Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction

The Wedding Night

THE WEDDING NIGHT
ZAHIE EL KOURI Ten hours after their wedding, Farid and Rima walked toward their suite, really alone for the first time. There was a frozen kind of stillness in the air between them, and the light of the corridor was too bright. It was three o’clock in the morning. Neither of them had said a word since the elevator doors closed behind them. The only sound was the rhythmic shew, shew, shew of the wedding dress against the carpet. The wedding dress was the most beautiful thing that Rima had ever seen. The bodice was fitted, and tight enough to stay on even without the short lace sleeves that covered her shoulders. Tiny pearls nestled on an intermittent layer of white lace. During one of the fittings , her mother had teased her about being like a Bedouin, said that it looked as though brides still came with dowries, and that this bride in particular had converted her entire dowry into pearls instead of gold. And it was even worse because in making that joke, both she and her mother knew that everyone else would have that very thought, and then, right after they had that thought, they would remember that Rima’s family had no money. There was a trick to wearing a dress like this, a way to fold up all the extra fabric in the train and attach it to the dress with buttons so no one could tell how heavy a burden it was. But the grommets had broken during the dancing at the reception, so now she was dragging that ridiculous train behind her. The dress made her uncomfortable in many ways: the itchiness of the crinoline, the wire in her strapless brassiere, the way the edges of her squarish engagement ring would get caught on the lace if she made any sudden movements. But the strangest and most 189 1KALDAS_pages:1KALDAS pages i-72.qxd 8/3/09 2:35 PM Page 189 uncomfortable thing about it was the way it made her feel like her parents , her mother-in-law, and all the other people who had convinced her to marry Farid were right behind her, riding on the silk, looking over her shoulder. She had carried them into her wedding night on the train of her dress, and they were there to make sure she did everything they expected of her for the rest of her life. And the next thing they expected her to do was to take off her beautiful dress and have sex with this man. Rima looked behind her. The corridor was empty. Farid’s glasses were smudged, and his shirt was sweaty and wrinkled . There was only a hint of gray in his thick, dark hair, and his hairline didn’t look as though it were going anywhere in the near future. Empirically, Rima knew he was attractive. Everyone kept telling her that. But she’d stared at him for so long in the past week that sometimes his features stopped making sense as a whole. Farid glanced at her. “It must be all the way at the end of this hall,” he said, smiling apologetically. His Arabic was close to perfect, but there was a twinge of accent, a slightly stilted quality to his phrasing. Still, it was better than her English. “Can I help you with the dress?” he offered. Rima looked back down the hall. “No thank you,” she said. “I am fine.” She didn’t feel fine. She felt like every step she forced herself to take cost her more energy than she had. “You must be tired of wearing it,” he said. Rima flinched. “I mean, it must be heavy, and you might be uncomfortable, though you look very beautiful in it, and you don’t look like you are uncomfortable at all.” He said it in a nervous way, and sighed when she didn’t respond. “Oh, here we are. Suite number 2750,” he said, stopping short and fumbling to find the plastic keycard. Rima stopped walking. That’s when the voices started. “This will make you happy,” her mother said, placing a hand on Rima’s shoulder to steady herself. 190
ZAHIE EL KOURI 1KALDAS_pages:1KALDAS pages i-72.qxd 8/3/09 2:35 PM Page 190 “This man will be able to take care of you,” her father said, tapping her on the...