Silent Minaret

by Shukri, Ishtiyaq

  Katinka and Issa had, just a few weeks before, visited the exhibition on memory commemorating the 250th anniversary of the museum. They paused at a minute depiction of Picasso’s Guernica: three months earlier, the giant replica in the United Nations building in New York had been draped in black so that its stark message would not undermine a vial-shaking Secretary of State’s feeble and, till now, unsustained evidence for war. ‘If there is war in Iraq,’ she had read somewhere, ‘there’s already been the first casualty – art.’

  Her favourite exhibit was the aboriginal nautical chart, the simplicity of its structure belying the intricacy of its task. After she had returned to marvel at it again a second time, she left the exhibition and went to find Issa in the magnificent circular reading room. She found him leaning back in his usual seat, A6 next to the General and Ancient History sections, staring up into the impressive domed ceiling with its azure blue panels and gold-trimmed edges. She slipped into the blue leather seat next to him and looked up too.

  Ready? he enquired, some moments later.

  She sat up and nodded decisively. “Yes.”

  I’ll buy you a drink.

  They left the reading room and followed its circumference clockwise to the cafeteria.

  “I’ll just pop in here to see if they have a copy of that nautical chart on sale,” she said when they passed the museum shop.

  Issa didn’t stop. They don’t. I’ve already checked.

  They sat down to a drink at one of the long tables in the Great Court. “What did you think of the exhibition?” she asked.

  Issa did not look up. It was as much about forgetting as remembering. Not a single thought spared for how the exhibits came to be here in the first place. Chronic amnesia.

  In the square, an ice cream-covered toddler on a leash leads its mother towards the fountain. The child screams with delight, stamping its feet excitedly when their dog, drawn by the thirteen rising sprays, bounds into the middle of the fountain, chasing the water jets with a wagging tongue. Vasinthe eyes the dog. The child spots a butterfly. The mother-on-a-string is soon tugged in one direction by the butterfly-chasing toddler and in another by the water-chasing dog. Arms outstretched, she looks from toddler on the left to dog on the right, momentarily perplexed at having to deny one or the other their pleasure. The toddler wins and Vasinthe breathes again when the woman reins the wet animal in with a yank of its retractable leash.

  All this, Katinka thinks, in a country at war, despatching duplicitous violence to depose of dubious threat – its own routines and pleasures totally undisrupted by the destruction it is wreaking elsewhere.

  Frances’ words at Christmas come ringing in her ears: “As normal,” she had said. “Everything as normal. War is no longer reciprocal.”

  Having had no appetite for the numerous excessive celebrations to which she had been invited, Katinka went instead to spend the day with Frances and Issa. She took along a dish of bobotie. When she arrived, Issa was intently studying a recipe for chocolate cake at Frances’ kitchen table. She rolled a joint at one end of the table, while, at the other, he painstakingly translated words and numbers from the recipe into exact neat mounds of ingredients in mixing bowls and measuring jugs. When she’d finished, she suggested they nip downstairs to smoke it in his flat before Frances returned from Mass. He turned down the offer:

  I need my wits about me for this. It’s her favourite so I don’t want to muck it up. You go ahead. My keys are on the fridge.

  Then they heard a key turn in the door.

  Issa glanced at his watch. Already! She shouldn’t be back yet. She’ll see the surprise before its ready.

  The door opened and Frances stepped into the living room.

  You’re back early. What happened? he shouted, waving Katinka into the living room while he tried to cover up the evidence of baking with tea-towels.

  Frances didn’t respond. When Katinka had helped her out of her scarf and coat, she eased herself into her armchair.

  “Are you okay, Frances?” Katinka asked. “Can I make you some tea?”

  “In a minute. You two carry on in there. I’ll join you when I’m ready.”

  Issa, clutching a tea-towel, kneeled on the floor beside her. Are you sure?

  “Yes. Now go on.” She patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll be through in a minute.”

