Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  ’There’s something I don’t understand about this flat. As Mayfair prices go, what he’s asking for isn’t at all bad - maybe because it’s no longer residential, with all these offices and antique shops - yet Mount Street is still considered one of the prettiest streets in London; it reminds me of Petra - in its colouring, I mean. Don’t you think?’

  ’I haven’t been to Petra, but I hear it’s magical.’

  ’I’ll take you soon.’

  She did not dare say again that she was afraid to travel with him, even as a tourist, to any Arab country, even if they took separate rooms.

  ’This area of London was the one we adored as children, my brother and I ...’

  Lamis played with his hair, wishing she could have seen Nicholas as a child. But she didn’t wish that he could have seen her. Najaf’s sun used to dry her hair and make it hard to manage and in her only two childhood photos she looked unkempt, as if a comb wouldn’t go through her hair; her brown dress with red circles looked like an old woman’s dress, she wore worn-out shoes, without socks.

  ’Did you come up to London very often?’

  ’Not really. Our visits up to town were like a trip to a foreign country. My brother and I would look forward to them for months. My favourite place was the Planetarium, where the darkness lit up with stars and you could see the planets. I would sit mesmerised; I believed it when my mother told us to prepare ourselves because they were going to fly us in our seats to the ceiling, to touch the stars.

  ’Even getting into a black cab was a treat then. Also the Tate gallery, where we could buy lots of cards. Oh, and the tube. That was the best treat of all, and seeing other children travelling on the tube on their own, independent, and not looking at the map the way we had to. Now I’ve talked too much. It’s your turn. What were your special childhood treats?’ But before she said anything, he said to her in Arabic, ’Chewing gum, sweets and a big doll.’

  ’You still remember the Arabic? My genius! And now, tell me, do you feel you’re a Londoner?’

  ’I wish. Anyone who looks in an A to Z isn’t a true Londoner. I think the newspaper-sellers are. That’s why you hear the cliché from people like me repeated so often, "I want to leave, I want to leave London." ’

  The flat in Mount Street was like two tiny sardine-tins on tall, pinkish sticks, like the other pinkish-coloured buildings in the street.

  ’Our first disappointment. Never mind. We still have Fulham to check — we’re like two birds trying to find the perfect nest that has nothing to do with our past. I’m sure we’ll be able to find a spacious flat - and when I say spacious, I mean the British idea of spacious. Sayf and the other Omanis laugh at our architecture. They say how can the English live when the dining room is on one floor, the bedroom on another, the sitting room on another, and the kitchen in the dungeon.’

  Lamis smiled but said nothing, relieved about that Mount Street fiasco and hoping that the Fulham flat would be worse.

  ’What’s wrong, sweetheart?’

  ’Nothing.’

  ’I hope you’re not disappointed because I vetoed Little Venice? But believe me, it is so dead. It’s like a suburb. You have to go all the way to Oxford Street if you want to buy a book.’

  ’OK. OK.’

  ’ "OK, OK" - as if you want to shut me up. This is what I have to put up with while I’m in Oman or in any Arab country, "OK, OK", amazingly understood by nearly every inhabitant of the globe. Do you know that "OK" was invented unwittingly by the seventh American president, Andrew Jackson? He was semi-literate and he ratified the documents placed in front of him by writing "Oll Korrect" using the "o" and "k" instead of "a" and "c".’

  Lamis laughed, wondering how he could love her when she was so boring, with no stories to tell, and wondering why she couldn’t be candid with him. What was the point of their relationship if she was not open and truthful with him? Why had she agreed to go with him, and let him think that she was looking for a flat or a house for both of them, when the truth was that she’d already gone with the woman from the estate agent’s to see two places, and both made her feel that she was a sheep on the way to slaughter. As soon as the woman had turned the key to open the door, she wanted to leave: each step she took inside was against her will, and almost physically painful.

  On both her visits to view places on the estate agent’s books, whether or not people were living there, the word ’family’ had flickered up, neon-lit, increasing her sense of alienation, her feeling that she was not ready to build a new home yet. She preferred to be in-between, his flat and hers.

  Should she confide in Nicholas now, or would he think that she didn’t trust him?

  She recalled how surprised he was that she received no alimony from her husband; she hadn’t asked for it. Nicholas asked her if that meant that she and her ex-husband had not sat down and discussed a divorce settlement, and she felt then as if Nicholas were acting like her parents, handing out one insult after another - as if, like them, he didn’t understand that she needed nothing except her freedom. She was neither homeless nor penniless.

  Lamis put her hand on his neck and caressed it. How could she love him so much and yet leave him in the dark about the reality of her life? Her father had rung from Dubai the day before, and told her that he and her mother were still on medication, due to her divorce.

  ’Listen, sweetheart,’ said her father. ’Now you’ve tasted freedom, is it the paradise you expected? Of course it’s not! How can it be when you left your son, a jewel bestowed on you by the Almighty, to treasure? You’re living in your ex-husband’s flat and you haven’t organised a job for yourself, and money goes as it comes. Why don’t you go back to your husband? A friend of his called me. I think he was trying to act as a go-between.’

