“Next, you describe my eyes as being as wide as two lakes, whereas you see that they are small, like the rips that rats make in a dress. Even my mother herself compares me to a Chinese girl, saying, ‘Bring me the china tray, my little China girl!’ My sister Salwa describes them as something else entirely when she is mad at me ….”
“What?” I said.
“No, no!” she said, “I’m too embarrassed to say.”
I pleaded with her to tell me. “You must never be embarrassed with me after today.”
“Fine,” she said. “Salwa says that my eyes are like … are like rabbit vaginas!” She said that with a smile, nearly laughing, and I noticed that her small eyes squinted completely to become small lines, which made her even more alluring, like someone beckoning with a wink.
She continued, “Then you say that my walk is what teaches the branches of trees to sway with the wind. You talk about a necklace for me made from stars and the moon, and that I am the mistress of the universe. But I’m just a girl who doesn’t know what goes on outside her own village. There are other things too. I’m talking about all these lies, Saleem. There’s no need for them. Your letters, with their authenticity and sincerity, are enough to convey your feelings for me.”
I felt crushed by the magnitude of this surprise as I contemplated the failure of my efforts and the late nights spent by the light of a candle, squeezing out my soul, tossing and turning in bed as I attempted to compose my poems, which never exceeded a dozen lines. But I sensed Aliya’s earnestness, and I saw that she was right. I didn’t comment but rather changed the subject to other details of daily life, taking care this time to avoid slipping into embellishments and dreams — despite the unreal quality of our encounter and a feeling that my growing love for her was exactly like a constantly expanding dream.
We agreed to meet daily in this place, which we called our nest. I stood up, extending my hand to help her rise. Her palm was soft like a new pillow. I felt that her touch had a flavor too because it left a sweet trace in my soul unlike any of the other hands I had shaken throughout my life.
I walked with her until we reached her horse. I helped her untie its rope, then accompanied her until she left the thicket in the direction of the shore. She brought the horse to a trot with a quick kick and off she went with a wave to me. I stayed where I was, watching her depart until she went out of sight, her hair flying behind her like the wings of a happy bird. Then I went back to the spot where we had sat together. I lay on my back and recalled the details: her breath, her voice, the touch of her hand, how her eyes closed, and what she had said. The delicious coolness of the sand seeped into my body as I stared up at a pair of pigeons sitting on the intertwined branches with the sky behind them.
When the nearby sun went behind the even closer mountain, twilight pervaded the place. I got up and tidied our nest, smoothing out the sand, breaking the branches that extended into it, arranging the stones around the circular edge. Then I returned home.
I didn’t tell Istabraq anything. I was still sobered by what Aliya had said about the lies of my poems. That night, I kept waiting for an opportunity to ask Grandfather about it. I hesitated quite a while, fearing that he’d get angry or rebuke me. It took me a long time to think of the appropriate words to pose the question.
Since I had noticed that his speech never stumbled when reciting poetry, I said, “Grandfather, have you memorized all the poems of Antara?”
“I have memorized many by him and by others,” he replied, “but I don’t know if I’ve memorized all his poetry or not.”
Then, knowing that Grandfather hated lying and considered it “a scourge worse even than murder because it is the first step on the path of every sin,” I asked, “But don’t you think that the poems of these knights have many exaggerations? Or even that they come to the point of lying sometimes?”
I expected his reaction would be violent or that he would be silent for a while in thought, as happened with him whenever someone asked him about matters related to Islamic law. But he answered immediately with one sentence: “The sweetest poetry is the most fabulous.”
Then he resumed the story he had been narrating that night, leaving me stunned by the force of this second surprise, which was no less than the one caused by Aliya’s words.
I wasn’t able to comprehend Grandfather’s expression very well at the time, but I resolved the matter by abandoning the composition of poetry for good in order to be free of the contradiction that it led me into. And why should I write it if Aliya didn’t expect that from me? I read less poetry after that too, and the poetry that I did read from time to time, I began to regard in the light of what both Aliya and Grandfather had said.
I only resumed writing poetry four years ago, here, during moments when a deadly longing for Aliya became unbearable. I wrote a few disconnected fragments. I didn’t publish any of them, and I’m not planning to do so now. My childhood dream of becoming a significant poet, or even a professional writer, had dissolved. The three short stories I published in the Iraqi opposition papers in London were only memories of my army days that I composed for myself in order to put them in context or to be done with them. Or else they were a way to use my free time here in an attempt to understand myself more fully.
We began to meet daily in our nest, which became a little wider, cleaner, neater, and more cozy. The rendezvous was usually during the hour of the midday siesta when our families were sleeping. The better we got to know each other, the deeper we fell in love. I brought Aliya my notebook, in which I had taped pictures of actors and actresses. There were also photos of dream-like scenes where I would talk about bringing her. These were pictures in advertisements which I clipped from the German magazines that my father brought, such as a white, wooden house, surrounded by trees and a garden with colorful flowers, sitting on a lake shore with water of the deepest blue. Behind it was a mountain, whose peaks were white domes of snow touching the other white of the clouds.
But Aliya was less affected than I was by dreams. I learned from her to be satisfied and content. I learned a sense of realism and how to find pleasure in working with the simple but real things around us. From her I also learned self-composure and confidence in the present moment.
In my notebook there were other pictures of women with green eyes and blond hair, for whom I would invent names and say that they were international actresses. I pretended to have a wide knowledge of the world’s celebrities despite never in my life having set foot in a movie theater up to that point.
Because we could think only of each other and would hurry to our rendezvous, we would get up from the family table before eating our fill. I would take a handful of dates with me, wrapping them up in a piece of paper that I would push into my pocket. Aliya was like me, Grandfather, and the majority of the Mutlaq clan: she loved dates. The first time, when the handful of dates was gone, we kept our sticky hands raised in the air, delaying our descent to the shore. I don’t know how, but I got hold of her hand and began sucking her fingers. She liked the idea and grabbed my fingers in turn to suck on them. At first, she laughed. Then we gave in to a delicious daze of obscure shudders which drew our lips together without our hands slipping away from each other’s fingers.