Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  She met Nicholas that evening, although they didn’t embrace as she’d been sure they would. She didn’t offer him her lips and he didn’t take her in his arms, and it seemed to Lamis that she might have daydreamed their kiss of two days before. Instead, Nicholas asked if she’d received Majnun Layla, and if she knew of someone who could frame it for her.

  She didn’t want to go to an Arab film with him or eat couscous in a Moroccan restaurant; she wanted him to hold her and not let her go. She realised he’d chosen a film for her sake, when he leaned towards her in the cinema and said, ’It’s amazing to think that the two of us are watching an Arab film together.’

  London after the cinema was waiting for a sign from Lamis before it stepped out of its dress and stood naked before her, and Lamis was waiting for a similar sign from Nicholas. The trees and houses and office blocks had suddenly become London. She was with an Englishman and so, like him, she could feel an indulgence bred of familiarity towards her surroundings.

  ’Where shall we go? Are you hungry?’ he asked.

  ’Whatever you like,’ she replied. But in her heart, she said, ’No, no, please. Eating’s what I did with my husband and his friends.

  ’Is that scarf from Iraq?’ he asked.

  ’No. London. I left Iraq when I was twelve and I haven’t been back.’

  ’It’s beautiful.’ He reached out and felt it. ’But you can go back if you want to.’

  ’Yes and no ... who knows ... I don’t know.’ She resisted the urge to tell on her husband: he’d once picked the scarf up from the floor in a restaurant and handed it to the waiter, forgetting that it was hers, even though it had been over her shoulders, round her neck, on the back of a chair at home, and hanging in the wardrobe.

  At Piccadilly Circus, starlings landed on window ledges, on trees, on the Coca-Cola advertisement, everywhere except the three golden statues erected on top of a building. The traffic noise mounted.

  ’Shall we go to my flat? I’ll show you the Arab dagger I bought in Oman.’

  Her limbs relaxed, though she was surprised to realise that even the English used this trick. She released the breath that had been stuck in her throat, but another replaced it and remained suspended until they left the car and went up the stairs and into his flat. At first she stood looking around, then she walked up to the dagger, heaping praise on it.

  When he didn’t approach her as they sat together, she deliberately summoned up her mother-in-law and sat her down to face her. When she still felt the urge to fidget so that he would move closer, she promptly sat her husband between them, and then their son on his knee. She brought in her mother, everyone who’d intervened to try and persuade her to change her mind about the divorce, until in the end the flat was crammed with people, even their neighbours in Beirut, the customs men on the Syrian-Lebanese border, they all gathered round her, some standing, some sitting, and finally there was Nicholas, who’d contented himself with putting her scarf round his neck for a moment, and bringing the end of it up to his nose. She caught him closing his eyes and he confessed to her that he’d watched her at Dubai Airport.

  His English words were flowing into her ears. They broke up into separate letters and slid in, one by one, feeding the little hairs with delicious food so that they demanded more. There was the flirtation with the letter ’r’, which Nicholas often left hanging in the air, like his lips, so that she heard ’hia’ instead of ’here’ and ’lova’ instead of ’lover’.

  The letter was lost as it tried to settle in her ear, but the word ’firstly’ left his lips parted. She squeezed herself in between the last two letters so she would be close to his vocal cords. She saw them like ropes for raising bridges.

  Lamis despaired of him ever taking her in his arms, and was becoming convinced that he’d kissed her in Leighton House and brought her to his flat now only in order to sell her something. An English youth had once followed her in the square when she was playing with her son, asking her if the buttons on her sweater were real diamonds. But she didn’t want to leave, even though Nicholas was asking her if she was hungry again, and yawning and fidgeting, jiggling his leg up and down. Does he like his own sex? Could that be possible? Why else would he have no wife, no girlfriend, even though he was so attractive, a real catch.

