Amreekiya Read online

She got right up in his face—her nose was maybe an inch from his—and laughed. “Man? You’re just a scrawny little boy that’s insecure ’cause your penis got chopped off in a botched circumcision.”

  His face scrunched up into an angry, hideous frown, and he stormed off as if Sana had uncovered the truth.

  She rolled her eyes and muttered some insult I couldn’t decipher. “Seriously, I can’t believe these stupid guys. They walk around like they own the place!”

  Everyone started heading back to class, and as soon as Motabel saw us come in the classroom, he picked up one of the desks and yelled obscenities at us in two languages: sharmootas, bitches, whores, cocksuckers. My blood pumped through my veins in violent spurts, and I clenched my fists. The teacher kept telling Motabel: “Oskoot! Be quiet and sit back down! Do not say bad words in class!”

  But he wouldn’t. He stood with the desk over his head and rage in his eyes. I was appalled. Amu and Amtu kicked me around emotionally and physically, insulting my mother for being a sharmoota and getting herself knocked up without a husband, and blaming me for basically anything that went wrong in the house because I was such a burden on them, but I wasn’t about to let someone else get in on the fun and call me a whore. I barely even talked to guys and didn’t want anything to do with them. Not the ones here, not the ones at regular school. I knew Motabel was a coward, and he’d eventually back down before he actually did anything to us. He deserved to be punished for threatening us with the desk and calling Sana ugly, though. I was sure Brother Radwan wouldn’t deliver on that the way I wanted him to. What could he do? Suspend him? Kick him out? That seemed more like a reward to me, so I took matters into my own hands. I charged and crouched and pulled down on Motabel’s balls, making sure to squeeze my fingers as hard as I could for maximum pressure. He dropped the desk on my back and cried out. The teacher ran toward us, but Sana was quicker and got to Motabel in time to slap him around before she tackled him and even pulled his hair. Motabel’s scream was so high-pitched it hurt my ears a little. Brother Radwan tried to get Sana off him, but it took a couple of minutes before he stopped the beating. I noticed everyone else staring with their eyes wide, mouths gaping, while I rubbed the middle of my back.

  When Sana calmed down, Brother Radwan managed to force her out of the class. Motabel tried to come back and get his revenge on me, but I got up and kicked him in the balls again before he’d even gotten all the way up. Brother Radwan was back in by then and tried to shove me outside, but I resisted, pushing his hands away from me. Brother Radwan only buckled—he didn’t quite fall—but it was enough to excite Rasheed and the other students. “Aw, sweet, Isra!”

  Once he regained his composure, Brother Radwan grabbed Motabel and threw him out of the classroom. Everyone was still quiet when he left, except for Rasheed. “My parents are gonna kill you!” he kept telling me, like I didn’t already know.

  On his trip back, Brother Radwan took Rasheed and me to the same office he took Sana to, the one where Amu and Amtu had signed us up to attend this hellhole. Motabel had been taken somewhere else. Rasheed sat down next to me and whined almost the whole time. “What’d I do? Why am I in trouble?” But once he got over the indignity of being sent here with me, he took the time, between bursts of laughter, to tell Sana what I did to Brother Radwan while she was gone.

  She gaped like the kids in class. “God, Isra, you’re majnoona to the core.”

  I was expelled. Brother Radwan wanted Rasheed reprimanded in some way for the things he said, but Amu and Amtu were too embarrassed to ever show their faces there again, so he and Hanan were taken out with me. It also made Sana and me minor celebrities among the Muslim kids in the entire county, or at least the ones who went to the mosque in town, where Sana told me it was talked about nonstop for at least a month and brought up frequently after that. She enjoyed the fame and laughed about it all the time when I went to her house in the summer to get away from Amtu Samia. Her parents weren’t too pissed at her because she hadn’t grabbed anyone’s balls or gone so far as to trip a teacher. “See, I got so mad I beat him like this!” she would say and reenact the beating with one of the dolls she had packed away in her closet. But I could tell she was a little peeved by the fact that people talked more about her friend, raised by an Amreekiya mother until she was eight, who had the nerve to grab a boy’s genitals right in front of a class and beat up a teacher.

