These Impossible Things

In the wake of her announcement about being engaged to Harry, Kees’s family stands in protracted, shocked silence. Her father eventually insists she must break off the engagement. When Kees refuses, her mother lashes out, telling her that she will no longer be welcome in her family home if she marries Harry. Kees spends the night writing a letter to her mother explaining herself and her love for Harry, but Kees’s mother lights it on fire without reading it. Kees leaves on an early train; her father, contrary to his habit, does not offer to take her to the train station.

When she returns to her flat, she’s surprised to find Harry there instead of at work. He, in turn, is surprised at Kees’s early return and tries to understand her irritable mood. He asks her why she has been hiding her Quran away and avoiding sex with him. He urges her to confide in him. She lashes out, accusing him of threatening to break up with her because she hasn’t wanted to have sex in recent weeks. They argue, and Kees is unable to stop herself even as she recognizes that she is being unfair to him. They remain tense with each other throughout the rest of the day, though Kees cuddles close to Harry at night while she cries. She doesn’t wear her engagement ring to work the following day, which Addy and Harry both notice. Harry leaves the flowers he bought her next to the ring and leaves them both for Kees to see when she arrives home.

Malak moves in with Ali, though she hides this from her family. One evening, they sit on the couch together while Ali engages in political debates on Twitter. Malak feels upset that he has been tweeting about politics during their romantic evenings together, though she insists to Ali that she doesn’t mind.

Suddenly, Ali says that he is upset that Malak messaged Jacob to wish him a happy birthday several weeks prior. Despite previously claiming that he had no objection to this, he now grows angry, yelling and pacing. Malak’s instinct is defend herself, but she fears this will stoke Ali’s anger, so she instead apologizes. Ali calls her a “whore” for “giving [herself] away” to Jacob (244); he then calls her “disgusting” and storms out. Malak waits for his return, crying and hurrying to delete Jacob’s contact information from her phone and social media. When Ali has not returned even the next day, she goes through her Facebook contacts and deletes all the men whom she has ever thought of as romantic prospects.

When Ali finally returns, he apologizes as Malak cries. They have sex, promising not to leave one another. Though Ali is now tender to her, Jenna wonders if he feels the need to hurt her first before he can show her this type of kindness. She wishes she could discuss her relationship concerns with Jenna and Kees.

Addy criticizes Kees because she is considering breaking up with Harry after being “banished” from her parents’ house over Harry. Kees denies considering a breakup, but Addy comments that this is the only reason she would leave her engagement ring at home. He accuses her of wanting Harry to fear she is leaving him, though he recognizes her impulse to force Harry to bear some of the burden of her “sacrifice” for their relationship. When Kees returns home to an empty apartment, however, she fears losing Harry and regrets her unkindness to him.

She finds Harry at church; his family is surprised when she joins them just as evening services begin. She prays on her own during the service, though she privately thinks that Catholics make too much of a “fuss about the prayers” (256). Vivian, Harry’s mother, tactfully invites Kees to spend the night with them and Harry. As Kees watches Harry’s parents fuss over him, she feels jealous. She starts crying and admits her family has rejected her but says that she plans to marry Harry anyway.

Later, Harry’s parents discuss their shock that Kees’s parents would reject her. Harry holds his sobbing fiancée. Across town, Kees’s mother furiously repaints her kitchen cabinets. Jenna thinks of Mo’s objection to her friendship with Lewis. Malak plans to make her wardrobe more conservative as morning prayers echo across Cairo.

Jenna finds herself exercising compulsively. She enjoys the peace she finds while focusing on the challenge of the workout—this is a respite from her intrusive memories of being raped. She desperately wishes she could go back in time to when she was close to her friends: Malak, Kees, and Lewis.

She and Mo become engaged without ceremony—though Jenna is uncertain that she ever technically agreed to marry him, she is unsurprised when the arrangement happens via their parents. She feels like a spectator as the engagement and wedding preparations progress. Neither Malak nor Kees can attend her engagement party. When she posts a photo of her engagement ring to social media, Kees and Malak respond. Jenna and Malak end up having a long conversation, and Jenna decides to visit Malak in Cairo after her exams are done. Her parents and Mo are all excited about this plan, though Jenna’s mother looks at her strangely, in a way Jenna cannot understand.

When Jenna makes it to Cairo, she and Malak hug each other as soon as they are reunited. Jenna notes that Malak looks very different—she is carefully groomed and dressed, compared to her usual “grungy” style. Jenna initially finds Ali arrogant, but she decides to try and like him since he seems to love Malak.

Jenna adores Cairo and jokes about staying with Malak as they catch up about their respective relationships. They each hide their unhappiness, reporting only the positive aspects of their lives. Malak anxiously reminds Jenna not to mention Jacob, relieved when Jenna cites Mo as being similarly jealous. Though they nearly ask one another why they seem sad, they remain silent. 

Kees frets over her first big case, and her worries are exacerbated by her family’s silence—even her siblings do not respond to her calls and messages. Kees spends long hours at work, and Harry says nothing despite the stress he feels at the growing distance between them.

Their new flat is ready, but Kees wants to wait to get married before they officially move in together. Vivian is anticipating a big wedding, but Kees pragmatically suggests doing an Islamic marriage—a nikah—soon, so they can live together even before the wedding, which will make them married under British law. Vivian helps with planning the nikah, though Kees is uncertain if her attitude stems from affection for her future daughter-in-law or relief that Harry doesn’t plan to convert. The event quickly becomes bigger than Kees planned, and though she feels disloyal to Malak over inviting Jacob, Harry insists.

