"Hello, Sameira. Habibi," Marianna calls to me. I walk to her front steps and stand before her. She looks up at me and her features are more gentle than I remember; I pull her up into a kiss, wondering what habibi means.
Her room is very small and sparsely furnished with a single window, a narrow futon on a wooden frame, a single dresser and a bookshelf with several books in Arabic, French, and English. She turns away from me to change her shirt for the dinner party. I watch the muscles in her lean back move as she bends forward to ease her shirt over piercings, pulls the clean one on over her braids. I want to kiss the place where her body narrows before widening again, but I look at her bookshelf instead. She has a copy of Stone Butch Blues; that's one good sign. There's one of us who she's willing to read about, at any rate.
She holds my hand while we walk to her cousin's house.
Her cousin greets us at the front door. "I am Fatima."
"Sameira."
She says something to me in Arabic, and Marianna answers her. They speak back and forth for a moment, and Fatima keeps glancing at me and frowning. "Come in," she says at last, and turns and leads us inside.
The house is full of many women, and children, and a few quiet men. There is much lively conversation, shifting between English and Arabic. I stop trying to understand after awhile, lean back and listen to the rhythm of the language instead, the rise and fall of women's voices, especially Marianna's voice. Her long face is expressive as she laughs with her friends; she catches me watching and smiles.
Fatima tells me that I am not eating enough. I take an olive to please her, savoring its salt, and then nervously wonder what to do about the pit.
"So you are one of Marianna's punk rock friends?" she asks me. Marianna glances at us sharply.
"Um, not really," I tell her. "Although I did go and see her band. She has a wonderful voice."
"Yes, she does. But the music she sings is very silly."
"Don't listen to her Sameira, you should hear the shit she likes-"
"Marianna!"
"Excuse me, the manure. This woman's taste is not to be trusted, Sameira, she has a secret love for Madonna."
"Madonna can sing! So can you, but all that you do in that silly band is scream." She shudders extravagantly. "I went to one show, I had a headache for a week! And all of those people, those women who look like men..."
Marianna says something sharp in Arabic, and I lose track of the conversation again. I slip my olive pit into a napkin and have some baba ghanoosh instead.
After dinner we go outside to have coffee on the back porch. Marianna comes to sit by me, gently takes my cup from me when I have finished with it. "Let me tell your fortune," she says, wrapping long fingers around the tiny cup, and setting it upside down on the saucer to rid it of the dregs. "Look. See here, like a mountain? You have a difficult way ahead of you."
She passes the cup to her cousin, who says something sharp in Arabic before handing it back. Marianna shakes her head and turns to me again. "See here? She sees a snake--that means a bad friend. But I don't think so. And look--" indicating droplets on the inside of the rim. "Good tears--you will be crying with happiness soon." Her fingers brush mine when she hands back the cup. I watch her elegant lips as she smiles.
When we leave she kisses her cousin on both cheeks and says something to her in Arabic. All that I catch is the word habibti. Honey, maybe? Habibti must be for family, habibi for friend.
Fatima kisses me on both cheeks. I thank her very seriously for dinner.
"Bring her back," she tells Marianna. "We'll teach her some Arabic."
Back at her apartment Marianna sits on the battered living room couch and I sit on the only chair. "My cousin made it possible for me to move here. She found me my job, through a friend, and I stayed with her while I looked for a place that I could afford."
"I don't think that she liked me."
"She'll take a little while to get used to you. And she wonders why you don't speak Arabic, since your father is Arab. Why didn't he teach you?"
"I'm not sure. I think it was different when he came here--he didn't want me to speak English with an accent. To go through what he went through. He wanted me to be American."
"I wish you spoke Arabic. There are things that I cannot say in English."
Her face has gone soft again. I look down, hoping that my face isn't too red, wishing I had something in my hands. "Come into my room," she says, very low. I look up, and she stands and offers her hand, leads me to her bed.
I am shy tonight, nervous from the strong coffee but also feeling very still and slow. She sits me on her bed while she takes off the shirt again. I am eye-level with her breasts but I look up at her face. She smiles down at me and takes my hand, kisses it softly and lays it over her breast. I can feel the ring under my fingers. "You can play with them, but gently," she tells me, and I put my mouth on one, take the ring between my teeth and very softly tug. When I look up at her she has closed her eyes and caught her lip between her teeth, so I play for awhile with her metal and her flesh. But when I start to move my mouth downwards she reaches down and lifts me from her, tilts my chin up until I meet her eyes. Her pupils are very wide.
"My turn," she tells me, and lowers herself onto me, easing me onto my back. I tense when she touches my belly, but she puts her mouth on my throat and I arch towards her when she bites. She keeps me between pleasure and pain for awhile, my life between her teeth, until it is too much and I ask her to stop. She rolls off of me and curls herself around my back.
"Are you tired?"
"Yes," I say, and I am, but I do not think that I will ever sleep with her body pressed against me and her breath against my neck.
I listen to her heartbeat and her breathing instead, and try to breathe in time with her, until drift into a sort of daze and then to sleep. I wake up very early because she is no longer next to me. She is kneeling a few feet from the bed, in profile to me. It takes me a moment to realize that she is praying, and that must be the way to Mecca.
Her face is stern with concentration and very beautiful. I watch her long lips form the name of Allah, and then close my eyes. It's too private--I don't want to spy on her like this. She crawls back under the covers with me after a few minutes, and I am quick to fall asleep again.
