By: Mehmudah Rehman

The still night descended upon a pensive Fatima like a canopy of dark opportunity. She gazed blankly at the glass in front of her. The deep red wine caressed the contours of the glass, its soft bubbles leaving their trace on the goblet. She sighed and licked her lips as she held the glass up, staring into the ruby-red beverage. She brought the cup to her lips, but put it down again, not sipping the wine.

She wanted to get drunk; it was always a good escape. All she wanted was to soar far, far away into a place where she could be happy. Into a place where being the person she was didn't matter.

And what was so bad about this little pleasure anyway? It wasn't like her liver would curl up and die if she got tipsy every now and then. She smelled the wine — ah, how satisfying the smell was! Once again, she brought the glass to her lips only to put it down again, frustrated by her inability to drink.

Alcohol had been a very significant part of her life ever since she met Ali and his friends. The first time she had been drunk was divine, and from then on Fatima indulged herself with sweet ambrosia. Possibly no one but her roommate knew just how much liquor Fatima could consume in one night. But then Fatima stumbled across a YouTube lecture about drinking in Islam.

Not that she cared — she was as far off the path of Islam as a Muslim could be. She remembered praying many years ago alongside her mother, but now Fatima enjoyed herself by doing as she pleased. First there had been Ali, then a couple others, but thankfully, she'd never gotten pregnant. Drugs were crass, but she had tried them as well. Drinking was where Fatima really found her liberty. And yet she was plagued by the lecture that clearly forbid drinking in Islam. She slept with men for crying out loud! Why was drinking such a tempting glass of wine suddenly so difficult?

And then, for the first time in years, Fatima rose from her seat on the couch and purified herself by performing wudu. With every passing moment, she breathed better. With every movement of the water cleansing her body, she felt as though her heart cleansed itself. The wine still sat on the table, enticing her, and unable to take the sight of it any more, Fatima gathered her resolve and poured it down the sink. Peace filled her heart; a different peace than what the drink would have brought her. It was a sort of tranquility that she had never known.

But then she thought of herself and the way the past few years had been. What good was a single isolated incident in the eyes of God? Did it even matter? Looking for answers and assurances, Fatima searched the sayings of Prophet Muhammed (SAW). If she ever needed a sign that God was indeed with her, this was it.

“Allāh says, take one step towards Me, I will take ten steps towards you. Walk towards me, I will run towards you.”

The words were magnanimous, simple yet powerful and suddenly, the tears fell. Fatima had never known how sincere tears of remorse could wash away the grime that encrusted a heart. She realized she had taken one meager step towards Allāh, and, because of that, He, the Almighty had taken ten steps towards her.

Her effort was a drop of goodness in an ocean of darkness and sin, but the most respected Deity had taken ten steps towards her because of it. Tomorrow would be a new day, a new beginning. Who knew where one step in the right direction would lead her? Drunk with a feeling of contentment that she had scarcely ever experienced, Fatima settled into a satisfying slumber.

Still sitting, she unpinned and readjusted her headscarf without removing it from her head and then pinned it back into place.  She stood, shrugged into her coat, slid her hands into her gloves and then left.  As she threaded her way through the maze of cubicles, she heard a sound, a small cough perhaps, and stopped.  It came again, this time louder, and unmistakably the sound of illness.  Someone else was still working, invisible behind the chest-high carpeted walls dividing the workspaces, and they had a cold.  Safiya pulled the collar of her coat more tightly around her neck and bent her head in the direction of the elevator, eager to be home.

Outside of the office building, Safiya turned left and began walking to where her car was parked two blocks away, two blocks through biting wind on a dangerously frozen sidewalk.  She buried her gloved hands in her pockets and passed by the Salvation Army Santa who had temporarily abandoned his bell and bucket for a cigarette and a doorway sheltered from the wind. Walking to the end of the block, she came to a cross-walk and waited for the signal to change.  She stamped her feet as she waited and turned so that the sharp wind was at her back.  In doing so, she found herself facing the glass window of a brightly-lit and busy restaurant – Roscoe's, where several of her coworkers could be seen drinking coffee.  Though she knew none of them personally, there were two she knew by name.  Janice, from accounting, who sometimes stared, and Alexander, who worked silently in the cubicle next to hers and radiated apathy like a disinterested sun.  They were sitting with a broadly-built man that Safiya had seen around the office only once or twice.

In the brief second that she recognized them, they had recognized her as well.  Janice rolled her eyes, turned away, and said something to the man seated on her left.  He looked at Safiya, then laughed and elbowed Alexander.  Alexander looked to him and then looked at Safiya, who felt her face turning color.  Safiya turned away quickly and crossed the street, the light having changed.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“I can't stand that rag-head,” Janice said, watching Safiya grow smaller in the distance through the restaurant window.  Janice was in her late thirties, a small, fit woman in a short navy skirt and white blouse.

“What, has she ever said anything to you?” the broadly-built man asked, his eyebrows raised.  His name was Martin.

“She'd better not,” Janice said coolly, “Or I'd knock her self-righteous head off.”

Martin slid his muscular arm around Janice's shoulders and said, “Don't worry about it, Janice,” he said, shifting closer, “She hasn't got a thing on you.”

Janice disentangled herself from Martin's arm and leaned across the small round table to appeal to Alexander.  “You know what I'm saying, don't you, Alex?”

Alexander looked down from the ceiling that he had been studying and smiled indulgently.  “I know she offends your modern sensibilities and that you feel her backwards ways are setting womankind back a thousand years.”

Janice glowered and Alexander continued.  “And I happen to know that you find her intimidating, and you hate her for it.”  Janice glared.

“What I want to know is what's hiding under all those clothes.  I mean, she's a woman right?  And I'm sure she comes with all the same parts that other women have.”

“Exactly,” Janice said, “Who does she think she is anyway, Mother Teresa?  Or the Virgin Mary?”

At the word virgin, Martin smiled.  Janice caught it and exclaimed.  “You don't think!”  Then she shook her head.  “Oh, what I wouldn't give to see her knocked off her holy pedestal…”

“Well?” Martin said smiling and stretching his arms out over his head, “What wouldn't you?”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

The next day in the office, Safiya looked up from her work when she realized that she was being watched.  She turned to the man standing at the entrance of her cubicle and said, “Yes?”

The man was dressed in a dark shirt and tie, and he stood with his arms on the ledges that formed the cubicle entrance, effectively blocking the way.  He was tremendous across the shoulders, and one of his thick hands held a manila file.  “Hi,” he said.  “These files were headed your way, so I thought I'd bring them myself.”

“Thank you,” Safiya said, and then waited.  The man stood smiling at her without making any move to actually deliver the file.  “The file?” she ventured.

“Oh, right, sorry,” he said, grinning.  “You haven't been here very long, have you.  My name is Martin.”

Safiya nodded politely and accepted the file from Martin's hand. He had taken a step closer to hand it to her and he stood there still.

“Is there anything else?” Safiya asked.

Martin shook his head as if waking up suddenly, “I'm sorry.  I lost myself for a minute there, you have such beautiful eyes.  Has anyone ever told you that?”

“You'd be surprised,” Safiya said blandly, turning back to her computer screen.  “Thanks for the file.  Have a nice day.”

Martin nodded and backed out the cubicle.  “Nice meeting you,” he said cheerfully as he started off again.  As his footsteps faded, someone spoke.

“Charming isn't he?”

Safiya turned suddenly in the direction from where that comment had come.  “Excuse me?” she asked the pair of sleepy gray eyes peering over the cubicle wall.  They turned out to be her neighbor's, Alexander.

“Martin thinks he's a stud,” Alexander said matter-of-factly, standing up and crossing his arms over the cubicle ledge.

Safiya tried not to smile.

Alexander continued, “He's after you.”

Safiya's eyes widened in surprise.  “What?  Why?”

Alexander shrugged.  “Beats me.”  He sat down and disappeared behind the cubicle wall again.

“Thank you?” Safiya said, unsure of whether to be grateful or offended.

“You're welcome.” His reply was muffled by the cubicle wall.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Come on Martin, you don't actually think you could get anything out of that saint,” Janice laughed. “You are so not her type.”

“What type would that be?” Martin demanded, seemingly hurt.  “Come on,” he said,  flexing his arms, “What woman could resist this?”

Janice rolled her eyes.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

A week later, Safiya found herself assigned to a last-minute project with three other team members.  The first, strangely, was Martin.  The second was a man with a Muslim name, Jamal Elbayoumy.  She had never met him.  The third was Alexander Kayahan, her neighbor from the next cubicle.

Safiya walked to her cubicle with the project outline in her hand, and paused before the entrance.  Then, instead of entering, she walked a few more feet and knocked on Alexander's.

“Yes?” he answered without looking up from his work.

“You're on the Dadeson account, too?”

“Yeah,” Alexander said without moving his eyes from the computer screen.

Safiya nodded and looked down at her shoes.  Alexander went back to typing.

At five o'clock, when most of the people in the office were turning off their computers and getting into their coats and gloves, Safiya was sitting in her cubicle waiting for the rest of her team.  The first to arrive was Alexander, his trip being only a few feet from his workspace to hers.  He stood facing a wall of graphs and notes that Safiya had posted to illustrate how far the project had gone and how far it had to go.  Safiya, who had been watching him, wondered where he was from.  His ancestry would be interesting to know.  Black Irish maybe?  He had straight black hair and gray eyes with thick eyebrows.   He was handsome but also harsh to look at.  When he spoke, his tone was unapologetic and brusque.  When he made eye contact, it was direct and piercing.  He turned and did so now.

Safiya looked away quickly and Alexander said, “There's a lot more to do here, are you sure you've been working?”

“Overtime for the last five working days,” she answered in what she hoped was a conversational tone, “And I'm not the only one with more work than they can handle.  Someone else has been here too, I hear them coughing when the office is empty.”

“Coughing?” Alexander echoed.

“They've got a bad chest-cold, whoever they are, they should be at home and not-”

Safiya's sentence was interrupted by a cough, one she recognized instantly to belong to the person who had been working overtime.  He was a tall African man, very dark with pink palms and teeth made startlingly white by the contrast of his skin.  As he walked into the cubicle he finished coughing and nodded to Alexander.  Then he turned to Safiya and said, “You needed help?”   His accent was thick, but his words were clear and they carried a certain amount of force to them.  “I am Jamal.”

Safiya returned the greeting with a nod and pointed to the project notes tacked to the wall.  “Thank you, Jamal, there's some information on the wall which you might want to look over.  There's one more person we're waiting for, and once he gets here we'll begin.”

When Martin arrived five minutes later, he greeted Safiya with a warm but unreciprocated smile and then read over the project notes.  Chairs were then commandeered from other cubicles and the four of them sat down to discuss and delegate work.

The small group met this way the next day as well, comparing notes and progress and pushing to finish as soon as possible.  Time was running out, the office's end-of year Christmas party was in six days and the deadline a day after.

Time passed, reports were written, and as the project drew nearer to completion, an interesting thing happened in the dynamics of the small group.  Martin began to stand closer, to put his hands on the back of Safiya's chair when he was talking to her.  Safiya became rather wary of him and took to standing up with her arms crossed whenever he entered.  Jamal became sicker, but always stayed as long as the others did, even when sometimes his part of the work seemed complete.  Alexander became less reticent and began spending time in Safiya's cubicle.  Three days before the office Christmas party, Alexander asked Safiya a question, the first time he had ever initiated a conversation.

“Going to the Christmas party?”

The question caught her off guard.  There would be dancing at the party, and drinking, and mistletoe, and all of these things clashed rather violently against her beliefs of what was ethical and civilized.  It took her a moment to gather her thoughts, a moment in which Alexander interrupted them and said, “I didn't think you would.  And you shouldn't either.”

“Oh?” Safiya asked with her eyebrows raised.

“No,” Alexander said, or ordered, rather.  “The project isn't finished.”

Safiya nodded and felt some small relief at not having to explain the real reason behind avoiding the Christmas party.  Somehow it never failed to offend people when she told them that their 'harmless holiday fun,' fit into a category of irresponsible sin that seemed totally unfitting for a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Christ.  (Peace be upon him, she added mentally.)

“Are you going?” Safiya asked.  “I mean, I'll stay to work, and I don't mind because this project is my mess and plus this isn't a religious holiday for me, and-“

“I'm not going.”  Alexander said.

“Not Christian?” Safiya asked before she could think better of it.

“An office party isn't Christmas mass,” he said with an edge in his voice.  “And I'm not Christian.”

“Jewish? Buddhist? Atheist?” Safiya trailed these words as she sat flipping through a stack of papers, trying to seem casually disinterested.

“D.,” Alexander said, equally blasé, “None of the above.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Now you,” Janice said, turning away from Martin and giving Alexander a flirtatious look, “You're much more appealing…”

“Him?” Martin laughed, “Oh come on, I bet no one would fall for him, he's boring as hell!”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

The rest of the workday passed in a productive blur, and when things were finally finished, Safiya found herself alone in her cubicle with Alexander.  Everyone else had gone home.  She stretched and rolled her chair away from her computer then stood up and looked around the empty office.

“Five minutes ago this place sounded like the floor of a stock exchange,” she said quietly.

“Lost a big account,” Alexander said absently.  “More screaming into phones than usual today.”

Safiya smiled.  Alexander stood up and walked back into his cubicle.  He came back with his coat.  “Done?” he asked unceremoniously.

Safiya nodded and picked her coat up as well.  Alexander walked her to her car.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Janice smiled and raised her eyebrows, “Oh you do, do you?

“Do I what?”

“Do you bet?” Janice smiled slyly.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

The next morning at work Martin entered Safiya's cubicle whistling.  He was holding two coffee cups and he held one out towards her.  “Christmas cheer anyone?” he was grinning broadly.

“I'll take one,” Alexander said, relieving Martin of one of the mugs.  Martin gave Alexander an irritated look and then handed the other mug to Safiya.  He then left, presumably to get a cup for himself.  Alexander sipped his and then set it down on the desk.  Safiya turned to her computer and got back to work.  A few moments later, she heard the sound of heavy foot-falls coming quickly in her direction.  She looked up, startled, to see Jamal in the entryway of the cubicle clutching his chest and wheezing.  He looked breathlessly to her and then to the coffee cup.  He then coughed, “La tashribi!”

“What?” Safiya asked, startled.  It had been years since she had studied Arabic and it took her a moment to even realize that was what Jamal was speaking.  He looked angry.  Even as he stood coughing and gasping for breath, his eyebrows were pushed together in look of ferocious displeasure.  “La tashribi!” he said this time in a steadier, angrier whisper.

Alexander, who did not understand the words but could not have been mistaken about the tone they were delivered in, stood and walked past Jamal, out of the cubicle and down the hall.  Jamal moved over shakily and took the chair Alexander had just left.  As he sat recovering his breath, Safiya reached for her cup of coffee.

“Do you not speak any Arabic?” he whispered with renewed fury. “I said don't drink that!”

“Excuse me!” Safiya said, frightened and angered by Jamal's rudeness, “What are you talking about?  Who are you to barge into my cube and tell me not to drink my own cup of coffee?”  She was beginning to wonder if Jamal had not been working too many hours.

“Who am I?” Jamal asked ruefully, “I am someone who cares to tell you when there is alcohol in your cup.”

“What?” Safiya looked down at the cup she had raised halfway to her mouth.  She felt her stomach give an unpleasant lurch.  “Wait, how do you know?”

“I saw Martin pouring whiskey into two cups of coffee and walking this way. I was afraid he would give one to you, and he did.”

“Martin?”

“Yes, I mean that man.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?” Saifya asked, her voice shaky with disbelief.

“Why wouldn't he?” Jamal coughed again. “Half of the people in this office do it every morning.  There's a bottle near the coffee pot, it is labeled 'Holiday Cheer.'  Have you never seen it?”

“I wasn't looking for it,” Safiya snapped defensively.  She felt embarrassed and irritable.  “And how can you be sure this is one of those cups?  Alexander took one of them and he's been drinking it.  If there was alcohol in it he would've told me.”

“Why should he have told you?  You think he doesn't drink?  He doesn't care if you do or don't.  He's not a Muslim.”

Safiya set the cup down on the desk and stared at it.  Jamal stood up to leave.  As he stepped towards the hall, he turned and said to Safiya, “You should be more careful in choosing your friends.  People in the office are talking about you.  You should not be spending so much time with that man.”

“Who, Martin?” Safiya asked incredulously.

“No,” Jamal said pointedly, “Alexander.”

Safiya felt shame and anger burn up into her face simultaneously.  “I thank you for your advice, Mr. Elbayoumy,” she said icily, “But I'm not a child, and I can take care of myself.”

Jamal's nostrils flared and he opened his mouth as if to say something and then decided against it.  He turned away and left.  A few minutes later Alexander returned.  He sat down with his arms crossed over his chest.  Safiya was sitting with her back turned to him, typing away at a lightening-fast but inaccurate speed.  After a few minutes Alexander said, “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” Safiya said sharply, still typing.  She did not want to believe what Jamal had told her, but unless she was to call him a liar, she had to accept that the coffee had alcohol in it.  And that meant that Alexander had tasted it and not told her.  She wanted desperately to ask Alexander about his coffee, to find out that Jamal had been mistaken and that Martin had delivered the coffee with alcohol in it to some other cubicle.  But she couldn't; she was too angry, and too embarrassed, and too afraid of offending Alexander.

Martin entered the cubicle with another cup of coffee in his hand and stood behind Safiya with one hand on her chair.  Safiya's carefully cultivated patience reached its limit.  She backed her chair up against his legs and turned to face him just as coffee sloshed onto his shirt.

“Whoa!  What gives?” he said, pulling the hot, wet stain off of his skin with two fingers.

“I didn't see you there,” Safiya said without sounding altogether convincing.  “Are you almost done with the accounts?”

“Almost,” Martin said evasively.  “Hey, you didn't drink your coffee.”

“No,” Safiya said, looking directly at him.  “I don't drink alcohol.”

Martin smiled sheepishly.

“Oh I am sorry, I didn't know.  Does this mean you can't join me for a drink after work?  How about just dinner then?”

Safiya turned back to the computer. Martin set his coffee on the desk next to Safiya's abandoned cup and placed both hands on the back of her chair.  Safiya pushed against him again, but found that this time he held her chair in place.

“Don't you ever get hungry, Safiya?” Martin asked, his mouth close to the folds on her scarf that hid her hair and ears.  “Won't you let me buy you dinner?”

Safiya stood up and turned to face Martin.  Standing at a distance, it had been easy to forget that he was a head taller and twice as broad as she.  She felt her anger shrink into something like fear as she stood in such close proximity to him.  “I'm not hungry, Martin,” she said, regaining her composure.  “And more so, I never am, nor ever will be in your presence.  Frankly, you make me sick.”

Martin was leaning closer and opening his mouth to speak when suddenly a hand appeared on his shoulder and he was turned about-face.

“I think,” Alexander said, pressing his fingers into Martin's shoulder, “That you are violating the lady's personal space.”

Martin tensed, then visibly relaxed and brushed Alexander's hand from his shoulder.  “No harm intended M'Lady,” he said, turning back to Safiya with affected gallantry.  “Begging your lady's pardon, most un-chivalrous of me,” he bowed out of the cubicle sneering.

Safiya sat down at her desk and put her forehead into her hands.  She heard Alexander sit back down in his chair.  After a few moments of silence she heard Alexander say, “Don't throw up on the computer.  Unless you've saved your document first.”

Safiya smiled.  She looked up at Alexander, her cheeks flushed with humiliation and gratitude and the awkwardness of what had just passed. “Thank you, for-”

“Don't mention it,” Alexander said briskly, scooting his chair back to his own corner.  “Just get back to work.”

Safiya nodded and picked up where she left off on the computer screen.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“How much would you bet?” Janice teased.  “Come on, or are you afraid you'd lose?”

Alexander had looked down indifferently from the ceiling, and was now looking at Martin, who bounced his knee excitedly under the table.

Martin looked at Janice, and then to Alexander, who seemed to be steeped in apathy as usual.

“Fifty bucks.” Martin grinned.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

At 8:00, the group's third hour of overtime, Jamal stopped by Safiya's desk with a CD in his hand.  He looked at Alexander, who was sitting in the corner of Safiya's cubicle proofreading, and then looked to Safiya with narrowed eyes.  Safiya ignored the look and accepted the CD.

“It is finished,” he said flatly.  “I have taken care of my accounts and the feasibility report.  I am going home now.”  He turned to leave, seemed to reconsider, and then said, “May I walk you to your car Miss Safiya?”

Safiya was about to accept his offer but then remembered what had happened not more than a few hours ago.  How could she have forgotten, even momentarily, the rude and superior ground that Jamal had taken in all this, even going so far as to tell her who she could and could not associate with?  And now, she thought, he was trying to see her to her car.  Who did he think he was, her chaperone?

A taste of lingering anger found it's way onto her tongue again.  It was bitter.  She felt her lip curling and did not try to stop it.  “No,” she said frostily, “I can take care of myself.  Thank you.”

“Miss Safiya,” Jamal said softly, “I respect you very much, and I respect your decision to wear a hijab, but I must tell you something.  The scarf on your head is not the only part of hijab.  It will not protect you if your behavior puts you at risk.  That is my advice,” he said, “And I know that the best advice is sometimes the worst to hear.”

Safiya felt her cheeks burn with anger.  Jamal turned and left.

Safiya turned away stiffly and glared at her computer screen as Jamal's footsteps faded away.  She was still staring at it blankly when she heard Alexander's chair squeak.  He was standing up and walking out of the cubicle.  He returned with his coat on.  “Done?”

Safiya fingered her keyboard.   Actually she wasn't done, but she couldn't bring herself to work right now.

“Yes,” she said, saving her work and then shutting down her computer.  She stood up and began to put her coat on.  Alexander waited until she had buttoned it up and then began walking towards the elevator.  Safiya followed.  They entered the elevator together and then stood in silence as it descended.  When the doors opened in the lobby, Alexander stepped out first and began walking towards the exit.  Safiya walked behind him.   He held the door open for her and then stood beside her on the sidewalk outside of the building.

Alexander turned and made eye contact.  Safiya maintained it, looking directly into his gray, half-lidded eyes.

“Coffee?” he said.

Coffee.

Jamal was right, Alexander wasn't a Muslim.  He probably didn't even know that Safiya wouldn't drink, so it's not like he would even know to warn her about the coffee.  It wasn't Alexander's fault.

“Sure.”

Alexander turned and began walking.  Safiya followed.  When they had walked up the block and stopped in front of Roscoe's, Safiya looked up at the great glass window again.  The tables inside were mostly full, but there didn't seem to be anyone from the office there.  Safiya's coworkers were the five o'clock coffee crowd, and this seemed to be a group of people drinking or eating dinner.  There was a bar towards the back of the restaurant, which Safiya had not noticed before.

Alexander stepped inside and held the door open behind him.  Safiya hesitated.  But why hesitate? she thought, We're just having coffee.  I can take care of myself.

Safiya put one foot before the other and followed Alexander inside to a small table in a corner.  Alexander sat down, made eye-contact with a waitress, and raising two fingers, said “Coffee.”  A slow smile spread across the waitress's face and she gave Alexander an appraising look before nodding and disappearing towards the kitchen.

Alexander reclined in his chair with one arm over the back and one of his legs extended beneath the table.  “What happened?” he asked bluntly.

Safiya, who had been debating whether or not to sit with her elbows on the table because that might appear as if she were leaning towards Alexander, was caught off guard.  “What happened with what?”

“With that jerk.”

“Oh, Martin's been getting on my nerves, I guess I-“

“I meant Jamal.”

Safiya looked up from the lap she'd been twisting her gloves in.

“And why'd he come rushing in,” Alexander said.

Safiya was momentarily seized with the desire to ask Alexander why he had rushed right out, but checked herself.  She had no claim on Alexander.  There was no reason why he should get in the way when Jamal came rushing in angrily.  It was none of his business.   But then, neither was Martin, and Alexander had definitely intervened there.  Alexander waited in the noisy silence of the restaurant as Safiya sat lost in thought.

“Where's he from anyway?”

“Jamal?” Safiya said, stirring, “I think he's from Senegal.”

“What language do they speak there?”

“Senegalese, and French too I think.”

“That wasn't French.”

“What wasn't French?”

Alexander looked at Safiya sharply.  She had failed to follow the obvious direction in which the conversation was going. “What he said when he rushed into your office wheezing like an asthmatic and clutching his chest like a heart patient, that wasn't French.”

“Oh.”  Safiya looked down at the table.

“Well?” Alexander inquired in the same flat, disinterested way that he always spoke.

“It was Arabic.”

“And what did he say?” Alexander pressed.

“He said 'don't drink that'.”

“Thought so.” Alexander tilted his head towards the ceiling and stared for a considerable amount of time.  Safiya sat in pensive silence while the restaurant around her murmured and clinked.

The waitress arrived and bent close to Alexander as she put the coffee cups on the table.  Alexander paid her no attention.  As she set down the napkins, she gave Safiya an amused glance, then sashayed away.   Safiya picked up her coffee and took a napkin from the pile to place beneath her cup.  There was something written on it, a phone number and a woman's name, Anna.

Safiya stared at it and then at Alexander, whose head was still tipped towards the ceiling.  He had unbuttoned his coat and his shirt collar was open.  She held the napkin in her hand.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Safiya cleared her throat.  “Alexander?”

“Call me Alex.” He said, still looking at the ceiling.

“Alex, you did, I mean, did you know there was alcohol in the coffee?”

“Of course.  I never use that kind of stuff myself.”

“Oh?” Safiya brightened.

“No.  It's cheap crap.  A good wine is better.”

“Oh.” Safiya sunk slightly into her chair.

Alexander looked at her.  “You don't drink.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Safiya sipped her coffee.  She heard the tinkle of wine glasses being toasted.  The explanation could be long.  Or it could be very short.