  They returned to the kitchen, closing the door behind them. She retrieved her red satin pouch.

  In church that morning, Frances had started nodding off during Father Jerome’s tired homily now suffering its third unedited rendition since midnight.

  “We have gathered here tonight,” he intoned loftily, “to remember the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.” Few observed the mistake. He sounded bored.

  In her eye-stretching efforts to keep awake, Frances perceived a particularly well-dressed man in the pew in front of her. She observed the fine cut of his suit jacket, the neat trim of the hair at the back of his neck above the line of his shirt collar. He was poised and nodded earnestly in agreement with what Father Jerome was saying.

  When the homily ended, the congregation kneeled in prayer. Frances, no longer able to assume that position, remained seated and bowed her head. Before closing her eyes, she noticed the soles of the man’s expensive shoes protruding from underneath his pew. She tried to focus her mind but her efforts were futile; she had become hopelessly distracted and peeped through narrowed eyes at the shoes. They were new, the soles hardly scuffed, the white stitching around the edges still clean. She reprimanded herself and forced her eyes shut.

  Throughout the Mass, Frances tried hard not to be distracted by the man. Nothing worked. When she tried to focus on the ritual at the altar, his broad shoulders got in the way. When she bowed her head to follow in her Missal, there was the smell of his cologne, or the sight of his neatly-trimmed fingernails when he held his hands behind his back.

  “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles:

  I leave you peace, my peace I give you.

  Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your

  Church,

  and grant us the peace and unity

  of your Kingdom where you live forever and ever.

  Amen.”

  Father Jerome looked up from his folded hands on the altar and over the congregation.

  “The Peace of the Lord be with you always,” he declared.

  “And also with you,” the congregation responded.

  “Let us offer each other the sign of peace.”

  Frances’ palms became clammy. Suddenly, she felt sure that the man had all the time been conscious of her scrutiny and that, when he turned around to offer her the sign of peace, he would stare knowingly at her. Once he had greeted those in the pew beside him, the man turned around slowly. Frances swallowed loudly and hurriedly wiped the sweat from her hands. She looked up. The shock nearly sent her to the floor.

  Her jaw dropped. Her heart raged in her chest. There in front of her, with stretched-out hand and poodle coif, stood the caricature she knew from the daily newspapers: the big ears, the glassy eyes, one smaller than the other, the tufty hair, the stuck-on smile. “Peace be with you, Frances,” it said, grinning broadly.

  Frances woke with a fright. The homily had ended. She felt flustered and searched her bag for a tissue with which to wipe her palms and brow. She was breathless. When the congregation started to sing, she struggled to find the place in the hymn book. The lady next to her helped. “Thank you,” she said, somewhat embarrassed, then tried to join in. “Sleep in heavenly peace / Sleep in heavenly peace.” The words stuck in her throat. Somewhere, in a church not far from here, the man in the fine suit was probably singing along right now, wringing out these words, she frowned, hollowing out these gestures. She lowered the hymn book.

  When they started on the second verse Frances wanted to shout. Shut up! Stop this sanctimonious pretence. Why don’t we sing something more fitting? ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war / With the
cross of Jesus going on before.’ Or what about, ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold! / Bring me my arrows of desire! / Bring me my spear! / O clouds, unfold! / Bring me my chariots of fire!’

  She sat down and dropped her head.

  “Sleep in heavenly peace / Sleep in heavenly peace.” The congregation fell silent. The lady next to her tapped her on her shoulder. Frances nodded that she was fine.

  “Lift up your hearts,” Father Jerome instructed.

  “We lift them up to the Lord.”

  “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

  “It is right to give him thanks and praise.”

  Frances looked around at the pious faces, their automated crossings, risings and fallings. Then she looked to the altar. “This is my blood. Take it all of you and drink from it.” The bread raising, the chalice raising, the incense swinging, the bell ringing.

  Pantomime. She thought. Repetitive, meaningless pantomime. When the congregation rose to line up for Communion at the altar, she rose and walked to the door.

