A Place for Us Read online

  After a while, he excuses himself and enters the hallway, and there she is. That first glimpse of her. She lingers by the drinks table. Tall glasses filled with juice. Orange and a kind of pink—maybe guava. When she looks at him they both smile, thinking the same thing, or so it feels. He pictures a tight rope connecting them, invisible to everyone else. She lifts a glass to her lips. He leans against the table, faces the crowd, watches people enter the hall, greet each other, and separate into the ladies’ or the men’s.

  “Do you think we can?” she asks. She is not facing him. She takes another sip. Her bangles clink.

  Every letter exchanged since that first scrap of paper left on his pillow seems to have been leading up to this moment. In his last e-mail he mentioned that maybe there was a floor in the hotel where they could meet, where no one would have any reason to go. She had not replied, and he had deleted it from his sent mail.

  Now he speaks. “Ten minutes, seventeenth floor.”

  “You’ve lost your mind.”

  But she laughs. He looks to see if anyone has heard her. She lowers her finished glass onto the table, a pink stain of lipstick on its rim.

  “You first. Fifteen minutes,” she says, and he watches her walk into the ladies’ hall.

  * * *

  THIS IS THE first walk they take together. The hallway on the seventeenth floor is carpeted and their footsteps make no sound. Already he has memorized the gaudy red pattern of twisting vines on the floor, and her feet encased in golden shoes, taking slow steps—maybe, he thinks, to elongate their walk. He had made a list of what he could bring up when he ran out of things to say—the main point being how his counselor told him there was definitely a chance of him graduating, so long as he did a lot of catch-up work, met regularly with his teachers, and attended mandatory tutoring sessions during some lunch hours. Amira responds with genuine relief, excitement even. He makes a note to remember to do the same for her, if she ever comes to him with good news. Every time someone opens one of the hundred doors, a panic seizes her and him too; they step away from each other as if shocked. But it is only a man holding a briefcase. Or an elderly woman in a turquoise dress, adjusting its pleats, glancing at them only once, but smiling at them as if she knows.

  He is so happy he could dance, uncharacteristic of him, but maybe with her he is someone who dances. Maybe with her he is someone who can do anything. It is time the world knew, he thinks—a line from a poem his teacher had assigned. He marvels at how the words he read before return and ring true now. It is time the stone made an effort to flower. Celan’s lines and Rilke’s on his mind—how foolish he would appear if he admitted that, how she would roll her eyes and think he was trying too hard, or that he was not as cool as he seemed. But there is a part of him that does not care, that wants to take the hair that has fallen into her face and tuck it behind her ear, gently brush against the skin of her cheek, and say the line he recalls—how everything exists to conceal us.

  She talks about her day. Her elaborate hand gestures. When did they become people who cared about the most insignificant details of their lives? He laughs at all the right moments. Something closed in her unlatches and she twirls, her outfit is one that fans out before falling against her legs and she gushes, “I can’t believe we’re doing this. What if someone catches us?”

  “They won’t.”

  “You’re so sure.”

  He extends his hand to trace his fingers against the textured wall, the door frame, the smooth length of the door, the door frame again—because he can’t touch her.

  “Tell me something,” she asks.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything that counts.”

  So he thinks. Far behind them there is the ring of the elevator. They freeze, then look to one another and laugh. They keep walking. What can he say? He should have prepared more. There are already things he knows he cannot tell her. Partially because he does not want to set a bad example, risk influencing her negatively. He remembers how quick she was to ask for a cigarette when she stumbled upon him and Abbas half a year ago, smoking in the tall trees behind her house. Why can’t I, if you can, she had said to Abbas, are our lungs so different, that different standards apply? Abbas turned to Amar as if to say, see what I have to deal with? And then he shrugged and passed her the cigarette, and said to her, I won’t even mention you tried to Mumma or Baba, but only because I would rather you try with me than alone, and only if you drop it with the equality stuff for at least a week. At least a week, Amira. And she saluted him, which endeared her to Amar, and held the cigarette between her index finger and thumb, sniffed it and scrunched up her nose before taking it to her lips and smoking it, giving it back after she started coughing on her third drag. You boys are dumb, she said when she returned the cigarette to Abbas, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Amar was grinning, it might have stung. Batamiz, Abbas joked as she walked away, begharat—which meant, the one who is disrespectful to their elders, the one who is without shame. She turned on her heel and replied khushi se—with pride, with happiness. How much more fun it was to throw Urdu terms at one another in jest; how different it felt when the same words were spat from their parents’ mouths.

