Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  ’Don’t worry. There’s no chance.’

  ’It would set my mind at rest.’

  Samir put the monkey in the bathroom, tore off some toilet paper for it to play with and left it there. The man locked the bathroom door, put the key in his pocket, then made for the stairs.

  ’Back in a second,’ he called as he double-locked the flat’s front door from the outside.

  ’Go then, and I hope you don’t come back,’ muttered Samir.

  Samir raced over to the phone and took Amira’s card from his pocket.

  ’Madame Amira. It’s Samir. Samir with the monkey ... I can’t. I’ve been kidnapped ... Yes, the man’s locked me and the monkey in. He’s waiting for the monkey to go to the toilet. When it’s been, I’m free. Everything depends on the monkey’s shit, pardon my language. I swear to God, it’s the truth, Madame Amira ... Yes, yes ... Yes, he’s given me the thousand pounds but not before he squeezed me like you squeeze a lemon. That monkey’s shouting its head off.’

  The monkey was beating on the door, pelting it with objects, letting out loud angry shrieks. Then there was silence. Water began to flood out under the bathroom door into the passage. The monkey shrieked again and Samir was afraid the whole flat would soon be under water.

  He called to the woman, ’Get up. Are you going to go on reading while there’s a flood?’

  He rushed to put his bag on the table and checked that his passport and the thousand pounds were still in his pocket. He found his coat and put it on top of the bag. Perhaps the monkey’s activities were going to give him his best chance of escape, if the neighbours came running, or the fire brigade showed up like he’d seen in foreign films. But only Faruq arrived, cursing and swearing as he gave the bathroom key to Samir, afraid that the monkey would take its revenge on him.

  The floor was under water; a cake of soap, a bottle of shampoo and the toilet brush floated on the surface. The bathroom curtain was chewed and torn, the plastic rail lay on the floor and the curtain rings drifted in the bowl. Foam obscured the mirror and a grubby towel had come to rest on the monkey’s shoulders. The man followed Samir and began searching round in the water, as if he had lost something precious. Bent almost double, he tiptoed around the edges of the bathroom rug, which had curled up into a boat shape, and only stopped when the monkey bared its teeth, laughing and gesticulating towards him.

  Give me back my freedom, Let my hands be unchained, To you I gave everything, Of me, nothing remains

  sang Samir, flinging his head back and wringing his hands with emotion, in imitation of Umm Kulthum.

  The man laughed in spite of himself. ’Has anyone ever told you you should go on the stage?’

  ’All the monkeys I’ve ever met! What do you want with me, man? Let me go.’

  ’You’d leave me to deal with the monkey?’

  ’I’ll do you a favour. I’ll clean up the bathroom, then I’m off.’ He began rolling back his sleeves and turning up his trouser legs.

  ’I’ll give you fifty pounds extra if you help me think how to make it shit, then you can go.’

  ’The zoo! Get the zoo’s number for me.’

  The man dialled directory enquiries, then the number of London Zoo, and handed the receiver to Samir, who adopted the accent he had learned from watching American cowboy films. ’I have a monkey that won’t go to the bathroom. I mean the toilet. I don’t mean to have a bath, I mean to go to the toilet. What should I do?’

  The receiver was put down at the other end.

  ’What fluent English!’ said the man malevolently.

  ’Why don’t you speak to them, then, or your lady friend? What’s she doing? Is she planning on reading three whole books today?’

  ’I’m afraid they’ll come and take the monkey away,’ said the man.

  ’Right, what do you think of this idea? I’ve got an English friend.’

  ’Are you mad? An Englishman? That’d be asking for trouble.’

  ’This one’s different. He shared a taxi with us, and knew the type of monkey it was - a name like cappuccino coffee. He recognised it from its white beard and tail! What do you think? Shall I talk to him?’

  ’Watch he doesn’t find out where you’re speaking from.’

  ’I don’t know myself.’

  ’All right.’

  Samir leaped up to the phone and called Amira.

  ’Madame Amira. Please, do you have Nicholas’s telephone number?’

  ’Listen, don’t waste your time. He likes girls.’

  ’I know, I know. But it’s the monkey.’

