Arriving at the rooftop, where he knew Kathmiya would be folding clean sheets, Shafiq was surprised to find her looking disheveled. Her bouncy hair was matted, her large eyes were half closed, and distress held her smile down. “Is it your husband?” he asked.
Kathmiya glared. Shafiq, though, smiled, if only secretly. Something was definitely wrong—with the engagement.
“I guess you just seem…distracted?”
“Can we focus on the writing?” she asked, sharp as the pencil he’d given her.
Shafiq was ready with a lesson. “What did I tell you about alef?”
“Easy,” she said. “A stick going up. Like the number one. I know that already.”
“Okay, but what if alef is at the end of a word?”
Kathmiya thought. It definitely looked as though she was puzzling about more than her letters. Those great eyes became heavy again, and she took in a sharp breath. When she noticed him watching her, she shot out, “Just show me, okay?”
“When you end a word in alef, curve it around like a flag,” he said. “And then sing the national anthem,” he joked.
She didn’t laugh.
Shafiq took a deep breath and scratched an alef on the lined paper he’d given her. By now it was filled with her exercises. The penmanship was deliberate, but somehow it still looked different from real writing, as though the scattered letters would never connect.
She copied his alef. Over and over.
Maybe the guy called it off. But what man in his right mind would not want to marry her? Maybe she was considered too poor. But her beauty is worth more than all the wealth in the Baghdad Central Bank. Maybe I’ll be lucky, but even if it ends for them, there is no beginning for us.
“That’s it,” he said. “You’ve totally got it.”
But she wasn’t encouraged. “How long until I get the whole thing—the whole language?”
Shafiq shrugged. “You’re so smart. Really soon.”
Kathmiya rolled this information around like a pearl, as though she were checking to see if it was real. Maybe she decided it was, or maybe she was just testing him, but finally she asked, “Can I show you something?”
This is it, he thought dramatically. She’s either going to tell me good-bye or tell me she’s free.
They climbed down from the roof and walked to the small maid’s-quarters end of the hallway. Shafiq held his breath, filled with a monumental sense of possibility.
“Look,” she said.
As soon as she brought out the picture book, he nearly laughed at his own delusion. This wasn’t a touching farewell or an announcement pregnant with possibility; this was an embarrassing little trinket.
At least to him it was. But when he took it from her, she snapped “Careful!” and he could tell that silly though it might be, she thought this book was something special.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to start teaching you English,” he joked.
Just a tossed-off comment, but it drew Kathmiya up, opened her eyes wide. “You mean you can read this?”
“Hey, I’m not the best, but if you let me open it—”
She wouldn’t. Kathmiya turned the pages while Shafiq scanned the words. “It’s about this girl. She’s called Sally.”
Kathmiya looked disappointed, who knew why. Shafiq tried to mine some gem from the text that might excite her. He settled on, “Sally is feeding these animals at her uncle’s farm.”
Suddenly Kathmiya was brooding again.
“Hey, don’t worry, it’s just a little story,” he said. “I mean, I know you really like this book, but—”
“It’s not the book,” she fumed. “It’s the uncle.”
“Yours?” Shafiq tried to picture her family.
“He was supposed to make a match for me but now that’s not going to happen.”
Finally, some news.
Shafiq had two choices, leave her hurting to keep his nonexistent chances open, or try to help. “What about a matchmaker?”
“Well, yes!” Kathmiya brightened. “I can write an alef. I know practically all my letters, ten times more than anyone else back home. So what is going to stop me from going to a matchmaker?”
Shafiq had just shown her the door, and she was ready to walk out.