The Nakeds (26 page)

She looked at him, surprised.

And he pressed his thumb and finger together and lifted them to his mouth, pretending to take a hit of a joint.

“I know what you’re asking for,” she whispered.

Again with the thumb and finger together, again with the inhaling, exhaling.

“I know,”
she said.

“Yes?”

“I don’t know who sells it,” she said, which wasn’t really true, but she didn’t want to get in trouble with him, not this soon, and what was he thinking, asking her something like that before he even knew her?

Nina turned around. “What are you two kids talking about?”

Hannah didn’t know how much of the conversation her mom had heard and didn’t know what to say.

“Hannah will show me around,” Mustafa said.

“Of course she will,” Azeem said. “Everyone get in the car. Let’s get this young man home and fed.”

THE BROTHERS
spoke to each other in Arabic for the first few days, even in front of Nina and Hannah, which made them uneasy, especially when one brother said something apparently very funny and they both started laughing.

“Mustafa’s English will only improve if he speaks it while he’s here,” Nina said.

“I suppose so,” Azeem said.

“And it would improve more quickly if he spoke it to you too,” she said.

“Give him a week or so.”

The four of them were sitting in the den. Mustafa was sitting where Azeem usually parked himself, in the big chair. He rested his arms on the overstuffed armrests and stared at the TV.

Hannah had a book in her lap but looked up, nodding enthusiastically at her mom’s suggestion. “Yes, yes—even to you, Azeem,” Hannah said.

“It would be great if we could all communicate,” Nina said. “We would be like a family.”

Hannah thought she saw Azeem bristle at the word
family
. Of course, he hadn’t told Mustafa exactly what was up between the three of them, who they were to each other.

The nightly news was on with the volume down low, and Mustafa seemed most interested in the screen during commercials, especially when a young woman was putting on lipstick or dancing around in a short skirt.

“You’re right—both of you,” Azeem decided, suggesting that Mustafa use the English he was taught in school. “You’ll be fluent when you go home,” he said.

“Flu?” Mustafa said.

“Flu
ent,
” Azeem corrected him, sounding like Nina. “Don’t worry about it, Mustafa. Talk to us in English from now on.”

Mustafa looked confused.

“Let’s start tomorrow. First thing in the morning, you’ll talk to me in English.”

“To you?” he said, pointing at Azeem.

Azeem nodded. “It’ll be good for you. You’ll know English very well when you return home.”

Mustafa shrugged and turned back to the screen, where a bubblegum commercial had begun. The four of them stared dumbly at the TV set. A cheerful song played and a beautiful blonde woman with a huge pink bubble growing from her mouth raised her eyebrows suggestively.

“Good country,” Mustafa concluded.

•  •  •

Later, when they went to pick up a pizza, Mustafa told Azeem that he’d lost the weight by eating only a quarter of what he desired. When he wanted two bowls of couscous, he allowed himself a small cup. When he wanted ten falafels, he allowed himself two and a half. When he wanted four skewers of lamb, he ate one. He gave up dates, feta, and flatbread, his favorite. He was always wanting more and never satiated and went to sleep thinking about food and dreamt about food and woke up thinking about it too.

Azeem was sympathetic. “I understand wanting more,” he said. “It’s something that gives you pleasure, so you do too much of it. It makes a kind of sense. I always thought your weight had something to do with the medicine, though,” Azeem said. “No?”

Mustafa shook his head.

“What do you think of Nina and Hannah?” Azeem asked him.

“Very nice,” Mustafa said.

“You’re not talking to them much. I know it’s a new place. And it’s much harder using the language in conversation than it is at school. I remember when I first arrived. I barely said anything to anyone. I had only Arab friends.”

“What’s that?” Mustafa asked.

“I only had Arab friends,” he repeated.

“No, I mean, what’s
that
?” He pointed at a Jack in the Box on the corner.

“A fast-food restaurant.”

“A what?”

“They give you food. Fast.”

Mustafa laughed.

Someone cut them off, swerving into their lane, and Azeem called the other driver an asshole.

They were quiet for a block until Mustafa asked, “Who is the woman to you?”

