Desert Temptation

The heat in Dubai doesn't just sit on you. It presses. It follows you from the moment you step out of the airport until you learn to move from air-conditioned box to air-conditioned box like a rat in a maze. I learned that in my first week. By the third, I'd stopped sweating through my shirts. By the sixth, I'd stopped thinking about anything except her.

Samreen.

My cousin Faisal's wife.

The apartment was on the fourteenth floor of a tower in Business Bay, all glass and chrome and a view of the canal that made you feel like you were living inside a postcard. Faisal worked in finance, something with derivatives and hedge funds that I never fully understood, and he traveled constantly. Singapore, London, Zurich. He'd call Samreen every night at nine, and she'd answer on the second ring, her voice flat and pleasant, the way you talk to a stranger who happens to share your address.

I was supposed to be figuring out my life. That's what my mother said when I told her I was moving to Dubai. Figure out your life, beta. Stop drifting. I was twenty-six, had a degree in computer science I'd never used, and a habit of leaving things half-finished. Relationships, projects, cities. My mother hoped Faisal would be a good influence. She didn't know about the way Samreen looked at me when she thought I wasn't watching.

Or maybe she did. Mothers know things.

The afternoon Faisal left for Tokyo, I was sitting on the balcony with a book I wasn't reading. The sun was a white smear behind the haze, and the canal below looked like a strip of hammered metal. I heard the sliding door open and didn't turn around.

"You're going to get heatstroke."

Samreen's voice. Low, with that edge of dry amusement she used when she thought I was being an idiot.

"I'm acclimating."

"You're burning." She sat down in the chair across from me, folding her legs beneath her. She was wearing a loose linen shirt, the sleeves rolled to her elbows, and her hair was down for once, falling past her shoulders in dark waves. No makeup. She didn't need it. Her skin had that warm olive tone that made you think of old photographs, and her eyes, God, those eyes. Hazel with flecks of gold, the kind of eyes that made you want to write bad poetry.

"I made lemonade," she said. "Real lemonade. Not the powder stuff."

"You made lemonade."

"Don't sound so surprised. I'm capable of basic domestic tasks."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking it."

She was right. I was thinking it. Samreen didn't cook. She didn't clean. She had a maid who came three times a week, and she spent most of her days in the study with her laptop, working on something she never talked about. Faisal said she was a journalist, but she never published anything I could find. When I asked her about it once, she just smiled and said, "Some stories take longer than others."

She went inside and came back with two glasses, condensation already beading on the rims. She handed me one and sat down again, closer this time. Close enough that I could smell her. Something clean and faintly floral, like jasmine, but underneath it something warmer. Skin. Heat.

"You're staring," she said.

"I'm not."

"You are. You've been staring at me for three months."

My throat tightened. "That's not true."

"It is." She took a sip of her lemonade, watching me over the rim of the glass. "You think I don't notice? You think I don't see the way you look at me when you think Faisal isn't around?"

I set my glass down on the small table between us. My hand was steady, which surprised me. "And how do I look at you?"

She didn't answer right away. The call to prayer started somewhere in the distance, faint and melodic, drifting across the water. It was that hour before sunset when the light turns gold and everything looks like a memory you haven't made yet.

"Like you're hungry," she said finally. "Like you've been hungry for a long time."

The words hung in the air between us. I could have laughed it off. Could have made a joke, retreated to my room, packed my bags, called my mother and told her I was coming home. That's what a smart man would have done. A decent man. But I wasn't feeling smart or decent. I was feeling the heat and the jasmine and the way her collarbone caught the light when she tilted her head.

"Faisal's your cousin," she said. "Your family."

"I know."

"He trusts you."

"I know."

"He trusts me."

I looked at her. Really looked. The slight tremor in her hand as she held the glass. The way her jaw was set, like she was bracing for something. The pulse beating in her throat, quick and visible above the open collar of her shirt.

"Then why are you out here?" I asked. "Why are you sitting next to me instead of inside, waiting for his call?"

She flinched. Just a little. A tightening around her eyes that was gone almost before I saw it.

"You think I planned this?" Her voice was sharper now. "You think I woke up this morning and thought, let me go sit with my husband's cousin and make him uncomfortable?"

"I think you're lonely."

The words came out before I could stop them. She went very still.

"Lonely," she repeated.

"Yeah."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you spend most of your time alone in that study. I know you don't have friends over. I know Faisal calls you every night and you talk for exactly four minutes and then you hang up and sit in the dark."

She stared at me. The lemonade glass was shaking in her hand now, a tiny vibration that made the ice cubes click against the sides.

"You watch me," she said. "You actually watch me."

"I can't help it."

She laughed. It was a strange sound, not quite happy, not quite sad. Somewhere in between. "You can't help it. That's your excuse?"

"I don't have an excuse. I'm just telling you the truth."

She set her glass down next to mine. The ice clinked. A bead of condensation slid down the side and pooled on the table, and I watched it instead of looking at her, because if I looked at her I was going to do something I couldn't take back.

"I was married before," she said quietly. "Did you know that?"

I looked up. "No."

"I was nineteen. He was thirty-four. My parents arranged it. He was a good man, they said. A doctor. Respected." She paused, tracing a finger through the ring of water her glass had left behind. "He used to lock me in the bedroom when he went to work. Not because he was cruel. Because he was afraid. Afraid I would leave. Afraid I would talk to someone. Afraid I would tell them what he did to me at night."

The words landed like stones in still water. I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

"I left him after two years. My family disowned me. Said I'd brought shame on them. Faisal was the only one who helped. He gave me money, a place to stay. He didn't ask questions. He didn't expect anything." She looked at me then, and her eyes were wet but her voice was steady. "So when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. Because he was kind. Because he was safe. Because I thought I could learn to love him."

"And did you?"

She didn't answer. The sun had slipped below the buildings now, and the sky was turning purple, the color of a bruise. The call to prayer had ended. Somewhere in the apartment, a phone started ringing.

Faisal.

Samreen stood up. She smoothed her shirt, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and for a moment she was just a woman standing on a balcony, composed and distant, the way she looked in photographs.

"I should get that."

She walked inside. I heard her pick up the phone, heard her voice shift into that flat, pleasant tone. "Hi, jaan. How was the flight?"

I stayed on the balcony. The air was cooling now, finally, and the city was lighting up below me, a grid of gold and white and red. I thought about what she'd said. About the locked bedroom. About Faisal being kind and safe. About the way she'd looked at me when she said she thought she could learn to love him. Past tense. Learn. Like a lesson you never quite master.

My phone buzzed. A text from my mother. "How are things? Are you eating? Is Faisal taking care of you?"

I typed back: "Everything's fine, Ammi. Don't worry."

Then I deleted it and typed: "I'm thinking of coming home."

I didn't send that either. I just sat there in the dark, listening to Samreen's voice through the glass door, and wondering what would happen when Faisal came back.