A Stranger in Paris
Page 3
Later I would learn that, for these students, Aberystwyth was a moment out of time; a wormhole in space into which they had crawled so that an Iraqi might dine with a Palestinian or an Israelite, and share tobacco and good food; it was a place where they were forced to fend for themselves, cook and do laundry for the first time, though back home most had servants and wives – several wives in some cases.
The strip lights flickered, and as the mist from the sea came in and night set, the first-floor kitchen hovered like a golden ball in the night above campus. My fellow travellers had come from far. Some had fought in wars. I’d not yet lived. My wars had been at home indoors with an OCD mother, or at a single-sex comprehensive school, where I could count the number of times I’d been allowed to bring friends home on one finger. Was that the reason I’d slipped so quickly into a claustrophobic relationship with Steve?
A grey-haired man from Glasgow called Iain joined us. He was the only other European. Small and wiry with a handle-bar moustache, he’d been in battle too. In a previous life, he was an army captain, but had dropped out with ‘a bout of pacifism’. He helped himself to a glass of Rafi’s whisky, rolled himself a cigarette and started ribbing with Josephar, the two men playing fisty-cuffs. Iain wore check carpet-slippers, neatly pressed jeans and a navy-blue pullover, the kind fishermen wear. He jiggled his knee nervously as he talked, swinging the slipper on the end of his foot, rolling the next cigarette before he’d finished the first. The table between us was laden with cardboard boxes full of wine and beer and lots of supermarket brand cola.
David hugged Ahmad from Bagdad. ‘My brother’, he said, ‘has been in the war and in the desert many years. Now we enjoy friendship and good food.’
Ahmad smiled. He didn’t speak much English. His eyes were red and bleary, his hair a halo of grey frizz. He wouldn’t look at me to begin with, and despite his rough appearance I realised he was gentle as a spring rabbit with a voice soft as dew. ‘Yes, my brother,’ he said to David, ‘my Jewish brother.’ He laughed. ‘Who could imagine?’
Ahmad’s face was scarred and pitted. David told me that his friend was also in his mid-twenties, and when he saw my look of disbelief Ahmad took out a crumpled photograph. It was hard to see the resemblance between the slim, smooth-skinned man in the photo, taken just a few years earlier, and the man standing before me. David talked angrily about chemicals, Iran and the desert. I should have known more about the war this man had fought in. I should at least have known how to pinpoint his country on the map.
‘He may be deported if there’s another war,’ David said. ‘He’s worried about his Masters. But tonight, we eat Rafi’s dal and Pervaiz’s chicken curry.’
Pervaiz sat in the corner with Taloob. He smiled a lot but didn’t say much. A lithe man, bald, with a shiny crown and thick black glasses.
‘Ah, Pervaiz,’ said David, ‘respect to this man, for he is not such a lowly student as us. Pervaiz is a great lecturer in business, overseeing my investigations into the canned food industry, and keeping his sharp eye not just on his friends from Pakistan, but on all of C-block.’
Pervaiz nodded and smiled again.
‘I am both tutor and chaperone,’ he said, pointing to his friend. ‘This is Taloob. He is a prince from my country, so I must keep an eye on him if I do not wish to be shot,’ he winked, ‘for Taloob is not always good and reasonable. He gives me all these worry lines.’ He crumpled his brow to demonstrate.
‘Why, what does he do?’ I asked.
Taloob answered for his chaperone. ‘I have dared to fall in love with an Italian woman named Ombretta, whom I wish to be my bride. But this is not something of which my family, or Rafi, approve.’
Taloob smiled and shook his attractive head. He was dressed in simple but expensive-looking designer clothes, wearing jeans and a white linen shirt. There was something of the young Imran Khan about him. He needed only a cricket jumper. I could see why Ombretta had fallen for him.
Rafi sweated over the pan, beads trickling down his face into his twirling moustache.
The wind drove the rain against the window, rattling the panes, a gentle reminder we were still in Wales. Across the campus on the other side of the gardens were kitchens identical to this one, with students bent over electric hotplates, illuminated like figures on a giant screen long before reality TV. Two students arrived with a large cardboard box piled high with vegetables. They talked to one another in Chinese, filling the fridge, then hastily retreated to their rooms.