  She had not seen a place like his before. It was a single person’s flat; everything in it suggested freedom: the capacious sofa that was more like a bed, despite its worn upholstery; books everywhere; the tall black lamp and the dining table used for everything but dining; the CD player; the kelim; and then, through the bedroom door, she could see the bed and, keeping it company in its solitude, a round cane table, and a clothes cupboard with some open shelves. There were maps on the walls, maps of the whole world, ancient and modern. She felt well-disposed towards the living room, and at ease in it. She noticed contact lenses on the table and realised she didn’t know what colour his eyes were, and smiled at the sight of shoes thrown down on the floor as if he’d been in a rush when he went out.

  She asked him if he wanted any help, and he turned from the rice he was washing in a small sieve.

  ’This is a miracle. What’s happening to me is a miracle.’

  ’A miracle?’

  ’I can’t believe you’re here with me in my flat, in my kitchen, and I’m cooking rice for you.’ He stopped. ’Rice. That’s all there is.’

  He laughed and she laughed too and asked him again if he wanted any help.

  ’Would you have a look for the saffron.’ He pointed to a shelf where there were a lot of spices. ’So you live alone in London?’

  She forced herself to be casual and answered like a character in a soap opera. ’Yep.’ She told him she used to be married.

  The aroma of rice and saffron and other spices rising up, the two plates and glasses, and the sight of the bottle of wine in Nicholas’s hand all made her happy. They sat down together at the table once Nicholas had pushed everything out of the way, and she ate the delicious rice with him. Even when he asked her if she liked Basmati rice she did not criticise him for being fussy, as she used to criticise her husband and her mother-in-law when they claimed one sort of rice was superior to another.

  ’How many years were you married?’

  ’Nearly thirteen. I’ve got a son, Khalid, at boarding school, who lives with his father.’ She paused for breath before she added, ’He is happy to let me see Khalid.’

  Nicholas made no comment. He asked her if she’d like to try the salad.

  He must think I’m heartless to leave my son with his father. That’s what everybody thinks.

  ’I left my son with his father because I thought I was going to settle in Dubai. I wanted to begin a new life and I didn’t want it to affect my son. I didn’t want to disrupt his life and school. Besides, he loves London, and his grandmother.’

  She hoped Nicholas wouldn’t ask whether she would fight for custody now she had decided to live in London.

  Her tone of voice, defensive and emotional at the same time, made Nicholas reach out and press her hand.

  ’It’s all right. You misunderstood me. I felt sorry that you were married so young, that’s all. I was wandering around the world with no responsibilities the year you got married. I went to India with only a few pounds in my pocket and a rucksack, to try and work out what I was going to do, why I couldn’t bear to look for a job, whether it was just laziness, or because I really didn’t know what I wanted to be.’

  ’It seems as if you’ve discovered ...’

  ’Not on my own - because every time I used to think about it, I’d have a sort of panic attack. It was chance that showed me my career.’

  Lamis was surprised that this tall man, who reminded her of her father, was opening up to her, revealing his vulnerability.

  ’I was strolling around like all those tourists at the Gate of India in Bombay, when I found an English child crying. I picked her up and put her on my shoulders, so she could be seen by whoever had lost her. I hea
rd her father calling her name before she did, ’Tamsin, Tamsin.’ He invited me to dinner that night, and he found me a job at Sotheby’s. That was in 1987. The year you married your childhood sweetheart.’

  ’I was forced to marry a man twice my age.’

  ’Do you mean it was an arranged marriage? I’m sorry, but you don’t seem to me to be someone who could be coerced into anything.’

  ’No. Forced marriage.’

  ’But why didn’t you refuse, or run away? There are a lot of women’s refuges here.’

  ’But I wasn’t living here. I was living in Beirut with my father and mother. I tried to refuse the marriage, and I thought my father would stand by me, but he didn’t, or couldn’t. My mother was so determined that I should marry my husband.’

  ’I am sorry, so sorry. But why did you live in Beirut during the war? Let me see ... yes ... the war was taking place then. Was your father in politics?’

