There's a mountain of rice on his plate, and Ali isn't complaining.
Alia's looking at him like he'd just transformed into an ant the size of an average human, as she plays with her own plate of food. He mouths "What?" in her direction, well aware that he's got rice in his mouth, but she simply looks away.
His cousin Marwa keeps looking his way, and he shovels more food into his mouth hoping to look less attractive. Not that he thinks he's attractive, but maybe this will make him look less of someone she'd want to confess her undying love to. Ali sinks lower into his seat, earning a kick in the shin from his mother. He doesn't really care. He cares more about the rice and chicken that's on his plate, the spoonful of yogurt plopped on the edge of his plate. There's a bowl of salad an arm's stretch away, and flat bread that he can smell, and practically taste on his tongue. His mouth waters. He wonders what's for desert.
His father and uncle are discussing Tesla's new model in one end of the long dining table, and he honestly has no idea what his mother's talking about, but Alia's surreptitiously trying to text with her phone hidden underneath the long table cloth, and Ali's tempted to do the same.
Except his grandmother's smiling at him as if she knows what he's up to (all though, she always seems to look at him like that, always has). He tries engaging her in a conversation about flowers, but he realizes half-way through, that he knows nothing about plants at all.
He finishes his plate and only takes his phone out his pocket while he sips his glass of water. He leaves the text from Marwa unread, and opens the one from Khalifa.
My fucking ass hurts
Damn, who'd u let fuck u
You don't remember last night?
Haha.
Who thought it was a good idea to have every meal on the fucking floor
This is what u get for being born here. Rite of passage. Unless ur me
Cause I had a choice
Ali's thumbs hover over the keyboard, unsure of what to say. His mother is sending him looks, and he knows he's been caught, and he'll have to suffer for it later, but now he's thinking of what he can text back.
He thinks of how terrifying Khalifa's dad looked standing before him outside the mosque just an hour ago. He doesn't understand how two people can be so different yet related to one another.
Need me to get you out of there?
Khalifa takes a while to respond, so Ali joins his family in the living room, where he's forced to pour coffee into minuscule coffee cups without spilling any of the steaming liquid onto his skin (and staining his white kandora. Which would suck even more because stains are hell to remove and Sarah would have his head).
At least, he thinks, as he finally completes his journey around the living room, he doesn't have to pour tea and hand-out the freshly picked dates from this morning. He can't say the same for Alia, who looks like she wants to kick him in the balls when he extends his cup for a re-fill.
His uncle's talking about the military service (is Ali going to apply before college or after? He should do it before. Oh, right, but if he does it after then the probability of ending up with a group of immature men would be slimmer. Frankly, Ali couldn't care less) when Khalifa finally texts him back.
Please.
It's how they find themselves in one of Khalifa's cars, the one that should belong to his driver, but they found the keys and sneaked out, driving illegally at the age of 17. He remembers Khalifa telling him about his father teaching him how to drive a car in the desert when he was younger, and they somehow drive around the city uninjured a few hours after lunch.