“Nina’s my girlfriend,” Azeem said.

“How long?”

“A few years.”

“That’s a long time.”

Azeem shrugged. “It’s the way things are done here.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me more about your weight loss,” he said.

Mustafa admitted that he used a smaller plate and forced himself to eat slowly. He said it wasn’t easy, that there was always a gnawing emptiness in his stomach. He felt it, even now, telling the story, anticipating the two puny pieces of pizza he’d eat while the rest of them ate until they were satisfied.

“Mom didn’t tell me that you’d lost weight.”

Mustafa said that he made his parents promise not to tell Azeem because he wanted to walk off the plane and surprise him. “You were surprised, right?” he said.

“I
was
surprised. And I’ve got a surprise for you too.” Azeem pulled into a parking spot near the entrance to the pizza place and turned off the car.

Mustafa could smell the garlic and cheese wafting in from the open window. He was unlocking the car, ready to step out, when Azeem stopped him.

“Wait a minute. Let’s talk here first. There’s something I want to tell you about, a place we go on weekends,” he began.

AZEEM BLAMED
his brother’s reticence on the language barrier, but Hannah felt that was an excuse. She thought he’d be friendlier and would make more of an effort. She thought he’d ask her other questions before asking where he could score drugs.

Now that he’d been with them over a week, though, she was getting used to his presence. Sometimes he did more than grunt hello at her. One morning they actually sat together at breakfast and tried to converse. Or she tried to converse and he offered her short answers in between bites of oatmeal.

She tried telling herself that his request for drugs was a way of establishing trust, a test, and perhaps she’d failed, let him down—maybe when she abruptly said she couldn’t help him, he felt insulted.

All he wanted to do, though, was talk to his brother and on the phone to his family and friends, and when Azeem and Nina were out of the house, he wanted to go in the backyard and be alone.

He asked her again and again for pot, calling it
Mary Jane
and
bud
and
happy seed
and
marijuana,
pronouncing the latter surprisingly well, which made her think he’d practiced the word at home. She imagined him preparing for his trip to America, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and saying
marijuana
out loud.

One early evening when Azeem and her mom were in the kitchen preparing dinner, she sat with Mustafa at the table and tried to make conversation. “This table is for picnics,” he began. “It’s a picnic table, right?”

“It is,” she said. “They think it’s contemporary.”

He looked at her.

“Modern,” she said. “New.”

He nodded, understanding. “My brother has changed.”

“I guess so.” She smiled.

“His studies, the place they go on the weekends. How do you say? Unusual,” he said, finding the word.

She laughed.

He leaned in. “I like to buy marijuana,” he whispered.

“I know,” she said. And just then her mom appeared with a steaming roast, Azeem behind her carrying a basket of bread. “Dinner is served,” Azeem said happily.

•  •  •

Mustafa asked her silently in the backseat of the car—again with the pressed fingers at his lips, again with the inhaling and exhaling. Again she shook her head.

“You know, if I get caught—which I won’t—I won’t tell your mom. I won’t—how you say—
snitch
.”

She wondered where he heard the word
snitch
.

She wondered if she could trust him.

She felt herself starting to cave.

That night he knocked on her bedroom door, stuck his face inside and asked her with just his facial expression and shrug.

And she invited him in. And she put down her book and he sat at the foot of the bed. And she told him that she’d ask around. She told him she thought that Head, whose real name was Steven and who lived just three doors away, had stash he was selling. Head, who actually nicknamed himself, was an eleventh grader, the football star at school, who was even more famous for being the best pot dealer around—
best
meaning that he didn’t overcharge you or add oregano to his product.

No, she wouldn’t buy it for him, even if he gave her the money.

It was enough that she’d look into it.

Because she could get in trouble, that’s why.

Stop asking.

And no, absolutely not—she wouldn’t go with him to Head’s house.

He’d have to go over there alone.

“You can tell him I sent you, if it makes you feel better,” she said.

Hannah didn’t smoke pot herself, at least not regularly, but she had tried it a few times with Rebecca and Megan. It seemed everyone everywhere was smoking it, though, even the twins at the nudist camp. She couldn’t imagine smoking pot
there,
how nervous she’d be, and how funny their naked bodies would become then.

