Hina Ahmed
‘Great! I will meet you there in a bit!’ Mo said, via text message to Zareena.
One message filled with the expression of his desire for her was enough to make Zareena squirm in delight. How weak she was to Mo’s strong hands, hands that she craved to have all over her body. Zareena had been anticipating Mo’s arrival for weeks. She had planned her ritualistic bodily grooming far in advance, a kind of grooming she was only motivated to do upon the arrival of her lovers.
Who at the moment was a man named Mo; a man that carried the significance that comes from a shared past, a contextualized knowing, but one that nonetheless still warranted a concealing of the raw truth of the hair that had grown like moss on the trunks of her legs and the surfaces of her underarms.
He did not need to be inflamed by her forest fires just yet.
Zareena promptly scheduled a haircut, a manicure, and a pedicure. She got her eyebrows and stashing stash threaded, like the good, brown girl, and took the time to massage her body with olive and rosehip oils, just like her khala demanded she does before the arrival of a suitor.
Zareena felt the closest to her vanity and her inner-critic in the days before Mo’s arrival, inspecting her skin closely for the slightest of blemishes, like the penetrating eyes of judgment from a potential mother in law, all in the hopes of embodying the idea of the physical perfection most deserving of a man’s attention.
‘You look amazing’ Mo proclaimed upon first seeing her. Zareena had been waiting in her car, crunched into a little ball in the driver’s seat mindlessly perusing through facebook photos in the hopes of alleviating her anxiety about the anticipated arrival. Mo pulled up next to her in his white sports car, wearing a baseball cap and sporting a fashionable hipster beard and newly purchased black, Ray-Ban sunglasses. He looked over at her, squinting as if blinded by the brightness of the sun.
Mo looked better this time, as a young adult, working for a big tech company in Manhattan. Gone were his college days of hedonistic joint-smoking, class skipping, and headbanging to the music of Metallica. However, one thing had remained the same: the way he looked at Zareena.
He quickly got out of his car, rushing over to her, with the kind of urgency of a police officer at a crime scene. ‘Hi’ Zareena said swooning and smiling, both inviting and anticipating his touch.
‘Why, hello’ he responded flirtatiously, taking his big, burly arms and wrapping them around her body like a cocoon, pressing her tightly against his chest. Zareena felt the safety of his softness like that of the fleece blankets that covered her vulnerable body during cold, winter nights.
Zareena gently pulled away. Mo walked back to his car to gather his belongings, Zareena followed. He momentarily paused, unable to stop his urge to touch her, kissing Zareena fearlessly all over her face, in the way that discretion-less lovers do, with a kind of passion that made him forget where he was, to which Zareena stated with a sheepishness that both longed to be released, and longed to be desired.
‘Mo, we are in a public parking lot!’ She said this as Mo kissed her passionately through his moving lips of inaudible words.
They arrived in his car. ‘What is this?’ Zareena asked pulling out a book that she spotted beneath the driver’s seat of Mo’s car. How to Live a Happier Life, the book read with a giant, smiling, yellow emoji on the front cover. Zareena was surprised.
Mo, An unhappy man?
She found it hard to believe with his stoically calm exterior and his success at upward class mobility.
‘You know, I just haven’t been so happy,’ Mo revealed.
Mo placed his hands into Zareena’s as they made their way toward the forest trails, trails that seemed to stand still in anticipation of their arrival. The birds sang loud love songs as an invitation into their home; the water suddenly stilled, the sky opened, the scents of the jasmine and pine trees of the forest blossomed in celebration of the homecoming of the redeeming and foolish qualities of infatuated love.
Mo was unable to keep his hands off Zareena, who looked even more beautiful now with her sun-glazed skin and short hair, accentuating the angles in her face; a face that had once formed the figment of his imagination was now finally his for the taking. He looked at her with eyes that screamed of ravenous hunger, like that of a lion with its mouth wide open, his pink, salivating tongue, rough like sandpaper, imbued with rich lather for the source of its helpless prey. In the past, this had gaze filled Zareena’s longing to be desired, like the satiety that comes after consuming a delicious meal.
