I Love I Hate I Miss My Sister (2 page)

“Carefree.” What a strange word.

My parents refused to move out.

Dad refused because he can’t bear to leave Djelila. Mom has no opinion. She’s in denial. She refuses to believe what happened.

Taïeb and Idriss have grown. Aunt Algia had her baby—a girl she named after her mother, Hebtissem. It’s strange that time does not stop.

I feel like running away. Final exams are at the end of the school year. I will ace them and get my diploma. Then I will leave. So I work hard, losing myself in my books. I’m oblivious to the difference between night and day. For me, the world is a small, narrow bedroom with twin beds and two desks—a space terrifying and comforting at the same time.

“Sohane, wait for me.”

“Hurry up, then!”

Djelila hoists her bags over her shoulders—one filled with schoolbooks, the other stuffed with her basketball gear—shoves a slice of bread into her mouth, and takes the stairs four at a time behind me.

“We’re always late because of you,” I complain as we head outside.

“Why are you always in such a hurry to get to school?”

Djelila throws what’s left of her bread into the square.
Bon appétit
, birds.

My sister never has time for a proper breakfast. But there is no way she would go to school without doing her hair just so and carefully applying makeup. Not too much,
just a light trace of powder to hide a tiny blemish on her chin, mascara, and some kohl to line her eyes. Only what’s needed.

At the bus stop, a woman wearing a djellaba is waiting, a shopping bag in her hand. I glance at her, then at the ads on the bus shelter. One ad shows a girl wearing nothing more than a G-string, her buttocks on full view. The full-size ad is supersexy. You can’t see the model’s face, which makes you think she has no face. She’s only a pair of butt cheeks. I am disgusted by this display of flesh. I look at my sister. Makeup isn’t the only weapon in her feminine arsenal. She’s wearing jeans that hug her curves, a close-fitting sweater so short it exposes her back when she bends down, and a mini-hoodie. She is lovely. So superficial. It’s probably her age. I’m only eleven months older than Djelila, but I don’t feel the need to expose parts of my body. My sweaters are long enough to cover my waist. And even if I don’t feel like lending my tight jeans to Djelila, I don’t wear them anymore. I’ve switched to a pair of looser-fitting cotton pants. They may not be as stylish as jeans, but they’re more comfortable.

Besides, I don’t want a boy to look at me because he’s attracted to my bared skin. I want something more. Something better.

Conceit is a sin. I know.

School isn’t so far that we can’t walk, but in the morning the bus gives us time to relax and prepare ourselves for the change in atmosphere.

The bus pulls up in front of the stop. It’s almost empty.
We’re at the beginning of the line. It will be full by the time we reach school. Djelila and I sit side by side, always in the same seats, in the first row at the middle of the bus. We put our bags on the floor and prop our knees up against the glass partition. We are still sisters for a few more stops. After that, we part ways—as if we’ve crossed an invisible border. The projects border.

Beyond that limit, my sister changes. She sits back a little more and puts her feet on her bag. The Djelila of the Lilac housing projects becomes the Djelila of Racine High School. One stop farther and Karine and Estelle join us. Djelila gets up and holds on to the pole to be closer to her friends. They talk about their teachers, about some of their classmates, about the last math lesson, which none of them understood. I wonder if Karine and Estelle even know that Djelila and I are sisters. If they do, they couldn’t care less.

When we get off the bus, the crowd separates us. We don’t bother to look at each other. Djelila no longer knows me.

I walk toward my friends, if you can call them that. They’re just the students from class who I get along with: Lola, Sofia, Christian, and Charlene. They are huddled near the main door, smoking. I do not smoke. I am Muslim. My parents taught me that we have to respect the body that God gave us.

Djelila goes her own way. Up until last week, Sylvan, a boy who’s also a junior but in another class, greeted my sister with a kiss. Hand in hand they would join their friends.
They made a cute couple. It lasted a month and a half. A short-lived love story. Djelila filled me in on the details at night, when the light was out. Ever since she started flirting in tenth grade, she’s told me everything. She had never gone out with a boy for such a long time, but she broke it off last week because she got fed up. “Sylvan’s too dull” is what she told me. My sister needs passion. Sylvan looked unhappy for a few days, but now he seems better. He still hangs out with Djelila and the others, and yesterday I saw them all laughing together.

I’ve never gone out with a boy. Djelila sometimes makes fun of me, in a nice way. She claims that Basil, the tall blond guy in her class, is crazy about me; she says I have a long list of admirers and that my indifference will drive them to suicide. She swears that a little bit of kohl would bring out the beauty of my eyes, that I’m very pretty when I smile. Of course, hearing her say these things makes me smile.

Djelila just lit a cigarette. Dad would not like that.

Dad would not have liked it.

“I thought you were an athlete,” I told Djelila.

“Yeah, so what?”

“Well, since when does nicotine boost endurance and the ability to shoot a basket from the mid-court?”

“Give it up, Sohane. What’s it to you if I smoke?”

