“I’m not sure anything will help,” I told her.
“Maybe not creepy men from the street,” she said.
“Maybe not anyone,” I said. “Maybe I’m not cut out for dating. Especially when I’m just biding my time until I can go back home. Return to my mom.”
“If you’re not happy here…”
“No, no. I am,” I murmured, realizing I’d misspoken. “I’m able to send money to my mother. I’m willing to do anything for that. Seriously. This is what I want.”
“It doesn’t sound like any kind of life,” Rita murmured. She snapped the light off in the classroom, casting shadows across our faces. Somewhere down the hall, we heard another teacher sharpening pencil after pencil. I could picture the shavings, filtering off to the carpet below.
“It’s just what I have to do right now,” I said, mostly to myself. “It’s just what I have to do.”
The walk back to my apartment that night felt long. My legs and back were aching with fatigue as I dropped my shoulders forward and paced across the sidewalk. I kept my eyes from the passersby, not wanting to see any opinions of me etched into their expressions. Not that I was often seen. Not that I was often acknowledged.
In almost every sense, I was an invisible woman, living an invisible life in the middle of a desert. On the days I was allowed to embark out by myself, darting toward the sea, I felt the ocean winds blast across my face and inhaled the salty air. On those days, I remembered who I was, or who I had been.
And then, I returned to the nothingness of my little life. The life I led, trying to sustain my mother’s. Trying to keep her with us for as long as I could.
Chapter 4
Rami
“How did it go last night?” Alim asked me. We were perched at a cafe, our cappuccinos cooling off in front of us. The foam had strung along Alim’s mustache, making him look like a teenager sipping coffee for the first time.
“She’s a guarded one, that American,” I said, considering the woman I’d met at the entrance of the school. She’d followed me out onto the sidewalk, interested, yet filled with secrets. “I think I would have gotten somewhere with her if she hadn’t been called back into the school.”
“Ah, that’s a tragedy,” Alim said, snickering slightly.
“Don’t think I’m going to give up on her,” I told him. “Seriously. I think I’ve got her on a line. It’s just going to be a slow fishing expedition.”
“Not exactly hanging on your every word, like most women in Al-Jarra? That’s shocking,” Alim said, his eyes glittering. “It’s almost as if my theory is already proving itself.”
“I don’t think this woman would have followed me even if I’d been Prince Charming himself. Like I said, she wasn’t having any of my nonsense.”
“I told you. American women can smell it from three miles away. They proved it on one of those nature channels.”
“I forgot you got really into those nature channels that year you didn’t get any dates,” I told him, snickering.
“Ha-ha,” he pretended to laugh.
“It’s true. But all women can smell it from at least two miles away.” The barista danced forward with her own opinion, her eyes sparkling. “Including women in Al-Jarra. They just might be a little enticed by all that money flowing from your robes.”
“Finally, someone on my side!” Alim said, smacking his hands together. “I’ve been waiting for this moment.”
“It isn’t just my charm, then?” I asked, flashing a perfect, cocky smile. I winked at the barista, grinning as she blushed. “Ah. That’s what I thought.”
“You’re going to need more than that,” the barista said, twirling back. “A few more tricks up your sleeve, as the Americans say.”
After finishing our coffee, Alim and I wandered down the road, killing time after lunch. Alim told me about the screenplay he was writing—an action flick that would almost certainly never be picked up. He considered himself the “artistic” one of our friendship, and forever tried to persuade me that that was indeed the case. How hard he worked. The colorful language he could use, when he tried.