“It rots your body and brain,” she said eventually.

“And compromises your integrity,” she said secondly.

“And damages society,” she said thirdly.

Alexander looked down from the ceiling and directly into Safiya's eyes.  “That's not the case with just having a glass of wine with dinner.”

Safiya shifted uncomfortably in her chair.  She found herself mentally struggling for an answer.  “If you believe that a destination is bad, then all the steps taken towards the destination are just as bad, right?  I mean, that's why people are prosecuted for attempted murder even if they were unsuccessful.”

“You're telling me that drinking is as bad as murder?” Alexander asked with one eyebrow raised.

“No no,” Safiya said shaking her head.  She found herself getting frustrated.  “Say you know of a bad road; it's full of holes and it's dangerous.  But people have fun driving it, so they zoom down it and get themselves hurt or killed.  You tell them it's dangerous, and they tell you it's fun.  Not everyone who drives down it dies, but still, the fact that that specific stretch of road kills people means that either it should be fixed or closed.”

“Why can't it be fixed?” Alexander challenged.

“You can't fix alcohol; if you take away the fact that it intoxicates you then no one will drink it.  How popular is non-alcoholic beer?”

“I don't see why the rest of us should have our fun road privileges taken away just because a few idiots speed and get themselves killed,” Alexander said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.

Safiya leaned forward earnestly.  “And I don't see why a road that kills people should remain open just because a few people have fun with it.  How can you justify the fact that drunk driving kills so many innocent people just because it's fun?”

“Allowing alcohol is not the same thing as allowing drunk driving.”  Alexander said with a cigarette dangling from his lips.  The smoke from his cigarette rose and joined the cloud that was slowly gathering over the tabletops.

“But allowing alcohol is allowing for drunk driving,” Safiya pleaded, holding the coffee cup in one hand.  “If there wasn't alcohol, then there wouldn't be drunk driving, or any of the other evils that are directly caused by alcohol.  It doesn't matter whether people are having fun because their fun doesn't justify them hurting other people.”

“You have a point,” Alexander said, putting his elbows on the table, “But you forget one thing.  As long as the road is fun, people will always drive it.”

“It doesn't mean they should.” Safiya said sulkily into her coffee cup.  “And it doesn't mean that I will either.  Martin was an idiot for giving me coffee with alcohol in it.”

“Is that where this all started…” Alexander trailed off and his eyes found the waitress.  He studied her as she bent over a table to serve drinks.  When she turned and smiled at him, he raised one finger and motioned for the check.

The waitress threaded her way between the tables and pushed-out chairs and delivered a bill to Alexander.  Alexander reached into his wallet and pulled out a bill.  Placing it inside the billfold, he handed it back to the waitress who gave him one last suggestive smile and then headed back to work, swishing her hips as she walked.

Safiya looked at the napkin that was still in her hand with the waitress's name and number crumpled up inside of it and then looked at Alexander, who was buttoning up his coat again.  She balled it tightly and dropped it into her empty cup.  Alexander stood up and Safiya followed him out of the restaurant.  He walked her back to her car.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“What's the matter, Alex,” Martin challenged, “Or aren't you interested in girls?”

“Much more interested in them than they are in you.” Alexander said calmly.

“Ooooh,” Janice winced, “Martin are you going to let him get away with that?”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Within two working days the project was finished.  There were to be no more five o'clock meetings in Safiya's cube and she no longer saw Jamal.  Martin she saw often, but he no longer acknowledged her, passing her by without even making eye contact.  Alexander she saw daily, but only as he passed by the entrance of her cubicle on his way to other places in the office.  She found herself feeling dismayed.

Safiya mentally kicked herself after taking the third peek in the direction of Alexander's cubicle to see if he had been standing there.  You're an idiot, she told herself.  You spent less than ten minutes in a restaurant drinking coffee, what are you expecting?

Safiya wasn't sure what she was expecting, but at 4:30 someone did raise their head over the wall of her cubicle.  It was Martin.

“Safiya,” he said in low voice, “Can I speak with you for a moment?”  His voice was curiously subdued, almost humble.  Safiya blinked slowly.  Martin gave a small hopeful smile.

“Alright,” she said warily.

Martin's head disappeared and in a few seconds the rest of him reappeared in the entrance of Safiya's workspace.  He walked in somberly with his hands behind his back and his head lowered.

“Yes?”

“I want to apologize,” Martin said, speaking deliberately.  “For the way I'd been behaving.  I know that it was disrespectful, and I would like to make it up to you somehow.”

Safiya shook her head slightly.  The apology took her aback slightly.  This was too out of character.  There had to be a catch.

A few seconds of confused silence followed.  Martin took a step closer, but held himself upright, not leaning towards her at all.  “I owe you,” he said.  “And I mean this in the nicest possible way, so can I please take you out to dinner?”

Aha, thought Safiya.  All is right with the world again. Safiya fought the urge to laugh out loud and instead composed her face into seriousness.

“I appreciate your apology Martin,” Safiya said, choosing her words carefully, “And I accept it.  But you don't need to take me out to dinner.”

“But I need to!” Martin said energetically, breaking out of character for a moment.  “I mean,” he said clearing his throat and becoming earnest again, “I ought to.  I should.”

Safiya's polite amusement began to wear off.  “Martin,” she said directly, “I apologize if I haven't told you this before, but I don't date.”

“Don't date?” Martin said incredulously, both eyebrows raised.  “Why is that?”

“Several reasons,” Safiya said immediately.  “There are better and more logical ways of getting to know a person than taking them for a sexual test drive that leaves both people used and possibly abused.”

Martin did his best to suppress a smile and didn't seem to be succeeding.  Safiya ignored this and continued.

“It undermines the sanctity of marriage by making love as cheap as dinner and a date.  It takes all the commitment out of relationships, and society – mostly children and family, suffers for it.”

Martin was no longer smiling and seemed to actually be thinking.  “So,” he said gradually, “How do you guys find love then?  A life-long partner?  A husband?”

“A bit more logically I hope.” Safiya said, “You can get to know a person in a setting that isn't a date and doesn't involve romance before a commitment.  Besides,” she said, choosing not to mince words. “You can probably learn a lot more about a person and whether or not you're compatible by sitting down and talking than you can with your tongue down their throat in a movie theater.”

Martin smiled.  “So you don't do movies then?”

“Not on a date, no.”

“And no dinner either?”

“No dinner.” Safiya echoed.

“Not even coffee with me after work?” The smallest trace of a smile appeared and then disappeared at the corner of Martin's mouth.  Was he teasing her?  Could he possibly know?

Safiya felt suddenly shaken, but she answered resolutely.  “No coffee.  Now if it's alright with you, I have to get back to work.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Martin leaned back in his chair and relaxed.  “It's not me you need to provoke Janice because I'm already willing to bet.  I'm not one to turn down fifty easy dollars.”

“Alright then,” Janice said, turning towards Alexander again.  She smiled at him wickedly.  “Come on Alex, fifty isn't that much, but it could buy a tolerably good bottle of wine and someone to share it with.”

“It couldn't be just that easy though,” Martin butted in.  “I'm not giving this guy fifty dollars just on his word.  I would need to see some proof first.”

Safiya turned back to her computer and stared at the screen.  She tapped the keyboard impatiently with her fingers and then put her hand on her forehead.  She was frustrated by her own reluctance to just pop her head over the wall and ask how Alexander was doing.  But she couldn't, she wouldn't.

I am not a clingy person, Safiya told herself.  Besides, now that the project is over I have no reason to see him.

After a few more moments of staring blankly at her work, Safiya thought, I wonder if he'll be at the Christmas party tomorrow?

The morning of the Christmas party very little real work was done in the office.  People may have been physically on duty, but mentally they were already on vacation and had shown up at the office dressed for the fun.  It wasn't anything formal, just refreshments and drinks and a fat man from HR dressed up as Santa.  Of course there was mistletoe being hung already, and the conference room had been set up as a dance hall and decorated with tinsel.

Safiya buried herself in her work and time flew.  She drifted back into awareness at 5:05 when she heard the sound of a bell ringing and people laughing.  The workday was over, the party had started, and Safiya had stayed five minutes more than she had intended to.   She shut down her computer and picked up her coat.  She walked briskly out of her cubicle towards the elevator and bumped directly into Alexander.

“Oh!” she said looking up, “I'm sorry!”

“There you are,” Alexander said coolly.  “I was waiting for you.  Let's go.”

“Go?” Safiya echoed, “Go where?”  Alexander was wearing a long black coat, and from between the unbuttoned lapels a deep red scarf showed.  The color suited him.

“Out.” Alexander said.  “I'm not staying for the party.  Are you?”

“No.”

“Well then, let's go.”

Alexander turned and headed for the elevator.  Safiya followed, trying not to smile.

Out of the office building, Alexander turned left and headed up the busy downtown street.  Safiya kept pace, brushing the occasional snowflake off of her eyelashes and doing her best to not bump into any of the hundreds of people on the sidewalk out for Christmas shopping.  She had to sidestep at times to avoid a collision, but Alexander, she noticed, walked perfectly straight ahead, turning for no one.  People stepped aside for him and turned their heads as he passed.  Safiya stole a glance at him.  Between the black of his hair and the black of his coat, Alexander's face was flushed from the cold and his eyes were lit from the lights in display windows.  Safiya looked away.

A few blocks farther and Alexander turned suddenly, stopping in front of an ice-skating rink nestled between the skyscrapers.

“You skate?” he asked.

“No,” Safiya said nervously.

“Me neither.”  Alexander began walking towards the rink.

Skates were rented and laced up, and Safiya followed Alexander and ventured out onto the ice.  Taking a few hesitant steps, Safiya looked up at Alexander, who was standing on the ice with his hands in his pockets.  At that moment Safiya's skates turned in at the ankles, causing her to lurch forward.  Alexander started forward to lend her a hand but lost his balance as well and sat heavily down on the ice.  Safiya gasped and looked at Alexander uncertainly, who was sitting with his long legs splayed and his head bowed, both hands on the ice beside him.  A few children skated expertly by.  Alexander looked up and a smile broke.  Safiya laughed out loud and offered him her gloved hand.

They fell a lot at first, and Safiya giggled herself into a blush while Alexander only smiled.  The hours flew by but Safiya didn't notice.  She was busy trying not to fall, and having fallen and then been helped up by Alexander, she was wondering why Alexander smelled so good even though he wore no cologne.  There was something about his scent, something that made her want to breathe deeply when he was close, something that made her stomach feel tight and her cheeks feel warm.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Alexander blinked slowly and actually yawned.  “You know what I bet?  I bet that I could do in a week what Martin couldn't do in his entire lifetime, but am I interested in fifty dollars to knock the holy saint off of her pedestal?  No.”

“Boy,” Janice said, “You are a conceited bastard aren't you…”

At ten-thirty Safiya finally looked at her watch, and noticing the time remarked, “Oh no!  It's late!”

Alexander turned gracelessly on the ice to face her and said, “You have a curfew or something?”

“No,” Safiya said hastily, “But it's ten-thirty and I have to be going.”

“Fine,” Alexander said sharply, turning and skating away.

Safiya was taken aback.  Had she somehow offended him?  She leaned in Alexander's direction and did her best to skate behind him without slipping again.  They made it to the edge of the rink where they returned their skates and put their shoes back on in silence, Alexander's face as unreadable as ever and Safiya's anxious.

As Alexander led the way back through the busy downtown streets Safiya struggled to keep up with his long strides.  He was walking quickly back in the direction of the office, and since he seemed to be keeping a step ahead of Safiya she could not see his face.

As she walked, she tried to put her scarf back in order, it had slipped backwards and sideways during the ice skating and a few of her dark curls had made their way out and on to her face.  One of her pins seemed to be missing too, the one that usually held the scarf closed at her chin.

From the path she walked behind Alexander, Safiya heard the trilling of a mobile phone.  Alexander reached into his coat and answered it.

“Ten thirty-five,” he said into the receiver without a greeting.  “I know how to tell time.”

“Last day of the week,” he added after another pause, “And it isn't over yet.”

Alexander walked on, listening to a voice in the phone that Safiya could not hear.  “I don't need an hour and a half,” he answered businesslike.  “You be ready in fifteen minutes.  When I call, you come to my desk.”  Alexander hung up and slipped the phone into the pocket of his jacket.    Safiya shivered a little and walked faster.

Within five minutes Safiya found herself standing in front of the office building again.  She was nervous.  It was late, and she had a gut feeling that told her she should be heading home.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Not fifty,” Alexander continued.  “Make it a hundred.”

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Alexander turned to Safiya and said, “I have something for you at my desk, come on up.”

“Oh no, it's alright,” Safiya said hesitantly.  “It can wait until tomorrow.  I have to be going.”

“It's got to be now,” Alexander said simply, “Because tomorrow will be too late.  Today is the Christmas party.”

“But I thought you weren't Christian?”

“I'm not,” Alexander said, “But I still have something for you.”

Safiya looked up and into Alexander's gray eyes.  “Alright,” she conceded after a few seconds of hesitation.  Alexander slipped his arm into hers and began leading her through the lobby.  Safiya's first impulse had been to pull away and say the same thing that she had said hundreds of times while carefully navigating her way through university- that she did not touch unrelated men, but now it was too late.  When she had taken both of Alexander's hands to be lifted off of the ice, when she had held the lapels of his coat and laughed while trying to steady herself, how could she tell him that?

Safiya figured that five more minutes in contact with Alexander's arm would be the last.  On Monday she would break everything off.  On Monday she would tell Alexander that there was nothing and no point to anything, that as bad a Muslim as she was, she would never marry a non-Muslim and therefore had no reason to pursue a relationship with one.  Not that he couldn't ever be one, she added mentally with guilty hope.  What was his religion anyway?  But a non-Muslim was out of the question, absolutely.  That's exactly what she would tell him, and she consoled herself with these thoughts as the elevator glided up to the proper floor and the doors opened.

Upon stepping out of the elevator she saw a few small groups of people standing around the cubicles with drinks in their hands.  The Christmas revelers had lingered on and spilled into the cubicles, and more than a few of them were obviously drunk.  One or two people turned as the elevator opened.  Safiya tried delicately to withdraw her arm from Alexander's but he had started forward, drawing her along past the people who were now openly staring.

Arriving at his desk, Alexander slid his arm out of Safiya's as he stepped into his cubicle.  Safiya sat down in the nearest chair and began trying to readjust her scarf, but without the lost pin it was impossible.  She could pull it over her forehead but it would just start slipping backwards again.    Alexander opened his desk and drew out a red velvet box, which he dropped in his pocket.  He then turned and looked at the various staff members who were trying to gawk and linger from an inconspicuous distance.  He pulled out his phone and Safiya watched as he punched out a quick text message.  That's right, she thought. He's supposed to meet someone here soon.  It's not like I'm here with him alone.

Alexander slid the phone back into his pocket when he was finished.  “Too many people here,” he said flatly.  “To the lounge.”  Safiya stood up quickly and led the way, this time keeping a step in front of Alexander so that he would not take her arm again.  Heads turned as they passed, and whispering followed.

Once inside the employee lounge Safiya turned and stood to face Alexander.  It was dark in there, the only light coming from the open doorway they had just entered from.

“Well?” she shrugged with anticipation, “Now what?”

“I have something for you,” Alexander said pulling the red velvet box from his pocket, “But you have to close your eyes first.”

Safiya looked at the box.  It was square and fairly large, too deep to be a jewelry box.  Alexander stepped close to Safiya and smiled.  Safiya paused and then smiled uncertainly, closing her eyes.

“Are you ready?” Alexander asked.

Safiya nodded, and at that moment two things happened.  The first was that her scarf slipped entirely off of her head.  The second was that Alexander kissed her.

Safiya was stunned, and as she opened her eyes to see Alexander's face, a tear slipped out.  Alexander withdrew his lips and with one hand touched Safiya's exposed hair, tucking a tendril of it behind her ear.  Then he traced the path of her tear with one of his fingers.

He spoke quietly in the darkness.  “Why are you crying?”

She had many reasons.  One for the foot that was planted between hers, two for the arms that held her.  Ten for each of Alexander's fingers.  But one came to mind as more tragic than the others.

“My first kiss,” Safiya trembled, “I was saving that…”

A few moments passed in silence.  Alexander looked at his watch, still holding Safiya.

“What do you want,” Safiya moaned, trying to pull her scarf back up.  “Let go already.”

“Any second now,” he said, peering at his watch in the darkness and drawing Safiya closer.

Safiya heard footsteps and gasped.  Alexander turned to her quickly and stopped her mouth with his.  Safiya tried unsuccessfully to cry out.  Just then the lights in the lounge flickered on and Alexander turned nonchalantly towards the door, his arm now hanging loosely around Safiya's waist.  Martin was standing in the doorway along with at least six of the Christmas party revelers.

“Hey,” Alexander said sharply, “Can we get some privacy here?”

Time stopped.

It resumed again when the people in the doorway, every last one of them, burst into laughter, harsh and unmistakably cruel.  Alexander looked around the room disinterestedly with his arm still around Safiya's waist.  Safiya stood with her scarf tangled around her shoulders and several other tears joining the first.  When the laughter finally ended and most of the people had wandered away, Martin walked reluctantly up to Alexander.  He stared at Safiya first, studying her hair and the lines of her neck as if he was looking one of the strangest things he'd seen in a while.  Safiya turned away and tried in vain to cover herself, but the scarf had become too tangled.  It couldn't cover her unless it was straightened out.

Eventually, Martin dug into his pocket and took out his wallet.  He counted out one hundred dollars.  Alexander took the money from him and counted it again.

“I can't believe it,” Martin said, shaking his head and putting his wallet back into his pocket.  “I can't believe you did it.  How it is that you attract women by pretending to not give damn, that is just too amazing.”  Martin shrugged and headed back towards the door.  “Janice is not going to believe this…”

Alexander slipped the money into his pocket and headed for the door himself.

“Wait!” Safiya called after him, a realization dawning on her.   “What just happened?”

“No big deal, “Alexander said, turning to face her with both his hands in his coat pockets.  “Just a little bet.”

Safiya placed her hand on her forehead.  “You bet him that, that-” Everything in her body ached, screamed and cried out in shame and fury, but she couldn't find the words.    “You sold me,” she whispered, “You sold me for a hundred dollars…”

Alexander shook his head and held out the red box.  Its lid was up.  It had been empty. “You sold yourself for nothing.”

Safiya gaped.

He spoke again just as he walked out the door.  “I just made a hundred dollar commission.”

When I lie in bed at night, that's when it all hits me. It comes gradually at first, like a soft yet steady hum. Like a toothache, it starts with a dull pain. Soon however, it becomes as if it were a full-fledged headache. I become entangled in its snares before I even realize it. My mind is spinning like a 45 on the turntable of unreality. Thoughts fly this way and that, sometimes crashing into the sides of my head, then returning with even more stamina. And all the while, I lie there, my eyes seeing only darkness but my mind knowing no rest.

Frustrated I throw back the covers and flip on the bedside lamp. The warm glow of a candle illuminates the cheetah motif of the lampshade. My soul feels comforted. The thoughts vanish tucking their tails between their legs. All is seemingly normal. I breathe a sigh of relief and try once again to immerse myself in sleep. I even switch sides for the clean slate effect. But once again, my attempt is futile. It all rushes back the moment my eyes shut and a million vividly disturbing imaginings break loose from temporary cages.

“They don't really like you, it's all a facade.”

“You looked so nice in that picture, I wonder if they thought you were pretty.”

“Why haven't they spoken to you for a while? You must have really done it this time.”

“Stop!” An overwhelming thought suddenly blots out all the rest. “You're all liars! They love me, they're just busy. I know I'm pretty because that boy said I was. Remember him? From Facebook?”

Ah, yes my mind is finally working properly. It has carefully sifted out what I want to hear, the supreme truth of the matters which hinder my slumber. Or at least, what suits my whims and fancies. The rest is simply 'mind junk'. I should have known all along.

Sleep soon overtakes me, but it does not last long. I am suddenly standing in a scene anew. Startled, I take account of my environment. My bedroom has faded away, the comfy pillow no longer cradles my head. The stupor of sleep has vanished and I feel more alert than ever before. The atmosphere around me is one of urgency and the mood is intense. I shudder. I look around and find myself surrounded by faces looking on in awe. I reach out to touch an arm, it retracts. I grab a hand, it slithers out of my grasp. Breaking out in a cold sweat, I too begin to imitate the hushed, anxious crowd. I know where I am now. This is the Day of Judgment.

My mind is once again set to full speed, but this time its thoughts are of a different nature altogether. Each thought consumes the expanse of my mind, first in loudness and then in absolute yelling.

“What have you prepared for this?”

“Did you even try to get ready?”

“WHAT HAVE YOU PREPARED FOR THIS!?”

I slowly become a crumpled heap on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. I have prepared nothing. Not enough dhikr. Not enough du'ā'. Not enough worship. In fact, the very thought of preparation had somehow eluded me, gotten lost somewhere in a mass of trivial pursuits. That was the one path my mind had not traversed, but which I now so desperately needed. I feel too weak to ward off a last minute whispering.

“I bet THEY will help you.”

Yes, that's it! I had done everything I possibly could to please them during life on the earthly plane. Many a time I had had to silence the voice of reason that would try to stop me. As long as they were happy with me, my life was complete. With new determination I rise and scan the crowd looking for a familiar face. It is no easy task, but whenever I spot one, I rush headlong to it, hands waving wildly. Much to my dismay, I get dismal responses each time. Some ignore me, a look of sheer indifference making them almost unrecognizable. Some walk swiftly away into oblivion in the same instant that I touch their shoulder. Soon, I find myself alone. The crowd has gradually marched away from me, rank upon rank. As my body helplessly falls forward, no longer able to support itself, I recall something. A verse. I had once read it, perhaps a Ramaḍān or two ago when I had ever bothered to peek into the Qurʾān. And as my body falls further and further into the unknown, the crowd still looking on, it flows through my veins, grabs the reins of my mind, pulsates through my heart, and consumes my soul.

“No bearer of burden shall bear the burden of another.”

And then I open my eyes. My head is cradled by a comfy pillow. I bolt upright, gasping for air and looking around. I see the familiar scenes; a curtained window to my right and a nightstand supporting a cheetah print lamp to my left. I rub my eyes and take a look at the bedside digital clock. 4:45 AM. Emerging from the covers, my feet touch the cold, hardwood floor. I shiver my way to the bathroom, turn on the tap, and start undoing Satan's knots, one by one. I slip on my prayer clothes, grateful for the warmth they provide and assume my position on my dark red prayer mat. In the stillness of the night I invoke my Lord. Every body, every face gradually marches away, rank upon rank and I feel myself flying higher and higher. I feel myself radiating light beyond the realms of human comprehension. I am alone, alone with the only One. Stray musings attempt to extinguish my light. But, an overwhelming thought suddenly blots out all the rest.

“Don't think. Just pray.”

She would produce all of the relevant papers and he would read through his homework in a nervous voice.  Me, nervous! he thought.  I'm a grown man. And she would nod when the work was right or gently explain when the work was wrong, or if he had written something particularly complex or clever, she would simply say, “Good.”  It was 1:52 now, and there were still six minutes to go.

She came on his lunch break.  He had two hours for lunch, that being one of the perks of having such a good job.  Salim was second-in command of a multi-national company headquartered in Dubai.   He took overseas phone calls and saw a steady stream of rich and important international clients for whom English was the common language.  That's why he was taking English classes, to fine-tune his accent, to turn his 'beesness' into 'business' and his 'moanie' into 'money'.

“Eye-yam so sorry meester Stein, but I cannot see you jast to-die.  Bleese talk to my seketary and we will work out ze abointmint for you.  Yes yes, off course.  Gudbye.”

“A 'P' is not a 'B',” she explained one day.  “Though they are both made with the lips, there is a difference between the words pit and bit.  Can you hear it?”

He would smile apologetically and stare at his fingernails.  There was no letter 'P' in the Arabic alphabet and he had a hard time trying to say the words pathos, pink, and portfolio, especially while looking at his teacher's lips.

“And your letter 'T',” she explained, kindly so as not to insult him, “does not belong on the tip of your teeth.  It belongs on the roof of your mouth just behind the teeth.”

Over a course of three months he had worked hard and succeeded in changing his accent from the harsh, guttural rendition of English that is common to the region into the soft and almost pleasant accent of a highly educated foreigner.  A good friend of his, a British lawyer, saw him one day after many months, and said with begrudging admiration, “My God, Salim, you sound like a villain from a James Bond film.”

At this he smiled and gave Robert and gentle punch in the pin-stripes.  “It is my English teacher, I have been taking her classes for three months, she is good.”

“She must be British then,” Robert said, more as a statement than a question.

“Oh no,” Salim shook his head, “She is American.”

“But not incurably, I'd bet.” Robert laughed.  “Just give me three months and I'd put a bit of British in her.”  Here Robert winked wickedly, and for some reason, Salim found himself inwardly seething.  Robert noticed the sudden darkening, the slight narrowing of the eyes, and said, “Are you well Salim?  You look ill a bit suddenly.”

Salim held both of his palms out and bowed his head slightly to excuse himself.  “It is this traveling.  I have flown to London three times this month, and it tires me.”

“Very well then.”  Robert clapped Salim on the shoulder, a little hesitantly, and took leave.  As soon as Robert was safely beyond the door and closed inside of the private elevator, Salim sat down on his leather chair and felt around for the bottle of Scotch inside his desk.  He poured himself a double and threw the drink down in one go.

