Three parties, p.17
Three Parties, page 17
“Yah Allah!” Firas’s mother shouted.
“Are you okay?” his father asked.
“Nothing bruised but my ego,” Abdullah answered, to another eruption of cackles.
“I’m okay, too,” added Mr. Lindstrom, who would inevitably bruise elsewhere.
“Firas, is your mind still crazy or can you fix the sofa for our guests?”
Holding up a fragment of the shattered sofa leg, he returned her icy stare. “What exactly do you think can be done about this, Mama?”
“I’m sure you will figure it out. In the meantime, I’m going upstairs to pray the maghrib.”
“I’ll join you,” said his father.
“Maybe you should ask her if she minds,” Firas said.
The entire room came to a standstill. “Why would she mind?” his father asked, taken aback. All eyes turned to Firas’s mother, who scoffed without even a hint of anger or surprise.
“See?” she said. “Crazy.” She turned to Firas. “Get upstairs and do some praying yourself.” Then she walked away, her husband right behind her, and Firas pondered the expression on her face, hidden from his father’s view, as she climbed up the stairs to their room.
Ibtisam, the painfully sweet second-oldest cousin, turned to Jido and flashed a set of bleached teeth that pierced his eyes. “And what are you wearing tonight, Haj?”
“A diaper, what the fuck is it to you?”
Without even flinching, she replied: “Well that makes two of us, Haj! Twinsies!” More laughter, though now with fluctuating levels of sincerity. Jido rolled his eyes and departed down the corridor.
“You know,” Suhad said, addressing the cousins, “you guys are unfashionably early. Maybe we should grab a slice of pizza before the party?” Just as she saw Firas’s mouth twitching: “And don’t worry, Firas, I’m sure the cousins can spot me a few bucks for now.”
“Definitely! Pizza’s on us for everyone who wants to join!” said Samira, the quartet’s least oblivious member.
Before Firas could object with another firm yet increasingly ineffectual I’m serving food!, Suhad, the cousins, and even Mr. Lindstrom, were already out the door.
Still crouched in the corner of the room, the bile rising once again, Firas muttered under his breath: “I should just cancel this party.”
A shrill gasp startled him, knocking him off his balance and tipping him over for a light fall. He realized then that Mazen was still in the room. His eyes wide, his mouth agape, he stared at his older brother as though he’d just said the most hurtful thing imaginable. Firas waited for some sort of verbal response, some explanation that could enlighten him as to why his brother appeared so perturbed, and what, if anything, he was meant to do about it. But Mazen said nothing. He simply fled the room and scurried up the stairs, shutting his bedroom door loudly enough to startle Firas once more.
Firas fetched some superglue from his room and set to work, as best he could, on the broken sofa leg. While he did, he thought about Mrs. Tullinson. He wished so much that they’d met before his failed twelfth birthday party. Perhaps she could have dissuaded him from having it, insisted instead on making him the banana chocolate pancakes he grew up to love. If only she were still around, she could even have dissuaded him from throwing this party. She could have spared him all the trouble it took to plan and execute it only to watch it crumble to dust, bit by aching bit.
But she wouldn’t have dissuaded him. She would have gently nudged him to face his fears. She cherished the time they spent together all those nights playing board games by her fireplace, but her enjoyment was always tinged with sorrow, for a young man like Firas had so much more to offer the world beyond the wholesome fun splayed across her living room floor. The possibility that he might go the way of her son, killed not by the twitchy swallow of a nearby lake but by the sharp claws of misery, never ceased to loom over her. If Firas had come out, at least reached Stage 4, he could have shared with her a joy whose bounty grew from honesty. How many more honest moments would elude him throughout his life? And this was unlike his twelfth birthday party; people were going to come. People were already coming. They came early because they couldn’t wait to celebrate with him. Now, finally, after all these years, he was going to get the celebration, the joy, the freedom he deserved.