  He dialled Nicholas’s number. As soon as he heard Nicholas’s hello, he shouted, ’Oh Mr Nicholas, God loves me - I found you! I am Samir, remember me? With the monkey? He, the monkey, is not going to the bathroom, I mean to the toilet, do you understand? He cannot shit! Can you help me make him shit? OK. OK. Sir, I’ll give him dried prunes ... OK ... OK. Lots and lots ...’

  But Samir was not allowed out of the door until the following day, after the monkey had passed the pellets with the diamonds that it had been fed in Dubai stuffed inside grapes. As the man bent down collecting them with a spoon in one hand and a bag in the other, Samir thought of stealing one but was distracted by anger. ’Criminals!’ he shouted. ’I’ll report you to the police. You’ve kept me prisoner here.’

  The monkey was faster than the man at picking up the stones but as soon as the man brought it a bag of pistachios, it dropped them. The man counted the diamonds and gave Samir an extra two hundred pounds. They left the flat and, as the couple went down the long flight of stairs, Samir threw the monkey at them. ’There you are,’ he said sarcastically. ’You’d better hurry. Your sister must be waiting for it.’

  As if for the first time, Samir inhaled the London air and looked up at the sky. ’I’m free!’ he cried. ’It feels so good!’

  He suddenly found himself wrapped in the monkey’s embrace. He turned around in a panic, but the couple had disappeared.

  ’In the name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful!’ he shouted.

  Then he saw them in a black cab. The man stuck his head out of the window and said, ’You’re right. Freedom does feel good!’

  III

  Amira went into the building known as the Birds’ Nests off the Edgware Road. She shook Nicholas’s hand. ’Bye. See you later,’ and gave the minibus driver who had carried her case into the lobby ten pounds, instructing him to drop the Englishman off.

  The porter looked stunned. A ten-pound tip? And what was she doing with a smartly dressed, blond man - a real Englishman?

  Amira was appalled by the sight of herself in the lift mirror. The dark freckles had spread over her forehead and cheeks. Were they that bad in Dubai? Or was it simply that anything not perfect showed up in London? Still, the English liked a tan. It gave the impression you’d paid a lot to sunbathe or ski.

  White suggested ice and snow in these Western countries, not purity and beauty like at home.

  She quickly unpacked her case, taking out the cushions she had stolen from her cabin in the client’s yacht in Dubai, not because she liked them, but to satisfy her desire for revenge. She was gratified, as well, by the sight of the bottles of perfume and jars of cream she had helped herself to from the British girls’ cabin after they had all gone ashore and left her alone on the yacht.

  She looked at her watch. The Gulf man and his nephew from the plane wouldn’t be ready to receive a phone call from her just yet. She dialled Nahid’s number but couldn’t get through. Her friend had probably still not paid her last phone bill, which had come to over a thousand pounds.

  In the kitchen Amira could find no trace of the two beer cans that she had left on the table before she went away, to test whether the porter ever entered her flat and snooped about during her absence. Never mind, he’d soon be running errands for her, whether he wanted to or not. Unlike his predecessors, who’d done odd jobs for her in exchange for free sexual services, the new porter didn’t seem to fancy Amira. He’d
even gone so far as to report her to the police, claiming to be afraid for his family, especially for his daughter who’d soon be ten years old. But the policeman he’d spoken to, a friend of Amira’s, told the porter that if he wasn’t comfortable with the job he should ask for a transfer. Nobody could say for sure that Amira was breaking the law, as long as she was working in her flat and not in the street. ’And anyway we’re talking about an Arab with other Arabs, so why should we interfere?’

  Amira cleansed her face with rosewater. She soaked a cotton-wool pad in olive oil and passed it over the dark patches on her skin. Then she sat on her bed and dialled the Gulf man’s number. The nephew answered. ’My uncle’s at the hotel.’

  ’But isn’t that his house?’

  ’Yes, that’s right. But we’ve got several floors here and he’s afraid of tripping on the stairs because his eyes are so bad. He’s having the operation the day after tomorrow.’

  ’Can you give me the hotel’s phone number and the number of his room?’

