Desert Boys by Chris McCormick

Author:Chris McCormick
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781250075512
Publisher: Picador

HABIBI

The day was warm and tedious, as it usually is when the weather’s gray and dull, when clouds have been hanging overhead for a long time, and you’re waiting for the rain that doesn’t come. My sister and I were already tired of walking, and Brooklyn seemed endless. Across the East River peered the Midtown skyline, chalky and plain under the gray sky. On our side of the river lay an empty stretch of unmown grass that—on sunnier days, according to Jean—served as a place for people to read books or to picnic. At one point, Jean said she could imagine a version of her life in which this day were set on repeat, with me in from California and nature still and pensive. In the past, I’d have made fun of her for a sentence like that, but this was the first time I’d visited since Mom died, so I nodded along in agreement.

Jean wiped her nose with the long bone of her thumb and cleared her throat into her thin orange scarf. Then it started to rain. And a minute later there was a downpour, and we couldn’t tell when it would be over. The two of us hopped from puddle to muddy puddle, amazed and then laughing at the sheer volume of rainwater coming down on us. We ducked into a small corner restaurant whose windows advertised falafel and yogurt sandwiches.

Other shelter seekers, a dozen of us, gathered in the little place. Most stayed at the windows, keeping an eye on the weather, waiting to push back out into the world. But Jean and I took stools at the counter and picked up menus.

The restaurant was called Habibi. At every wedding reception or party on our Armenian side of the family, a song by that name was played toward the end of the night, when the only people around to hear it were too drunk or happy or both to take offense at the word “Allah.” Habibi means “beloved.”

As Jean was talking, a disheveled man in his forties with graying shoulder-length hair and thick black eyebrows came out from the kitchen.

He had heard us, and now was looking us over: Jean, dark haired, tan skinned, large nosed like Mom; me, pale and blond, like Dad, with pink, chapped nostrils from an ongoing bout with a cold. The man wore a small gold crucifix that fell gently against his white polo. At his throat, three tattooed bars: red, blue, and orange, the Armenian flag.

His name was Simon. He told us that the owner—“a Turk, but a good one”—had the day off, leaving him in charge. Simon took our order, suggesting items along the way. “You don’t eat meat?” he asked Jean when she’d turned down three of his suggestions. Then, to me: “She doesn’t eat meat.”

He lopped generous scoops of hummus into a Styrofoam container and included two extra grape-leaf dolmas at no cost.

The storm outside began to look staged; rain and wind beat furiously against the windows.

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