if by chance he was deluded into liking her, what would he do when the delusion was over? “Margaret, shut up.”

“I won’t, and you should listen because I know what he sees in you.”

She was hooked again. “Oh?”

“You have the type of body . . . how can I put it? Long legs never hurt. And at the thighs, where everyone else drifts into wayward masses, you’re hard as a boy with a high little ass. Then there’s your mouth. It’s full and moist. It dips and curves. Coming at the end of your rather solemn face, it’s a shocker. There’s this irresistible juxtaposition of seriousness hiding a wanton nature. You’re a mystery.”

“Margaret, you’re daft. You really think Samir has figured all this out?”

“Not consciously. It just works on him. Face it, luv, you’ve got it.”

“What is
it
?”

“You know . . . like Clara Bow. It’s a quality. You can’t quite define it.”

It was so tempting to believe it all. And so utterly stupid.

21.

AH, LOVE . . .

S
uzanne Lenglen, the glamorous French tennis star, displayed little brown moons under her eyes, suggesting that she came to the court without sleep after a night of carnival.’ ” Margaret drew in her breath with appreciation. She was reading from an outdated issue of
Time
sent by the Society of Friends in Indiana. “Do you think a night of carnival means petting, kissing, or more?”

“Petting and kissing. Not more,” answered Nadia, putting out her palm to stop an imaginary love-crazed suitor.

“Give me a little kiss, will ya, huh?” Margaret sang and vamped. That song, together with “There’s Yes! Yes! in Your Eyes,” were the popular imports played over the shortwave radio.

“What are you gonna miss, will ya, huh?” answered Nadia. They fell on each other, laughing helplessly.

From old issues of
Collier’s
and
Life
, their bibles of sophistication, the girls compiled a little glossary of slang: “the cat’s pyjamas” denoted ultimate desirability; “nuts” expressed disgust; “lousy” was something contemptible; “to carry a torch” was to suffer from unrequited love; “for crying out loud” was the ultimate expression of exasperation (Margaret’s favorite); and “crush” was a word Nadia finally put to use in May on one of the sweet spring nights when the spirit wells up with the pure joy of the physical universe.

She stood alone in the foyer, half-hidden by an urn filled with bushy flowering red jasmine. The flowers had been gathered that morning to delight the parents who had come for the recitation. She sighed, filled with inexplicable longing, and fingered the ragged paper in her hand on which was scribbled Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”

The proper recitation of poetry was important at FGS and once a month the parents came to listen.

“For crying out loud,” said Margaret, “everyone goes fast asleep at these things. The Muslims are indifferent because we never include their poets. The English poets say very little about the afterlife, which is as important to them as this vale of tears.”

On an evening just like this, after Nadia had recited all seven stanzas of Tennyson’s “Sir Galahad,” her grandmother kissed her cheek and muttered into the air, “Reap the wind and harvest nothing.” Her way of saying Nadia spent time on activities with no lasting benefits.

Miss Smythe said if they hoped to sit for the matriculation exams, they must be well-read. They must know the great literature of the world. “The great literature of the world,” shrieked Margaret, “is either crying over spilled milk or making too much of everything. Life is very simple, really.”

“You can make fun of it because you’re English,” offered Nadia wisely. “For us it’s something to admire.”

From her safe nook in the foyer, she could hear the boys finishing their recitation. That meant the girls would begin. She would have to take her place in the auditorium. “ ‘Ah, love . . . Ah, love . . . Ah, love . . .’ ”—she spoke with exaggerated emotion—“ ‘let us be true to one another for the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams / So various . . . so? . . . beautiful . . . so new / Hath really . . . hath really . . .’ ooh, what does it bloody have?”

“It ‘hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,’ ” came an unequivocal, deeply masculine answer from the other side of the foliage.

She sucked in her breath, bit down on her offending lips and waited. To be heard using that word! She knew that
bloody
, while it sounded harmless to her, was quite coarse to the English. An eternity was perceived but only several seconds passed. Her mouth felt dry as a gully. “ ‘Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain . . .’ ” The voice now had an urgency. He was trying to get her to continue, to answer with the next poetic line.

She unclenched her jaw and let go of her lips. “ ‘And we are here as on a darkling plain,’ ” she said timidly without any of the expression the line demanded, “ ‘Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where . . .’ ” What came next?

“ ‘Where ignorant armies clash by night,’ ” came the resonant answer.

