the days of the rest of her life stacked together like pages. If only she could flip through them, so she knew what was to come.
Isra broke his gaze and returned her eyes to the graveyards. Perhaps he was only nervous, she told herself. Or perhaps he didn’t like her. It was reasonable. After all, she had never been called beautiful. Her eyes were small and dark, her jaw angular. More than once, Mama had mocked her sharp features, saying her nose was long and pointed, her forehead too large. She was certain Adam was looking at her forehead now. She pulled on her hijab. Perhaps she should bring out the box of Mackintosh’s chocolates Mama saved for special occasions. Or maybe she should brew some chai. She started to offer him some grapes but remembered they were not yet ripe.
As she turned to face Adam once more, she noticed his knees shaking. Then, in a flash, he zoomed closer and planted a kiss on her cheek.
Isra slapped him.
Shocked, she waited for him to apologize, to muster up something about how he hadn’t meant to kiss her, how his body acted of its own accord. But he only looked away, face flushed, and buried his eyes between the graves.
With great effort, she forced herself to look at the cemeteries. She thought perhaps there was something between the graves she could not see, some secret to make sense of what was happening. She thought about A Thousand and One Nights, how Princess Shera had wanted to become human so she could marry Sindbad. Isra didn’t understand. Why would anyone want to be a woman when she could be a bird?
“He tried to kiss me,” Isra told Mama after Adam and his family left, whispering so Yacob wouldn’t hear.
“What do you mean, he tried to kiss you?”
“He tried to kiss me, and I slapped him! I’m sorry, Mama. Everything happened so fast, and I didn’t know what else to do.” Isra’s hands were shaking, and she placed them between her thighs.
“Good,” Mama said after a long pause. “Make sure you don’t let him touch you until after the wedding ceremony. We don’t want this American family to go around saying we raised a sharmouta. That’s what men do, you know. Always put the blame on the woman.” Mama stuck out the tip of her pinkie. “Don’t even give him a finger.”
“No. Of course not!”
“Reputation is everything. Make sure he doesn’t touch you again.”
“Don’t worry, Mama. I won’t.”
The next day, Adam and Isra took a bus to Jerusalem, to a place called the US Consulate General, where people applied for immigrant visas. Isra was nervous about being alone with Adam again, but there was nothing she could do. Yacob couldn’t join them because his Palestinian hawiya, issued by the Israeli military authorities, prevented him from traveling to Jerusalem with ease. Isra had a hawiya too, but now that she was married to an American citizen, she would have less difficulty crossing the checkpoints.
The checkpoints were the reason Isra had never been to Jerusalem, which, along with most Palestinian cities, was under Israeli control and couldn’t be entered without a permit. The permits were required at each of the hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks Israel had constructed on Palestinian land, restricting travel between, and sometimes within, their own cities and towns. Some checkpoints were manned by heavily armed Israeli soldiers and guarded with tanks; others were made up of gates, which were locked when soldiers were not on duty. Adam cursed every time they stopped at one of these roadblocks, irritated at the tight controls and heavy traffic. At each one he waved his American passport at the Israeli soldiers, speaking to them in English. Isra could understand a little from having studied English in school, and she was impressed at how well he spoke the language.
When they finally arrived at the consulate, they waited in line for hours. Isra stood behind Adam, head bowed, only speaking when spoken to. But Adam barely said a word, and Isra wondered if he was angry at her for slapping him on the balcony. She contemplated apologizing, but secretly she thought she had nothing to apologize for. Even though they had signed the Islamic marriage contract, he had no right to kiss her like that, not until the night of the wedding ceremony. Yet the word sorry brewed on her tongue. She forced herself to swallow it down.