‘They are the only people who do not wish to eat with us,’ said David. ‘We have extended the arm of friendship many times but they are happiest alone. We do not judge. Here in C-block everyone must be good to each other and if they are happy, this makes us happy too.’
The plates on the table were chipped and ill-assorted. I was placed next to David, who brandished screw-top wine as if it was a grand cru, and given the job of lighting candles stuck in old wine bottles.
I was grateful no-one had asked me to cook. My mother made our kitchen a no-go zone when we were children. My brother and I were forbidden to enter her sacred space; summoned to the dining room for meals and banned from opening the fridge to serve ourselves. The result of this was that I arrived at university not knowing how to switch on an oven or boil an egg. Throughout my first year I ate in Penbryn Hall of Residence canteen. In our second year Cassie brought home an industrial-sized pack of frozen fish fingers, a massive bag of peas and a family-size pack of dried mashed potato. We lived for a term on this tasty but limited menu. Cassie, the only student to leave university with her bank account in credit, carefully distributing two fish fingers each, per meal. When Steve came along he replaced Cassie, regularly providing one of his two stock favourites: chilli con carne or spag bol. The rest of the time we ate pizza at the Student Union.
Tonight, in C-block, the formica table was laden. Rafi piled my plate high. I put aside my vegetarian ideals and devoured the chicken, knowing I’d need some meat on my bones in the lean months ahead. It certainly beat staying in my room alone with a spider plant for company.
Habte from Ethiopia arrived late from the library and joined us, together with an excitable man with a squeaky voice called Jaime from Chihuahua. No-one waited to be invited; they took a plate from the cupboard and helped themselves from the bowls in the middle of the table. Shamilla from Malaysia, in blue batik dungarees, squeezed in at the end of the table. She shared a room with Michelle in an all-girls block opposite. Michelle disengaged Ramid’s tongue so that she could eat.
‘Every night it’s like this,’ David said. ‘We never know who’s coming so we cook for plenty. No-one goes hungry.’ He was flushed now and had lost the jacket. His shirt had been carefully ironed and I imagined him dressing for dinner. It made a change from those ‘straight out of the dryer’ rugby shirts the rugby boys wore at the Union. David clearly didn’t believe that clothes used for sporting activities could double up as dinner wear. He was attentive to me and when he laid his hand across mine to ask if I would care for a little more Bordeaux, there was an inner jolt of pleasure sadly lacking whenever Steve fizzed open a can of Strong Brew.
When we had finished our instant coffee and the men had smoked their pipes and roll-ups, David stood abruptly.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘We’ll get your coat from my room.’
My coat was in Neath, but I followed my host down the long corridor.
Up and down C-block, the fire doors were slamming as students returned to their rooms for the night. They were off to study, not heading out for a night on the tap like the Ifor Evans boys. I thought of Steve back home in South Wales. I wondered if it was darts tonight, or if he was staying in with his mam and dad. I thought of the wedding list and of all his aunties who had contributed. Some of them were pensioners. It wasn’t moral to take their money even if Auntie Jean had won the sandwich toaster at Bingo.
My current financial situation could only be due to bad karma.
The solitaire diamond i
n my ring dug into my palm like a secret.
I didn’t want to be branded, however sparklingly.
Or to belong to someone else.
That’s what marriage is all about, you dozy mare, my inner father cried.
We sat on the bed. David pressed a button on a cassette player. Richard Clayderman playing Frantic Piano. He smelt strongly of aftershave (David not Richard Clayderman). The moment should have been ridiculous, a cliché to run from, but I was rooted to the spot.
The course of my life was about to change. The thing I called ‘desire’, as it coursed through my every fibre, was the jolt of a new pathway as it carved out a future I had not planned. We stumble into such determining moments; life is a series of them. Their prelude may be nothing more than a plate of tarka dal and a fictitious coat. There were no flashing lights to warn us.
