Chapter 7: Chosen

Yasmin came up the stairs the next morning still holding onto Omar’s arm, and she did not let go of it.

She had not let go of it much through the night either, once the fear had finally loosened its hold on her. Something had happened down there she had no ordinary words for. At the end, when they had crested together, she had felt — she was certain of it, the way she was certain of prayer — that their two spirits had come loose from their bodies and risen up together, soaring somewhere high and bright, one thing and not two. A gift from Allah. She believed that with her whole heart. He had reached the part of her that her first husband never touched, the part she’d hidden so far down she’d half forgotten it was there, and instead of taking it from her he had lifted it up into the light.

So she held his arm, and walked close against his side, and was in no hurry at all to stop.

The others were already in the kitchen. Yasmin crossed to Dina — Dina, whose turn was that very night, sitting with her coffee and her careful composure and a flicker of nerves under it that only another frightened woman would have spotted.

Yasmin took her by the hand.

“His love is a warm blanket,” she said softly, and her face when she said it was so open and so changed that the whole table went quiet to hear her. “It will wrap all the way around you and hold you and keep you. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He is truly ours.”

Dina held Yasmin’s gaze a moment, and the comeback she’d been reaching for wasn’t there.

“Well,” she said finally, and her voice came out lower and less steady than she’d meant. “That’s not what I expected you to say. Not from you. Not this morning.” She looked down at their joined hands. “You were a wreck yesterday. I could hear you crying through the wall.”

“I know,” Yasmin said simply.

“And now look at you.” Dina shook her head slowly, her own throat gone tight. “Glowing like the sunrise.” She tried for dry and didn’t quite make it. “If he can do that for you — after everything — then I suppose I haven’t got much to be afraid of tonight, have I?”

“No,” Yasmin said. “You haven’t.”

Dina let out a breath, squeezed her hand once, and reached for her coffee with a hand that wasn’t entirely steady — the iron woman who’d never been chosen, looking at the proof that being chosen didn’t have to hurt.

Mariam, watching from the stove, pressed her lips together and said nothing, because her eyes had gone bright and she did not trust her voice.

The day did not pass evenly for Dina, and she hated that it didn’t.

She was the steady one. The one with her feet under her, the one who set the truth on the table while the others fluttered. She did not flutter. And yet all that Thursday she caught herself with her hands gone useless in the middle of things — standing in the field with the hoe forgotten, standing at the stove with the bread going dark, her mind three rooms and one night away.

She’d taken to wearing her hair in the ponytail he’d asked for. She told herself it was practical. It was not practical, and she knew exactly why she wore it, and she wore it anyway.

The trouble was she wanted him, and wanting had never once in her life been safe. Twenty-one years of being too tall, too much, the girl the matchmakers’ eyes slid past on their way to the smaller, softer ones. She’d built her whole self around not minding. Made herself useful instead of wanted, capable instead of chosen, and told herself so many times she didn’t care that she’d nearly believed it. Then a half-dead American had come down their stream and looked up at her from the basement floor, and weeks later taken her face in both hands in her own kitchen and called her pretty, and the not-caring had come apart in her like wet paper.

He accepted her. The whole of her — the height she’d been taught to apologize for, the sharp tongue, the load she carried because no one had ever offered to carry it for her. She’d stopped doubting that.

What scared her was the rest. Because Dina had never been with a man. Not once. The others had husbands behind them, for better or terrible worse — they knew the shape of what was coming. She knew nothing. She, who prided herself on always knowing, was going to walk down those stairs and be a beginner at something, with no control over any part of it.

Late in the afternoon Mariam found her in the field, standing over a row she hadn’t touched, and came and stood beside her a while without a word — two women looking at the poppies and the long gold light coming down off the ridge.

“He won’t rush you,” Mariam said finally. “Whatever you’ve been carrying around out here all day — set it down. He’ll meet you wherever you are and not one step past it. You know that by now.”

“I know,” Dina said, lower than she meant to.

Mariam glanced at her sidelong. “You never have,” she said. Not a question, and not unkind.

Dina’s jaw tightened. She didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“Then tonight you teach him how slow you need,” Mariam said simply, “and he’ll go slower than that.” She touched Dina’s arm once and left her to the light.

Dina stood in the field a while longer, tall and still against the sky, and let herself, for once, be afraid of a good thing instead of bracing against a bad one.

To help break her gnawing tension. As she rose from the dinner table, Dina bowed her head between her outstretched, crossed arms like a slave offered up, and crooned, “Doom, O doom! I am to be speared and my honor torn asunder! Be merciful, my lord — use a small dagger instead.”

Chuckling, Omar replied with mock villainy, “Methinks I shall use the broadsword instead. Off with you to the bedchamber!”

That lightened the mood as they cleared and finished the evening dishes.

When the lamps were lit and the house drew toward sleep, Omar waited for her at the top of the stairs with the lamp, so she wouldn’t go down into the dark alone. Dina came to him with her chin up — of course her chin was up, it always was — but he could see the pulse going at her throat.

They went down together. He set the lamp on the shelf and turned to her and took her hands, the tall girl who had only to tip her head slightly to meet his eyes.

“At the table,” he said, “you all voted. I want to hear yours, from you. Just you.”

Dina swallowed. “I voted for you. I want you for my husband.” Her voice was steadier than she felt. “I didn’t think a man would ever —” She stopped, started again, plainer. “No one ever picked me, Omar. Twenty-one years and not one. I made myself stop waiting for it. And then you looked up at me off that floor like I was something worth looking at, and — yes. I vote yes. I want you.”

“Then hear my vow to you,” he said, and didn’t let go of her hands. “Dina. I take you as my wife — all of you. The height you were taught to be sorry for, the sharp tongue, and the load you’ve had to carry by yourself your whole life because nobody was ever there to carry any of it for you. Everywhere you’ve been, men looked past you, and not one of them had the sense to see what was standing right in front of him. Their blindness is the great fortune of my life. I vow to choose you, out loud, every day, so you never have to wonder again whether you were chosen. As God is my witness.”

Whatever Dina had braced herself to say went out of her. Her eyes filled, and she let them, which for Dina was its own kind of vow.

Dina gave a nervous smile and asked. “Would you like to undress me?”

“Why, yes Ma’am. I’d love to! I love unwrapping presents.”

“Are you sure you’re not Christian?”

Omar chuckled and replied. “Touché. No, I’m not Christian, I’m Sunni Muslim.”

“Okay, I’m a little frightened that you will find me unacceptable in your sight.”

“From what I have seen, you’re a real beauty in disguise.”

Finally stepped up to stand in front of Omar and said with a large intake of breath, “I’m ready, Husband.”

It seemed that all three of the younger women wore the same style night shift for sleeping. They were probably hand made.

As he started to unbutton her nightgown. Dina said, “Just so you know, this is all I have on. I thought it was useless to wear a lot of clothes because I was going to have to take all of it off anyway.”