And yet…he still sensed something was missing. It was the worst sense of something missing, because that sense was not coming from his mind, it was not based on anything rational, anything that could be explained or analyzed for the purposes of finding a solution. This sense emanated from somewhere deeper. He had forgotten something, some detail, small enough not to be noticed yet capable of crashing the entire mechanism of his life. But what could it be?
He suddenly began to regret not inviting Kashif. Firas would have used him as a crutch—but so what? Crutches are inherently temporary, and he would have eventually stood all on his own. There was no shame in it. And yet still he couldn’t bring himself to make the call.
He turned the couch right side up to see if the newly glued leg would hold. It did, but that could easily change the second someone sat on it again. He figured it might make for a good laugh, ease his tension. So he abandoned it and headed towards the stairs to go up and get dressed. But he stopped, abruptly, when he heard fighting in the hall.
“Baba, why are you making my life harder?”
Firas watched the interaction between his father and grandfather, the former’s hair still a mess from his shower. It had been a long time since he’d seen his father look so dejected. But nothing could have worsened matters than Jido’s response to what was essentially a rhetorical question:
“Because it needs to be harder.”
Firas’s father had no words, and would not have been able to voice them even if he had, for the old man kept on going:
“You’re making a mistake raising your children. There is no family in this house. There’s a man and a woman and three youths. You’re all spare parts, so corroded by Time you’ll never manage to fit back together!”
For a split second, Firas’s father appeared ready to say something, but he knew the old man wouldn’t let him say it; he knew it would immediately be rendered obsolete by the vitriol to come.
“These children are not yours. You let go of them. You surrendered them. You’re a failure as a father.” Jido’s head sank. “So am I.” As Firas’s father debated whether to defend himself, Jido’s eyes arose and landed on Firas idling by the banister. Firas wanted his grandfather to look away, to look anywhere else, at anyone and anything but him. “And so your son will be.”
And that was it. That was the last thing his grandfather would ever say to him. “Take me back to the nursing home,” he told Firas’s father, the words spoken at the lowest volume he’d ever shown.
Within fifteen minutes, his parents were getting the old man into the car and driving away. Firas still needed to get dressed, set the tables, and complete a hundred other tasks. He had also scheduled a ten-minute break to cry. He had resolved not to cry on this day, but the break could perhaps still serve another purpose. It never hurts to prepare oneself just in case, even as Firas remained undeterred. And he was undeterred. Time would never grant him another chance. It hadn’t even granted him this one; it had simply let just enough moments slip from its grasp for him to catch like snowflakes on his tongue, no two the same, neither in their formation nor in where they land, similar only in the way they vanish from consciousness, only in the fact that they could never be reclaimed and never be recreated.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
His outfit for the evening fit perfectly. Firas was concerned he may have lost weight over the course of the past week due to the stress leading up to the party. But he looked elegant in his simplicity of style. He smiled at his reflection. A small victory he was needing more and more as the deadline approached.
He sat on his bed, and although he had no intention of crying, he felt he should use this time to enjoy the quiet that now permeated the house. His parents were not yet back from the nursing home, nor were Suhad, Mr. Lindstrom, and the cousins from the pizza parlor. Even Maysa was gone, Firas having informed her that he would not be requiring her services until the cleanup and sending her home for a few hours. Rarely did silence occur inside the Dareer house, even when, as was often the case, each member of the family was in a different room. Regardless whether his bedroom door was closed, Firas could hear Suhad traipsing up and down the stairs in thick-heeled boots; he could hear his mother clanging silverware as she set the table; he could hear his father watching television in his bedroom and leaving it on after falling asleep.
