Free The Hidden Light of Objects by Mai Al-Nakib Page B

would, in a few years, accidentally blow himself up in a garden. Alex was the girls’ common denominator, our irresistible sorcerer. Kissing Alex at the rink – just that once – was kissing moonlit perfection. I was fourteen, maybe fifteen, and I lifted my chin up to meet Alex’s lips. A throwaway kiss at the rink, like kissing glory. We hardly exchanged a word. We exchanged, instead, our youth in small, private packets. In that worn army jacket, he was, for an instant, mine. He smiled so rarely, tall, flawless Adonis, but that night – just that once – he smiled for me.
    Years later, I heard from someone, I can’t remember who, that Alex was damaged, somehow broken. It’s very possible. Alex was, after all, too good for the universe to allow to be true for too long. That night at Elsa’s, all I could do was jump up and down on her bed screaming, “I kissed Alex! I kissed Alex!” It could never, not ever, get better than Alex at the rink.

Playing with Bombs
     
     
     
    Death is not what they promised. No one-way ticket to paradise. No special dispensation for martyrs. No houri s. Those houri s were supposed to be awesome. I looked all over for them after the blast. Nothing. Time seems to pass over here, though I’m not exactly sure how it moves. In the ways that count, I think I’m still fifteen.
    I had friends who could identify every specimen of bomb. I would stand around rolling my eyes and gnawing into my cheek as they rattled off names, model numbers, and destructive capabilities. Some of them sat around all day making lists like the ones kids in normal places make of their favorite athletes or rock stars. I was surprised they didn’t hide posters of artillery under their pillows in place of Playboy centerfolds. My best friend Rami had photocopies of Playboy pictures hidden under his bed, and, God forgive us, they were fantastic.
    I, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less about explosives. I hated what they did and never got angry enough to want to use them, not even against our sworn enemies. That made me different – a loner, an outsider, on the fringe. Oh, and I loved that. I was fifteen and reading Camus and Dostoevsky, what do you want from me? A couple of years earlier, there was the intifada . That was a dynamite moment, and I was as fired up as all my friends were. Everyone who knew me made fun of the fact that at last something had yanked me out of my corner and into the streets. “From books to stones, eh, Nimr? This is what it takes to get your head out of the clouds?” I would have been a stone myself if I hadn’t been stirred by what kids like me were trying to do. While stones are weapons, they aren’t bombs. I felt I could get behind stones with a clean conscience. The other side didn’t use stones to fight back, I promise you. To even the field, our side started to pick up less innocent objects too. That’s when I drifted back up into my clouds. Not everyone is made for fighting.
    I was the youngest of four boys. My mother always said, “Three for me and one for the cause.” I figured, being the youngest, I was okay. Little did I know. Don’t get me wrong, I cared about the cause. I wanted liberation for Palestine as much as anyone. I was sick of being caged in, tired of having to shuffle paper to move from A to B, fed up, most of all, of watching my dad struggle to piece together in his mind his decimated village, his father’s rock-smashed knees. Most of the time, though, I worried about other stuff. I wanted to figure out this whole girl thing. I was desperate for a girlfriend and thought I was making headway with Sireen. Sireen’s hair looked like Medusa’s, whose picture I had seen in a book about art my father kept in the glass cabinet with all his special books: the OED , The Times Atlas of the World , and the one on human anatomy with glossy foldouts. She scared me a little, Sireen. She was wild, I could tell. I was sure we were destined to be together. She