The Absence of Stains
‘Mariam doesn’t know whether Dina’s a virgin, but if she were in her place, she now thinks—under the threat of her family finding out that she wasn’t—she would say she had been raped. To them, that would be better than knowing she had sinned willingly.’
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Tariq kisses the tiny red mark on the underside of her right breast, telling her how much he loves it, how beautiful it is. She says it really isn’t—it’s an angioma, a round-shaped collection of microscopic blood capillaries, nothing more.
‘You never fail to suck the magic out of a moment, do you?’
She laughs and he reaches under the covers, running a hand between her thighs, where she still throbs.
‘We can’t,’ Mariam breathes into his neck. She kisses the sticky skin and scrambles out of bed, bending down to pick up her bra. They’ve already used the only condom he had left, and she has to get home. Home, where her mother thinks she’s been at the movies for the past three hours.
‘When will you see the gyno?’ Tariq asks, lying back against the headboard and lighting a cigarette.
‘I told you, I don’t need a prescription to buy birth control pills.’
‘You should still see a doctor before you start.’
She continues to dress in silence, her back to him. Why would she go on the pill when she’s leaving for New York in three months? It’s been weeks since she got her acceptance letter, and still they both act as though nothing has changed.
The sun has set but the air inside his room is still heavy with the afternoon’s heat. Her question remains unvoiced.
Tariq wraps an arm around her stomach and plants a kiss on her thigh. ‘I don’t want you to go.’
Her breath catches. He probably just means he wishes she could spend the evening with him. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ she whispers, still facing the huge Pulp Fiction poster on the wall, the upper left edge of which is starting to peel off with the humidity.
She is zipping up her jeans when he says, ‘So you don’t want these?’ She turns around. Her blue lace panties are hanging from his index finger.
‘I left them for you,’ Mariam smiles, climbing back into bed. Leaning against his bare chest, she reaches for the cigarette he’s left burning in the ashtray on his nightstand. The smoke comes out of her mouth in a ragged puff.
‘Nobody knows you. Not like I do,’ he says. Behind his black-rimmed square glasses his eyes look sad. ‘It excites and disturbs me.’
She sighs. ‘Me too.’
She hands him back the cigarette and heaves herself off the bed. Her tank top clings to her back, wet and stubborn.
‘You need to fix the fan,’ she says as she slips into her cardigan.
‘I’m almost relieved it’s broken, it was too damn noisy.’
‘Well, I prefer the noise to this stickiness,’ she says. She picks up her backpack and kisses him lightly on the mouth.
‘I love the stickiness,’ he says, pulling her in for a deeper kiss. Then, his teeth grazing her earlobe: ‘I love how your sweat smells.’
She giggles. ‘Fix the fan, we’ll be sweating anyway.’
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