  So he cannot tell her, tell anyone, that he had sought out Abbas’s friend Simon a few months ago. Simon was the only person who had been in the car who had survived the accident that killed Abbas. When Mumma heard there had been a survivor, she had said, “What is it about these tragic accidents, a group of people touch death and God chooses one to come back and tell us about it.”

  What was it that Simon could tell him, he had wondered, and in pursuit of an answer they had become sort of friends. One night, Amar followed him to a house party at the edge of town. He had smoked cigarettes with Abbas and the other boys for years; they had even, a few times, smoked weed. But that night, when a red cup of beer was handed to him, he accepted it. There was no immediate effect, the foam fizzy on his lips, but with each sip he felt like he was stepping out from his old world. Later, he took a bong hit too quickly and went outside to breathe the fresh air and massage his chest to dissolve the feeling of glass in his lungs, swaying on the heels of his feet, not knowing why he was there, accepting one drink and then intentionally going back for another and another, in a room full of people he did not know, and the only person who he did know was nothing like Abbas.

  That night the bright moon hung low in the sky. As a child, Amar’s belief that the moon followed him calmed him, but seeing it then, with his lungs still filled with crushed glass, he felt the panicked sensation of a hand being pressed on his neck, and he knew he could not tell anyone how far out from his world he had ventured alone, certainly not his sisters, and definitely not Amira, who he had just begun to write to, who he wanted desperately to impress. The pebbly stars took turns dimming and glowing. And though he could not remember the last time he had stood sincerely in prayer, a thought like a prayer rose in his mind and he was so surprised by its presence it struck him like a blow: that his sisters never experience the doubts he was feeling, that they never shake in their certainty of being Muslim, never think that maybe there was no hell and no heaven and therefore no point. Never wonder if everyone had gotten it wrong or maybe they had all gotten it right in their own way, which meant that no way was superior to any other. That his sisters never stray from the path outlined for them, and that if there was a heaven, they would be in line waiting to enter.

  So why would he say anything that would infect Amira’s thinking, now that he has started to regard her with the same kind of love he reserves for those he is closest to?

  “In eighth grade I stole from grocery stores, gas stations,” he says, thinking that this is what she might be looking for. An actual secret, but one that is far enough behind him that it will not change how she looks at him now.

  Her eyes widen, incredulous. He imagines her sheltered life. N
ever really alone without a father, brother, mother nearby and watching. But his life has been sheltered too.

  “You’re terrible,” she jokes.

  He tells her he hid chocolate bars in his sleeves, but doesn’t mention that he had been there with her brother, or that they would walk there with a group of other boys after Sunday school, during lunchtime while others lined up for spaghetti or sandwiches.

  “Why did you do it? Just to see if you could?”

  He shrugs. “I didn’t even want to.”

  “Did you ever get caught?”

  He tells her about the time the cashier at a gas station saw him on a security video, how the man ran out after him and how Amar, startled, dropped the green mint Tic Tacs and ran and ran until he couldn’t breathe.

  “I like how you remember the flavor,” she says.