  ’No, my father’s a musician, a lute player, but we left Iraq in 1982. We were about the first Iraqis who fled. The rumours that Saddam Hussein was going to wipe out my city, Najaf, were on everyone’s lips. We fled to Syria, but a woman cousin encouraged my father to go to Lebanon, where she lived. Lebanon was enjoying a long lull ... but the war broke out again. A few months after we arrived there, we found ourselves stranded. But to go back to Iraq was impossible, like returning to death itself.’

  Nicholas suddenly embraced Lamis tightly, as if wanting her to forget that period of her life. She forced herself not to cry, not just because she was so moved that he was genuinely concerned, or because what she had been through was devastating, but because she had fallen in love with him, and become as fragile as a paper kite.

  ’But what about you? What attracted you to the Arab world?’

  ’Chance too. I met an Omani who collects Islamic daggers. He asked me to help him build his collection, and I accepted. A heaven-sent opportunity. I seem to be having a lot of them lately - it was extraordinary luck that I had to go to Leighton House that afternoon.’

  He looked at her as if he were casting his net into her big sea.

  ’We have a proverb in Arabic which means "a chance meeting is better than a thousand rendezvous".’

  ’Does that mean that I’m not going to see you tomorrow?’

  She nearly told him another proverb, ’Don’t postpone today’s work until tomorrow’, but instead she stood rooted to the spot, hoping he’d look at her, and he did, but not in the way she’d expected. She didn’t rush away, not wanting to regret her actions later, but went on standing there like a beggar, too proud or too helpless to hold out her hand.

  He stared at her face until she felt embarrassed because he was going to see that she was embarrassed, and when he gathered up the hair falling on her neck and, with his other hand, began following the line of her neck from just beneath her chin to the hollow of her throat, a strange feeling possessed her and she wondered if he wanted to strangle her. He passed his fingers all over her face, almost touching her eyeballs, and when he reached her nose and began mechanically tracing the line dividing her nostrils, she fidgeted uncomfortably in case her nose dribbled, but he began touching it more insistently as if he wanted to stretch it or push it out of sight.

  Eventually he responded to her discomfort and left her nose alone. He never took his eyes off her face, but his fingers went to her earlobes. The ears, the fingers, the navel, the man’s penis, these are the parts of the body that remind us that human beings are miracles. The faint rustling sensation descended from her ear to her palate, then to her lips. Lamis closed her eyes as if a bright light had suddenly been shone into them.

  She felt him touching her lips, his finger moving slowly along them as if he were counting the pink lines from which the lips are formed, line by line. Her mind leaped on again: would her lipstick come off on his finger? Did a man taste the lipstick or the lips? Then he parted her lips and reached her teeth.

  Nicholas took off his shirt but kept his piercing eyes on her teeth and to her surprise he began tapping them lightly, like a bird pecking at a biscuit. She was beginning to get impatient and felt confused by what was happening, so she bit his finger and laughed. He laughed too, and clasped her face to his bare chest. She smelled a delicious smell, not his skin, or soap, or a smell left behind by the fabric of his shirt, but a new smell - the smell of a chest without hair, an English smell. She freed her face, her restlessness this time nothing more than a desire that he hold other parts of her close to him. But he did not. He held her face away from him, then brought it close again, then turned his attention to her hair, taking hold of it strand by strand as if he were parting the branches blocking his path. He only rearranged it when he breathed a blessing on it, and sniffed it in ecstasy. His breathing became faster and he finally put a hand to her waist to undo her trousers. She went to help him, but he led her to the sofa.

  He dropped her trousers on the floor, then bent over her feet, raising them a little so that he could examine them, as they were far away from the rest of her. He felt the calf of one leg; it was surprisingly muscular. (He was bound to ask her if she rode a bike.) He felt the other leg, pressing the two legs together so one would not be jealous of the other. Then he returned to her waist and started to peel off her tights. He noticed the varnish on her toenails and stroked each nail slowly and gently through the nylon as if he were repainting them. When he reached her thighs he gasped faintly, and closed his eyes for a moment as he continued releasing her from her tights. He was breathing heavily now, almost panting. He took one foot in his hand and bent to kiss it.

  He was the Prince’s footman, examining the feet of all the adolescent girls before he let them try on Cinderella’s slipper, making those around him think that he was doing it to prevent cheating, but actually getting immense pleasure from it.