He didn’t want to be thinking about anything. He wanted to enjoy some peace of mind, enjoy it as though it were his last chance, because it very well may be. Yet he couldn’t help himself. He still had so much left to consider. He had far more to contend with now than when he awoke this morning, which seemed like a million mornings ago. In the wake of discovering his mother’s affair, suffering Jido’s scorn, maneuvering around Maysa’s sabotage, and lingering in the profound tenderness of Kashif’s lips against his cheek, his announcement seemed to portend something even worse, much worse, than everything that preceded it. And what would happen then? What was to come in its immediate aftermath? Even Firas could hardly plan for that.
A week earlier, he had booked himself a four-night stay at a hotel in Corktown. He knew without question that his parents would not want to see or speak to him for some time, and he couldn’t bear to be around his friends until after he managed to firmly regain his footing. The hotel offered free breakfast and Wi-Fi, though he hardly imagined himself eating or going online. He would even leave behind his phone, cut himself off from his world until all its pieces reassembled into a quasi-recognizable image. After the fourth day, if his parents were still angry or disappointed or, in a worse case, vindictive, or, in an even worse case, indifferent, he had planned to stay with Tyrese until he could find his own place. But the newly ambiguous status of his relationship cast doubt on this portion of the agenda. He hadn’t planned for a problem with Tyrese. Tyrese seemed the only constant in his life, the only factor that would never vary. And he didn’t. It was Firas who varied, it was Firas who turned their relationship into something it was not. He set the rules and then he broke them, figuring Tyrese would go along but ultimately losing everything. But he also hadn’t expected a promotion, which came with a salary, albeit an unimpressive one. He could now afford a few more nights at the hotel if need be, a few more moments of quiet to no longer have to think about anything at all.
But while that settled the matter of his thoughts, what of his feelings? What was the plan for those intrusions on the human heart? Firas was not worried about all feelings. He wasn’t worried about anger or sorrow or fear. These were manageable emotions, ones wholly dependent on internal factors and thereby capable of being subdued and eventually expelled. One can choose to be angry at/sad about/fearful of the outside world and one can choose not to be. Nor was he particularly worried about feeling lonely. He had enough friends to whom he could turn, and who would likely offer him support after witnessing firsthand his family’s disdain. And even if he had no friends to support him, one can just as easily feel lonely when not alone and be alone without feeling lonely. As far as he was concerned, none of these potential feelings posed any real threat to him and his path forward. What did pose a threat was despair. Despair comes as much from the external world as it does from the internal, and the choice to subdue it or expel it is not entirely in one’s control. One cannot maintain hope solitarily; it’s too expansive a feeling, too fragile and spontaneous to count as anything less than a sheer miracle. Hope never stems from anything rational. Nothing drives it, yet almost everything is driven by it. It is the ultimate motivation for human progress, yet it brushes over humanity so fleetingly. There is a shortage of hope in the world, and were Firas to retain a piece of it, he would need to wrest it from the hands of another lost soul. But could he? Would he be strong enough for such a fight in his vulnerable state? While their feelings are still raw, people often do things they later come to regret: they quit jobs they need, start fights they can’t finish, disown children they raised and loved. Could Firas, for all his meticulous planning, make such a grave mistake?
He also considered that his parents might try to contact him with some inane plan to “fix” the problem, some trek to a conversion therapy center in the middle of a Mormon town. He’d heard rumors of an organization in Utah where the counselors theorized that homosexuality arose in men because they’d not gotten enough male affection throughout their youth, leading the older male counselors to wrap their arms tightly around the young converts’ bodies for hours on end until this affection they were receiving finally satiated their thirst for cock.
On the other hand, his parents might try to convert him in another, less scientific way, or rather a different kind of science, trading psychological tools for anatomical ones. They once arranged a dinner party for their friends, a cheerful Turkish couple who brought with them their daughter. This daughter, a pre-med student, was pleasant and charming throughout the entire evening, cracking jokes about her red hair and alabaster skin and the shock on White people’s faces when she explained to them that no, in fact, red hair did not originate in Ireland or Scandinavia but in Central Asia, which meant she had, by geographical proximity, more claim to it than Patrick O’Shaughnessy or Astrid Eriksson, and the Dareers and their guests laughed merrily at that and at every other thing that was said during the evening until the parents went into the living room and simultaneously chatted and eavesdropped to see if the chemistry between their offspring was there and lo and behold it wasn’t. Firas had long sensed that they might try again, and now he was almost certain of it. As soon as he refused the offer—or the command, as it was likely to be—his parents would either find a more effective strategy or opt for a clean break, an abrupt stop to all forms of communication and the slow erasure of their firstborn child from their memories.