  She joins them in the kitchen. Fresh flowers, a pot of tea and a plate of mince pies are waiting on the table. Frances smiles and sits down.

  You were home early.

  “Yes,” she says vacantly. “Yes, I was. I think Father Jerome was anxious to get home to his Christmas dinner.”

  Katinka pours them each a cup of tea.

  Frances stares into the tea bubbling up to fill the cups. “What will it take for people to notice, do you think?”

  “Notice what, Frances?” Katinka asks placing a cup in front of her.

  Frances doesn’t answer. “They don’t know what war is really like,” she says, staring through the window at the low grey sky hovering above the chimneys. “They think it’s all fireworks on TV.” She shakes her head. “How quickly we forget.”

  Katinka looks enquiringly at Issa, but he is not forthcoming, just stares back at her, waiting for Francis to explain.

  Frances stirs her tea, pre-occupied. “I wonder how many of the mongers would still support this war if there were the possibility of retaliation. But there isn’t, so they won’t have to suffer what they propagate. Everything continues as normal,” she says. “As normal. Everything as normal. War is no longer reciprocal. Now the world’s strongest countries bomb its poorest. Where’s the honour in that?” She refuses a mince pie.

  The square has started to fill up with lunchtime picnickers. Confident, dapper young men with loosened ties and stylised women with sitcom hairstyles in pretty frocks and strappy sandals, unfold expensive sandwiches. Most perch on unfurled newspapers in the sun. A few seek the shade of the full green trees, their crisp new leaves rustling in the spring breeze. Isn’t this just lovely?

  When the sun clears the trees, their positions become exposed. They rise from the bench and walk slowly towards the perimeter of the square. Their abandoned seats in the sun are quickly filled.

  “I know that research is a solitary, time-consuming, at times all-consuming, endeavour,” Vasinthe says, when they have reached the path that runs along the outer limits of the square. “But even my most committed students have lives beyond their work. Did he really spend most of his time at home, working on his thesis?” She grimaces at the prospect.

  Katinka nods. “Although he did occasionally go to the British Library. And he also liked working in the reading room at the British Museum occasionally, but not very often. It’s quite noisy with tourists coming and going all the time. I used to meet him there from time to time.” She wants another cigarette but decides against it. She finds a packet of gum in her pocket and holds it out to Vasinthe.

  “No thank you.”

  She puts a piece in her mouth. “Issa loved his work,” she says, chewing. “Maybe love is the wrong word.” She tries to think of a more suitable one. “Committed,” she says, pleased with her selection. “I think it was when he was happiest, though he found it hard at first.” Her eyes narrow as she casts her mind back. “I remember when I first came to London, he used to spend all his time reading. That was in the early days of his research.

  “He always had a book with him, was always reading. He even read about reading.”

  Listen to this, he once told her before reading aloud from the book in front of him: Reading is inevitably a complex, comparative process. A novel in particular, if it is not to be read reductively as an item of socio-political evidence, involves the reader with itself not only because of its writer’s skill but also because of other novels. All novels belong to a family, and any reader of novels is a reader of this complex family to which they all belong.

  “I remember he was reading the first time we met in London,” she continues. “I was almost an hour late; he hadn’t even noticed. And even when he eventually started writing, he was still always reading, except now he also carried a little notebook with him that he scribbled in from time to time.”

  Vasinthe frowns disapprovingly. “You mean you’d arrange to meet and he’d bring along a book!”

  Katinka tries not to sound defensive. “He didn’t bring one specially, more a case that he always had one on him. I didn’t mind.” She sticks her hands in her back pockets and squeezes her elbows towards each other. Only one spinal click today, she thinks. She can usually extract three or four with a tight squeeze. “We didn’t meet – ” she was going to say, in restaurants to have fancy dinners and sparkling conversation. Issa hated all that stuff. So do I – but then quickly rephrased her thoughts. “We’d hang out in parks, like these people here, or some evenings we’d go to our usual coffee shop on Edgware Road for a few hours. You could easily while away a whole night there, drinking mint tea, sometimes playing tawla.

