The sellers set up their produce on identical grey tables around the yard. Some, with jars of cranberry honey and bottles of kefir, faced the marble columns of Memorial Church, while others faced the steps of Widener Library, tiered like a Mayan temple.
Jamal and I walked toward Erdem’s booth, which was buzzing with undergrads waiting in line. Jamal turned to me and said, ‘Can you believe he dropped out of his PhD for this?’
‘Maybe we’re the stupid ones,’ I said. ‘Continuing to study in a dying discipline.’
Jamal ignored my comment and checked his phone, and I looked at the trees holding on to the few orange leaves left. I felt an intense shiver and nudged him, saying, ‘It’s too cold for November.’
‘You say this every year,’ he said. It was true; whenever winter neared, I felt slightly depressed and daydreamed about being back in Beirut under a closer winter sun.
When we reached Erdem’s table, he opened his arms and hugged us. ‘Habibis,’ he said, offering a few milk baklavas. We chatted for a bit, with Erdem updating us on the restaurant he was saving up for in Watertown, while we complained about writing our theses.
We were about to leave when a customer wearing a loose hijab, with some strands of brown hair dangling over her forehead, interrupted us and said, ‘Hey, it’s you.’ Jamal realised she was speaking to him and replied awkwardly, ‘It’s me.’
‘I just wanted to say I loved your speech the other weekend.’
‘What speech?’ Jamal asked.
‘At Café Algiers for the “Reading, It’s Political” event,’ she said. ‘When you mentioned that therapy is neoliberal and that we should turn to the archive to heal … Man, I was clapping like a proud auntie.’
‘I agree with such a badass statement,’ he said. ‘But that wasn’t me.’
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, introducing herself as Fatima. ‘I know you’re being modest. Anyway, I have to run to class, but I’m going to the cinema tomorrow with my partner, Dany, to see Carol. Join us.’
‘Sure,’ I interjected. ‘Yes, Jamal is being modest. Despite his fiery speeches, he’s an introvert at heart.’
Fatima gave him her number, then walked towards Divinity Avenue, and we walked over to the Tozzer Library. We were about to enter when Jamal, visibly upset, stopped me and said, ‘Why did you tell her it was me?’
‘Why not,’ I said. ‘You have an activist doppelganger. The whole thing was too good. If only she knew you were at the Sheraton Commander having dinner with your mom during the Muslim ban protests.’
‘Don’t use this against me,’ he said. ‘That was the only night she was in Cambridge. But seriously, why are we going tomorrow? I don’t feel comfortable continuing the charade.’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ve always wanted to see Carol. By tomorrow, she will have forgotten all about it.’
He nodded hesitantly.
Brutalist Autumn. Courtesy of the author.
*
We were the only ones at the film, except for a few older white men sitting behind us. I watched, enthralled by its perfectly lonely settings and Cate Blanchett’s stoic performance. At some point, maybe it was the wine, I teared up. When the film ended, I quickly dried my eyes and said, ‘Wow, that was the right kind of intense.’
‘It was so moving,’ Dany said, bringing her feet together.
‘Really?’ Jamal said, standing up. ‘I thought it was as heteronormative as a breakfast cereal ad.’
Fatima laughed so hard that I wondered if she would spit out her tonsils. ‘You nailed it, man. Such a cheap film.’
Jamal walked out, smiling mischievously, and Fatima followed him. On the way to the restaurant, he sliced up the film, critiquing its supposedly hollow narrative, while Fatima chimed in with a list of grievances.
I was confused about why Jamal was acting so holier-than-thou. Dany was also a bit fed up, saying, ‘Harvard students always need an audience.’
‘And we’re not the right audience, I guess,’ I said.
She laughed a little and added, ‘This is what happens when they make us hyper-fixate on theory. We encounter Carol and her lover as categories instead of two lovers trying to live their story. We lose the compassion necessary to fall in love for them. We lose the heart necessary to experience a work of art.’
‘Exactly,’ I said.
At the entrance to Border, a bouncer wearing thick earmuffs asked for IDs. ‘Oh shit,’ Dany exclaimed. ‘I forgot mine at home.’
‘Oh,’ Fatima said. ‘The graduate housing isn’t too far. Let’s get it.’
‘Once I walk back to campus, I can’t go out again,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk soon.’ Dany left before any of us could say goodbye. I knew she was lying about the ID, and I wished I had lied too.
For the rest of the night, Jamal sprinkled anecdotes about his radical life, new to me but powerful to Fatima, who listened with deep conviction. At some point, I couldn’t handle the feeling of being an extra in Dead Poets Society, so I excused myself, pretending I had a stomachache, and left twenty dollars on the table.
Cambridge was as still as a snow globe on the way home, and my head was loud and busy, replaying Fatima and Jamal’s conversations. Who was this friend I had been sitting across from? It was as though he had acquired a new personality, and Fatima had arrived just in time to activate its full potential.
I began to wonder whether I had somehow made it difficult for him to show this side of himself in our friendship. But how? He had always mocked people who spoke with that kind of moral certainty.
‘It’s just one night,’ I kept telling myself. I decided to ignore it and messaged him, saying it was fun.
I hadn’t left the house in weeks because the harsh winter cold made even a short walk feel like a journey, but when I finally did, I started seeing Jamal everywhere.
Jamal never replied.
Once, he sat at Tatte café in his long Burberry trench coat, eyes fixed on his screen. Another time, I passed Lush and saw him filling his basket with purple and yellow bath bombs. In that moment, I smiled, recognizing the friend I used to know. I thought about going inside and saying hello, but I was too scared and too proud.
