The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

husband and wife
still sounds a bit odd to Rabih and Kirsten
as well. They likewise often place the titles in ironic quotation marks to mitigate
their weight and incongruity, for they don’t feel anything like the sort of people
they tend to associate with the words, which evoke characters far older, more
established, and more miserable than they take themselves to be. “Mrs. Khan is
here!” Kirsten likes to call out when she comes home, playing with a concept
that remains only distantly believable to either of them.
“So, Rabih, where do you work?” asks Murray, who is gruff, bearded, in the
oil industry, and a onetime admirer of Kirsten’s at university.
“At an urban-design firm,” Rabih tells him, and feels distinctly like a girl, as
he does sometimes in the presence of more solid males. “We do civic spaces and
spatial zoning.”
“Hang on, mate,” says Murray, “you’ve lost me already.”
“He’s an architect,” Kirsten clarifies. “He’s done houses and offices as well.
And hopefully he’ll do more when the economy picks up again.”
“I see: Sitting out the recession in these dark parts of the kingdom, are we,
before bursting back into the limelight to put up the next Great Pyramid of
Giza?”
Murray chortles a bit too loudly at his own unfunny jibe, but it’s not this that
bothers Rabih; rather, it’s the way Kirsten joins in, cradling in her hand what
remains of her pint, inclining her head towards her old college buddy and
laughing heartily along with him, as though something quite amusing really has

---

been said.
Rabih stays quiet on the way home, then claims he’s tired, answers with the
famous “Nothing” when asked what’s wrong, and—once they are inside the flat,
which still smells of fresh paint—heads into the den with the sofa bed in it and
slams the door shut behind him.
“Oh, come on!” she says, raising her voice to be heard. “At least tell me
what’s going on.”
To which he replies, “Fuck you, leave me alone.” Which is sometimes how
fear can sound.
Kirsten brews herself some tea, then goes to the bedroom, insisting to herself
—not entirely truthfully—that she has no idea what her new husband (who truly
did look an odd sight in the Bow Bar) can possibly be so upset about.
At the heart of a sulk lies a confusing mixture of intense anger and an equally
intense desire not to communicate what one is angry about. The sulker both
desperately needs the other person to understand and yet remains utterly
committed to doing nothing to help them do so. The very need to explain forms
the kernel of the insult: if the partner requires an explanation, he or she is
clearly not worthy of one. We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a
sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should
understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love.
Eventually she gets out of bed and knocks at the door of the den. Her mother
always said one should never go to bed on an argument. She is still telling
herself that she does not understand what’s up. “Darling, you’re behaving as if
you were two years old. I’m on your side, remember? At least explain what’s
wrong.”
And inside the narrow room crammed with books about architecture, the
oversized toddler turns over on the sofa bed and can think of nothing beyond the
fact that he will not relent—that and, irrelevantly, how strange seem the words
stamped in silver foil along the spine of a book on a nearby shelf: 
MIES VAN DER ROHE.
It’s an unusual situation for him to be in. He always tried very hard, in past
relationships, to be the one who cared a little less, but Kirsten’s buoyancy and
steeliness have cast him in the opposite role. It’s his turn now to lie awake and
fret. Why did all her friends hate him? What does she see in them? Why didn’t
she step in to help and defend him?