He had long stopped feeling guilty for drinking alcohol.  Even though he was a Muslim, and even though his religion forbade all intoxicants, the cult of success demanded that he make a champagne toast on certain official occasions and politely accept the fine wines that his happier clients bestowed upon him, for refusal would be seen as unprofessional, uncivilized even.  By now, he had made the inevitable transition from a slightly guilty Muslim who sipped champagne at company dinners to wholly guiltless Muslim who drank Scotch in the privacy of his office.

After another drink he felt as though he might not kill Robert after all.

The American teacher was Muslim too, strangely enough.  Salim perfectly remembered how shocked he had been the first time he saw her:  paper-white skin, ice-blue eyes, and a delicate cream scarf wound about her head like some sort of holy aura.  It hung from where she had pinned it, and the light shone through the layers.  He hadn't talked to a woman in a scarf since…since he had made his pilgrimage to Mekkah four years ago, and on the way back, stopped in the duty-free shop in the airport and bought some vodka for his colleagues.

He had been late that first time, and his secretary had led the teacher into Salim's office and sat her down on the over-stuffed sofa in front of the bay window.  She had been reading a book when he walked in, and when she looked up to greet him, he saw that the light from the window shone through her eyes like they were made of glass.  It had unnerved him, they were very nice eyes, but they were a tad unnatural.

Salim thought about pouring himself a drink now, but reconsidered.  She would be here in a minute and she would smell the alcohol on his breath.  He would be better off checking his homework again.  He picked up his pen and tried to twirl it in his fingers.   It fell from his hand and clattered noisily onto the desk.  Salim looked at it and sighed.

I make deals in the millions of dollars, I can have any woman I want, and I have dropped my pen more times in her presence than I have in my entire life…

Salim placed both of his hands on his desk and stared at them, lost in his own thoughts.  He was surprised when he heard his clock softly chime two o'clock.  She was two minutes late.  What if she wasn't coming?  Last class, she had looked up at him just as he was stealing a glance at her, and there had been a few seconds of awkward silence.  She had flushed a beautiful shade of pink and then turned quickly back to the book in front of her.  What if she was angry?  What if she refused to come anymore?

Salim rubbed his hands together, cleared his throat, quietly practiced his homework, and readjusted his tie all in the course of the next two minutes.  His phone rang and he nearly jumped out of his seat.

“Sir?” the secretary said on the other end, “Your teacher called. She apologizes for the delay and says she will arrive shortly.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he muttered into the phone, and then hung up without listening for the secretary's reply.

She was coming.  He opened his desk drawer and poured himself a drink before he had time to reconsider.  He drank it quickly and then followed it with another.  He closed the bottle and stowed it away hastily, then he went to his private bathroom and brushed his teeth vigorously.  He splashed water on his face and then dried up with a monogrammed towel.  He returned to his desk and quickly called his secretary, and ordered that two cups of strong coffee should be brought in when the teacher arrived.  He had just hung up the phone when he heard the hiss of the elevator doors opening, and the staccato click of her heels on the marbled floor.  He fixed his eyes upon his desk, and did his best to appear thoughtful, or nonchalant, or calm, or anything but nervous and increasingly warm on the inside from Scotch.

She opened the heavy wooden door without knocking, and stepped inside the room.  She smiled politely and said, “Assalamu Alaykum.”

And he smiled, genuinely happy, and stood and returned the greeting, and then offered her a chair on the other side of his desk.   She opened her bag and began pulling out the books and lessons, and he stared politely at his own hands.  The secretary came in a second later, bearing a tray with two cups of coffee, and set them down on the large desk.  “Cream and sugar?” she asked the teacher.

“Both please.”  The teacher looked up said thank you, and gave the secretary a smile, one very much unlike the one she gave to Salim every week.  This one was softer.  Ah, thought Salim sadly.  That must be a real smile, and the one she gives me must be just formality.

When the secretary had left, the teacher sipped her cup of coffee tentatively and then said in her strange American accent, “Sorry I'm late.  I had some problems with my car on the way here.  Thanks for the coffee.”

“You're welcome,” Salim said, and he was very careful to form his lips into a circle when pronouncing the 'w' in 'welcome'.  Salim sipped his coffee and then, before he could think, blurted out, “I thought you were not coming.”

He mentally braced for the bolt of lightening he expected to strike him for his impropriety.

“Pardon me?” she said with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth.

Encouraged by the teacher's subdued reaction, and by the Scotch, Salim cleared his throat and said, “I said I thought you were not coming.”

“Oh no,” she said, “I would call if I had to cancel.”

The coffee was finished in silence and the lesson began.  Salim did his best to pay attention and to covertly study his teacher's face at the same time.  It was a fairly difficult task since all of the conversation revolved around the lesson, and the entire lesson was in the books on the desk.  There was no legitimate reason for him to look up at all.

When the lesson was finished, the teacher gave her wrist a small shake and her watch slid out of her sleeve.  “I've stayed ten minutes to make up for me being late,” she said looking at it, “I hope I haven't made you late for anything.”

“Not at all,” Salim said, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her.  He liked this chair a lot, it was quite expensive, made of soft Italian leather and expertly engineered.  It had a comfortable feel, and an aura of money and power about it.  “You are having problems with your car?”

“Yes,” the teacher nodded.  “I've already spoken to your secretary about it, and she even called and arranged for my car to be towed.  She's a very sweet lady.  She's going to call me a cab.”

“A cab?” Salim said uncertainly, trying to remember something.

“Yes, a cab is a taxi.  A taxi cab.”

“I should have remembered that,” Salim said, “I knew that word.  A taxi, one minute please.”  Salim dialed his secretary.  “Hello?  Yes, cancel the… cab.  Send the driver up please.  Yes.   Thank you.”

Salim looked up and saw bewilderment on the teacher's face.  He registered the look with private and pleasant surprise. “I would not dream,” he said choosing his words carefully, “Of sending you in a taxi cab.  Please accept the services of my driver instead.”

“Oh no no,” the teacher said quickly, straightening and holding both of her hands out, palms forward. “A cab will be fine, please don't trouble yourself.”

“Trouble myself?” Salim smiled, stroking the soft leather on the arms of his chair, “It is no trouble to myself, only to the driver, and he is paid enough to be troubled in such a way.  I am sorry I will not be accompanying you, only my driver.”

The teacher was visibly relieved.  “Thank you,” she said a bit more calmly, “That's very nice of you, and of your driver.”

There was a self-conscious pause in the conversation as Salim tried to say something that was fitting, grammatically correct, and possibly friendly.  Before he could think of something that fit all three requirements, there was a knock at the door and a uniformed driver stepped in.  He gave a deferential bow and said, “Madame?”

The teacher smiled at the driver and stood up, and then turned slowly back to Salim.  “Thanks again,” she said awkwardly, “I appreciate the ride.  The day after tomorrow at the same time then?”

“Yes,” Salim nodded, standing up, “The same time.”

The teacher followed the driver out of the door.  Salim stood until he heard the hiss of the elevator doors.  Then he sat back down at his desk, allowing a guilty smile to spread over his face as he locked his fingers together, propping them under his chin.  He was thinking of her reaction, how when she refused his ride, she said no, not once, but twice very quickly.  And her eyes had widened.  Had she suddenly straightened in her chair?

Salim's eyes darted from left to right over the space on his desk as he processed these signs.  He knew what people looked like when they were afraid.  Men came into his office and cowered in the same chair that she sat in on a daily basis, quietly terrified of the power he wielded and the favor he could bestow or withhold at his leisure.  They all sat erect in their chairs, blinking more often than natural.  Some openly cringed, some of them feigned cheerfulness, some of them wore fake nonchalance, and the bravest of them put on an air of humble dignity to cover their inferiority before him.

It was too good to be true.  Salim must not believe that this teacher, this confident and professional teacher he had meekly submitted to for the last three months, was actually afraid of him.  But still, he savored the thought and decided it would taste better with another glass of Scotch.

Later that evening, after a full day's work and a gourmet meal, Salim sat pensively in the back seat of his car. He considered himself an expert in the analysis of behavior and body language, and he had been thinking all day of how the teacher had accidentally given him the upper hand, how she had accidentally shown that she was nervous this afternoon, maybe even afraid.  Salim felt he could relax now, that he would no longer need to be nervous around her, for he had enough proof that it was she who was nervous around him.  He pushed a button on his armrest and the glass dividing the back seat from the front slid open.

“Yes sir?” the driver asked.

“Call Alice, ask her who towed my teacher's car.  Then take me there.”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes.  Now.”

The driver nodded and the glass went back up.  After a few moments the car turned away from the part of town that Salim was familiar with, the glass towers, the opulent restaurants and the luxurious private clubs.  The skyscrapers passed and the streets became narrower.  The street lights glinted off the curves of the long, black car as it slid noiselessly from the street into the sandy driveway of a mechanic's garage.  There was a light shining from a room towards the back of the garage, and there was perceptible movement within.  There were several cars parked outside the garage, presumably in various states of repair.  Salim wondered which one his teacher drove.

The glass slid down again.  “Sir?”

Salim stared intently at the light in the back room and felt a trembling of suspense, of good things to come in the future.

“See who is in that room,” Salim said slowly, “And bring him to me.”

Salim watched, invisible behind his tinted window, as the driver strode purposefully to the back room of the garage.  He knocked on the window, twice, and stepped back.  Salim saw another bulb come on in the garage and the front door opened a crack, sending a slice of warm electric light over the cars parked outside.  Salim watched the pantomimed exchange between his driver and the man behind the door, unable to hear and unable to look away.

Finally a small, stout, South Asian mechanic emerged from the door with one hand suspiciously in the pocket of his greasy overalls, and began stepping carefully towards Salim's driver.  The driver took a step back and gestured towards the car where Salim was sitting.  The man took two steps, and then stopped, and then started again.  When he had mincingly come as far as the tinted window, the driver opened the passenger door for him and waited for the man to step in.  Salim sat quietly in his corner of the back seat, simmering with anticipation.  The man grunted and sat himself down and the door was closed behind him.

“Wh-who's there?  What you want sir?”

“My friend,” Salim said, “I need a small favor from you only.”

“Garage closed,” the man said with an admirable show of bravery, “and only work Toyotas.”

“You towed a car belonging to my friend today,” Salim said in the low, smooth voice he used for intimidating lesser men, “I want you to replace everything with new parts.  I want you to clean it, inside and out.  I want you to make it run like it is new again, and I want your work to take no less than one week.”

“You be lucky if I finish in one week!” the man said, forgetting his fear to talk shop, “If you and me are talking about the same car, the little Amreekan lady with the scarf, take two weeks.”

“No,” Salim said, his voice so low he was almost purring, “Finish it in one week and you will not be sorry.”

The mechanic shivered.   “And wh-who pay for all this?”

“My driver will call, he will come to check what you have done.  Give him the bill for the extra work, and give the lady the bill only for what was broken when you towed it.  You will not mention my surprise.”

The mechanic nodded his head quickly and began pushing ineffectually on the handle of the door.  The driver unlocked it from the master control and the mechanic tumbled out, shuffled quickly back to his garage and slammed the door shut behind him.  Salim ordered the driver home again.

As Salim watched the neighborhood change and the streets widen, excitement twisted and writhed and throbbed in the bottom of his stomach.  Today was Sunday, we have class again on Tuesday and Thursday.  He should have the car ready by next Monday.  That way I can have next Sunday, too…

Salim spent the next day doing his work half-heartedly, and even let his attention drift in the middle of a phone call.  He was so busy hoping, planning, and scheming that he awoke suddenly to a voice saying, “Hello?  Hello?  Salim are you there?  Damn this phone line…I've been talking to myself for the last five minutes.   Stella!  Call back the son of a…click.”

Salim tactfully called the other party back first and apologized, saying he had gotten disconnected five minutes ago and had been trying to call back since.  He forced himself to concentrate on the call and even made up for his previous neglect with some understated but well-placed flattery.  When the call was over, Salim dropped into his chair and leaned back, placing his feet on the desk.  He was careful not to put his legs on the pages of English language exercises that were spread out there.  They were only half-way done, and poorly at that.  Part of his homework was to write sentences with the twenty new vocabulary words that the teacher gave him on a weekly basis, but today he could not think at all.

On Tuesday  morning he stood in his closet and felt at loss.  He would wear a suit, that was a given, but which one?  If he wore a silver tie, would that seem like too obvious of a cry for attention?  His navy suit with the hand-painted silk tie was sedate but well-cut, but then, he had already worn that on Monday.

Now who is acting like a woman?

He settled on a gray suit with a patterned silver and maroon tie.  It was a color combination that his tailor never failed to mention as “…very sophisticated, sir.” He selected a platinum tie clip, one without extra ornamentation and placed a six thousand dirham pen in his breast pocket.  Then he went to his dressing table and frowned at the designer cologne labels.  They were all too flashy, the scents were all piney, or floral in a manly way, or clean-smelling.  He needed something sedate but masculine, he needed…Aha!  A little bit of musk.

Salim arrived at his office half an hour early to finish his homework, and when his secretary arrived, he ordered her to hold all calls until ten minutes into the workday.  He wanted to finish his work undisturbed, he wanted it to be exceptional, he wanted his teacher to read it and smile and say, “Good.”

At 1:30, his lunch was delivered.  He ate it quickly and went to his bathroom and brushed his teeth, his hair, his shoes.  He straightened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket and went back to his office.  She would be coming soon.  The secretary had called her at noon to confirm her class and to ask if she wouldn't need a ride today as well.

Salim glanced over to the clock.  It was 1:50.  He took his homework out arranged it neatly on the desk.  At 1:57, the elevator hissed and the teacher's heels came clicking towards his door.  The teacher came in and said hello.

He stood up and returned the greeting, and offered her the chair on the other side of his desk.  She nodded and sat down, and instead of opening her bag, she looked up and said, “Your secretary asked me if I needed a ride.  I thought she was going to send a cab, but your driver picked me up instead.”

“Ah, he insisted that he pick you up.”

“Did he?” the teacher said, tilting her head to one side slightly, “He's such a quiet man.”

Salim smiled cheerfully at the teacher and thought he saw her eyebrows raise just slightly.  Still smiling, he said, “Shall we begin the lesson?”

His homework had been done flawlessly and Salim counted the times he heard his teacher say “Good.”  Five.  He had never gotten five before, and by the end of the lesson, he had only dropped his pen once.  It was the teacher who dropped her book instead, and when she moved to pick it up, Salim stood up and said, “Please, let me.”

He walked around the tremendous mahogany desk and picked the book up from where it had fallen on the floor.  As he crouched at her feet to pick it up, he felt sure that she must be able to smell his cologne.  Why else had she shifted in her chair?  He picked the book up and placed it gently on the desk and then returned to his own chair.   When the lesson finished, she assigned Friday's homework and began putting her books back in her bag.  Salim leaned back in his chair and gazed contentedly at her face as she did this.  When she looked up suddenly, he said right away, “What is the status of your car?”

“The mechanic said that there was some problem with the radiator,” she said, averting her eyes and putting one last book away, “It won't be ready until Monday, I think maybe it's because he's busy.”

“My driver has asked that he should escort you from here to your home until your own car is ready.  He distrusts men who drive taxis.  I do as well.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, “ok.”  And that was all.  The driver knocked on the door and stepped inside.  She stood up and followed him out.

Salim sat at his desk trying to suppress a smile.  He was nearly bursting with excitement, he wanted to stand up and dance, he wanted to pump his fist in the air, he wanted to sing.  He had expected her to primly refuse- to give some irreproachable excuse for not availing herself of his offer, or maybe even to have another car.  Salim himself had three, a black one for work, a silver one for parties, and a red luxury sport utility vehicle for vacations.  But she had agreed, and now there was nothing left to do before Friday but wait, and do his homework.

Salim worked especially well on Wednesday, he felt alive and well-oiled, he skillfully flattered the appropriate parties and pleasantly threatened others.  It was a good day.  At the end of it he went back to his designer duplex apartment and did his homework enthusiastically.

Make a sentence for the following vocabulary words:

Persistent:  adj.  refusing to relent, continuing firmly or steadily.  A persistent man always gets what he wants.

On Thursday morning, Salim woke up early and showered.  He emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and walked into his closet again.  He had woken early enough today to dress himself at a leisurely pace, and so his took his time selecting a suit.

Pinstripes?  Too formal.  Black?  Too intimidating, or too much like a waiter depending on the choice of tie.  Blue?  Wore that on Monday.  Olive?  Ah, olive.  Perfect.

Salim hummed as he stood and dressed before the mirror, a nameless but happy tune of his own improvisation.  He selected the same musk he had worn on Tuesday and took care not to put on too little or too much.  He gave himself one final appraisal in the mirror before walking out of the door, seeing how his tailored suit fit perfectly over his wide shoulders, buttoned neatly at his trim waist and set his own olive skin off exotically.  In a dark blue or black suit that contrasted his skin, Salim could pass as an Italian, maybe even a Slav.  But in olive, he had the unmistakable warm glow that only an Arab of medium skin has.

The morning's work went well, and by 12:30 Salim had quite an appetite.  He phoned his secretary and cancelled his order-in lunch.  He called the driver shortly afterwards and headed out for a quick lunch to a nearby roof-top cafe.  At 1:30, he looked at his watch, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and left.

The driver held the door open for Salim and closed it behind him.  Inside the car, Salim inhaled deeply and savored the atmosphere of the back seat.  It was cool and smelled of the leather on the seats and the musk on his suit.  He placed his hand on the seat next to him, the palm down and the fingers spread out and pressed into the leather.  He wondered where she had sat the last time she rode in this car.   He wondered what the look on her face would be when she sat down and saw Salim there.  Salim tried to picture his teacher's smile, not the wooden one she gave him, but the soft one he saw her give to the secretary once- the friendly smile, the soft smile, the smile where her lips actually parted instead of staying pressed politely over her teeth.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, thinking of nothing in particular, content to breathe and feel and anticipate.  With his eyes still closed, Salim felt the car slow and then stop.  He listened as the driver opened his door and stepped out, and then listened to the sound of his footsteps go fading into the distance.  There were a few minutes of silence, and then the sounds of footsteps returning towards the car.  Salim turned expectantly towards the door and watched from behind the tinted glass as the driver reached for the handle.  The door opened and Salim looked away as his teacher sat down, with her head still turned towards the driver.  She was saying thank you.  Salim cleared his throat.

The teacher turned suddenly and saw him and Salim thought he saw the tiniest glimpse of something unpleasant.  Alarm, was it?  Or was it fear?  Salim smiled graciously and said hello.  She returned the greeting nervously, simultaneously moving farther away in her seat and smoothing the skirt over her knees.  Salim straightened in his seat and pulled his knees closer together.

“I apologize for surprising you.” Salim said smoothly, “I had an appointment before this and there was not enough time to drop me at the office and then pick you up.”

“Oh?” she said in a strangely flat voice, “I called earlier and your secretary said you were out to lunch.”

Salim, an experienced liar, laughed and waved his hand as if shooing away the misunderstanding.  “Even lunch is an appointment for me, I had to schedule it three days in advance.”  He chuckled at his own joke, and the teacher smiled, but with her lips still pressed over her teeth.

“It is a cozy villa that you have,” Salim said after they had driven a few minutes in heavy silence, “the perfect size for just two or three people.”

The teacher nodded, still looking out of the window.  Salim turned in his seat towards her and said, “Do you live alone?”

He watched the teacher's profile as she blinked slowly and then turned her body towards him.  “Yes, I live alone.”

“I hope I am not rude for asking, but what brings you to this city so far from your home?”

“Many things,” the teacher said without elaborating.  Then she quickly looked up and turned the question back onto Salim.  “And you?”

“I am local, so I am from here,” Salim said proudly, “But I am not always in Dubai-  sometimes Berlin, often London, Madrid, Tokyo.”

“How often do you travel?” she said, repeating a question from last week's grammar lesson.

“You know as well as I do how many classes I am missing these days.  It is rare that I should have four lessons in a row.  For that I apologize.”

“Do you enjoy it?” she asked.  It was yet another grammar-book question.

“It is tiring sometimes, one wishes that he could settle quietly someplace, but he wishes this only sometimes.  At other times, it is very enjoyable.”

The teacher launched a barrage of polite but impersonal questions at Salim all the way until the moment the car stopped before the glass tower of Salim's office.  The driver opened the door for her, and then for Salim, and they walked together to the elevator.  Salim's mobile phone went off just as he was stepping into the elevator after his teacher and he decided to take the call in the lobby and allow the teacher to go up before him.

Once the phone call was finished, Salim got onto the elevator himself.  This public elevator took him only as far as the 31st floor, where his company headquarters were located.  Once there he took another elevator, a private one that led up four floors and opened only to his office.  When he arrived, his teacher was already seated primly in the chair on the other side of his desk with books and papers laid out for the lesson.  Salim said hello, and his teacher said, “Shall we begin?”

Salim got one 'good' and a nod at the end of his homework.  The rest of the lesson was complex and it was difficult for him to keep up.  By the end, Salim had given himself a headache trying to digest all of the new grammar rules and long vocabulary words that his teacher had presented.

At 3:02, the driver knocked on the office door.  The teacher shook her watch out of her sleeve, glanced at it and then closed her book.  She assigned Salim homework, said good-bye and then left before Salim could respond.

As Salim numbly closed his book and gathered the notes in front of him, he realized what his teacher had done.  In the car, instead of giving him a chance to direct the conversation, she had questioned him continually about unimportant and impersonal things, and robbed him of his chance to ask her anything personal or unrelated to English grammar. During the lesson, she had overwhelmed him with complicated lessons and rapid-fire questions about grammar rules he was supposed to have memorized.  She was in control again, and there was no mistaking that she had asserted her authority on purpose.  Salim had lost the upper hand.  He had also dropped his pen four times, splattering ink on one of his books.

Friday passed uneventfully, Salim slept in, went out for brunch, and double-parked outside of a masjid to catch the last minute of the sermon before prayer began.  Afterwards he caught up to some office work.  After sunset he met with some friends to watch a movie in VIP lounge and ended the evening by buying a new pen for his class on Sunday.  He was looking for something with a better grip.  The man in Mont Blanc boutique ensured him that this particular pen not only came with a very ergonomic grip, but also had an 18k gold nib, platinum casing, and diamonds set into the logo.

On Saturday evening, Salim met Robert at a dinner hosted by a common business connection.  “You look lovely this evening, my dear,” Robert said, mocking him good-naturedly, “With your fair brows pushed together into a most charming state of distress.  Your velvet eyes glazed with a far-away kind of look.  It must be a matter of the heart then,” Robert sighed dramatically, placing his hand over his chest.

Salim put his fork down and swallowed hard on his steak.  “I beg your pardon.”

“Come dear, you can tell Uncle Robert, who's the foolish fellow who's broken your heart?”

Salim wiped his mouth with his napkin and stared at Robert with narrowed eyes.  Robert noted the lack of real fire beneath the harsh gaze and pushed forward.

“So you can tell me about Hannah and Eva, but not this one?  And who was that German woman last time, the one with big teeth?”

Here Salim snorted and laughed into his napkin, losing all pretense of anger.  “That was Gertrude,” he said recovering, “and her teeth were not so big.”

“Gertrude…” Robert mused, “That's right.  I should've remembered her name since it does rhyme protrude.”

Salim covered his eyes with his hand as Robert laughed openly at his own joke.  When he was finished, Robert wiped imaginary tears from his eyes and then leaned forward, speaking to Salim in a low and earnest voice.  “Out with it then.  Have you finally loved and lost your secretary?”

Salim shook his head.

“Good, I may have her then?”

“What does it matter to you Robert, you have a dozen stories of romance on a weekly basis.  Tell me one of yours.”

Here Robert straightened suddenly in his chair and held his head high, his chin out challengingly.  “A true gentleman never speaks of such things.”

“But I should speak of them?”

“You heathen Arab, you're no gentleman!”

“Nor you, English infidel.”

The conversation deteriorated into an exchange of affectionate racial slurs and the night ended with a few off-key songs in the back seat of Salim's car.  The next morning Salim's alarm clock went off at seven, and as the electronic siren reverberated painfully in his sore head, he toyed with the idea of going in to work late.  Ms. Alice was an excellent secretary, she could come up with a hundred ways of placating neglected clients.

(The Vice President is in a meeting, but he told me you might call, sir, and asked me to inform you that he would get in touch with you as soon as possible, as he is very eager to talk to you.  He will call you as soon as he is able.  Of course sir.  Yes, yes.)

Salim slapped the alarm clock and pushed his face deeper into his pillow.  He was still in bed when his mobile phone went off at 9:05, trilling Beethoven's Ode to Joy in progressively louder tones.  He fumbled for the right button.  He eventually pushed it and said, “Hello?”  It was his secretary.

“Good Morning sir, Mr. De La Rosa has called for you twice since 8:30 and Mr. Robert Spenser left a message for you at 8:40.  Shall I read it to you?”

Salim mumbled the affirmative.

“The message reads: Sincerest condolences on the loss of the aforementioned broken body part.  Take two strong doses of Gertrude and call me in the morning- Doctor Robert.”

Last night's memory was fuzzy, what was Robert talking about?  A broken body part?   Salim rubbed his eyelids with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand as he tried to recall the evening.  His secretary waited patiently on the line.

It was coming back now, what was it that Robert had said?  Someone had broken his heart?  Salim suddenly remembered the conversation and the evening he spent fretting about his teacher…his teacher!  She would be coming today!  This was Sunday afternoon, and his homework had not been done and now he had slept in and wasted what little time he had to do it.  He gasped aloud.

“Sir?  Is everything all right?”

“Alice, send  my driver immediately.  Postpone my calls, tell them I am in a conference until 10:30.”

“Yes sir.”  Salim disconnected the phone and threw off his covers.  He washed his face hastily but did not shave.  He ran into his closet and grabbed a simple black suit.  He put it on quickly, pocketed his mobile phone and ran out to the elevator.  His new pen was forgotten in the entryway.

