Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  The English student would go out of his mind when he saw the fabric Mrs Cunningham had woven, and she would make Samir look good in front of him too. He had always had it in the back of his mind that he’d known one English person before he came here, and was overjoyed he’d remembered her. He began his quest by contacting all the Cunninghams in the phone book.

  ’Please, I’m looking for Mrs Margaret Cunningham, a lady who lived in Beirut, in the British Embassy. I have to find her. It’s very important.’

  Then somebody suggested he should contact the Foreign Office and a week later an answer arrived from her son, a little card with his mother’s address, saying that she’d be happy to see him.

  He took the two students with him and in the flood of happiness that came over him he could only congratulate himself for being so clever. The world had begun to teach him some lessons, or was it London? London didn’t like different types mixing together. John the Policeman, an admirer of Amira’s, would not like Mrs Cunningham, while these two would be fascinated by her, and not give Amira a second glance.

  ’Her picture was in all the magazines, I swear to God,’ he told them.

  The two did not understand much that Samir said, but they were grateful for his interest in their art. He had bought them a lot of fabric and scarves from Edgware Road, which were not to their taste. The scarf that they had seen on Samir at the bus stop remained their favourite piece, and the first boy had begun to wear it as a sign of gratitude to Samir. Whenever he met them near their college, Central St Martin’s, and invited them to lunch or afternoon tea, Samir would take care to wear the most beautiful clothes he could find, for he sensed that his clothes were a point of contact between himself and the boy. Or rather the two boys, as they were always together, which irritated Samir. They admired the way Samir mixed clashing colours and unwittingly wore seventies fashions that were, according to him, expensive originals that people had heaped upon him in Lebanon and Dubai.

  Samir was glad when the taxi dropped them outside De Vere House in Queensgate and he saw the luxurious building where Mrs Cunningham lived; then for a moment he was worried. What would happen to Amira and the monkey if she invited him to come and live with her here? When Samir saw a woman sitting at an enquiry desk he assumed that this must be where Mrs Cunningham worked rather than her home. The two students exchanged glances. And when an employee came to show them to Mrs Cunningham’s room, one of them asked Samir when he’d last visited his friend. Before Samir had finished his calculations, they were being shown into the room.

  ’It’s not possible. There must be some mistake. This isn’t Mrs Cunningham,’ he said to himself.

  He tried to explain this to the two youths, but was unable to catch their eyes as they were looking eagerly round the room.

  Mrs Cunningham had been a frequent visitor to the psychiatric hospital in Lebanon when Samir was there as a patient. He first met her when she tried to interest the patients in fabric. One morning Mrs Cunningham asked them to start unravelling some pieces of material: ’Pull until you reach the black dot, then stop.’

  The nun moved among the patients fearfully, warning and watching those she felt were incapable of following instructions. One patient unravelled half the material, and when she stopped him, he tried to weave the threads back in, and pulled his hair and wept in frustration. Samir was delighted by the beautiful, bright, slippery cloth. He had not felt silk before; he was used to thick cotton and muslin. He began to play with it, winding it round him, then draping it round his shoulders like a shawl. When the nurse tried to stop him he ran away from her and the material trailed after him. Rather than telling him off, Mrs Cunningham liked what she saw and took photos of him, recounting to the nun how activity of this nature restored ’their’ vitality and mental energy. When Samir stopped running, he went up to Mrs Cunningham, lifting the train of material clear off the ground, like a bride.

  ’How nice this material is!’ he said boldly to her. ’It slips through your hands like a fish. You should make it into a dress and put a sky-blue tabaq on the front, or orange-red like the sunset. It’d look fantastic.’

  ’Do you mean by tabaq the dish we eat from?’ asked Mrs Cunningham, who knew a few words of Arabic.

  ’No.’ Samir tried to correct her, while everybody laughed at the way he described the dress. ’Tabaq means a big open flower, you can say, one that’s as big as a dish.’

  Mrs Cunningham touched the pullover that Samir’s mother made him wear all through the winter, and asked him where he got it, complimenting him on the wool and the beauty of the knitting.

  ’My mother knitted it. Please take it, Mrs Cunningham.’

