The Pact We Made. Layla AlAmmar

mini-cans of condensed, tooth-rotting milk. He set it before me like I’d asked for it and went about lighting the charcoal cubes. Baba stepped out the front door with a ‘Ha!’ when he saw me curled up in the wicker chair. He swung his arms to the front and side, an akimbo Macarena, a bastardized version of the routine we’d all done during morning assemblies at school.

      He stepped off the porch and into the yard, surveying the grass for bald spots and inspecting the date trees. It’s a barren land, but you wouldn’t know it looking at our garden. The proper names of trees and vegetation aren’t common knowledge in Kuwait, at least not among the younger generations. If pressed I could possibly have identified an orange tree, but only if it were blossoming. Baba wandered over to his herb corner as Raju finally got a proper fire going and left the duwa in my care. My father squatted down on his chicken legs to check the nets protecting his rosemary and mint. He was happy, enormously happy, his only concern whether the street cats were messing with the herbs again. There was a particularly fierce tom, a wall-prowling howler with a personal vendetta against mint, who tore through the nets Baba set up and gnawed at the baby stems and leaflings. This infuriated him. I’d suggested, more than once, that he move his herbs inside, but he said they would taste different if they were grown through glass.

      The front gate opened, and Nadia and her brood spilled into the yard. First came the twin boys, tearing across the grass to the trampoline Baba had set up for them in the corner. ‘Shoes off!’ I called as they hoisted themselves over the bar, a directive that was ignored until their grandfather sent over a quelling look.

      Then came the little one, Sarah, tiny hand clutched by Nadia as she had a distressing tendency to sprint towards the street. She tugged and tugged, but only when the gate was firmly shut behind them was she released and allowed to fly through the yard and jump in my lap. Nadia couldn’t get so much as a greeting in until Sarah was done telling me about her day: there was the spring show rehearsal and the girl next to her who didn’t know any of the words; there was the PE class where she wasn’t chosen in Duck, Duck, Goose; there was the teacher who was having a baby, and why couldn’t Mommy have one too?

      I laughed over at Nadia, who had a horrified expression on her face. ‘Maybe in a few years, baby,’ I consoled Sarah, running my hand over her curly hair, so much like mine when I was her age.

      ‘But I want one now,’ she whined into my neck.

      ‘I’d sooner shoot myself,’ Nadia mumbled, jerking her chin towards the boys, who were half jumping, half wrestling on the trampoline.

      I cuddled the little one tighter in my lap. ‘It’d be okay if you had another girl.’

      ‘Can I get a guarantee?’

      Mama came out to join us, and Nadia rose to greet her. Sarah wanted to stay put, but I nudged her to her feet and over to her grandma.

      ‘Hayati!’ Mama lifted a wriggling Sarah up into her arms for a hug and a smattering of kisses. When she put her down, she scurried back and climbed into my lap. ‘Go play with your brothers.’

      ‘La Yumma,’ Nadia said with a shake of her head. ‘They’re too rough with her on there.’

      Sarah didn’t seem inclined to move anyway, snuggling up to me while we talked over her head. Eventually Baba abandoned his garden to come get her; he pushed her on the swing set, trying to teach her to propel herself. I’d forgotten about the duwa, but Nadia always had impeccable manners, and she got up to serve Mama. The tea might have been too strong at that point, but she tipped the pot over a cup so it came out in a steaming, perfect arc. She filled the cup almost to the brim, knowing how our mother liked it, then cracked open a can of condensed milk and filled the remaining space with the white, syrupy liquid before handing it over.

      I was a mistake. Various members of my family, at various times, have said it. Always with a smile or a wink, but the words don’t change. My parents, though they married young, had problems conceiving. Mistrustful of Western medicine, my mother watched the moon instead, counting her cycles, frequenting the lesser pilgrimage, and drinking teas of sage and fenugreek and anise. After six years, when the dismay was so entrenched that Mama had broached the topic of my father taking a second wife to give him children, she finally conceived. Nadia was received like an heir to something greater than what my parents had to offer. They took their miracle baby and wished for nothing more. Eight years later, I announced myself when Mama vomited at a table laden with four types of fish.

      ‘Oh,’ my sister said, turning to me, ‘I forgot to ask how it went the other night.’

      I winced. Mama frowned, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of the topic or because the tea was too hot. ‘No effort from this one, as usual.’

      ‘Yumma, don’t start,’ I said, shaking my head.

      ‘What? She should know what I go through with you. I set out a beautiful dara’a, blue and silver and bright, and she wears black like she’s going to a funeral. He’s a wonderful man. Tall, smart, lovely eyes, and she stares at her knees all evening.’

      ‘I was being demure.’

      ‘Ekh!’ Mama said, flicking her hand at me like I was a fly that required swatting. ‘Allah forgive me, it’s almost like you don’t want to get married.’ She shook her head, giving off an impression that was equal parts martyrdom and disappointment. If she were Catholic, she’d have been crossing herself. Turning to Nadia, she added, ‘Talk to your sister before she becomes a spinster and—’

      ‘Dies,’ I finished, making Ariel’s wiry hair a bit too dark.

      ‘Allah forgive you,’ she hissed, smacking my thigh. ‘Don’t say such things.’

      ‘You’re the one talking about spinsters,’ Nadia retorted in my defense.

      ‘Well, we’re getting there.’ She sighed like she was carrying an impossible burden and folded her arms over her stomach.

      I dropped the sketchpad and pencil on the floor and went to join the kids. The boys were running screaming circles around Baba. They would never have to concern themselves with this. Their lives would be so easy. They would have freedoms my sister and I never contemplated: the freedom to study anywhere in the world; the freedom to live their lives without constant scrutiny, where society responded to their mistakes with ‘boys will be boys’ instead of ‘you bear the family’s honor’; and, perhaps most meaningful of all, the freedom to not marry without shame or guilt. My heart slumped at what was in store for Sarah. She was still in the swing, whining about not being strong enough to propel herself yet, so I obliged her. Nadia and Mama continued to talk, my sister tossing out gentle reprimands that my mother deflected like a ninja.

      Let them talk. It was all just words.

       3

       A Grotesque Pandemonium

      Did I have a happy childhood? It’s hard to say. I suspect many of my memories are compiled from the stories of others. That if I peeled back Nadia’s hand gestures, tossed out Mama’s commentary, and blacked out Baba’s impressions, I would be left with no memory at all save for perhaps some flashes of light or lingering scents. As a result, I put very little faith in my recollections. I’m unattached to them, can go over them with all the emotional connection of someone flicking through a waiting-room magazine. Mona and Zaina would argue about things in our past, each passionately denying or affirming what had or hadn’t happened and in what sequence. And when my vote was sought, they’d huff when I insisted I didn’t remember.

      I was rarely lying when I said that.

      There are flashes, though; scenes I remember with eye-watering clarity. One vacation in London where Baba took us to a museum because, ‘You need culture. Not just games and fun and shopping.’ I was twelve, and Nadia and I rolled our eyes all