Chapter Twenty-Six
Before
“Do you think they have a happy marriage?” I asked Ali as I watched my old friend Rula dancing to Arabic music with her husband, Marwan. We’d met in high school and attended college together.
Ali cut into his prime rib. “He’s definitely cheating on her.”
“What?” I asked, both shocked and intrigued by this unexpected tidbit from my husband, who never gossiped.
We were at a wedding for Rula’s younger sister.
My other university friends were also there with their husbands.
Hanan, the bride, was much younger than me and the last in our extended group to tie the knot.
The rest of us had been married for years by then.
Ali and I were celebrating our eighteenth anniversary the following month.
I watched him cut his meat. “What do you mean he’s definitely cheating on her?”
Rula still felt like one of my closest friends, even though we both had busy lives and moved in different circles and didn’t see each other much.
Ali shrugged. “You can just tell with some men.”
“How can you tell?” I pressed.
“Just by the way they talk.”
I studied Marwan. When I first met him, he did have what my mother would call a white eye. “Aina baitha,” she would say, meaning that he looked at women inappropriately. The literal translation being that the white of his eyes showed too much because he looked at women with overly wide eyes.
But I’d always found Marwan to be a harmless flirt and a good match for Rula. He seemed devoted to her.
“By the way they talk?” I persisted. “Why? How does Marwan talk?” Were there special code words that men used with each other?
“I don’t know.”
“Marhaba, cousin,” a voice said from behind me. I looked up to see Hamza, my second cousin, smiling down at us.
“Hamza!” I got up to greet him with an air-kiss on each cheek. “What are you doing here?”
Hamza gestured toward his dark suit jacket. “I’m the banquet manager.” He shook hands with Ali, who’d also gotten to his feet. “Is my crew doing a good job tonight?”
“They’ve been great. Excellent service,” I said. “Obviously their boss has whipped them into shape.”
“Good to see you, man,” Ali said to him. “How long have you been working here?”
“A few months. I’m in the management training program. Inshallah, I’ll be the general manager one day.”
“Inshallah,” Ali and I both repeated. God willing. We chatted briefly, catching up on his family and promising to make plans to get together soon.
“Good to see you both,” Hamza said before getting back to work.
Later, as we waited for the hotel valet to bring our car around after the wedding, the conversation about Rula and Marwan played over in my mind. “What would you do if I cheated?”
“Why?” He shot me an amused sidelong look. “Am I boring you?”
“Hah! As if that could ever happen.” Besides me genuinely liking my husband as a person, the physical attraction between us remained strong.
“Why are you asking?”
“I was just thinking about what you said about our friends earlier.” I didn’t want to mention Rula and Marwan by name in case any of their family and friends walked by and overheard. “If he does cheat, I wonder if she knows and pretends to be oblivious.”
He chuckled. “I could never get away with that with you.”
“I’m glad you realize that, buddy.”
“One woman is enough trouble for me.”
“How romantic.”
He grinned. “All I need is you, baby.”
I considered his words. “What if we stopped having sex?” I lowered my voice as the crowd around us grew with people waiting for their cars.
“Why would we stop having sex?”
“Just hypothetically,” I said. “Would you cheat then?”
“I guess it would depend.”
“On what?”
“On why we weren’t having sex. If you were sick, God forbid, obviously I would never cheat. But if you just suddenly arbitrarily decided you weren’t into it anymore, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Ali liked to have sex regularly, so I understood where he was coming from. “You’re saying I have nothing to worry about as long as we keep it moving in the bedroom?”
“You have nothing to worry about period.” His tone turned more serious. “Some men are the cheating type and others aren’t. I’m not the cheating type.”
“Lucky for me because I don’t think I could handle it if you were unfaithful,” I told him. “I wonder if I’d leave you.” That last part I said more to myself than to him.
“Is it even a question?”
“It would be hard to let another woman sink her claws into you. It might be easier to shoot you.”
He laughed. “So you’d murder me. Got it.”
“Yes, I think I’d rather you were dead than with someone else.”
“I’m learning so much about you. I never took you for the jealous type.”
I wasn’t. Or at least I hadn’t been. “We’ve been together so long now that I guess I’ve become territorial.” I lightly pinched his upper arm. “You’re mine, and don’t you forget it.”
“Right back at you. I’d kill any guy who tried to lay a hand on you.”
“Ha! Look at the difference between us. I’d kill you, and you’d kill the man.”
We watched the valet bring our car around. “Luckily, it’s a moot point because neither of us is a cheater.”
“I know.” I smiled, feeling a rush of love and gratitude to be in a secure marriage. “Thank God.”
After he tipped the valet and we were in the car, Ali looked at me with that smug expression that I knew so well. “Now let’s get home and keep it moving in the bedroom, shall we?”