The Ruins of Us (7 page)

“Did you really have to wait two years to tell Rosie?” Dan asked. “Why didn’t you own up to it from the beginning?”

“The truth is, I didn’t want to hurt her. I thought it would be easier to just keep going and pretend that nothing had changed.”

Dan closed his hands tight around the steering wheel and gunned the engine a little. Yeah, it was easier. Carolyn had once told him that she’d fallen out of love with him years before she filed the papers. If she hadn’t finally acted, they could have gone on living together out of habit, unhappily, unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

As they pulled in past the chain-link fence that surrounded the compound, the sun was setting over the finger of water that separated Bahrain from Saudi Arabia. There were a few other cars in the parking lot, but none that Dan recognized. When Gulf Oil had closed down the beach compound, instead of razing the old structures it waited instead for the region’s unforgiving climate to demolish the rice-paper houses, pieces of the property disintegrating into the salt-white waters of the Gulf year by year. The roof of the clubhouse was a patchwork and the walls had joined in the slow erosion. The company left behind hundreds of heavy, wood-framed couches and chairs that had filled the temporary houses and offices.

This January night, there were ten habitués clustered around the room, forming small circles as people tried to make conversation over the sound of Fairuz’s voice blaring out of the boom box by the door. Abdullah had brought the system with him on one of their trips out to the bungalow, and he kept an ever-rotating stash of CDs at the clubhouse—mostly old classics like Umm Kulthum and Fairuz, but also a few new Lebanese singers like Haifa Wehbe, whose cleavage provided fodder for Arab morning show hosts but whose music, in Dan’s opinion, fell well short of tolerable. He recalled so vividly the night he and Abdullah had gone to see Fairuz at Jesse Jones Hall in Houston. They had met just a few weeks before when Abdullah was fresh off the boat, waiting in line for food at the student union. Abdullah was standing in a sea of people rushing around grabbing tacos and barbecue sandwiches, looking completely befuddled. “Avoid the Frito pie,” Dan had advised him. They’d shaken hands, and he’d guided Abdullah to Mama Lopez’s taco truck, where he’d bought him two tacos al carbon loaded with white onion and cilantro. At first, Abdullah had been suspicious, but soon he was cramming the food in his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Dan had waited until the following week to introduce him to Mama’s infamous habañero salsa. Afterward, they’d had to stand on the sidewalk blowing their noses for a full fifteen minutes before they dared venture to class.

Soon, it was Abdullah’s turn to shock Dan’s system. When Abdullah invited him to the Fairuz concert, the Middle East was a cluster of countries on a map, a montage of sand and veils and camels if he stretched his imagination a little. The concert was part of Fairuz’s huge
1971
North American tour, and when she sang “Le Beirut,” her arms spread wide and the sleeves of her white dress cascading like gossamer, Abdullah had choked up. At that moment, Dan knew that this was a man to be friends with.

Things were dismal for Arabs then, Abdullah had explained. With the dream of unity destroyed in
1967
and Nasser dead, Beirut seemed to be the one promise Allah had kept. It wasn’t until
1975
that the city fell to civil war, neighbors murdering one another and shelling the centuries-old buildings all to hell.

After the show, Dan and Abdullah had tried to sweet-talk their way backstage, fueled by fantasies of Fairuz’s midnight eyes, her goddess voice. The Lebanese security detail had listened to Abdullah’s plea before spitting on the ground and saying, “Khaleeji dog.” Abdullah had attempted to coldcock the man, but the guard caught his stump mid-swing and then yelled as if he’d touched a stove, pushing the pale, handless arm away from him forcefully. The mysterious phantom hand. Abdullah had told Dan he’d lost the hand in a horse-riding accident—a bad spill in the desert, the horse rolling onto his hand before stumbling back onto its legs. It sounded far-fetched, but Dan didn’t press him. The lack of a hand was story enough.

