The sultry voice of Umm Kalthoum wafts seductively out of a cassette player perched atop a hotdog cart. A twinge of bittersweet nostalgia. The Egyptian hotdog vendor stands next to his cart, customerless, lonely.
Omar arrives at the intersection of Eighty-sixth and Broadway. He stops to light a cigarette, takes the right-hand mitten off and places it in his coat pocket. The red Don’t Walk signal is lit. He notices no car coming. He steps off the curb. His left foot alights on a metal grate. It takes less than a microsecond for his foot to slip from under him. His right foot follows suit, imitating the left in flight. His arms flail helplessly. The cigarette falls from his lips onto his chest in midair. His right hand instinctively reaches out to break his fall, reaches the grate an instant before the heavy thud of his butt, followed by his right elbow. The pain is instantaneous. His right hand is chafed, his left elbow is bruised, and the small bone at the bottom of his spine hurts. He attempts to pull himself up quickly, wobbles unsteadily.
“Are you all right?” asks a black man in a business suit, half of a couple.
“I’m fine,” Omar snaps.
He almost slips again standing up. A group of teenagers, a couple of Puerto Ricans and an Indian, snicker from across the street.
“It’s the ice,” the black woman, the other half of the couple, says. “It’s slippery.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” he growls back. He walks away.
The cigarette has burned a tiny black hole in his coat. His hand is not bleeding. He feels he is about to start crying. Fear. He is terrified. Not a normal kind of fear, primal, nothing he has ever felt before. He feels goose bumps all over his skin. His testicles ache. There is a metallic taste in his tongue. His breath comes fast, shallow. Dark spots appear before his eyes circling clockwise. He stops for a second to regain his breath. His mittened hand instinctively reaches out to the building on his left. He needs to steady himself. He wants to be home. He resumes walking, this time at a brisker pace. This must be primordial, cellular. He is unable to control the feeling. His bones ache. He wishes to wail. He wants to be in his own bed, his mother taking care of him, making him hot tea with a little bit of cognac. His head pounds.
Omar walks through the door, sees her sitting on the couch. His wife. He smiles at her, a forced smile. She worries. She can’t discern his expression. She thinks he is either about to cry or crack a one-liner. She tries to stand up, but he comes over and kisses her. He begins unwrapping himself.
“You burned a hole in your coat,” she says, not an expression of concern, but a conversation starter.
“I know. I dropped a cigarette.”
“They don’t warn you about the sartorial dangers of smoking.”
He hangs his coat on the coathook, takes off one sweater, the scarf, the hat, gradually regains his natural form. He takes off his boots. He comes over and lies on the couch, his head on her lap, his legs draped over the armrest. She strokes his hair gently.
“Did you lose a mitten?” she asks.
“Mitten?” She had used the English word. “What is mitten?”
“It means a glove without fingers.”
“I know what it means. I know exactly what it means. Why do they use a different word? Why did you use it?”
“Because a mitten is different from a glove and you lost a mitten. That’s why.”
“Couldn’t you have used the Lebanese word? I mean when did we start differentiating between a mitten and a glove.”
“It’s just more precise.”
“Precise. Yes.”
He stares at the ceiling as she continues to stroke his hair.
~ ~ ~
Régine and Fatima giggled, huddling together on the couch, arms entwined. Janet stood in front of a floor-length mirror dubious of the reflection. She liked the kohl. Not the rest, though. The braided hair made her look prepubescent. The gold chain with dangling trinkets around her forehead, the yellow eye shadow and the blood-red lipstick had the opposite effect, made her look adult, in her thirties. The dichotomy was disconcerting. She did not look Lebanese, yet was no longer American. She knew no Lebanese woman who dressed like that. She stared at the girl in the mirror. She appeared so exotic, straight out of a Sinbad Hollywood movie. Yes. Sin and bad. That was the girl in the mirror. She shuddered. She thought she was losing her footing again, though her feet had not budged. She quickly grabbed the mirror to steady herself. She looked like something out of A Thousand and One Nights. She was Shahrazad, a drunk Shahrazad, spinning tales.
“Do you like it?” Régine asked her Galatea.
“It’s strange,” Janet responded, which induced another bout of tittering from her friends. “I look so different.”
Fatima fixed herself another drink. Her parents were in the mountains for the weekend so she had no worries. She placed a single ice cube in the miniature glass, poured the glass jar of arak until the glass was half full. The clear liquid whitened as it hit the cube, turning milky when she topped the glass with water.
“To your health,” she said to no one in particular as she lifted the glass in the air, then gulped down the whole drink.
“You didn’t make me one,” Régine pouted.
“Sorry. I’ll do it. Do you want another, Janet?”
Janet was entranced. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Janet heard, “I am,” coming from behind her, but was unsure whether it was Régine or Fatima. She begged to differ. There was no doubt Janet was the most beautiful of the three. How many times had she seen her face in the mirror? She knew every minute detail of it. Yet what stared back at her was a face she did not recognize. She raised the corners of her mouth for a smile, attempting to recapture some glimmer of familiarity. The face staring back at her became more distorted. She shivered perceptibly.
“You don’t like it?” Régine asked, supine on the couch. Fatima was making more drinks. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I don’t know. I wanted to look Lebanese so that I don’t look so different from everybody.”
Why was she here if not to feel different from the way she did back there? She wanted to experience the world. She wanted to change how the world saw her. Then why was she so terrified of the transformation she saw? She stared at the reflection. She must force herself to like this amalgam of East and West, to embrace it. The reflection might not be the new her, but she should accept any discernible change, no matter how incongruous it appeared. Any change was good change.
“Pour me a drink, Fatima,” she said.
“You’re so remarkable,” Fatima said. “I can’t believe you like arak. I bet you no other American would drink this.”
“I want to celebrate the new me.”
Janet kept looking at the mirror. She saw looking back at her a middle-aged woman, sad, lonely, desperate. She saw someone bitter. The woman in the mirror shook her head and told her, “Don’t.” The phrase repeated in her head over and over, a ringing. She was terrified. She covered her ears with her hands, felt faint.
On the corner of Bliss and Abdel-Nour streets, Janet waited for Régine and Fatima, looking in a store’s picture window. Nothing interesting so she regarded her insubstantial reflection. She looked good. Janet had an abundance of bright red hair and was well aware of it. She took out a cigarette as a group of young university men walked by.
“Hi, Janet,” one of the boys said.
She glanced up at him, unsure whether she knew him. She smiled anyway. “Hi there.” The young man puffed up, obviously proud he knew her. One of the boys hesitated, wondering whether they were going to slow down and talk to her. The group kept moving. She lit her cigarette. Looking back, the young man said, “I’ll see you in class tomorrow.” Ah, he was in her math class. Could not remember his name, though. She heard them talking. Those eyes were the only thing she understood. She grinned. She should learn more Arabic. One of the boys punched her classmate on the shoulder and they disappeared around a corner.