Layliyah
It turned him on to see her belly dancing the Dubka in her wood-panelled basement. Her wide, flat pelvis and those hard breasts shaking in a way he had never seen before. A throng of Arab relatives held hands and circled her, not letting anyone in. They took synchronized steps to the repeated, primal beats of a base drum, which was struck and swung side to side by her proud father. At the front of the line a man jigged and stamped his feet, waving a white flag.
Nick stood a safe distance away. Shari once explained the ritual particulars of the dance, how it was once performed between women, but he had no desire to test the waters tonight. He found it difficult to remember her as the same girl who climbed in from his bedroom window such a short time ago.
“I’m leaving for good. They won’t let me breathe without mentioning it over and over to me.”
Her curly hair was pulled back that night. She scuttled in, having scaled the antenna pole, making herself comfortable on his bed. Nick smoked a cigarette at his computer, blocked on a stilted paragraph. He needed to complete an essay on “the illusions of film noir,” necessary for him to graduate with a communications degree. Shari huffed and puffed when he put his schoolwork before her. She had given up on school to take a job as a waitress at the El Amir—her father’s Middle Eastern restaurant. School did little, her parents once remarked, to help her find a proper Lebanese man to marry.
Nick ignored her nonetheless. He knew she wasn’t serious about running away from home. She simply had an uncanny tendency to shock him with blunt statements that made him think twice about her true intentions.
“Make me pregnant.”
He snapped his head around to see her inviting him to his bed with parting legs.
“I’m not ready to be a father.”
“You’re not ready to be anything.”
And so she pouted like a little girl, a stark contrast from the woman in waiting on the night of the Layliyah. Shari seemed more to resemble her parents—the friendly, food-bearing neighbours, who were cultural fanatics on their own suburban corner lot. Over the years, Nick had noticed that the population of Arab immigrants had assimilated nicely into their small Canadian town. So much so that their block resembled a village with uniform one story houses and replicated landscapes translating further into communal beliefs. According to their parental propaganda, Shari was to marry from the old country, a Lebanese man, the destiny of her birthright. She was to marry within their circle, and dance happily ever after.
She seemed too busy to talk.
“Shari, can I have a word with you, in private?”
“I can’t right now, Nick. The Layliyah is important to my family. My father will get upset with me. My behaviour is a reflection upon him. The father of the bride always throws the Layliyah for the daughter the night before the wedding, and the bride must show that she is grateful.”
“I know that but,” Nick tried to say something poignant, but the environment overwhelmed him. The scent of cooked meat mixed with baked goods, sweet perfume and musky cologne hung in the air. Buxom, shorter girls bumped and passed him on their way to the food table, keeping him off-balance.
“Nick honey, have something to eat. I think it’s about time you tried Kibi.”
A silky hand with long nails and cold sharp rings tickled the back of his neck. Shari’s mother swivelled around to face him. Nick had noticed her staring at him from the moment he entered the muggy, smoky basement. Six months ago she knocked on the front door of his home with a similar concern. She had taken a seat at Nick’s kitchen table, while he had listened from his bedroom upstairs, like a little boy in trouble.
“Nicolas does not belong with my Sharifa. They are too different.” Her accented pitch haad risen with the words she wished to emphasize, mainly “not” and “too.”
Nick’s mother had listened as she set the table for dinner, never failing to include a third plate. The third dish kept up the façade that Nick’s parents had a marriage, despite their separation eight years ago. Nick’s father would often show up in an attempt to save Nick the embarrassment of admitting his parents were divorced in principle. With this arrangement, Nick’s mother also avoided the awkwardness of having the neighbours know that she had been abandoned for another woman and a gambling addiction. Nick had accepted this dysfunctional stalemate as a boy, but now he despaired of it in the company of neighbours like Shari’s mother who were adamant about the sanctity of marriage and judgmental to boot.
“I didn’t realize Nick was so serious about Shari, I mean, Sharifa. I had assumed they were just friends.”
Nick’s mother was a short, plump, Canadian-born woman of “mixed origins” with thick glasses and pale skin, a humble contrast to Shari’s mother, who was purebred, tanned and always decorated with gold whenever she left home. Nick’s mother finally took a seat at the table waiting for a tiny pot of Turkish coffee to boil. Shari’s parents had introduced the fortune-telling drink to Nick’s mother. She often tried to impress them by serving it when they visited. Otherwise, she loathed the strong, syrupy coffee.
“Please. Tell him to stay away. It will best for the both of them. My husband will be very upset. He doesn’t know a thing, but he is beginning to suspect.”
At the Layliyah, Shari’s mother pointed with an open hand to a tray of raw meat, red as a beating heart, garnished with sprigs of parsley.
Although Nick was a frozen food enthusiast, he had heard much about Kibi, this Middle Eastern delicacy, placed alongside baskets of pita bread. Shari’s mother managed to pull him away to an area that appeared to be an elevated garden of food in great quantities. She urged him to walk. With a grateful smile, Nick followed the cattle line of scooping guests. And with every stall, he glanced back to the culminating Dubka. The dance had reached its climax once again, with applause, and a polite kiss from a man freshly emigrated from Lebanon. A distant relative of the family, he wore a toupee. Shari had known him little more than two months, and he spoke broken English. He was rather square-bodied, with a pointed chin and a dark unibrow. He appeared suddenly upon the scene, as secretly as Nick would leave that night, without the customary good wish.
Preparing for the wedding mass evoked the same anxiety for Nick. He stepped in front of the mirror to consider his latest breakout. The red raspberry patch above his left eye seemed to make, in contrast, the rest of his complexion paler. His light hair, with reddish undertones and matching red freckles on his nose and cheeks, made it difficult to use cover-up makeup. He had never felt the need to use makeup before, but he wanted to hide this recent insecurity. Shari had often treated their relationship the same way.