manipulating him so that he surrenders completely to them and to what they are doing to his body?
Over here, this way! Bilal repeated, every time he turned back to see whether I was still close behind him. When we reached especially congested spots he even put his hand out to me as though he thought I might need to hold it.
We’re here—there’s the car, right over there, he said, his gaze following his pointing finger. I saw the car. The two days since I had left the hospital had left it even dirtier. And then there was that splotch, which for an instant seemed to shimmer as though it were coming alive.
I’ll wash it off, I’ll get rid of it there, once we’re at our house, he said to me. He sensed my repugnance and so he took the key from me and made me wait until he had opened my car door.
*
In that filth-covered car, through its open window came bursts of air that invigorated me and made me feel a bit stronger. The breeze even brought the surgeon’s words back to me now sounding reasonable and true rather than evasive and suspect. It wasn’t death that awaited me, it was loss: no longer being whole. Ever since the moment I had been told of my illness, my head had closed the latch, trying to block out any and every thought of it. But these cool gusts of air somehow opened up a passageway. I even found myself, following this powerful little upsurge of wellbeing or at least reassurance, drumming my fingers against the wheel as though I was deliberately, and audibly, tapping out a tune that made me happy. At the sound, Bilal turned.
To your house or ours? I asked him.
Ours, he said. You can have lunch and relax a bit there.
What will your mother feed us?
Something that tastes really good. On the days when she doesn’t go to work she cooks really nice meals.
I was imagining her silhouette, that strong firm form standing at the kitchen sink washing greens. In another scene in my mind she was taking a cooking pot down from the shelf overhead and then she turned to pick up something she had set down on the table behind her, her form always giving off a sense of energy and strength.
Her work colleagues won’t have shown up?
She didn’t say anything to me about it. She would have told me if they were coming.
I went back to drubbing the wheel with my finger, and he gave me another sidelong glance.
Yes, ours—we’ll have lunch at home, he said, going along with my newfound serenity, clearly relieved and even a bit lighthearted. To show that I was playing along with him too, I said, But we don’t know yet what your mother has made.
In my head I went back to imagining her, there in her kitchen. Now she was finishing up what I had already watched her doing in my mind, shaking her hands a few times to get rid of the drops of water clinging to them and then looking around the kitchen again as if she were searching for something and had simply forgotten where she had put it.
I sensed that Bilal was pushing me closer to her, although I didn’t know exactly how, or what this meant. I mean, that kind of closeness that would go beyond where we were now, me and her. We who are both close to him, I thought, but are as far apart as can be when it comes to any communication between the two of us. Now and then I wondered about how I might help him along in this mission of his, if indeed that was what it was. For instance, I could ask him about his mother’s colleagues at work and whether they were all women. Or I might say to him, without there being any particular occasion for the remark, You know, your mother might not be in the most sociable mood right now.
But what I said right then was: What will your mother say when she sees the car looking so filthy!
It doesn’t matter, she saw it in the morning when you came to pick me up.
She was in the house?
We were waiting for you. She was waiting, and so was I. A couple of times she left me standing at the window while she went into another room to do something or other, but then she came back and stood there with me.
Bilal said all of this as though he were divulging a secret. He looked at me to see what impact his words might have.
I didn’t have any wish to push him further, by objecting, for example, that she was just trying to hurry his departure so that she could go off to work. He would answer me by saying, No, that wasn’t why she was standing at the window. Anyway, it was more than enough for me to go on picturing her standing there. In itself this revealed a different side of her. Or at least it began to dislodge that sense of neutrality, or of distance, which ever since my brother’s death had kept us performing the same ritual over and over every time I visited her at home. Welcome to the Sayyid, she always said to me as soon as she opened the door. And then, Come in, Sayyid. She would wave her hand toward my accustomed seat. Next there would come the question, Coffee? And then I would be stealing the usual glances at her figure as she went out of the room to make the coffee. After this there would again be that very same distance, the remoteness that seemed to define these moments before she would say, her hand firm around the rolled-up bills inside the piece of paper that was there to conceal what was inside, Sharaft, Sayyid. You have honored us with your presence.
What do you think about washing the car at the station? It seemed to me that arriving there in a clean car—a glistening car—would make some kind of difference.
As you like, he said, though the look on his face made it clear he was in a hurry to get home.
Just a quarter of an hour, that’s all it will take, I said, not ready to give in to his preference. I really did not want to arrive at her door with any detail awry in the picture I imagined.
This time, I thought. This time, surely, I could step just over that line I had never even dared to approach. Those strong, resolute footfalls of hers, always so steady and firm whether I was coming into the house or going out, had never left me even a tiny margin of space for maneuver, a pause or a hesitation that would allow me to swerve even slightly from the modest route I was accustomed to following and the phrases I invariably said. Her fulsome welcome didn’t leave me any room to insert a single word that might get her to turn to me in surprise, or at least with a slight look of puzzlement in her eyes, in search of some further explanation. Some word that might get her to wonder, after I had gone, about why I had said that particular thing and what I had meant by it.
This time my illness would take on the mission of diluting that implacable force that I had never seen desert her. It seemed to have already started happening, according to Bilal, who was intent on making me think he was giving me a clear signal when he had described, earlier in our conversation, how she had stood at the window waiting for me to arrive. I broke the silence.
Does she know what I have?
Who?
Your mother. Did you talk to her about me?
My words came as a surprise to him. He had thought that what we knew about that—what was between us, just me and him—wouldn’t invade our conversation.
She knows.
He knew I would not want to embarrass him further by asking how she had learned of it. He waited a few seconds before getting up from where he was sitting across from me. I’ll go and see if they’ve gotten the spot off the windshield, he said, walking out to the carwash that was located somewhere behind where I sat. He would linger there, I knew, watching them as they trained water on it, the jet of liquid I could hear gushing out, thick and fast, splashing onto the metal car body. He would stay out there and I would remain in here, sitting on this chair and to all appearances just waiting for him to come back.
It’s like new! he said as he strode toward me.
You mean they’ve gotten all the way down to its original color? I asked. I wanted to tease him, to let him know we were back to where we’d been before I asked my question about whether his mother knew how sick I was.
It’s like new, he just said. But hearing him say this for the second time got me to twist around and look at it.
It