Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  He had worked in different areas at Sotheby’s before eventually settling into the Indian department. At that time London was witnessing a huge inrush of Arab collectors of Islamic art, and Sayf asked Nicholas for guidance over an Omani rifle inlaid with pinkish ivory which he wanted to bid for at a Sotheby’s auction. The following day Sayf contacted Nicholas and asked him to accompany him to Spinks, where he’d seen another dagger that he was interested in buying. Nicholas declined but Sayf was insistent. ’I have confidence in you. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the way you look, and my sixth sense. Please!’

  ’Sorry, Mr Sayf. I can’t. They’re our competitors.’

  However, after Nicholas and Sayf had lunch together and shared a bottle of very good wine, Nicholas did agree to go on his own to Spinks. The dagger had beautiful jade work on the handle, and Nicholas later advised Sayf to buy it.

  Instead of thanking him, Sayf asked Nicholas to swear on whatever was dearest to him, his mother, fiancée, wife, that he’d not taken a commission from Spinks.

  ’Why do you ask, when you said you trusted me?’

  ’Because you insisted on going on your own to look at the dagger.’

  Since this episode they had slowly established a trust between them. They became a team.

  Nicholas saw his father’s letter on his desk and decided to call his parents.

  ’Hello, Scott. How are you?’

  ’Nicholas, when did you get back?’

  ’A couple of days ago. From India, via Dubai.’

  ’India? Did you go on holiday?’

  ’I’m afraid not. I’d tracked down a prince in Madhya Pradesh - central India. He has the most exquisite dagger and, most fortunately, an astonishing rare seventeenth-century gold ball. To show them to me, he had to bring them hidden in his turban and cummerbund.’

  ’How extraordinary! Did you buy them?’

  ’Well, as you know, Sayf likes to haggle, especially with Indians. And he does it better than I do.’

  ’How is Sayf? Did you give him the Bible?’

  ’To tell you the truth, Scott, I didn’t take it with me. I didn’t think it would be exactly diplomatic.’

  ’Perhaps another time would be best. Your mother would like a word.’

  ’Nicholas. Hello, darling. Don’t listen to him. Don’t take the Bible next time either. I don’t think it’s a very good idea. It’s a sensitive subject.’ He heard her turning away to talk to his father. ’No, no.’ Then his mother was on the phone again. ’Listen, Nicholas. The Muslims might think you were in Oman because of religion rather than your job, especially if they knew your father was a vicar.’ She broke off again. ’No. I haven’t finished what I want to say...’

  However, Nicholas’s father was back on the line. ’Hello, Nicholas. Do you know what your mother did? You know she thinks she’s allergic to bee stings? Well, she was stung by one while I was away for the night, attending a funeral in London. She was afraid she was going to die - no, she didn’t have an allergic reaction, although the sting hurt - but she thought we’d have to arrange for a post-mortem, so she caught the bee and put it in an envelope with a note to say this was the culprit, then prepared to die, lying there with her arms folded and the envelope on her chest. Let me tell you, I’ve never laughed so much in my life.’

  His mother took the receiver. ’See how thoughtful I am, even when I’m dying.’

  ’Do you still have the envelope?’

  ’Of course.’ She laughed.

  ’Helen, listen,’ he said to his mother. He almost told her that he’d met someone and fallen in love, but instead he asked her, ’How are the self-defence classes?’

  ’Excellent. Can we look forward to seeing you soon?’

  ’Very soon.’

  He replaced the receiver. His mother and some of her friends had taken up classes in self-defence after they had started to demonstrate against fox-hunting.

  The phone rang and it was his father again.

  ’Nicholas, I’ve just remembered. I don’t think I told you what happened to Harold when he was serving in the Sudan. One day, as usual, he asked the Sudanese driver, who brought the regular supplies to the church, if he’d like to rest before he set off again, and offered him a cup of tea. The driver noticed the sugar collected in the bottom of his cup. As there wasn’t a spoon to hand, Harold stirred the tea with the big cross he wore round his neck. When the driver stood up to go Harold said to him, "Now there’s a seminary in your stomach." The man belched suddenly and said, "And there’s the first priest coming out of it."’