But today, all she felt was the pain that comes from being overfed.
Zareena moved back and looked away, only to be pulled in closer with a stronger gaze that sought to hold her with its clenching, bestial, fangs, fangs designed to tear her into shredded morsels of flesh and bones. Frightened, Zareena looked away. But Mo’s grasping gaze only got deeper and more indignant, as it solidified its way into her flesh like a foot stuck in wet cement, needing to be pulled out with the strength of its might to be released.
They walked. Hand in hand.
‘So yeah…the source of much of my sadness is my ex, Sarah.’ This was the first time that Zareena had heard her name. In the past, she was nothing more than a vague, elusive figure, unworthy of naming. But today, with the revelation of her name, came the delivery of not only Sarah’s birth but of Zareena’s envy.
Zareena suddenly felt transformed from that of the object of Mo’s desire to that of a consoling friend.
‘What happened?’ She asked, wanting to know more. Mo shared details somewhat vaguely, placing most of the blame on Sarah’s unreasonable expectations and demands, along with a general dissatisfaction with their emotional and intellectual compatibility.
‘Well, she must have been great in bed,’ Zareena joked, knowing very well what mattered the most to a man.
‘She was when she wanted to be,’ he laughed.
‘I invited her to move in with me after one year of dating, she lived rent-free,’ he made sure to add.
‘Did you like being her sugar daddy?’ Zareena sneered.
‘Let’s just say I don’t prefer it,’ he said, letting go of her hand.
Mo handed Zareena his joint. The joint that she loved smoking because it had his mouth on it, the only time she really preferred to smoke one was in his company, as they took a seat on the tree stump that overlooked the pond of before them; a pond where dragonflies flickered freely in the water to a rhythm of their own choosing.
‘It is so beautiful here,’ Mo said absorbed in the beauty of the present moment, as Zareena found herself buried in the narrative of Mo’s past.
Zareena both pitied Mo and envied Sarah. The power and control Sarah seemed to have over not only a man, but a man like Mo, who was seemingly unbendable to anyone’s wishes but his own, but who had not only been bent but successfully broken, by Sarah’s abominable ways. As the walk ensued, Mo seemed to be continuously interrupted by text messages reminding Zareena of the power of his persona. Zareena gazed onto his phone to see that it was a woman begging him for drugs. Feeling both guilty for her gaze and afraid of the return of his darkness, Zareena looked away.
Mo’s mother called and needed him immediately.
‘Well, we’d better hurry up and do this,’ she said dragging him behind her as if she was herding cattle up a hill.
Within her she felt the subtle numbing of the ferociousness of a desire that had once carried her through the steep trails of the forest; perhaps because of the blood that was pouring profusely within her, perhaps because of the shrouding shame that always ensued afterward, or perhaps because she simply no longer wanted him. And yet she did it. She performed it, like the ritual of prayer in the mosque. Rituals though, rust from the salty waters of boredom and duty-hood, causing Zareena to suddenly feel more connected to all the women that had come before her.
They both walked back in hollow silence. Feeling the lack of intimacy between them, Zareena started to bring up childhoods. Mo shared a lot in the vastness of the space she had provided. He did not ask her much about hers. As they got back to the car, Mo invited her to come to see the new house he had just bought. As he drove, Zareena rested her elbows on his shoulders, and a dank quiet ensued between them. Within the silence, Zareena felt the sturdy, un-creaking, planks of a well-settled, sunk in, prideful, pride of a man.
They arrived at the house: unoccupied, barren. A homeless home, with a homeless man, both equally longing for a home in a homeless home.
Zareena felt longing, longing for a house her own, with a man of her own.
But this was not her house nor her man.
Instead, she realised that she was, after all, nothing but the Bystander of his Glory.