Had Anton gone through with his lavender marriage in the end? Firas took out his phone and typed Anton’s name into the search engine, thinking that a wedding photo might appear in the results.
He was floored.
There was Anton draped in a rainbow flag on the streets of Moscow. He was alone (though a boot headed in his direction protruded from the edge of the frame) and dressed in a full-length sable fur coat, underneath which Firas could see he was shirtless and suspected he was pants-less.
Anton had actually done it. He had leapt from Stage 3 to Stage 8 in one of the most notoriously homophobic regions of the world. Were there a feeling to describe the all-too-common mixture of pride and envy, Firas would have unleashed its width and length and depth across the landscape of his humble Detroit neighborhood, and continued to unleash it until it shot all the way up into the stratosphere where doctrines wilt like petals then burn like embers.
He kept staring at the photo, letting its vibrancy—the rainbow flag blending into the backdrop of Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Anton’s pale face framed by shoulder-length ebony hair—nourish him until his own moment came.
But the more he stared at the photo, the more its light began to dim. Because now, inching towards his fateful party, he realized that Anton’s eventual disregard of his messages was not the result of the increasing mundanity of their conversations.
They arrested him.
They must have. There were no reports anywhere in the search results, but what was the likelihood that such reports would be made public? Anton’s courage may have gotten him not only arrested but also tortured and killed.
Arrested. Tortured. Killed.
Firas pictured these words in his head: stooped and sickening gargoyles, as stiff in their composition as in their composure, dusty pearls for circles in their wide, haunting eyes, their bodies now rumbling to life through air ripped from human lungs and light snatched from murky skies. How lanky they were. How towering. These were quiet words, words that dripped, streaking black, slimy ink across the surface of his mind to imprint the chiaroscuro portrait of his bruised and bloodied friend. No, Firas was not in Russia; yes, his map differed from Anton’s, and Tyrese’s, and Cetan’s, and Professor Markum’s. But the starting point, for each of them, was the same.
Firas gazed back at his reflection. Despite the disturbing nature of his thoughts, he took solace in how clear they were, clearer than they had been all day. He wished for his thoughts to always be so clear, for the noise to always fade. He needed to return to the preparations, but if the silence remained, he told himself he would allow his break to go on just a little while longer, for it was far too precious to squander.
Unfortunately, he started to hear something.
A buzz. He remembered hearing a buzz in the flower shop that morning, thinking, momentarily, that he was losing his sanity, that it was all in his head. He gave himself the benefit of the doubt and assumed it was real. A real buzz. But from what precisely? It was too persistent to be a doorbell, too melodic to be a fridge. He waited a minute, listening intently until his ear whittled down the noise like an archeologist scraping the surface of a buried fossil and a discernible sound emerged.
It was music.
His music.
Someone was playing “Flight of the Bumblebee.” He had connected his laptop to the Bluetooth speaker in the living room, and someone had then gone into his playlist and started it. But that didn’t make sense. No one was home; he would’ve heard them. Now he considered the other alternative, that it was indeed just in his head. The evening’s suspense was building in his mind, the terror, the excitement, all of it. Firas was fortifying his nerve, letting the tubas, the trombones, the trumpets, the horns, the bassoons, the contrabassoons, the clarinets, the oboes, the flutes, the English horn, the piccolo, all shoot across each corner of his mind and rebound again and again until every part of him absorbed every instrument and all the notes with which they graced the score.
