‘I’m Sami. What are you listening to?’
She mentioned the singer’s name and when Sami said he didn’t know about her, Sarah let him listen.
‘Her voice is like candyfloss,’ she said.
It was true. The song was sweet and soothing yet crispy and clear, and closed out the sound from the other students.
‘She’s from Damascus, like me,’ Sarah continued and leaned forward over the table as if to tell him a secret. ‘I convinced my parents that Homs had the best university for my master’s, so I could live away from home.’
She smiled and Sami noticed a dimple in her right cheek, the most perfect shape he had ever seen.
‘So, what are you studying?’
‘Modern Arabic literature and English literary history.’ She leaned back. ‘And you?’
‘IT. You know, computers and stuff.’
He kept his eyes on the food and only glanced at Sarah now and then, trying to come up with a question that would make him seem smart and interesting.
‘You read…quite a lot then?’
He blushed and felt like biting his tongue, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Yeah, I like to read. When everything is dull around you, at least you can escape somewhere between the covers of a book.’
Her leg grazed his and it was probably a mistake, but still a minor electrical shock went through Sami’s body, like touching the damp light switch after cleaning the chandelier.
‘You don’t seem to lead a dull life.’
‘What do you know? I wouldn’t mind some more adventure,’ she said.
* * *
—
The following day they met in the library after class and studied together.
‘See you tomorrow then,’ Sarah said, filling her bag with books. ‘Same time and place?’
He watched her leave, her hair swaying as she walked, the backpack bouncing on her shoulder, and by the door she turned and raised a hand. He waved back and then something struck him.
‘Sarah, wait!’
The librarian gave Sami a look from across the room. He ran up to Sarah, who smiled with raised eyebrows, and there was the dimple, and what was it he had intended to say?
‘Maybe I can have your phone number? I mean, if something happens and I’m late tomorrow…’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You can have my number.’
* * *
—
He texted her the same evening.
Messah alkheer. Kifik?
She said everything was good, but wrote nothing more. He asked for the name of the singer with the candyfloss voice.
Lena Chamamyan, she replied.
Sami searched for her music and found a photo of the singer, and realized Sarah looked a lot like her: round cheeks and dark eyes and red hair, only less curly. A few months after the life-changing choice over a dessert, they were a couple.
* * *
—
To be in love was to gather each other’s peculiarities and habits as treasures. Sarah said Sami wasn’t as serious as everyone thought he was and that his portion sizes were curiously large for someone so slim. Sami noticed that Sarah started speaking faster when she talked about books she was reading, and bit her nails when she got stressed or nervous.
His lips were large and dry, hers were soft and tasted fruity from her lip balm. When they were together, it was like drowning and free-falling at the same time.
Sarah came from a Christian family in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. Sami noticed every detail in her student room: the stacks of books on her windowsill, from Jane Austen to Ahlam Mosteghanemi. Three over-watered mini cacti drooping in their tiny flowerpots. The collection of trainers under her bed. The hairs in her brush on the nightstand, the condoms under a pile of magazines. The glass where her lips had left a shiny imprint on the edge.
Sarah lent him her copy of Chaos of the Senses and he soaked up every word, at first because it was Sarah’s book and then because of the language. The Algerian author Ahlam Mosteghanemi wrote about a woman whose husband was a senior officer. The main character was writing a novel, while the novel wrote her life. Reality and fiction were woven together. Sami started doubting everything that was visible in the world. Were there undercurrents that followed different laws? He took out a pad and paper and wrote a paragraph but was unable to capture the feeling. Instead, he penned a love letter to Sarah. Later she embraced him and reached for what lay under the stack of magazines on the nightstand. Golden sunbeams streaked her hair as it spread out across the pillow.
Homs was a major city but slightly more conservative than Damascus or Aleppo. Homs was like their prim and proper older sister, confident and unafraid to live life, but never truly overstepping since her parents and siblings were watching. You would routinely find kissing couples in the shade of trees and in hidden corners of the campus, but cohabiting before marriage was rare, and usually carried out in secret. Even more secretly, men who wanted to meet other men sought out special bathing houses.
Sami staying in Sarah’s room overnight was out of the question. Instead they snatched brief moments of kissing and pleasure. It sounded romantic in theory, the foreplay extended by furtive looks and ambiguous text messages, but their intimacy often felt hurried and insufficient.
A few times Sarah did sneak him into her room during daytime. They lay in her bed and she read from one of her favourite writers, Nizar Qabbani. The Syrian poet rose to fame in the middle of the previous century when he sought to rebel against the shameful silence surrounding sex and relationships. In Qabbani’s love poetry, the woman was the focus, her body and pleasure.
‘I’d never come across a man who knew women so well before,’ Sarah said.
‘Hey, what about me?’
‘You’re learning,’ she teased and stroked his back.
Writing so openly about passion and politics, with heat and intensity, was revolutionary for their parents’ generation, Sarah said. There was room for all women in Qabbani’s poems: the ones who fell in love with each other, the ones who had extramarital relationships and the ones who chose not to have children.
‘When Nizar Qabbani was fifteen, his older sister killed herself,’ Sarah told him. ‘It was after she had refused to marry a man she didn’t love. That’s what made him want to write about social injustice.’
His rebellious streak seemed to be a family trait. Qabbani’s father owned a chocolate factory and had supported the rebels during the French rule, a stance that landed him in prison several times. And his grandfather’s brother, the famous dramatist, caused protests when he staged a performance criticizing Caliph Harun al-Rashid – who was not only immortalized as a character in Arabian Nights but was also infamous for his brutality.