  Amu Nasser wasn’t so amused by my behavior. I expected some ear-pulling, verbal abuse for weeks, maybe even a beating, a rarity for Amu because that would take too much energy, but I had never done anything this bad before. He did yell at me the whole way home, telling me the usual: I was ungrateful, I had been rescued from a kafir life to live as a good Muslim girl, and what did I do? I made it difficult for him at every turn. He had to spend more time cleaning up the messes I made than he did for both his own children. He claimed that now he and his wife were shamed in front of nearly the whole Muslim community here. All because of me.

  He added a new twist to the attack, right at the end. “Your grandmother wants to see you be a good girl, and this is what you do for her? Wallah she would weep for days if she heard this. I cannot bear to look at you myself. There is not a girl more selfish in the entire world.”

  I figured if my grandmother could forgive my father for all he’d done—leaving his family behind without a word in nearly a decade and abandoning his own child—she’d be a hypocrite to judge me so harshly for merely defending myself and what I believed. I should be praised for it, but no one else seemed to feel the same way.

  If anything, Amu Nasser was disappointed in me, not just angry like the other times, because he didn’t speak to me for more than a month. I was relieved but also pissed that the worst thing I ever did brought me the least punishment. All I got was Amtu Samia’s constant snide remarks about what a beast I was becoming, that I’d never find a husband with the temper I had and would end up spending my days alone. Then she’d gossip to her friends, especially Imm Samir, who said repeatedly that a man would take an obedient wife over a beautiful one, so my light skin wasn’t going to save me from a life of loneliness.

  Imm Samir would know about loneliness. She was about a thousand years old, and her husband had been dead for a while, but she refused to move in with any of her children’s families like widowed women usually did. She went on living in her house by herself and did whatever she wanted, while Amtu Samia acted like she didn’t know what Amu Nasser was doing when he stayed late at work or went to the office on the weekends.

  What a sad, husbandless life I was doomed to lead.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke up to find my calves splayed across Yusef’s thighs and Yusef eating a bowl of cereal that he balanced with his chest and other hand. The sun glaring through the thin patio curtain made the walls look more starkly white, making me squint once my eyes were all the way open. I sat up and pulled the straps of my slip up on my shoulders, and he startled, almost tipping the cereal onto me. His lips were still parted when he looked over at me, set the bowl down, and rubbed my calves. “You looked so tired, I wasn’t gonna wake you up.”

  I was surprised that I had slept while he put my legs up and ate right beside me, but it was so cool and comfortable now after the long hot night. It took a minute to realize how I looked: dried drool on the corner of my chin and frizzy hair. I resisted the impulse to bolt and clean myself up, but I tried to subtly rub the drool residue from my face as I leaned in closer to the couch.

  Most of my stuff was still in two suitcases and one raggedy duffel bag I’d had since childhood. Yusef had bought a small bureau for me, and he left some hangers free and half of the bottom shelf for my books.

  It had been fourteen years since I moved from one place to another, and I couldn’t decide how to organize my things. Dressy tops in one drawer and casual ones in another? I hung up my few dresses, including my wedding dress and the traditional Palestinian embroidered one Imm Yusef gave me, in the closet. Yusef had
also brought me a pale blue cotton dress, fitted and sleeveless, which told me that he had picked it out without his mother. I put it on once everything was unpacked, and he grinned when I met him out in the living room. “Maybe I should have saved that for the house,” he said. “You’ll get more attention than all the girls in bikinis.”

  I nudged his arm with my elbow, hoping that the pink on my cheeks wouldn’t be too visible. “You’re such a liar.”

  We arrived in Avila Beach in the late afternoon, and though the sun still seared down intensely, groups of people were spread out on the sand with their umbrellas, towels, and lawn chairs. I had only ever been to the beach a couple of times, all before my teens, so the thought of wearing a bathing suit, even a one-piece, was mortifying. I had packed some capri leggings and a baggy shirt, but I felt a little anxious about wearing even those as I looked at the shirtless men and bikini-clad women. I leaned on the wooden fence just above the beach and wondered what it would be like to have that much of my body exposed in public; it was hard enough to let Yusef see me naked last night, and I had agonized about it our whole engagement.

