Ghassan Zeineddine
Yusra
It’s July and I’m walking down Caniff Street in Hamtramck, covered from head to toe in black. I wear a niqab, leaving only a slit for my eyes, and an abaya. My furry hands are gloved. Despite my getup, I worry that someone might recognize the way I walk, tilting from side to side like a juiced-up bodybuilder. Though I’m of average height, my massive chest and big biceps make me stand out. I remind myself that I’m miles away from my Lebanese neighborhood in East Dearborn. My wife and son would never trek this far into Detroit, nor would my buddies. Lebanese don’t come here. I hear Polish folk once ran this city within a city, but now Yemenis and Bangladeshis have taken over with all their grocery stores, restaurants, and mosques. I spot a pack of niqabis across the street, and I almost wave to them like we’re all friends and haven’t seen one another in months.
There are no clouds and few trees to provide shade. Sunshine floods the street, reflecting off the hoods of parked cars and storefront windows. I’m sweating like a sisterfucker. My abaya sticks to my bulk; my underwear is soaked. I can’t remember walking as much as I have in these past weeks; my feet are blistered and my knees are sore. My lower back is starting to give out. And with my face covered, I keep smelling my stale breath. But I’m walking free as Yusra.
I wear mascara, lipstick, and clip-on earrings, and beneath my abaya a sleeveless dress for big-sized women. I’m walking in high heels, my second pair; I broke the first pair learning how to walk in the fuckers. But I love the sound of heels clicking against asphalt, a sound that I can finally make.
I pass a Yemeni grocery, a secondhand clothing store, a gift shop, a used record store, and a Polish deli before arriving at a bakery with outside seating at the end of the block. When I order an iced coffee and two red velvet cupcakes, I adjust my voice, aim for a higher pitch. I sound ridiculous, but who fucking cares? No one knows me here, and the young woman at the register, who has long pink bangs gelled back and the sides of her head shaved, looks about as bored as my son does when he’s working the register at my butchery. I take my drink and cupcakes outside and sit at an aluminum table under a striped awning. Sweat trickles down my back like every drop can’t wait to kiss my ass. I peel off my heels and sigh in relief, resting my bare feet on the sidewalk. I pull back my niqab without exposing my face, and in the small space between the cloth and my mouth, I squeeze in my drink and suck from the straw with the force of a vacuum. I smack my lips and feel drunk happy even though I’ve never tasted a lick of alcohol. I haven’t felt this exhilarated in a long time, not since my son was born and I held him in my arms for the first time, which was twenty-three years ago. I scarf down the cupcakes, fitting each under the niqab. If I’ve got frosting on my mustache, no one can see it.
I pull out my smartphone to check the time. It’s not even noon yet, so I can relax. I’m not expected back at the butchery until late afternoon, when the weekend rush begins. As of three weeks ago, I told my wife and son that I was going to start taking Friday mornings off.
“To do what?” my wife had asked in Arabic. This was after dinner.
“Work on myself.”
“Geez, Baba,” my son said in English. “That sounds really New Agey.”
I almost smacked him across the back of his head but held back. Ignoring him, I explained to my wife that I planned to start walking the Dearborn streets.
“Are you having a mid-life crisis?” my son asked me.
This time I smacked him.
I bought women’s clothing from an outlet far from Dearborn and a niqab and abaya from a store in Hamtramck. This is my third time dressing up as Yusra, and each time I’ve ended my walk at the bakery.
Allah bless this country. In Bint Jbail, the village where I was born and raised in southern Lebanon, I’d never be able to dress up as Yusra. I was only Yasser there, Yasser who worked at his father’s butchery and slaughtered animals, Yasser who smoked hookah with his childhood friends in the evenings at the pool hall, Yasser who married his second cousin not to keep the land in the family but because he truly loved her. I’m Yasser here, too, but now that more people are coming out as trans men and women—I learned the meaning of trans from the internet—I think I also can be Yusra, if only for a few hours a week. I must be careful; if I’m found out, I could be beaten up or killed by those who hate us. Us? Am I one of “us”? But who dares fuck with me? In Bint Jbail I got into fistfights like they were daily prayers. I’ve broken more noses and cracked more jaws and smashed more ribs than I can remember. Even at sixty-two years old, I’ve got enough power left in my hands to knock out a horse.