It was no voice she recognized. Was it a parent? Perhaps an intruder! She began to tiptoe away, hoping to reach the door of the auditorium—from which she should not have strayed—without facing . . . him. She felt an incriminating awkwardness in every step.

“You stumbled on ‘so various, so beautiful, so new,’ etc. That’s where your problem begins.” The voice reached out and stopped her in midflight.

“Yes,” she acknowledged, still facing away.
That’s where your problem begins
.

“Well? Don’t you need to learn it? Come here. It isn’t as if you’ve got a week.”

She turned to face a tall, slim man elegantly dressed in a flat-woven tweed cut in a smart, shaped style. His brown hair was parted to the side neatly and brushed back, exposing his face in a daring way—like the men who posed in the motor car advertisements whose hair (and their caution, she surmised) was driven back by the wind, making them appear headed toward inevitable danger. It was a confident face with a strong but appropriate Roman nose, pale eyes, and a wide mouth that was twitching, trying to contain a smile. She tipped her face up to him, crimson and unsure. Hoping for the best. “I beg your pardon?”

“Not at all. I beg yours. You came to practice your lines in privacy and now I’ve thrown you off. It’s hardly fair.” Again his mouth curved upward. What was the appropriate response? Her fervent wish was not to appear stupid. Right then, his lighthearted expression changed to one of concern. “Why so worried?” he asked. “Haven’t got the lines tucked in memory?” He gave her a reassuring smile—a smile that seemed too extravagant for a girl her age. “You’re in luck. I happen to be an expert on ‘Dover Beach.’ Come . . . give it another try . . . ‘Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.’ Come on, repeat after me . . .” He crooked his finger as if to charm the words out of her.

“ ‘Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,’ ” she repeated unconvincingly. She looked around the hall, at her hands, at the patterned floor and then again at his face.

“Think of it as
J L L
. . . or to make it more personal, Jack Loves Linda . . . joy, love, light . . . followed by that tragic tale, Charles Pines for Penelope.
C P P
. . . ‘Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.’ ” His face was serious as a priest.

“ ‘Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,’ ” she repeated and then continued. “ ‘And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.’ ” She looked away to the side to briefly escape his gaze, for he was hanging on her words, mouthing them with her as if she were a toddler. “I’ve got to go now.” Yet she stood still, waiting for his dismissal.

“There you are,” he said with kindness. “It was just a stumble. You’ll do fine.”

She ran down the corridor but then slowed down, aware of the clatter of her shoes. At the door of the hall, she looked back. He stood perfectly still, framed by the burning red bush, his tweed-clad arms comfortably across his chest, the corner of his lip hiked up in a smile. His eyes held fast on her retreating form. She smiled, both thrilled and embarrassed that he was still looking at her.

Samir stepped into the foyer, expecting to find it empty. He had been reprieved from listening to the girls’ poetry in order to arrange the seating in the parlor for the tea social that was to follow. The well-dressed man at the end of the hall caught his attention first. Then, in a moment of devilish serendipity, he saw his cousin Nadia turn to bestow on this stranger an irresistible smile of such tenderness that it jarred Samir. Her face in that subdued light seemed as fragile as the mist that rolled in before dawn and hovered magically before it delivered itself to the thirsty foliage.

The irony of the moment wasn’t lost on Samir. Had Sammy Sahadi not omitted four lines from “Annabel Lee,” crassly curtailing Poe’s lament for his beloved, the scene would have gone unwitnessed. He had stepped into the hall seconds too early and now that exchange of private smiles took hold of his imagination and made him restless. He had the uneasy feeling that he had apprehended something that was as yet unknown to the participants.

Jasmeen had just begun “Geist’s Grave” when Nadia took her seat. “ ‘That liquid melancholy eye’ ”—Jasmine was being overly dramatic in her recitation, as if she were auditioning to be in films—“ ‘From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs / Seem’d urging the Virgilian cry, / The sense of tears in mortal things . . .’ ” At this point, Jasmeen, moved by her own words, began to weep.

There was a great deal of embarrassed shifting by the audience and Jasmeen’s mother cried out emotionally, “It’s all right,
habibty
,” a gaffe that sealed Jasmeen’s fate at FGS.

“What’s she crying about?” hissed Margaret to Nadia. “Geist was Arnold’s dog. That bloody poem is about his dog. That girl’s balmy, I swear. She’s an idiot. Now, look”—she rolled her eyes heavenward in disgust—“Miss Smythe has told her to sit down. She doesn’t have to finish so I guess I’m up . . .” Margaret passed through the row of knees with resignation and then proceeded to give a flawless rendition of Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper,” sweetly dedicating it “to the hardy women of Palestine,” which forever endeared her to half the audience. Nadia was so surprised she forgot to go next.