  But it was so nice to feel the cool breeze against my skin and to hear the waves as I stood against one of the railings.

  Yusef wrapped himself around my waist with his cheek against mine. I put my hands on top of his. “It’s so beautiful here,” I said. I turned and gave him a soft kiss; he pressed my body against his and laid his cheek against my hair.

  We checked into our hotel room, stacked the suitcase and bag in the corner, and browsed through the restaurant and bar brochures on the bed. I rested my head on his shoulder. “It’s a little early for dinner.”

  He leaned in hesitantly and stroked my hair. We kissed and undressed; he ran his tongue over my nipples, the light stubble on his chin tickling my breasts. I moaned softly and caressed his back. I turned him over and got on top of him, letting him see my dangling breasts and the squished layer of fat on my belly. I almost lost my nerve when he took my hand and kissed the fingertips, his eyelids heavy and his lips twisted into a half smile, but he pulled my hips forward and put himself inside me.

  Afterwards we cuddled for a little while, his breath coming in slow spurts against my hair, before he nodded off. He snored more quietly than last night, and the reverberations from his chest lulled me into a temporary stupor. Then something startled me, so I sat up. I was a little sore between my legs, but not nearly as much as last night. I checked for blood but felt only a sticky wetness.

  Yusef turned over. His arm hit the empty bed and he mumbled my name. “Come over here, albi,” he said as he pulled me down beside him again.

  “I love you so much.” I looked over as I stroked the arm that he laid over my belly, concentrating on the curve of his muscles at the top. He kissed the corner of my forehead and worked his way down to my cheek and then my lips. “I never thought that …” I felt my throat close up a little as I tried to finish my sentence. “I never thought that this would happen. That we would be together.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Why?”

  I didn’t tell him that I thought we might be too different to be able to create a life together, to agree on anything. “Oh, I don’t know. It seemed too good to be true.”

  He stared at me, searching for answers in my eyes. “It was hard when we were teenagers, and you were younger than me.”

  I snickered. “Three years makes such a difference.”

  “It did then. We were both so scared of each other.” He rubbed my shoulder. “Remember when I tried to kissed you?”

  I blushed even now. “I guess you weren’t that scared.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, my stomach was doing back flips all day. When you asked me to take you home that morning, I thought, this was the day.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course you did.”

  “And when I got a little taste I had more courage than ever.”

  We were too exhausted to get ready and go out to dinner, and besides, all the socializing during and before our wedding had burnt me out, so we picked up some food from a local seafood shack and ate in our hotel room.

  Yusef ate as ravenously as I did the day before, eating his entire steak meal and taking bites of my coleslaw and fries but steering clear of my shrimp and crab. “My mom was telling me that morning that we should go to Palestine on our honeymoon.” He sat back in the chair and crossed his hands over his full belly, his eyes half closed. “I said, ‘Mama, most women wouldn’t consider visiting refugee camps and going through checkpoints a romantic destination.’” He laughed. “Besides, she wanted to go, too, with my father at least. That would cost a fortune, especially after the wedding.”

  “Which part? Nablus?”

  “No, Hebron and Jenin, too. Also, we try to get into Jerusalem every time we visit so we can see al-Aqsa, but that didn’t work out for us when we went the last time a few years ago.” He started tapping his fingers on his belly. “They said there was something wrong with our passports, but they’re full of it.”

  “I was in Jerusalem for about a week.” That city unsettled me the most, especially when we visited the Dome of the Rock, seeing all those praying around us while I heard chants from the Jewish service beneath us. One of Amu Nasser’s sisters said I should feel a special bond with the mosque because the name Isra referred to the journey that the prophet Muhammad—himself an orphan—made before ascending to Heaven from the Dome, but I only felt confused by the prayers and some residual fear from having to get past the guards at the entrance. “But I spent most of the time in Ramallah, where most of my dad’s family lives.”