  “And besides, what he read was usually interesting so, if I was in the mood, I’d get him to move over so I could read with him, or I’d read the crumbled paper he always had on him somewhere, in the bottom of his bag, in his jacket pocket or tucked into the back of his jeans.

  “If I didn’t feel like reading or conversation, I’d play a game on my phone, or listen to the new music he’d downloaded that week.

  “We were very easy. Anyway, I knew that if I wanted to talk he’d close the book immediately and then I would have his undivided attention. That was enough.”

  For a while they walk in silence, looking down at their feet. When Vasinthe looks up, she sees a man approaching from the opposite direction leading a panting dog on a leash. Observing the animal’s pink, dripping jowls, she gathers her flowing khamees and scarf to her and steps behind Katinka to the other side of the path. When he passes them the man shoots her a disdainful glance, which, leaving go of her garments, she deflects with a slow blink and a slight elevation of her nose.

  “You don’t like dogs, I take it,” Katinka concludes when the man is out of range.

  Vasinthe tenses her neck and shakes her head stiffly. “I can’t bear them. It’s the one thing about London, England, I really dislike; dogs.” She says the word with a scowl, as though she were talking about vermin. “They’re everywhere. And their owners seem invariably to assume that every one adores their blubbering smelly mutts as much as they do.” She feels a sudden urge to wash her hands and, even though she has not actually touched the animal, she nevertheless reaches for the anti-bacterial waterless handwash, which she always carries with her.

  “So that’s where Issa gets it from,” Katinka observes pointing at the tube.

  Vasinthe, as though caught shoplifting, opens her palm guiltily to reveals its disinfecting contents.

  “He used to use that too,” she says. “Mind you, it didn’t stop him from washing his hands constantly. He was always washing his hands.”

  “He was?” She squeezes a blob of gel into her palm then secures the cap.

  “Yes, whenever he came to my house, it’s the first thing he’d do. I never understood why he needed to.”

  She returns the tube to her pouch. “Why was that?”

  “Because Issa never actually touched anything when h
e was out in public. Not unless he absolutely had to.”

  Vasinthe is taken aback. “Really,” she says, tilting her head in interest. “Did he say this much to you?”

  “No, but it was impossible not to notice, especially as he grew more and more obsessive about avoiding contact. The more preoccupied he became, the more elaborate his methods.”

  Vasinthe rubs the gel vigorously into her hands, as though she is scrubbing up for surgery. “Like?”

  Katinka immediately recognises the astringent smell, its familiar freshness crashing into her like a tidal wave from a distant sea. She stops to look at her feet while half forgotten memories, like foamy bubbles on a sandy beach, come swirling all around. “Like,” she recalls, breathing in the smell, “he wouldn’t open a door with his bare hands, he’d always pull his sleeve down to cover it. Or if he were wearing short sleeves, he’d use his handkerchief to clutch the handle. And at cash points, or in lifts, he never pressed the buttons with the tip of his finger, he always used the knuckles of his clenched fist. He never held onto handrails in buses or on the tube; he’d always find somewhere to lean instead. That was why he sprained his wrist that one time. He wouldn’t grab onto the handrail, so he went flying down the aisle. I asked him once why he still needed to wash his hands if he never touched anything.”

  You never know. I might have touched something.

  “And if you had, why would that be such a bad thing?”

  Drop it. You wouldn’t understand.

  Vasinthe pats her hands dry. Her meticulously manicured fingers spread from facing palms like the wings of a perfumed butterfly. She points to a secluded bench in the shade. When they sit down, Katinka gives in to the craving and lights another cigarette.

  “According to Frances,” Vasinthe whispers urgently, leaning forward, her body taught with intensity, “he washed all the time. Is this true?”