Salim arrived at his office and accepted a handful of messages from his secretary on his way to the elevator.  As he waited impatiently for the doors to open on his floor, he read through them.  There were five, and they were sorted in chronological order; 8:45, message from Robert.  8:52, slightly angry message from La Rosa, 9:10, message from potential client, 9:15, message from a mechanic.  And the last one, 9:18, was a message from his teacher.  Salim looked at his watch. It was 9:35.  She must've called when he was en route to the office.  He read the message hastily.

“My apologies,” it said, “I have to cancel class for today.  I will call you when I can come.”  Alice always took messages verbatim, and as Salim read the note, he tried to hear the words as his teacher spoke them.  In his head they sounded toneless, ambiguous.  They were possibly benign or possibly angry.

The elevator doors opened and Salim walked slowly to his office and sat down at his desk.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone, cycling through the directory and looking for her number.  He found it and hesitated before pushing the button.  What if she was angry at him?  What if he had been too forward in the car?  He placed this thumb over the send button.  He knitted his eyebrows together and pressed it.

The phone rang, once, twice, thrice.

“Hello?”  It was she who picked up.

“Hello, this is Salim,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.  “I just received your message.  I am hoping everything is well?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.  “Hello?” Salim said again cautiously.

“Yes, everything is fine, thanks,” she answered.  “I just can't make it today, sorry.”

“May I help with anything?  A taxi perhaps?”

“No, thank you.  A taxi will not be necessary.”

“Pardon my asking,” Salim ventured, “I hope you will not mind, but may I ask if there is any problem?”

Salim thought he heard the scratch of breath blown across the receiver.  It could have been static, he was not sure.

“There is no problem at all, thank you.”

Salim twirled a pen in his free hand and then ventured, “Then why can you not come?”

Over ten seconds of silence followed.  Salim cleared his throat.  Then he heard the sound again, it could not have been static.  It was definitely a breath of some sort.

“I'm sorry,” the teacher said slowly, “I just don't feel up to teaching classes anymore.  I'm tired these days.  If you don't mind, I'd like a vacation.”

“Of course, of course,” Salim said right away, “A week?  Two weeks?  When will you return?”

“I'm sorry for not making myself clear the first time,” the teacher said.  “But I would like to postpone classes with you until further notice.”

Salim put his hand quietly on his forehead and said, “One moment please.”  He put the phone down on the desk and exhaled loudly.  Then, as he was staring at his desk in perplexity, his eye caught the fourth phone message- the one from the mechanic.  It read: “Tell him I tried but she's very angry and I'm sorry, she looked inside of the car and I'm sorry, ok?  Please.” After the last line Alice had penned a few dots and a question mark in parenthesis, which was her way of signaling her confusion.

Salim picked up the phone quickly.  “I…”

“Yes?” his teacher said tonelessly.  Now Salim realized that her voice was calm but angry. How could he have missed the exasperated sigh earlier?

“Listen,” he said, dropping all pretense of formality, “Can you please come to my office?  I think we must talk in person.”

“I would rather not,” the teacher said.

“Please,” Salim said, “You must, please, I shall send the driver for you in ten minutes, ok?”

After a tense silence she said, “Fine,” and hung up.   Salim rang his secretary and had the driver sent to the teacher's house.  She would be arriving soon.  It would take less than twenty-five minutes altogether.  He had much to do in that time and had to hurry to accomplish it.

He quickly called La Rosa and made the proper apologies, setting a time for a longer, uninterrupted phone call for later in the afternoon.  He phoned the potential client and convened a council of secretaries to arrange a meeting some time next week.  He stuffed the other three messages in his desk and in doing so, spied his bottle of Scotch.  He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long draught.  Then he rushed to his bathroom to brush his teeth, and to shave, which he had not done yet.

He emerged from of the bathroom with his jacket in his arms and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and stopped in his tracks.  His teacher was already sitting in the chair on the opposite side of his desk.  The driver must have gone exceptionally fast.  Either that or time had passed much faster than Salim expected it to.

She did not turn around when he stepped into the room, but stayed in the chair, erect and motionless.  Salim felt his stomach quiver suddenly.  He drew in a breath, called upon all his mental resources, and walked to his chair, still with his sleeves rolled up and his jacket still over his arm.  He sat down without looking up at her right away, contemplating his lap.  After a few moments, the teacher said, “Well?”

Salim looked up guiltily, embarrassedly, and said, “This is about your car.  Please allow me to apologize.”

The teacher looked unflinchingly at Salim, the only sign of her emotions being a slight flaring of her nostrils, a rise in color to her cheeks.  “What-”

“Please,” he interrupted, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the desk.  “I know that it was not right of me to do such a thing secretly, but I wanted to make a surprise for you.”

“By going behind my back and threatening the mechanic?” she demanded.

“Oh,” Salim said, wilting.  “I am sorry.  Please forgive me.  I am very sorry.”

The teacher put a hand on the back of her neck and shook her head.  “I just-” she began, exasperatedly, “I mean, what right?  What are you trying, to, to- achieve?”

Salim looked up at her, and he stared sadly into her eyes.  She shook her head slightly as he did this and raised her eyebrows, as if asking a question.  Salim opened and closed his mouth several times as if to answer, and when nothing came out, his teacher shook her head once more and stood up.

“Wait!” he said, suddenly recovering his powers of speech.

“Good bye,” she said through tight lips.  “Good luck with your English studies, and with finding a new teacher.”

She turned and walked out of the door.  Salim stood and rushed out into the hall behind her.  The elevator doors had already opened and she was just stepping inside of them when he caught up and ran in behind her.  She turned around angrily as the elevator doors closed behind them.  She jabbed at the button for the 31^st floor.

“Now what?” she said irritably.

“Please,” Salim said, trying to stand at a respectful distance in the limited space of the elevator.  “Please, you misunderstand me.  I meant you no harm, I did not mean to violate your privacy.”

“Then what did you mean?” the teacher challenged, placing one hand on her hip.  Salim was momentarily distracted by its curve.  Then he blinked and looked up, staring into his teacher's angry blue eyes again, searching them for a sign.  That fierce sparkle, was it the hard sparkle of a diamond?  Or was it the faceted sparkle of ice?  Could the ice melt?  Could he make the eyes melt?

As he stood staring, the ice did melt, and a trickle of water leaked out onto the teacher's cheek.  “Oh I am so sorry!” Salim said, frantically producing a silk handkerchief from his pocket, “Please don't cry, please, I am so sorry!”

The teacher snatched the handkerchief and turned away, and at that moment, the lights flickered in the elevator.  There was a grinding noise and the elevator stopped.  Salim stood uneasily with his hand on the brass rail in the compartment.

The teacher looked up to the ceiling, and then to Salim.  She pushed the button for the 31st floor several times, and then the button for opening the door, and when at length, nothing happened, she threw the handkerchief back at him scornfully and said “Dammit!  Did you arrange this too?”

Salim shook his head innocently and pushed the emergency button.  It gave off a wicked spark and Salim jerked his hand away.  He squeezed his tingling fingers for a moment, and then reached into his pocket for his mobile phone.  The pocket was empty.  Of course.  His mobile phone was on his desk.

He closed his eyes and turned and rested his head against the cool wall of the elevator.  The teacher was standing with her back to him, both hands on the brass railing.  They stood in silence for an interminable amount of time, waiting.  Finally, the teacher sighed, set down her purse, and sat down on the floor with her legs crossed beneath her skirt and her arms crossed on her stomach.  Salim sat down also.  He stared meekly at his fingernails.

Salim cleared this throat and spoke, quietly, because the stillness in the elevator made his voice seem very loud, saying, “I am not a bad man.  I am not what you think I am.”

The teacher was staring at the elevator door.  She said, “So what.”

“So you do not have to leave teaching me.  I will not harm you.”

The teacher raised an eyebrow and turned to glare at Salim.  “Harm me?”

Salim felt a hot rush of color to his neck and he looked away. After a while he glanced down at his watch.  Ten minutes had passed in the elevator.  Salim looked at the ceiling, then at the floor, at the elevator buttons, and then at the door, and when he turned his head slightly to steal a glance at his teacher, who looked like she was resting her head against the elevator wall with her eyes closed, she turned to him and gave him an accusing stare.

“I did not do this!” Salim pleaded, “Please believe me.  I would never do anything like this.”

“Like you would never do anything with my car?” she was still staring at him.

Salim met the teacher's angry stare with a look of both regret and longing.  He began awkwardly, “If you knew why I did it you-”

“Don't bother,” the teacher said, interrupting him.  “I don't care why you did it.  When this elevator opens I am going home and you and going to find a new teacher.”

“I don't want a new teacher.”

“I don't care what you want.”  The teacher turned away and sniffed.  A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Why are you crying?” Salim asked in a way he hoped was gentle and inoffensive.

“I'm tired and upset and I'm stuck in an elevator,” the teacher said wearily, “Why shouldn't I cry.”

Salim drew a breath and held out his hand, as if making an offering, “But you don't have to be upset, and it's not so bad being stuck here.  Someone will come and open the doors, until then, please don't cry.”

Another tear rolled down the teacher's cheek regardless of Salim's advice.  Salim put his hand back in his lap, and after contemplating it for a minute, he shifted on the elevator floor so that he was facing his teacher.  “Please, why are you crying?  Is it because you are angry with me?  Please tell me.”

The teacher wiped her tears away with a corner of her scarf and Salim quickly handed her the silk handkerchief he had initially offered her.  She took it without looking at him and dried her eyes and dabbed at her nose with it.

“I am crying,” she said slowly, “Because I am mad at myself.  I am mad at you, and I am mad at this stupid elevator.”

“There is no reason why you should me mad at yourself,” Salim said with admonishment in his voice.  “And you shouldn't even be mad at me, I had a good reason for what I did, and I caused you no harm.  Now the elevator,” Salim said, trying to dispel some of the stress in the air, “Even I am mad at the elevator.”

The teacher said nothing.  He scooted a little closer to her and said quietly, searching her face, “You know why I did it, don't you?”  The teacher flushed and looked away from him.

“You know then.” he said, licking his lips anxiously, “Will you still be angry with me?”

“Leave me alone,” the teacher said weakly, “Go back to your corner and stay there until the doors open.”

A mechanical clicking noise came from somewhere beneath the floor of the elevator.

“No,” Salim said, scooting a little closer, his eyes glittering with excitement.  “Listen.  I know why you are crying.  You do not have to be upset.  I am not a bad man.  I have an excellent career and I-”

“You have nothing I need,” the teacher interrupted sternly.  “Now go back to your corner.”

Salim drew himself up indignantly, “Nothing you need!  Do you not need a house?  A life?  A man who will-”

“Nothing!” she said, raising her voice suddenly.  “That is enough, go back to your corner and stay there!”

“You're not teaching me any more, correct?”

“Correct,” the teacher said through clenched teeth, struggling to control her anger.

“So if you are not my teacher then I do not have to obey you.”  The teacher's eyebrows shot up in surprise and Salim smiled.  “You are not the teacher anymore and I am not Mister Vice President.  You are Angela and I am Salim.”

“I didn't give you permission to use that name,” the teacher said, her lips pressing together tightly when she ended her sentence.

“I do not need permission.,” Salim said, matching her tone.  “There is no student and no teacher, only man and woman.  Now Angela, you must tell me.  Am I not a suitable man?”

“Fine,” the teacher said, turning suddenly to face Salim.  “You want to know?  I'll tell you.”  She held up her hand and began counting off her complaints on her fingers.  “You're a professional liar, you drink, you smoke, you don't pray, you don't give a damn about your own religion and you think you can trick me into falling in love with you?  How stupid do you think I am?”

Salim blinked and shook his head as if trying to shake off the teacher's outburst.  “But, but,” he stammered, “Surely you must be joking.  You are American, you know what life is about, and I can give you a good one!”

“To hell with your life,” she said, and then laughed bitterly, “Yes, to hell with it.  I don't know if you even believe in accountability, so I'm not going to make a fool of myself by talking about heaven and hell, but I know what my life's goals are, and none of them involve any of yours, or you, or any men like you.  Ok?  Is that clear?”

Salim sat dumbly, staring at the floor.  The elevator shivered and the lights flickered again.  Suddenly, alarmingly, it dropped and then came to a jarring halt.  The doors had still not opened.  Salim looked up to the ceiling in alarm and swallowed against the lump of nausea in his throat.  The teacher had her eyes closed and hands grasping the brass rail above her.  Salim opened his mouth and drew a shaky breath.  There was a harsh grating noise and the elevator jerked suddenly up and then down again.

“Oh ****…” Salim said shakily.

The teacher opened her eyes and took her hands off the brass rail.  “Look,” she said, her anger replaced with urgency, “Look, I need to apologize for insulting you.  Don't hold it against me, please.”

Salim had wrapped his arms around his middle and was rocking back and forth with his eyes closed, trembling.  His breathing had become irregular.

“Oh no, don't panic!” the teacher said, standing up and taking Salim by the arm.  “Stand up,” she said, and she made Salim stand and bend over with his head between his knees.  “Breathe gently, there.  Good.”

Salim closed his eyes and forced himself to inhale.  The elevator doors hissed and opened half of an inch, and when Salim looked up eagerly he could see a vertical section of gears and wires lining a wall of cement between floors.  He stood up immediately and forced his fingers into the crack, pushing against the doors.  As he grunted and strained, the teacher sat down again and held her cupped hands out in front of her face, praying.

Salim groaned through his clenched teeth and pushed the door harder.  It came open another two inches, and then the entire elevator shuddered and Salim pulled his fingers out just as it began moving again.  The wires showing between the open doors scrolled upwards and out of sight at a progressively faster speed, and Salim was lifted onto his toes by force the rapid descent.   Faster and faster the elevator fell.

When the elevator struck the ground with a deafening crash and a shattering of glass panels and a crackling of electric wires, Salim lost consciousness.

Salim dreamt he was swimming in a tremendous pleasure garden, and in the immense blue pool, hundreds of other people were laughing and frolicking.  Some of them were sitting by the pool and feeding each other fruit.  One woman was laughing gently as she leaned onto another man's neck.  Salim turned and reached out with his arm and began swimming.  He had taken only a few strokes when he realized that something was wrong, he could not feel his fingers in the cool water.

Salim lifted his arm from the water and stared at it in horror.  His right hand was missing, not cut off, but decayed off, rotted off, and greenish-brown veins and arteries dangled lifelessly from the stump of his wrist.  Salim turned to the other swimmers for help and saw that the man swimming next to him was trailing a sightless eye through the water from a gaping socket.  A woman floating beside him was missing her jaw, and her teeth and blue tongue hung straight out from the bottom of her face.  Everywhere Salim turned, he saw people laughing joyfully and rotting alive.  Salim put his remaining hand to his face and found that he had no nose, only a moist, oozing cavity between his eyes where it had once been.  He screamed.  And screamed.  And screamed.

He was still screaming when he awoke on the elevator floor, and he coughed and gagged on his own blood, and then screamed again.  Salim rolled over onto his side and was immediately struck with overwhelming pain.  In the thin shaft of light that was shining through the crack in the elevator door, Salim watched blood drip to the floor.  It was coming from his face.  He held out his hands in front of him and nearly screamed at the sight: his right hand was crushed, the skin and muscle and bone all mangled together in an oozing, shockingly painful mess.  Salim shuddered as a wave of pain washed over him again.  He vomited.  When the wave subsided, Salim turned over onto his elbows and knees and crawled forward.

He found her, still sitting cross-legged, her scarf still wrapped neatly around her head, though shards of glass and debris were scattered all over it and nestled in the folds that lie over her chest.  In his confused state, Salim thought she might be sleeping with her chin resting on her chest.  He tried to say her name, but he couldn't hear himself mouth the words.  He couldn't reach out and shake her, so he crouched before her, bleeding and shuddering, until the shaft of light in the elevator widened and several silhouettes entered through it.

In the days and nights that followed, Salim was seldom conscious, and his sleep was disturbed with the same frightening dreams of the pleasure garden.  Between dreams he had vague ideas of doctors and nurses and needles, and of a relentless cycle of pain, and then numbness, and then pain again, followed by numbness.

Two and a half weeks after the elevator had come crashing down from Salim's private office to the company headquarters on the 31st floor, Salim regained consciousness, and Robert arrived not half an hour later.

He laid his hand uneasily on the rail of Salim's bed.  “How do you feel old chap?” Robert asked softly.

“I don't know,” Salim said.  His throat was raw from the tube that had been pulled out only a few minutes ago.  “My hand, it hurts…”

Robert averted his eyes and self-consciously pulled his own hand back into his lap.  “You haven't got it anymore Salim, they had to take it off…”

Salim raised his arm unsteadily and stared desperately at the bandaged stump.  That's right, his hand had hurt so much.  He remembered seeing the bloody pulp above his wrist, and then getting onto his elbows and knees and crawling towards…

“My teacher!” Salim croaked, starting from his pillow, his voice grating harshly in his throat as he groaned and tried to lift himself with his remaining hand.

Robert leapt to his feet and pushed the button that called the nurse and tried to subdue Salim at the same time.  “Calm down, calm down!  You must rest Salim, the doctors say you're barely alive as it is now.  Stop thrashing about or you'll undo everything!”

Salim dropped back onto his pillow, exhausted from his brief struggle.  “You must…” he said breathlessly, “…you must tell me…please, how is she…”

A nurse came in holding a wrapped syringe and a small glass bottle.  She opened the syringe and then stabbed its tip through the top of the vial, drawing out its contents.

“You must promise not to get all worked up when I tell you Salim, or I won't tell you at all.”

Salim did his best to nod earnestly, though it sent bursts of pain through his skull.

“Alright then,” Robert said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.  He drew a breath and held it for a second.  Then he released it, saying, “I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you.  She didn't survive.”

Robert turned his head and continued talking as he stared into the space above the window.  “I can't remember the technical word for it, something about the brain being struck from the impact, the doctors said she never felt a thing.  I'm so sorry Salim.”

Hot tears welled up in Salim's eyes and escaped, burning paths from the corners of his eyes to the pillow beneath his head.  The nurse slipped in next to all the tubes and wires connected to him, and then emptied the injection into the cannula of his IV.

Salim's mouth hung open.  Tears flowed freely from his blood-shot eyes, even as the sedative spread through his body and his eyelids grew heavier.  Robert stayed watching him until the fingers on his remaining hand stopped twitching and his breathing grew less harried.  When he thought he was finally asleep, Robert leaned carefully over Salim, and then watched in surprise as a large tear welled up in the corner of his closed eye and ran down his face.

“Poor chap,” Robert murmured as he walked out the door, “Crying in his sleep.”

She would produce all of the relevant papers and he would read through his homework in a nervous voice.  Me, nervous! he thought.  I'm a grown man. And she would nod when the work was right or gently explain when the work was wrong, or if he had written something particularly complex or clever, she would simply say, “Good.”  It was 1:52 now, and there were still six minutes to go.

She came on his lunch break.  He had two hours for lunch, that being one of the perks of having such a good job.  Salim was second-in command of a multi-national company headquartered in Dubai.   He took overseas phone calls and saw a steady stream of rich and important international clients for whom English was the common language.  That's why he was taking English classes, to fine-tune his accent, to turn his 'beesness' into 'business' and his 'moanie' into 'money'.

“Eye-yam so sorry meester Stein, but I cannot see you jast to-die.  Bleese talk to my seketary and we will work out ze abointmint for you.  Yes yes, off course.  Gudbye.”

“A 'P' is not a 'B',” she explained one day.  “Though they are both made with the lips, there is a difference between the words pit and bit.  Can you hear it?”

He would smile apologetically and stare at his fingernails.  There was no letter 'P' in the Arabic alphabet and he had a hard time trying to say the words pathos, pink, and portfolio, especially while looking at his teacher's lips.

“And your letter 'T',” she explained, kindly so as not to insult him, “does not belong on the tip of your teeth.  It belongs on the roof of your mouth just behind the teeth.”

Over a course of three months he had worked hard and succeeded in changing his accent from the harsh, guttural rendition of English that is common to the region into the soft and almost pleasant accent of a highly educated foreigner.  A good friend of his, a British lawyer, saw him one day after many months, and said with begrudging admiration, “My God, Salim, you sound like a villain from a James Bond film.”

At this he smiled and gave Robert and gentle punch in the pin-stripes.  “It is my English teacher, I have been taking her classes for three months, she is good.”

“She must be British then,” Robert said, more as a statement than a question.

“Oh no,” Salim shook his head, “She is American.”

“But not incurably, I'd bet.” Robert laughed.  “Just give me three months and I'd put a bit of British in her.”  Here Robert winked wickedly, and for some reason, Salim found himself inwardly seething.  Robert noticed the sudden darkening, the slight narrowing of the eyes, and said, “Are you well Salim?  You look ill a bit suddenly.”

Salim held both of his palms out and bowed his head slightly to excuse himself.  “It is this traveling.  I have flown to London three times this month, and it tires me.”

“Very well then.”  Robert clapped Salim on the shoulder, a little hesitantly, and took leave.  As soon as Robert was safely beyond the door and closed inside of the private elevator, Salim sat down on his leather chair and felt around for the bottle of Scotch inside his desk.  He poured himself a double and threw the drink down in one go.

He had long stopped feeling guilty for drinking alcohol.  Even though he was a Muslim, and even though his religion forbade all intoxicants, the cult of success demanded that he make a champagne toast on certain official occasions and politely accept the fine wines that his happier clients bestowed upon him, for refusal would be seen as unprofessional, uncivilized even.  By now, he had made the inevitable transition from a slightly guilty Muslim who sipped champagne at company dinners to wholly guiltless Muslim who drank Scotch in the privacy of his office.

After another drink he felt as though he might not kill Robert after all.

The American teacher was Muslim too, strangely enough.  Salim perfectly remembered how shocked he had been the first time he saw her:  paper-white skin, ice-blue eyes, and a delicate cream scarf wound about her head like some sort of holy aura.  It hung from where she had pinned it, and the light shone through the layers.  He hadn't talked to a woman in a scarf since…since he had made his pilgrimage to Mekkah four years ago, and on the way back, stopped in the duty-free shop in the airport and bought some vodka for his colleagues.

He had been late that first time, and his secretary had led the teacher into Salim's office and sat her down on the over-stuffed sofa in front of the bay window.  She had been reading a book when he walked in, and when she looked up to greet him, he saw that the light from the window shone through her eyes like they were made of glass.  It had unnerved him, they were very nice eyes, but they were a tad unnatural.

Salim thought about pouring himself a drink now, but reconsidered.  She would be here in a minute and she would smell the alcohol on his breath.  He would be better off checking his homework again.  He picked up his pen and tried to twirl it in his fingers.   It fell from his hand and clattered noisily onto the desk.  Salim looked at it and sighed.

I make deals in the millions of dollars, I can have any woman I want, and I have dropped my pen more times in her presence than I have in my entire life…

Salim placed both of his hands on his desk and stared at them, lost in his own thoughts.  He was surprised when he heard his clock softly chime two o'clock.  She was two minutes late.  What if she wasn't coming?  Last class, she had looked up at him just as he was stealing a glance at her, and there had been a few seconds of awkward silence.  She had flushed a beautiful shade of pink and then turned quickly back to the book in front of her.  What if she was angry?  What if she refused to come anymore?

Salim rubbed his hands together, cleared his throat, quietly practiced his homework, and readjusted his tie all in the course of the next two minutes.  His phone rang and he nearly jumped out of his seat.

“Sir?” the secretary said on the other end, “Your teacher called. She apologizes for the delay and says she will arrive shortly.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he muttered into the phone, and then hung up without listening for the secretary's reply.

She was coming.  He opened his desk drawer and poured himself a drink before he had time to reconsider.  He drank it quickly and then followed it with another.  He closed the bottle and stowed it away hastily, then he went to his private bathroom and brushed his teeth vigorously.  He splashed water on his face and then dried up with a monogrammed towel.  He returned to his desk and quickly called his secretary, and ordered that two cups of strong coffee should be brought in when the teacher arrived.  He had just hung up the phone when he heard the hiss of the elevator doors opening, and the staccato click of her heels on the marbled floor.  He fixed his eyes upon his desk, and did his best to appear thoughtful, or nonchalant, or calm, or anything but nervous and increasingly warm on the inside from Scotch.

She opened the heavy wooden door without knocking, and stepped inside the room.  She smiled politely and said, “Assalamu Alaykum.”

And he smiled, genuinely happy, and stood and returned the greeting, and then offered her a chair on the other side of his desk.   She opened her bag and began pulling out the books and lessons, and he stared politely at his own hands.  The secretary came in a second later, bearing a tray with two cups of coffee, and set them down on the large desk.  “Cream and sugar?” she asked the teacher.

“Both please.”  The teacher looked up said thank you, and gave the secretary a smile, one very much unlike the one she gave to Salim every week.  This one was softer.  Ah, thought Salim sadly.  That must be a real smile, and the one she gives me must be just formality.

When the secretary had left, the teacher sipped her cup of coffee tentatively and then said in her strange American accent, “Sorry I'm late.  I had some problems with my car on the way here.  Thanks for the coffee.”

“You're welcome,” Salim said, and he was very careful to form his lips into a circle when pronouncing the 'w' in 'welcome'.  Salim sipped his coffee and then, before he could think, blurted out, “I thought you were not coming.”

He mentally braced for the bolt of lightening he expected to strike him for his impropriety.

“Pardon me?” she said with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth.

Encouraged by the teacher's subdued reaction, and by the Scotch, Salim cleared his throat and said, “I said I thought you were not coming.”

“Oh no,” she said, “I would call if I had to cancel.”

The coffee was finished in silence and the lesson began.  Salim did his best to pay attention and to covertly study his teacher's face at the same time.  It was a fairly difficult task since all of the conversation revolved around the lesson, and the entire lesson was in the books on the desk.  There was no legitimate reason for him to look up at all.

