Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami Read Free Book Online

the mirror for a while. He, too, had played with fire, but maybe he’d already been burned. When hereached for the scissors again, he noticed a velvet pouch tossed in the middle of the perfume bottles. He took it in his hand and opened it. In it were the prayer beads that had broken, years ago, it seemed, and which Salma had saved here for him. He couldn’t help but think about his mother, for whom virtue and religion went hand in hand, about a time when he, too, believed that such a pairing was natural.
    â€œI know I shouldn’t be happy about someone’s misery,” Salma said. “But I’m glad Faten was expelled. At least now Noura won’t be seeing as much of her at school.”
    Where had he gone wrong? He had always had Noura’s best interests at heart. What was so bad about her life before? She had it all, and she was happy. Why did she have to turn to religion? Perhaps it was his absences from home, his fondness for the drink, or maybe it was all the bribes he took. It could be any of these things. He was at fault somehow. Or it could be none of these things at all. In the end it didn’t matter, he had lost her again, and this time he didn’t dare hope for someone to return her to him.
    â€œDo you think that’ll help?” Larbi asked his wife.
    Salma shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Bus Rides
    T HE DAY AFTER M AATI beat her with an extension cord, Halima Bouhamsa packed up some clothes and took the bus to her mother’s house in Sidi Beliout, near the old medina of Casablanca. The cord had left bubbly welts on her arms and face, and she couldn’t hide them under her housedress. She arrived at the door of the studio apartment, a packet of La Ménara tea in her hand as an offering, and stood for a moment, hesitant. Her mother wouldn’t be happy to see her, but she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. She knocked.
    â€œAgain?” said her mother, Fatiha.
    Halima didn’t even nod. She walked past Fatiha and into the studio, where the smell of camphor balls from theprevious week’s cleaning lingered in the air. Stripes of sunlight came through the closed shutters, making a hazy grid on the bare floor. On the far wall was a sepia photograph of Halima’s father, the only inheritance he had left behind after years of struggle with lung cancer. A portable TV sat in the corner, a gift from Halima’s brothers, both emigrants to France. She dropped her bag on the floor and walked over to the narrow kitchen.
    â€œWhat happened this time?” Fatiha asked.
    â€œHe drank the rent money.” Halima took off her jellaba, revealing her paisley-print dress and the blue belt encircling her small waist. She was twenty-nine, but the dark patches on her face and the stoop in her shoulders made her look much older. She sat down on a stool and let her chin rest in her hands.
    Fatiha lit the Butagaz and put a kettle on it. “The Lord is with those who are patient,” she said.
    Halima wondered whether all the Lord ever wanted from His people was patience. Hadn’t she suffered long enough? She was sure that the Lord also wanted His people to be happy, but she couldn’t come up with a stock expression as a retort, the way her mother always did.
    The kettle whistled. Fatiha made a pot of mint tea and served it on the low, round table. Halima took her glassand cradled it in her chapped hands. “If I don’t give him money for drinking, he steals it from me.”
    â€œA woman must know how to handle her husband,” Fatiha said reproachfully. She sat down, her ample bottom spilling over the sides of her chair. “Look, I’m going to get you a little something from a new sorceress I went to the other day. Make sure you put it in Maati’s food this time. He’ll become like a ring on your finger. You can turn it any way you want.”
    â€œYour magic doesn’t work.”
    â€œThat’s