CONTEXT
Mrs. Davis takes dozens of pictures in front of the living room fireplace, then volunteers Emmy’s dad to drive us to the dance. “It’s too far to walk in those shoes, girls; you’ll break your ankles. Besides, it’s getting dark.”
Emmy grabs the camera out of her hands. “Did you get a good one?” We look over her shoulder as she scrolls through the images, grunting her disapproval as she presses buttons. Tori’s eyes are closed in this one; Morgan’s mouth is open in that one. In photo after photo, Emmy’s hair is wrong, she looks too fat, there’s too much flash.… Her face starts to fall until finally she finds a picture worthy of her collection. “We look so hot!” she crows as we study ourselves in the tiny screen. “Mom, can you print this one, please?”
I stare at my image, pleased and appalled. I am nearly unrecognizable—a bedazzled version of myself held together with spaghetti straps and mounted atop small, spindly heels. My makeup is too heavy and my hair is too fussy, but somehow it’s okay, because … I fit. I am one of four satin-clad girls playing dress-up. Back home we’d be lumped in with prostitutes looking like this—the clothing alone would condemn us. Here, though, the innocence of the moment glows through the layers of gloss, and we look like nothing more than happy, pretty girls.
The moment doesn’t last. “All right, Cinderellas,” Emmy’s mom calls as she shoos us out the door. “Your coach awaits you!”
“Mom!” Emmy hisses at her to be quiet, but the Cinderella reference lingers.
“Awk-ward,” Morgan sings under her breath.
Barbaric, I sing in my head. Group photo aside, their fairy tale is not mine, and we are once again divided.
In the car I choose the passenger seat to accommodate my silence; Mr. Davis doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. Let the others whisper about me in the backseat. Let my face burn until it’s surely as shiny and scarlet as my dress.
One more story from home enters my thoughts as we drive.
Another car, driven by another man. We were always going somewhere, it seems—why else so many memories in transit? I’m wearing another party dress, this one chosen by my mother. Was it pink? Maybe lavender. Something girlish and sweet; I couldn’t have been much older than Bastien is now.
I’d started the evening feeling like a princess, but by then I was tired and cranky. Mother shushes me and drapes one of her necklaces over my head to distract me. But neither the icy-sharp feel of the gems nor the satisfying heft of the golden links—all quite real, of course—cheers me. I’d seen enough jewels that evening, thank you very much. My cousin had been insufferable, showing them off.
“How many more of these do we have to sit through?” I complain. “I wish she would just get married and be done with it. How many parties can one bride possibly have?” My voice turns nasal and wicked as I imitate. “Looook. This one is from my fiancé. And these are from his parents. And this one, and this one, and this one …” I stroke my ears and neck with exaggerated sweeps—a diva displaying her imaginary jewelry.
“Don’t envy your cousin, Laila,” Mother says into her compact as she wipes lipstick from her teeth. Believing her comment to be a rebuke, I turn toward the window to pout. But she’s not done speaking.
“The better the jewelry, the worse the man,” she says as she puts away the mirror. She sounds tired, and maybe even a little bit angry, though I can’t understand why. She was the one who dragged me to this party, yet another of the endless engagement festivities for my cousin Farah.
“What do you mean by that?” Now I’m indignant. Has she just insulted my father? “You have very nice jewelry.”
She sighs and fingers the largest of the stones circling my undeserving neck. “Yes, I do. But I chose well. Not everyone gets a choice. Certainly not poor Farah.”
The hint of gossip is tantalizing. I scrabble across the leather seat to take Mother’s hand and snuggle up against her, shameless in my thirst for unkind stories about my unkind cousin.
For once Mother is reluctant to play along. She plucks the necklace off me and takes her time refastening it around her own neck. Finally, she speaks. “I shouldn’t tell you any of this. But that girl is too young and too stupid to be practically sold off to a miserable old wretch like her husband-to-be. Hers will not be a happy marriage. Not that she’d know one if she saw one, anyway. Not with parents like hers.” Mother leans back with her eyes closed and refuses to say anything else on the matter.