When the lesson was finished, the teacher gave her wrist a small shake and her watch slid out of her sleeve.  “I've stayed ten minutes to make up for me being late,” she said looking at it, “I hope I haven't made you late for anything.”

“Not at all,” Salim said, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her.  He liked this chair a lot, it was quite expensive, made of soft Italian leather and expertly engineered.  It had a comfortable feel, and an aura of money and power about it.  “You are having problems with your car?”

“Yes,” the teacher nodded.  “I've already spoken to your secretary about it, and she even called and arranged for my car to be towed.  She's a very sweet lady.  She's going to call me a cab.”

“A cab?” Salim said uncertainly, trying to remember something.

“Yes, a cab is a taxi.  A taxi cab.”

“I should have remembered that,” Salim said, “I knew that word.  A taxi, one minute please.”  Salim dialed his secretary.  “Hello?  Yes, cancel the… cab.  Send the driver up please.  Yes.   Thank you.”

Salim looked up and saw bewilderment on the teacher's face.  He registered the look with private and pleasant surprise. “I would not dream,” he said choosing his words carefully, “Of sending you in a taxi cab.  Please accept the services of my driver instead.”

“Oh no no,” the teacher said quickly, straightening and holding both of her hands out, palms forward. “A cab will be fine, please don't trouble yourself.”

“Trouble myself?” Salim smiled, stroking the soft leather on the arms of his chair, “It is no trouble to myself, only to the driver, and he is paid enough to be troubled in such a way.  I am sorry I will not be accompanying you, only my driver.”

The teacher was visibly relieved.  “Thank you,” she said a bit more calmly, “That's very nice of you, and of your driver.”

There was a self-conscious pause in the conversation as Salim tried to say something that was fitting, grammatically correct, and possibly friendly.  Before he could think of something that fit all three requirements, there was a knock at the door and a uniformed driver stepped in.  He gave a deferential bow and said, “Madame?”

The teacher smiled at the driver and stood up, and then turned slowly back to Salim.  “Thanks again,” she said awkwardly, “I appreciate the ride.  The day after tomorrow at the same time then?”

“Yes,” Salim nodded, standing up, “The same time.”

The teacher followed the driver out of the door.  Salim stood until he heard the hiss of the elevator doors.  Then he sat back down at his desk, allowing a guilty smile to spread over his face as he locked his fingers together, propping them under his chin.  He was thinking of her reaction, how when she refused his ride, she said no, not once, but twice very quickly.  And her eyes had widened.  Had she suddenly straightened in her chair?

Salim's eyes darted from left to right over the space on his desk as he processed these signs.  He knew what people looked like when they were afraid.  Men came into his office and cowered in the same chair that she sat in on a daily basis, quietly terrified of the power he wielded and the favor he could bestow or withhold at his leisure.  They all sat erect in their chairs, blinking more often than natural.  Some openly cringed, some of them feigned cheerfulness, some of them wore fake nonchalance, and the bravest of them put on an air of humble dignity to cover their inferiority before him.

It was too good to be true.  Salim must not believe that this teacher, this confident and professional teacher he had meekly submitted to for the last three months, was actually afraid of him.  But still, he savored the thought and decided it would taste better with another glass of Scotch.

Later that evening, after a full day's work and a gourmet meal, Salim sat pensively in the back seat of his car. He considered himself an expert in the analysis of behavior and body language, and he had been thinking all day of how the teacher had accidentally given him the upper hand, how she had accidentally shown that she was nervous this afternoon, maybe even afraid.  Salim felt he could relax now, that he would no longer need to be nervous around her, for he had enough proof that it was she who was nervous around him.  He pushed a button on his armrest and the glass dividing the back seat from the front slid open.

“Yes sir?” the driver asked.

“Call Alice, ask her who towed my teacher's car.  Then take me there.”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes.  Now.”

The driver nodded and the glass went back up.  After a few moments the car turned away from the part of town that Salim was familiar with, the glass towers, the opulent restaurants and the luxurious private clubs.  The skyscrapers passed and the streets became narrower.  The street lights glinted off the curves of the long, black car as it slid noiselessly from the street into the sandy driveway of a mechanic's garage.  There was a light shining from a room towards the back of the garage, and there was perceptible movement within.  There were several cars parked outside the garage, presumably in various states of repair.  Salim wondered which one his teacher drove.

The glass slid down again.  “Sir?”

Salim stared intently at the light in the back room and felt a trembling of suspense, of good things to come in the future.

“See who is in that room,” Salim said slowly, “And bring him to me.”

Salim watched, invisible behind his tinted window, as the driver strode purposefully to the back room of the garage.  He knocked on the window, twice, and stepped back.  Salim saw another bulb come on in the garage and the front door opened a crack, sending a slice of warm electric light over the cars parked outside.  Salim watched the pantomimed exchange between his driver and the man behind the door, unable to hear and unable to look away.

Finally a small, stout, South Asian mechanic emerged from the door with one hand suspiciously in the pocket of his greasy overalls, and began stepping carefully towards Salim's driver.  The driver took a step back and gestured towards the car where Salim was sitting.  The man took two steps, and then stopped, and then started again.  When he had mincingly come as far as the tinted window, the driver opened the passenger door for him and waited for the man to step in.  Salim sat quietly in his corner of the back seat, simmering with anticipation.  The man grunted and sat himself down and the door was closed behind him.

“Wh-who's there?  What you want sir?”

“My friend,” Salim said, “I need a small favor from you only.”

“Garage closed,” the man said with an admirable show of bravery, “and only work Toyotas.”

“You towed a car belonging to my friend today,” Salim said in the low, smooth voice he used for intimidating lesser men, “I want you to replace everything with new parts.  I want you to clean it, inside and out.  I want you to make it run like it is new again, and I want your work to take no less than one week.”

“You be lucky if I finish in one week!” the man said, forgetting his fear to talk shop, “If you and me are talking about the same car, the little Amreekan lady with the scarf, take two weeks.”

“No,” Salim said, his voice so low he was almost purring, “Finish it in one week and you will not be sorry.”

The mechanic shivered.   “And wh-who pay for all this?”

“My driver will call, he will come to check what you have done.  Give him the bill for the extra work, and give the lady the bill only for what was broken when you towed it.  You will not mention my surprise.”

The mechanic nodded his head quickly and began pushing ineffectually on the handle of the door.  The driver unlocked it from the master control and the mechanic tumbled out, shuffled quickly back to his garage and slammed the door shut behind him.  Salim ordered the driver home again.

As Salim watched the neighborhood change and the streets widen, excitement twisted and writhed and throbbed in the bottom of his stomach.  Today was Sunday, we have class again on Tuesday and Thursday.  He should have the car ready by next Monday.  That way I can have next Sunday, too…

Salim spent the next day doing his work half-heartedly, and even let his attention drift in the middle of a phone call.  He was so busy hoping, planning, and scheming that he awoke suddenly to a voice saying, “Hello?  Hello?  Salim are you there?  Damn this phone line…I've been talking to myself for the last five minutes.   Stella!  Call back the son of a…click.”

Salim tactfully called the other party back first and apologized, saying he had gotten disconnected five minutes ago and had been trying to call back since.  He forced himself to concentrate on the call and even made up for his previous neglect with some understated but well-placed flattery.  When the call was over, Salim dropped into his chair and leaned back, placing his feet on the desk.  He was careful not to put his legs on the pages of English language exercises that were spread out there.  They were only half-way done, and poorly at that.  Part of his homework was to write sentences with the twenty new vocabulary words that the teacher gave him on a weekly basis, but today he could not think at all.

On Tuesday  morning he stood in his closet and felt at loss.  He would wear a suit, that was a given, but which one?  If he wore a silver tie, would that seem like too obvious of a cry for attention?  His navy suit with the hand-painted silk tie was sedate but well-cut, but then, he had already worn that on Monday.

Now who is acting like a woman?

He settled on a gray suit with a patterned silver and maroon tie.  It was a color combination that his tailor never failed to mention as “…very sophisticated, sir.” He selected a platinum tie clip, one without extra ornamentation and placed a six thousand dirham pen in his breast pocket.  Then he went to his dressing table and frowned at the designer cologne labels.  They were all too flashy, the scents were all piney, or floral in a manly way, or clean-smelling.  He needed something sedate but masculine, he needed…Aha!  A little bit of musk.

Salim arrived at his office half an hour early to finish his homework, and when his secretary arrived, he ordered her to hold all calls until ten minutes into the workday.  He wanted to finish his work undisturbed, he wanted it to be exceptional, he wanted his teacher to read it and smile and say, “Good.”

At 1:30, his lunch was delivered.  He ate it quickly and went to his bathroom and brushed his teeth, his hair, his shoes.  He straightened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket and went back to his office.  She would be coming soon.  The secretary had called her at noon to confirm her class and to ask if she wouldn't need a ride today as well.

Salim glanced over to the clock.  It was 1:50.  He took his homework out arranged it neatly on the desk.  At 1:57, the elevator hissed and the teacher's heels came clicking towards his door.  The teacher came in and said hello.

He stood up and returned the greeting, and offered her the chair on the other side of his desk.  She nodded and sat down, and instead of opening her bag, she looked up and said, “Your secretary asked me if I needed a ride.  I thought she was going to send a cab, but your driver picked me up instead.”

“Ah, he insisted that he pick you up.”

“Did he?” the teacher said, tilting her head to one side slightly, “He's such a quiet man.”

Salim smiled cheerfully at the teacher and thought he saw her eyebrows raise just slightly.  Still smiling, he said, “Shall we begin the lesson?”

His homework had been done flawlessly and Salim counted the times he heard his teacher say “Good.”  Five.  He had never gotten five before, and by the end of the lesson, he had only dropped his pen once.  It was the teacher who dropped her book instead, and when she moved to pick it up, Salim stood up and said, “Please, let me.”

He walked around the tremendous mahogany desk and picked the book up from where it had fallen on the floor.  As he crouched at her feet to pick it up, he felt sure that she must be able to smell his cologne.  Why else had she shifted in her chair?  He picked the book up and placed it gently on the desk and then returned to his own chair.   When the lesson finished, she assigned Friday's homework and began putting her books back in her bag.  Salim leaned back in his chair and gazed contentedly at her face as she did this.  When she looked up suddenly, he said right away, “What is the status of your car?”

“The mechanic said that there was some problem with the radiator,” she said, averting her eyes and putting one last book away, “It won't be ready until Monday, I think maybe it's because he's busy.”

“My driver has asked that he should escort you from here to your home until your own car is ready.  He distrusts men who drive taxis.  I do as well.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, “ok.”  And that was all.  The driver knocked on the door and stepped inside.  She stood up and followed him out.

Salim sat at his desk trying to suppress a smile.  He was nearly bursting with excitement, he wanted to stand up and dance, he wanted to pump his fist in the air, he wanted to sing.  He had expected her to primly refuse- to give some irreproachable excuse for not availing herself of his offer, or maybe even to have another car.  Salim himself had three, a black one for work, a silver one for parties, and a red luxury sport utility vehicle for vacations.  But she had agreed, and now there was nothing left to do before Friday but wait, and do his homework.

Salim worked especially well on Wednesday, he felt alive and well-oiled, he skillfully flattered the appropriate parties and pleasantly threatened others.  It was a good day.  At the end of it he went back to his designer duplex apartment and did his homework enthusiastically.

Make a sentence for the following vocabulary words:

Persistent:  adj.  refusing to relent, continuing firmly or steadily.  A persistent man always gets what he wants.

On Thursday morning, Salim woke up early and showered.  He emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and walked into his closet again.  He had woken early enough today to dress himself at a leisurely pace, and so his took his time selecting a suit.

Pinstripes?  Too formal.  Black?  Too intimidating, or too much like a waiter depending on the choice of tie.  Blue?  Wore that on Monday.  Olive?  Ah, olive.  Perfect.

Salim hummed as he stood and dressed before the mirror, a nameless but happy tune of his own improvisation.  He selected the same musk he had worn on Tuesday and took care not to put on too little or too much.  He gave himself one final appraisal in the mirror before walking out of the door, seeing how his tailored suit fit perfectly over his wide shoulders, buttoned neatly at his trim waist and set his own olive skin off exotically.  In a dark blue or black suit that contrasted his skin, Salim could pass as an Italian, maybe even a Slav.  But in olive, he had the unmistakable warm glow that only an Arab of medium skin has.

The morning's work went well, and by 12:30 Salim had quite an appetite.  He phoned his secretary and cancelled his order-in lunch.  He called the driver shortly afterwards and headed out for a quick lunch to a nearby roof-top cafe.  At 1:30, he looked at his watch, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and left.

The driver held the door open for Salim and closed it behind him.  Inside the car, Salim inhaled deeply and savored the atmosphere of the back seat.  It was cool and smelled of the leather on the seats and the musk on his suit.  He placed his hand on the seat next to him, the palm down and the fingers spread out and pressed into the leather.  He wondered where she had sat the last time she rode in this car.   He wondered what the look on her face would be when she sat down and saw Salim there.  Salim tried to picture his teacher's smile, not the wooden one she gave him, but the soft one he saw her give to the secretary once- the friendly smile, the soft smile, the smile where her lips actually parted instead of staying pressed politely over her teeth.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, thinking of nothing in particular, content to breathe and feel and anticipate.  With his eyes still closed, Salim felt the car slow and then stop.  He listened as the driver opened his door and stepped out, and then listened to the sound of his footsteps go fading into the distance.  There were a few minutes of silence, and then the sounds of footsteps returning towards the car.  Salim turned expectantly towards the door and watched from behind the tinted glass as the driver reached for the handle.  The door opened and Salim looked away as his teacher sat down, with her head still turned towards the driver.  She was saying thank you.  Salim cleared his throat.

The teacher turned suddenly and saw him and Salim thought he saw the tiniest glimpse of something unpleasant.  Alarm, was it?  Or was it fear?  Salim smiled graciously and said hello.  She returned the greeting nervously, simultaneously moving farther away in her seat and smoothing the skirt over her knees.  Salim straightened in his seat and pulled his knees closer together.

“I apologize for surprising you.” Salim said smoothly, “I had an appointment before this and there was not enough time to drop me at the office and then pick you up.”

“Oh?” she said in a strangely flat voice, “I called earlier and your secretary said you were out to lunch.”

Salim, an experienced liar, laughed and waved his hand as if shooing away the misunderstanding.  “Even lunch is an appointment for me, I had to schedule it three days in advance.”  He chuckled at his own joke, and the teacher smiled, but with her lips still pressed over her teeth.

“It is a cozy villa that you have,” Salim said after they had driven a few minutes in heavy silence, “the perfect size for just two or three people.”

The teacher nodded, still looking out of the window.  Salim turned in his seat towards her and said, “Do you live alone?”

He watched the teacher's profile as she blinked slowly and then turned her body towards him.  “Yes, I live alone.”

“I hope I am not rude for asking, but what brings you to this city so far from your home?”

“Many things,” the teacher said without elaborating.  Then she quickly looked up and turned the question back onto Salim.  “And you?”

“I am local, so I am from here,” Salim said proudly, “But I am not always in Dubai-  sometimes Berlin, often London, Madrid, Tokyo.”

“How often do you travel?” she said, repeating a question from last week's grammar lesson.

“You know as well as I do how many classes I am missing these days.  It is rare that I should have four lessons in a row.  For that I apologize.”

“Do you enjoy it?” she asked.  It was yet another grammar-book question.

“It is tiring sometimes, one wishes that he could settle quietly someplace, but he wishes this only sometimes.  At other times, it is very enjoyable.”

The teacher launched a barrage of polite but impersonal questions at Salim all the way until the moment the car stopped before the glass tower of Salim's office.  The driver opened the door for her, and then for Salim, and they walked together to the elevator.  Salim's mobile phone went off just as he was stepping into the elevator after his teacher and he decided to take the call in the lobby and allow the teacher to go up before him.

Once the phone call was finished, Salim got onto the elevator himself.  This public elevator took him only as far as the 31st floor, where his company headquarters were located.  Once there he took another elevator, a private one that led up four floors and opened only to his office.  When he arrived, his teacher was already seated primly in the chair on the other side of his desk with books and papers laid out for the lesson.  Salim said hello, and his teacher said, “Shall we begin?”

Salim got one 'good' and a nod at the end of his homework.  The rest of the lesson was complex and it was difficult for him to keep up.  By the end, Salim had given himself a headache trying to digest all of the new grammar rules and long vocabulary words that his teacher had presented.

At 3:02, the driver knocked on the office door.  The teacher shook her watch out of her sleeve, glanced at it and then closed her book.  She assigned Salim homework, said good-bye and then left before Salim could respond.

As Salim numbly closed his book and gathered the notes in front of him, he realized what his teacher had done.  In the car, instead of giving him a chance to direct the conversation, she had questioned him continually about unimportant and impersonal things, and robbed him of his chance to ask her anything personal or unrelated to English grammar. During the lesson, she had overwhelmed him with complicated lessons and rapid-fire questions about grammar rules he was supposed to have memorized.  She was in control again, and there was no mistaking that she had asserted her authority on purpose.  Salim had lost the upper hand.  He had also dropped his pen four times, splattering ink on one of his books.

Friday passed uneventfully, Salim slept in, went out for brunch, and double-parked outside of a masjid to catch the last minute of the sermon before prayer began.  Afterwards he caught up to some office work.  After sunset he met with some friends to watch a movie in VIP lounge and ended the evening by buying a new pen for his class on Sunday.  He was looking for something with a better grip.  The man in Mont Blanc boutique ensured him that this particular pen not only came with a very ergonomic grip, but also had an 18k gold nib, platinum casing, and diamonds set into the logo.

On Saturday evening, Salim met Robert at a dinner hosted by a common business connection.  “You look lovely this evening, my dear,” Robert said, mocking him good-naturedly, “With your fair brows pushed together into a most charming state of distress.  Your velvet eyes glazed with a far-away kind of look.  It must be a matter of the heart then,” Robert sighed dramatically, placing his hand over his chest.

Salim put his fork down and swallowed hard on his steak.  “I beg your pardon.”

“Come dear, you can tell Uncle Robert, who's the foolish fellow who's broken your heart?”

Salim wiped his mouth with his napkin and stared at Robert with narrowed eyes.  Robert noted the lack of real fire beneath the harsh gaze and pushed forward.

“So you can tell me about Hannah and Eva, but not this one?  And who was that German woman last time, the one with big teeth?”

Here Salim snorted and laughed into his napkin, losing all pretense of anger.  “That was Gertrude,” he said recovering, “and her teeth were not so big.”

“Gertrude…” Robert mused, “That's right.  I should've remembered her name since it does rhyme protrude.”

Salim covered his eyes with his hand as Robert laughed openly at his own joke.  When he was finished, Robert wiped imaginary tears from his eyes and then leaned forward, speaking to Salim in a low and earnest voice.  “Out with it then.  Have you finally loved and lost your secretary?”

Salim shook his head.

“Good, I may have her then?”

“What does it matter to you Robert, you have a dozen stories of romance on a weekly basis.  Tell me one of yours.”

Here Robert straightened suddenly in his chair and held his head high, his chin out challengingly.  “A true gentleman never speaks of such things.”

“But I should speak of them?”

“You heathen Arab, you're no gentleman!”

“Nor you, English infidel.”

The conversation deteriorated into an exchange of affectionate racial slurs and the night ended with a few off-key songs in the back seat of Salim's car.  The next morning Salim's alarm clock went off at seven, and as the electronic siren reverberated painfully in his sore head, he toyed with the idea of going in to work late.  Ms. Alice was an excellent secretary, she could come up with a hundred ways of placating neglected clients.

(The Vice President is in a meeting, but he told me you might call, sir, and asked me to inform you that he would get in touch with you as soon as possible, as he is very eager to talk to you.  He will call you as soon as he is able.  Of course sir.  Yes, yes.)

Salim slapped the alarm clock and pushed his face deeper into his pillow.  He was still in bed when his mobile phone went off at 9:05, trilling Beethoven's Ode to Joy in progressively louder tones.  He fumbled for the right button.  He eventually pushed it and said, “Hello?”  It was his secretary.

“Good Morning sir, Mr. De La Rosa has called for you twice since 8:30 and Mr. Robert Spenser left a message for you at 8:40.  Shall I read it to you?”

Salim mumbled the affirmative.

“The message reads: Sincerest condolences on the loss of the aforementioned broken body part.  Take two strong doses of Gertrude and call me in the morning- Doctor Robert.”

Last night's memory was fuzzy, what was Robert talking about?  A broken body part?   Salim rubbed his eyelids with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand as he tried to recall the evening.  His secretary waited patiently on the line.

It was coming back now, what was it that Robert had said?  Someone had broken his heart?  Salim suddenly remembered the conversation and the evening he spent fretting about his teacher…his teacher!  She would be coming today!  This was Sunday afternoon, and his homework had not been done and now he had slept in and wasted what little time he had to do it.  He gasped aloud.

“Sir?  Is everything all right?”

“Alice, send  my driver immediately.  Postpone my calls, tell them I am in a conference until 10:30.”

“Yes sir.”  Salim disconnected the phone and threw off his covers.  He washed his face hastily but did not shave.  He ran into his closet and grabbed a simple black suit.  He put it on quickly, pocketed his mobile phone and ran out to the elevator.  His new pen was forgotten in the entryway.

Salim arrived at his office and accepted a handful of messages from his secretary on his way to the elevator.  As he waited impatiently for the doors to open on his floor, he read through them.  There were five, and they were sorted in chronological order; 8:45, message from Robert.  8:52, slightly angry message from La Rosa, 9:10, message from potential client, 9:15, message from a mechanic.  And the last one, 9:18, was a message from his teacher.  Salim looked at his watch. It was 9:35.  She must've called when he was en route to the office.  He read the message hastily.

“My apologies,” it said, “I have to cancel class for today.  I will call you when I can come.”  Alice always took messages verbatim, and as Salim read the note, he tried to hear the words as his teacher spoke them.  In his head they sounded toneless, ambiguous.  They were possibly benign or possibly angry.

The elevator doors opened and Salim walked slowly to his office and sat down at his desk.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone, cycling through the directory and looking for her number.  He found it and hesitated before pushing the button.  What if she was angry at him?  What if he had been too forward in the car?  He placed this thumb over the send button.  He knitted his eyebrows together and pressed it.

The phone rang, once, twice, thrice.

“Hello?”  It was she who picked up.

“Hello, this is Salim,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.  “I just received your message.  I am hoping everything is well?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.  “Hello?” Salim said again cautiously.

“Yes, everything is fine, thanks,” she answered.  “I just can't make it today, sorry.”

“May I help with anything?  A taxi perhaps?”

“No, thank you.  A taxi will not be necessary.”

“Pardon my asking,” Salim ventured, “I hope you will not mind, but may I ask if there is any problem?”

Salim thought he heard the scratch of breath blown across the receiver.  It could have been static, he was not sure.

“There is no problem at all, thank you.”

Salim twirled a pen in his free hand and then ventured, “Then why can you not come?”

Over ten seconds of silence followed.  Salim cleared his throat.  Then he heard the sound again, it could not have been static.  It was definitely a breath of some sort.

“I'm sorry,” the teacher said slowly, “I just don't feel up to teaching classes anymore.  I'm tired these days.  If you don't mind, I'd like a vacation.”

“Of course, of course,” Salim said right away, “A week?  Two weeks?  When will you return?”

“I'm sorry for not making myself clear the first time,” the teacher said.  “But I would like to postpone classes with you until further notice.”

Salim put his hand quietly on his forehead and said, “One moment please.”  He put the phone down on the desk and exhaled loudly.  Then, as he was staring at his desk in perplexity, his eye caught the fourth phone message- the one from the mechanic.  It read: “Tell him I tried but she's very angry and I'm sorry, she looked inside of the car and I'm sorry, ok?  Please.” After the last line Alice had penned a few dots and a question mark in parenthesis, which was her way of signaling her confusion.

Salim picked up the phone quickly.  “I…”

“Yes?” his teacher said tonelessly.  Now Salim realized that her voice was calm but angry. How could he have missed the exasperated sigh earlier?

“Listen,” he said, dropping all pretense of formality, “Can you please come to my office?  I think we must talk in person.”

“I would rather not,” the teacher said.

“Please,” Salim said, “You must, please, I shall send the driver for you in ten minutes, ok?”

After a tense silence she said, “Fine,” and hung up.   Salim rang his secretary and had the driver sent to the teacher's house.  She would be arriving soon.  It would take less than twenty-five minutes altogether.  He had much to do in that time and had to hurry to accomplish it.

He quickly called La Rosa and made the proper apologies, setting a time for a longer, uninterrupted phone call for later in the afternoon.  He phoned the potential client and convened a council of secretaries to arrange a meeting some time next week.  He stuffed the other three messages in his desk and in doing so, spied his bottle of Scotch.  He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long draught.  Then he rushed to his bathroom to brush his teeth, and to shave, which he had not done yet.

He emerged from of the bathroom with his jacket in his arms and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and stopped in his tracks.  His teacher was already sitting in the chair on the opposite side of his desk.  The driver must have gone exceptionally fast.  Either that or time had passed much faster than Salim expected it to.

She did not turn around when he stepped into the room, but stayed in the chair, erect and motionless.  Salim felt his stomach quiver suddenly.  He drew in a breath, called upon all his mental resources, and walked to his chair, still with his sleeves rolled up and his jacket still over his arm.  He sat down without looking up at her right away, contemplating his lap.  After a few moments, the teacher said, “Well?”

Salim looked up guiltily, embarrassedly, and said, “This is about your car.  Please allow me to apologize.”

The teacher looked unflinchingly at Salim, the only sign of her emotions being a slight flaring of her nostrils, a rise in color to her cheeks.  “What-”

“Please,” he interrupted, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the desk.  “I know that it was not right of me to do such a thing secretly, but I wanted to make a surprise for you.”

