sound of Bush’s self-righteous voice as the president gives another speech on the campaign trail.
When he opens his eyes, Zakhariye is blinded by the harsh morning light flooding the room. We really should get heavier drapes, he thinks. But how will he sell the idea to Thandie? His wife adores these sheer cream curtains that she chose — at a hefty price per metre — more for the sophisticated elegance they bestow on their lives than the shelter they provide. If he does ask his wife about putting up heavier drapes, then that would make their sleeping arrangement official. So far, for the past month, his sleeping downstairs on the sofa has had an accidental appearance. When she recently asked him why he was sleeping on the couch, he told her that since he was watching the news so late at night he didn’t want to disturb her, thus portraying himself as a self-sacrificing husband rather than a man more comfortable sleeping by himself in the living room than on his side of their bed next to his wife of nine years.
Zakhariye sits up on the sofa and cranks the volume to hear what the experts are saying about the previous evening’s presidential debate. He watched it and was thrilled at how well John Kerry did, but he wants to know if everyone else saw what he did or if his hatred for George Bush clouded his objectivity. The longer he listens the clearer the victor of the debate becomes to him.
Even though Kerry has won two debates in a row, Zakhariye hears the wholesome, all-American TV announcer reading the latest polls, indicating that if the election were held today, Bush would win. The prospect of George W. Bush returning for four more years as the leader of the free world saddens Zakhariye in a way that scares him. Such anguish over an American presidential election makes him worry about his mental state.
The time on the bottom right side of the TV screen above the CNN logo reads 8:04 a.m., and Zakhariye knows his wife will be coming downstairs any moment dressed in faded blue jeans and a sweater, with a knapsack on her back to carry her scrubs. Exactly as estimated, Thandie sprints down, full of energy and enthusiasm for the day ahead. Zakhariye represses a surge of resentment at his wife’s tampon commercial perkiness. He wonders if he, too, would be so giddy if he took his multivitamins as religiously as she does. They exchange quick smiles as she makes her way toward the kitchen and he folds the blanket he covered himself with the previous night and puts it in the linen closet next to the kitchen.
Zakhariye’s eyes fix on her willowy neck that would make her look so regal if it were a bit shorter but in actuality makes her seem fragile, almost childlike. He turns his attention to the small amount of cereal she helps herself to in the green ceramic bowl they bought together at Pottery Barn. Zakhariye wants to tell her to eat more, that she is getting too thin, but he doesn’t. They have had many conversations, arguments even, about her not eating enough, and he recalls how much she disliked the fatherly tone of his voice. He doesn’t want to go back to the way things were following the accident, so he glances away instead.
“Busy day?” he hears himself ask, surprised that he wants to know.
She turns to him but remains silent, as if caught off guard by the resumption of the usual morning chitchat that once filled their home. “Yeah,” she says, and starts eating.
In the old days, as they ate breakfast, she leisurely munching on her cereal while he and Alcott enjoyed large, syrup-drenched pancakes Zakhariye woke up early to make, they would compare and contrast what lay ahead, telling each other how busy things were going to be at work as if competing for the title of whose day would be the most demanding.
Thandie would tell their son in great detail about the three or four people booked for surgery that day, all the people that she, as the anesthetist, would gently usher to sleep. And he would inform Alcott about the editorial meetings he would have to endure or the many squabbles between the writers and art department that he as the managing editor would have to intervene in. Alcott, the whole time, would turn his gaze from one parent to the other, always paying special attention to his mother’s stories because to a seven-year-old boy operations sounded far more “awesome” than squabbles over heads, decks, and cover lines.
Zakhariye remembers how Alcott loved asking his mother about the operations and how she relished describing the painstaking work of removing a bad kidney or repairing a defective heart, all the while making her modest part in the whole dangerous endeavour more heroic.
But today as Zakhariye drinks coffee, as he leans on the ivory marble kitchen counter while his wife eats at the nearby table, nothing is shared, no comparisons are made about the coming day. He gestures to refill her coffee. She smiles, silently indicating that she would like that. He does so, and she thanks him with another gesture — a simple nod — so elegant in its precision that it would make a tango dancer proud. Lately, most of their communication has taken the form of these gestures. A stranger observing them would find beauty in the way they distilled complex language into mere gestures.
This graceful series of movements is separated by uncomfortable silences punctuated every so often by an overly polite please or thank you as if anything resembling a real conversation might open another abyss. They lived in that dark, horrifying place for months after they buried Alcott, so they avoid anything that might throw them back there — talking especially. Words have a way of leading them astray into unwanted memories of when things were good and happy and the particles of their lives were securely in place.
Watching their boy’s small body draped in a simple white cotton sheet — in keeping with Islamic burial — being lowered into the ground did things to them individually. It shattered something that could never be repaired. But it also did something to them as a couple. It stopped them from being on the same team. These days they are as estranged from each other as he feels from their previous life. From the moment they found out that Alcott didn’t make it out of the emergency surgery to stop internal hemorrhaging, whatever love and affection Zakhariye and Thandie had for each other had leaped into their past and become inseparable from memories of their son. Regaining even an ounce of what they once felt for each other now means remembering their lost son.
As Zakhariye sips his hot coffee, he glances at the morning newspaper.
His wife gets up, puts her bowl and coffee mug in the dishwasher, grabs her knapsack, and heads for the door. Just before she leaves the kitchen, she stops and says, “Bye.”
“Have a nice day, sweetie,” he replies, barely shifting his attention from the paper.
Zakhariye glances at his watch — time for him to go to work, too. But there is something else he really wants to do now that he has the whole house to himself and doesn’t have to fear his wife giving him another one of her subtle but reproachful looks for wasting so much time in front of the TV. He desires nothing more than to take another cup of coffee, sit before their plasma screen TV in the middle of their beautifully decorated living room, and lose himself in world events where the good guys and bad guys are clearly labelled. Bush and Blair good, Osama and Saddam bad. There is great comfort in such irrefutable clarity.
Deep down inside he knows world affairs are never as simple as the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and the other twenty-four-hour-news channels he watches would have him believe. But since he can’t find an expert, a priest, or an imam who can explain why he had to bury his son instead of the other way around, he gladly consumes the news because it, like a well-made Hollywood flick, makes sense. If he puts aside all that he knows about the world and the corrupt men who run it, he really can find some order.
As much as he wants to vegetate in front of the TV, he knows he can’t risk being late for work again. He has a meeting with the publisher of his magazine at ten to discuss sagging sales and stagnant circulations, and he can make it on time if he grabs a quick shower and jumps into a cab. So he, too, throws his mug into the dishwasher and heads for the bedroom. He tries to sprint up the stairs like his wife, but his back is sore. Weeks of sleeping on the sofa have
