The Brooklyn Rail

Ledia Xhoga’s novel about a woman whose life is on the brink of unraveling because of her good intentions explores the complexity of translating our own trauma, even to the people we love. With lyrical prose and a propulsive plot, Xhoga delves deep into the shadows of the human psyche, challenging readers to confront the darker legacies of the past while pondering the delicate balance between empathy and self-preservation. 

 

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LEYLA AND SANAZ gave off a heady, flowery scent as they entered my apartment. They also brought with them bottles of Italian wine, high spirits, and stories of a tattoo artist in Union Square who had designed intricate geometric patterns on their arms and wrists. An impromptu stop at Sephora's makeup counter had altered their appearance, making their faces more eye-catching and alike. They both modeled a smoky eye effect, a golden-flecked blue shadow with an elongating line. Their outfits, loose blouses in earth tones, added to their resemblance.

They had walked all over the city, they said, but their tiredness didn't show. They hadn't seen each other in years and couldn't get enough of rehashing old memories. Their conversation reminded me of my long WhatsApp conversations with Alma, my cousin and childhood friend who lived in Athens. She was married, with three children. Despite so many years apart, we were still giddy together. What really mattered in a friendship, and what lasted, was that someone had once seen you completely, as you were. It saddened me to think of Alma, who, although one of the smartest people I knew, had been working as a house cleaner for years. The last time we talked, she'd been upset, having overheard some Albanian relative describe her job as cleaning the shit of the Greeks.

I poured wine for them and checked on the byrek, already in the oven. Leyla and Sanaz skittered around the apartment. I could hear their voices in the living room, admiring the view of the Manhattan skyline from our windows, as the aroma of baked phyllo and cheese permeated the apartment. I wished Billy were home that evening. He might complain about our visitors, who took over his study occasionally, but I was sure he'd enjoy the company of the Kurdish women. He was probably on the plane now, but I pictured him listening to Miles's reading, fidgeting in his chair, although pretending to be wholly engrossed. Would I mention the women to him later on, when we talked on the phone? I had gone to that literary reading intending to get away from refugees, to retreat into literature and languages, but had instead brought these women home.

In the living room, Leyla and Sanaz were arguing in Kurdish. Leyla sounded emotional, on the brink of tears. Sanaz appeared calmer, but she was talking fast, as if attempting to reason with Leyla. I recalled that prior evening when we'd scurried down that side street for no obvious reason. Immersed in their conversation, they didn't even see me standing there at first.

“Sorry,” Leyla then said, switching to English. "I've had this issue lately. My ex-husband is following me.”

“Is your ex living here?”

“No, he's back home. He has asked a relative to follow me. I saw him standing outside Sephora today.”

“I didn't see him,” said Sanaz. "I even looked where you pointed.”

“It doesn't mean he wasn't there.”

“I didn't say he wasn't. I just didn't see him. And I didn't see him yesterday either. What do you want me to say?”

“Nobody believes me. I feel it in my body whenever he follows and take pictures of me,” Leyla said.

“Takes pictures of you?” I asked. “What for?”

“To send to my ex-husband. He wants to know how I'm doing.” She started rummaging through her backpack. She pulled out a bag of clothes, two books. She flipped through a notebook. She turned her backpack inside out, then started looking through the pockets.

“Is he tracking me?” she said. "How does he know where I am? How is he doing it?”

Sanaz glanced at me. She seemed both puzzled and worried. Leyla interpreted her expression as I did, an insinuation that the story of this relative who stalked her was either nonsense or an obsessive paranoia.

“Why do you make that face?" she said to Sanaz.

“What face?” said Sanaz. “I didn't make a face.”

“I saw it.”

“Let's take your things," I said quickly, heading to Billy's office. "You can sleep in here tonight.”

When we returned to the living room, everything seemed fine. "Cheers," said Sanaz. “To Leyla.”

“To poetry," said Leyla. "And to new, wonderful friends. You have no idea what this means to me. Having a room of my own, even for a night.”