Invisible stagehands came in as we sat on the narrow student bed beneath David’s giant Betty Blue poster. They carried out the painted scenery of Cheshire and Wales, replacing it with views of Paris and the French countryside with its vineyards and Chateaux; the backdrop against which my adult life would now play.
‘May I kiss you?’ David asked with refreshing simplicity. I noticed he didn’t have to get drunk to say this, and he didn’t make a clumsy lunge towards me. The question was asked simply.
‘I can’t,’ I said, pressing my ring deeper into my palm, ‘I’m engaged.’
‘That is a grave pity, for one so young.’
Graves made me think of early death and lost opportunity. I couldn’t waste this moment. It was the most intense I’d ever known.
‘It’s awful,’ I said, ‘but I’m not getting married. I don’t want to anymore. But Steve, my fiancé, doesn’t know that yet. You must think I’m horrible, telling you first.’
‘Mais non,’ he said, placing his hand on mine, ‘but now that I do know, there is perhaps, how shall I say, a little compromise possible?’
He took both my hands and pressed them together beneath his own. I was shaking. I wanted to kiss him. I didn’t want to go home. But it was wrong. As I closed my eyes I saw a line of toasters and waffle-makers spread out on a table like prizes to be won at a quiz show. Steve’s mum and dad were clapping as some cheesy compere shouted at me to ‘Come on down’. Only I was round the back of Television Centre with a long-legged Frenchman.
I grabbed the white starched university sheet from the bed and pulled it over my head, draping it around me.
‘Maybe through the sheet,’ I said. ‘Maybe that wouldn’t count.’
He smiled and pushed me back onto the pillow.
‘Through the sheet is not counting at all,’ he said. ‘See how our lips do not touch.’
And so I kissed my first Frenchman, and though it was only through a university sheet, I knew deep down there were tricky times ahead.
Chapter 4
It was a full six months later when Rafi and my other friends stood on the station platform to say goodbye. David was already in Paris. Taloob, my Imran Khan lookalike friend from Pakistan, was the only one too upset to attend. I found a note from him pushed under my door early that morning. ‘I hope life is always kind to you,’ it said.
I hoped so too.
The night before, back in Cwrt Mawr kitchen, in a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from his new European life, Taloob had asked me to marry him, telling me it was finished with the Italian and he would take me to Pakistan, where he would treat me like a princess. He too saw the window of opportunity closing as his time at university ended. The proposal ended in a dismal, tear-drenched kiss from Taloob infused with our mutual grief: Taloob at the idea of returning to a strict life in Pakistan; me with the anguish of an uncertain welcome in Paris from my estranged boyfriend.
Both of us were lost and clinging to a dream, but I wondered as I boarded the train if the idea of running away to a palace in Pakistan was any more ridiculous than the fool’s errand on which I was about to embark.
That evening, Ahmad tried to joke Taloob out of his tears by telling him I was worth no more than half a camel’s leg now, being Spoilt Goods and all. We laughed, but deep down I knew Ahmad meant it. I’d slept with two men: one a Welsh Methodist; the other a French Orthodox Jew. Oh, and there had been that slight fling with a Greek Cypriot who looked like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot. That was far too many lovers by Muslim standards, and it had cost me any number of camel legs.
My train pulled into the station and a few stray travellers climbed on board. I was making the long journey to Stansted where I had a flight booked, to take me to Beauvais airport on the outskirts of Paris where I would begin my new life.
Rafi, the eldest of the group, placed a podgy hand on my shoulder. Two hard brown eyes stared intently into my own.
‘You know I think you are a fool,’ he said. ‘No good will come of this wild goose chase. If you were my daughter I would take you home and make you clean goat pens until you saw sense.’ He winked but nodded a little sadly, so I knew the message was serious.
My father had said pretty much the same thing as this polite Pakistani gentleman. You need your flaming head testing, were his exact words.
I hung my head miserably. Rafi had not finished.
‘You know that David has told you to let him go. You know you follow him in vain, despite his wishes and contrary to our advice. But we, your friends from Cwrt Mawr C-block, wish you well, and we will be here for you, should you wish to return.’
