Sima Qunsol

Sima Qunsol

The Dinner Party

New Voices Award Winner

Since they moved back to Amman, Grace and Omar have been sleeping with the window shutters rolled up. They both agree the soft morning light is necessary. But when the two of them wake up today there is barely a sign of sunrise, as if someone has draped a giant, gray blanket over the city. “It looks like it’s going to rain,” Grace says as she rolls out of bed. And sure enough, as she stands barefoot on the cool kitchen tiles waiting for the coffee pot to fill, she hears the rain tapping gently at first and then beating against the windows. A flash of light floods the room for a millisecond and then the world rumbles outside, a deep and glorious rumble that makes Grace’s chest flutter. Thunder always thrills her, and now she is fully awake.

“Is it always like this in April?” Omar asks, joining her in the kitchen. Neither of them can remember. This is their first year back in the city after a decade away in Dublin.

“We’ve put away our boots already, haven’t we?”

“And the raincoats.”

Later, in the afternoon, Grace sits alone by the living room window. Omar has gone to rehearse for his play. The playwright and stage director, Mr. Hussam, died exactly forty days ago, five weeks into rehearsals, at the age of seventy-six.

Slipped in the rain on the steps outside his house. After a week of mourning, and another week of artistic and logistical deliberations, the troupe decided that the show must go on. A relief for Grace and Omar, who moved back to Amman specifically for this play.

It wasn’t a difficult move. Grace was already working remotely as a corporate communications editor. And Omar was itching to quit his job as stage manager at a struggling theatre, which was haunted by all sorts of financial and bureaucratic problems. Grace could tell that he missed acting, really acting, not the silly gigs he found here and there, those racially ambiguous roles with barely any lines. And wasn’t it enough that they had both become tired, on a spiritual level, of the dreariness of Dublin? The days had started to feel like thick mud to be pushed through. So when Mr. Hussam, who had once been Omar’s mentor in Amman, reached out to say that he was producing his first play in almost a decade, they knew they had to move back. The rain is relentless, and the little alley which leads to their building has been emptying itself all day like a stream into the main street. Grace thinks about the word rainfall, how falling implies a sort of surrender. This rain isn’t falling, she decides. Each drop is launched from the sky like a bullet towards them. Biblical rain, as her father likes to call these spells, which aren’t so common in Amman as they are in Dublin. How adaptive Dubliners are to harsh weather—no matter the downpour, life carries on. Here in Amman, everyone is at the mercy of the daily forecast. It’s too hot to go out, too cold, too dusty. The old wives’ tales are very much alive, and every season is hairfall season, flu season, allergy season.

The oven timer buzzes. Grace almost doesn’t want to turn away from the window, but she makes her way to the kitchen and takes the cake out of the oven. Orange rosemary, for the dinner she and Omar are invited to tonight at Mr. Hussam’s house. His widow, grateful for the company’s decision to carry on with the play, has insisted that they all dine together on the fortieth day after her husband’s death. There had been the burial, the three-day wake, the church service on the third day, and now this. More involvement than Grace would prefer, really. But the man meant a lot to her husband, and her husband means a lot to her. So here she is, mixing powdered sugar with orange juice and a dash of orange zest and waiting for the cake to cool.

Already, some of the guests have canceled because of the rain. Omar reports this to Grace, as he is the direct invitee and she is his plus one. “One person’s roof is leaking, he just left rehearsals,” he tells her over the phone. “And another says the roads won’t be safe for driving at night.”

Ten minutes later he calls her again to say he is coming home early; there has been a power outage at the theatre. When he arrives, he reports that only four other dinner guests will in fact be attending.

“It’s so funny, isn’t it,” Grace says, “how eager people are for any excuse to stay in.” People are too soft here, she thinks to herself. But really she’s a little relieved; maybe Karma is one of the people who can’t make it.

“Right,” Omar agrees. “Poor auntie Amal, I hope she hasn’t already prepared food for a dozen guests.”