“This smell is amazing,” said Sanaz. “Is the byrek ready yet?” "Just a few more minutes.”

“I'll tell you about the Albanian I dated in Italy,” Leyla said laughing. Her effervescent mood struck me as remarkable considering that just seconds ago she had seemed so angry. Maybe she was hiding her weariness, but her high spirits brought back more questions about her stalker. Had anyone else seen him, besides her? I tried to focus on the story she was telling now. It was amusing, if ordinary, a man overpromising, engaging in false advertising, making plans he had no intention of following through. She described him as friendly, a macho type, the Albanian owner of a pizzeria in a small Italian town. He had wooed her, flooded her with phone calls, sent her flowers, gifts, talked about vacationing together to Albania. Then he'd gone back home.

“When he came back to Italy, radio silence,” she said. “A week later I went to the restaurant. Honestly, it crossed my mind he might be dead. A new woman was working there. It was his Albanian wife. He'd been married for years.”

She then talked to us about her time in Rome. She had gone to university there for three years. A professor had urged her to apply for a scholarship at an American university—he had connections at Fordham—but she had given in to her family's pressure and returned to Erbil to get married.

“Who would have thought your husband would turn out like that?" said Sanaz. “He's an engineer, from a good family, soft-spoken. Who would have thought that he'd force the hair dryer into your hand while you were bathing and ask you to kill yourself? Or that he'd hand you a knife and tell you to cut your throat?"

“Is that what he did?”

“That and more,” said Sanaz. "Better not to think about it. It's hot in here, isn't it?”

During the winter, when it got cold outside, our heater went on overdrive.

“Where can I change? Would you mind if I take a shower before dinner?”

“Go ahead. There are extra towels in the cupboard.”

Sanaz left the room. Leyla followed her. I then heard the sound of the keys in the lock, then Billy's footsteps and his voice calling my name. Why was he back in the apartment? Perhaps he had forgotten something. Or had he changed his mind about going to LA? He would enjoy that evening with us, I thought at once. Leyla would talk about her poetry. Sanaz about the doc- umentary film she'd been shooting with her husband, featuring two Yazidi women who had survived a massacre.

"It's such a beautiful apartment,” Leyla was saying to him in the hallway. “Thank you for letting me stay here this weekend.”

All I heard was silence. Why wasn't he responding?

"Why are you back?” I asked when he came into the living room. "Miles got food poisoning in Thailand. He's still there apparently. Who's the woman?”

"And nobody told you he was still in Thailand?”

"I only read the email once I got to JFK. Who is she?” "She's a Kurdish poet. I met her at that poetry reading you told me about."

"Is she staying here?" He didn't wait for my answer. “Of course, she is. There's a bag in my office.”

"Just for the weekend. She lives in Crown Heights at the moment. It's kind of complicated. I'll explain everything later.”

Sanaz popped her head into the living room.

“I'm having a hard time with the shower," she said. “Am I doing something wrong or is there no hot water?" Then she turned to Billy. "Oh, sorry, hi there. You have a beautiful apartment. Thank you for having us."

Billy turned to me.

"Wait, is she another one?"

His confusion, of course, related to the fact that Sanaz and Leyla had changed the shapes of their features at the makeup counter, making them appear similar.

"You have to wait for the hot water," I told her, pretending he hadn't spoken. She threw a puzzled glance at me, then looked around for Leyla. I tried to steer him toward our bedroom, where we could talk alone. He wouldn't budge.

"A lot of people might need to use my office more than me, but that doesn't mean that they can use it,” he said.

"They're only here for the weekend. Leyla is sharing a tiny studio with four other women in Crown Heights. Sanaz lives in Chicago."

"What if I brought random people from outside to spend the weekend, how would you feel?"

"I haven't stopped you. You don't bring them in because don't want to."

A vein in his neck flickered. The Kurdish women were standing in the hallway, darting glances at each other.

"Sanaz," I said, "go take the shower."

She opened her eyes widely, as if to say, Are you joking? Maybe she was right—it was an absurd thing to say.