I hear the call to prayer. The muezzin’s voice floats in the sky like Allah herself is in the air. I feel like praying now, to give thanks for the chance to eat cupcakes as Yusra. I follow the muezzin’s call to its source and enter the mosque. The atrium is filled with niqabis and hijabis and men with skullcaps and beards. I look from side to side; no one suspects anything, and why should they? I’m just a big-sized woman. But my palms are sweating. Before entering the prayer room, I remove my heels and put them in the shoe cubby for women. I should head to the women’s wudu station to wash myself, but if I keep my niqab on while I try to splash water over my face and rinse my mouth, it’ll only attract more attention.
“Excuse me, do you need help with something?” someone behind me asks in Arabic. The voice has a Yemeni accent.
I turn around. A young, short woman is looking up at me, her hijab wrapped tightly around her face. There’s a bump at the bridge of her long nose. Her skin is chestnut brown.
I shake my head, too afraid to speak.
“Is this your first time here?” she asks.
I nod.
“Want me to show you the wudu station?”
I shake my head.
“Ah, you must have already performed wudu.”
I nod.
“Then let’s go pray.”
I follow her into the back of the prayer room, where the women are seated on the rug. The men are seated up front. My heart is pounding like a sisterfucker on speed, not that I’ve ever taken speed. I sit next to the young woman against the back wall.
“My name is Petra,” she says. She waits for me to give her my name.
“Yusra,” I say in the same voice I used at the bakery.
“Are you Yemeni?”
“Lebanese.”
“Welcome.”
Thankfully, our conversation is cut short when the imam walks up to the microphone placed at the front of the room. We all stand up and form lines shoulder to shoulder and the imam begins reciting the Al-Fatiha. As I kneel and touch my forehead on the floor, I have to stop myself from laughing because I’m drunk happy again.
Following the service, I pick up my heels from the cubby and have a cup of tea with Petra in the foyer. We stand among dozens of women on one side of the room and the men on the other side.
“Do you live in Hamtramck?” Petra asks me above the buzz of chatter. She must be around my son’s age. I notice a wedding band on her finger.
“Dearborn,” I say.
“And you came all the way out here to pray?”
“This city is special to me . . . my husband, Allah rest him, used to work with Yemenis at the Ford Rouge factory. I wanted to come here and pray in his honor.” Lying comes easy for me.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Petra says. “I didn’t mean to pry—”
I leave the mosque, get into my van, and drive to an abandoned warehouse and park on a dead-end street. Keeping the van running with the AC cranked up, I crawl into the rear and change into Yasser.
* * *
My son, Abdullah, sits behind the register, all three hundred pounds of him. He wears an extra-extra-large Detroit Pistons jersey over a T-shirt and cargo shorts that reach down to his shins. Years ago, he wore sports jerseys without a shirt underneath to show off his biceps, but these days he’s got more flab than muscle. The poor boy used to be a star offensive lineman on the Fordson High football team; Division One programs were interested in him. But in a Friday night game his senior year against Dearborn High, the biggest game of the regular season, he snapped his leg in two and dislocated his knee on a single play. I could hear him screaming from the bleachers, the worst sound I’ve ever heard. I ran onto the field and held his hand. His teammates were all on their knees. I begged Allah to spare my son and inflict the pain on me instead, but my prayers went unanswered. I was utterly helpless.
Abdu never played football again and had a metal rod and pins installed in his leg. After attending community college, he gave up on his education and joined me at the butcher shop. He still lives with us. I have no interest in him taking over the shop once I retire. I plan to sell it. My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather were all butchers; the cleaver runs in our family like a curse. I want Abdu to be a doctor or a lawyer. Shit, I know that’s not going to happen. Abdu wasn’t ever good at school. But he can go into real estate or some other business. I want him to wear a suit to work and one day see his face on a billboard on Ford Road. Many successful Arabs have their faces plastered on billboards, advertising their businesses. My wife has encouraged me to pay for space on a billboard to advertise Yasser’s Meats, home of my famous kafta, but I think my ugly mug would only scare drivers. If it was beautiful Yusra up there, maybe then it would be a different story.
