The Things I Would Tell You

by Sabrina Mahfouz

  ABLAH: And miraculously, out of the 345 ones available, they’ll go to see a Botox doctor newly arrived from London?

  CAMILLA: They have to maintain a high status within their groups and a high status as a woman is impossible to maintain without a ferocious approach to anti-ageing, as you’ll know. They will want the best.

  ABLAH: It is funny.

  CAMILLA: What?

  ABLAH: I’ve wanted to be in a room with one of you people for so long and now here I am and I can’t even catch my thoughts—

  CAMILLA: We’re conscious of the fact we’ve made plenty of mistakes when it comes to Iraq—

  ABLAH: Mistakes!?

  CAMILLA: That’s why we’re pursuing non-traditional routes into finding out what we can about those intent on destroying innocent lives.

  ABLAH: Innocent lives. I wonder what you mean by innocent.

  CAMILLA: I mean people who aren’t planning to attack other people.

  ABLAH: Do you know anyone who died there?

  CAMILLA: Yes. My partner. She was twenty-three.

  ABLAH: I am sorry to hear that. Truly.

  CAMILLA: The company who made the armour for the vehicle she was in made some redundancies to save costs. They didn’t realise they’d got rid of everyone who knew how to fit the armour.

  ABLAH: And yet, you carried on?

  CAMILLA: Ablah, I can’t stand here and give you a speech on the magnificence of the monarchy and the righteousness of our military interventions. I know plenty of them, but – that’s not why I do this.

  ABLAH: You believe you can make a difference? Save some lives?

  CAMILLA: I know I can, I do. The work we do, it saves lives, it keeps at least some people safe, we just can’t make a poster out of it.

  ABLAH: I arrived here when I was fifteen. We literally walked through flames to find ourselves here, in Shepherd’s Bush. It wasn’t as friendly then as it is now, not as easy to find a piece of home. My mother didn’t speak any more. She’d refused to leave Iraq earlier. My sister and my brother, younger than me, twelve and ten. Small, sweet faces, big eyes. They were the cherished ones. I was arrogant, precocious, rebellious. The two little ones were cheeky but adoring of my parents. They loved doing anything for them. In Iraq, one day, they went out to the market for my mother, she’d ran out of the cheese my father lived for. I was sulking, listening to music, doodling the name of a boy I had a crush on all over my schoolbooks. Life continues as much as it can, even when it has been deemed worthless by those in buildings like the one where you work.

  We all heard the explosion. So quick. Like a pillowcase being ripped in half whilst you sleep on it. Then the falling. A sprinkling, really. Bricks and limbs and pipes and poles falling so softly, like raindrops from where we stood, searching with our eyes. We couldn’t see the damage, only hear it. We stood frozen outside the house, me, my mother and father, wishing our ears to be wrong, wishing to see their small, sweet faces running to us, laughing that they’d played a trick, they’d made us think we were in a film, here is the cheese, baba, here is a kiss, ’ammi, here is a hug, big sister.

  We had to wrap parts of their little bodies together in a white cloth because we didn’t know who was who.

  My father said we had to go then, at least to save me, the uncherished child who was now the only child and so, cherished, a little. My mother didn’t argue because she didn’t speak. We made our awkward, painful, silent way here, to you and I was glad, I really was. I flourished.

  CAMILLA: What about your mother?

  ABLAH: To lose children, there’s no coming back from that.

  CAMILLA: It must be… horrific.

  ABLAH: So many children have died in Iraq. All over. So many, still dying. Small bodies, the cloth for five of them can be made from one adult’s shroud. If they can even be found, to be buried. War, Camilla, does not keep any people ‘safe’. Pause. Ablah is upset. Camilla is momentarily saddened by this accusation of failure on her part.

  CAMILLA: I know we’re asking a lot from you, Ablah and we wouldn’t do so unless—

  ABLAH: Did Nasim tell you why we’ve had a difficult relationship?

  CAMILLA: No, he didn’t.

  ABLAH: I hadn’t spoken to him for five years until two months ago.

  CAMILLA: Five years is a long time.

  ABLAH: To not speak to your only child? It’s a lifetime.

  CAMILLA: Because he went to Iraq?