“By going behind my back and threatening the mechanic?” she demanded.

“Oh,” Salim said, wilting.  “I am sorry.  Please forgive me.  I am very sorry.”

The teacher put a hand on the back of her neck and shook her head.  “I just-” she began, exasperatedly, “I mean, what right?  What are you trying, to, to- achieve?”

Salim looked up at her, and he stared sadly into her eyes.  She shook her head slightly as he did this and raised her eyebrows, as if asking a question.  Salim opened and closed his mouth several times as if to answer, and when nothing came out, his teacher shook her head once more and stood up.

“Wait!” he said, suddenly recovering his powers of speech.

“Good bye,” she said through tight lips.  “Good luck with your English studies, and with finding a new teacher.”

She turned and walked out of the door.  Salim stood and rushed out into the hall behind her.  The elevator doors had already opened and she was just stepping inside of them when he caught up and ran in behind her.  She turned around angrily as the elevator doors closed behind them.  She jabbed at the button for the 31^st floor.

“Now what?” she said irritably.

“Please,” Salim said, trying to stand at a respectful distance in the limited space of the elevator.  “Please, you misunderstand me.  I meant you no harm, I did not mean to violate your privacy.”

“Then what did you mean?” the teacher challenged, placing one hand on her hip.  Salim was momentarily distracted by its curve.  Then he blinked and looked up, staring into his teacher's angry blue eyes again, searching them for a sign.  That fierce sparkle, was it the hard sparkle of a diamond?  Or was it the faceted sparkle of ice?  Could the ice melt?  Could he make the eyes melt?

As he stood staring, the ice did melt, and a trickle of water leaked out onto the teacher's cheek.  “Oh I am so sorry!” Salim said, frantically producing a silk handkerchief from his pocket, “Please don't cry, please, I am so sorry!”

The teacher snatched the handkerchief and turned away, and at that moment, the lights flickered in the elevator.  There was a grinding noise and the elevator stopped.  Salim stood uneasily with his hand on the brass rail in the compartment.

The teacher looked up to the ceiling, and then to Salim.  She pushed the button for the 31st floor several times, and then the button for opening the door, and when at length, nothing happened, she threw the handkerchief back at him scornfully and said “Dammit!  Did you arrange this too?”

Salim shook his head innocently and pushed the emergency button.  It gave off a wicked spark and Salim jerked his hand away.  He squeezed his tingling fingers for a moment, and then reached into his pocket for his mobile phone.  The pocket was empty.  Of course.  His mobile phone was on his desk.

He closed his eyes and turned and rested his head against the cool wall of the elevator.  The teacher was standing with her back to him, both hands on the brass railing.  They stood in silence for an interminable amount of time, waiting.  Finally, the teacher sighed, set down her purse, and sat down on the floor with her legs crossed beneath her skirt and her arms crossed on her stomach.  Salim sat down also.  He stared meekly at his fingernails.

Salim cleared this throat and spoke, quietly, because the stillness in the elevator made his voice seem very loud, saying, “I am not a bad man.  I am not what you think I am.”

The teacher was staring at the elevator door.  She said, “So what.”

“So you do not have to leave teaching me.  I will not harm you.”

The teacher raised an eyebrow and turned to glare at Salim.  “Harm me?”

Salim felt a hot rush of color to his neck and he looked away. After a while he glanced down at his watch.  Ten minutes had passed in the elevator.  Salim looked at the ceiling, then at the floor, at the elevator buttons, and then at the door, and when he turned his head slightly to steal a glance at his teacher, who looked like she was resting her head against the elevator wall with her eyes closed, she turned to him and gave him an accusing stare.

“I did not do this!” Salim pleaded, “Please believe me.  I would never do anything like this.”

“Like you would never do anything with my car?” she was still staring at him.

Salim met the teacher's angry stare with a look of both regret and longing.  He began awkwardly, “If you knew why I did it you-”

“Don't bother,” the teacher said, interrupting him.  “I don't care why you did it.  When this elevator opens I am going home and you and going to find a new teacher.”

“I don't want a new teacher.”

“I don't care what you want.”  The teacher turned away and sniffed.  A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Why are you crying?” Salim asked in a way he hoped was gentle and inoffensive.

“I'm tired and upset and I'm stuck in an elevator,” the teacher said wearily, “Why shouldn't I cry.”

Salim drew a breath and held out his hand, as if making an offering, “But you don't have to be upset, and it's not so bad being stuck here.  Someone will come and open the doors, until then, please don't cry.”

Another tear rolled down the teacher's cheek regardless of Salim's advice.  Salim put his hand back in his lap, and after contemplating it for a minute, he shifted on the elevator floor so that he was facing his teacher.  “Please, why are you crying?  Is it because you are angry with me?  Please tell me.”

The teacher wiped her tears away with a corner of her scarf and Salim quickly handed her the silk handkerchief he had initially offered her.  She took it without looking at him and dried her eyes and dabbed at her nose with it.

“I am crying,” she said slowly, “Because I am mad at myself.  I am mad at you, and I am mad at this stupid elevator.”

“There is no reason why you should me mad at yourself,” Salim said with admonishment in his voice.  “And you shouldn't even be mad at me, I had a good reason for what I did, and I caused you no harm.  Now the elevator,” Salim said, trying to dispel some of the stress in the air, “Even I am mad at the elevator.”

The teacher said nothing.  He scooted a little closer to her and said quietly, searching her face, “You know why I did it, don't you?”  The teacher flushed and looked away from him.

“You know then.” he said, licking his lips anxiously, “Will you still be angry with me?”

“Leave me alone,” the teacher said weakly, “Go back to your corner and stay there until the doors open.”

A mechanical clicking noise came from somewhere beneath the floor of the elevator.

“No,” Salim said, scooting a little closer, his eyes glittering with excitement.  “Listen.  I know why you are crying.  You do not have to be upset.  I am not a bad man.  I have an excellent career and I-”

“You have nothing I need,” the teacher interrupted sternly.  “Now go back to your corner.”

Salim drew himself up indignantly, “Nothing you need!  Do you not need a house?  A life?  A man who will-”

“Nothing!” she said, raising her voice suddenly.  “That is enough, go back to your corner and stay there!”

“You're not teaching me any more, correct?”

“Correct,” the teacher said through clenched teeth, struggling to control her anger.

“So if you are not my teacher then I do not have to obey you.”  The teacher's eyebrows shot up in surprise and Salim smiled.  “You are not the teacher anymore and I am not Mister Vice President.  You are Angela and I am Salim.”

“I didn't give you permission to use that name,” the teacher said, her lips pressing together tightly when she ended her sentence.

“I do not need permission.,” Salim said, matching her tone.  “There is no student and no teacher, only man and woman.  Now Angela, you must tell me.  Am I not a suitable man?”

“Fine,” the teacher said, turning suddenly to face Salim.  “You want to know?  I'll tell you.”  She held up her hand and began counting off her complaints on her fingers.  “You're a professional liar, you drink, you smoke, you don't pray, you don't give a damn about your own religion and you think you can trick me into falling in love with you?  How stupid do you think I am?”

Salim blinked and shook his head as if trying to shake off the teacher's outburst.  “But, but,” he stammered, “Surely you must be joking.  You are American, you know what life is about, and I can give you a good one!”

“To hell with your life,” she said, and then laughed bitterly, “Yes, to hell with it.  I don't know if you even believe in accountability, so I'm not going to make a fool of myself by talking about heaven and hell, but I know what my life's goals are, and none of them involve any of yours, or you, or any men like you.  Ok?  Is that clear?”

Salim sat dumbly, staring at the floor.  The elevator shivered and the lights flickered again.  Suddenly, alarmingly, it dropped and then came to a jarring halt.  The doors had still not opened.  Salim looked up to the ceiling in alarm and swallowed against the lump of nausea in his throat.  The teacher had her eyes closed and hands grasping the brass rail above her.  Salim opened his mouth and drew a shaky breath.  There was a harsh grating noise and the elevator jerked suddenly up and then down again.

“Oh ****…” Salim said shakily.

The teacher opened her eyes and took her hands off the brass rail.  “Look,” she said, her anger replaced with urgency, “Look, I need to apologize for insulting you.  Don't hold it against me, please.”

Salim had wrapped his arms around his middle and was rocking back and forth with his eyes closed, trembling.  His breathing had become irregular.

“Oh no, don't panic!” the teacher said, standing up and taking Salim by the arm.  “Stand up,” she said, and she made Salim stand and bend over with his head between his knees.  “Breathe gently, there.  Good.”

Salim closed his eyes and forced himself to inhale.  The elevator doors hissed and opened half of an inch, and when Salim looked up eagerly he could see a vertical section of gears and wires lining a wall of cement between floors.  He stood up immediately and forced his fingers into the crack, pushing against the doors.  As he grunted and strained, the teacher sat down again and held her cupped hands out in front of her face, praying.

Salim groaned through his clenched teeth and pushed the door harder.  It came open another two inches, and then the entire elevator shuddered and Salim pulled his fingers out just as it began moving again.  The wires showing between the open doors scrolled upwards and out of sight at a progressively faster speed, and Salim was lifted onto his toes by force the rapid descent.   Faster and faster the elevator fell.

When the elevator struck the ground with a deafening crash and a shattering of glass panels and a crackling of electric wires, Salim lost consciousness.

Salim dreamt he was swimming in a tremendous pleasure garden, and in the immense blue pool, hundreds of other people were laughing and frolicking.  Some of them were sitting by the pool and feeding each other fruit.  One woman was laughing gently as she leaned onto another man's neck.  Salim turned and reached out with his arm and began swimming.  He had taken only a few strokes when he realized that something was wrong, he could not feel his fingers in the cool water.

Salim lifted his arm from the water and stared at it in horror.  His right hand was missing, not cut off, but decayed off, rotted off, and greenish-brown veins and arteries dangled lifelessly from the stump of his wrist.  Salim turned to the other swimmers for help and saw that the man swimming next to him was trailing a sightless eye through the water from a gaping socket.  A woman floating beside him was missing her jaw, and her teeth and blue tongue hung straight out from the bottom of her face.  Everywhere Salim turned, he saw people laughing joyfully and rotting alive.  Salim put his remaining hand to his face and found that he had no nose, only a moist, oozing cavity between his eyes where it had once been.  He screamed.  And screamed.  And screamed.

He was still screaming when he awoke on the elevator floor, and he coughed and gagged on his own blood, and then screamed again.  Salim rolled over onto his side and was immediately struck with overwhelming pain.  In the thin shaft of light that was shining through the crack in the elevator door, Salim watched blood drip to the floor.  It was coming from his face.  He held out his hands in front of him and nearly screamed at the sight: his right hand was crushed, the skin and muscle and bone all mangled together in an oozing, shockingly painful mess.  Salim shuddered as a wave of pain washed over him again.  He vomited.  When the wave subsided, Salim turned over onto his elbows and knees and crawled forward.

He found her, still sitting cross-legged, her scarf still wrapped neatly around her head, though shards of glass and debris were scattered all over it and nestled in the folds that lie over her chest.  In his confused state, Salim thought she might be sleeping with her chin resting on her chest.  He tried to say her name, but he couldn't hear himself mouth the words.  He couldn't reach out and shake her, so he crouched before her, bleeding and shuddering, until the shaft of light in the elevator widened and several silhouettes entered through it.

In the days and nights that followed, Salim was seldom conscious, and his sleep was disturbed with the same frightening dreams of the pleasure garden.  Between dreams he had vague ideas of doctors and nurses and needles, and of a relentless cycle of pain, and then numbness, and then pain again, followed by numbness.

Two and a half weeks after the elevator had come crashing down from Salim's private office to the company headquarters on the 31st floor, Salim regained consciousness, and Robert arrived not half an hour later.

He laid his hand uneasily on the rail of Salim's bed.  “How do you feel old chap?” Robert asked softly.

“I don't know,” Salim said.  His throat was raw from the tube that had been pulled out only a few minutes ago.  “My hand, it hurts…”

Robert averted his eyes and self-consciously pulled his own hand back into his lap.  “You haven't got it anymore Salim, they had to take it off…”

Salim raised his arm unsteadily and stared desperately at the bandaged stump.  That's right, his hand had hurt so much.  He remembered seeing the bloody pulp above his wrist, and then getting onto his elbows and knees and crawling towards…

“My teacher!” Salim croaked, starting from his pillow, his voice grating harshly in his throat as he groaned and tried to lift himself with his remaining hand.

Robert leapt to his feet and pushed the button that called the nurse and tried to subdue Salim at the same time.  “Calm down, calm down!  You must rest Salim, the doctors say you're barely alive as it is now.  Stop thrashing about or you'll undo everything!”

Salim dropped back onto his pillow, exhausted from his brief struggle.  “You must…” he said breathlessly, “…you must tell me…please, how is she…”

A nurse came in holding a wrapped syringe and a small glass bottle.  She opened the syringe and then stabbed its tip through the top of the vial, drawing out its contents.

“You must promise not to get all worked up when I tell you Salim, or I won't tell you at all.”

Salim did his best to nod earnestly, though it sent bursts of pain through his skull.

“Alright then,” Robert said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.  He drew a breath and held it for a second.  Then he released it, saying, “I'm sorry I had to be the one to tell you.  She didn't survive.”

Robert turned his head and continued talking as he stared into the space above the window.  “I can't remember the technical word for it, something about the brain being struck from the impact, the doctors said she never felt a thing.  I'm so sorry Salim.”

Hot tears welled up in Salim's eyes and escaped, burning paths from the corners of his eyes to the pillow beneath his head.  The nurse slipped in next to all the tubes and wires connected to him, and then emptied the injection into the cannula of his IV.

Salim's mouth hung open.  Tears flowed freely from his blood-shot eyes, even as the sedative spread through his body and his eyelids grew heavier.  Robert stayed watching him until the fingers on his remaining hand stopped twitching and his breathing grew less harried.  When he thought he was finally asleep, Robert leaned carefully over Salim, and then watched in surprise as a large tear welled up in the corner of his closed eye and ran down his face.

“Poor chap,” Robert murmured as he walked out the door, “Crying in his sleep.”

Assalamu alaykum readers,

We have had some great additions to the MuslimMatters family.

This week we will be publishing our first post by internationally acclaimed author Umm Zakkiyah.

Umm Zakiyyah was born in 1975 in Long Island, New York, to parents who had come from devoutly Christian homes. Her parents, Clark and Delores Moore, accepted Islam that year, and thus Umm Zakiyyah became the first child of her parents to be born into Islam. Because of this, when Clark and Delores changed their and their children's names to Islamic ones years later, they chose the name “Baiyinah” for Umm Zakiyyah, because the name meant “clear evidence”—and for them, her birth represented the birth of spiritual clarity, when truth became clear from falsehood.

Umm Zakiyyah spent most of her childhood in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she wrote articles for local newspapers and essays and poetry for college publications nationally. In college, as a student at the prestigious Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, she wrote articles for the school's newspaper and received various awards for her leadership and academic achievements.

In 1997, she graduated from Emory University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in elementary education and went on to make a name for herself as a writer, teacher, and inspirational speaker. She appeared on radio and TV in the United States and Canada, and was a guest lecturer at national conferences and youth events.

2001 marked the release of her first novel, If I Should Speak, which immediately received international attention from the United Kingdom and Australia and quickly became a bestseller in stores throughout the United States. The novel earned national and international acclaim from professors and writers, as well as from magazines and newspapers, such as the American Muslim Magazine and the Muslim Link newspaper.

Please join us in welcoming Umm Zakkiyah to MuslimMatters.

Then someone comes along and looks at your Tower. They pay no attention to the nice, strong foundation, but they look up to the sky where the top of the Tower vanishes and ask, “So, what color is the roof?”

You’re a little confused. “The color?” you ask, “I don’t know. I’ve never been that high up. I don’t know about the roof. Some one else around here might…”

“How about the windows? Does this Tower have windows?”

“I’m not sure,” you admit, “Maybe-“

“Hey, who built this Tower anyways?” the person cuts in, “And what’s it made of? I’ve heard it’s nothing but matchsticks, and it could come crashing down at any second.”

Questions come at you rapid-fire, so many questions that you don’t have answers to- about cornices on the tenth floor that you’ve never seen, about building permits you know nothing about, about carpets in halls and rules about living there that you didn’t know existed. You shake your head, bewildered. Seeing you distressed, the person smugly smiles and then wanders off.

You sit down on the ground and put your head in your hands, thinking. It seems as though you know so little about the Tower. You were so sure about it, and then this person comes along and shows you how little you know after all. I mean, does the Tower even have windows? What color is the roof?

You thought you knew it all. But now you’re not sure. So much is unknown to you, and from where you stand at the bottom of the Tower you have no way of finding out. You try to see the top of the Tower but it curves away from you, high into the clouds. You look for a long time, straining to see the windows, wondering about the roof. You finally start walking around the base of the Tower, looking for answers. It’s tremendously wide, and along the walls you find people leaning against it that you never knew were there. You ask one of them, “So, what color is the roof?”

“The roof?” the man says, “It’s blue. And anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t deserve to lean against the Tower like we do.” A few people who are leaning on the wall beside him nod. Then you hear a voice coming from a few feet up the wall.

“Blue shmue!” someone cries. “The roof is green!”

The man and his followers call back, “Blue!”

An argument begins that you have no desire to hear. You walk away. Still walking, you come upon a group of women who have their backs turned to the Tower. They see you coming and roll their eyes.

“Excuse me,” you venture, “But I was wondering if you knew whether the Tower had any windows…”

“Windows!” a woman shrieks, “Did you know that in this Tower women are not allowed to look out of the windows!”

“But how do we know?” you mutter. “We don’t even know if the Tower has windows. No one has mentioned them.”

“I’ve heard that the windows are round,” another woman says, “But very high from the floor.”

“Oh don’t be silly,” the first woman says, “If there are windows they’re square. The saint in my village told me so.”

The women start bickering.

“Round!”

“Square!”

“Round!”

“Square!”

The women’s voices are strident and harsh, they seem to grate against your nerves. You back away from them and start running, trying to put as much distance between you and the fighting as possible. In your haste, you bump into a simple old man who had been standing with his forehead on the Tower. He falls to the ground.

“I’m so sorry!” you say, bending over to pick him up.

“Oh don’t worry,” he smiles, standing up and dusting himself off. “You were running quite fast there, everything alright?”

In the distance the women are screaming at each other and you’re pretty sure you can hear the word ‘kafir’ being thrown about. Your knee is bleeding. Or maybe it’s the old man’s blood. You might have hurt him when you knocked him over. You look at your palms. They’re scraped and there are little rocks embedded your skin, and they burn. You feel tears come to your eyes. No, everything’s not alright. You shake your head and feel a build-up of frustration that is bursting to come out. Just as you open your mouth to speak, you see a movement out of the corner of your eye. It’s the first man, the one who had asked about the Tower. He waves.

“You again?” the old man says without warmth in his voice.

The other man nods and smiles. “So,” he says, “Ever figure out what color the roof on your so-called Tower is?”

You look to the old man. He shakes his head. “You know that I don’t care what color the roof is.”

“Come on,” the other man challenges, “How can you pretend to believe in this Tower when you don’t even know about the roof. I bet you never figured out the windows either.”

“You’re right,” the old man says calmly. “And I’ve often wondered but frankly it’s not that important. The Tower stands whether or not there are windows. The Tower is strong no matter what color the roof.”

The other man looks irritated. You look at the old man. He doesn’t seem at all frustrated or confused by his lack of knowledge.

“Hmmph!” the other man says, walking away.

“Strange man…” the old man mutters, leaning against the wall again. He seems completely peaceful, content with how he stands.

“But the roof,” you whisper, “How is it that we know nothing about the roof?”

The man turns so that he is facing you, and he leans with his shoulder instead of his forehead.

“Well,” he says, “You and I have never seen the roof, right?”

You nod.

“And we’ve never seen the windows.”

You nod again.

“So what?” he shrugs, “I have learned all I can about the foundation of the Tower. I have learned that it is smooth, it is flawless. It is built on logic and cemented with wisdom. No one can deny the foundation.”

You drop your hand to one side and let your fingers graze the foundation. It’s still there, firm and cool to the touch.

“So someone comes along and asks you about the windows. You say you don’t know. Someone asks you about the roof. You don’t know.”

You think.

“I have never known what shape the windows are, and I have never known whether organ donation is allowed in Islam, and whether the Fida’een are wrong and I have never been sure about why Allāh made the Tower exactly the way that He did, but that doesn’t mean that it is not real.”

“Your faith is built on logic the same way that walls are built on a foundation, and so long as you remember the strength and perfection of the foundation, your walls can never be shaken.” The old man looks at you gently and then points to the sky, “You are standing at the base of a great and majestic Tower, and just because you can’t see the roof, doesn’t mean that the Tower does not exist.”

You nod and smile.

You lean against the wall.

You whistle a happy tune.

She would produce all of the relevant papers and he would read through his homework in a nervous voice.  Me, nervous! he thought.  I’m a grown man. And she would nod when the work was right or gently explain when the work was wrong, or if he had written something particularly complex or clever, she would simply say, “Good.”  It was 1:52 now, and there were still six minutes to go.

She came on his lunch break.  He had two hours for lunch, that being one of the perks of having such a good job.  Salim was second-in command of a multi-national company headquartered in Dubai.   He took overseas phone calls and saw a steady stream of rich and important international clients for whom English was the common language.  That’s why he was taking English classes, to fine-tune his accent, to turn his ‘beesness’ into ‘business’ and his ‘moanie’ into ‘money’.

“Eye-yam so sorry meester Stein, but I cannot see you jast to-die.  Bleese talk to my seketary and we will work out ze abointmint for you.  Yes yes, off course.  Gudbye.”

“A ‘P’ is not a ‘B’,” she explained one day.  “Though they are both made with the lips, there is a difference between the words pit and bit.  Can you hear it?”

He would smile apologetically and stare at his fingernails.  There was no letter ‘P’ in the Arabic alphabet and he had a hard time trying to say the words pathos, pink, and portfolio, especially while looking at his teacher’s lips.

“And your letter ‘T’,” she explained, kindly so as not to insult him, “does not belong on the tip of your teeth.  It belongs on the roof of your mouth just behind the teeth.”

Over a course of three months he had worked hard and succeeded in changing his accent from the harsh, guttural rendition of English that is common to the region into the soft and almost pleasant accent of a highly educated foreigner.  A good friend of his, a British lawyer, saw him one day after many months, and said with begrudging admiration, “My God, Salim, you sound like a villain from a James Bond film.”

At this he smiled and gave Robert and gentle punch in the pin-stripes.  “It is my English teacher, I have been taking her classes for three months, she is good.”

“She must be British then,” Robert said, more as a statement than a question.

“Oh no,” Salim shook his head, “She is American.”

“But not incurably, I’d bet.” Robert laughed.  “Just give me three months and I’d put a bit of British in her.”  Here Robert winked wickedly, and for some reason, Salim found himself inwardly seething.  Robert noticed the sudden darkening, the slight narrowing of the eyes, and said, “Are you well Salim?  You look ill a bit suddenly.”

Salim held both of his palms out and bowed his head slightly to excuse himself.  “It is this traveling.  I have flown to London three times this month, and it tires me.”

“Very well then.”  Robert clapped Salim on the shoulder, a little hesitantly, and took leave.  As soon as Robert was safely beyond the door and closed inside of the private elevator, Salim sat down on his leather chair and felt around for the bottle of Scotch inside his desk.  He poured himself a double and threw the drink down in one go.

He had long stopped feeling guilty for drinking alcohol.  Even though he was a Muslim, and even though his religion forbade all intoxicants, the cult of success demanded that he make a champagne toast on certain official occasions and politely accept the fine wines that his happier clients bestowed upon him, for refusal would be seen as unprofessional, uncivilized even.  By now, he had made the inevitable transition from a slightly guilty Muslim who sipped champagne at company dinners to wholly guiltless Muslim who drank Scotch in the privacy of his office.

After another drink he felt as though he might not kill Robert after all.

The American teacher was Muslim too, strangely enough.  Salim perfectly remembered how shocked he had been the first time he saw her:  paper-white skin, ice-blue eyes, and a delicate cream scarf wound about her head like some sort of holy aura.  It hung from where she had pinned it, and the light shone through the layers.  He hadn’t talked to a woman in a scarf since…since he had made his pilgrimage to Mekkah four years ago, and on the way back, stopped in the duty-free shop in the airport and bought some vodka for his colleagues.

He had been late that first time, and his secretary had led the teacher into Salim’s office and sat her down on the over-stuffed sofa in front of the bay window.  She had been reading a book when he walked in, and when she looked up to greet him, he saw that the light from the window shone through her eyes like they were made of glass.  It had unnerved him, they were very nice eyes, but they were a tad unnatural.

Salim thought about pouring himself a drink now, but reconsidered.  She would be here in a minute and she would smell the alcohol on his breath.  He would be better off checking his homework again.  He picked up his pen and tried to twirl it in his fingers.   It fell from his hand and clattered noisily onto the desk.  Salim looked at it and sighed.

I make deals in the millions of dollars, I can have any woman I want, and I have dropped my pen more times in her presence than I have in my entire life…

Salim placed both of his hands on his desk and stared at them, lost in his own thoughts.  He was surprised when he heard his clock softly chime two o’clock.  She was two minutes late.  What if she wasn’t coming?  Last class, she had looked up at him just as he was stealing a glance at her, and there had been a few seconds of awkward silence.  She had flushed a beautiful shade of pink and then turned quickly back to the book in front of her.  What if she was angry?  What if she refused to come anymore?