Always so compassionate, Omar. Since Mr. Hussam’s death, he has been buying produce for Amal every Saturday from the farmer’s market. Overpriced and disfigured, as all organic produce is.

“She doesn’t drive, and she’s scared of elevators,” Omar had explained. “And it’s hard for her to carry the bags up to the apartment.” The first time they showed up at her door with fruits and vegetables, Amal said, Oh you shouldn’t have. But now she is used to it, sends Omar voice notes on Friday evenings asking if there might be any crab apples at the market. When will it end? Will they show up with half a kilo of tomatoes one day, instead of the usual kilo, and then not show up at all the following week? Or are they doomed to do this poor old widow’s grocery shopping until they decide, if they ever do, to move back to Europe?

Yes, Omar is compassionate, but only to those to whom he is not obliged to be compassionate. When they moved back to Amman, the couple decided to rent a place in Jabal Al-Weibdeh instead of staying at Grace’s family building in Rabieh, where there was an empty apartment on the ground floor with central heating and enough closet space for the raincoats and the boots all year round. But there was no privacy, they agreed, or any autonomy when it came to family functions and unannounced visitors. They were homesick, true, but they still valued the solitude of Dublin, how they could always escape into their home and answer to no one but each other. Now, hearing Omar say poor Auntie Amal with that worried face of his, Grace feels something like betrayal twitch inside her. The sun has set, and Grace and Omar are standing at the entrance to their building, waiting for the right moment to leap into the rainfall. But there is no right moment—they run out of the building towards their car, which is parked a little down the street. Omar holding a bottle of wine close to his chest, Grace carrying her cake with both arms, head bent forward to protect it. Maybe from afar, with the rain and all, it looks to the unknowing neighbor like she is carrying not dessert but a newborn child.

Amal buzzes them in and greets them at her apartment door, dressed in all black with a cigarette in her hand.

“Oh, I’m so happy you could make it,” she says after kissing them both.

“There’s far too much food, far too much.”

“Well, I am starving,” Omar says.

“Me too,” Grace says, even though she isn’t.

“Oh, isn’t it just crazy outside?” Amal asks.

“So crazy,” Grace agrees.

“It’s unbelievable,” Omar says.

“But don’t worry,” Amal says. “I made sure the house is extra warm for you all. Come in, come in!”

Grace has been here before, for the occasional Turkish coffee after the weekly produce drop-offs. She has always found the house overwhelming, with its deep Damask wallpaper and tasseled sofa cushions and rococo lamps. But this is the first time she feels claustrophobic. The living room is dimly lit, and the velvet curtains hang like solemn guards in front of all the windows. Grace suspects that the shutters behind them have also been pulled down. This leaves her with the sensation that she is underground or even worse, backstage.

Amal instructs Omar to leave the wine on the dining table, where there are already some open bottles and wine glasses. She takes the cake from Grace and disappears into the kitchen. The other guests stand up from their sofas and armchairs to greet them.

There is Saleh, who in his early forties is the oldest member of the troupe and the de facto director of the play. He is Grace’s favorite, because he always remembers her name. Next is Mona, a pharmacist pursuing a second degree in theatre arts at the University of Jordan, and her boyfriend Yousef, a rising film actor from Ramallah. And finally, seated on her own armchair across the salon is Karma.

Karma possesses a beauty that is assured of itself. Her dark curls are always the right degree of unruly. Tonight they are pulled back into a bun, with two strands framing her upturned eyes, impenetrably brown like boiled coffee. She is dressed in all black, lace upon lace, Grace can’t tell if it’s a dress or several separate pieces. Her boots are also black, high-heeled and assertive. Something about them makes Grace feel like a dull knife, the way they point towards Omar, who has taken a seat on the remaining couch. And isn’t Mona also wearing a black satin shirt? And the men, they are dressed in dark colours, even Omar has his navy sweater on. Grace wonders if it’s a mourning thing or a theatre thing. She tugs at her green wool dress, tragically shapeless, she realizes now, and sits next to her husband. Immediately, he falls into conversation with Karma.