Abdu looks at me like he can see right through me and my heart thumps again. Is there still mascara on my lashes or rouge on my lips? I cleaned myself silly in the van. After changing back into Yasser, I dropped off Yusra’s clothes at a dry cleaner, where I also pay the clerk a little extra to keep my heels, bag of makeup, and jewelry in the backroom. I reach for my ears and only feel lobes.
“What?” I ask in Arabic.
“How was walking?
“Good.”
I roll up my sleeves and put on my apron, tying the straps across my lower back. My assistant, Sleiman, a Syrian from Homs, is in the back carving up a cow carcass. I slip on disposable gloves and begin dicing slabs of meat for shish kabob and stew, and as I cut, I taste a terrible bitterness. Being Yasser makes me feel immensely sad and lonely. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being Yasser because when I’m him I’m a husband and a father, a successful butcher, a man with loyal friends. It’s just that I don’t want to be Yasser all the time.
A mother and her young daughter enter the shop and the mother orders my famous kafta. I take out another knife, the blade curled at the tip like a crescent moon, and over a wooden board I cut a batch of parsley in half and then I quarter onions so quick that the mother and her daughter gasp in fear I’ll slice off my fingertips—tap, tap, tap the blade sounds on the board, reminding me of heels on asphalt. For a moment, I see myself as Yusra and I can taste the cupcakes again. I slide everything with my blade into the food processor. I remove a slab of meat from the counter, slice it up into big chunks, and slide it into the meat grinder. Clumps of ground meat ooze out onto a tray. I reach back into the counter for a piece of tail fat, cut it up, and throw that into the grinder. I carry the tray to the counter and slide its contents onto the wooden board, pour the mash of onions and parsley on top, and garnish the mound with my secret blend of dark spices. I replace my knife with a cleaver, and with blistering speed I fold all the meat and fat and greens into each other, my cleaver gliding the meat in one direction and my free hand sending it back, until the meat turns into a light brown oval studded with parsley.
At closing time, Abdu tells me that I’ve been grumpy since I returned from my walk.
“Are you happy?” I ask him.
“I hate that question.”
“Count the till.”
* * *
After dinner, my wife and I sit in the living room to watch TV. Abdu left the house to smoke hookah with his former teammates.
“You’ve been quiet all evening,” Samar says. Her hair is long and silver.
“Just thinking about Abdu’s future,” I lie.
“At least he’s working.”
Samar and I grew up together in Bint Jbail. In our youth I never paid much attention to her at family gatherings, but after what happened to her parents and siblings, I started to look after her. For years, our village and other towns in southern Lebanon were bombed by Israeli fighter jets on the hunt for Palestinian militias. The militias would camp in our woods and launch attacks across the border. We supported their cause, but we paid for it with our lives. One day, Samar’s mother sent her to the souk to buy lemons. As Samar was on her way to the main square, she heard the thunder of a fighter jet, and moments later, a bomb exploded. I was at my father’s butchery when I heard the blast. Samar’s house had been flattened. Her parents and four siblings were buried under the rubble.
At the funeral, Samar remained at her mother’s sister’s house to accept condolences. When I went inside to offer mine, I found her in the living room surrounded by women: her aunts, cousins, neighbors, schoolmates. They were all dressed in black. A Qur’an lay open on a side table. A middle-aged woman recited suras from the holy book. The aunt sitting next to Samar, Samar’s mother’s sister, began slapping her chest and howling like a jackal. Soon, all the women were wailing and crying for Allah’s mercy, all except for Samar, who sat with a straight face. She’s an orphan now, I thought. She must be in shock. I wanted to console her, but I had no words except for the ones I whispered in her ear: “If anyone bothers you, let me know.” She moved in with her aunt, and when she turned eighteen, I married her. Villagers were surprised that such a soft-spoken woman would end up with a brute like me, but Samar felt protected by me. More than anyone else.