  Fear seized Lamis, and she shouted at the top of her voice, ’No, no, no. I don’t want to go back to him.’ She began to sob uncontrollably.

  As if her father had issued an edict declaring that she should not fall in love and lead a new life, as if Nicholas might be banished. As if the helicopter, which she used to see circling London’s sky, could land, kidnap him and take off.

  Lamis looked at Nicholas now, not believing that she nearly owned this human being, his body, mind, everything was hers. She was going to live with him under one roof. He was a gift, as ’The Nile was a gift to Egypt’ - that was the first sentence in her school geography book.

  But as soon as she saw the man from the estate agent’s waiting for them on the steps of a building in Fulham, her previous feelings of alienation and distress rushed back, partly because the man was an Arab. She could tell from his accent. He proceeded to show them the flat on the third floor. It was magnificent. From the kitchen window Nicholas and Lamis saw gardens, high trees and the sky.

  ’It’s beautiful, habibti.’

  Hearing the Arabic for ’darling’ from an Englishman’s lips, the estate agent told them he was from Lebanon.

  As the estate agent and Nicholas compared notes, checked the available light, where the sun would enter the flat, that there was no damp on the walls or the ceiling, Lamis became annoyed at being unable to imagine herself living with this man, although she knew very well that living without him would be like having an arm amputated.

  III

  Amira put the headphones of her Walkman over her ears. Umm Kulthum sang inside her, ’Your eyes take me back to times that have passed,’ but this musical craving for love gave her a craving for chocolate and she switched it off and hurried to open the capsule and sniff. The smell of chocolate wafted up her nostrils. She had done this dozens of times already, and still her craving had not gone away, as Peter the specialist had assured her it would. He did not believe in diets, only in the use of scent to halt the cravings. Whenever she had a craving she opened the inhaler -like a tube of Vick’s - and sniffed. If she had a craving for chocolate she inhaled from a chocolate tube, or for chicken, from a chicken tube.

  ’What about Lebanese falafel, or Moroccan bist
illa and couscous and harira?’ she’d asked him.

  He promised he’d suggest the idea of catering for the foods of other nationalities to the American scientists who were always creating new tubes.

  She stood up and started to look for the chocolate she had hidden in one of the suitcases on the highest shelf in her cupboard. There was a noise at the door. She ignored it for at least ten minutes, until curiosity got the better of her, and she looked through the spy hole and tried to decipher the excited hubbub on her doorstep, the horde of children, the clothes, the big suitcases and numerous carrier bags, but she could not relate their faces to anybody she knew. Only when she heard the name Samir did she open the door. She stood before the clamour of Arab voices, wearing her pink nightdress and sunglasses, so that the commotion appeared to be taking place in semi-darkness.

  ’Where’s Samir?’

  ’Isaaf and the children? Come in, come in,’ said Amira.

  ’You know our names?’

  ’Please. Come in.’

  Samir’s wife was wearing a very expensive coat two sizes too big, its sleeves nearly covering her fingers; she pushed her children and all their things into Amira’s flat.

  ’So ...he went without for so long, then broke his fast on an Egyptian woman of all things,’ Samir’s wife snapped, misled by Amira’s rapidly shifting accent. ’He told me he was living with a Lebanese man.’

  She couldn’t help remarking on Amira’s nightdress and gold-rimmed spectacles and pink slippers trimmed with feathers. ’Well, there was never the money for me to dress like that? I always had a kid in my arms, another on the way and a third round my feet. Where is he? Go on, take the baby from your sister’s arms,’ she instructed her eldest son, seeing that her daughter, who was only five years older than her baby brother, was nearly collapsing from the weight. ’So ...’ she shouted at the top of her voice, ’he left us just like that, to give the monkey to its owner. It’s been three months since he disappeared. I suppose he thinks he’s done his duty. A few phone calls, a bit of cash, and that’s it.’

  ’Listen. Samir’s gone out with the monkey,’ interrupted Amira placatingly.

  ’Thank the Lord I decided to come and see for myself! Otherwise Samir might have got away with it and left me with his kids. We’re going to make your lives a misery!’

  At this, Amira could no longer contain herself and snatched the sunglasses off her face to reveal bruises around her eyes from her cosmetic surgery. Staring at Isaaf’s widening pupils, Amira screamed, ’Listen to me! Me and Samir ...’

  ’What? Did he give you a beating? Was he jealous? He’s never been jealous about me. He never hit me once.’

  Amira stamped her foot in a fury and went into her room and locked it from the inside. The children looked at their mother, who was holding her head, and the baby began to cry and tried to wriggle out of his older brother’s arms, insisting on going to his sister, then making her fall over with him on top of her.

  Samir’s wife rushed over and knocked on Amira’s door, shouting loudly, but Amira ignored her. She was trying to contact Samir on the mobile and wondering where this fit of jealousy would lead. Would Samir’s wife be just as jealous if she knew her rivals were young men? Young men whose names Samir didn’t even know how to pronounce, and whom he knew only a specific part of, who disappeared before even his head had stopped spinning with pleasure. She’d begun to be afraid for Samir as his obsession with finding a man seemed to have become chronic, and she’d bought him dozens of packets of condoms, for she was familiar with the English and their meanness: Maureen used to reclaim the cost of condoms from her punters.