Omar first met Karma years ago in Turin, at a summer acting program for gifted high school students. The program couldn’t have been longer than two weeks, and when it ended, Omar returned to Amman and Karma to Abu Dhabi.

They met again in their early twenties, acting in one of Mr. Hussam’s plays. The show sold out, ran for three consecutive weekends, but nothing big ever came of it. This was Amman, after all. And so Omar left for Ireland to pursue a master’s in arts and cultural management, a field his parents deemed reliable. That was how he met Grace, they sat next to each other during a screening of a Palestinian film, and it surprised them both that they had never crossed paths in Amman before. They have been together for seven years, married for three.

Grace knows these guests relatively well by now; sometimes she joins her husband and his fellow actors for after-rehearsal drinks at a nearby bar, which is always full of artists and filmmakers. She’s been going less frequently these days, all they talk about is the play, how they wish Mr. Hussam was still here.

“Grace, how is work going these days?” Saleh asks from across the coffee table.

“It’s going well, thank you,” she replies with a smile. She has nothing more to say about her job, which is as steady and unstimulating as always.

“You really have to visit us at the theatre sometime,” Mona says, her hand intertwined with Yousef’s. “Mr. Hussam hated having visitors during rehearsals, God rest his soul, he always used to say that rehearsals should be like a well-kept secret.”

“He loved telling us to leave our ‘outside life’ at the door,” Yousef added, “as if it might contaminate the show.”

“Well, I don’t really disagree with him,” says Karma. After a beat, she adds, “I mean sure, you should visit us Grace, you should see what Omar’s like on stage, he’s such a force. But it’s true about secrecy, there’s something so sacred about rehearsing for a play, it’s like its own little universe. When I go on stage I stop being Karma. I stop looking at Omar as Omar. And Mona isn’t Mona, and Saleh isn’t Saleh, and nothing off-stage matters anymore.”

Mona hums in agreement.

“This reminds me of something I read,” Omar says, squinting his eyes like he always does when he is trying to recall things. “How it’s common for actors to develop some sort of disassociation from their real lives, and this one actor, he was saying that when he’s filming something, his own life becomes the temporary one that he drops in and out of, and when he goes to set, it’s as if he’s returning home to his real life.”

Does Omar perhaps have a mild hangover these days when he comes home after rehearsals, parts of his mind still lingering somewhere under the stage lights? He is often preoccupied, Grace has noticed, like when she catches him muttering lines under his breath. Sometimes she gets the impression that rehearsals are the climax of his days in Amman—everything else simply rises and falls around them. “It’s like that movie, remember,” Karma says, turning to Omar. “About the man who gets obsessed with recreating his real life on stage, and ends up building a giant replica of New York City and moving into it.”

“Oh, I remember that one,” responds Grace, and now she is the one reminding Omar. “We watched it together last summer, after Ellie told us about it.”

“Yes,” Omar says, nodding at both of them. “Exactly.”

“I’ve never been a fan of method acting, personally,” Saleh says. “Karma, I get what you’re saying, how you stop being you, and I stop being me. But I don’t think I’ve ever looked at acting as something that is at odds with my sense of self, something separate from my real life. It’s an extension of it. When I go on stage, I’m still Saleh. I’m playing this character or that character, but that’s all it is, play.

It can be convincing, but it’s still play. I’m still me.”

“Clearly Khaled disagrees with you on this,” Yousef says, and everybody laughs. Even Grace breaks into a smile. She understands Yousef’s reference, knows who Khaled is and how he overdoes it. She puts her hand on Omar’s thigh, and he puts his hand on top of hers, and she feels pleased with herself, reassured that her husband shares the details of his life with her each night before bed. This is real life, she thinks.

“I actually liked what he did today,” Karma says. “Right after the line about my mother. It broke the tension of the moment. Saleh, what do you think?”