  ABLAH: Despite all my stories, all my ranting to him against the war machine, despite never having heard a ‘hello’ from his Grandma, never being able to meet his uncle and aunty, he still decided the money was too good to say no to. To privately patrol a prison camp. For the British Army. Unthinkable. Indigestible. I – well, everything is a failure after that.

  CAMILLA: He came back safe.

  ABLAH: Thank God, he did. Who knows what happened to those he patrolled… But now that I’m talking to him again, trying, trying to untangle how we could hold such opposing views on such fundamental matters, squeezing out the love in my heart to cover the scars of sorrow he caused me – I simply cannot step away from him to do what you’re asking me to, even if I wanted to. Do you understand Camilla? I won’t leave my son again.

  Pause.

  CAMILLA: I had hoped to tell you this once you’d agreed, as a pleasant surprise of sorts. I hadn’t anticipated such...

  ABLAH: What, tell me what?

  CAMILLA: Nasim is… He’s working for us now.

  ABLAH: No. No.

  CAMILLA: He’s been through the recruitment process, all the vetting, the training.

  ABLAH: You fucking… you stood there and knew… he told me he was working on writing, he was going on a… course—

  CAMILLA: He’s legally obliged to not reveal where he works, of course.

  ABLAH: What is he going to be doing—

  CAMILLA: I can’t tell you—

  ABLAH: Bullshit, you’ve just told me more than you should anyway. So tell me.

  CAMILLA: He… he’s due to be deployed to Baghdad, soon. Pause.

  ABLAH: For how long?

  CAMILLA: Two months, to begin with.

  ABLAH: To begin with?

  CAMILLA: He has a lot of talent, very promising.

  ABLAH: You vultures!

  CAMILLA: Ablah—

  ABLAH: How can you do this to people? You know what it feels like to lose someone senselessly, or was that all just a lie to get me talking—

  CAMILLA: That was the truth.

  ABLAH: And yet – and yet – are you even human?

  CAMILLA: This is what I can do. To make the world I want to see.

  ABLAH: Why did you tell me about Nasim?

  CAMILLA: I was always planning to. I just thought it would be under… more favourable circumstances.

  ABLAH: Are you able to stop his deployment? Do you have that authority?

  CAMILLA: I can’t stop him being deployed. I could certainly cite conflict of interests – if you were going to be there, of course – and push that he’s sent elsewhere or given a London-based desk job for a while.

  ABLAH: Desk job. You must give him a desk job.

  CAMILLA: I can only do that if the conflict of interest is there – you.

  ABLAH: If I say yes, when will I become… active?

  CAMILLA: Next week, ideally. We have the clinic ready, the timing is crucial, for reasons I can’t tell you yet, until you sign.

  ABLAH: Will he know?

  CAMILLA: He’s still junior. He won’t be cleared to that level. We’ll come up with a reason.

  ABLAH: My God, my God. How did this happen? Would you be able to guarantee he would never be deployed to Iraq?

  CAMILLA: For as long as I’m employed by the Ministry, yes. Beyond that, no.

  Pause.

  CAMILLA: I’m aware you need to get back to work soon.

  ABLAH: Yes.

  CAMILLA: But this is quite urgent, due to the—

  ABLAH: Crucial timing?

  CAMILLA:
Yes.

  ABLAH: If I say no?

  CAMILLA: We really hope you won’t.

  ABLAH: If I do?

  CAMILLA: Nasim will go to Baghdad…

  ABLAH: And?

  CAMILLA: And counter-terrorism measures have become pretty comprehensive these days.

  ABLAH: You’d arrest me?

  CAMILLA: We could.

  ABLAH: Would you? Really?

  CAMILLA: There’s been a lot of arrests. For women with… your background.

  ABLAH: I take it you don’t mean in medicine.

  CAMILLA: The first person to be convicted under the updated anti-terrorism legislation was a Muslim woman who wrote poetry.

  ABLAH: Poetry?

  CAMILLA: About decapitation and various, worryingly violent things.

  ABLAH: Ever read American Psycho? Bret Easton Ellis?

  CAMILLA: I’m not saying I agree, I’m saying it’s not as difficult as you may think.

  ABLAH: If you look like me, you mean? So the ‘terror poet’ has been taken. Would I be the ‘Botox bomber’?