A month later, I was returning books at the Widener Library when I saw him sitting at a long table, reading near the green lamps. There was no point in avoiding him anymore, so I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. He removed his earphones and turned towards me, a bit startled. ‘Oh hey,’ he whispered. I was already triggered by this Bostonian hello, devoid of emotion. Where was his warm hug? But I said ‘hey’ back, and we headed to the basement to talk. When we arrived, I bought an instant coffee from the vending machine and asked if he wanted one, but he declined.
‘So how are things?’ I said, realising as I looked at his awkward smile that I missed him.
‘It’s been busy,’ he said. ‘With all the postdoc applications and finishing grants. You know the precarity of being a PhD.’
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. Because I truly knew – I was in my last year of funding and wasn’t sure how I would be able to stay in Cambridge next year. He, on the other hand, had a bank on speed dial.
We chatted for a while, and he told me that Fatima would join him in Amman for the winter break. ‘We’ll go to the Azraq refugee camp together,’ he said. ‘We’re shooting a short documentary on the permanence of temporary spaces.’
‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Does she have a background in film?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘We want it to be a rogue project where the participants co-produce it with us. We got the Humanica grant for it!’
I was about to tell him about visiting an old school friend fromBeirut who moved to San Francisco, but he didn’t seem interested.
‘Well, it was good seeing you,’ I said. ‘I have to run. Dr. Leonard is waiting, and you know how strict he is about office hours.
The first snow in Harvard Yard. Courtesy of the author.
*
Being back in Cambridge after the break was not as bleak as it usually was. Energised by city chatter and a sea more alive than ours by Boston Harbour, I was ready to take on the spring semester. After unpacking, I decided to text Jamal. We hadn’t spoken for over a month, but distance sometimes helps.
‘Surprise, surprise, it’s still freezing. Thai dinner at Nine Tastes?’ I texted.
I waited to see if he would type, but he didn’t. A few hours passed with no reply, so I walked to The Abbey next door and ordered a martini and fries. I tried reading The Broken Fountain, but I couldn’t concentrate, so I ordered and drank more cocktails as my surroundings started to blur.
Near the end of the night, my phone beeped. It was a message from Jamal: Shit, I just saw this. I was with Fatima at a poetry fundraiser at Brookline Booksmith. Coffee soon?
I laughed a little and typed: Maybe sell one of your watches to close the fundraiser. Or wouldn’t that be radical enough for Fatima?
I wanted to click send, and I was close, feeling a nervous tingling across my body. But I put my phone down and ignored him. I turned to face the crowd behind me when a violent thought hit me like a migraine. Was I to blame? That day at the farmer’s market when I thought I was being mischievous. Was I another Fatima, manufacturing the activist?
I paid the bill and walked out of the bar. I decided I would no longer obsess over him.
For the first month of the semester, I did my best to avoid him, and I knew he was doing the same. I started studying at the Yenching Library: small and depressing, with a ticking clock that unnerved me. I knew his class schedule at Tozzer, so I made sure to leave before he arrived. Whatever overnight studying I needed to do was now done in my dorm room, with a bottle of Barefoot red wine. But I couldn't escape hearing about him because, on campus, he was becoming a leader among graduate students, organising sit-ins at the undergraduate dining halls and joining immigration clinics at the law school. The more I heard about his heroism, the more annoyed I became that he showed compassion for everyone except his friend. Yet I resisted confrontation because I knew that a fight with an anthropologist is as petty as a fight on Real Housewives.
A few months into the semester, we had vanished from each other's sight, and I felt confident about my trajectory. I finally decided to leave academia when I realised my research had given me the answers I needed: ethnography doesn't have to be produced only in academia and staying in it, with its infighting and performativity, felt as bad as being in the corporate sector. I wasn’t ready to tell my friends in the cohort my decision yet because I knew it would trigger a wave of anxiety and judgement. Only Erdem knew.
Near the end of April, on the sunniest Sunday in spring, when the red and yellow tulips had grown out of every corner in Cambridge, I went to help Erdem set up for the farmer’s market. He was getting ready to open his restaurant, Nemrut, and I placed a few flyers for the opening day on the table. We were having tea and waiting for customers when we heard a loud ruckus. The crowd shifted towards Widener Library, and on the steps, I saw a tall man with a buzz cut and a large golden hoop dangling from his left ear. It was Jamal, and next to him was Fatima, still in a hoodie, this time red. But she had a different energy, glowing like someone who had gone on a long holistic journey, and she stood beside him with intense pride: the king and his kingmaker.
Jamal cleared his throat and began a long-winded speech:
Enter to Grow in Wisdom. That’s what the inscription on the Dexter Gate says. But wisdom for whom? For the undergraduate crushed by student debt and Ritalin? Or for the labor of a doctoral student feeding a never-ending machine of knowledge production that serves only one goal, the accumulation of capital?
The speech went on, and I noticed that Jamal had a new voice, as if he had purchased one with stronger vocal cords and the ability to command. But the anxiety in his eyes remained, glimmering like raindrops on a leaf. At some point, Fatima seemed annoyed that the crowd was not engaging, so she took the mic from him and yelled, ‘Stop buying and start listening.’ She paced across the library entrance, confronting students and telling them, ‘Fuck your undergrad paper. Wake up,’ until a few security guards came out and said it was time to wrap this up. Jamal, looking a bit horrified that Fatima was stealing the show, pretended to go along, raised his fist, and scanned the crowd. We locked eyes for a minute and I stared into them long enough to exchange a sea of unheard words.