But Amal—recalling his breath in her ear, the touch of his hand—wasn’t so sure she wanted to forget it. She needed to think it over some more.
She considered going to the campus Shia mosque for advice, but the place was a POG hangout and thus not exactly welcoming. Instead, she talked to her roommates.
Jemila was dismissive: “Don’t be ridiculous, Amal! If you want to sleep with him, just sleep with him.” At first Amal thought this was just Jemila being modern, but then she realized there was more to it than that. Jemila was Sunni, and Sunnis believed that temporary marriage was forbidden. Of course Sunnis like all Muslims also believed that sex outside of marriage was forbidden, but Jemila apparently made a distinction between sins she liked and sins she found distasteful. “I mean really, it’s kind of gross if you think about it. Like being an actual prostitute.”
“What are you saying, Jemila?”
“Well . . .” Jemila grew defensive, recognizing she was on shaky ground. “It’s just, to make a formal bargain . . . It’s like you’re renting yourself out . . .”
Amal stared pointedly at the gold bracelet on Jemila’s wrist. “So says the girl who expects gifts from all her boyfriends.”
“Those are gifts, not contractual obligations!”
Iman wasn’t surprised by Jemila’s attitude towards temporary marriage. What surprised her was that Anwar didn’t share it. “Isn’t he a Sunni, too?”
“He’s Sunni, but his grandmother is Shia.”
“My grandmother is a Jew,” Iman said. “But you don’t see me celebrating Yom Kippur.”
“Anwar knows I’m Shia,” Amal said. “And he respects me, so—” She stopped, because Iman was laughing. “Fine. You think he just wants to have sex with me, is that it?”
“If he were Shia, I would definitely think that. And I still think it’s the most likely explanation, but there’s a difference: A Shia boy who proposes temporary marriage to get sex may honestly believe he’s following God’s law. A Sunni boy knows he’s being cynical.”
“I’m glad you think so highly of Anwar.”
“It’s not the only possible explanation. I can think of other reasons why a Sunni might propose temporary marriage, but they’re all worse.”
“What other reasons?”
“He might be an idiot,” Iman said. “Or mentally ill.”
“Oh, wonderful. Anything else?”
“The worst reason of alclass="underline" He might be in love with you. Maybe what he’s really after is a permanent marriage, but he’s afraid you’re not ready, so this is his way of easing up to it.”
“You call that the worst reason?” Amal said. “How could Anwar loving me be a bad thing?”
“Because you don’t love him,” said Iman. “I’ve listened to you talk about him, Amal. You like Anwar. You enjoy his company and the attention he pays you. He distracts you from worrying about your family. But you don’t love him, and I don’t think a temporary marriage—or an affair—is going to change that.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” Amal said. “I mean, it’s not as if I were going to say yes to Anwar’s proposal.”
“You haven’t told him no yet, though.”
“No, but I’m going to.” And then, as if to demonstrate that there was an idiot here, but it wasn’t Anwar, she added: “Don’t worry, Iman. I know what I’m doing.”
The number on Umm Dabir’s message slip had a Baghdad area code rather than the Riyadh code Amal would have expected, and as she dialed she entertained the notion that this really was just a prank of some sort. But the voice that answered said “Al Rasheed Hotel,” and when she asked to speak to Abu Salim bin Amjad she was put straight through. The next voice she heard was Anwar’s.
He told her he was in town for a conference. He told her he needed to see her. He wouldn’t tell her why, but he also wouldn’t take no for an answer, and any impulse Amal might have had to hang up on him was checked by the thought that he’d just call Farouk’s office again, or perhaps show up in person.
She named a restaurant a few blocks from the hotel and agreed to meet him that evening at half past six. She arrived early, and like a Bureau agent setting up a sting, parked her car across the street, facing the direction of his most likely approach.
She’d run his name on the office computer. Sure enough he was a federal employee, though not with the State Department as he’d always planned—his posting was in Commerce, in the Patent and Trademark Office. His wife, Nasrin, was Persian, the fourth daughter of a former trade delegate. They had two daughters of their own . . . and one son.
Abu Salim. Salim’s dad. Of course it was the most natural thing in the world for a father to take the name of his firstborn son. But when the son is the product of a marriage that should never have happened and a woman who rejected you . . . Who does that? What does it mean? What do you want from me, Anwar?
Amal had been in the fifth month of her sigheh when Aunt Nida found out. Amal never learned who tipped Nida off, though she suspected Iman, in an act of kindness, had made a phone call.
That day she’d gone to the seawall to walk and think about drowning herself. Even in her worst despair, suicide wasn’t really in Amal, but another idea—of fleeing across the sea to some country where no one knew her—appealed more strongly, and if she’d come upon an unguarded boat she might have taken it.
Instead she went back to the dorm. A girl sitting in the lobby stared at her as she came in, and Amal walked by swiftly, drawing her abaya around her. To conceal her weight gain she’d been dressing more and more conservatively, but not even a burqa would hide her belly-bump much longer. Already there were whispers.
Anwar wanted to do more than whisper. “Let’s declare our marriage openly and move in together,” he said. “We’re in love, what’s the problem?” The problem? The problem was a future in which Amal ended up living in Riyadh, not as an ABI agent but as a suburban housewife. A future in which instead of helping her father chase Baath out of Iraq, she went shopping at the Hayat Mall. Oh, and they weren’t in love. Anwar was insane, and Amal was stupid.
She opened the door to her room and Aunt Nida was inside, sitting on her bed and smoking a cigarette. Amal stopped short, in panic trying to come up with some lie to tell, but it was pointless; she could see on Aunt Nida’s face that Nida already knew everything.
“Amal,” she said. “I’m very disappointed in you.” This mild rebuke, the only one Nida would offer, struck Amal like a blow to the head. She didn’t pass out, not exactly, but the terror she’d just barely been holding in check rose up and cloaked the world in a haze.
When the haze lifted, Amal was sitting down and Nida was interrogating her.
“How many months?”
“One more,” Amal said numbly. “The sigheh ends in thirty-four days.”
“Not the marriage. The pregnancy.”
“Oh.” Amal reddened. “I don’t know. It’s been three or four months I guess.”
“Three, or four?”
“I don’t . . . Four. I think four.”
“Ah.” Tradition held that God gave a fetus its soul a hundred and twenty days after conception. In civil terms, this translated into abortion being legal during the first four months of pregnancy and expensive thereafter. “Does the boy know?”
“Anwar? Yes, he knows.” She almost laughed. “He thinks it’s great news.”
“And you?” said Aunt Nida. “Do you want to stay with this boy, Amal? Raise a family with him?”
“No.” No hesitation. “I want—” I want the last five months back. I want the future I had before I did this stupid, stupid thing. I wish, I wish. “No,” she repeated.
“All right then,” Nida said.