  Lamis felt tired. She was not used to this athletic behaviour. He gave her back her foot. He didn’t seem to notice the tops of her legs and what lay between them, and her pants ready and waiting for him like a lighthouse guiding the wavering ship. He touched a black mole on her thigh which Lamis had examined religiously each year by the dermatologist. She began to laugh, trying to move his hand off her waist. She told him she was ticklish there and this seemed to drag him back to reality. Her laughter made him lose his way. ’I like your dimples,’ he said.

  ’If you give me a five-pence piece, I promise you I can make it disappear inside them.’

  He let go of her waist and resumed his route, this time to her arm. He raised it above her head and buried his face in her armpit. She began to laugh again. ’I’m ticklish under my arms. Do you want to see some more dimples?’

  She turned over on her stomach. There were two dimples in her buttocks. He bent to kiss them, panting as if he had had a hard climb to reach them. She closed her eyes, waiting for another decisive gesture but there was nothing, nothing. Suddenly she shrieked with laughter as he flung himself on her toes, and this seemed to interrupt their journey for good. He asked her if she was hungry.

  She said no, she wasn’t hungry, and stayed on the sofa, trying unsuccessfully to draw him back into the sequence of the journey. He was like a tourist whose wallet had gone missing: by the time it was found, he’d lost all interest in the place. She tried a different tack, asking him why people were ticklish. Was it something to do with the functioning of the blood and the lymph glands?

  ’Let me get you something to eat. I’m still hungry, aren’t you?’

  He was trying to hide his erection when she grabbed him by the foot and smiled at him and leaned towards him and put her mouth on his. There was a pause before he kissed her, letting his tongue search for her imprisoned tongue, pushing against her teeth, which almost melted and fell out one by one with the heat. But he didn’t drag her off to the bedroom as she’d anticipated.

  She realised she didn’t know Nicholas, and became convinced he was odd; otherwise how was it, she asked herself for the hundredth time, that he was still un
married.

  ’Why are you sitting far away from me?’ she asked him.

  ’I’m not.’

  ’What’s happened?’

  ’I’m the happiest person alive.’

  ’I don’t understand you. What’s going on? What’s scaring you away?’

  ’Scaring me away? I’m in heaven. I want to look at you, memorise you.’

  She did not give him the chance to continue but threw herself on him, kissing him, grabbing hold of his face and drawing his tongue into her mouth, and he kissed her and took her tongue and let his face rest in her hands. Then she took off her pants, but he continued addressing the other parts of her body, as if he was a student trying to find out how these different bits connected to one another, where each began and ended. She saw his erection and was reassured again. The trees rustled outside as if to say, ’We can see you,’ and a few light spots of rain knocked on the window, asking permission to come in. He was still enjoying his discoveries, as if he were being confronted with a woman’s body for the first time. What could he be seeing that he hadn’t seen before? He passed his hand over her armpit and whispered, ’Your skin is so soft.’

  When he entered her, she thanked God that she was normal. One year or more - she had thought that her hole might have reverted to flesh, like a pierced ear if you stopped wearing an earring. She drew Nicholas to her spontaneously, she who’d always wondered what sex was. He was on top of her, his face just above hers, his hands out in front of him like the Sphinx, so as not to put his weight on her. His lips only left her mouth to move down to her breasts; he was looking so intently at her that she felt dizzy and had to close her eyes.

  She opened them only when her conflicting, incomplete thoughts buzzed a warning note and she saw his face was still buried in hers. Then a clear, unambiguous thought formed itself in her mind: Why’s Nicholas still on top of me? What’s wrong with him? What do I have to do to make him come? My husband went like a rocket, straight up into the sky, a brief blaze of light, then a rapid descent to earth. I wonder what English women do. Should I move more? Shout or murmur sweet ecstatic nothings? Bite his lips, cling to his back, digging my nails in his flesh, or say ’Give it to me, baby’? Has my body rebelled against me and told him the truth, that it can’t feel him?