Kashua Sayed - Second Person Singular

The lawyer looked around for the bar of chocolate but did not see it anywhere. Maybe she’d hid it and maybe she’d eaten it. For a moment he grimaced at the thought of her throwing it out.

Just before eight, he parted with his sister and walked toward the gate outside the dorm.

The roommate was coming up the walk. She approached along with another girl and the lawyer feared saying anything to her in front of her friend. He sat stone still on the wooden bench and watched her come toward him. He looked down when he saw that she had noticed him. When he looked back up she was standing above him with her friend by her side. His face flushed a deep red. He had no idea what to expect.

“Are you here to visit your sister?” she asked. The lawyer got to his feet, looked bashfully at her friend, and nodded.

“I’ll be there in a second,” she told her friend, who said good-bye and left.

“What do you want?” she asked him when they were alone. The lawyer managed to draw a deep breath and stay focused. He decided not to get sidetracked this time and to act according to his original plan. Just as he did in court.

“I came to ask what your response would be if I were to tell you that I want to ask your father for your hand,” the lawyer said. He wanted to make clear that he was not looking for a fling. He did not have time to waste and, as always, he had decided it would be best to be straightforward.

“What?” she snapped. “My response would be a resounding no, that’s what my response would be.”

The lawyer let the insult wash over him. He nodded.

“Okay,” he said, “if that’s the case then I’m sorry if my behavior has in any way been offensive to you.” He wanted to leave as soon as possible.

“Are you out of your mind?” she asked.

“I apologize,” he said, begging to be set free, allowed to return to his room to process the humiliation.

“What do you have to apologize for?” she asked. “I don’t even know you. I met you for two seconds and then you come over and say you want to ask for my hand in marriage? What do you think this is, the Stone Age?”

“I brought you chocolate,” the lawyer said.

“Wonderful,” she said, smiling.

“Did you throw it away?”

“No, it’s good Belgian chocolate. What do you think I am, an idiot?”

“So, what did you do with it?”

“I ate some and I hid the rest from your sister.”

“You didn’t even offer her a piece?”

“No! Your sister is a nightmare.”

“You see,” the lawyer said, starting to feel slightly optimistic, “that’s already a good sign.”

“What’s good about it?” she asked.

“You already hate my sister. All women hate their sisters-in-law.”

She laughed, a wonderful and uplifting sound.

One month later the lawyer went to her village, Tamra, along with his father and mother, and asked for her hand. During their engagement, she finished her studies and her internship and later, once they’d gotten married, they moved into a rented apartment in Beit Safafa.

XEROX MACHINE

By six thirty in the morning the lawyer was already starting to regret not staying home. He chain-smoked, and drank three cups of coffee in an hour. His thoughts were fractured and visions of his wife flashed through his mind; she seemed happy, smiling, beautiful, and attractive. Why doesn’t she call? He pounded the table with his fist. Enough, he couldn’t go on like this anymore. He’d call her father, tell him about the note, and politely ask that he come and remove his filth from the lawyer’s home. But the lawyer was not sure how her father would react to that type of charge. Perhaps he would stand behind his daughter. Perhaps he would prove himself to be more of a slave to avarice than a guardian of the family’s honor. The lawyer had no way of knowing. He had never forged any serious ties with her family. The Galilean family of his dreams, educated and rich, turned out to be far more modest in wealth and education than any of the ones he knew in the Triangle. Her father was a construction worker, her mother a housewife, and she was the only member of the family to have gone to college.

And why had she not yet called, the whore? There was no way she was still asleep. Was he so insignificant as to not be worth a phone call? But there was really no reason for her not to call. No reason at all for her to be suspicious, unless she had woken up while he rifled through her date book and her cell phone — but there was no chance of that. She had been asleep. He’d made sure of it. There was no reason that he could think of for her to be suspicious of him. Maybe the fact that he left the house on his day off and at such an early hour was enough to make her think that something dreadful had happened. Maybe she had left the house, taken the kids, and run away to the village of her birth. That notion troubled him, and he became certain that that was what she had done. He began dialing her number, sure she would ignore his call, imagining her in her new car, fleeing from him. And maybe she would answer, throwing the truth in his face as she drove. Her words would drip with derision and his children, seated in the backseat, would hear just what their beloved mother thought of their father. They were capable of believing her, the lawyer thought, shaking his head.

“Hello,” she answered, and her voice revealed that she had been up. “Where are you?”

The lawyer was glad that she had answered. Her tone soothed him.

“Are you awake?” he asked, trying to hide the tremor in his voice.

“Yes,” she said, “why, have your kids ever let me sleep in? What’s going on, why are you calling?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, why are you calling me from downstairs,” she asked, chuckling. “Why don’t you just come up?”

“I’m in the office.”

“What? Why? Is something wrong?”

“No, nothing, I just woke up early and I have a ton of work.”

“Oh, wow, I’m such an idiot. I thought you were asleep,” she said, laughing. “I’ve been shushing the kids all morning.”

“Ha,” the lawyer grunted, trying to join her laughter.

“Will you be stuck in the office for a long time?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t really tell yet.”

“Oh, God, now we’re not going to see you on Fridays, either? Enough! You’re killing yourself! You’re coming for lunch, though, right?”

“What? Ah, I’ll see when I’m done here.”

The lawyer relaxed. It was clear she really had thought he had been sleeping downstairs. Of all the possible scenarios, he had forgotten to take the most logical one into account. After all, he always stayed in bed on his days off, until long after the house had come to life. Why should his wife have thought that this day was any different?

“Don’t be late, okay?” she asked, her tone convincing. “And also, don’t forget that I’m going over to Diana’s tonight.”

“I won’t,” the lawyer said, lying, having totally forgotten that she was supposed to go out with a few friends from work to see one of their colleagues and her one-month-old baby. Again he felt the gloom cloud his mind. The visit now seemed like a thin and feeble cover story.

“All right,” he said, feeling his voice shake, “I should get going. I’ll talk to you later. I’m not sure how long I’ll have to stay here.” He realized that this was the night to catch her in the act.

The lawyer hurried over to the Xerox machine and made copies of the note he’d found in the book and the sample of her handwriting from her bag. He went over to Samah’s desk, took a sheet of stationery with the office letterhead on it, and wrote out a request for an analysis from the graphologist. He made clear that he did not need an official report, as he sometimes did, but merely a verdict on whether the two notes were written by the same hand. The lawyer added that the matter was urgent and that he would like the results ASAP, and then he underlined ASAP twice and left his cell phone number just in case. Standing by the fax machine, waiting for it to start to ring, he looked at his watch and knew he was sending it off to an empty office. It was not yet seven in the morning.