We immigrated to America following the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. Samar’s happy in Dearborn, where she can live without the fear of fighter jets and still speak Arabic on the streets. She thinks of her dead family every day, carrying that pain with her wherever she goes, though now she’s accustomed to its weight. She’s the strongest person I know, and I try my hardest not to think of the pain I’d cause her if she ever found out about Yusra.
She pulls up her pants leg and glides her hand over her hairy skin.
“Time for sukar,” I say.
I’m the one who prepares her wax, always have. We go inside the kitchen, and she watches me as I pour a cup of sugar into a pan and squeeze half a lemon on top and wet with water the sugar that hasn’t been juiced over. The water hardens the forming wax, and the lemon juice softens it; I find the right balance and turn off the stove, wet a slab of marble with cold water, and pour the melted sugar onto the slab. I nudge the sides to the center with my stubby fingers and keep doing this until the color turns from amber to golden yellow and the glob starts to cool off and becomes pliable.
As a boy, I used to watch my mother make sukar. She’d tear off a small piece for me to eat, but I wasn’t so much interested in its taste than how Mama used it, which was to wax her legs and underarms. I once flattened a piece of sukar on my shin and pulled it up, removing my hair. Mama snatched the sukar from my hand.
“If your Baba sees you waxing your leg he’ll beat you,” she said.
That day, she allowed me to wax her legs on her bedroom floor to the sound of Um Kalthoum on the transistor radio. We kept our ears open in case Baba returned home from work early. When I was older, I started to wax my younger sister’s legs in secret. I’d also wax a spot on my upper thigh, which was hidden from view. At night, I rubbed that smooth spot over and over.
Samar and I return to the living room. We sit on the floor and I watch her wax her legs. Once she’s done and the sukar is covered in black specks of hair, I glide my hands up and down her soft legs, wishing that mine felt the same. We kiss and her saliva wets my mustache. We move to our bedroom and make love.
Once Samar falls asleep, I pull out my phone and visit my favorite online chatrooms, where I’m known as “Yusra_righthooktothechin.” I discovered everything I’ve learned about the LGBTQ community on the internet. Before my online research I had no fucking clue about what those letters represented, and I became pissed off at Americans’ obsession with acronyms. I now understand the whole pronoun business, and although I don’t mind being a “he” or a “she,” I wonder if I should just be a “they.” If the Dearborn community ever found out about Yusra, I’d shame not only my family here but also in Bint Jbail, because word would reach them as quick as it takes to send a text message. I’d lose my customers and then my business. How would I support my family then? That’s assuming they wouldn’t reject me. I understood all these risks I was taking when I first dressed up as Yusra, but I had to try it out—my anonymous friends in the chatrooms rallied me to embrace my true self, whatever the fuck that means.
Yusra has always been a part of me. I first spoke her name when I was sixteen, and I met my friend Rami down in the valley to hunt birds. Only we didn’t hunt. We went into the shade of an oak tree where no one could see us. I pulled a tube of red lipstick from my pocket, which I had stolen from my sister’s drawer, and applied it over my lips. Rami slid his pants and underwear down to his ankles. “Call me Yusra,” I told Rami. I got down on my knees and took his cock in my mouth and began sucking him off. “Yusra,” he moaned again and again, pulling on the back of my hair. He ejaculated and I spat his cum in the dirt.
Rami got on his knees to suck me off. When I was done, I said I’d kill him if he ever mentioned what we did to anyone.
“Relax, Yusra,” he said.
I punched him in the face, breaking his jaw. As he wept on the ground, blood pouring from his mouth, I said he could only call me Yusra when I said so. Otherwise, he was to call me Yasser. Rami’s mouth was wired shut for the next six weeks. When he healed, we continued sucking each other off under the oak tree. And then, I married Samar and he married a woman from the town across the valley. We lost touch after I left the country.
* * *
It’s Friday and I’m back at the mosque in Hamtramck. I’ve had my iced coffee and cupcakes and now I’m ready to pray again as Yusra. I look around for Petra but I don’t see her anywhere. I enter the prayer room and head toward the back.