  They arrive at a long mirror in the hall and stand hushed before it. She is as beautiful in the mirror as she is in real life. He looks from himself to her, at the gap between their arms. Her phone starts to ring again, her mother, no doubt wondering where she has gone. She looks at him in a way that tells him it is time for her to go back. He suggests she take the elevator first. He will take his time before doing the same. And then they move on, broken or awoken from some spell. She waves and he holds up his hand as the elevator doors close. He watches her descent, a little red dot charting her movement away, floor eleven lighting up, then eventually three, two, one. He walks the empty halls. Slight pink smudge still on his thumb from wiping the rim of her glass but no other proof. But they were those two people in that mirror, they were the ones looking back at themselves, awed by their impossible reflections.

  5.

  PE CLASS IS LET OUT EARLY, AND INSTEAD OF RUSHING TO THE locker room with his classmates who are eager to line up at the snack bar, Amar drags his badminton racket on the blacktop. Mumma is still visiting her father in India, leaving no one to slip him spending money for a freshly baked cookie or a frozen lemonade cup. Nana’s health has been stable for two weeks now. But Mumma’s flight was canceled, and he is not sure when she will be able to come home. Hadia says there is no need to worry. Amar has yet to figure out how to launch a birdie into the air. Every time he tries, the birdie thuds to the ground just as his racket whooshes past, and he looks around to see if anyone but his partner noticed. His English teacher, Miss Kit, taught them a new word in class this week—melancholy—and he thinks of the word as he leans down to tug a protruding weed from the blacktop, tries to whack it with the racket, and wonders if maybe that is what he is feeling.

  His shoulder is shoved and he stumbles into the brick wall. It is Grant walking away, looking back in such a way that Amar realizes he was shoved on purpose. He brushes dust from his shoulder. He does not like Grant, or the way Grant looks at him: as though there is something disgusting on Amar’s face. Amar straightens his posture and raises his shoulders a little. Just in case he was shoved because he appeared weak. He trails the racket against the wall until he reaches the locker room. He will push Grant back if he tries to bump him again.

  Inside, the air is musty, the light gray. It smells of sweat. Light comes through the small, opaque windows at the very top of the walls, so high up that no one can see out of them. Everything echoes: footsteps of boys departing, locker doors slammed, locks snapped shut. His locker is in the farthest row, toward the end of the aisle. He likes it because not many people are around when he changes.

  “Look,” someone says, “terrorist in a white shirt.”

  Amar turns around. It is Grant speaking to Brandon. Brandon’s dirty PE clothes are flung over his shoulder. Both of them are in some of his classes but he knows neither well. Brandon has broad shoulders and is taller than the rest of the boys. Amar turns to look behind him but no one else is there.

  Amar is the one in white. He slams his locker door louder than he intended. The metal trembles. He busies himself with the zipper of his backpack and Grant calls out to him, “Hey, we’re talking to you.”

  Amar pictures the rest of the locker room—empty by now—and his stomach clenches.

  “Why don’t you go back to your own country?” Brandon snarls.

  He stands to face them.

  “This is my country.”

  He wanted to sound angrier, but he is surprised by the presence of something else in his voice—discomfort or defensiveness, he can’t tell. There is a slim space between Grant and the row of lockers and if he squeezes past he can make it to the door. He can ditch his last two classes and walk away from the whole stupid school until he reaches Hadia and Huda’s high school, where he can wait by the gate until they are let out. He has been in fights before, not with Grant or Brandon, but with other classmates in previous years. Fights he picked or allowed to happen, knowing he would win, or that there would be no real damage done: a bloody nose, a bruised arm. But this time there are two of them. And Brandon is bigger than he is. He presses his sneaker into an old, dark gum stain. Then Mark appears. Mark had moved to another school district after his parents’ divorce, but their schools had combined again in middle school. They did not really speak to each other anymore, Mark being a grade older. Still, if they passed each other in the hallway they would nod, and it was like a secret pact they kept with their younger selves. Mark nods to Grant, and Amar realizes they are friends now.

  “Him?” Mark says when he sees Amar. He sounds surprised.

  Amar wonders if they had planned to bother him today.