Mustafa told her that he wasn’t ready for the nudist camp yet. He wasn’t nearly as opposed to it as Hannah had been, but he needed time to adjust to America first, he said. “Hannah and I will stay home and acquaint ourselves,” he told Azeem, which Hannah thought meant: I’ll smoke pot and Hannah can try to talk to me and I can ignore her and she can go to her room and read her stupid bug books and I’ll watch American TV.

On Saturday morning, after her mom and Azeem had left for The Elysium, Hannah called Rebecca and begged her to skip the movies and mall just this once so she wouldn’t have to be alone with him.

“What does he look like?” Rebecca said.

“Like a weirdo,” Hannah said.

“Why should I come, then?”

“To see
me
.”

“Is he cute at all?”

“No,” she said.

“You owe me,” Rebecca said.

•  •  •

When Mustafa returned from Head’s house with his baggie of pot, he was in a much better mood. And he cheered up even more when Rebecca, in short-shorts and stretchy blue tube top, walked through the front door.

He told the girls that he’d scored
island bud
. The pot was from Maui and very good, Head had told him. Mustafa was beaming, smiling and animated. It was a side of him Hannah had never seen. “Let’s all smoke this pot from Maui,” he said.

“Yes,” Rebecca said, enthusiastically.

They sat in the backyard and smoked. Mustafa took the first hit and passed the joint to Rebecca. She was smiling at him and giggling before the first joint was gone, and Hannah didn’t know what was so funny. After she was stoned, though, she realized that Mustafa was indeed a comedian.

He leaned back in the lounge chair with his fingers interlaced, his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. He had on a navy blue T-shirt that said something in Arabic across the front and Hawaiian-print shorts, which Hannah thought very appropriate since the pot was from the islands. Stoned, she found this amazing, incredible, and told them about her observation.

“You’re right,” Rebecca said, amazed too. “I wonder what it means.”

“It means I belong here,” Mustafa said.

Hannah knew on some level that it meant nothing, but stoned everything seemed connected and powerful. “I didn’t even know you liked it here, Mustafa. I can’t tell,” she said, looking at him.

“Very much,” he said.

They were quiet for a few minutes.

“It’s not that I don’t like you,” he finally said.

“It’s not that I don’t like you too,” she said.

She didn’t know what they had just said to each other or what it meant, but she thought maybe it was a step forward.

“You really fit in, Mustafa,” Rebecca said.

Hannah looked at her, amazed. What was she talking about?

“I’m very happy here,” he said. “Now that I’ve scored Maui Wowie.”

They all laughed at that, and couldn’t stop laughing. They laughed and laughed until their stomachs hurt and their throats ached, and when they finally stopped laughing, they realized they were ravenous.

In the kitchen, they prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The girls drank orange juice and Mustafa finished off the milk. With his busted-up English, he managed to compliment and insult them at the same time, telling them that Rebecca had the more attractive face of the two but that Hannah had the better body. No one had asked him and Hannah decided that regardless of their moment in the backyard, he was still a weirdo.

After the peanut butter sandwiches, they ate everything else in the fridge, even a green bell pepper, which Hannah had never realized tasted so sweet. They sliced the pepper into strips and dipped it in tahini. They ate spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream and hunks of cheese.

Rebecca could barely understand Mustafa and was continually saying,
What did he just say?
Still, in the bathroom, she admitted that she thought he was cute, in his own way. Hannah was surprised.

“You told me he was huge,” Rebecca said.

“He
was,
” Hannah insisted.

“Did you tell me he was a fatty so you could have him to yourself?” she wanted to know.

“God, no,” Hannah said.

“Because all you have to do is say it and I’ll keep my hands off of him, but he’s foxy,” she said.

When they got back to the living room, Hannah looked at Mustafa carefully, searching his face and body, trying to see what her friend saw, and she couldn’t. He had a hand under his T-shirt and was scratching his chest. “I don’t get it,” she whispered to Rebecca.