Just a small idea I've been playing with. Please, tell me what you think.
***
If father finds this, I am dead. The words reverberated in her brain to the tempo of her fluttering heart. The scrap of paper held in her hands was of little consequence, really. Picked up off the ground, no one would know or understand the dangers it implied. But discovered in her room by her father's wandering hands...the very thought chilled her blood. She recited the simple words and numbers over and over again until they became etched into her memory. Lunch tomorrow, 2:00? Call me. 727.0380 *Ari
He sat next to her during life drawing that afternoon, asked her name. He said she fascinated him. He told her his name was Abraham, but everyone called him Ari. He wanted to have lunch with her. He wanted to break bread with her. He didn't understand.
She could feel her face flush with embarrassment and shame. Never had she desired so much to be other than what she was. Khalidah al-Jamil bint Haroun al-Abdu'llah bin Nidal al-Rashid. Bound and gagged by a tyrant father, a silent mother, and a country not quite her own.
Her mind raced with reasons to make a phone call that evening. She prayed with every step and every breath that Father was not home. She could tell her mother she had to reschedule her music lessons. She would call Ari, then call her music teacher and reschedule, so her mother could not take the blame if Father did find out. If he was home, she would have no chance. She knew he listened to her conversations on the kitchen phone. What could she do? What could she say? Yet she knew it wasn't right. This was not their country. The rules had changed.
*
They shuffled off the airplane in a daze. It felt like none of them had slept in ages. Khalidah had no idea why Father has decided to drag her mother and she along. They could have stayed in Tikrit, with Uncle and Auntie and the twins. He insisted. The girls hadn't wanted her to leave. She cuddled them and told them she'd be home soon.
“Just think,” she had said, “you two will be five when I return! I'm sure we'll be home just in time to celebrate.”
They chased after the car with their mother until the edge of town, shouting “Bissamala!”
The little ones were placated, Khalidah was not so sure. She had a sick feeling in her stomach, as though she had eaten something rotten without knowing it. Uncle had said there were young men in town again, talking destruction and hate.
“If Father likes the job, will we stay?” she had whispered to her mother during the long flight in coach. It was rare that they were alone. The company had offered two business and one coach seat, or one first class and two coach. He was upfront enjoying wine and free hors d'oeuvres while she and her mother were crammed in with a motion-sick grandmother and a screaming two-year-old. It did not matter much to her, however. She enjoyed the time alone with her mother.
“If Father likes the job, will we stay?”
“I don't know, dear one. I hope not.”
“Insha'allah! Why must we go in the first place? Could not Uncle care for us in Father's stead?”
“La.” She shook her head sadly. “He would not let us stay. I tried to appeal to him. He insisted we come. It will be a good experience. You can learn a great many things, Khalidah.”
“About what, Umm? What is there to learn in that awful place, with those terrible people? What good can come from being in a place where the people have no morals! No God! Jews at best, Christians at worst, and every one of them--”
“Allah alim, girl! Now be silent.”
Khalidah was silent. But her brain burned with anger at having to move to a country seething with selfishness, godlessness, ignorance...She was furious with Father for dragging them along. She tried to convince herself that it wouldn't be as bad as they said. She was not flying off to greet the Great Satan. She was not going to be stripped of her dignity and forced to convert. There was nothing terrible awaiting her, no fate like those described by the young men she knew. That there was nothing wrong with America.