  He raised his eyebrows and parted his lips a little. “You’ve been to Palestine?”

  “It’s that surprising?”

  He shrugged. “I just don’t see your family as, uh, connected to the homeland.”

  I didn’t know what pissed me off more: that he said it or that he was right.

  “What, because none of us women wear hijab or read the Qur’an?” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Those are religious practices. Being Palestinian is an ethnicity.”

  He sighed. “Ah, Isreenie, it doesn’t bother me that you’re so Americanized. It’s like being with two women at the same time: an American and a Palestinian.”

  He laughed at his own analogy, oblivious to or unconcerned with the glare I was giving him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The summer I turned twelve, Amu finalized the plans for our family trip to Palestine, which he had been talking about for years. We’d go to Jerusalem, his hometown, and would visit some of Amtu’s relatives in Jordan and a few people Amu knew there, but he never mentioned anything about visiting those relatives who were closer to me, like Baba’s parents and his siblings, and his nieces and nephews. Almost all of them were still in Ramallah, in the interior of the West Bank. The Israelis had just set up a bunch of checkpoints going from Jerusalem to Ramallah, and Amu was afraid to face them. It was too dangerous. Not worth the risk.

  But the whole time we stayed at his sister’s house—which had been his parents’ house—everyone pestered him about letting my other relatives see me. My grandmother was old, and she wanted to see her only grandchild from her youngest son.

  Amtu Samia was opposed to the idea, too. She didn’t like having to stay in this decrepit house, but she refused to stay in a camp for any amount of time. They were overrun with thugs and religious fanatics and regularly attacked by Israeli soldiers; also, the Arabic graffiti that defaced nearly all the buildings were just hideous. Her family had a two-story house in Amman. Just because she was Palestinian didn’t mean that she would ever want to set foot in a refugee camp.

  So, with pressure coming from both sides, Amu struck a deal. The day before we were supposed to leave for Jordan, he would drive me to Ramallah, drop me off, and rejoin the others in Jerusalem on schedule, inshallah (in Palestine, he was much more religiously inclined). He would come back for me the day before we were all to fly out of Jordan.
r />   Everyone in the house, and some of the family that lived nearby, woke up early to see me off. Amtu Fareeda, Amu’s oldest sister, made a big breakfast to fortify us for the journey ahead, like we were going into battle. I thought of my sixth-grade teacher who asked us to write and read a paragraph to the class about what we would be doing over the summer. I wrote about the trip we would be taking to Falasteen—which I called Palestine in class, so everyone would be able to understand me. The teacher looked stunned; I expected it. It wasn’t the first time a teacher had gotten frightened at the mention of Palestine or Palestinians.

  Amu wasn’t exaggerating about the checkpoints. We were both American citizens, so it should have been easier for us to enter, but we looked Palestinian enough to be delayed for hours. The brief morning cool wore off thirty minutes into our nearly four-hour wait, and Amu and I rubbed our faces with our increasingly lukewarm water bottles. Amu also used the time to lecture me about how I should keep safe: avoid Israeli soldiers and settlers; if I happened to encounter them, be respectful; under no circumstances separate myself from my relatives.

  My mouth parched at the realization that Amu would be leaving me here permanently. I couldn’t believe I was blind to all the indications beforehand: Amu helping me carry my things to the car, just like when he picked me up from Baba’s apartment, and dropping me off by myself. How could he do this to me? Sure, Baba did it, and he had much more of an obligation to take care of me, but Amu was supposed to be the honorable one. If I was shot, raped, or attacked, I hoped Amu would hear about it and feel the sharp pangs of guilt—and Baba, too, wherever he was.

  The soldier who finally came to Amu’s window was young and pale and skinny, with red pimples dotting his face. He had a machine gun slung over his shoulder, resting close to his hip. He spoke the worst English I ever heard, making it seem like a losing battle with his tongue to form simple sentences. I was practically drowning in sweat, and the sun blinded me more as the day pushed closer to noon. “What? You want us to get out of the car to be searched?”