One Hundred and One Nights (9780316191913) Read Free Page B

notice. He just continues making his tea with his back turned toward the patrol. I can hardly believe it. It fits with all the other negative things I must report to Sheikh Seyyed Abdullah.
    When the British patrol clears through the market and passes beneath the blue-tiled arch into Safwan, it disappears from my view. I look down. Layla stands in front of my shop.
    “Hello, girl,” I say. “ Masah il-kheir. A fine evening!”
    “It is,” she says. “Do you have a son?”
    “No,” I say. “Why?”
    “The honorific,” she says. “I am calling you father of someone. Who is this Saheeh you speak of when you tell me Abu Saheeh is your name?”
    “No son,” I say. “Just a joke.”
    Layla looks disappointed but she does not reply. She merely turns her head to the side as if examining me. I come out the side door of my shop. Expecting her in the shade under the awning, I find nothing there.
    I turn around and look back into the stall, where the shelves now display several styles of phones and headsets, stacks of brochures for calling plans, and new phone cards in their plastic sleeves. A Shasta orange soda on the storefront sill attracts a swarm of bluebottle flies. Layla has vaulted through the window and over the counter. She stands inside the shack. Brushing flies away from the soda, she picks up the can and shakes it. Some liquid remains in the bottom. She looks at me and I nod to let her know she may drink.
    “What will we talk about today?” I ask. I lean in through the sill as though I am the customer and she the owner of the store. “More stories of America and Americans? How about the soldiers you’ve met? Let’s talk about them.”
    She shakes her head no as she drinks.
    “TV stars?” I say. “Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
    “No,” she says, wiping the corner of a lip now colored brighter orange than any henna. “No. Not Americans. Not TV. Not movies or aliens.”
    “Then what?”
    She puts the can on the dirt floor, raises a small bare and calloused foot above it. I notice the same circlet of bird bones and dollhouse keys around her ankle as I had seen the first day we met. Maybe my initial guess at her age was wrong. She is older than ten. Maybe twelve, maybe even thirteen or fourteen. Too old for a street urchin. Too old to run wild. Nearly ready for the hijab . Nearly ready for marriage. She is just small-boned. Malnourished. A waif. It makes me feel uncomfortable to see her up close, and to better comprehend her true age, this nearness to womanhood.
    With her bare foot Layla crushes the can, retrieves it from the dust, and stashes it into an inside pocket of her caftan.
    “I want to talk about you,” she says. “About Abu Saheeh. About Father Truth.”
    “Me? You think I am more interesting than Americans? More interesting than Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
    “Yes,” she says. “I think you’re a spy.”
    I laugh, heartily. More heartily than I have laughed for months.
    “Like Peter Sellers?” I ask.
    “Who?”
    “The Pink Panther.”
    She frowns, doesn’t get it, hasn’t seen the movie. Probably hasn’t seen the cartoon, either. Not in vogue for the youth now. Certainly not shown on our local broadcast TV, the Egyptian station Nile Drama. She waits until I have finished laughing and wiping my eyes. I feel young for laughing, still suppressing giggles that threaten to surge from belly to throat. But I feel old for thinking of Peter Sellers. I am forty-two. I vaguely remember that a new Pink Panther movie has come out from America, a remake. I wonder who stars in it? Arnold Schwarzenegger? I try to think of the names of other, more modern actors. Tom Cruise? Jack Black? Rufus Wainwright?
    “Peter Sellers is an actor,” I say. “I’ve always thought I look a bit like him, the mustache. Or maybe he looks a little bit like an Iraqi. But he’s no Schwarzenegger, no Tom Cruise. Not handsome. Not someone you’d like.”
    Suddenly a little angry, Layla strikes a pose far too mature for