And just like that, they begin to deconstruct today’s scene, referencing names and lines and events that Grace cannot follow. It is true that Omar reports to her the highlights of his rehearsals, who showed up late, who hasn’t memorized their lines, yet he still has not shared the entire premise of the play with her. It is hardly a secret. After all, he leaves the script on the coffee table at home, and often discusses the play with the troupe in her presence. She knows that all she has to do is ask. Yet she hasn’t asked, and he hasn’t shared, and for some reason the two of them have accepted this boundary, feel compelled to uphold it. What Grace can surmise is that a great unnamed catastrophe has taken place right before the beginning of the play, and that Karma’s character is blind and must be led by the arm, the wrist, the shoulder, across the stage by the other characters. Grace also knows that Karma has committed to wearing a blindfold while performing, meaning that Karma herself, much like her character, must navigate the stage without sight, relying on auditory cues and guiding hands. Just two weeks ago, the main discussion at the bar was whether this blindfold should be acknowledged in the play or treated as invisible, something that they had not determined with Mr. Hussam.

There is indeed too much food on the table, stuffed chicken, warak dawali, roast lamb, kibbeh with cooked yogurt, spiced rice, plain rice, three different salads, dozens of spinach pastries. Omar pours two glasses of red wine and hands one to Grace. Everybody is seated at the dining table now, Karma across from Grace, Grace next to Omar, Amal at the head of the table.

“Thank you all for being here today,” Amal says, offering a sad smile. “I know how much my husband cared for each and every one of you. May God have mercy upon his soul. I want you to know that even though he is not here anymore, you will always be welcome in this house.”

“May God have mercy upon his soul,” everyone repeats.

“It’s our pleasure to be here, Auntie Amal,” Omar says.

“Yes, thank you for having us,” Mona says. “You really went out of your way.”

“Really, you shouldn’t have troubled yourself,” Saleh chimes in.

“You’ve done so much,” Karma says.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Amal replies. “It’s nothing.”

The usual platitudes, back and forth they go. For some reason, Grace never learned how to play this game that everyone seems so adept at. She has tried to borrow phrases she hears from the women around her in Amman, but they always come out wrong and insincere. She only knows how to smile, how to draw out her thank yous in English.

“Please, help yourselves,” Amal says when a sudden boom interrupts her, swallowing all other sounds with it, like a heavy object falling down an otherwise quiet stairwell. The apartment is so confined to itself that they have forgotten the storm outside. Amal and Mona jump a little in their seats. They wait for the thunder to roll into the distance.

“Wow,” Yousef says, his eyes wide. “I haven’t heard one that loud in years.”

“Oh, I really love this weather,” Grace finds herself saying. “It makes me feel alive.”

“No one loves the winter unless they are rich,” Karma says, wine glass in hand. “Tomorrow we’ll hear about the damage on the news, all the flooded houses.”

Shame flows through Grace. She realizes she is not the type of person who might challenge someone like this at a dinner party. She has always operated under strict social protocols, and she finds it jarring when others don’t extend the same courtesy to her. And who does Karma think she is anyway, lecturing others about wealth with a pair of Azza Fahmy earrings dangling from her ears? She looks at Omar for support, but he is passing the fattoush to Yousef.

She wants to answer Karma back, defend herself, but then Amal says, “My husband, God rest his soul, he always knew how much I hated this weather. Whenever he heard thunder, he would rush back home and find me hiding under the bedsheets.”

No one says anything. Perhaps they are all wondering, like Grace is, how Amal will manage tonight, all alone in this suffocating house.

“I’ve been scared of thunder my whole life,” continues Amal with her eyes suspended somewhere out of reach. “Ever since I was a little girl. Back when my family was still living in Karak, there was a really bad storm one night, the thunder was so loud, and a man from our neighborhood was struck by lightning.

I was in bed when it happened, my parents didn’t let me go outside, but I remember hearing screams, children calling for their parents in the dark. The next morning I found out that the lightning had cut the man in half.”