  She wrote the numbers down on her hand and felt as pleased as if she had been handed a ticket guaranteeing her work for the rest of her life. She experienced an unfamiliar rush of energy and hurriedly removed everything from her face. She applied a pink cream, then a white, and put on the gold bracelets she had bought in Dubai. She bundled Nahid’s present into a bag, and rushed off to Nahid’s place. Nahid was out, and she searched fruitlessly in her bag for a pen and a piece of paper. She finally found a piece of chewing gum, which she unwrapped and put in her mouth. She stuck the wrapper through the door, hoping that Nahid would discover the signal later, and then headed in the direction of Bahia’s flat, which overlooked Hyde Park, anticipating that she’d find Nahid there. Before she turned towards Bayswater Road, she couldn’t help but stop to admire the flowers and fountains and the curve of Marble Arch. I ought to live here, she thought. This is the real London. Not ’little Arabia’ as the English call Edgware Road these days.

  Bahia welcomed Amira coldly, disguising it so well that only Amira saw through her manner, but as soon as Nahid caught sight of her she shrieked in delight, ’London without you isn’t worth an onion skin.’

  ’I’ve missed you all like mad. It was a lousy trip,’ said Amira, switching her Moroccan accent to an Egyptian one. Ever since she’d watched Egyptian films as a child, with their crafty and coy and glamorous film stars, she’d felt that life with an Egyptian accent would be infinitely more fun.

  ’God! What happened?’ asked Nahid.

  ’Nothing.’ Amira was staring at another woman in the room, whose head was covered with a scarf. ’I know your face.’

  ’Don’t you recognise Katkouta?’ Bahia trilled maliciously, proud that the star ex-dancer, Katkouta, was visiting her.

  ’I was wondering where I’d seen that beautiful face before.’

  ’Thank you,’ said the woman in the headscarf.

  ’Right, so tell us what happened, Amira. They say Dubai’s paradise. Couldn’t you take the heat and mess, or are we English now?’

  Amira ignored Nahid’s question and addressed Katkouta.

  ’How are you, Madame Katkouta? We’re honoured to have you in London. I used to love seeing you dance ... especially in the films, with Abaza.’

  ’Thank you. Thank you very much. But are you telling us Dubai doesn’t live up to its reputation?’

  ’The Natashas! They’re everywhere, like grains of desert sand or a plague of locusts. A reserve army of blonde ants foraging for food, sent by the communists to cream off the Arabs’ wealth and give us diseases. And to think my poor nephew spent his youth in one of our prisons because he believed in their red flag! Those Russian floozies have taken over - they’re everywhere, the hotels, the shops, piling up their trolleys with cellphones, irons, hair-dryers, anything electrical, and clothes, perfume. I suppose I could just about have accepted all that ... But for a Russian to stand there singing Farid al-Atrash’s "Rose in my Heart", that was too much.’

  ’Who cares?’ Nahid said. ’Why do you always hold the ladder horizontally, Amira? Live and let live.’ She turned to Bahia. ’Come on, aren’t you going to tell Amira about your latest gadget?’

  ’It’s not a gadget,’ Bahia protested. ’It’s a cooling system I’ve had installed in one of the small rooms. It’s for keeping furs in all year round; it protects them from moths and they stay as fresh as a daisy. You’re all very welcome to use it. One hundred and fifty pounds a year. And,’ she added, ’if you’ve got any dried molokhiya, bring it with you and store it with your fur, because ordinary fridges spoil its taste.’

  ’I gave my fur coat away to your mother,’ Amira reminded Bahia. ’Don’t you remember, Bahia, when you made your mother close her eyes and feel in the bag. "Guess what it is, I said, and the poor woman shouted, "How lovely! We’re going to make molokhiya with rabbit!"’

  ’You always like to humiliate me, Amira,’ Bahia said angrily. ’My mother was joking. Besides, the coat was all moth-eaten and you looked like a gorilla in it!’

  Amira interrupted their laughter crossly. ’I was joking too. You take everything so seriously.’

  Nahid tried to smooth things over. ’You know, Amira, you can go into this cooler and stay there for five minutes and it tightens your skin, as if you’ve stretched your face with clothes pegs - here,’ she demonstrated, ’and here. How many times a week did the specialist say, Bahia?’

  ’Once a week,’ Bahia replied. ’If there’s something like a party, for instance, then twice, but that’s strictly for special occasions. Don’t kid yourself, though. It won’t make you lose weight.’