Someone had dimmed the lights in the bungalow of the Princeton Club so that the yellowing plaster walls, the painted concrete floor, and the faded company furniture took on a romantic, rather than desperate, air of dilapidation. Dan went to the bathroom, and by the time he came out, Abdullah had already made himself a part of the circle of revelers, his hand resting on a man’s shoulder as he listened to him intently. After a few minutes, both men tipped their heads back and laughed. Abdullah had always been that way—eminently sociable and lighthearted. Rosalie teased him for his lack of Arab fatalism, to which he always replied, “Only an asshole could be this wealthy and develop an existential crisis.” But his optimism often resulted in a failure to foresee consequences. Dan knew that despite Abdullah’s attempt to seem unfazed, Rosalie’s anger—its visceral power—had shocked him. And perhaps it was Abdullah’s authentic self-expression, so admired by Dan at the concert, which had made it possible for Abdullah to rationalize his choice to take a second wife. Wasn’t marriage the ultimate expression of that vaunted emotion, that truest love? And if one should be lucky enough to feel love twice in one lifetime, well, why not?

Dan couldn’t hear anything over the tinny feedback of the boom box. He glanced over at Abdullah, who waved. Dan waved back, although he was annoyed to see his friend acting jovial after what had taken place in the driveway of his home. Since learning about Abdullah’s marriage to Isra, Dan had attempted objectivity, tried to step back to see his friend’s triangulated domestic scene through the telescopic lens of cultural relativism. Professors clearing their throats in great halls with cathedral ceilings used that telescope to watch the constellation of Arab lives blink and shine hundreds of light years away. However, most of Dan’s Muslim friends agreed that polygamy was not Islam’s finest allowance, especially in modern times, so he didn’t feel too bad about coming down on Abdullah for it. Could it be that Abdullah actually believed that he’d done nothing wrong? It was pretty obvious that Rosalie would slice off Abdullah’s ears if she could, a tithe for his betrayal. This couldn’t be the life she had planned for herself when she left Texas for the Kingdom, hoping for adulation and homecoming. She’d grown up on the State Oil compound just outside of Al Dawoun and possessed that displaced expatriate child’s longing—more like an illness, really—for a home that no longer existed. She had probably passed a teenaged Abdullah while on shopping excursions to Prince Muhammad Street, so that when she’d met him in Austin, she’d believed him to be the cure for her plaguing ache. Dan went into the kitchen and poured himself a tumbler of Black Label. Bottles were stacked eight deep on the plastic countertops. The green and brown and white glass covered in peeling labels created an accidental beauty that pleased Dan. The mess lent the scene an air of community, as if the clubhouse were a tiny sacked city, and they, the remaining citizenry, tasked with rebuilding. Pressing the cool glass against his forehead, Dan listened to the sounds of the party—the music of ice cubes clinking in glasses, the laughter that pushed its way up and out of the conversation. He moved to the doorway, where he leaned against the frame and watched the room.

Usually, the Princeton Club was a mess of testosterone: pent-up bachelors and bored married execs who just wanted to find the peace that lay in the bottom of a tumbler of whiskey. Dan recognized a few faces, but the three women were strangers. Word was that they were Syrian cousins of one of the men and were trying to find work or love in the Gulf, whichever came first. Their presence electrified the low-ceilinged room. Dan watched the most attractive of the three as she worked the shisha. She looked like she was in her early twenties, but the way she moved her mouth suggested a lifetime of experience. She’d removed her abaya and her beaded black headscarf rested about her straight shoulders. When she leaned in to take the hose from the Saudi next to her, she extended a single arm, milky as the inside of a halved almond.

“Ya Valentino! Bahibak! Why don’t you come over here? We can be usdeeqa’a,” the Syrian said, addressing him by the nickname that Abdullah had given him. She walked over and stood next to him. “Salaam,” she said.

He could smell the scent of Coco Mademoiselle as she swung her hair to one side. In a place where women couldn’t show their faces, perfume was vital, and Coco Mademoiselle was the fragrance of the moment. Every woman in Al Dawoun doused herself in it, and on the hottest days Dan could swear that a cloud of bergamot was visible hovering above the city.

“Salaamu aleikum,” he said. “Aish Shishmik?”

“Fatima.”

That was nearly the extent of his Arabic. Hello. What’s your name? Two decades in a place and he still felt trapped in a Berlitz video:
Beginner’s Arabic for Cursing, Carousing, Unbelieving Scoundrels.
But the Saudis he knew all spoke gorgeous English, so why should he bother? They’d already done the hard work, and he felt that there was something romantic about hearing the burble of unintelligible words. When taking coffee with his friends, he liked to lean back and watch their expressions and gestures as they argued in Arabic, the tiny, gilded coffee cups suspended in their hands like ornaments.