“Salam wa alaykum,” the women tell me as I waddle past them.
“Wa alaykum wa salam,” I respond. I see the suspicion in their eyes and I tell myself, “No one knows. No one will ever know.”
Following prayer, I retrieve my heels from the cubby and slip them on and sip tea in the foyer. It’s while I’m standing among the women that I notice Petra coming out of the prayer room. We make eye contact, and she darts over to me.
“I arrived late today,” she explains. “My husband called, and when he calls, I have to answer because I don’t know when he’ll call again.”
“I miss the sound of my husband’s voice.”
“Allah rest him,” she says, and holds my free hand.
“Is your husband not in Hamtramck?”
“He’s away at sea.” Her eyes fill with tears. She removes a tissue from her purse and blows her nose. “I need to buy a few groceries from the store. Care to join me?”
“I’d love to.”
We step outside and walk down the street. In heels I tower over Petra.
“I’m glad you came back,” she says. “I was hoping to see you again.”
“How come?”
“Because I don’t know any other Lebanese. I only leave Hamtramck when my husband is in town. I don’t drive.”
I tell her that a few Yemeni restaurants and cafés have opened in East Dearborn. When Samar and I first arrived in Dearborn, the eastside was dominated by Lebanese. Then the Iraqis entered the area, and the Yemenis soon followed.
“I’m still new to America,” Petra says. “I don’t have many friends.”
At the grocery store, Petra buys milk, a carton of eggs, and some vegetables. I insist on carrying the plastic bag.
“My house is just around the corner,” she says.
“I’ll walk you there.”
Petra lives on the upper floor of a duplex. At the stoop I hand her the bag.
“When does your husband return from sea?” I ask.
“He should be back by the fall. He works as a sailor on the Great Lakes. Sometimes, they go out to sea. He’s now on the eastern coast of Africa. He sends me the most beautiful pictures of the ports he’s visited.”
She invites me inside for tea. I say that I’ve got to get back to work.
“Where do you work?”
“Oh . . . At a butchery. I clean in the back.”
Petra suggests that we exchange numbers. We do.
“Do you have any children?” she asks.
“I’m all alone.”
That evening, as Samar and I are watching TV, I receive a text message from Petra. She’s sent me a picture of her husband standing on the bow of his freighter. He must be in his early thirties and has buckteeth. He’s squinting in the sun, his black hair blowing in the wind. In all the years I’ve lived in Dearborn, I’ve never had a Yemeni friend. I feel rotten that some of my buddies think Yemenis are beneath Lebanese. It’s because Yemenis are mostly darker skinned than us, and thinking of dark skin reminds me of Jamon, who owns a gas station in Detroit near the border with Dearborn. One day, after stopping at an Arab butchery in the Eastern Market where I buy my meat in bulk, I was on my way back to Dearborn when I stopped to fill my tank. I went inside the little mart to pay for my gas when I saw a Black man reading behind the register. He was holding a book in one hand while biting the nails of his other hand. His fingers were long and slender. He put the book on the counter and nudged his glasses up his nose. After I paid, I asked if he was enjoying his book, and he said that he was and recommended the novels of Walter Mosely.
Two weeks later I returned to the gas station. The man handed me a copy of Devil in a Blue Dress.
“Thought I’d give this to you in case you returned,” he said. “It’s Mosely’s first novel and my favorite.”
I stayed for an hour, just talking in my halfway decent English. Jamon was around my age and was born and raised in Detroit. He refused to cross the border into Dearborn, not even to eat the city’s delicious Arabic food.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Don’t you know about what happened in ’67?”
“Of course. The Six-Day War.”
“No. I’m talking about the Detroit Rebellion. We went into the streets to protest against police brutality. The mayor of Dearborn lined up police forces on the border and told his men to shoot any Black person who entered the city. Only he didn’t refer to us as Black folk. The man was mayor for nearly forty years, and from what I hear, he didn’t care for Arabs either.”
I then understood why so few Black people lived in Dearborn. I didn’t tell Jamon that some people in our community called Blacks “Abeed,” the Arabic word for slaves. The next time I visited Jamon was after he closed for the day. We went into his backroom where he made a pot of coffee. We sat and talked about Devil in a Blue Dress. I had read the book in two days, I liked it that much.
