Emotion welled in my throat. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like another thing I thought I knew about Ali that’s not exactly the whole truth. I thought he was this outdoorsy guy—”
“Hewasby the time you met him. That was real. He loved hiking and camping. You knew that.”
“But he got it fromher. He passed that love on to our children. It’s like Lizzie was a bigger part of his life than I ever realized. In a way, she asserted herself in our lives without my knowing it.”
“We’re all the products of our life experiences,” he said. “Lots of different things influenced who Ali was by the time you met him.”
“Ali got a clean slate in me, because he was my first and only romantic relationship.”
“Hiking is a good habit, a healthy habit,” he pointed out. “It made Ali happy. He would probably have discovered his love for nature at some point along the way. It’s not like Lizzie forced him. She simply introduced him to the natural world.”
“You’re right, I guess.”
“I am,” he said. “Now please be careful driving home.”
“I will.”
As I walkedBintiback to the van, I couldn’t help wondering what else I didn’t know.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Before
“Do you think they have a happy marriage?” I asked Ali as I watched my old friend Rula dancing to Arabic music with her husband, Marwan. We’d met in high school and attended college together.
Ali cut into his prime rib. “He’s definitely cheating on her.”
“What?” I asked, both shocked and intrigued by this unexpected tidbit from my husband, who never gossiped.
We were at a wedding for Rula’s younger sister. My other university friends were also there with their husbands. Hanan, the bride, was much younger than me and the last in our extended group to tie the knot. The rest of us had been married for years by then. Ali and I were celebrating our eighteenth anniversary the following month.
I watched him cut his meat. “What do you mean he’s definitely cheating on her?”
Rula still felt like one of my closest friends, even though we both had busy lives and moved in different circles and didn’t see each other much.
Ali shrugged. “You can just tell with some men.”
“How can you tell?” I pressed.
“Just by the way they talk.”
I studied Marwan. When I first met him, he did have what my mother would call a white eye. “Aina baitha,” she would say, meaningthat he looked at women inappropriately. The literal translation being that the white of his eyes showed too much because he looked at women with overly wide eyes.
But I’d always found Marwan to be a harmless flirt and a good match for Rula. He seemed devoted to her.
“By the way they talk?” I persisted. “Why? How does Marwan talk?” Were there special code words that men used with each other?
“I don’t know.”
“Marhaba, cousin,” a voice said from behind me. I looked up to see Hamza, my second cousin, smiling down at us.
“Hamza!” I got up to greet him with an air-kiss on each cheek. “What are you doing here?”
Hamza gestured toward his dark suit jacket. “I’m the banquet manager.” He shook hands with Ali, who’d also gotten to his feet. “Is my crew doing a good job tonight?”
“They’ve been great. Excellent service,” I said. “Obviously their boss has whipped them into shape.”
“Good to see you, man,” Ali said to him. “How long have you been working here?”