  ’That’s a wonderful story, Scott, wonderful ...’

  ’What I want to say is that there’s a willingness for dialogue, whatever the religion, whatever the nationality.’

  ’Exactly. I know.’ Nicholas nearly added that, all the same, it wouldn’t be advisable for his father to wear his dog collar when he visited Oman.

  ’I saw Desmond at a funeral and when I told him you were working in Oman, he was amazed. He said he wouldn’t have thought of you as the arrogant, aloof type who’d fall in love with the Arabs and then go off and work with them. I told him you weren’t T. E. Lawrence or Doughty or Burton. It was simply that you’d been given this opportunity - God works in mysterious ways - and that now you have a very reasonable income, you even travel Club Class and a large house in Oman has been provided for you.’

  ’Scott, you forgot to tell him that I’m building the most important collection of Islamic daggers in the world. Anyway, I must go. I’ll see you soon. If you can’t come up, I’ll drive down.’

  ’It would do your mother good if we took the train up to London for a visit. Now, son, she’s gone to answer the door, so I can say this to you. She’s depressed.’

  ’What’s the matter? Is it her health?’

  ’The usual thing. Don’t worry about her health, it’s fine.’

  Neither of them spoke of what was on both their minds: Nicholas’s mother was feeling worn down by continually having to scrimp and save. She had always regarded herself as a middle-class woman but the reality was that she and Nicholas’s father lived like paupers. Nicholas decided that he should persuade both of them to visit him - he would take them to Burberry’s and buy them new winter coats. At least they’d agreed to let him pay for their trip to Oman, if they ever finally went. He’d find a way to get around their pride.

  Having made this decision, he stopped worrying about his parents. He went to his briefcase and took out the Polaroids of the jewelled dagger and the gold orb. They were magnificent. A wave of anxiety swept through him. Had he been wrong not to offer the Prince a down-payment? Should he have insisted that Sayf, whom he’d consulted over the telephone, agree to let him finish the deal once and for all? Could he trust the Prince to keep his promise not to sell the object before Sayf made the trip himself, to see them? But Nicholas thought back to his meeting with the Prince, and felt reassured.

  The Indian Prince had locked the door. Then he drew the shutters and flicked on a tape, and the sound of Frank Sinatra, ’New York, New York’, filled the room. Furnished with carved wooden tables, chairs and cabinets, the room was stifling hot, despite the fans revolving in the ceiling.

  ’I don’t trust anybody,’ the Prince whispered to Nicholas, ’not even my wife and children. I carry my inheritance from my father with me wherever I go, like a cat moving her kittens from place to place, to avoid greedy hands and mouths. My son sold my grandfather’s rifle for the price of a dinner and a night out in Bombay.’

  The Prince put his ear to the door for a few moments, and Nicholas was reminded of the thief in London who was identified not by his fingerprints, but by his earprint, because he always listened at doors before he forced them open. Having made sure that the room was secure, the Prince lifted his turban and took out a small bundle the size of an orange. He rearranged the turban on his head and loosened the cummerbund that was wound around his waist seven times, and then laid another parcel on the table, which he unwrapped
first. Nicholas hid his dazzled reaction under a professional calm as he gazed in awe at the dagger. Its handle was encrusted with gleaming rubies and emeralds formed into flowers, set in a gold inlay of circles and squares. He suppressed another gasp as the Prince opened the round parcel he had taken from his turban and held out a jewelled honeycomb, a replica of a pomegranate with the outer shell removed to reveal the inner gold fibres protecting the ruby seeds. The whole thing was magnificently worked to size, the seeds held concentrically by a craftsman’s measurement as precise as that of a butterfly’s wing, only a hair’s breadth between the rubies and the gold filigree, a perfect sphere.

  ’Seven centimetres in diameter?’ Nicholas asked guardedly.

  ’No, five.’

  ’There’s an orb like this one in the Persian crown jewels, but it’s slightly bigger.’

