Kathryn raised a glass of dark beer to toast Sameh, a colleague at the Chamber who translated all of her articles into Arabic. “To your mother’s visa.”
“To my mother’s visa,” he raised his glass to hers, thick drops of condensation falling in the hot evening air of the outdoor beer garden. “You can’t imagine how many hours, how many days I spent going from one ministry to another here. The Emirati officials wanted so many papers, everything from Iraq, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, property certificates. After two wars, those papers don’t even exist any more in my country, or if they do, no one can find them. But finally, I convinced them to let her come. So soon you’ll meet her.”
“Al-hamda’allah,” Kathryn said, smiling at the irony of thanking Allah, in a Muslim country, while drinking a beer with an Iraqi man, now working in the UAE as a naturalized citizen of a distant Nordic country. “When will she arrive?”
“My younger brother is traveling from Sweden to Baghdad to help her and my youngest sister pack their things. Then I have to arrange for a bigger flat here so they’ll be comfortable. I think maybe three or four months until they are here.”
“But at least she knows it will happen.”
“Yes, she tells me everything’s fine and not to worry. But I hear news from their neighbors; a bomb landed down the street, or someone’s uncle was kidnapped, or their sister-in-law raped.”
Kathryn wrapped her hands around her glass, uncomfortably. “I can’t help but feel some responsibility for what’s happening in your country.”
He looked in her eyes, leaned back in his chair and laughed with surprising force. “Responsible? How are you responsible?”
“Well, we elect our leaders and they have invaded your country—again—causing this chaos.”
“Do you really think you have any influence on any of that? You Americans, sometimes you really do believe you are powerful. My friend, governments are governments, people are people. You’re not responsible. I worked as a government translator during Saddam’s time. But I certainly don’t feel any responsibility for what Saddam Hussein did when he was in power.”
She raised an eyebrow, nodded her head in concession, a shade of embarrassment rising in her cheeks. “Perhaps it’s all just an illusion that we have any influence on our leaders, but we are raised in America to believe we do. So, how about this? I’m terribly sad for what my country has done in your country.”
“Me too,” Sameh sighed, “me too.”
A waitress arrived, asked, “Anozher beer?” with an Eastern European accent.
“Not yet, but soon,” Sameh said with renewed enthusiasm. “But please—French fries.” He drank again. “Now, let’s talk of something happier, you just returned from Pakistan, now you’re married.”
“Oh, the wedding,” Kathryn smiled broadly. “I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in my life. When Rashid comes back onshore, you should come over and look at the wedding album. The whole event was just so big, so over the top,” she gestured widely with her hands, forty red and white bangles that marked her as a new bride jingling along her forearms.
“And your parents came?”
“Yes, I was so proud of them. Especially my mother, she never once complained about the heat or the filth, she just danced and ate and laughed with Rashid’s family like she had known them all her life. My father tried a couple of times to talk foreign relations with Rashid’s brothers, but they were always interrupted by some fun before it got serious. And the mehendi,” she rubbed the faded henna designs on the backs of her hands, “the henna party was so fun. The mehendi artist worked for almost eight hours straight covering all the women’s hands, even my mom. He didn’t realize until almost midnight that I was the bride. By the time he finished almost everyone was asleep, there were people on blankets and little sleeping mats everywhere.”
The fries arrived, Sameh chuckled.
“And the extended family…Rashid was the last son to be married in his family, so relatives came from all over, even some cousins from London, and an uncle who had been estranged from Rashid’s father over some business issue. And the most amazing to me, a Pashtun man came all the way from the frontier territories near Afghanistan. He was their driver’s father, he’d helped Rashid’s father to safety when they crossed from India during Partition.”
“Why was that amazing to you?”
“I guess because he hardly knew Rashid, and he certainly didn’t know me.”
Sameh grinned, “But a wedding in this part of the world isn’t really about you.” He took a long swig of his beer, “It’s about the extended family, the clan, affirming alliances. That Pashtun man wasn’t coming for you or Rashid, he came out of loyalty to your father-in-law and his clan. And you know the Pashtuns, they are the most loyal people in the world.”
She reached for a few fries. “I guess that makes sense, it’s just such a different way of thinking than how I grew up.”
“Well, you should get used to it. You’ve married into that world now.”
“Yes, but I have the benefit of being the outsider. I can sort of pick and choose about how much their norms apply to me. And Rashid’s company will transfer him to the U.S., so by next year we’re planning to leave this part of the world.”
“Maybe,” he fiddled with his coaster, a cardboard disc with a beer logo and a promise of a better time, “but lots of things in life are our naseeb, they are written, already chosen for us.” He drew his finger across his forehead.