“Nothing. It’s your problem. I’m just saying that for such a serious basketball player you—”

“I barely smoke one cigarette a day.”

I was using the sports argument, but Djelila wasn’t buying it. We had already discussed the subject. Long before, Mom—at Dad’s request—asked Djelila why she no longer went to the mosque.

Mom made no demands. She just wanted to know
the reason. Djelila mumbled some answer; she knew our parents worried about her. After all, if you don’t go to the mosque, and if you stop praying, you’re condemned to hell. Djelila explained to Mom that she didn’t really have time anymore, what with homework and basketball.… “But I pray, Mom, I recite all my prayers,” she lied to her.

Mom turned to me for confirmation and I nodded and said, “Yes, Mom, we pray together.” This was a lie too, but it reassured Mom, who in turn eagerly reassured Dad.

I tried to delve deeper into the question.

“Don’t you believe in God anymore, Djelila?” I asked.

You shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it. I don’t feel like thinking about it.”

Of course you didn’t feel like thinking about it.

You inhaled your cigarette smoke with relish that morning and started to cough. Karine slapped your back and you burst out laughing. You couldn’t stop. You laughed like crazy, like the crazy pretty girl you were.

I thought you smoked to prove yourself, to appear self-confident. I was right, probably. But I couldn’t understand why you wanted so badly to belong to that group. They were all so ordinary. All they cared about was their looks, their love lives, the movies they went to see. I saw it as a betrayal, a way for you to detach yourself from us, a way to reject and repudiate us. I told you as much sometimes: “You’re different when you’re at school, Djelila, you’re not the same. You play a part. Why?”

You always answered fiercely: “You too, Sohane, you’re different at school.”

You were right.

You added that it was at school that you felt like yourself. That when you were with your friends you didn’t feel the need to pretend to be someone you weren’t. You could laugh loudly, smoke, and talk without having to watch what you said. You felt free.

I didn’t believe you.

“All you want is to be like everyone else. To disappear in the crowd,” I accused you. “But you’re better than that!”

“Really? Better than that? Are you saying I should be like you? Is that what you mean?”

Irritated by what I considered your bad faith, I shrugged and went back to my books and my homework. I no longer understood you. What had happened to you?

Djelila, why are you no longer here? I want to hug you so badly.

Five o’clock. In clusters, students come out of school. I’m in a hurry to get home. I have an essay to prepare. I feel more pressure than usual, with final exams almost here. The teachers do nothing to alleviate the stress. They only make it worse.

At midnight, I’m still working when Djelila brings me a glass of milk and some chocolate cookies.

“Your essay is going to be fine,” she says as she looks over my notes. “You always explain what you want to say clearly. Not like me. Whenever I try, everything gets jumbled.…”

I don’t answer. She goes on: “You should stop working now. You’ve done enough, don’t you think?” I tell her that I can’t sleep anyway. “Stress? You should relax, Sohane. Seriously. You’ll be beat tomorrow. I’m going to bed.” These
few words that we exchange don’t seem like much, and yet I drink my milk and I’m finally willing to go to bed. For the span of one night, I forget my classwork, teachers, and the looming exams that are like a monstrous dragon about to swallow me whole.

I spot Djelila and her friends in front of the school gate. They are saying goodbye to each other. Djelila is laughing, her white teeth gleaming. A boy bends toward her and whispers a few words in her ear. I don’t know him. She pushes him back gently. He shrugs and blows her a kiss from his fingertips. Djelila shakes her head and walks off. My eyes stay glued on her. She has not seen them.

They’ve never come so close to school.

At least, I’ve never noticed them before—Majid, Youssef, Brahim, Mohad, Saïd—the gang from the projects. They are leaning against the school wall, “warming up the asphalt,” as they like to say. It’s their main pastime. But they’re not here by accident. They don’t seem to be looking in our direction, but I’m sure nothing that happened between Djelila and the boy escaped their notice.

Recently, my French teacher, Ms. Lombard, brought in an article about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A present-day medieval regime.

Ms. Lombard made it clear that the article wasn’t related to our literature curriculum, which it definitely wasn’t. But we read the article in class anyway.

It talked about the “Taliban police of vice and virtue” that patrolled the streets of Kabul. A bunch of bearded men who made it their job to ensure that, underneath their burkas, women weren’t wearing any makeup, that their socks covered their ankles, maybe even made sure that their smiles did not offend God. The article made for a passionate discussion in class. It was a discussion, not a debate, since everyone was in agreement. The girls were shocked, and some boys made crude jokes. I didn’t say anything; I just listened.

Now, at this very moment, I realize that
our
Taliban has arrived. They aren’t bearded. Not yet. We’re roughly the same age and even attended the same school before they dropped out. We played and learned to read together. Usually they stay within the housing project, their hands stuffed in the front pocket of their hoodies, shoulders hunched. Every day they become surer of themselves and assert themselves more and more, our little judges.