  The Prince nodded in agreement, although he had not previously known of the existence of the other orb. He said solemnly, ’They say my grandfather used to carry this around with him, and squeeze it to ease the pain of his rheumatism, not just with his hands, but between his feet, too.’

  The two men laughed, although Nicholas was still slightly breathless. There was a knock at the door, and the sound of voices.

  The Prince hid the pieces in Nicholas’s bag then hurriedly rewound the sash round his waist and made sure that the turban was sitting properly on his head. He opened the door and a man and a woman carrying trays of food entered, bringing a delicious aroma of spices into the room.

  At their arrival Nicholas relaxed, not only because he was hungry and liked Indian food, especially when it was prepared in private houses, but because he realised that the precious objects the Prince had shown him would not be going to a completely different environment. Oman was so much like India in many ways. Even the food smelled the same. Who could tell? Maybe the Indian Prince would be able to retrieve his heirlooms from Sayf in a few years’ time, if that was what he wanted. Nicholas curbed his self-doubt and told himself he wasn’t joining the ranks of those who plundered the cultural and spiritual heritage of a country. And when, later that day, he headed into Khajuraho with the Prince, through fields of vivid yellow mustard flowers and golden wheat, to tour the famous Nagara temple with its sensuous deities, the business of buying the orb and the dagger became altogether less urgent.

  IV

  Samir shouted, or was it the monkey? He ran along behind the taxi, his eyes starting out of his head as he watched the couple recede into the distance. He stopped another in the crush of traffic, and fright made his words come out indistinctly. ’Follow that bastard,’ he told the taxi driver in Arabic. Then, in English, ’Bastard. He left me with this monkey I just delivered to him.’

  The taxi driver’s eyes jumped nervously away from the madman back to the steering wheel; he shook his head and roared off.

  Samir looked about him, afraid of the street. He went into a shop that sold magazines and newspapers to ask directions to Edgware Road. He confided in the shopkeeper who looked Arab, dark, not English. The man heard Samir out but, at the end of his story, shook his head regretfully. ’I don’t understand much Arabic,’ he said. ’Take it to the zoo.’

  Samir hurried back towards the flat where he’d been held prisoner, but it had spawned hundreds like it. ’Dear God, don’t make it difficult for me,’ he begged aloud.

  He should have noticed something distinctive about the place, but how could he when the buildings were as alike as cloves of garlic? Not like Lebanon, where you could tell them apart from a shirt hanging out to dry, a canary in a cage, a pot of basil. If only he’d memorised the way the paint was peeling round the door. He pressed the bells in a number of buildings, calling, ’Hello. Hello,’ and as his despair mounted he began to curse.

  After a great deal of effort, he managed to disentangle himself from the monkey and put it on the ground. ’Go on, mama. You’re a dog. Do you understand? Can you sniff out the place where we slept last night?’

  The monkey froze for a moment and looked at Samir, then jumped into his arms again, wrapping itself around him. Samir thought of the Tabbouleh take-away, and of Amira. He should ask her for help. Where to start? The telephone booth on the pavement scared him. Would he be able to get out if he went in? Of course he would. He picked up the receiver but felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He tried pushing open the door of the phone booth again and when it gave way easily he calmed down. He had the piece of paper with the phone number on it and the coins at the ready. The monkey grabbed the paper from him. Samir snatched it back, his heart beating furiously, then he kissed the paper joyfully because it wasn’t ripped. Apprehensively he dialled the number. The coins would not stay in and kept falling straight through to the tray at the bottom. He banged the telephone. ’Have you got the runs?’ he shouted.

  He tried again and the same thing happened. He pushed the door open and asked a woman passer-by in the street to help him. But he did not listen to her explanation, and let the door bang shut because she started asking him about the monkey: was it a capuchin, how old was it, was it legal to keep a capuchin as a pet, where did he get it? Inside the booth Samir was looking at a card that showed a photo of two very beautiful young men, way superior to the cards of women in seductive poses stuck on the walls around the phone. He took the card and looked around as if he were stealing the crown jewels, then stuffed it in his trouser pocket. He had to get rid of the monkey now. He rotated like a spindle in a spinner’s hand.