  She found her way to their house, and asked Samir’s mother to knit ten pullovers in the various colours she’d chosen. She paid his mother handsomely and even thanked her again in a postcard from London, which Samir had preserved for ages.

  ’Remind her who you are.’ The nurse pushed him forward now.

  Samir was sure that this wasn’t Mrs Cunningham in spite of the furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl and the Lebanese hall-stand.

  Obeying the nurse, he bent towards her. ’I’m Samir, from Beirut. Samir from the Asfouriyeh Hospital. A-s-f-o-u-r-i-y-e-h.’ He spelled out the hospital’s name very slowly. ’Samir. You let your dentist Mazmanian put my teeth right. When you gave me an apple I screamed in pain. I’m living here now. These are my friends. They make material like you. See what they make.’ Samir indicated one of the students, who had brought her a piece of cloth he had woven himself, but he cleared his throat awkwardly and said to Samir, ’Never mind. Don’t upset her.’

  But Samir snatched the packet from him and opened it and showed her the material. Mrs Cunningham tried to talk, but only her eyes said anything. She handled the material lovingly, then looked at Samir and the two youths and nodded, trying again to articulate dumbly. She stood up and the material fell to the floor. She went over to the wardrobe and tried to open it. One of the students got up to help her and she took out a thick book, almost dropping it, but holding on to it doggedly and turning its pages, pointing to photos of paintings and costumes. It was one of the loveliest books the two had seen and they stood on either side of Mrs Cunningham, turning the pages for her, to her obvious joy. A certain photo caught her eye and she tried to talk, ’A-a-a,’ pointing to it.

  Samir was uncertain what to do. He couldn’t help looking at the Arab furniture, which gave him the fleeting sense of being in Beirut; then the happiness that he felt because the two boys liked Mrs Cunningham and hadn’t been disappointed by the visit began to change into annoyance as they ignored him completely and lavished all their attention on the book and Mrs Cunningham. One seized her hand and kissed it and the other fetched her silver brush and comb and did her hair for her. When she was tired of them they left her alone and examined the furnishings in her room, especially the glass vase in the shape of a mermaid. Each of them handled it at length before standing back to make space for the other, both repeating, ’Divine, divine.’

  Then one of them seized the dead flowers and yanked them out of the vase and, not finding a rubbish bin, headed for the door and disappeared outside. He came back with a nurse who picked up the vase, poured the water into the toilet and returned the empty vase to the table. Samir noticed the trail left by the stale water but did not roll up his sleeves as he usually did when he saw something needed cleaning. He was besotted with the first youth, and wished Mrs Cunningham would doze off. The regular movement of his hand as he brushed Mrs Cunningham’s hair had aroused Samir, and she did seem to be taking a catnap now, but the youth pushed Samir away. ’Shh,’ he said, then asked him again, ’Didn’t you know she was in a home?’

  Chapter Six

  I

  Lamis caught sight of Nicholas and asked the taxi driver to stop a short distance from the theatre in the Strand, afraid that she’d be embarrassed if Nicholas watched her getting out. She still felt awkward when she was with him; she never drank water
fast in front of him in case she made a noise when she swallowed. She walked slowly towards the theatre, observing Nicholas, and a little shiver of excitement went through her. Every time she had gone to the theatre with Belquis she had dreamed that one day she would wait for a man at the entrance to the foyer and he would come through the rain to her, closing his wet umbrella, and plant a kiss on her cheek as he greeted her. Later they would stand sipping wine together, talking about the play.

  ’Hello, darling.’

  ’Am I late?’

  ’It gave me a chance to watch you. You looked as though you’d come out of the sea, with those colours, and the way you do your hair, and I have an erection ... can you tell me what to do about it?’

  ’Oh Nicholas.’ She blushed awkwardly.

  ’Give me a kiss.’

  She went up to him and looked around before pecking him on the cheek.

  ’Who’s going to see you? Didn’t you say you hardly ever saw another Arab at the theatre or opera? Hang on, have I gone mad too? See how you’ve affected me? Fuck them! See? I’m English again.’