Salim rubbed his hands together, cleared his throat, quietly practiced his homework, and readjusted his tie all in the course of the next two minutes.  His phone rang and he nearly jumped out of his seat.

“Sir?” the secretary said on the other end, “Your teacher called. She apologizes for the delay and says she will arrive shortly.”

“Thank you, thank you,” he muttered into the phone, and then hung up without listening for the secretary’s reply.

She was coming.  He opened his desk drawer and poured himself a drink before he had time to reconsider.  He drank it quickly and then followed it with another.  He closed the bottle and stowed it away hastily, then he went to his private bathroom and brushed his teeth vigorously.  He splashed water on his face and then dried up with a monogrammed towel.  He returned to his desk and quickly called his secretary, and ordered that two cups of strong coffee should be brought in when the teacher arrived.  He had just hung up the phone when he heard the hiss of the elevator doors opening, and the staccato click of her heels on the marbled floor.  He fixed his eyes upon his desk, and did his best to appear thoughtful, or nonchalant, or calm, or anything but nervous and increasingly warm on the inside from Scotch.

She opened the heavy wooden door without knocking, and stepped inside the room.  She smiled politely and said, “Assalamu Alaykum.”

And he smiled, genuinely happy, and stood and returned the greeting, and then offered her a chair on the other side of his desk.   She opened her bag and began pulling out the books and lessons, and he stared politely at his own hands.  The secretary came in a second later, bearing a tray with two cups of coffee, and set them down on the large desk.  “Cream and sugar?” she asked the teacher.

“Both please.”  The teacher looked up said thank you, and gave the secretary a smile, one very much unlike the one she gave to Salim every week.  This one was softer.  Ah, thought Salim sadly.  That must be a real smile, and the one she gives me must be just formality.

When the secretary had left, the teacher sipped her cup of coffee tentatively and then said in her strange American accent, “Sorry I’m late.  I had some problems with my car on the way here.  Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome,” Salim said, and he was very careful to form his lips into a circle when pronouncing the ‘w’ in ‘welcome’.  Salim sipped his coffee and then, before he could think, blurted out, “I thought you were not coming.”

He mentally braced for the bolt of lightening he expected to strike him for his impropriety.

“Pardon me?” she said with her coffee cup halfway to her mouth.

Encouraged by the teacher’s subdued reaction, and by the Scotch, Salim cleared his throat and said, “I said I thought you were not coming.”

“Oh no,” she said, “I would call if I had to cancel.”

The coffee was finished in silence and the lesson began.  Salim did his best to pay attention and to covertly study his teacher’s face at the same time.  It was a fairly difficult task since all of the conversation revolved around the lesson, and the entire lesson was in the books on the desk.  There was no legitimate reason for him to look up at all.

When the lesson was finished, the teacher gave her wrist a small shake and her watch slid out of her sleeve.  “I’ve stayed ten minutes to make up for me being late,” she said looking at it, “I hope I haven’t made you late for anything.”

“Not at all,” Salim said, leaning back in his chair and looking up at her.  He liked this chair a lot, it was quite expensive, made of soft Italian leather and expertly engineered.  It had a comfortable feel, and an aura of money and power about it.  “You are having problems with your car?”

“Yes,” the teacher nodded.  “I’ve already spoken to your secretary about it, and she even called and arranged for my car to be towed.  She’s a very sweet lady.  She’s going to call me a cab.”

“A cab?” Salim said uncertainly, trying to remember something.

“Yes, a cab is a taxi.  A taxi cab.”

“I should have remembered that,” Salim said, “I knew that word.  A taxi, one minute please.”  Salim dialed his secretary.  “Hello?  Yes, cancel the… cab.  Send the driver up please.  Yes.   Thank you.”

Salim looked up and saw bewilderment on the teacher’s face.  He registered the look with private and pleasant surprise. “I would not dream,” he said choosing his words carefully, “Of sending you in a taxi cab.  Please accept the services of my driver instead.”

“Oh no no,” the teacher said quickly, straightening and holding both of her hands out, palms forward. “A cab will be fine, please don’t trouble yourself.”

“Trouble myself?” Salim smiled, stroking the soft leather on the arms of his chair, “It is no trouble to myself, only to the driver, and he is paid enough to be troubled in such a way.  I am sorry I will not be accompanying you, only my driver.”

The teacher was visibly relieved.  “Thank you,” she said a bit more calmly, “That’s very nice of you, and of your driver.”

There was a self-conscious pause in the conversation as Salim tried to say something that was fitting, grammatically correct, and possibly friendly.  Before he could think of something that fit all three requirements, there was a knock at the door and a uniformed driver stepped in.  He gave a deferential bow and said, “Madame?”

The teacher smiled at the driver and stood up, and then turned slowly back to Salim.  “Thanks again,” she said awkwardly, “I appreciate the ride.  The day after tomorrow at the same time then?”

“Yes,” Salim nodded, standing up, “The same time.”

The teacher followed the driver out of the door.  Salim stood until he heard the hiss of the elevator doors.  Then he sat back down at his desk, allowing a guilty smile to spread over his face as he locked his fingers together, propping them under his chin.  He was thinking of her reaction, how when she refused his ride, she said no, not once, but twice very quickly.  And her eyes had widened.  Had she suddenly straightened in her chair?

Salim’s eyes darted from left to right over the space on his desk as he processed these signs.  He knew what people looked like when they were afraid.  Men came into his office and cowered in the same chair that she sat in on a daily basis, quietly terrified of the power he wielded and the favor he could bestow or withhold at his leisure.  They all sat erect in their chairs, blinking more often than natural.  Some openly cringed, some of them feigned cheerfulness, some of them wore fake nonchalance, and the bravest of them put on an air of humble dignity to cover their inferiority before him.

It was too good to be true.  Salim must not believe that this teacher, this confident and professional teacher he had meekly submitted to for the last three months, was actually afraid of him.  But still, he savored the thought and decided it would taste better with another glass of Scotch.

Later that evening, after a full day’s work and a gourmet meal, Salim sat pensively in the back seat of his car. He considered himself an expert in the analysis of behavior and body language, and he had been thinking all day of how the teacher had accidentally given him the upper hand, how she had accidentally shown that she was nervous this afternoon, maybe even afraid.  Salim felt he could relax now, that he would no longer need to be nervous around her, for he had enough proof that it was she who was nervous around him.  He pushed a button on his armrest and the glass dividing the back seat from the front slid open.

“Yes sir?” the driver asked.

“Call Alice, ask her who towed my teacher’s car.  Then take me there.”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes.  Now.”

The driver nodded and the glass went back up.  After a few moments the car turned away from the part of town that Salim was familiar with, the glass towers, the opulent restaurants and the luxurious private clubs.  The skyscrapers passed and the streets became narrower.  The street lights glinted off the curves of the long, black car as it slid noiselessly from the street into the sandy driveway of a mechanic’s garage.  There was a light shining from a room towards the back of the garage, and there was perceptible movement within.  There were several cars parked outside the garage, presumably in various states of repair.  Salim wondered which one his teacher drove.

The glass slid down again.  “Sir?”

Salim stared intently at the light in the back room and felt a trembling of suspense, of good things to come in the future.

“See who is in that room,” Salim said slowly, “And bring him to me.”

Salim watched, invisible behind his tinted window, as the driver strode purposefully to the back room of the garage.  He knocked on the window, twice, and stepped back.  Salim saw another bulb come on in the garage and the front door opened a crack, sending a slice of warm electric light over the cars parked outside.  Salim watched the pantomimed exchange between his driver and the man behind the door, unable to hear and unable to look away.

Finally a small, stout, South Asian mechanic emerged from the door with one hand suspiciously in the pocket of his greasy overalls, and began stepping carefully towards Salim’s driver.  The driver took a step back and gestured towards the car where Salim was sitting.  The man took two steps, and then stopped, and then started again.  When he had mincingly come as far as the tinted window, the driver opened the passenger door for him and waited for the man to step in.  Salim sat quietly in his corner of the back seat, simmering with anticipation.  The man grunted and sat himself down and the door was closed behind him.

“Wh-who’s there?  What you want sir?”

“My friend,” Salim said, “I need a small favor from you only.”

“Garage closed,” the man said with an admirable show of bravery, “and only work Toyotas.”

“You towed a car belonging to my friend today,” Salim said in the low, smooth voice he used for intimidating lesser men, “I want you to replace everything with new parts.  I want you to clean it, inside and out.  I want you to make it run like it is new again, and I want your work to take no less than one week.”

“You be lucky if I finish in one week!” the man said, forgetting his fear to talk shop, “If you and me are talking about the same car, the little Amreekan lady with the scarf, take two weeks.”

“No,” Salim said, his voice so low he was almost purring, “Finish it in one week and you will not be sorry.”

The mechanic shivered.   “And wh-who pay for all this?”

“My driver will call, he will come to check what you have done.  Give him the bill for the extra work, and give the lady the bill only for what was broken when you towed it.  You will not mention my surprise.”

The mechanic nodded his head quickly and began pushing ineffectually on the handle of the door.  The driver unlocked it from the master control and the mechanic tumbled out, shuffled quickly back to his garage and slammed the door shut behind him.  Salim ordered the driver home again.

As Salim watched the neighborhood change and the streets widen, excitement twisted and writhed and throbbed in the bottom of his stomach.  Today was Sunday, we have class again on Tuesday and Thursday.  He should have the car ready by next Monday.  That way I can have next Sunday, too…

Salim spent the next day doing his work half-heartedly, and even let his attention drift in the middle of a phone call.  He was so busy hoping, planning, and scheming that he awoke suddenly to a voice saying, “Hello?  Hello?  Salim are you there?  Damn this phone line…I’ve been talking to myself for the last five minutes.   Stella!  Call back the son of a…click.”

Salim tactfully called the other party back first and apologized, saying he had gotten disconnected five minutes ago and had been trying to call back since.  He forced himself to concentrate on the call and even made up for his previous neglect with some understated but well-placed flattery.  When the call was over, Salim dropped into his chair and leaned back, placing his feet on the desk.  He was careful not to put his legs on the pages of English language exercises that were spread out there.  They were only half-way done, and poorly at that.  Part of his homework was to write sentences with the twenty new vocabulary words that the teacher gave him on a weekly basis, but today he could not think at all.

On Tuesday  morning he stood in his closet and felt at loss.  He would wear a suit, that was a given, but which one?  If he wore a silver tie, would that seem like too obvious of a cry for attention?  His navy suit with the hand-painted silk tie was sedate but well-cut, but then, he had already worn that on Monday.

Now who is acting like a woman?

He settled on a gray suit with a patterned silver and maroon tie.  It was a color combination that his tailor never failed to mention as “…very sophisticated, sir.” He selected a platinum tie clip, one without extra ornamentation and placed a six thousand dirham pen in his breast pocket.  Then he went to his dressing table and frowned at the designer cologne labels.  They were all too flashy, the scents were all piney, or floral in a manly way, or clean-smelling.  He needed something sedate but masculine, he needed…Aha!  A little bit of musk.

Salim arrived at his office half an hour early to finish his homework, and when his secretary arrived, he ordered her to hold all calls until ten minutes into the workday.  He wanted to finish his work undisturbed, he wanted it to be exceptional, he wanted his teacher to read it and smile and say, “Good.”

At 1:30, his lunch was delivered.  He ate it quickly and went to his bathroom and brushed his teeth, his hair, his shoes.  He straightened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket and went back to his office.  She would be coming soon.  The secretary had called her at noon to confirm her class and to ask if she wouldn’t need a ride today as well.

Salim glanced over to the clock.  It was 1:50.  He took his homework out arranged it neatly on the desk.  At 1:57, the elevator hissed and the teacher’s heels came clicking towards his door.  The teacher came in and said hello.

He stood up and returned the greeting, and offered her the chair on the other side of his desk.  She nodded and sat down, and instead of opening her bag, she looked up and said, “Your secretary asked me if I needed a ride.  I thought she was going to send a cab, but your driver picked me up instead.”

“Ah, he insisted that he pick you up.”

“Did he?” the teacher said, tilting her head to one side slightly, “He’s such a quiet man.”

Salim smiled cheerfully at the teacher and thought he saw her eyebrows raise just slightly.  Still smiling, he said, “Shall we begin the lesson?”

His homework had been done flawlessly and Salim counted the times he heard his teacher say “Good.”  Five.  He had never gotten five before, and by the end of the lesson, he had only dropped his pen once.  It was the teacher who dropped her book instead, and when she moved to pick it up, Salim stood up and said, “Please, let me.”

He walked around the tremendous mahogany desk and picked the book up from where it had fallen on the floor.  As he crouched at her feet to pick it up, he felt sure that she must be able to smell his cologne.  Why else had she shifted in her chair?  He picked the book up and placed it gently on the desk and then returned to his own chair.   When the lesson finished, she assigned Friday’s homework and began putting her books back in her bag.  Salim leaned back in his chair and gazed contentedly at her face as she did this.  When she looked up suddenly, he said right away, “What is the status of your car?”

“The mechanic said that there was some problem with the radiator,” she said, averting her eyes and putting one last book away, “It won’t be ready until Monday, I think maybe it’s because he’s busy.”

“My driver has asked that he should escort you from here to your home until your own car is ready.  He distrusts men who drive taxis.  I do as well.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, “ok.”  And that was all.  The driver knocked on the door and stepped inside.  She stood up and followed him out.

Salim sat at his desk trying to suppress a smile.  He was nearly bursting with excitement, he wanted to stand up and dance, he wanted to pump his fist in the air, he wanted to sing.  He had expected her to primly refuse- to give some irreproachable excuse for not availing herself of his offer, or maybe even to have another car.  Salim himself had three, a black one for work, a silver one for parties, and a red luxury sport utility vehicle for vacations.  But she had agreed, and now there was nothing left to do before Friday but wait, and do his homework.

Salim worked especially well on Wednesday, he felt alive and well-oiled, he skillfully flattered the appropriate parties and pleasantly threatened others.  It was a good day.  At the end of it he went back to his designer duplex apartment and did his homework enthusiastically.

Make a sentence for the following vocabulary words:

Persistent:  adj.  refusing to relent, continuing firmly or steadily.  A persistent man always gets what he wants.

On Thursday morning, Salim woke up early and showered.  He emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and walked into his closet again.  He had woken early enough today to dress himself at a leisurely pace, and so his took his time selecting a suit.

Pinstripes?  Too formal.  Black?  Too intimidating, or too much like a waiter depending on the choice of tie.  Blue?  Wore that on Monday.  Olive?  Ah, olive.  Perfect.

Salim hummed as he stood and dressed before the mirror, a nameless but happy tune of his own improvisation.  He selected the same musk he had worn on Tuesday and took care not to put on too little or too much.  He gave himself one final appraisal in the mirror before walking out of the door, seeing how his tailored suit fit perfectly over his wide shoulders, buttoned neatly at his trim waist and set his own olive skin off exotically.  In a dark blue or black suit that contrasted his skin, Salim could pass as an Italian, maybe even a Slav.  But in olive, he had the unmistakable warm glow that only an Arab of medium skin has.

The morning’s work went well, and by 12:30 Salim had quite an appetite.  He phoned his secretary and cancelled his order-in lunch.  He called the driver shortly afterwards and headed out for a quick lunch to a nearby roof-top cafe.  At 1:30, he looked at his watch, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and left.

The driver held the door open for Salim and closed it behind him.  Inside the car, Salim inhaled deeply and savored the atmosphere of the back seat.  It was cool and smelled of the leather on the seats and the musk on his suit.  He placed his hand on the seat next to him, the palm down and the fingers spread out and pressed into the leather.  He wondered where she had sat the last time she rode in this car.   He wondered what the look on her face would be when she sat down and saw Salim there.  Salim tried to picture his teacher’s smile, not the wooden one she gave him, but the soft one he saw her give to the secretary once- the friendly smile, the soft smile, the smile where her lips actually parted instead of staying pressed politely over her teeth.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, thinking of nothing in particular, content to breathe and feel and anticipate.  With his eyes still closed, Salim felt the car slow and then stop.  He listened as the driver opened his door and stepped out, and then listened to the sound of his footsteps go fading into the distance.  There were a few minutes of silence, and then the sounds of footsteps returning towards the car.  Salim turned expectantly towards the door and watched from behind the tinted glass as the driver reached for the handle.  The door opened and Salim looked away as his teacher sat down, with her head still turned towards the driver.  She was saying thank you.  Salim cleared his throat.

The teacher turned suddenly and saw him and Salim thought he saw the tiniest glimpse of something unpleasant.  Alarm, was it?  Or was it fear?  Salim smiled graciously and said hello.  She returned the greeting nervously, simultaneously moving farther away in her seat and smoothing the skirt over her knees.  Salim straightened in his seat and pulled his knees closer together.

“I apologize for surprising you.” Salim said smoothly, “I had an appointment before this and there was not enough time to drop me at the office and then pick you up.”

“Oh?” she said in a strangely flat voice, “I called earlier and your secretary said you were out to lunch.”

Salim, an experienced liar, laughed and waved his hand as if shooing away the misunderstanding.  “Even lunch is an appointment for me, I had to schedule it three days in advance.”  He chuckled at his own joke, and the teacher smiled, but with her lips still pressed over her teeth.

“It is a cozy villa that you have,” Salim said after they had driven a few minutes in heavy silence, “the perfect size for just two or three people.”

The teacher nodded, still looking out of the window.  Salim turned in his seat towards her and said, “Do you live alone?”

He watched the teacher’s profile as she blinked slowly and then turned her body towards him.  “Yes, I live alone.”

“I hope I am not rude for asking, but what brings you to this city so far from your home?”

“Many things,” the teacher said without elaborating.  Then she quickly looked up and turned the question back onto Salim.  “And you?”

“I am local, so I am from here,” Salim said proudly, “But I am not always in Dubai-  sometimes Berlin, often London, Madrid, Tokyo.”

“How often do you travel?” she said, repeating a question from last week’s grammar lesson.

“You know as well as I do how many classes I am missing these days.  It is rare that I should have four lessons in a row.  For that I apologize.”

“Do you enjoy it?” she asked.  It was yet another grammar-book question.

“It is tiring sometimes, one wishes that he could settle quietly someplace, but he wishes this only sometimes.  At other times, it is very enjoyable.”

The teacher launched a barrage of polite but impersonal questions at Salim all the way until the moment the car stopped before the glass tower of Salim’s office.  The driver opened the door for her, and then for Salim, and they walked together to the elevator.  Salim’s mobile phone went off just as he was stepping into the elevator after his teacher and he decided to take the call in the lobby and allow the teacher to go up before him.

Once the phone call was finished, Salim got onto the elevator himself.  This public elevator took him only as far as the 31st floor, where his company headquarters were located.  Once there he took another elevator, a private one that led up four floors and opened only to his office.  When he arrived, his teacher was already seated primly in the chair on the other side of his desk with books and papers laid out for the lesson.  Salim said hello, and his teacher said, “Shall we begin?”

Salim got one ‘good’ and a nod at the end of his homework.  The rest of the lesson was complex and it was difficult for him to keep up.  By the end, Salim had given himself a headache trying to digest all of the new grammar rules and long vocabulary words that his teacher had presented.

At 3:02, the driver knocked on the office door.  The teacher shook her watch out of her sleeve, glanced at it and then closed her book.  She assigned Salim homework, said good-bye and then left before Salim could respond.

As Salim numbly closed his book and gathered the notes in front of him, he realized what his teacher had done.  In the car, instead of giving him a chance to direct the conversation, she had questioned him continually about unimportant and impersonal things, and robbed him of his chance to ask her anything personal or unrelated to English grammar. During the lesson, she had overwhelmed him with complicated lessons and rapid-fire questions about grammar rules he was supposed to have memorized.  She was in control again, and there was no mistaking that she had asserted her authority on purpose.  Salim had lost the upper hand.  He had also dropped his pen four times, splattering ink on one of his books.

Friday passed uneventfully, Salim slept in, went out for brunch, and double-parked outside of a masjid to catch the last minute of the sermon before prayer began.  Afterwards he caught up to some office work.  After sunset he met with some friends to watch a movie in VIP lounge and ended the evening by buying a new pen for his class on Sunday.  He was looking for something with a better grip.  The man in Mont Blanc boutique ensured him that this particular pen not only came with a very ergonomic grip, but also had an 18k gold nib, platinum casing, and diamonds set into the logo.

On Saturday evening, Salim met Robert at a dinner hosted by a common business connection.  “You look lovely this evening, my dear,” Robert said, mocking him good-naturedly, “With your fair brows pushed together into a most charming state of distress.  Your velvet eyes glazed with a far-away kind of look.  It must be a matter of the heart then,” Robert sighed dramatically, placing his hand over his chest.

Salim put his fork down and swallowed hard on his steak.  “I beg your pardon.”

“Come dear, you can tell Uncle Robert, who’s the foolish fellow who’s broken your heart?”

Salim wiped his mouth with his napkin and stared at Robert with narrowed eyes.  Robert noted the lack of real fire beneath the harsh gaze and pushed forward.

“So you can tell me about Hannah and Eva, but not this one?  And who was that German woman last time, the one with big teeth?”

Here Salim snorted and laughed into his napkin, losing all pretense of anger.  “That was Gertrude,” he said recovering, “and her teeth were not so big.”

“Gertrude…” Robert mused, “That’s right.  I should’ve remembered her name since it does rhyme protrude.”

Salim covered his eyes with his hand as Robert laughed openly at his own joke.  When he was finished, Robert wiped imaginary tears from his eyes and then leaned forward, speaking to Salim in a low and earnest voice.  “Out with it then.  Have you finally loved and lost your secretary?”

Salim shook his head.

“Good, I may have her then?”

“What does it matter to you Robert, you have a dozen stories of romance on a weekly basis.  Tell me one of yours.”

Here Robert straightened suddenly in his chair and held his head high, his chin out challengingly.  “A true gentleman never speaks of such things.”

“But I should speak of them?”

“You heathen Arab, you’re no gentleman!”

“Nor you, English infidel.”

The conversation deteriorated into an exchange of affectionate racial slurs and the night ended with a few off-key songs in the back seat of Salim’s car.  The next morning Salim’s alarm clock went off at seven, and as the electronic siren reverberated painfully in his sore head, he toyed with the idea of going in to work late.  Ms. Alice was an excellent secretary, she could come up with a hundred ways of placating neglected clients.

(The Vice President is in a meeting, but he told me you might call, sir, and asked me to inform you that he would get in touch with you as soon as possible, as he is very eager to talk to you.  He will call you as soon as he is able.  Of course sir.  Yes, yes.)

Salim slapped the alarm clock and pushed his face deeper into his pillow.  He was still in bed when his mobile phone went off at 9:05, trilling Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in progressively louder tones.  He fumbled for the right button.  He eventually pushed it and said, “Hello?”  It was his secretary.

“Good Morning sir, Mr. De La Rosa has called for you twice since 8:30 and Mr. Robert Spenser left a message for you at 8:40.  Shall I read it to you?”

Salim mumbled the affirmative.

“The message reads: Sincerest condolences on the loss of the aforementioned broken body part.  Take two strong doses of Gertrude and call me in the morning- Doctor Robert.”

Last night’s memory was fuzzy, what was Robert talking about?  A broken body part?   Salim rubbed his eyelids with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand as he tried to recall the evening.  His secretary waited patiently on the line.

It was coming back now, what was it that Robert had said?  Someone had broken his heart?  Salim suddenly remembered the conversation and the evening he spent fretting about his teacher…his teacher!  She would be coming today!  This was Sunday afternoon, and his homework had not been done and now he had slept in and wasted what little time he had to do it.  He gasped aloud.

“Sir?  Is everything all right?”

“Alice, send  my driver immediately.  Postpone my calls, tell them I am in a conference until 10:30.”

“Yes sir.”  Salim disconnected the phone and threw off his covers.  He washed his face hastily but did not shave.  He ran into his closet and grabbed a simple black suit.  He put it on quickly, pocketed his mobile phone and ran out to the elevator.  His new pen was forgotten in the entryway.

Salim arrived at his office and accepted a handful of messages from his secretary on his way to the elevator.  As he waited impatiently for the doors to open on his floor, he read through them.  There were five, and they were sorted in chronological order; 8:45, message from Robert.  8:52, slightly angry message from La Rosa, 9:10, message from potential client, 9:15, message from a mechanic.  And the last one, 9:18, was a message from his teacher.  Salim looked at his watch. It was 9:35.  She must’ve called when he was en route to the office.  He read the message hastily.

“My apologies,” it said, “I have to cancel class for today.  I will call you when I can come.”  Alice always took messages verbatim, and as Salim read the note, he tried to hear the words as his teacher spoke them.  In his head they sounded toneless, ambiguous.  They were possibly benign or possibly angry.

The elevator doors opened and Salim walked slowly to his office and sat down at his desk.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone, cycling through the directory and looking for her number.  He found it and hesitated before pushing the button.  What if she was angry at him?  What if he had been too forward in the car?  He placed this thumb over the send button.  He knitted his eyebrows together and pressed it.

The phone rang, once, twice, thrice.

“Hello?”  It was she who picked up.

“Hello, this is Salim,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.  “I just received your message.  I am hoping everything is well?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.  “Hello?” Salim said again cautiously.

“Yes, everything is fine, thanks,” she answered.  “I just can’t make it today, sorry.”

“May I help with anything?  A taxi perhaps?”

“No, thank you.  A taxi will not be necessary.”

“Pardon my asking,” Salim ventured, “I hope you will not mind, but may I ask if there is any problem?”

Salim thought he heard the scratch of breath blown across the receiver.  It could have been static, he was not sure.

“There is no problem at all, thank you.”

Salim twirled a pen in his free hand and then ventured, “Then why can you not come?”

Over ten seconds of silence followed.  Salim cleared his throat.  Then he heard the sound again, it could not have been static.  It was definitely a breath of some sort.