  The best thing would be to go to the Tabbouleh take-away, where the Lebanese boys were. He understood them, and they understood him. Once Samir worked out which way to walk and spied the Tabbouleh in the distance, he calmed down. London was not as difficult to get around, or as big, as they said.

  ’The man called Faruq ran away and left me with the monkey,’ announced Samir when he reached the restaurant. ’You’ve got to help me look for him. He’s one of your customers. I want to talk to Amira. You must know her. She knows you. Here’s her number.’

  ’No. We can’t make private calls from here. There’s a telephone downstairs,’ answered one of the waiters.

  ’Take it to the zoo and get rid of it,’ said another.

  ’I’m scared to do that. They’d start asking questions. I smuggled him from Dubai. I’ll have to think of something else.’

  The manager was watching and the youths returned to work. Samir went back out into the street and took the fork leading to the half-peeled-garlic-clove buildings. He stood peering up at the windows in the hope of seeing a curtain hanging down, or a broken chandelier. Two boys and their mother clustered round him. The woman asked if it was a capuchin monkey and if her children could stroke it.

  ’Take it. Take it. He loves children. He’s very good-natured. His mother died, poor thing.’

  The woman smiled and advised him to take it to a zoo in Dorset, which specialised in all types of monkey, then went on her way, although her children hung back defiantly.

  Samir took two walnuts from his pocket and threw them on the ground. ’Run! Run!’ he whispered in the monkey’s ear. The monkey made a dive for the nuts, scaring the two children, and Samir accelerated away but the monkey leaped at him and clung on even more tightly than before.

  Samir spun round in distraught circles like a dervish, in the hope that the monkey would fall off. Then he murmured, ’Beloved Lord, release me from this monkey and I promise I won’t flutter my eyelashes at a single blond.’ He paused, then added, ’Not even a dark man, OK?’

  As happens in stories or dreams, an immensely long car drew up almost at once, the driver opened the passenger door and an Arab man stepped out. The driver, who was English, greeted Samir politely and asked him where he’d bought the monkey and how much it had cost.

  ’Have it for nothing. Come on, we’re brothers,’ replied Samir, ignoring the driver and addressing the passenger directly.

  ’You’re Lebanese? Pleased to meet you. The monkey’s beautiful. Is there some reason why you don’
t want it?’ he asked Samir, playing with a long, expensive-looking string of prayer beads.

  ’Uncle, it’s in the best of health but its owner’s dying and I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ’Does it bite?’

  ’No. Not so’s you’d notice, my friend, and who doesn’t bite when he gets angry? My mother, God rest her soul, used to bite raw fish to make sure they were fresh. Please, do take it. There! Congratulations!’

  The man laughed, then handed Samir two peach-coloured notes. The monkey tried to take them and Samir didn’t stand in its way because the main thing was for the monkey to leave him. Lord, use a screwdriver to get it off me, if you need to.

  The monkey leaped across to the other man, trying to pinch the prayer beads he was rattling in his fingers. The man let it play with them for a few moments, then put them away in his pocket. The monkey tried worming its way into his pocket, then changed its mind and fingered the man’s moustache, disregarding Samir, who was calling, ’You naughty boy, you know what’s best for you, don’t you?’ Then, turning to the man, ’He knows with an owner like me he’ll be homeless and hungry, but with you he’ll live a life of luxury. He’ll entertain you and be a good cure for stress! You’re lucky!’

  Samir held out a hand to the man in the car but the monkey shook it instead and took a comb and a brightly coloured handkerchief from Samir’s jacket pocket. Samir walked off hugging himself, as if the monkey was still wrapped round him. He shook himself, like a bird trying to dry its feathers.

  He would leave the next day. He would save five hundred pounds for his wife and children, and the rest he would spend here, because you should spend money in the country where you earned it - or so said his former neighbour in Beirut, Prosper Luna, originally Abd al-Ghani Qamr, who’d emigrated to Brazil and begun to collect his savings in a reed pipe for the day he returned to Lebanon. When he decided to go back home, he looked in the instrument, only to find that mice had eaten through the notes, layer by layer, so what was left looked like discs of Swiss cheese.