  ’It’s a great idea to go out in the evenings. I feel so happy!’

  But she did not tell him she felt liberated because she had bought a mobile phone so her son could reach her at any time.

  An old man grinned conspiratorially at Nicholas when they both happened to glance at their watches simultaneously.

  ’I think only old people here are like Arabs,’ Lamis said.

  She and Nicholas looked about inquisitively. Another elderly person stood with a quizzical expression watching a dog trotting along behind its owner, apparently resisting the urge to run behind it and pull its tail. An older woman directed a female tourist to Trafalgar Square and peered down the street after her to ascertain whether she was going the right way.

  Lamis felt confident because she was with someone who knew the rituals of going to the theatre: how to inspect the ticket, when to rush and when to dawdle. He whispered in her ear, ’I want to be inside you now,’ and she listened intently like a thirsty lizard that had already absorbed a little moisture through its skin.

  She saw two plays, one on the stage, and the other acted out in her mind - The Setback, which convinced her that she could never belong to the old England she was seeing on the stage. Although she consoled herself with the thought that even Nicholas didn’t belong there, one look at him and at the rest of the audience with their eyes fastened on the actors was enough to make her change her mind again. She observed the way the features of those in the audience responded to the words, forming a frown or a smile. They were bringing themselves to the situations and dialogues on the stage, and however much those differed from their own reality, the seeds of them were buried deep in their consciousness.

  Her frustration had been building up in the English classes, although the teacher still maintained that she was optimistic. ’Five words out of seven, Lamis. That’s not bad. All that concerns me is that when you leave here you don’t think one sentence in Arabic, or everything we’ve achieved will be wasted. But that’s asking a lot. God help you?’

  Every time Lamis imagined a type of food - bread, olives - she subconsciously said its name in Arabic; whenever she spoke her own name or that of her son, she was talking Arabic. She found herself climbing back up the attic stairs and saying tearfully to the teacher at the next lesson, ’My memory’s all in Arabic. As if I’m a parrot. Don’t parrots ever lose their memories?’

  Nicholas took her hand and brought it up to his lips, then put a paper ring on her finger, a bit of the theatre programme that he had been painstakingly twisting into a circle.

  He was not satisfied with her smiling at him. He wanted an answer, or was she answering him by keeping the ring on her finger, and smiling when he put on a paper ring too? She took his hand and squeezed it. Did that mean ’Let’s get married’?

  They sat in a restaurant wearing their paper rings.

  ’Let’s order champagne to celebrate.’

  She laughed.

  ’Yes or no?’

  ’Nicholas?’

  ’Yes or no? I want you to marry me. And don’t tell me that we’ve only known each other two months.’

  ’I can’t.’

  ’Why? Because you don’t want to spend a few months in Oman? But you nearly lived in Dubai.’

  ’Because ... because I can’t just now!’

  ’Thank you for that word "now". You won’t believe this but sometimes I forget you were married and that you have a child. Let’s order champagne anyway because you’re beautiful and I love you.’

  Nicholas ordered champagne and as they raised their glasses, he noticed the awkward expression on her face.

  ’Lamis, you don’t look happy. Is there something bothering you?’

  ’I want to go to the Ladies.’

  He stood up and moved the table out for her.

  She examined her face as she dabbed it with pink powder, and said to her reflection as if it was to him, ’I love you. I love you. I want us to go home now, but maybe waiting will make me want you more.’

  ’So, did you think it over in the Ladies? Do you want me to help you bring your things over here tomorrow?’

  ’And live in your flat?’

  ’No, in a tree, what do you think? Lamis, I don’t believe you. Look at your face. After all I’ve said to you. Why don’t you move in with me? Come on, now. Let’s go together to the flat that I’m not allowed to see, and get whatever you need.’

  ’They’ll say I got divorced because of you.’

  ’You’ll explain to your son that it isn’t true.’

  She did not tell him that she was not sure that she wanted to introduce him to her son so soon, or for the three of them to be together under one roof. ’What about the rest?’

  ’Didn’t you get divorced because you realised you felt unconnected to your husband, to the whole lot of them? Yes or no? It’s something you attach a great amount of importance to.’

