Omar saw Youssef first. He calmly left the door he held open for his boss, went around to his side of the car, and climbed in. Youssef walked up, standing now face-to-face with his father. “Youssef! What are you doing here?” Nabil asked. He sounded genuinely surprised.
“I came to see you.”
Nabil’s gaze shifted. “I’m sorry about what happened. My wife and my daughter found out … it’s complicated.”
“Weren’t you going to tell them? Why would it be complicated?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Nabil said wearily. Then he reached out and touched Youssef’s arm. It amazed Youssef how much and how often both of his parents underestimated his capacity to understand. He did understand. A small part of him had known, all along, that his dream of a real-life father was impossible, but he had wanted to turn the impossibility into a possibility. Why could they not understand that?
“So this is it?” Youssef asked his father. “You don’t want to see me anymore?” There was a touch of threat in his tone; he did not know from where it came.
“No, that’s not it. I do want to see you. But right now is not the best time.” He looked up at the building, as if afraid of being caught. “I am still trying to see if we can reach a compromise. Please be patient.”
Promises, again. Youssef was ready for them, though, the way a traveler in the desert cannot discount assurances of an oasis up ahead; it was better than continuing forth without hope of relief. “Where have you been this whole time?” he asked, his voice softening.
“I was in Los Angeles until mid-June, and then in Spain, and now I have so much work to catch up on, I haven’t been able to handle this. But I will.” He let his hand rest on Youssef’s shoulder once again. “Okay?” He got into the car, closing the door. Youssef jammed his fists into his trouser pockets and stood aside, watching the car ease its way out of the parking lot.
For the first time, Youssef could see why Nabil Amrani never seemed to get emotional when they watched sad movies together in the apartment, or why he never seemed to get angry when he heard news of the war on the radio. The world was the way it was; Nabil Amrani took it as it came and did not think about anything else besides his own existence. Someday, Youssef knew, his father would come to see that life could not be lived like this, that the wider universe had a way of intruding upon people’s private world.
TWO WEEKS WENT BY, but there was no word from Nabil Amrani. No matter how often Youssef played images of a future with his father in his mind, he could not bring himself to believe in them anymore. He called his father’s mobile phone repeatedly, but his father never picked up. He tried him at the office, but the secretary said he could not come to the phone, and to please stop calling. He even went to the office, but the security guards would not let him go upstairs.
He came to understand that his father had made a choice. Amal was his real child; Youssef was the bastard. He belonged here with all the other young men no one talked about, except every few years when there was a natural catastrophe, a terrorist attack, or a legislative election. He had grown up in Hay An Najat, away from the eyes of the world, and now he became convinced that it would be his grave, too.
12. A PERFECT CIRCLE
AT FIRST, HIS MOTHER did not ask Youssef why he spent most of his days in bed, staring at the ceiling, but once it became clear his father would not call, the questions began. “Why don’t you shave?” she asked. She stripped her bed of sheets and blankets and took them outside to hang in the sun.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, rubbing his beard.
She watered her potted flowers, started the kettle, turned on the radio. When the tea was ready, she reappeared at the door of the bedroom. “Why don’t you come eat your breakfast in the yard?”
The delicious smell of mint and sugar drifted in with her. Still, he replied, “It’s too hot out there, a-mmi.”
She ate alone without complaint and later brought him a glass of tea and a plateful of fritters. “Why don’t you invite Amin to come over?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t feel like seeing anyone.”
As she was getting ready for work the next day, she told him she would no longer serve meals in the bedroom. “If you want to eat, you will have to get out of bed.” He looked at her in despair. Could she not see that he was unwell? He turned to his side and faced the wall, picking at the paint with his fingernail until he heard her leave. When she came home that night, she did as she had promised. It was the same the next day, and the day after that, until hunger drove him to the yard, where he made himself a pot of tea on the Butagaz and ate a piece of bread from the basket under the awning.
In the morning, she shook him awake. “Here,” she said, handing him a fifty-dirham bill. “I need you to get some sugar and some oil today.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to go out.”
“I don’t want to go to work, either, but here I am,” she said, putting a blue jellaba over her uniform and zipping it up. From the armoire, she fetched her purse and checked for her keys.
“People will ask me questions. They’ll want to know what happened.”
“Then tell them.” She snapped her purse shut.
“I can’t.”
“Then don’t tell them. Look, you’re not going to stay locked up in here the rest of your life.”
Why not? Youssef thought. Here, he was safe.
“I have two shifts to do today,” she continued, “because Jamila is sick and can’t come to work. So I won’t be back till after nine o’clock. Get me one liter of oil and half a kilo of sugar.”
“Please, a-mmi,” he pleaded.
She ignored him, slipped her shoes on, and left. Wrapping himself up in his blanket, he went to the yard, where he turned on the TV. Though he watched the show, his mind was elsewhere. The errand seemed insurmountable, but the thought occurred to him suddenly that it might be possible to do it without being seen. After all, it was only seven thirty in the morning.
He cast the blanket aside and hurriedly put on his shoes. The street was quiet as he walked toward Moha’s hanout, on the other side of the hill. Before Youssef had moved out of the neighborhood, he had rarely gone to Moha’s, so when he appeared in the store today, no one asked him where he had been. He paid for the sugar and the oil, picked up the plastic bag, and left. He was already congratulating himself on having gone and come back unseen, when, turning a corner, he glimpsed Amin with two street urchins. His heart sank.
“Bellati!” Amin yelled. “A-Youssef, wait!”
Youssef walked faster, keeping his eyes locked on the ground.
Amin and his friends crossed the street. “Can’t you hear me calling?”
“Ah, Amin, my brother,” Youssef said, trying to do his best impression of his old self. “Forgive me, I wasn’t paying attention.” Amin wore a jean jacket streaked with dirt around the collar and sleeves. His eyes had that vacant stare they sometimes had when he smoked hashish. Youssef did not recognize the two teenagers standing by his side; maybe they were fresh additions to Hay An Najat from the countryside.
“What are you, deaf?” Amin said, looking at his two friends, who laughed as though he had just told the best joke in the world. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the plastic bag.
“This? Just some sugar and oil.”
“You’re running errands for your mother,” Amin said, “like a good little boy.” And he laughed again.
Youssef shrugged and walked away. Amin followed. “Where have you been?”