ABOVE THE RUSHING TAP water, I hear Salem chopping parsley and tomatoes into tiny pieces. The knife moves quickly and I’m almost afraid he might cut his fingers or lunge at me with that blade as he glares at me. I look away, back at the pile of dirty dishes and try to concentrate on the task at hand. But it’s not easy with Salem only a few feet away. I also wonder where Rami is, what he’s doing at this very moment. I can’t stop thinking about him, about what happened in the bathroom. Squinting, I’m embarrassed that I let him kiss and touch me. When I look up, Salem is standing across from me now. He’s shaking his head. “I don’t want you to see my nephew again. Don’t come around my place anymore.”
I say nothing. I scrub a dish, then rinse it. The water splashes on the front of my pants and I curse.
“You should get another job. You’re a lousy dishwasher," he mumbles. Then he returns to the cutting board, picks up the knife again and chops the parsley, flinging tiny pieces in the air.
On the way home, I walk past McGill and stand in front of the campus for a few minutes and wonder if it’s possible to return to school again. Then I continue walking home, my eyes gazing down at the frozen sidewalks. When I arrive at my house and enter my room, I find Denise leaning against the cherrywood headboard of my bed, clutching her knees to her chest. She’s naked. Her dirty blonde hair hangs over her shoulders; strands barely cover her breasts. I hurry towards her and wrap her with my blanket. She is shivering so loudly that I can hear her teeth gnashing together. Throwing off my coat, I crawl under the blanket and embrace her tightly, rubbing my hands along her slender back then arms.
“Your room is fucking cold!” she curses.
“It’s not that cold," I protest. “You’re Canadian, you should be used to this weather," I reply, smiling.
“Smart ass. Outside, maybe, but certainly not indoors. That’s the miracle of central heating, my Arabian prince.”
Grinning widely, I say, “Are you still upset with me?”
“No," she murmurs. Undoing my belt buckle, I feel her fingers tugging at my pants, unzipping them. Pulling away from my warm embrace, she slides down my body, takes me in her mouth. I groan softly. I close my eyes and Rami appears to me.
Later on, she glides up my body and kisses me on the mouth. I hold her a while longer in my arms before she gets out of bed, bends down and gathers her clothes from the floor. I watch her dress.
“My mother’s funeral is tomorrow. Will you come?”
“Of course," I reply, now sitting up. “What time is it?”
“10: 30 a.m.”
“Oh, I have to work the early shift.”
“Whatever. I knew you wouldn’t come," she cries.
I pull up my pants and stand in front of her. “I’m sorry. I’ll call in sick tomorrow. I’ll be there.”
She buries her face in my chest and sniffles. “Thank you.”
You shouldn’t love me, I want to tell her, but only draw her closer to me, and feel her heart thumping against my own.
The next day I stand in a pew at the back of the church and listen to the eulogy Denise gives for her mother. Denise wears a black slim dress, her shoulders, covered with a grey shawl, sag and her voice quivers but she manages to make it through without crying. When it is over, I stand outside. I slip on my gloves, my thoughts briefly turn to Rami, and I wait for the family to emerge from the church. I give my condolences. Denise gently caresses my face. I have no time to hide my hands but she doesn’t notice the leather gloves anyway. I feel my cheeks redden with shame. I stand on the curb of the sidewalk as the charcoal limousine follows the hearse carrying Denise’s mother on her final journey.
I walk home and think about my own journey. How I had finally left my parents and my life in Lebanon and headed to Montreal alone. Although my aunt sponsored me, we have rarely spoken since she had a fight with my father. A family feud. Fighting. That’s what us Arabs are good at. We’re so passionate, we can’t even make love without having a good fight first, I think. Makeup sex. I now wonder if Rami has this in his newly acquired vocabulary. He’s young with a fresh perspective, something I used to have but lost. I wonder where it went. I wonder if this optimism is somewhere between the dirty dishes, countless job interviews and failed relationships. When I walk up the front porch of my house, I stand there for a while and look at my neighbourhood. Towering maple trees line the narrow streets, their branches still naked, and I picture leaves emerging in a month or two. I look across at the homes with Montreal’s winding steps and pity those who have to carefully make their way down them during a winter storm of freezing rain and heavy snow. I look down at the wooden, even steps of my place and laugh because this was one of the reasons I had chosen to live here, besides the cheap rent. I didn’t want to fall and break my back during those long winters. I imagine my mother cursing in Arabic when I’d arrive back in Beirut, an invalid. “You’re trouble. You’ve always been trouble. From day one.”