The guests are not sure how to respond to such a story. Amal, suddenly aware of its weight, gives a nervous laugh and says, “It was such a long time ago.”

“This reminds me of a sheep herder who was on the news,” says Karma.

“Does anyone remember him? A few months ago, he was also in Karak, he lost like eight sheep after lightning struck a power line. Poor man.”

“Poor sheep,” Yousef says, and Mona giggles.

Omar puts a hand on Grace’s shoulder and asks, “More wine?”

Grace shakes her head.

“I’ll have some,” Karma says, holding her glass out. Omar stands up, even though he doesn’t have to, and pours the remainder of the bottle into the glass.

Something about the gesture reminds Grace of the play. She is sweating in her dress, and the room is so hot, and the thick smell of meat hangs heavy over the table.

Another clap of thunder outside. This time everyone is a little more relaxed, and they laugh together.

“You know, I also know someone who died from lightning,” Saleh says to Amal, and now everyone turns to him. He takes a sip of wine before continuing. “It’s a lot more common than you’d think. One of my father’s friends, he lost his wife that way. They were very adventurous, they traveled the whole world together. South America, the Far East, you name it. One time they were in Johannesburg, walking around, and she was hit by lightning, just like that. It was all over the news. I think she was a famous documentary photographer or something.”

“And you wonder why I’m so terrified,” Amal says. Yousef pokes his fork into one last piece of warak dawali, but otherwise everyone has finished eating. The wine glasses are almost empty, smudged with greasy fingers and lips. Grace is rehearsing in her head what to say to Amal now that the meal is over, some variation of thank you or bless your hands. But before she speaks, Karma begins to giggle.

“Omar, remember when we thought we were going to die in Turin?” she asks.

Omar lets out a soft chuckle. The two of them share a quick glance, as if to decide who will narrate the story. There is a mischievous twinkle in Karma’s eyes as she turns to the rest of the table and begins.

“We were in Turin for the summer. It was for an acting workshop we did. It’s where we met, actually. Anyway, we were walking around one night, I wanted to buy cigarettes and Omar was the only one who would come with me. And the weather was fine that day—”

“The weather was beautiful that day,” Omar cuts in. “Like you would never be able to tell that there was a storm on the way.”

“Exactly,” continues Karma. “So we were walking around, looking for a tobacco shop, and we were arguing about something, I can’t remember what it was.”

“We were arguing about whether it’s harder to act on stage or in front of a camera,” Omar reminds her. “That was back when I wanted to be on television.”

“Anyway we were having this argument, and out of nowhere the sky lit up.”

“Like someone flipped a switch.”

“Exactly like that, and Omar and I stopped and looked at each other, and then we heard the loudest sound ever, like a fucking bomb. It was coming from everywhere, it was so disorienting.”

“And Karma started screaming.”

“And Omar just pulled my arm and shouted, ‘Run!’ and the two of us started running as fast as we could back to our hotel.”

“I don’t think I processed what the sound was until it started raining on us. I thought it was the apocalypse or something, the only thing I was thinking about was that I had to go back and call my parents.”

“And I was just following Omar, I thought he saw something I didn’t, so I ran behind him, my heart was beating so fast.”

“And then we got to the hotel, drenched, and I slowly realized that the world wasn’t ending.”

“I still don’t understand why we started running,” Karma says, wiping tears from her eyes as the two of them give in to their laughter. “It was so dramatic!”

Everyone else is laughing along with them, laughter of acknowledgement, laughter of politeness. Omar, still breathless, leans back and reaches out for Grace next to him. She squeezes her husband’s hand. His face is flushed, the way it always gets at the end of a performance. He is happy, she realizes as his thumb traces small circles across her skin. The easy, uninhibited kind of happiness that one feels at home.

She wants to be part of this happiness. She has her own story to share, and now, she has found the perfect opening after Karma. She pushes herself up in her seat, lets go of Omar’s hand, looks at Saleh and parts her lips.

