Exit West(8)

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THE SHROOMS ARRIVED first thing the following morning at Nadia’s office, their uniformed courier having no idea what was inside the package Nadia was signing and paying for, other than that it was listed as foodstuffs. Around the same time, a group of militants was taking over the city’s stock exchange. Nadia and her colleagues spent much of that day staring at the television next to their floor’s water cooler, but by afternoon it was over, the army having decided any risk to hostages was less than the risk to national security should this media-savvy and morale-sapping spectacle be allowed to continue, and so the building was stormed with maximum force, and the militants were exterminated, and initial estimates put the number of dead workers at probably less than a hundred.

Nadia and Saeed had been messaging each other throughout, and initially they thought they would cancel their rendezvous planned for that evening, Saeed’s second invitation to her home, but when no curfew was announced, much to people’s surprise, the authorities perhaps wishing to signal that they were in such complete control that none was needed, both Nadia and Saeed found themselves unsettled and craving each other’s company, and so they decided to go ahead and meet after all.

Saeed’s family’s car had been repaired, and he drove it to Nadia’s instead of riding his scooter, feeling somehow less exposed in an enclosed vehicle. But while weaving through traffic his side mirror scraped the door of a shiny black luxury SUV, the conveyance of some industrialist or bigwig, costing more than a house, and Saeed steeled himself for a shouting, perhaps even a beating, but the guard who stepped out of the front passenger-side door of the SUV, assault rifle pointed skyward, merely had time to look at Saeed, a smooth, ferocious glance, before being summoned back in, and the SUV sped off, its owner clearly not wishing, on this night, to tarry.

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SAEED PARKED around the corner from Nadia’s building, messaged that he had arrived, awaited the thump of the falling plastic bag, slipped into the robe that it contained, and then hurried in and upstairs, much as he had before, except that this time he came bearing bags of his own, bags of barbecued chicken and lamb and hot, fresh-made bread. Nadia took the food from him and put it in her oven so that it might remain insulated and warm—but this precaution notwithstanding, their dinner would be cold when finally eaten, lying there disregarded until dawn.

Nadia led Saeed outside. She had placed a long cushion, its cover woven like a rug, on the floor of her terrace, and she sat on this cushion with her back against the parapet and motioned for Saeed to do the same. As he sat he felt the outside of her thigh, firm, against his, and she felt the outside of his, likewise firm, against hers.

She said, “Aren’t you going to take that off?”

She meant the black robe, which he had forgotten he was wearing, and he looked down at himself and over at her, and smiled, and answered, “You first.”

She laughed. “Together, then.”

“Together.”

They stood and pulled off their robes, facing each other, and underneath both were wearing jeans and sweaters, there being a nip in the air tonight, and his sweater was brown and loose and hers was beige and clung to her torso like a soft second skin. He attempted chivalrously not to take in the sweep of her body, his eyes holding hers, but of course, as we know often happens in such circumstances, he was unsure as to whether or not he had succeeded, one’s gaze being less than entirely conscious a phenomenon.

They sat back down and she placed her fist on her thigh, palm up, and opened it.

“Have you ever done psychedelic mushrooms?” she asked.

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THEY SPOKE QUIETLY under the clouds, glimpsing occasionally a gash of moon or of darkness, and otherwise seeing ripples and churns of city-lit gray. It was all very normal at first, and Saeed wondered if she was perhaps teasing him, or if she had been deceived and sold a dud batch. Soon he had concluded that by some quirk of biology or psychology he was simply, and unfortunately, resistant to whatever it was that mushrooms were supposed to do.

So he was unprepared for the feeling of awe that came over him, the wonder with which he then regarded his own skin, and the lemon tree in its clay pot on Nadia’s terrace, as tall as he was, and rooted in its soil, which was in turn rooted in the clay of the pot, which rested upon the brick of the terrace, which was like the mountaintop of this building, which was growing from the earth itself, and from this earthy mountain the lemon tree was reaching up, up, in a gesture so beautiful that Saeed was filled with love, and reminded of his parents, for whom he suddenly felt such gratitude, and a desire for peace, that peace should come for them all, for everyone, for everything, for we are so fragile, and so beautiful, and surely conflicts could be healed if others had experiences like this, and then he regarded Nadia and saw that she was regarding him and her eyes were like worlds.

They did not hold hands until Saeed’s perspective had returned, hours later, not to normal, for he suspected it was possible he might never think of normal in the same way again, but to something closer to what it had been before they had eaten these shrooms, and when they held hands it was facing each other, sitting, their wrists resting on their knees, their knees almost touching, and then he leaned forward and she leaned forward, and she smiled, and they kissed, and they realized that it was dawn, and they were no longer hidden by darkness, and they might be seen from some other rooftop, so they went inside and ate the cold food, not much but some, and it was strong in flavor.