When things got quiet between me and Jamon, he began biting his nails. He bit them until they bled.
“Don’t do that!” I said. I got up from my chair, took his hand, and sucked on his fingers, swallowing his blood. He stood up and leaned in to kiss me. His breath smelled of Pet Milk. I shoved him back and he fell on his ass; his glasses flew across the room. I picked them up and handed them to him and then helped him up. He winced in pain. I left the gas station without another word.
These days, when I’m driving back from the Eastern Market, I take another route to Dearborn. If I drive by Jamon’s gas station I fear that I’ll stop to see if he’s there.
What’s your husband’s name? I text Petra.
Mohammed. What was your husband’s name? Allah rest him.
Yasser.
Samar looks at me.
“The guys,” I tell her, shaking my head. The guys mean my WhatsApp group made up of my Dearborn buddies. We mostly send each other filthy jokes.
* * *
On Sunday, Samar and I attend my friend’s barbeque. We’re sitting in his backyard where he’s grilling kabobs and lamb chops. All my buddies are here. We sit in plastic chairs on one side of the yard and our wives on the other. There’s a hookah for every two men just as there’s a hookah for every two women, although Samar doesn’t smoke and glances at me every now and then.
I watch the women chat and smoke as I sip a bottle of nonalcoholic beer; I wish I could sit with them. The men are dying to tell raunchy jokes, but with our wives nearby we can’t. If I was drinking real alcohol maybe then I’d forget about what I’m thinking, and what I’m thinking is that I can’t wait for Friday to come, that it’s too far into the week. My phone pings with a text. I pull it out and see a message from Petra and instantly I’m giddy. She’s asking if I’d like to come over for coffee. We’re on the same wavelength!
I wish, but I’m busy with family, I write.
Another time . . . I haven’t heard from Mohammed in days. Do you think he’s safe?
Don’t worry. Allah is watching over him.
“Who’re you texting, dirty boy?” my friend Ali asks me.
Startled, I look up at him. A wide grin stretches across his greasy face. “Sleiman. He works at the shop.”
“But you’re closed on Sundays.”
“We’re working out his schedule for the week.”
Ali leaves his chair to refill his plate and I put my phone on silent and return to texting.
There’s something that’s bothering me, Yusra, Petra writes.
I fear that she’s found me out and I begin to panic. My hands are trembling as I text: What is it, habibti?
I hear that sailors spend so much time at sea that when they return to land they’re hungry for women. Do you think Mohammed is cheating on me?
Relieved, I type: But he loves you. I can see it in his eyes, from that picture you sent me.
You’re right. I’m just being paranoid. We’ve talked about having kids!
“Still texting Sleiman, dirty boy?” Ali asks me. I didn’t even notice that he returned to his chair. Across the yard Samar is staring at me.
Petra continues to text; I’ll arouse more suspicion if I respond to her. I go inside the house and step out the front door and walk onto the sidewalk and call Petra.
“You’ll make a wonderful mother,” I tell her. My voice is high pitched and squeaky.
“You’re so comforting, Yusra. I thank Allah for bringing us together. The women in my neighborhood are nice to me, but I can’t open up to them like I can with you.”
“You’re like my own daughter, habibti,” I say, and I go on and on about how much I love Hamtramck and Yemeni people. I’m not sure what I’m saying but it all sounds good to me; I’m overcome with joy. And it’s then that I notice an Arab teenage boy on the street, sitting on his bicycle with one foot on the asphalt. He’s staring at me like I’m a zoo animal.
“What’s wrong with your voice, uncle?” he asks me in English.
I put my phone on mute and switch back to Yasser. “Fuck off,” I tell him.
* * *
That evening, while Samar and Abdu are watching TV, I go upstairs to the master bathroom and look at my reflection in the mirror. I’ve had my mustache since I could grow facial hair and can’t imagine myself without it. Still, I pull out my electric razor and put it to my face. As my black and gray bristles fall in the sink, I feel lighter, like I’m floating. I wash and dry my face and then lick my smooth upper lip. I go downstairs and sit in my recliner in the living room. When Samar looks at me, she screams. Abdu cups his mouth.