But Mona beats her to it, something about getting her wisdom tooth removed during a thunderstorm. And now Yousef is talking about how he had to remove his wisdom tooth right before a shoot, and he could only speak with a lisp, and the director ended up incorporating the lisp into his character, and Yousef had to speak that way for an entire month. And Amal says that her wisdom teeth never came out, and Karma says that’s not possible, and Saleh says it is.

Back in Dublin, Grace used to visit the theatre where Omar worked. There was a game the actors would sometimes play on stage. Everyone would stand in a circle and close their eyes. Someone would start the game by saying the number one, and then another voice would say two, then three, and so on. The objective was to count to twenty, but if two people spoke at once, then they all had to start over. The longer a group spent together, the more attuned they were to each other, the more instinctive the game became. Grace feels as if this dinner is one big counting game to which she has arrived late.

Saleh asks if he can check out Mr. Hussam’s library; there’s a book of bedouin poetry which he would like to see. Mona says that she would like to take a look too, if that’s okay. Amal says of course, although she won’t join because that room makes her sad. And suddenly everybody wants to see the library, they all get up, leaving Amal and Grace at the table.

Amal finishes her cigarette in silence and stubs it out on her plate. This dinner has clearly exhausted her too. She pushes her chair back, stands up, and begins to clear the table. Grace feels rude staying still, even ruder leaving now to join the others, so she starts helping Amal, and now the two of them are in the stuffy kitchen, silently putting leftovers into tupperwares, and everyone is back in the salon but no one misses her, and she wonders why she is here, in the kitchen, setting coffee cups for Omar and Karma when she is a guest too. She excuses herself to the bathroom, where there is a small window to the outside world. She slides it open, inviting the cool, damp air to slip in. The rainfall, like white noise, drowns out the sound of chatter from the living room.

It is almost midnight when they finally leave. It is still raining, and water washes down the asphalt with determination. Omar and Grace make their way against it, like little salmon in a stream. Omar is carrying a bag full of leftovers. Grace, once again, is holding her cake to her chest, only a few slices missing.

“That was nice,” Omar says after they climb into the car.

“Yeah?” Grace asks. “I suppose it was.”

“Yeah,” he says. “We should invite them all to dinner sometime.”

Grace, eager for this dreadful night to be over, gets ready for bed in a hurry, crawls under the sheets for shelter. Omar joins her a little while after, turns the lights off and gives her a kiss on her shoulder, he is so unaware. Outside, the storm persists, and just as the two of them begin to sink into sleep, it jolts them back into the waking world, filling their bedroom with a flash of light.

“What do we do?” whispers Omar, shuffling towards Grace under the duvet. She wraps her arms around him and wonders if she should finally roll the shutters down.

“My dorm room was very small,” she whispers as she traces her fingers up and down Omar’s back. “I used to sleep with my head right by the window. The glass was always so cold, I could never get warm. One evening I was asleep and suddenly found myself standing in the middle of the room. My heart was pounding. The thunder made me jump out of bed, you see, it was so loud and lasted so long that I thought the city was on fire. I stood there, in the middle of the room, asking my roommate Sara, ‘What happened? What happened?’ And Sara was laughing at me. I couldn’t understand why she was laughing. And all the while our landline was ringing. Not just our landline, all the phones on our floor were ringing. Sara picked ours up and said, ‘Hello?’ but no one answered. She hung up and it kept ringing. She picked it up again and said, ‘Hello? Is anybody there?’ and no one was there. And the thunder kept coming, and the sky kept lighting up, and all the phones were still ringing, and I was still standing in the middle. It was the most surreal experience.”

Omar mumbles something. He is falling asleep in Grace’s arms. She is wide awake now.

“I never realized how weird it was,” she continues. “A phone ringing without a caller. Just a ringing that never ends, and you’re stuck there saying hello, hello, is anybody there?”

Sima Qunsol lives in Amman, Jordan. Her work can be found in Wildness, Eclectica Magazine, Rusted Radishes, and Poetry Ireland Review.