“Your turn, mademoiselle,” Margaret said archly.

She stood and faced the row of parents and noticed her father dressed in an unfamiliar European suit, tugging and picking at his jacket as if trying to make it as long and comfortable as his familiar aba
.
Why couldn’t he stop arranging it and be still? His neighbors were staring at him. She cleared her throat meaningfully and began her recitation. Midway through, when she had gained some confidence, she dared to search the rows for the man in the foyer and found him standing at the back. Their eyes met. He smiled encouragement, as if she were his special project, and made a little flourish with his hand in salute. Her heart reacted. A handsome man’s attention was something so new and unexpected. She returned to her seat feeling elated.

Of all the dainty tasks learned at Friends’, pouring tea from the ornate silver urn engaged her imagination most. She had watched Miss Smythe’s delicate New England wrist dip and bend, pouring a perfect arc of dark liquid without concern and with a confident smile on her lips. She was eager to give her guests not only tea but also all the goodness that was inside her. “Eating should entail spiritual sustenance, too,” Miss Smythe told them. “Food should be given gracefully, generously. But certainly our Arabic girls don’t have to be told such things. They have made a religion of hospitality.”

Tonight Nadia was one of the girls chosen to pour and she sat in the seat of command surrounded by nested cups, little pincers for sugar and lemon at her fingertips. A deputy paired the cups with saucers and handed them up. She poured and held the cup a moment in the air while inquiring with a smile, “Lemon? Sugar?” This was the ceremony that satisfied her soul.

“Got scullery duty, eh?” Margaret sneered, coming up from behind and digging her fingers into Nadia’s shoulders.

“Three sugars, please,” demanded a voice from above. The voice was familiar. Before she looked up, she knew it was her poetry coach.

“Two will do.” Margaret grabbed the cup from Nadia, plopped two cubes into it with her fingers, and handed it to the man. “Too much sugar rots the teeth,” she said sternly.

Nadia’s first thought was,
Oh, Margaret will interest him now with her brashness.

The man smiled indulgently. “Margaret,” he said, “you were superb tonight.” He looked down at Nadia. “And you pulled yourself out quite handily, too, although I would guess your interests lie in something other than poetry.” His candor was a surprise but not deflating. He made her sound vastly more interesting than a scholar of poetry.

Margaret went to stand between them. “Nadia,” she said with mischief in her eyes, “this cheeky man is Victor Madden, my father.”

“How do you do.” He had extended his hand and she had no choice but to let him have hers, but the news fell like a bomb. The room blurred. Margaret’s father! It was one of those awful awkward moments when one’s expectations are so wrongly placed that the spirit falls with a thud. He had been her special encounter, an event to play with in her mind. And now . . . Margaret’s father! She had wanted him known only to her and now . . . the whole thing was spoiled. As if it were Margaret’s fault she had a father, Nadia had an instant desire to put great distance between herself and her friend. The Black Sea would have been about right.

The tea drinkers had dwindled and she excused herself awkwardly, unwilling to look at his face. She went in search of Nadeem, who was standing by himself, his hands crossed in front of him, turning a black fedora around and around. He walked to a chair but before sitting pulled out his trousers like a man accustomed to dealing with the loose skirt of the aba
.
Nadia felt a stab of tenderness and loyalty. He had worn the suit only to please her.

He rose to greet her and she kissed him. Usually she chastised him for making no attempt to mingle with the other parents, but tonight she said nothing. She noticed with some dismay that she had grown slightly taller than he.

“Baba, it’s all right if you wear your regular clothes. You looked so uncomfortable in that suit.” She tried not to sound critical, unwilling to make him the victim of her sudden black mood.

“Was it so obvious? I tried to sit still, but it’s extremely itchy.”

“No, it wasn’t obvious,” she lied. “It’s just a surprise to see you in a suit. You didn’t have to come tonight. You’d have been asleep by now.” The programs began at a time when her parents were usually ready for bed. “How’s Mama?”

“Mama’s fine. She wanted to sleep early tonight.” He looked down at his feet with interest, not used to seeing them when wearing his usual long robe. He looked up again and his face was serious. “Mama’s not fine. Khalil and Hanna are finally going to America. She cries about it every night.”