First

The best wife can make a throne of tattered linen and royalty of a drunkard. Hibba Amoud knew this, and yet staring at her snoring, whimpering husband, she could do nothing but strain in the unrealistic alchemy of swapping a smudge for sheen.

Even well past dawn, when the smells of a village collectively releasing pent-up gas and brewing ink-black coffee laid thick upon the wafer walls of her house, Hibba stared in vain.

Beneath his scowling, chapped lips and wispy beard, Yousif Amoud was nearly all belly, scrapping about with legs fit to buckle under the weight of one more errant slice of bread. His head was peaceful in sleep, washed clean of dreams by muscle relaxers he'd hustled from the local doctor. Regardless of how empty his mind was in (or out) of sleep, Yousif's body saw fit to enact a reign of terror on the Amoud's sole two rooms. Twig legs thundered out like a horse fearing the lash, arms coarse and hair-matted spun like those of a swimmer who just took a bump on the head, and Yousif's sinuses performed the nightly ritual of revenging years of jealousy on the neighbors and keeping them up past midnight.

“I could choke him,” thought Hibba, toying with the fabric of her dress and dwelling on plans made more viable through lack of sleep. She quickly abandoned her regular thoughts of homicide and got up to make coffee.

If there was anything more vile to Hibba than watching her husband sleep (she suspected there wasn't), it could still be remedied by a morning sipping cheap Nescafe and basking in the Lebanese sun for a few hours, if not minutes. Though it's said that the key to a husband's heart is his stomach, the assurance of a wife's sanity can surely be found in coffee grounds.

The unbroken thread of silence awarded by sitting on a neon-pink plastic chair scrunched in the corner of a porch watching folk pass by was actually filled with sounds. This din, however, was a balm whereas Yousif's cacophony was maddening. Occasionally tooth-less old men shuffled by with brows beaten by toil and still managed a wave, while their youthful counterparts danced and charged each other in naïve facsimiles of war.

Behind the chipped door, haunting reminders of her husband's nightly thrashing echoed.

“Let him crash,” Hibba said into the endless pit of her mug. It wasn't hate that kept her up, though her thoughts made it seem that way. It was more of an extended annoyance, as if her husband was a child in the midst of arrested development, incapable of maturing yet too old to be coddled.

Halfway through her first mug of coffee, however, her morning ritual of near-obsessive thoughts regarding Yousif was invaded by a high-pitched call, almost a warbling. It could only be her neighbor Hayma coming from her door, boorish and pestering where she thought herself sociable and inviting.

“Who's that over there?” Hayma called before she came into sight, “Hibba? By god, I need some coffee.” Hayma was testament that no matter how irritating the wife, at some base level a snoring husband was to blame.

“Come up, I have another mug set out already,” said Hibba, suddenly aware of her unconscious act of premeditated courtesy. She was quick to feign interest in Hayma's day-to-day activities, and whether or not she noticed the vapid affirmatives Hibba invariably replied with, Hayma blustered on, revealing more than what was proper.

When the only object one can give is courtesy, often the only punishment one can inflict is withholding it. In that way, many of the villagers living in Arab Saleem acted as saints, hoarding the hopes of one day shunning their neighbors and revenging slights to their honor.

That they rarely got this opportunity didn't enter into their judgments, and the villagers led well-mannered lives purely by way of miscalculation.