I already knew that Farah’s marriage had been arranged—something gradually becoming less common, at least in our circles. But my cousin had claimed to be pleased with the match. I knew nothing of the man, except that my uncle had chosen him. That was reason enough to dislike him, though.
“You are worth more than shiny stones, Laila,” Mother had whispered as she kissed me good night once we reached home. “We all are.” I’d been charmed by the rare display of affection, and I hadn’t sought any additional meaning from the words.
Here, in the front seat of Emmy’s father’s car, I remember them. I also remember the feel of real jewels, so different from the costume version I wear now. I remember the weight of the gold, the strength of the clasps, and the almost-scratches left behind by sharp diamond facets.
I flick irritably at the cheap baubles hanging from my ears, missing the gems of Before. And then I remember one more detail.
Farah had been just sixteen years old.
One year older than I am now, married off to a man more than twice her age. Had I even seen her since? Was she as unhappy as Mother had predicted? I can’t recall.
I shiver and try not to think of her any longer. I am here now.
MOVEMENT
The heavy, thumping music makes the air in the gymnasium vibrate. For a moment the guttural combination of drumbeats and bass turns familiar, the sound of a procession of tanks driving by, and my heart starts to race. But then the lyrics begin—silly, repetitive lines heavy with rhymes about feeling the night. We are not in a war zone, I remind myself. We are at a school dance. All right, all right. Feel the night. My pulse slows and my lungs allow me a breath.
“Laila, come on!” Emmy yells over the music and waves me in, pulling me by the fingertips through a churning mob of dancing bodies. I’m bumped, then jarred, and I lose Emmy, but she reaches back and finds me again. Everyone around me is huge, all sharp elbows and heavy feet, and I feel like I’m being crushed. I’m underwater again, not breathing, until we break through the frenzy to a corner of painted linoleum calm.
“Are you okay?” Emmy is laughing, but she looks concerned.
I nod, not yet trusting my voice. In this life I have only seen such things in an entirely different context. In my experience, such frenzied swarmings mean only riots, and riots mean bloodshed.
“As you can see, there’s no requirement that you actually know how to dance here. What a bunch of flailing idiots!” Emmy somehow spots Morgan in the chaos and waves her over.
She’s pushing her way through when the air-pounding song ends and a new one begins. The crowd reacts by slowing, then dispersing. The sweaty dancers look wilted, dejected by the calmer tempo, and they shuffle and spread to the perimeter of the room.
Morgan rolls her eyes at the deflating scene as she joins us. “Laila, you’re shaking!” She places her hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m just cold.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say in the swampy heat of the body-packed gym, but my friends accept my answer.
“All the more reason to get out and dance!” Morgan half pushes me toward the center of the room, but I resist. More than anything I just want to leave this noisy, crushing place.
“Laila?” I see in Emmy’s face that she will not enjoy the night if I am unhappy. For her, I decide to pretend. I follow Morgan, my feet heavy with dread.
Fortunately, the dance floor is less crowded than when we first entered, and almost all the dancers left are girls. But just as my little group finds a space and we form a small dancing circle of our own, the music changes again. To my ears, the song is hardly different from the one that cleared the space, but the crowd hears something that I cannot. People surge back to the floor, and once again I am being pummeled and suffocated. It takes me several long, breathless moments to realize that it’s my frozen stance that’s making me suffer—my rigid shoulders and planted feet. I need to stop resisting, I tell myself. I need to move with the crowd.
The motion helps. I’m awkward at first; my hips and knees refuse to sway. But Emmy was right—there is nothing to know about this kind of dancing. It is simply something to do.
I watch my feet until they seem to be cooperating. It’s only when I feel confident enough about my movement that I look up and see what has happened.
Decency has fled the room.
All around me couples writhe and grind against each other in time to the music. It’s lewd, animal, and I can’t help but freeze in place once more. Next to me, Emmy, sweet Emmy, who even now wears tiny butterfly earrings more suitable for a child, is leaning backward, her arms reaching up and behind her to embrace the boy who is pressed against her like a sweating, grunting human cape. The transformation in the room is complete.