At the nikah, Kees attempts to mentally downplay the event’s significance to suppress her disappointment over her family’s absence. Though she tries to be grateful for Vivian’s enthusiasm, all the details Vivian gets incorrect makes Kees sad and embarrassed. Kees dislikes the imam performing the ceremony, whom she located with great difficulty as others refused to perform an interfaith nikah, often criticizing Kees for her choice.

Jenna arrives, brushing off Kees’s apologies for not being in touch for so long. Jenna is excited to do Kees’s makeup and is calmly sympathetic when Kees expresses her disappointment with how the ceremony is turning out. When Kees says that she created all these problems by falling in love with Harry, Jenna rejects this, saying that Kees has been brave while Jenna herself has been a coward. Before Kees can ask what she means, Harry’s sisters-in-law enter and the conversation shifts.

Just before the ceremony beings, Kees’s father appears. He seems frail and Kees worries this is her fault. Her father says he has come without her mother’s knowledge and must quickly leave. He has brought her an ornate gold bangle which, he reports, he and Kees’s mother bought for Kees when she was a child and kept for her wedding day. When she cries, he embraces her. When he continues to assert that he does not support the match, however, despite Kees’s attempts to explain that she and Harry worship the same God, Kees grows angry.

Harry enters and introduces himself to Kees’s father. He tells Kees that the imam, despite having been paid, has changed his mind at the last minute; he isn’t coming. Harry leaves to call other imams and Kees’s father reports that he will reach out to his contacts, as well—he cannot stay and show his support, but he can ensure she has an imam to perform the nikah. While they search, Harry’s family tries to be helpful without really knowing how.

Meanwhile, the narrative includes accounts of how Jenna’s mother worries over her daughter’s recent sadness. In Cairo, Ali throws a mug, striking Malak in the head. Revolution begins in Egypt.

Kees’s father finds an imam willing to perform the ceremony. Before he leaves, he asks Kees if she is continuing to pray, and she truthfully agrees. Harry pulls Kees’s father aside and apologizes for the hurt and offense he caused his family. Before leaving, Kees’s father gives Harry’s father money for the wedding; Harry’s father calls organizing the ceremony for Kees a “blessing” and an “honor.” Kees’s father then waits on a nearby bench until the imam calls him, hours later, to confirm that Kees is married.

After the ceremony, Kees is pleased that the imam didn’t mention anything about Harry’s religion. She thanks Addy for bringing a ladoo (which is a traditional dessert) and a buttonhole flower for Harry, as these added culturally responsive details to the ceremony. He reports that Harry’s brother Gus is gay, despite being married to a woman, and Kees refutes this. Kees and Jenna sit alone for a while, commenting that it has been a year and a half since the three friends have been together. They each recognize that the other seems “sadder.” When Harry sees them sitting quietly together, he leaves them in peace.

Malak recalls how Ali threw a plate at her and later claimed he wasn’t himself when he did it. He apologized, claiming she makes him “a better man” (308). Malak learns how to navigate life, with her foremost thought being keeping Ali happy. She begins attending female-only outings, as mixed-sex outings receive suspicion and hostility from Ali. She chooses concealing swimwear and deletes old photos on social media on which she wore more revealing outfits. However, she and Ali do not, at his insistence, follow one another on social media.

Malak’s memories of other acts of physical abuse meld together—she rationalized them by arguing that they were exceedingly rare. She regrets the instances when she shouts back at him, though she never grows physically violent herself. She finds Ali’s tenderness when he apologizes addictive. She admits to herself that Ali’s behavior is abusive but finds herself uncertain about how to react.

On January 25, 2011, the 25 January Revolution begins in Egypt, distracting Ali. Because he is preoccupied, his violence against Malak temporarily abates, in part because Malak stays with her cousins while Ali attends political protests. She reassures family and friends in England that the violence is less than it appears via news stories, even believing this herself until she sees a man die at a protest that turned violent. She stops to comfort this dying man and is late getting home; however, Ali is furious and shouts over her explanations, causing Malak to think longingly of Jacob. Later that day, she learns of Kees’s nikah and feels lonely.

The revolution ends and life in Cairo becomes normal again, though Malak finds teaching even less fulfilling than before, given the disinterest of her students. Ali’s abuse becomes physical again. Eldin, an older coworker and friend, notes Malak’s malaise, and after hearing her symptoms, comments that it sounds as though Malak might be pregnant. When Malak insists that she uses birth control pills, Eldin notes that she, too, was taking the same pills when she became pregnant with one of her sons. When Malak takes a pregnancy test, it turns out to be positive. Her instinctual response is to ask about abortion; this possibility is complicated not only by its legal prohibition in Egypt but by the unknown gestational age of the fetus. Later, a doctor informs her she is three months pregnant.

Jenna wakes at 4:15 am from a blurry recurring dream in which she has killed someone. She waits until five o’clock to go for a run, ignoring the sight of her wedding dress. She has left all the wedding planning to her mother, which her mother finds strange. Jenna still holds back from Mo, though she felt slight hope for their relationship the one time when she allowed herself to kiss him passionately and he returned that passion.

At 4:15 am, Kees hasn’t left work from the day before—her first big trial has arrived. A coworker warns that Kees’s attentiveness to work surpasses ambition and urges her to deal with her situation at home as it will affect the quality of her work. Kees returns to the home Harry’s parents bought for her and Harry—she is uncomfortable with its empty rooms. She feels an intense need for her mother to visit the apartment before it feels like a true home. She knows her intense mourning over her lost family is challenging for Harry, but she doesn’t know how to move forward.

At 4:15 am in Cairo, Malak creeps from bed to research pregnancy information, looking both at options to get an abortion and the money needed to quickly marry and raise a child in Cairo. She worries about having a child with a man who abuses her. One night, as Ali arrives from work, she sends a quick email—the following chapter reveals that she emailed Kees.