With my shoulders dropping, I turn and walk inside.
Once inside, I hear voices in the living room. A man with a thick Arabic accent is conversing, and when I enter the room, there is Rami chatting with Ben. His long legs are spread apart and his arms are relaxed on top of the sofa. As soon as he sees me, he stands up quickly and says, “Marhaba, Amir, I in neighbourhood and come say hello.”
I usher him into the kitchen. With my arms crossed over my chest, my coat still on, I say abruptly, “What are you doing here?”
“I tell you. I come visit. I walk in neighbourhood and I remember where you live.”
“You shouldn’t be here. I have a girlfriend. I’m not gay. I’m sorry… you have to go.”
Rami’s face crumples and he looks like he’s about to cry. I want to reach across and comfort him but don’t. I lean over the doorway to the living room and watch Ben, who is staring intently at the TV.
Rami opens his mouth, his lips quivering, and says slowly in his broken English, “I sorry. Ana go. Ana make mistake. It wrong ana come here. Sorry.”
I look away and wish he’d speak in Arabic with me but I don’t have the heart to tell him this; I know he’s trying hard to learn English and there is something special about this private language we share.
“I make mistake. I sorry. Ana asef," he apologizes again.
“It’s okay. Don’t be sorry.” And as he passes by me, I grab his wrist and guide him upstairs, still holding onto him, until we’re in my room. I look at Rami again and say, my voice cracking, “Don’t go.”
Rami smiles. Flinging off my coat and removing his, I push him onto the bed. There is urgency to my movements. I only hesitate once when I unzip his jeans and pull them down, tug on his underwear and gaze at his penis, already hard, quivering in anticipation. I’m not sure what to do, so Rami takes my hand and rests it on his cock. My fingers wrap around it and Rami moves my hand up, down, up again, down again, again and again. I watch his face tighten, his neck craning, his mouth straining. His eyes are half-closed; he’s moaning now. I feel myself grow hard. Finally, he shudders and I move away, crawl to the edge of the bed, staring down at my hand, the hand that held another man’s cock a few seconds ago. Wiping it on the end of my sheet, I retch. I feel the bed shift and Rami kneels towards me but I push him away. He calls out my name but I ignore him and race out of the room.
In the bathroom, I scrub my hands with a bar of soap, scrub so hard that my knuckles are red and sore. I can’t look at myself in the mirror so I stare into the sink while the drain swallows the soapsuds. After several minutes, I sit on the edge of the tub, turn on the faucet and let a rush of water mask the sobs that escape from my throat.
When I finally emerge from the bathroom, my tear-stained face pink from the steam of the running water, Denise walks into the hallway. She touches my flat belly, resting her hand there for a while before she leans in and kisses me on the mouth. “Thank you for coming to my mother’s funeral. It meant a lot to me.” She’s about to open the door to my room but I guide her in the other direction, towards her own room.
She gives me a strange look. “What’s wrong? I don’t want to be alone tonight.” Before I can stop her, she swings the door open to my place, and I step back, lean against the wall, hands clasped together as if in prayer, hoping Rami isn’t still there.
But when she enters the room, there is no sign of Rami. No sign that, only fifteen minutes ago, he’d been on the bed; it’s perfectly made, not one crease. Almost so perfect that Denise notices. She turns and gives me a wide grin. “When did you start making your bed?”
I laugh, and before I can stop her, Denise is pushing me on the mattress, taking off my clothes. I want to stop her. It just doesn’t feel right lying with her now, but I kiss her back, push myself inside her. Later, I turn to my side and stare out the window while Denise traces my back. Moonlight fills my room and I imagine Denise’s imprints glowing on my skin.