Rafi closed his arms around me, and then let me go, casting a glance to the skies, as if there was no hope for this foolish girl who had wasted enough of his time. My surrogate family hugged me hard. There was nothing more to be said. I pushed myself out of the group and ran to the train before I could change my mind. I was just in time as the guard blew his whistle and the train pulled out of the station. I settled back on the start of my long, seven-hour journey. There would be time to think as we cut through oppressive purple mountains and dank green valleys. Turning from my fellow passengers I pressed a damp cheek against the cold window pane, bidding a silent farewell to the sheep who clung to the hillsides in mist and fog.
In my pocket, there was a plastic bag filled with sticky globular gulab jalum cakes. I took one out, bit into the soft syrupy interior and tasted rose water through the salt of my tears. I watched the rain pelt the dirty grey windows and played back the last few months, events racing through my mind as fast as the telegraph poles outside the train window, punctuating my mind with incidents which were both joyous and painful to remember. David being Jewish had meant nothing to me. Not at first. I had no idea that being non-Jewish would make me unworthy. On the night I began to take it seriously we were walking home from the Student Union bar, arm in arm. David was wearing his long, dark wool overcoat, which, with his thick black hair and brows always gave him that sombre ‘Death is at the door’ look.
He wasn’t happy.
I’d just feasted on a Friday-night Union pizza with prawns on the top, despite David’s protests. Angry now he told that me since Unclean Foods had traversed my tongue, he couldn’t kiss me.
I laughed.
‘What do you mean, you can’t kiss me?’
‘Prawns, they are not kosher. They do not have – how do you say? – the little wings, to swim with.’
‘Fins.’
‘Oui, exactement. They do not have fins or écailles. How is it? Scales I think. Yes, scales. And they have been in your mouth, so I can’t kiss you.’
When I laughed, he strode off so fast I couldn’t catch him. I ran behind to pull him back. I wanted to prove that his desire to kiss me was greater than these antiquated rules which felt a bit OCD to me.
I’d had enough of rules with no rhyme or reason from my mother. Don’t touch black bin liners. Don’t go near sewer pipes. Cross the road if you see a tramp.
It seemed unjust that although it was okay for David to kiss me when I was still engaged (the toaster and sandwich makers had all gone back to Argos now, and
I’d been told in no uncertain terms by Steve’s mum ‘never to darken their doorway again’) he wouldn’t kiss me because of five shrivelled up prawns topped with cheese and garlic, currently rebirthing in a sea of warm lager.
David pushed me back, hard enough to mean business, holding me at arm’s length.
‘Non,’ he said, ‘Stop!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I retaliated. ‘How can you believe such bollocks? What do you want me to eat? Locusts?’
He gave me that look, all dark and brooding, then stormed off to Cwrt Mawr.
I ran after him. For a few minutes, the only sound was our feet on gravel and heavy breathing.
As we reached the lighted doorway, he spun around waving his long arms in the air.
‘This is the whole problem!’ he cried. ‘This is what you refuse to understand. I am Jewish, and you are not. Je suis Juif. It changes everything.’
‘Well, if it means that much to you, I’ll be Jewish,’ I said. ‘I’ll be juif. Or should that be juive?’
It was better than being a rugby widow.
‘You think it’s that easy, do you?’ he said. ‘You think you can just be Jewish. like that?’ He clicked his fingers.
‘I don’t see why not,’ I said, certain it was all about learning some scripture or something; a religious ceremony perhaps. Special clothes?
In A level RE the Jews never came off very well. They had killed Christ for a start. Surely the fact I loved David enough to want to be Jewish counted for something? Not everyone would go to such lengths for love. It showed how respectful I was of all this crap and how seriously I took his religion.
‘They will never accept you,’ he shouted. ‘Neither my family nor my community. You will always be an outsider.’
‘But that’s –’ I tried to conjure up the worst word I could find, hit him where it hurt, ‘– that’s racist. That’s just as bad as the Nazis in the war.’