A new song came on, heavy on the bass, and Fatima started dancing. An Olympic-quality undulator, she moved effortlessly, her body gamine and beautiful in its iterations. He wasn’t interested, though. Not really. Dan felt a sense of superiority to all the men out there who had affairs, married and remarried like it was sport. They must not have really been in love, he’d think. In the chaste years since his divorce, he’d started to fancy himself something of a Petrarch, a Florentino Ariza—someone not deterred by romantic futility. But Abdullah fancied him a bore, a eunuch, a big drag. That was OK. Abdullah had never had much patience for the classics, was more of a pulp man himself.

He watched Abdullah, who was talking to a man Dan didn’t recognize and sneaking glances at the young woman who’d joined the group. She had a mouth like a split-open black plum, and she wore a long, midnight-blue dress that tied in a halter somewhere behind the masses of hair that she pushed out of her face. He was annoyed with his friend, his bald desires. Suddenly, the Princeton Club didn’t seem like the best idea. He wanted to be alone, back in his condo, not out indulging his rapacious buddy.

He flipped the lock and moved the sliding back door to the side. A weathered, low-slung deck stretched five or six feet outward before stopping abruptly. Beyond was a short strip of beach, the water moving in gentle, moon-pulled waves. It felt good to be so close to the water, the little South Seas–style clubhouse pushed right up against the shore so that Dan could see the small dark mounds of dying jellyfish on the beach. The air on his face was miraculous, and the lights of Al Dawoun winked along the opposite shore like stars in a tilted sky. To his right, the causeway stretched into the darkness, its concrete supporters invisible so that it looked like it was floating the cars back to the Kingdom. It was late and traffic had thinned out. Dan hunkered in a company chair, its wood cracked from the wet, salty air blowing in off the Gulf. The chair’s cheap upholstery was coming apart to reveal foam cushions, and every time he shifted his weight, he could smell decades of mold.

“Daniel Coleman,” someone said from the shadows along the wall.

“Who’s that?” Dan said, his eyes growing lazy with tiredness.

He watched the glowing red tip of a cigarette flare and fall to the sand.

“Patrick Hastings.”

Dan could see the man’s outline now. He was tall and lean with stylishly unkempt hair, which, backlit as it was from where Dan stood, had clearly thinned since the last time they’d met. Pat had made a pass at Carolyn in the kitchen at one of those hooch-soaked State Oil parties, and Dan had broken Patrick’s wrist in two places with a cast-iron crepe pan.

“Pat, how are you?” Dan said, extending his hand. “It’s been an age.”

“Bloody hell,” Pat said, pausing before he took Dan’s hand. “I heard a rumor that you gave up on this place years ago.”

“Can’t quite tear myself away,” Dan said.

They hadn’t spoken since the night of the party. Carolyn had been so embarrassed that night, she’d insisted they go home immediately, and she’d slept under a sheet on the couch. She had shamed Dan later, telling him he must be some kind of asshole to think that she needed protection from a Pat Hastings pass, and why hadn’t he just tossed her over his shoulder like a caveman and stormed home?

They stood listening to the beach sounds for a moment. Pat lit another cigarette.

“You’re not hiding any cookware in your pockets, are you?” Pat said, exhaling to the sky.

Dan gave a halfhearted laugh. Back in those days, he thought that was what finished marriages—a little grabass in the kitchen.

“Not my finest hour, Patrick. Thanks for the reminder.”

“I wore a cast for two months. Bones just wouldn’t knit right.”

Dan decided to change the subject. He needed to get away from that memory of fighting like a fool, like an asshole, of letting his temper rule the day.

“I tell you what,” he said. “Being back in the States about killed me.”

“Yeah. Once you unlock the golden handcuffs,” Pat said.

Pat didn’t need to finish the thought. They both knew the cliché: Come out from under the covers of State Oil life and you can hardly stand the sight of the bright world before you. You barely know how to pay taxes. You miss the gold souq and the extravagant vacations. You miss the power of the income and the right to complain about it. Hell, you even miss the possibility of having it out with a cane-wielding mutawa over the length of your wife’s abaya. On the outside, too much was uncertain, and company life was hard to part with. After college, he and Carolyn had come to the Kingdom at Rosalie and Abdullah’s urging.
What will I do without you idiots around?
Abdullah had asked. The money was easy, no taxes, free housing, a pool, and great schools for the kids. Things were great until they weren’t, when Carolyn started staring out windows for long stretches, sleeping through the afternoons. She missed her family, missed driving, missed the Pacific. So they left.