  ’I know. I can’t help it.’

  ’But you spend most of your time at my place, apart from a couple of hours or so at your flat during the day. You’re like a scared husband, who feels he has to establish his presence in his own house, but you’re doing it for the sake of the doors and walls. Or perhaps it’s for the porter and his wife, so they can keep checking up on you. Or would you like to own that flat despite your ex-husband and his mother? I’m still not convinced you’ve completely let go.’

  He was right; when she went out of her flat in the afternoons she used to wait until the porter and his wife were busy having tea. She had always been able to change the course of a conversation with Nicholas, but not tonight. He didn’t respond to her trying to excite him, nor to the stories she related to him.

  ’OK then, don’t move in with me right now. I know, my place is so small. Let’s go to Oman together. Just for a month or two.’

  ’Oman? I couldn’t possibly go with you to Oman.’

  ’I promise you, you’d see one thousand five hundred stars instead of five hundred in London.’

  ’I can imagine them!’

  ’I can’t postpone my trip any longer. I have to go in a few days.’

  ’Anyhow, we couldn’t stay together.’

  ’Why? You’ve got a British passport. Oh, I’ve just thought, Omani law says unmarried British women under the age of thirty-five or forty can’t enter Oman, unless they’re married to Omanis.’

  She felt relieved. Sultan Qabus had come to the rescue.

  ’I’m joking, Lamis.’

  ’But we’re not married.’

  ’It doesn’t matter. You’re British.’

  ’But my name’s written in my passport, and my place of birth - Najaf, Iraq.’

  ’OK, we’ll stay in a hotel and take two rooms. You’ll be my guest. I don’t care if I spend everything I’ve got on you.’

  He exuded happiness and confidence because she no longer had an excuse.

  ’Nicholas. Don’
t smile like that, please. I’m the one who knows the system, not you. I know this Jordanian Muslim woman married to a Lebanese Christian. They moved to one of the Gulf states and the authorities said their marriage wasn’t recognised, even though the husband lied and said he had converted to Islam and had a forged document from Lebanon to prove it. But they insisted on testing him and gave him some books on Islam and obliged him to take lessons for several months.’

  ’But that doesn’t happen in Oman, I promise you. Anyway, I’ll make some enquiries and if there’s any obstacle you won’t go. It’s quite simple.’

  ’I was told that Dubai was the Oriental Monte Carlo. It seems you’ve forgotten what happened to me there.’

  ’No, I haven’t forgotten. But you have to put that incident behind you.’

  ’It wasn’t only an incident. It was a terrifying experience. And to be honest with you, my fear extends even to the Iraqi opposition. Any of those groups might lapse into the violence they’re meant to be opposing. I remember only too well the way I started avoiding my grandfather, who I adored, after I watched him hitting the birdcages and heard him furiously criticising my father and mother.’

  Nicholas took her hand and kissed it.

  ’Darling, let me help you not to fear anything.’

  II

  London was like the palm of a human hand intricately crisscrossed by deep and superficial lines, along which Lamis and Nicholas were trying to drive in Nicholas’s tiny car. He took Hyde Park Corner then Park Lane on the way to Mount Street, where they were going to view a flat belonging to one of Nicholas’s acquaintances. They passed the Dorchester Hotel, where Lamis had been married. She nearly told Nicholas, laughing, that, as soon as she and her ex-husband were in their hotel room, he’d been preoccupied with finding somewhere to hide her diamond earrings, panic-stricken at the idea that she might have lost one of the diamonds during the wedding. Her heart skipped a beat. She remembered that she’d given her sister’s address in Dubai to Selfridges, when she stored her jewellery in one of the store’s safe-deposit boxes. Now she should give them Nicholas’s address. Of course it shouldn’t be the address of the flat still belonging to her husband; she was afraid that her mother-in-law could go into the flat, look through her things any time she felt like it. She might find the key in the tiny envelope, go to the Selfridges basement and take everything from the tin box that lay hidden along with hundreds of other boxes, in a quiet, dim place, where there was a faint echo of music, far below the shoppers’ footsteps.