"You said you'd never bring anyone else home,” he said. "We've talked about this."

What was he talking about? Had we? Leyla, who was stand- ing behind Sanaz, headed to the office. She was barefoot. Her small feet pattered on the wooden floor. I ran behind her.

"My husband is not feeling well,” I said. “He's never like this.”

She kept tossing clothes into her backpack.

"Don't worry," she said. “We'll have dinner out. Thank you for inviting us anyway."

"But the byrek is ready. There is no reason for you to leave. It's my apartment, too."

Leyla picked up her scarf. She rested it on her shoulders but didn't twirl it around her neck, as I imagined she would while wandering the city alone, her solitude sharpened by the humiliation of that evening. Billy was in the hallway, clinging to an injured expression. But it wouldn't last long. As Leyla braved that winter night, he'd sprawl into his ratty heirloom chair with a glass of wine. As she let trains go by, he'd be drowsy, scrolling down his phone until his eyes closed.

"They're not leaving," I told him. “You go, if you want."

He seemed about to say something but didn't. Tiny flames leapt up in his eyes. He turned his back on me and walked toward the apartment door. A second later, I heard the banging. It took me a moment to understand what was happening.

He was slamming the door into the wall. Leyla and Sanaz already had their shoes on but didn't dare leave. He was standing in their way. He took a break at some point to ask me a question.

"Is that why you didn't come to LA?"

A part of me wanted to reach toward him, to calm him down. My body wouldn't obey. I felt an irrational fear that I might bump into our hallway furniture and fall in front of everyone. I didn't move.

"I would like to leave,” Leyla finally said.

"They want to leave," I repeated.

He didn't seem to hear us. He slammed the door against the wall one more time. For a few seconds he remained motionless, waiting for his anger to leave his body. It felt like the silence after an accident. He appeared deflated. His shoulders stooping, he stomped on the chunks of wall splattered all over, turning them into powder. He stared down, reading a pattern amid the dust.

The women used the opportunity to tiptoe out, walking sideways along the wall of our narrow hallway so as not to touch him. Once outside the apartment, they ran toward the stairs and didn't wait for the elevator. Helen had opened the door just enough to peep. Another neighbor's yapping dog, about to go for a walk, dashed toward our apartment. Billy shut the door hard, right in front of the dog's face. The fire alarm in the kitchen went off. The byrek was burning. Overestimating the strength of my wrist, I pulled out the glass dish only to have it slip from my hand. I tried to hold on to it with my other hand, burning my fingers in the process. I let the dish go at once, breaking it in pieces. Tiptoeing among the chunks of hot spinach, burnt pastry, and shards of glass, I made it to a chair and sat. Billy walked into the kitchen with a tube of aloe vera.

He applied the green gel onto my fingers. Under the fluorescent light, amber flecks and gold ripples appeared in his eyes. “I feel like a terrible person,” he said. “But am I? I've had a shitty day, then there's all these strangers in our home again.”

“It was a dinner party. For three."

“It doesn't matter what it was.”

"Only one of them was staying for the weekend. She's a victim of domestic abuse. Her husband has people following her."

"You've fallen into a quicksand,” he said. “I can't pull you out.”

He went to our bedroom and packed a backpack with his clothes. He walked down the hallway toward the door. Before leaving, he cleaned up the dust on the floor. He straightened a rumpled rug with his feet. He put my shoes back on the rack. He closed the door behind him softly. Where was he going at this time of night? The apartment, which moments before had been full of voices, was now quiet as a tomb.

I texted Leyla, explaining that my husband's behavior wasn't typical. I wanted her to understand that Billy wasn't like her ex. Maybe I also wanted to remind myself of that. He was not and would never be a violent man. He wasn't rude. He wasn't mean. He had helped someone who had stayed with us in the past find employment. He even bought extra catch-and-release mousetraps and gave them to the neighbors.

I wrote many texts to Leyla that night saying all that, apologizing, asking if we could reschedule. She never responded.