  Samir had told Amira that his wife never suspected that he liked his own kind; on the contrary, she was sure he had many mistresses. Once in Sharjah she even thought she’d nearly caught him with one of them, when she descended on him unexpectedly at the cabins where he worked as a cleaner. On hearing his wife knocking on the doors calling for him, Samir immediately took off his dress and scarf and hid them in a drawer. He lowered the radio and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt before he opened the cabin door. Because it took Samir so long, she suspected something and started looking for a woman but found only the scarf and the dress, with its fresh stains of sweat mingled with Giorgio perfume. And when she nearly went out of her mind looking for the woman, Samir found himself confessing that he liked to wear women’s clothes. ’Don’t you remember what I used to wear during the war? I don’t believe you’ve never heard the stories about me wearing my mother’s clothes when I was young ... but you must remember the women’s panties you found in my pocket?’

  She’d become obsessed with the blue lace panties with satin ribbons and left them on the side of the sink, the dining table, the sofa. Whenever he told her to stop, she’d say, ’I can do what I want. I like them. I’m waiting for the children to ask about them.’

  But she did not believe a word of what Samir was telling her. On the contrary, his explanation made her all the more convinced that Samir was a liar who invented weird and unthinkable excuses.

  Amira told him that his wife probably couldn’t comprehend the fact that there were gays and drag queens, especially as, in his case, they’d produced five children together. She told him about her own aunt, who lived in the Rif area of Morocco: this aunt’s daughter asked her mother not to accept gifts from Amira because they were bought with contaminated money. The aunt answered that Amira would never steal. The daughter lost patience and told her mother bluntly that men paid her niece to sleep with her, but the aunt only shook her head saying, ’What’s wrong with that? At least they pay, they are nice people ... generous.’

  One of Samir’s children ventured into the first bedroom; he called his mother to come and see his father’s coat lying on the bed. She fell on it, sniffing it for the scent of possible lovers, then threw it down and picked up a heavy chain, like a dog’s, and coloured pencils and a small child’s scribbles. He’d had a child. No, he’d adopted the woman in pink’s child, and they must have put that basket on top of the wardrobe to keep it out of harm’s way. It contained toys, packets of biscuits, and there was an old pillow that the child had dribbled on. She swooped on the wardrobe and flung it open and saw lots of gaily coloured shirts, two with frills, one purple, one white, and shiny leather shoes with gold buckles.

  ’They’re like what the singer Prince wears!’ exclaimed her eldest son in delight.

  She examined the grey leather trousers and red jeans and picked up a striped cap and a purple feather boa and considered each of them in turn, while the children played with the basket and its contents. The girl seized hold of a brightly coloured embroidered shoe. ’Look!’ she said to her big brother. ’It’s like the picture of the boat in your book!’

  He was desperate to try on the magnificent shirts and ignored her. But when his mother gave a yell and held out a pair of nylon leopard-skin patterned panties and a matching sleeveless top, the son decided they had made a mistake and this must be the woman’s wardrobe, not his father’s.

  He said so to his mother, but instead of calming down she shrieked, ’Even their clothes are all mixed together.’

  Amira didn’t open the door until Umm Kulthum’s voice on the Walkman was interrupted by Samir’s as he knocked, begging Amira to back him up and let his wife apologise.

  ’Please, Amira. Swear to her on the Qur’an that you’re like a sister to me.’

  ’I won’t swear anything if she comes to my house and insults me. Your wife’s mad, Samir. But right now the important thing is, where are you all going to live, now there are seven of you?’

  Samir turned to his wife. ’Where are you all going to sleep? Why did you come? How did you get here? Who bought your tickets? Who bought this coat for you?’

  ’Some women from the ruling family took pity on me and the children. Remember you have five children? Did you think what you sent us was enough? That’s why.’

  ’Don’t change the subject. Who bought you the tickets? Wo
men or men? Amira will tell you how I work day and night so you can hold your heads up in public, while you’ve been dragging my name through the mud. How am I going to go back to Dubai now, if my wife’s turned into a brown Natasha?’

  ’The women bought the tickets for me, and gave me this coat. I told you how Mahasin took me with her one day, and I read their coffee cups for them, and everything in my fortune-telling turned out to be true, so they began sending a car to fetch me twice a day.’

  Samir kept up the pretence of jealousy; it was the only way he could control his wife. ’These women thought you were manna from heaven, I’m sure!’ he said sarcastically to her. ’You must think I’m stupid. I swear if I hear a single word from Dubai I’m going to throttle you.’

  Samir’s wife calmed down. He was jealous about her. She was his property. He’d threatened to hit her, even strangle her. Did she need any further proof that he loved her? Look at him now, exhausted. He still didn’t believe her. She saw how he glanced furtively at her coat, trying to find out the truth. But when she showed him the return tickets, Dubai-London, London-Dubai, and the one-year visa stamped on her passport, his eyes flickered distractedly, and he found himself shouting, ’I’m finished, no work, no fun, only six chains around my neck - you and your children.’