When I wake up again, a few hours later, she lets me make love to her, lets me pin her with my weight and see how wet I can make her. She is beautiful arching up against my hand--beautiful with her head pushed back and her neck bared for me--beautiful opening her eyes when I am not hard enough. "More," she tells me, and I give it to her gladly, wishing that I had my dick but glad to feel her, to put all my attention on seeing how wide I can open her, how much of myself I can fit into her flushed body. I am beginning to wonder about my fist, but she stops me at four fingers, and I work them into her at the speed she demands and watch her move. Still working her with a hand on her clit and the other inside, I take one nipple ring between my teeth and tug a little harder than I think is absolutely safe, and she comes.
She sends me off for the first shower, and I stand under very hot water until it starts to get cold. I finish quickly and tell her, guiltily, "I'm sorry, I used all the hot water."
"Well, you'll have to be punished then," she says, and pulls and pushes me onto my back. I wrestle with her happily, but tense when she eases a hand within my jeans. She doesn't try to get inside me, just cups me through my boxers with one warm firm hand. She smiles at my nervousness, sweet and cruel. "Don't be afraid," she tells me, "I'm going to take care of you." And she bends to take my throat again, soft and hard, until I close my eyes, and say, not knowing what I am asking for, "Please--"
"Turn over," she tells me, voice gone a bit rough, and her hands are urgent as she helps me onto my stomach and pulls down my jeans and boxers. She arranges herself on me and I feel her weight, and her moisture where she presses against my lower leg. I brace myself for penetration but instead she runs her nails down my back.
I gasp, and she laughs low in her throat, then kisses the back of my neck very sweetly. "Not what you expected, hmmm?"
"No."
"Good." She is stroking me now with the palm of her hand, along my spine, along the curve of my ass. "I wouldn't want to be predictable," she says, and slaps me hard.
I jump, surprised, then flush with heat. Turn my head, sideways on the pillow, and look down the length of my body to see her smiling at me.
"Do you trust me?"
"Yes."
"Good." She is stroking me again, her strong hands along the curve of my ass, and then she bends and follows her hand with her light tongue. Spreads me open, and moves her tongue down the base of my spine to my anus.
"Marianna--" My voice is high and frightened, and she lifts her mouth off me but stays close enough that I can feel her breath. "--Please."
"Sameira, this is what I want. Will you give it to me?"
I bury my face in the pillow and give her a very muffled "yes." She makes me say it again, clearly, before she lowers her face again, and I clench my eyes and teeth and endure her touch.
It isn't long before I melt beneath her soft warm tongue. It's different than anything I've felt before, soothing and arousing at once, and slowly I relax and let her make me feel what she wants. I am sad when she stops, relaxed enough not to want to move, and tingly enough to lie drifting and hope that she'll come back, but when she rummages in a drawer I figure that she is putting her clothes on and start to sit up.
"Don't move," she tells me, and then she is touching me again, one hand firm on my back and the other on my ass. I turn my face and look at her, and she smiles and works one finger inside me while I gasp.
It isn't quite pain, but overwhelming enough that it almost is; I have to fight the urge to stop her and concentrate on lying still. It goes on forever, almost too much, then respite, then more, and I can't help but move, away from her as she fills me, pushing back against her, following her when she teases by moving away.
I open my eyes and her face has that stern look again, all of her attention on me, I shut my eyes and turn my face away, and then it is too much suddenly and I whisper, "stop." She leaves her fingers inside me, palm against me, while my breathing calms and my heartbeat slows. Then she pulls out of me, very slowly, and I pull her down on the bed and bury my face in the back of her neck. I want to cry, for some reason, so I send her off to the shower. But then I find that I can't, so I dress quickly and go to the kitchen.
I'm at the stove when she comes in, give her crepes and the strawberries that I found in the refrigerator, and watch her eat while I think about how to explain. "Do you like Leslie Feinburg's stuff?" I ask, and then have to wait while she finishes that mouthful.
"I've been reading Stone Butch Blues on my breaks at work. It's wonderful. I read it a couple of years ago, when it came out, but it's just as amazing this time, too."
I drink a little water and pick up a paper napkin to fidget with.
"So, yeah. You didn't think he was horrible for taking hormones, a tool of the patriarchal death culture and all that?"
She laughs, and I curse myself for making a joke of it.
"Sameira, if all the patriarchs were like that, I would have no problem with the patriarchy."
I smile back at her nervously and look down to find that I've torn my napkin into little pieces.
She has to work today, so I walk her to the coffee shop and kiss her goodbye, then take the train for the hour and a half back to Hyde Park. On the way I worry about how to explain that I'm not what she thinks I am. I think of a million perfect phrases and wonder if I'll ever have the courage to use any of them.
Christine is typing something on her word-processor when I walk inside. "How was your date? Are you in love?"
"Wonderful and horrible. Maybe."
"Ooh, I'm jealous. You'll have to tell me everything--as soon as I finish this paper."
I wander through the apartment touching things until she banishes me to the kitchen, saying that I'm making her nervous. While I'm looking through the fridge for something to cook the phone rings. It's my mother, wanting to complain about my brother. I half-listen, saying "oh my," and "how awful," during the gaps, until she seems to be done.
"Well, he is a teenager," I tell her, and she agrees, starts to make hanging-up noises.
"Tell Dad I learned a new word in Arabic."
"Oh? "
"Yeah. I think it means beloved. Habibi."
"Oh." Her voice changes. "Have you finally changed your mind about this lesbian thing?"
"What do you mean?"
"Habibti is what you say to a girl. Habibi is the masculine form."
"Oh."
"Sameira?"
"Listen, I've got to go now. I'll talk to you later, okay?" I hang up the phone and stand holding it until it starts to beep at me.
I guess that I don't have to explain it all to Marianna after all.
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