Sometime during the middle of the night, I am startled awake. I hear something, but I’m not sure what it is. I look down and see that Denise is still asleep, curled to the side, her longish hair spread on the pillowcase. Slowly I slide out of the bed, slip on some clothes, tiptoe across the room and make my way downstairs. It’s dark. The TV glow vanished in the moonlight. There is a tap at the door. I look at the wall clock. It’s a little after midnight. Who could be knocking at this time, I wonder. When I peer through the peephole, I see the back of someone with a short crew cut and my stomach tightens. I feel something rise within me and I feel like I’m going to collapse. The person knocks again. I look in the peephole once more. It’s Rami. Returned. Like an unopened letter. I stare at him. He looks sad, I think, and I suddenly feel pity for him out there in the cold on my porch while my girlfriend sleeps quietly upstairs. With my forehead pressed against the door now, I hope he’ll go away but he knocks again.
Straightening my posture, I open the door and pull Rami inside, put my index finger on my mouth to hush him. I motion for him to follow me into the kitchen. I find a small pot and begin to boil some water. I ask him if he likes Turkish coffee and he nods. We don’t talk much. I watch him as he rubs his hands warm. He has the smell of cold on the woollen scarf that he slowly tucks into the sleeve of his winter coat. I don’t question why he’s wandering my neighbourhood at this time of night. He tells me he misplaced his keys and wondered if they were here. I turn and see an unfamiliar set on the counter. I rise and get them, dangle them in the air, and he reaches out for the key chain, then shoves it in his pocket. I sit down again. There is something good about sitting across from this man, but also uneasy. I think I hear a creak on the upper level of the house and I’m almost tempted to push Rami out the door. But he’s looking down at his hands, still rubbing them. His eyebrows are a bit wet from fallen snowflakes and his lips are chapped. He bites them then stops and looks across at me. “I’m sorry, Rami," I finally say. “I don’t know why I did what I did. We can’t do this anymore. We should stop before it goes any further. I have a girlfriend.”
He speaks in Arabic. “I know, you already told me.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure if you’re listening. Your uncle will kill you if he finds out that you’re gay.”
He clears his throat and says, “Don’t worry about my uncle. He can’t control my life.”
The water boils and I rise from my seat and pour some coffee grounds into the pot. I let it simmer before I bring two tiny cups to the table. When I place one in front of Rami, he gently touches my wrist; my eyes tear. I sit across from him again and we drink. Rami takes slow sips and I swallow the bitterness quickly, too quickly, and I singe the roof of my mouth. We don’t say anything for a long time. Then Rami tells me that Gaza never felt like home to him. Could never feel like home. He says with a certain sadness that it will be a long, long time before Palestinians ever find their true dwelling. They are like a bunch of fireflies in a dark sky, shining bright, making their presence known, but they just keep floating in the darkness and can never set roots anywhere. “Air all we got," he sighs, now speaking in English. They have no land. He’s not sure if Palestinians and Israelis will ever be able to live side-by-side in peace. He’d like to hope they could. But he doesn’t know and I don’t know either. He speaks in Arabic again. “Maybe in a hundred years from now things will change for the Middle East and there will be peace like there is here in Canada. Funny, Arabs and Jews look so much alike, even share some of the same food, although some would argue that!” He stops and laughs, then goes on in a serious tone. “But despite some similarities, there are too many differences. There’s been so much bloodshed, so many bombs, so many lives destroyed, so much hatred. This is why I left. I knew I’d always feel displaced. So why feel displaced when I can come to the new world and start a real home for myself here. That’s why I left. I know Montreal can be a home for me. It’s already starting to feel like one, especially since I met you.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t know me all that well. We’ve only met.”
“But there is something between us, Amir. I feel connected to you. Can’t you feel it too?”
I want to tell him, yes, but don’t. Instead, I reach across the table and cover his hand with mine. When I turn and look out the window into the sky, I squint and search for those fireflies.
But I let go of his hand quickly when Denise enters the kitchen, wearing a bathrobe and nothing else. Her small breasts are slightly exposed as she puts her hands on her hips and asks, her eyes widening, “What are you doing here? It’s Rami, isn’t it?”