  ’Who wants to lose weight?’ Amira knew full well that Bahia was referring to her.

  ’For one, the woman who went to the dentist to have her jaws wired together,’ Bahia answered without looking in Amira’s direction, ’who started processing her food and shovelling it in between her teeth. And the woman who convinced herself that Jesus was watching every time she opened the fridge door or reached for a piece of cake. She made herself stop because she didn’t want to upset him - "He’s suffered enough already." ’

  Nahid tried to keep the peace. ’My sister’s husband wanted a divorce after she put on too much weight. And then he married his secretary, and my sister couldn’t get any money out of him - even the judge blamed her for being overweight in the first place!’

  ’Can you believe it? Egyptian TV warned its female announcers that they’d be dismissed if they didn’t slim,’ put in Katkouta.

  ’It’s an international conspiracy. Arab men are rejecting their Arab past, and following the West - broad hips used to be a sign of beauty.’ Amira was defensive. Her recent client from the Emirates and his friends in Dubai had made her doubt her female charms. The excess of flesh covering her body had taken life all of its own accord, established a foothold without being invited.

  ’Come on, Nahid,’ said Amira, tiring of the subject. ’I want to buy some material. Let’s go to Speedy Gazelle’s!’ She turned to Bahia. ’Tell the truth. You’ve had a nose job.’

  ’Me? God forbid!’ replied Bahia. ’I’ve lost five kilos, and all of me’s got thinner.’

  Nahid and Amira went out together. As soon as they were on the pavement, Amira reproached Nahid for her small-mindedness and told her she’d become just like the others.

  ’You’re all friendly with Bahia because she lives in an expensive block of flats and makes herself out to be something special. The day the wife of that wretched old Saudi man of hers decides to visit London, he’ll throw Bahia out and pretend he doesn’t know her. And that fridge thing is only there to stop her rotten money stinking. As for her old man with his limp, he was after me, I swear. I agreed to go with him once. I felt disgusted and I told him I didn’t want a penny. He pays girls to massage his crippled leg. He says that’s what geishas do. A geisha would never touch a crippled leg! Afterwards he wanted me to sit downstairs by the fountain with him. It’s so cold there it makes your teeth chatter, and the lu
te player was pathetic. Not only that, but the old man had invited half a dozen Swiss and British bank managers, and they never took their eyes off the floor. I felt so embarrassed for them. And what about that virtuous lady Katkouta, Egypt’s leading dancer? If she’s repented and become a born-again Muslim, what’s she doing spending time with Bahia? She must want to lead us back on to the straight and narrow. Or doesn’t she know how to enjoy herself except with people like us?

  Nahid shrugged non-committally. She sensed that there was something bothering her friend and asked gently, ’Now tell me, Amira. Tell me. What happened in Dubai?’

  ’Do you remember Muhammad from the Emirates?’

  ’Spare Tyres? Of course. How could anyone forget him? What’s happened to him? Did he die and forget to put you in his will?’

  ’Be serious, Nahid. He treated me like a dog. From the moment he saw me in Dubai, he put the knife in. He tried to destroy my dignity, my beauty. He said he regretted asking me to go out there with the other girls. He played tricks on me and went off. Imagine! Twice I accompanied the whole lot of them on board the yacht, but he only took the English and the Russian girls ashore with him. He left me behind as if I was a piece of garbage ... trash!’

  Amira found herself remembering the day Spare Tyres first saw her undressed. ’Eve driven naked from the Garden of Eden,’ he’d breathed, because he’d never seen a woman without her clothes before. ’Hold me up. I feel I’m going to faint. Your body is as slender as a ben tree. Your breasts are like two ostrich eggs, your stomach a field of daisies, your bottom two sand dunes.’

  Later Muhammad had told Amira that when he’d returned to the Gulf he’d tried to persuade his wife to sleep naked with him, threatening to divorce her if she refused, and bribing her with gifts of expensive jewellery, until one night she gave in on condition that the room was pitch dark.

  All the same, as soon as his wife entered, he turned his face away. ’Oh no.’ He’d seen the way her soft breasts hung down like the udders of a half-starved goat, and her fleshy stomach, like a pile of spare tyres, rested in heavy folds, one on top of the other.