“How do I look?” I ask them.
“Strange,” Abdu says.
“What’s gotten into you, Yasser?” Samar asks me.
“Nothing.”
“Who were you texting at the barbeque?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I saw you texting like your fingers were on fire.”
“What’s going on?” Abdu asks.
“I was texting Sleiman,” I say, and I tell her the same lie that I told Ali. Samar does and doesn’t believe me. Abdu is still confused.
“There’s nothing to worry about, habibi,” I tell him.
* * *
The urge to see Petra is unbearable. On Monday I call the dry cleaner and tell him I need to pick up my belongings today. Until that time comes, I cut up meat and chicken and make more of my special blend of spices. Abdu sits at the register with his face buried in his phone and Sleiman is in the back carving up another cow. Later, Sleiman leaves for the day and I go out to buy lunch for Abdu and me. We eat our sandwiches and drink coffee in silence. I prefer it this way because all I can think about is driving to Hamtramck. About twenty minutes before I’m supposed to leave, I make kafta for Petra. I’m mixing the greens into the meat with my cleaver and free hand when Abdu asks me who the order is for.
I stop what I’m doing. “Why does it matter?”
Abdu fiddles with his thumbs, which he does when he’s nervous. “I spoke to Sleiman. He said you never texted him over the weekend.”
I raise the cleaver above my head and slam it into the cutting board, breaking the wood in half.
“What the fuck!” Abdu says.
“The kafta is for a poor widow. She’s the one I was texting. I didn’t mention her to your mother because it doesn’t look good—me texting another woman. The widow is old enough to be your grandmother. She came in one day when you were off.”
Abdu nods. He does and doesn’t believe me. He returns to his phone.
I take out another cutting board.
* * *
“I’ve brought you kafta,” I tell Petra, standing on her stoop. I texted her that I was bringing early dinner. I’m in my black getup. In the van I changed into my dress and put on makeup in a hurry. “The meat is from my work.”
“Bless your hands. Come in, ya ikhti.” Ikhti, my sister. It sounds wonderful.
I follow her upstairs and enter her two-bedroom apartment. She removes her hijab and unpins her shiny black hair and lets it fall down to her shoulders.
“We can grill the meat out on the kitchen balcony,” she says. “The balcony is private, so no one will see you if you’d like to remove your niqab.”
“Oh, I’d prefer to keep it on.”
I grill the meat with onions and tomatoes as Petra sets the table and makes a pitcher of fresh lemonade. I told her that I already ate and not to account for me, but she has. Once the meat and vegetables are cooked, I carry the food on a tray inside and we sit at the table.
“Wouldn’t you rather remove your gloves and niqab?” Petra asks. “It’s only you and me here.”
I knew this moment would come and I’m prepared. “I have a skin rash. And I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t mind what you look like.”
“It’s a really bad rash, with pus and blisters. I often get these rashes in the summer. I’ve got allergies, and in this heat—”
“Yusra, I don’t mind.” She’s looking straight into my eyes, into my soul.
“The rash…”
“I already know, Yusra. I knew from the moment I first saw you. It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone. Trust me.”
I remember the terrifying thrill of sucking Rami off in the shade of the oak tree as Yusra. That was over forty years ago; desire seared through me then. That same burn is in me now, heating my skin. I pray that Petra doesn’t betray me.
I remove my niqab.
Petra smiles and takes a bite of kafta. “Delicious,” she says. As she continues to eat, I stand up and remove my gloves and abaya.
“Nice dress,” Petra says with a full mouth.
I sit back down and join her in the meal. My feet are aching; I keep my heels on.
Ghassan Zeineddine is an assistant professor of English at the University of Michigan Dearborn. His fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness, Pleiades, TriQuarterly, Fiction International, The Common, Epiphany, and Iron Horse Literary Review, among other places. He is co-editor of the forthcoming creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. Ghassan lives with his wife and two daughters in Ann Arbor, Michigan.