“I’m sorry,” the teacher said slowly, “I just don’t feel up to teaching classes anymore.  I’m tired these days.  If you don’t mind, I’d like a vacation.”

“Of course, of course,” Salim said right away, “A week?  Two weeks?  When will you return?”

“I’m sorry for not making myself clear the first time,” the teacher said.  “But I would like to postpone classes with you until further notice.”

Salim put his hand quietly on his forehead and said, “One moment please.”  He put the phone down on the desk and exhaled loudly.  Then, as he was staring at his desk in perplexity, his eye caught the fourth phone message- the one from the mechanic.  It read: “Tell him I tried but she’s very angry and I’m sorry, she looked inside of the car and I’m sorry, ok?  Please.” After the last line Alice had penned a few dots and a question mark in parenthesis, which was her way of signaling her confusion.

Salim picked up the phone quickly.  “I…”

“Yes?” his teacher said tonelessly.  Now Salim realized that her voice was calm but angry. How could he have missed the exasperated sigh earlier?

“Listen,” he said, dropping all pretense of formality, “Can you please come to my office?  I think we must talk in person.”

“I would rather not,” the teacher said.

“Please,” Salim said, “You must, please, I shall send the driver for you in ten minutes, ok?”

After a tense silence she said, “Fine,” and hung up.   Salim rang his secretary and had the driver sent to the teacher’s house.  She would be arriving soon.  It would take less than twenty-five minutes altogether.  He had much to do in that time and had to hurry to accomplish it.

He quickly called La Rosa and made the proper apologies, setting a time for a longer, uninterrupted phone call for later in the afternoon.  He phoned the potential client and convened a council of secretaries to arrange a meeting some time next week.  He stuffed the other three messages in his desk and in doing so, spied his bottle of Scotch.  He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long draught.  Then he rushed to his bathroom to brush his teeth, and to shave, which he had not done yet.

He emerged from of the bathroom with his jacket in his arms and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and stopped in his tracks.  His teacher was already sitting in the chair on the opposite side of his desk.  The driver must have gone exceptionally fast.  Either that or time had passed much faster than Salim expected it to.

She did not turn around when he stepped into the room, but stayed in the chair, erect and motionless.  Salim felt his stomach quiver suddenly.  He drew in a breath, called upon all his mental resources, and walked to his chair, still with his sleeves rolled up and his jacket still over his arm.  He sat down without looking up at her right away, contemplating his lap.  After a few moments, the teacher said, “Well?”

Salim looked up guiltily, embarrassedly, and said, “This is about your car.  Please allow me to apologize.”

The teacher looked unflinchingly at Salim, the only sign of her emotions being a slight flaring of her nostrils, a rise in color to her cheeks.  “What-”

“Please,” he interrupted, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the desk.  “I know that it was not right of me to do such a thing secretly, but I wanted to make a surprise for you.”

“By going behind my back and threatening the mechanic?” she demanded.

“Oh,” Salim said, wilting.  “I am sorry.  Please forgive me.  I am very sorry.”

The teacher put a hand on the back of her neck and shook her head.  “I just-” she began, exasperatedly, “I mean, what right?  What are you trying, to, to- achieve?”

Salim looked up at her, and he stared sadly into her eyes.  She shook her head slightly as he did this and raised her eyebrows, as if asking a question.  Salim opened and closed his mouth several times as if to answer, and when nothing came out, his teacher shook her head once more and stood up.

“Wait!” he said, suddenly recovering his powers of speech.

“Good bye,” she said through tight lips.  “Good luck with your English studies, and with finding a new teacher.”

She turned and walked out of the door.  Salim stood and rushed out into the hall behind her.  The elevator doors had already opened and she was just stepping inside of them when he caught up and ran in behind her.  She turned around angrily as the elevator doors closed behind them.  She jabbed at the button for the 31^st floor.

“Now what?” she said irritably.

“Please,” Salim said, trying to stand at a respectful distance in the limited space of the elevator.  “Please, you misunderstand me.  I meant you no harm, I did not mean to violate your privacy.”

“Then what did you mean?” the teacher challenged, placing one hand on her hip.  Salim was momentarily distracted by its curve.  Then he blinked and looked up, staring into his teacher’s angry blue eyes again, searching them for a sign.  That fierce sparkle, was it the hard sparkle of a diamond?  Or was it the faceted sparkle of ice?  Could the ice melt?  Could he make the eyes melt?

As he stood staring, the ice did melt, and a trickle of water leaked out onto the teacher’s cheek.  “Oh I am so sorry!” Salim said, frantically producing a silk handkerchief from his pocket, “Please don’t cry, please, I am so sorry!”

The teacher snatched the handkerchief and turned away, and at that moment, the lights flickered in the elevator.  There was a grinding noise and the elevator stopped.  Salim stood uneasily with his hand on the brass rail in the compartment.

The teacher looked up to the ceiling, and then to Salim.  She pushed the button for the 31st floor several times, and then the button for opening the door, and when at length, nothing happened, she threw the handkerchief back at him scornfully and said “Dammit!  Did you arrange this too?”

Salim shook his head innocently and pushed the emergency button.  It gave off a wicked spark and Salim jerked his hand away.  He squeezed his tingling fingers for a moment, and then reached into his pocket for his mobile phone.  The pocket was empty.  Of course.  His mobile phone was on his desk.

He closed his eyes and turned and rested his head against the cool wall of the elevator.  The teacher was standing with her back to him, both hands on the brass railing.  They stood in silence for an interminable amount of time, waiting.  Finally, the teacher sighed, set down her purse, and sat down on the floor with her legs crossed beneath her skirt and her arms crossed on her stomach.  Salim sat down also.  He stared meekly at his fingernails.

Salim cleared this throat and spoke, quietly, because the stillness in the elevator made his voice seem very loud, saying, “I am not a bad man.  I am not what you think I am.”

The teacher was staring at the elevator door.  She said, “So what.”

“So you do not have to leave teaching me.  I will not harm you.”

The teacher raised an eyebrow and turned to glare at Salim.  “Harm me?”

Salim felt a hot rush of color to his neck and he looked away. After a while he glanced down at his watch.  Ten minutes had passed in the elevator.  Salim looked at the ceiling, then at the floor, at the elevator buttons, and then at the door, and when he turned his head slightly to steal a glance at his teacher, who looked like she was resting her head against the elevator wall with her eyes closed, she turned to him and gave him an accusing stare.

“I did not do this!” Salim pleaded, “Please believe me.  I would never do anything like this.”

“Like you would never do anything with my car?” she was still staring at him.

Salim met the teacher’s angry stare with a look of both regret and longing.  He began awkwardly, “If you knew why I did it you-”

“Don’t bother,” the teacher said, interrupting him.  “I don’t care why you did it.  When this elevator opens I am going home and you and going to find a new teacher.”

“I don’t want a new teacher.”

“I don’t care what you want.”  The teacher turned away and sniffed.  A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Why are you crying?” Salim asked in a way he hoped was gentle and inoffensive.

“I’m tired and upset and I’m stuck in an elevator,” the teacher said wearily, “Why shouldn't I cry.”

Salim drew a breath and held out his hand, as if making an offering, “But you don’t have to be upset, and it’s not so bad being stuck here.  Someone will come and open the doors, until then, please don’t cry.”

Another tear rolled down the teacher’s cheek regardless of Salim’s advice.  Salim put his hand back in his lap, and after contemplating it for a minute, he shifted on the elevator floor so that he was facing his teacher.  “Please, why are you crying?  Is it because you are angry with me?  Please tell me.”

The teacher wiped her tears away with a corner of her scarf and Salim quickly handed her the silk handkerchief he had initially offered her.  She took it without looking at him and dried her eyes and dabbed at her nose with it.

“I am crying,” she said slowly, “Because I am mad at myself.  I am mad at you, and I am mad at this stupid elevator.”

“There is no reason why you should me mad at yourself,” Salim said with admonishment in his voice.  “And you shouldn’t even be mad at me, I had a good reason for what I did, and I caused you no harm.  Now the elevator,” Salim said, trying to dispel some of the stress in the air, “Even I am mad at the elevator.”

The teacher said nothing.  He scooted a little closer to her and said quietly, searching her face, “You know why I did it, don’t you?”  The teacher flushed and looked away from him.

“You know then.” he said, licking his lips anxiously, “Will you still be angry with me?”

“Leave me alone,” the teacher said weakly, “Go back to your corner and stay there until the doors open.”

A mechanical clicking noise came from somewhere beneath the floor of the elevator.

“No,” Salim said, scooting a little closer, his eyes glittering with excitement.  “Listen.  I know why you are crying.  You do not have to be upset.  I am not a bad man.  I have an excellent career and I-”

“You have nothing I need,” the teacher interrupted sternly.  “Now go back to your corner.”

Salim drew himself up indignantly, “Nothing you need!  Do you not need a house?  A life?  A man who will-”

“Nothing!” she said, raising her voice suddenly.  “That is enough, go back to your corner and stay there!”

“You’re not teaching me any more, correct?”

“Correct,” the teacher said through clenched teeth, struggling to control her anger.

“So if you are not my teacher then I do not have to obey you.”  The teacher’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and Salim smiled.  “You are not the teacher anymore and I am not Mister Vice President.  You are Angela and I am Salim.”

“I didn’t give you permission to use that name,” the teacher said, her lips pressing together tightly when she ended her sentence.

“I do not need permission.,” Salim said, matching her tone.  “There is no student and no teacher, only man and woman.  Now Angela, you must tell me.  Am I not a suitable man?”

“Fine,” the teacher said, turning suddenly to face Salim.  “You want to know?  I’ll tell you.”  She held up her hand and began counting off her complaints on her fingers.  “You’re a professional liar, you drink, you smoke, you don’t pray, you don’t give a damn about your own religion and you think you can trick me into falling in love with you?  How stupid do you think I am?”

Salim blinked and shook his head as if trying to shake off the teacher’s outburst.  “But, but,” he stammered, “Surely you must be joking.  You are American, you know what life is about, and I can give you a good one!”

“To hell with your life,” she said, and then laughed bitterly, “Yes, to hell with it.  I don’t know if you even believe in accountability, so I’m not going to make a fool of myself by talking about heaven and hell, but I know what my life’s goals are, and none of them involve any of yours, or you, or any men like you.  Ok?  Is that clear?”

Salim sat dumbly, staring at the floor.  The elevator shivered and the lights flickered again.  Suddenly, alarmingly, it dropped and then came to a jarring halt.  The doors had still not opened.  Salim looked up to the ceiling in alarm and swallowed against the lump of nausea in his throat.  The teacher had her eyes closed and hands grasping the brass rail above her.  Salim opened his mouth and drew a shaky breath.  There was a harsh grating noise and the elevator jerked suddenly up and then down again.

“Oh ****…” Salim said shakily.

The teacher opened her eyes and took her hands off the brass rail.  “Look,” she said, her anger replaced with urgency, “Look, I need to apologize for insulting you.  Don’t hold it against me, please.”

Salim had wrapped his arms around his middle and was rocking back and forth with his eyes closed, trembling.  His breathing had become irregular.

“Oh no, don’t panic!” the teacher said, standing up and taking Salim by the arm.  “Stand up,” she said, and she made Salim stand and bend over with his head between his knees.  “Breathe gently, there.  Good.”

Salim closed his eyes and forced himself to inhale.  The elevator doors hissed and opened half of an inch, and when Salim looked up eagerly he could see a vertical section of gears and wires lining a wall of cement between floors.  He stood up immediately and forced his fingers into the crack, pushing against the doors.  As he grunted and strained, the teacher sat down again and held her cupped hands out in front of her face, praying.

Salim groaned through his clenched teeth and pushed the door harder.  It came open another two inches, and then the entire elevator shuddered and Salim pulled his fingers out just as it began moving again.  The wires showing between the open doors scrolled upwards and out of sight at a progressively faster speed, and Salim was lifted onto his toes by force the rapid descent.   Faster and faster the elevator fell.

When the elevator struck the ground with a deafening crash and a shattering of glass panels and a crackling of electric wires, Salim lost consciousness.

Salim dreamt he was swimming in a tremendous pleasure garden, and in the immense blue pool, hundreds of other people were laughing and frolicking.  Some of them were sitting by the pool and feeding each other fruit.  One woman was laughing gently as she leaned onto another man’s neck.  Salim turned and reached out with his arm and began swimming.  He had taken only a few strokes when he realized that something was wrong, he could not feel his fingers in the cool water.

Salim lifted his arm from the water and stared at it in horror.  His right hand was missing, not cut off, but decayed off, rotted off, and greenish-brown veins and arteries dangled lifelessly from the stump of his wrist.  Salim turned to the other swimmers for help and saw that the man swimming next to him was trailing a sightless eye through the water from a gaping socket.  A woman floating beside him was missing her jaw, and her teeth and blue tongue hung straight out from the bottom of her face.  Everywhere Salim turned, he saw people laughing joyfully and rotting alive.  Salim put his remaining hand to his face and found that he had no nose, only a moist, oozing cavity between his eyes where it had once been.  He screamed.  And screamed.  And screamed.

He was still screaming when he awoke on the elevator floor, and he coughed and gagged on his own blood, and then screamed again.  Salim rolled over onto his side and was immediately struck with overwhelming pain.  In the thin shaft of light that was shining through the crack in the elevator door, Salim watched blood drip to the floor.  It was coming from his face.  He held out his hands in front of him and nearly screamed at the sight: his right hand was crushed, the skin and muscle and bone all mangled together in an oozing, shockingly painful mess.  Salim shuddered as a wave of pain washed over him again.  He vomited.  When the wave subsided, Salim turned over onto his elbows and knees and crawled forward.

He found her, still sitting cross-legged, her scarf still wrapped neatly around her head, though shards of glass and debris were scattered all over it and nestled in the folds that lie over her chest.  In his confused state, Salim thought she might be sleeping with her chin resting on her chest.  He tried to say her name, but he couldn’t hear himself mouth the words.  He couldn’t reach out and shake her, so he crouched before her, bleeding and shuddering, until the shaft of light in the elevator widened and several silhouettes entered through it.

In the days and nights that followed, Salim was seldom conscious, and his sleep was disturbed with the same frightening dreams of the pleasure garden.  Between dreams he had vague ideas of doctors and nurses and needles, and of a relentless cycle of pain, and then numbness, and then pain again, followed by numbness.

Two and a half weeks after the elevator had come crashing down from Salim’s private office to the company headquarters on the 31st floor, Salim regained consciousness, and Robert arrived not half an hour later.

He laid his hand uneasily on the rail of Salim’s bed.  “How do you feel old chap?” Robert asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Salim said.  His throat was raw from the tube that had been pulled out only a few minutes ago.  “My hand, it hurts…”

Robert averted his eyes and self-consciously pulled his own hand back into his lap.  “You haven’t got it anymore Salim, they had to take it off…”

Salim raised his arm unsteadily and stared desperately at the bandaged stump.  That’s right, his hand had hurt so much.  He remembered seeing the bloody pulp above his wrist, and then getting onto his elbows and knees and crawling towards…

“My teacher!” Salim croaked, starting from his pillow, his voice grating harshly in his throat as he groaned and tried to lift himself with his remaining hand.

Robert leapt to his feet and pushed the button that called the nurse and tried to subdue Salim at the same time.  “Calm down, calm down!  You must rest Salim, the doctors say you’re barely alive as it is now.  Stop thrashing about or you’ll undo everything!”

Salim dropped back onto his pillow, exhausted from his brief struggle.  “You must…” he said breathlessly, “…you must tell me…please, how is she…”

A nurse came in holding a wrapped syringe and a small glass bottle.  She opened the syringe and then stabbed its tip through the top of the vial, drawing out its contents.

“You must promise not to get all worked up when I tell you Salim, or I won’t tell you at all.”

Salim did his best to nod earnestly, though it sent bursts of pain through his skull.

“Alright then,” Robert said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.  He drew a breath and held it for a second.  Then he released it, saying, “I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you.  She didn’t survive.”

Robert turned his head and continued talking as he stared into the space above the window.  “I can’t remember the technical word for it, something about the brain being struck from the impact, the doctors said she never felt a thing.  I’m so sorry Salim.”

Hot tears welled up in Salim’s eyes and escaped, burning paths from the corners of his eyes to the pillow beneath his head.  The nurse slipped in next to all the tubes and wires connected to him, and then emptied the injection into the cannula of his IV.

Salim’s mouth hung open.  Tears flowed freely from his blood-shot eyes, even as the sedative spread through his body and his eyelids grew heavier.  Robert stayed watching him until the fingers on his remaining hand stopped twitching and his breathing grew less harried.  When he thought he was finally asleep, Robert leaned carefully over Salim, and then watched in surprise as a large tear welled up in the corner of his closed eye and ran down his face.

“Poor chap,” Robert murmured as he walked out the door, “Crying in his sleep.”

***

The living room was dark except for a thin shaft of light that shone underneath the front door. A clock chimed, once, twice, thrice. The curtains on the window were drawn, and only the faintest glow from the outside world passed through them. In that darkness the father shifted his weight on the sofa.

Jingling, a sudden soft jingling of keys on the other side of the door, caused the father to sit up. The door opened. A man’s silhouette removed the keys from the door carefully and laid them on a coffee table. He stepped soundlessly upon the carpet and guided the door closed. The father spoke.

“Where have you been, Asif?”

“Assalamu 'Alaykum Abbu, I didn’t know you were still up.”

“I’m up because I’ve been waiting for you to come home since eleven o’clock. Where have you been?”

“Me and Masood were just hanging out.” The young man stood with his shoulders dropped and his hands in his pockets.

“Hanging out. Since seven o’clock, for eight hours.” The father’s fists clenched.

“Yeah, just hanging out. You don’t need to get all worried, we-“

“Of course I need to be worried!” The father’s scream reverberated in the hallway. A light in the sister’s bedroom turned on.

“Dad, you don’t need to…”

“I’m the sort of stupid person, apparently, who cares about their children and worries when they are gone all night. How do I know if you’re not dead? How do I know you’re not lying dead in the street somewhere while I stay home worrying myself out of my damned mind? Where have you been?!”

“I told you,” Asif said more firmly, “I was just hanging out with Masood.”

The father’s voice became dangerously soft. “Then why did Masood call and ask me where you were?”

***

The right arm was no less lean, and both arms connected to a set of wide shoulders. They were bare, as was his chest. Beneath his left breast was a scar from where he had once flipped over the handlebars of his bicycle. A little metal bell had been joined to the handlebars by little metal screws. One of them had been poking out just enough to tear a gash in a seven year old boy’s chest.

***

“Where is he now?” the sister asked.

The father exhaled loudly in frustration. “Asleep. He’s been asleep all day, and he’s naked, totally naked…”

“He's what?” the mother asked incredulously.

“I went in this morning,” the father said with humiliation, “To wake him and God Almighty, he was naked. Nothing on his body. I put a blanket on him and told him to get up and put some pants on, but I couldn’t get him up. I closed the door, don’t go in his room.”

***

His hips were clad very loosely in a pair of sweatpants that might have fit at one point in time. At the moment they barely clung to his pelvic-bones. Had he been standing, he would’ve had to hold them with that attractive left hand. He had such nice, long hand – big but by no means clumsy. The nail from the right middle finger was missing though. It had come off during an accident. He had no memory of seeing the jeep, and when he came to a stop ten feet from his motorcycle, he lay there and laughed.

***

“I don’t know what to say,” the mother said quietly, “His clothes are full of little holes.”

“They’re torn?” the father asked.

“No,” the mother said, holding a pair of pants. “They’re burnt.”

“Burnt? I don’t understand. What does burnt mean?”

***

His legs lay unmoving in the overly loose folds of his pants. Compared to his height and his broad bone structure they seemed diminished, too thin and spindly to belong on a body with such great shoulders, such long arms.

***

“Let’s get high, hiiiigh, let’s get high, hiiigh-“

“Asif…”

“Yeah, I just took some Ecstasy, Ain't no tellin what the side effects could be…”

“Asif!”

“Come on, let’s get hiiiigh!” Asif laughed and reached for one of his sister’s arms.

“Don’t touch me!” she burst, backing abruptly out of his reach. “You’re singing crap and you’re glorifying something that you know is haram. You know, you absolutely know that’s haram, and I don’t want to hear it!”

She turned away from him and put her face in her hands. Asif put one of his hands on her shoulder and turned her around.

“What’s the matter with you?” he teased.

The sister removed her hands and looked Asif in the face. She was crying.

“Oh uh,” Asif mocked, pulling his hand of off her shoulder and stepping away. “Why are your eyes red, huh? Don’t tell me you’re on drugs, I’m gonna tell Abbu on you!”

The sister pushed past Asif and ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Asif sang on his way to the front door. “Let’s get high, hiiiigh!”

***

The feet were uncovered, some of the nails broken short and some grown long. The skin was dry and papery, and the gray roughness on the soles of his feet was an effect of long-term neglect. Also, the heels were cracked.

***

The elder brother came for a visit. He sat with Asif in the car.

“I know what you’re doing because I’ve done it before.”

“What?” Asif demanded belligerently, “What do you think I’m doing? And what have you been up to, huh?”

“I’m going to tell Abbu and he’s going to break your legs.”

“Yeah, and what if I tell Abbu what you were up to?”

“Abbu knows what I did, and Abbu knows that I quit years ago. You, on the other hand, appear to have fallen into the s*** face first.”

***

He had, at one point, been a warm, healthy Pakistani brown. That was before the skin, the fingertips, and even the eyes turned yellow. They were a dull, sticky-looking yellow and were no longer handsome, no matter how green.

***

Asif lay on the floor. He had just fallen out of his chair at the dining table, and the plate of rice he had been eating fell down with him. He was grinning.

Then he was chuckling.

Then he was roaring with laughter.

The roaring turned to howls, and then the laughter turned into wailing.

Then he was crying.

The mother put her hand to her heart. The sister looked to her desperately. The father was at work. That was the night that Asif told them everything.

The next morning he forgot and wasn’t sure why he had been locked in his bedroom.

He banged on the door for three hours. No one opened it. There was a pain in his head and a frantic craving. He kicked at the door furiously.

Downstairs the mother cried.

Asif jumped off of his second-floor balcony and landed in front of the house. He limped away to get more.

***

The face, the drawn, yellowed, taut face, had once been handsome. The black hair had once fallen sleekly in place when he ran his fingers through it. The father had looked at him with pride, the sister had guarded him jealously. His friends had called him a ‘pretty bastard’ and teased him until he lovingly beat them up.

***

“If you fail the drug test, I kick you out. If you come home high, I kick you out. You understand?”

Asif ignored the elder brother and walked into the room that was to be his. As he set his bags down the doorbell rang.

The door opened and the nephew ran excitedly in calling, “Asif Chachu! Asif Chachu!”  He was two years old and hyperactive and happy.

“Tahir! Come here, you,” Asif picked Tahir up with one hand and slung him over his shoulder. Tahir giggled and screamed with joy. Asif took Tahir to the park.

***

There are certain things that drugs will do to a man’s body. His eyes become small. He sweats a lot. He is irrational and aggressive.

***

Asif was kicked out of the elder brother’s house and lived in his car. After two weeks, out of pity, out of pain, out of futility and love and worry, he had been allowed to move in with the family again. But he refused to quit.

“Don’t you understand?” the father screamed, “You are hurting the family, you are hurting yourself! They are illegal, they are haram!”

“You want kick me out again, you can kick me out, and I’ll still be doing drugs. You wanna keep me here, then keep me, here, but I’ll still be doing drugs. You can’t tell me I’m getting high because you don’t know what it feels like, ask anybody who-“

“Ask who?” the sister spat, “Other drug addicts? Have you ever thought about opening the Qur’an and checking?”

Asif pointed a finger in his sister’s face. “The Qur’an only mentions alcohol!”

The sister slapped him and left the room.

***

The chemicals in drugs are harmful not only to humans. If you try to smoke heroine on the dining table, it might eat a hole through the finish.

***

They came home and found Asif on the floor, unconscious, unresponsive. The house was a wreck. There was a hole in the dining table.

Asif awoke in a hospital bed and pulled out his IV. He walked out of the room and bumped into an orderly who tried to guide him back. There was a fistfight. The orderly, as well a doctor who tried to help, were badly beaten. Asif left.

Back home, the father was stricken with a severe headache. A few minutes later his nose began to bleed. The mother tried to convince him to see a doctor. He sniffed, refused, and picked the car keys up. Where his fingers touched the table he left a drop of blood.

Asif made it home before the father returned and went directly to his room. The mother and the sister followed behind him, pleading. They refused to let him go, they refused to leave his room. He put on a pair of sweatpants and threw his hospital gown off. He pushed past them and began walking downstairs.

The sister rushed down the stairs and made it to the front door before he could. She stood in front of it with a knife in her hand.

“You can’t leave,” she cried, “I won’t let you go and kill yourself.”

Her eyes were red, her hands shook. She brandished the knife only feebly.

“Quit faking,” Asif said, moving suddenly towards her. He took the knife from her hand and flung it across the room. She rushed forward and wrapped Asif in a tight embrace, burying her face in his chest.

“Please,” she groaned, “Please…”

Asif thrust her away with such force that she hit the wall. He walked out the door.

***

The body, Asif’s body, lies half naked on the floor.

***

The elder brother came home after the funeral prayer and sat wearily down. Quick, light footsteps approached him from the kitchen and Tahir climbed into his father’s lap.

“Hi, Baba,” Tahir said.

The remaining brother drew Tahir to himself and held him tightly. Innocently, Tahir pushed away. He then held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged, “Where Asif Chachu?”

“Asif Chachu isn’t here any more, Tahir,” the remaining brother clenched his jaw to stop his mouth from quivering.

“Asif Chachu gone?”

“Yes, Asif Chachu gone.”