Free City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris

about talking to a woman on the phone, a woman
you knew?
But she knew the answer: it wasn’t proper for a good Muslim man to associate with a
na-mehram
woman. So perhaps he cared about her, but he cared about his religious proscriptions more. He had made his choice.
    Which is why it was so ridiculous to feel delighted by his return. Was it too much to imagine that his weight loss, his sallow look, was a reflection of the pain he had caused himself in abandoning her?
    A blue Mazda beeped at her from the corner, and she pulled herself together. Twice a week now, Ahmad turned over his driving job to Katya’s young cousin Ayman, who had just moved to Jeddah from Beirut. When he’d come to the house that first night, she’d liked him immediately. He was fifteen, tall and bulky and not much to look at, but his humor had brought a new sense of life to the house.
    Ayman drove slowly closer, pretending not to recognize her, staring at her covered face with a goofy imitation of studiousness. He pulled to a halt across the street and plucked a pair of binoculars from the seat, aiming them at Katya. She began to laugh.
    Seemingly satisfied that he’d located the right woman, he tossed the binoculars in the backseat and pulled the Mazda to the sidewalk.
    He tumbled out of the driver’s side, his long, gangly arms swinging like an ape’s as he loped around the car. He opened the back door and hastened her inside with a monkey’s
oook-ook
. He even paused to scratch his armpit and sniff his fingers, which caused her to bury her head in her hands.
    “You are so shameful!” she cried. “How can you do that in
public?
”
    He cocked his head to say
No speak human
and loped back to the driver’s seat.
    “Hello, monkey,” she said.
    “At least I found you this time!” he said with a grin once she was settled comfortably in the backseat. His previous attempt to pick her up had seen him approaching a strange woman on the street who’d panicked when he’d said, “Hello, cousin,” and moved to take her elbow. The woman had swatted him with her purse and started screaming. He tried to apologize but she whacked his face.
    “How’s the black eye?” she asked, peeking at him in the rearview mirror.
    “Much better,” he said, using a hand to raise his hair from his face. “It’s turning yellow.”
    His elbow knocked the mirror out of alignment, and he almost swerved off the road trying to adjust it. Katya shouted before he hit a parked car.
    “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, and turned his attention to the road with a look of desperate concentration. “I have a surprise for you.”
    “You’re going to get me home alive?”
    “Your father and I roasted pigeons for dinner.”
    “Mmmhh.” She tried to sound appreciative, even though pigeons had never been her favorite dish. “That’s very sweet.”
    He cocked his head. “I know.”
    She had to laugh. It was hilarious to watch him at the wheel of the Mazda. Did cars come any smaller than this? Did men come any bigger? He was like an overgrown dog stuffed into a travel cage. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging.
    As soon as Ayman had come to the house, her father had put him to work. It was Abu’s opinion that a man was only as good as the labor he could do, so in the past two months, Ayman had done more than his share of the dishes, the floors, even once—to her acute embarrassment—the laundry.
    It was never awkward sitting in his backseat. If Othman had been driving, or even Nayir, she would have hated it. But Ayman’s irrepressible humor made it comfortable, even easy, to sit here. She felt like a queenly older sister.
    “Your father said that if I get you home on time, he’ll let me do your laundry again.”
    She laughed. “Stop it!” she said. “Stop making me laugh. You are not doing my laundry ever again. Is that clear?”
    “Yes, madam.” He sat up straight and clutched the wheel.
    “And remember,” she said, “when you approach a woman on