THE LIVING ROOM CLOUDS with tobacco while Amir’s father and his guests pass the snake-like tube around, each man taking a puff or two then relinquishing the tube to the next guy. Leaning against the kitchen doorway, Amir watches and listens to the men. His mother and brother are visiting his grandparents. He listens to his father speak and smiles at how his strong voice carries across the room, demanding respect and quiet from those around him. “We were coming home from the beach when it went off. No matter how many times I’ve felt a bomb, I can’t seem to get used to them. At first, I thought my family and I were going to be killed…” Amir’s father stops and calls out to his son. “Amir, come here.” With his shoulders sagging, he crosses the room and sits on the arm of the sofa, next to his father, who squeezes the back of his neck but lets go when the tube reaches his hands again. He takes a puff. After, he holds the tip to Amir’s mouth; he inhales a little too much until he finds himself coughing. The men laugh. His father pats his back. “Slowly, puff on it slowly, like the first time you kiss a girl. You do it gently, slowly.” The men laugh some more.
One man leans his elbows on his knees and asks, “Amir, have you kissed a girl yet?”
The boy’s shoulders tense and he doesn’t answer right away. “No," he finally mumbles.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“Old enough to kiss, I think. Find yourself a nice girl and kiss her. Slow and gentle. Like your Babba said.”
His father laughs then his face turns serious. “I heard on the news that twenty people were killed by the car bomb. I’m just thankful that my family wasn’t part of that number. It’s horrible what’s become of our home.”
“Do you really think we can still call it that?”
“No matter how divided and broken our country is, it’s still our home," Amir’s father asserts. Amir stares at his father’s face and sees the lines around his eyes deepen. Suddenly there is a knock at the door. “Amir, can you get that?”
He leaps off the arm of the couch and races to the door, then pulls it open; the man he had bumped into the other day stands in front of him. “Oh, hello. It’s you. Standing straight and not falling into people," he chuckles and Amir likes his laugh. Deep and rich.
He wants to hear it again, so he tries to say something clever. “Come in. The men are smoking and talking about women and politics.”
The man laughs again. Amir wishes he had a tape recorder so he could replay this laughter over and over. “I don’t think women and politics go together. Maybe women and cooking. Women and children. Women and fuc…” he stops and stares at Amir who is no longer smiling. He clears his throat. “What’s your name?”
“Amir.”
“Ah, prince.”
Amir nods vigorously and grins. “You know that?”
“Yes, I know many things. Amir, is your father home?”
“Yes. I’ll get him. Please wait a second," he answers, remembering his manners.
Within seconds, Amir’s father is at the door, shaking the man’s hand.
“I’m Walid," the man says. “I just moved in next door.” He nods his head in that direction.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ziyad and this is my son Amir," Amir’s father says, resting his hands on his son’s shoulders.
“Sorry to trouble you, but could I borrow a screwdriver? I can’t seem to find my tools. They might’ve got lost in the move," says Walid, smiling.
Amir’s father instructs him to get the tool. After a couple of minutes, he returns and passes the screwdriver into Walid’s hands, and the man’s fingers touch his. Amir quickly looks at the wall. There is a sudden pressure down there, a tugging against his underwear and he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t move, doesn’t dare look at the man, who Amir imagines is staring at the bulge growing in his blue underwear. Finally Walid thanks Amir’s father and leaves, saying a quick goodbye to Amir too. Taking deep breaths, Amir feels himself relax. He heads into his bedroom and closes the door softly behind him.
Pants crumpled on the floor, blue underwear around his ankles, he falls back on the mattress, his fingers wrap around his penis, then his hand moves up and down. He thinks of Walid, his mop of dark hair falling around his strong forehead, the stubble along his cheeks. Breath hurrying, semen spurts out all over his thighs. Groans escape from his pursed lips, then deep-throated cries. He turns onto his belly, buries his face in his pillow. He knows this isn’t normal. He should be thinking of kissing girls, the tips of his fingers circling their budding breasts, not masturbating while thinking of a man. Turning and staring up at the ceiling, he wipes his eyes and listens to the loud voices of the men in the living room as they speak over each other. What if they happen to walk in on him, grasping his cock in his hands, and whispering Walid’s name as if he were reciting a love poem? He knows he should be imagining girls, not boys, and certainly not men. He bites his lower lip. Then he slowly gets up from the bed, cleans himself and slips his clothes back on.
He walks closer to the mirror across from his bed and studies his face. He looks normal, he thinks. Boyish. Dark curly hair, kept short, not dishevelled like Walid’s. There’s nothing gay about him, he thinks. He’s seen some men prancing on the beaches, Speedos as tight as a woman’s bikini bottom, their balls barely contained in the spandex material, and he’s even witnessed them kissing other men in a secluded area of the beach, away from the sunbathers, and he remembers how this had made his stomach churn and he had almost felt like puking right in the sand but he kept watching, not turning away even when one man pulled down the other man’s swimsuit and began licking his cock as if it were a popsicle. Wide-eyed, he couldn’t stop looking at the men and he licked his own lips, but after a while, he bent over in the sand and threw up. On weak legs, he raced back to his parents and brother and fell back on his towel, his heart pounding as fast as a musician’s palms on a handheld drum, the picture of the two men still in his mind.
Now he returns to his bed and flings himself on it. He doesn’t want to be like the men on the beach. I’m not a fag, he repeats silently, then says it out loud as though these spoken words would make the statement real. But his voice barely carries across his bedroom and out the window to the full moon. Amir sits up suddenly and walks to the window, leans on the ledge and wishes he could grab the moon and keep it beside him like a nightlight, but he knows this is impossible. Some things are not meant to be. Like him being gay. Like him and Walid. Tiptoeing back to his bed, he slips under the covers, closes his eyes and feels moonlight touch his dark eyelids.