Her eyes kept reverting back to a sprig of grass between the sidewalk slabs. It looked out of place. She wanted to pick it since she felt some strange affinity to it. Just as she was about to bend down, she heard Régine calling.
As usual Régine showed up first. Fatima was habitually late. Régine was dressed to the nines, en tailleur Chanel as the Lebanese would say, which surprised Janet. She assumed Régine wanted to look older to impress the woman. Maybe Régine was not as confident as she appeared.
“Are you ready?” Régine asked, stepping partly toward Janet. She searched through her handbag, stood feet slightly apart, her weight unbalanced.
“Yes, sure. Are you?”
“Yes, of course. Done this lots of times.” She lit a Marlboro, her hands trembling slightly, exhaled loudly.
“I don’t believe in the stuff anyway.”
“You’ll see. She’s good.”
When the dark-red Rambler stopped in front of the girls, Régine quickly threw the cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. Fatima got out of her father’s car. Régine had to stoop, look through the car’s passenger window, to greet Fatima’s father.
The girls waited until the car turned the corner before all three of them opened their purses and took out cigarettes. Régine flagged a taxi. When Janet looked down, she noticed the sprig of grass had been sheared by Régine’s high-heel.
The fortune-teller’s house was in Zi’a’ el-Blatt, a neighborhood Janet had never been to. Like other houses on the street, it was old, Lebanese old. Régine knocked on the oversized door and the girls waited. And waited. Janet noticed the ubiquitous turquoise hand, palm outward, dangling from a chain at the top of the door. After a while a woman opened the door.
“We’re looking for Sitt Noha,” Régine said.
“Well, you found her. Come on in, girls.” Her manner was not cheerful, nor crude, neither welcoming nor antagonistic. However, Janet knew Régine and Fatima would already feel slighted. The fortune-teller had not shown enough respect.
Sitt Noha led them through the foyer into the main room of the house. Janet had yet to see a house like this. Her friends all had modern apartments, whereas this house showed nothing belonging to the twentieth century. The floors were all smoothed stones with intricately painted Islamic designs. A huge Persian carpet dominated the room. Other carpets were hung on the walls. The seats were contiguous cushions on low benches against the walls, circling the entire room. Sitt Noha picked up a plate of food from the top of a low hexagonal brass table and took it into the kitchen. She was obviously in the middle of having lunch. “You girls make yourselves at home,” she said as she left the room.
Janet was enthralled by the room. This was the exotic Middle East she had come for. The gilded mirror on the wall, the antique chandelier, the oil lamps that were obviously functional rather than decorative, the finely detailed backgammon board, open, on one of the cushions — apparently a game had been interrupted.
“I can’t believe she was having lunch in the living room,” Régine said, “and she knew we were coming.” She sat rigid, starched, back straight. She pouted, looking more about to cry than angry.
Janet stared at a turquoise rosary on the seat next to her. It was not made for human hands, the beads much too big, for a giant’s hands. The ashtrays on the table in front of her were silver, shaped in the form of pineapples. Why pineapples? She found that amusing. She sat cross-legged on the cushion. She lit a cigarette.
“And my mother likes her,” Fatima said. “I wonder if my mother comes here or asks her to come to our house. I can’t see my mom here.”
Janet hoped after she had been in Lebanon a while, she would be able to understand the conventions better. Sitt Noha was from a lower class than the girls so she should have shown more respect. On the other hand, she was much older so she did not have to. They were her clients, about to pay, so she should have. It was so confusing. How Régine and Fatima figured out what was appropriate was beyond her. At least she had begun to know intuitively when they felt slighted.
She stared out one of the Turkish windows across the room, into the garden, dominated by a black oak and an orange tree, side by side.
“And she’s so fat,” Régine said.
Although Sitt Noha was overweight, Janet did not think she was that fat. Sitt Noha probably weighed less than Régine’s mother. What Régine was actually commenting on was Sitt Noha’s apparent lack of concern with her weight, her lack of any attempt to cover it up.
Sitt Noha walked back into the room, had changed from her housedress into another, dark purple with gold stitching. Janet had to grin. She was sure Régine and Fatima would scorn the new housedress and mock it, but Janet thought it was charming. The housedress made Sitt Noha look like a giant decorated aubergine.
Sitt Noha had a toothpick in her mouth. Tomato paste stained the corners of her lips. She moved a low ottoman right in front of the girls and sat down, knees apart, her hands between them, packing up loose folds of the housedress.
She yelled, at the top of her lungs, “Where is the coffee, Asma?” The girls jumped, startled.
“What can I do for you, my daughters?” she asked in Arabic. All Janet understood was my daughters.
“We’re here for fortune-telling,” Régine said. “Like I said on the phone, our friend here is all the way from America. She doesn’t speak Arabic very well.” Neither did Régine, who was having substantial problems constructing a complete Arabic sentence. Having grown up in a French-speaking household, she, like many Lebanese, had trouble with her mother tongue. “But I can translate for her.”
“And you two don’t want me to tell you anything? You’re not looking for husbands?” Sitt Noha pulled her disheveled hair back, forming a loose ponytail with a rubber band.
“We want to, but we’re here for the American.” Janet was not following the conversation well, but she did notice Régine and Fatima move slightly forward.
“We want everything,” Fatima said. “We can pay.”
“Can you actually tell what our husbands will look like?” Régine asked, breathing noisily, her eyes sparkling.
“When you called,” Sitt Noha said, “I thought you were the foreigner.”
“No,” Régine said. “I’m Lebanese, from Beirut. She’s the American.”
“You said your name was Régime. What kind of name is that?” Janet understood the French word for diet and tried hard to stifle her laugh.
“It’s Régine, with an n,” Régine replied, moving back into the cushions. She fidgeted with her handbag.
“Why would your mother call you that? Did she know you were going to grow up fat? She must be a fortune-teller too.”
“No, no. It’s Régine, not Régime. It means queen.”
Sitt Noha was oblivious to Régine’s irritation. A little girl, no more than ten years old, dressed in a similar aubergine housedress, came in carrying a silver tray with a pot of coffee. She gave each of the girls a cup. Janet shook her head, but Sitt Noha insisted. She kept moving the toothpick from one side of her mouth to the other. Janet could not take her eyes off it.