The Pact We Made
What if you had to choose between your family and your freedom?.‘How could I explain to her that nothing in my life felt real? That in a country like Kuwait, where everyone knew everything about each other, the most monumental thing to ever happen to me was buried and covered over? For the sake of my reputation, my future, my sister’s and cousins; the family honor sat on my little shoulders, so no-one could ever know.’Dahlia has two lives. In one, she is a young woman with a good job, great friends and a busy social life. In the other, she is an unmarried daughter living at home, struggling with a burgeoning anxiety disorder and a deeply buried secret: a violent betrayal too shameful to speak of.With her thirtieth birthday fast-approaching, pressure from her mother to accept a marriage proposal begins to strain the family. As her two lives start to collide and fracture, all Dahlia can think of is escape: something that seems impossible when she can’t even leave the country without her father’s consent.But what if Dahlia does have a choice? What if all she needs is the courage to make it?Set in contemporary Kuwait, The Pact We Made is a deeply affecting and timely debut about family, secrets and one woman’s search for a different life.
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The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Layla AlAmmar 2019
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photography © HMoodboard/Getty Images
Layla AlAmmar asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008284442
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008284466
Version: 2019-01-16
To Mom, my first reader, for handing me a book all those years ago.
‘At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life – that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.’
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
‘No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.’
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: A Grotesque Pandemonium
Chapter 8: The Sleep of Reason …
Chapter 10: Who More Is Surrendered?
Chapter 12: He Cannot Make Her Out
Chapter 13: What One Does to the Other
Chapter 17: Those Specks of Dust
We were eight years old in my first memory of the marriage pact. Mona and I were at Zaina’s house. Her oldest sister had just gotten married, and we were bursting with talk of all that we’d seen and heard at the wedding. We looked like mummy brides, wrapped in her mother’s headscarves. Mona had found ribbons and flowers which she’d braided and pinned into our hair. We took turns being the bride while the other two played the parts of sisters, supporting the train, giving admonishing smiles during the Yelwa, and bobbing up and down in exultant dances.
‘When she came through the door, everyone was so quiet,’ Zaina said, standing at the door to her room, holding a bouquet of fake roses. ‘All the lights went out and there was just a spotlight on her, and then “Heb AlSa’ada”came on and she started walking. Like this.’ She took solemn steps forward, her feet drowning in the heels we’d pilfered. Mona held and re-draped her train as she walked. I was supposed to sing the song, but I was imagining walking down a long aisle with a spotlight on me while everyone stared. It wouldn’t be like weddings we saw on television where the man stood at the end. It would just be me and a never-ending aisle leading to an empty settee. I could trip and fall, walk too slow or too fast, forget to smile at the photographer or drop my bouquet. Anything could happen.
‘Dahlia!’ Mona whined, drawing out all the syllables in my name. I started singing, but Zaina had already reached the desk chair we were using as a kosha. She turned to look over her shoulder while Mona metamorphosed into photographer, snapping shots of Zaina smiling, laughing, and looking coy. I knew what was coming next; I always got the groom’s role.
‘Yella ya mi’ris,’ Mona hissed, waving me back towards the door.
I obeyed, hurrying down our makeshift aisle. Mona immediately sprang into action, chanting the groom’s song as I walked back towards them. The man had it easier; he didn’t have to milk the moment. He was encouraged to walk as quickly as possible to his bride. I got to Zaina and gave her a kiss on the forehead before taking the chair beside her. Mona re-draped the train and continued to snap fake photos as we interlocked our arms and mimed sipping juice from tall, flutey glasses.
‘We should get married together,’ Zaina said, sighing up to the ceiling. ‘All three of us, on the same day.’
‘Yeah!’ Mona cried, clapping her hands together. ‘And we can have one big party!’
‘We could all walk down the aisle together,’ I offered.