  CAMILLA: Who knows what would happen, but the slightest incident wouldn’t be good for business, would it?

  ABLAH: You’d be surprised, Camilla, not everybody shares your love of Queen and country.

  CAMILLA: It must have been difficult, growing up.

  ABLAH: How do you mean?

  CAMILLA: In a country you’re not from. Viewed with hatred at worst, pity at best. Unspoken suspicion of deserving your fate following you around.

  ABLAH: I told you, I flourished here.

  CAMILLA: You had to, you’re a survivor. But they didn’t make it easy, did they?

  ABLAH: Nothing in life is easy.

  CAMILLA: At school, being the refugee kid, the one nobody wanted to sit next to, the one nobody spoke to, the one who had to learn the language quick enough to pass tests all the other kids had been preparing for since they were born. The one nobody chose for their team at PE – is that why you hated it so much?

  ABLAH: This is beneath even you.

  CAMILLA: Proving your worth, proving you could do it, do anything you wanted, do better than they all could – that’s what got you out of bed every day. That’s what gave you the strength to look at your silent mother and tell her about your day as if she’d asked.

  ABLAH: Stop it.

  CAMILLA: Nobody to believe in you, everyone to expect nothing from you. The reserves of belief you must have buried inside you, Ablah, it’s incredible.

  ABLAH: You do not know me.

  CAMILLA: Every step you made you had to justify why you were allowed to take it before you could make the next one. You had to laugh at jokes that broke your heart at first until, you got so used to it, you started making them yourself.

  ABLAH: I’m not sure I’ve made who I am clear enough—

  CAMILLA: You had to be validated at every stage by someone else – a man, someone who’d already made it, someone trusted, someone British, someone white. From school to college to uni to hospitals to clinics—

  ABLAH: What is your point, Camilla, just shut up and tell me! What is your goddamn point?!

  CAMILLA: I could make it all unhappen, Ablah. All that work. A lifetime of work. Of sacrifice, of soul-destroying boundary bending. A high-profile arrest. Rumours. Association with unfavourables from back home. It would be so easy for us, so utterly, boringly easy that it makes me feel nauseous, to be honest. Because I admire you and I would hate to have to do that to someone of your conviction and strength.

  Ablah is very upset – this is unbearable.

  ABLAH: But you would.

  CAMILLA: I would.

  ABLAH: Your dedication is exemplary.

  CAMILLA: You have a real opportunity here, Ablah.

  ABLAH: Yes, perhaps I do.

  CAMILLA: Okay?

  Camilla is searching for her answer. Ablah takes her time.

  ABLAH: Do you know that botulinum is the most toxic chemical in the world to humans? That Botox is a form of that, the very thing people pay to have injected into their faces?

  CAMILLA: Yes, I’m aware. It’s also one of the chemicals Saddam was suspected of stockpiling for biological warfare.

  ABLAH: All those Iraqi women, hoping to find love, acceptance, some tingle of excitement again, something, anything, all with the help of the very thing that was used to justify the decimation of their lives, and the cosmetic use of it was invented by the country that orchestrated all that destruction. Irony doesn’t begin to cover it.

  CAMILLA: It is what it is.

  ABLAH: Did you choose Nasim for his role, just so you could get me?

  CAMILLA: No. He applied a long time ago. It was just lucky, that he mentioned what you did.

  ABLAH: Lucky for who?

  CAMILLA: Like I said, this is an opportunity for someone of your… passion.

  Pause. Is Camilla encouraging Ablah to cause trouble?

  Ablah is really struggling with what to do.

  Camilla checks her phone/watch.

  CAMILLA: Ablah?

  ABLAH: I know how to kill.

  CAMILLA: There won’t be any killing.

  ABLAH: There’s always killing.

  CAMILLA: Not for you.

  ABLAH: For the drones? For Nasim?

  CAMILLA: This is about saving lives, not taking them, isn’t it? Camilla is almost looking for Ablah’s validation on this point.

  ABLAH: If I was to open a tiny, undiluted bottle of botulinum – which is luckily very easy for someone like me to come by – and put it here, between us, the airborne particles from this deadly toxin would likely kill us both relatively quickly, perhaps before my PA, sitting just out there, came knocking. I wonder though, if one of us had significant exposure to Botox already, they might outlive the other long enough to get help for themselves, just in time.

