Mhammad and I both worked. He managed a local restaurant, and I did light bookkeeping for a hair salon where I also threaded eyebrows and did manicures. I’ve always been good at stuff like that, and having a job made me feel like a modern woman. But in truth, marriage was not what I’d imagined. I’m sure Mhammad and I shared many tender times. But I can only remember one. We had gone to the beach together and lain in the sun, then gone to the home of some friends to drink alcohol they made. Jugs and jugs of horrible-tasting dark liquid. They thought my aversion was cute and encouraged me to give it a chance. I couldn’t get used to the taste, but I went along, wanting to feel as sophisticated as the other wives appeared to be, and eventually I liked the way it made me feel sexy and worldly. Mhammad said he was happy that I wasn’t up-tight about drinking. He said modern women smoked and drank. But I still refused to smoke and repeated what I had read in the comic book years ago about a Western conspiracy to kill us with cigarettes. They laughed the way adults do when a small child says something silly. Marriage had made me smaller.

We ate and danced and laughed, first at the beach and later with his friends. My shoulders were slightly sunburned, and Mhammad rubbed aloe on my skin. We were tired, barely able to stand by the time we finally made it to our apartment. I thought we would go right to sleep, but Mhammad insisted we finish off the night with what little was left of his own contraband liquor stash. He took out his oud and began strumming, tuning it first. My hips took hold of the music and made love to its notes. I was swimming in the joy of it, took off my top and brassiere until I was dancing naked, only a scarf around my hips. He kept playing, I dancing, neither of us wanting to stop. Eventually we succumbed to the alcohol and exhaustion, and later we made love. I learned that evening that we could love each other best if we were drunk. But even then, on that fine day, he didn’t look at me, flipping me onto my stomach, and I knew he was making love to Tamara, not me.

I tried to duplicate the closeness of that night on other occasions, encouraging him to drink at home with me and play his music. But we’d just flounder through the awkwardness until we went to sleep drunk and disappointed.

The next months are a blur of a few images and sounds, mostly arguments, followed by tears and a slammed front door. Like my father, he’d come back in the middle of the night, telling me he had been at the coffeehouse with his friend Jamil. But unlike my father, Mhammad did not love his wife. He did not want to be with me and did not enjoy touching me. And in time, I didn’t want him either, but not before something tender inside of me hardened.