Hope & Other Dangerous Pursuits Read Online Free Page B

before that she had refused to join them at the betrothal of her second cousin. She had always been a good student, but he didn’t understand why she worked so hard now. This was supposed to be an easy year, to improve her English. There would be plenty of time to study next year in New York. “Come on,” he said. “Spend some time with your father for a change.”
    â€œFine, Baba,” Noura said.
    On the way to the theater, Larbi glanced at Noura in the rearview mirror. “You’re not wearing makeup,” he observed.
    Salma laughed. “Don’t tell me you cared for her eyeliner.”
    â€œI’m just saying. It’s the theater, after all.”
    â€œWhy should I paint my face to please other people?” Noura said indignantly.
    Salma pulled down the passenger-side mirror and stared at her daughter in it. “I thought you liked to do it for yourself.”
    Noura bit at her unmanicured nails, tilting her head in a way that could have meant yes as much as no, then shrugged.
    The comedian’s routine was a mix of biting satire and musical numbers, but although everyone around him laughed, Larbi found he couldn’t relax. He wanted to talk to Noura, though he feared she would again say it was nothing.
    The next day, Larbi waited for his daughter to leave for school before slipping into her room, unsure what to look for. The windows were open and the sun was making tree spots on the floor. Larbi sat on his daughter’s bed. It struck him that it was made, the crocheted cover pulled neatly on all sides. She had always been messy, and he’d often joked that he’d need a compass to find his way out of her room. Now he felt silly for finding her sudden neatness suspicious. Salma was right, he worried for no reason. He got up to leave, but the garish color of a paperback on the nightstand caught his eye and he reached for it. It was a book on political Islam. Leafing through it, he saw that the print quality was poor and that the text was littered with typographical errors. How could Noura bother with this? He tossed it back on the nightstand, where it hit another tome, this one a leather-bound volume. Larbi tiltedhis head sideways to read the spine. It was
Ma’alim fi Ttariq
by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian dissident and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He doubted that Noura, who’d been schooled at Lycée Descartes, could even read the complicated classical Arabic in a book like that, but its presence on her nightstand made him look frantically around the room for other clues. Next to her stereo he found a stack of tapes, and when he played one it turned out to be a long commentary on jurisprudence, peppered with brief diatribes about the loose morals of young people. He couldn’t find anything else out of the ordinary.
    When Noura came home for lunch he was waiting for her in the living room. “What’s this?” he asked, holding up the Sayyid Qutb book.
    â€œYou were looking through my things?” Noura said, looking surprised and hurt.
    â€œListen to me. I’ll only say this once. You’re not to see this girl Faten any longer.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t like what she’s doing to you.”
    â€œWhat is she doing to me, Baba?”
    â€œI don’t want that girl in my house anymore. Safi!”
    Noura gave him a dark look, turned on her heel, and left the room. When the maid served lunch, Noura saidshe wasn’t hungry. Larbi didn’t mind. Better a sulking child than one who gets in trouble.
    I T WAS ONLY A few weeks later, the day before Ramadan, that Noura made her announcement. Salma was shuffling back and forth from the kitchen, where the maid was roasting sesame seeds in the oven for the briwat pastries she would make for the holy month. Larbi was looking at pictures Nadir had sent of the apartment he’d just moved into with a friend, and he was more amused than upset to see no trace of