  CAMILLA: But you don’t have that tiny bottle, do you Ablah?

  ABLAH: It’s all about possibility, isn’t it, Camilla?

  BLACKOUT.

  Hanan al-Shaykh

  An Eye That Sees

  A voice rang out, loud and tuneful, through the Victoria and Albert Museum. The visitors froze, puzzled – they had never heard such a strange melody. They reacted as though a bird had just landed on their heads.

  It was the attendant. He stood in the middle of the gallery, his eyes closed, his head swaying from side to side, his hands clutching his heart as though afraid it might fly away. Usually a shadowy presence, a figure of unobtrusive authority, suddenly appeared before them as a man of flesh and blood.

  In his early days at the job, Tareq had heartily greeted each visitor as they entered, and had taken it upon himself to accompany them as they wandered around the gallery. But before long his supervisor had asked him to keep his distance: people had complained of feeling followed, monitored. He was to stay in his corner and only intervene if there was a specific reason; to ask someone to lower their voice, silence their mobile phone, refrain from leaning against the exhibits or put away their sandwiches. On the whole he complied, except for the odd moment when he couldn’t resist telling an old man that he reminded him of an uncle back home, or remarking on the coldness of the weather.

  When he had first come to Britain, ten years before, Tareq would invariably introduce himself by telling the story of Tareq ibn Ziyad, the general who had led the Islamic conquest of Andalusia, and after whom both he and the mountain of Gibraltar were named. Years of seeing eyes glaze over went by before he finally understood that the British didn’t care, and he stopped taking such pride in his name.

  In the face of this indifference he tried to content himself, instead, with the fact that his one dream of a life in Britain had, at least, come true. He had grown up hearing his father and the village elders speak with envy about those who had left Yemen and made a life for themselves in Europe or the Arabian Gulf. Time and time again, he heard them say, a young man who stays in this country won’t find a thing to eat but flies; won’t even find a shroud to c
over him when they lay him to rest in the earth. Tareq had escaped this fate. He had left his job at the Yemeni airline in Sanaa after talking to a customer who boasted to Tareq that he could earn in just a few days in the UK what amounted to Tareq’s monthly salary in Yemen. The last ticket Tareq issued was his own.

  After a great deal of effort he had managed to secure the necessary papers and was awarded leave to remain in the UK – and permission to work. He began drifting from job to job – from a metals factory in Sheffield to a hospital in Hackney – until his Egyptian flatmate suggested he try his luck at the V&A, where he himself worked as a handyman, hanging pictures and moving objects to and from storage.

  The position came to him on a plate of gold, as they would have said at home, and Tareq became a museum attendant. It was a neat, respectable job, and he was proud that it meant he didn’t need to work with his hands: as far as those back home were concerned, this was as good as being a company director. Besides, the role offered plenty of time for quiet contemplation. Over the course of the following months he reduced himself, as requested, to a set of ears and a pair of eyes.

  Tareq busied himself with adding and subtracting, comparing his earnings and expenses, brooding over what he wanted to buy, and what he had bought and regretted. He calculated the sum he had left over to send to his parents in Yemen, and thought of the special massage chair that might help ease his father’s rheumatism. Would it be possible to ship it over? And if so, how would they manage to squeeze it along the narrow alleyway leading to their home – or, for that matter, through the tiny front door?

  Should he go home for the holidays, he wondered? There were rumours things in Yemen were becoming more unstable – might they become so dangerous that they would shut down flights altogether? Perhaps he should devote some of his time off to finding a bride instead. His Somali friend Ahmed, a bus driver, had told him about a promising young woman he’d met who was single. She worked at a post office and greeted him ever so politely as she got on the bus every day. If he weren’t married himself, Ahmed said, he’d be tempted to ask for her hand.

  Tareq didn’t get to meet anyone through work. The women at the museum – employees and visitors alike, whether foreigners or Arabs – came from a completely different world. They were the sort of women who walked around in spindly heels that looked like the twigs Tareq used to clean his teeth. He could sooner reach the stars than talk to a woman like that. Life here was expensive, too. Even a sip of water came at a price.