  “Arabian Nights tells us he’s from here,” Grant explains to Mark. Brandon grins. Amar wants to tell Grant he is an idiot and that he is not even Arab. But his jaw is shut so tight his teeth hurt.

  “He is,” Mark says.

  Mark meets his eyes for a moment but then looks away.

  “That’s right, you know him.”

  “Knew him.”

  There is the sound of a locker door echoing. Amar realizes he has taken a step back and hit the door with his body. Grant smiles with his head tilted back as though he has sniffed his fear.

  “We should go,” Mark says, looking over his shoulder.

  Amar is relieved: they may no longer be friends, but at least there is something between them they could both recognize and respect.

  “Is your dad a terrorist?” Brandon asks.

  Amar feels silent. And sick to his stomach, like his insides have twisted into a tiny fist, and when he looks up from the gray cement floor, the gray grout, the dark gum stain, it is to look at Mark, who is avoiding looking back at him. This is not anger. This is not fear. This is not an exchange he has been in before. He feels too ashamed to even have to say, no, he is not.

  “Mark, you know his dad too?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  Once when they were ten, maybe eleven, Baba took all of them bowling. Mark’s finger had been between the bowling balls when another one rolled out, and it jammed his finger enough for him to not want to bowl. Mumma wrapped ice from the soda machines in a tissue, Baba gave them a ton of quarters to go into the arcade to play games that were manageable with one throbbing hand, while Hadia and Huda took over their turns. They brought home ten sticky aliens and one glow stick.

  “Is he a terrorist?” Grant asks.

  “Shut the fuck up, man,” Amar says.

  Good. That was better. That sounded tougher.

  Mark is the only one of these idiots who has been to his home, has eaten dinner with them, and if there is anyone who will tell them that his father is not a terrorist, but just someone who wears white shirts to work, packs brown paper lunch bags, it is Mark.

  His father with his beard and his skin a little darker than Amar’s. His father did have a temper, one that was undetectable until it erupted, but his anger was hardly ever directed anywhere but at Amar, and even then Amar instigated it. When the sun began to set his father took walks at a slow pace, pausing at hedg
es with flowers, and some evenings Amar peered down from his bedroom window and thought his father looked like a peaceful man, his hands crossed and resting behind him. Amar wants to tell them: no, my father points out the stars in the sky to us if we haven’t looked up in a while, he teaches us how to look for the new moon to mark the new month, he reads books he underlines with a faint gray pencil. My father always says excuse me if he passes someone too close in the street. My father has never lost his temper at a stranger.

  Mark shrugs, then says, “He sure looks like a fucking terrorist.”

  Amar punches him in the face. And again. So fast and so hard that Mark’s head hits the locker behind him and he crumples to the floor, eyes wide and wild, one hand covering his mouth. Grant and Brandon look from Amar to Mark, as if unsure what to do. Even Amar does not know what to do. If he should run. His hand hurts so much so he holds it. Mark moves his hand and there is blood on his teeth, blood on his lip. Soon it is on his chin, on the collar of his shirt, and he holds his fingers over his mouth as if to stop it. Then there are arms around Amar and he is lifted off the floor, Brandon has picked him up and Amar begins to kick, but he can’t move his hands. Grant is looking at him as if he is pleased for this opportunity, so pleased, and he steps toward Amar, and then it is Amar who is receiving punch after punch after punch.

  * * *

  IT HURTS TO touch his face in the nurse’s room so he sits with his hands in his lap, careful to not rest the back of his head against the wall either, a tenderness there he is sure will become a bump. He waits with the lights turned off. He focuses in and out at the charts of what to eat, the poster of the muscles in the body and the bones, the glass containers with the cotton balls and wooden sticks. He blurs his sight and then focuses on the line of the sink, blurs and then the tick, that shift that announces another minute has passed. The nurse is being very kind to him. Her name is Mrs. Rose. She checks on him even after she has applied the bandage on his eyebrow and chin, given him a tissue to hold up to his split lip.