Rami pushes back the chair and puts on his winter coat, ties the scarf tight around his neck. “You got good memory. Yes, ismee Ra… my name’s Rami. You Denise?”
She nods then sits where Rami had sat and lifts his tiny cup and swirls whatever coffee is left in it. “It’s one in the morning, Rami. Shouldn’t you be home?”
“Oh, yeah, home.”
“Yes, home. This is mine and Amir’s home, not yours," says Denise, her normally kind face contorting.
“Denise, please," I plead.
She glares at me. “What?”
“You’re being rude.”
Rami stands by the doorway now, digging his hands into his pockets.
“I’m not being rude!” snaps Denise. “It’s late and we shouldn’t be entertaining visitors at this time.”
“He doesn’t know a lot of people. I’m trying to help him with his English.”
Rami finally speaks, “Yes, Denise, Amir good teacher. He teach me English.”
“Yes, I can tell. He teach you good English," she mimics.
“That’s enough, Denise. I’m going to walk Rami home.”
She stands up quickly; the chair falls back on the floor. “It’s late! He can walk home alone or take a cab. The hell you’re going out this late.”
“What are you? My mother?”
Denise doesn’t say anything further, only rushes out of the kitchen and up the stairs. I follow her and stand at the bottom of the staircase and shout, “You’re fucking jealous! I can’t believe you’re fucking jealous!”
“Fuck off, Amir!” I hear her yell back before slamming the bedroom door.
Angrily, I struggle to put my coat on. Rami stands in front of me now, puts his hands on my shoulders and tells me to stay. I watch him open the door and walk unsteadily into the cold, snowflakes sticking to his woollen coat.
I stomp upstairs. Moonlight pours into my room when I open the door. Denise is there, standing in front of the window. “I’m sorry I overreacted. Can you forgive me?” she says, now standing across from me and leaning into my body, resting her hands on my chest. I step back and sit on the edge of the bed, resting my elbows on my thighs, rubbing my sleepy eyes with my hands.
She kneels in front of me and touches the material of my pants, then traces my penis.
Gripping her wrists, I hold her hands up in the air; they tremble. “Don’t. It’s late like you said.”
She sighs, rises to her feet and slumps next to me. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to kick your friend out.” She continues, “Things have been so chaotic since my mother died.” She inches closer and kisses me on the lips, roughly.
I clutch her shoulders. “Stop.” Standing up now, I pace the room with my hands on my waist. “We should take a little break.”
“I don’t understand. Where’s this coming from?” She lowers her head then looks up again. “Do you think I’m beneath you or something? I don’t have a university degree like you do.”
“No, no, that’s not it. What good is my degree here anyway? I’m a lousy dishwasher.”
“And I’m a lousy shop clerk. You do think I’m beneath you, not good enough to fuck anymore, don’t you?” she repeats louder.
“That’s not it at all.”
“Then what? You never stopped my advances before. Is it Rami? What’s up with that guy anyway? He suddenly appears in our life and is always around, late at night, by the way. Do you like him or something? I saw…” she stops.
“What?”
“I saw you holding his hand.” She looks hurt.
“That’s crazy. I wasn’t holding his hand," I say angrily. “Leave Rami out of this.” I point to my chest. “I’m not good for you. I’m trouble like my mom always said.”
“Fuck your mom!”
“Shut up!” I holler. “You don’t know my mother, so don’t curse her.”
“She really screwed you up, didn’t she?”
“Shut up! You want to fuck. Okay, let’s fuck.” I shove her onto the bed, fling off her bathrobe, and she slaps my face several times, then kicks me in the groin. I grasp my crotch and stumble to the opposite side of the room, where I fall against the wall and bury my face in my hands. I don’t look up when I hear Denise’s frantic footsteps on the floor, don’t watch her pull on her bathrobe and falter when she opens the door. “I’m sorry," I whimper, now glancing up. Denise looks back, her cheeks wet, then slams the door. Lowering my eyes, I watch the moonlight whitewash the hardwood floor.