But television has taught me well. I regain my balance quickly, the initial shock worn off. I’ve seen this, just never in person. In my country, this scene—this lusty, teenage carnival—would end in a police raid and lashings. Or worse. My uncle would be involved. Where judgment could be found, he always was.
That thought—the mere idea of my uncle’s reaction—unleashes me. I’m here in disguise. I can be someone else. Someone other than me. I am here to learn.
I grant myself a small gift—a moment away from my past.
Loose-limbed, freed, I intentionally bump against the nearest person, a sandy-haired boy I’ve never seen before. The bump is enough. He turns around, no introductions necessary, and presses against me as if our torsos were magnetized. Behind him, his previous dance partner makes an angry face and then moves on, disappearing into the waves of dancers. I barely register her scorn—I’m trying to stay on my feet as this broad, untucked-shirt-wearing body leans and thrusts against me.
Tori, grinning and grappling with her own partner to my left, sees me and gives me a thumbs-up. “Daaammn, Laila,” she says approvingly. Her lipstick is smeared, and her eyes are too bright even in the strobe-lit darkness. It’s all surreal.
But that is precisely why I stay. Because it’s not real.
I don’t think. I just do. I press back against my stranger—my partner—and watch my hands find his chest. I push a little, he pushes a little, and since neither of us yields, we’re crushed together even closer.
I’ve been sheltered, even captive, judging from the standards grinding around me, but in my American disguise I find it easy to catch on. I feel out-of-body as I look up at him in a way that I mean to be encouraging, and I link one leg over his so that I’m nearly straddling my stranger’s thigh. My dress rides up even higher, and for a second my hand reaches to pull it down, until I remember my purpose. I let the skirt drift where it may.
There are hands on my skin where fabric once lay, and nearby someone howls like a wolf. It was surely done in jest, but the sound is so fitting that it sends chills down my spine. I move my hands. I move my hips. I move my body against his. Never before have I moved like this. I’m surprised to find that I like it, that my ragged breaths are coming and going in time with the breaths of the boy who is touching me—every time we inhale, our chests are pressed together even that much closer. It’s not pleasure that I feel, exactly. It’s too clinical for that.
It’s power.
I’ve always been taught that women should be invisible, that our bodies must be hidden and our voices hushed. In this moment, with this unknown person grinding against me, I almost understand why. Just looking at the stranger’s eyes, heavy-lidded and incoherent, and his hands, gripping and petting as if he were having a stroke, I think: I have done this.
It’s intoxicating.
I want to test my power further. I’m tilting my head up toward his, my eyes daring him and my mouth slightly open, breathless in a whole new way, when someone grabs my arm and whirls me around roughly. I turn with a smile on my face, eager to discover my next conquest.
It’s no dance partner, though. It’s Amir.
My spell is broken, and my stranger melts back into the crowd with a shrug. I was just a body; he’ll find another. Amir doesn’t let go of my arm, so I step closer to him, still moving with the music. I want to dance more. Amir will do.
“Stop it!” he hisses. “You’re acting disgusting.” He pulls me toward the exit, moving so fast that I stumble and almost fall. As I catch myself, yanking my arm out of Amir’s grip, I see Ian looking at me from a few feet away.
Are you okay? he mouths, since the music is too loud to talk.
I look back at Amir, whose face is twisted and tense with anger. For a second I hesitate, but then I nod at Ian. I’m fine, I mouth back to him. After all, Amir is nothing but a displaced peasant—his rage is no threat to me. But I haven’t forgotten Mr. Gansler’s threat. I need to appease Amir for my family’s sake. I will allow him his anger as a peace offering.
Ian’s face stays neutral, but he keeps watching until I let the gymnasium doors slam behind me. I’m still charged from the dancing, emboldened by the music I can still hear pounding against the doors and windows. I turn to Amir and smile. Let him rage. I am in control.