Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  ’But why’s he done this? I wasn’t unfaithful to him. All I did was love him.’

  ’You didn’t want to live with him.’

  ’But we spent every night together.’

  ’Do you think by taking a small suitcase over to his place, you were moving in with him? You were supposed to announce to everybody that you were living together, go abroad with him for a bit, then marry and have kids.’

  ’But why did he disappear like this? We were so close, like a nail and its varnish ... how could he disappear in this way? Why didn’t he talk to me, argue with me?’

  ’Each one of us has a different way of showing anger, and showing love too. Your ex-husband must have wondered why, all of a sudden, after thirteen years of marriage, you refused him. He must have said to people, "But what did I do wrong? How did I drive her away?" ’

  Lamis went back to her own flat and it, too, was unchanged and waiting for her return. There was another phone message from her son. She dialled the school’s number and promised Khalid that she would fetch him the day after tomorrow, and that this time he could stay overnight with her. As she put down the receiver she thought it was lucky that he wasn’t living with her. She called Oman, Nicholas’s flat in London, Oman again, his flat, and finally Anita, and left her an urgent message about what had happened. She looked out at the BT tower before drawing the curtains and closing her eyes in bed, thinking that the reason Nicholas had left couldn’t have been because she didn’t want to move in with him, nor because she hadn’t told her son about them since, although now she had left messages, lying and saying that she was sorting everything out, Nicholas still hadn’t responded.

  As soon as they stepped off the train, her son’s attention was fully occupied by London. He wanted to go to Namco again - ’There’s one in Piccadilly Circus, Mum’ - but she insisted on taking him to Hyde Park, once they had had something to eat in the Hard Rock Café.

  She led him towards the tearoom with the weeping willow in Hyde Park. Should she ask him if he remembered what he’d said about that tree? No, she mustn’t be sentimental. He’d thought the twigs under the tree were its tears, and one day he’d walked in among the branches on his little legs and pulled them down so that they touched the ground, saying, ’Look, it’s dried its tears now.’

  Was it possible that this boy trailing along behind her sulking, because she didn’t want to buy him rollerblades so he could join the dozens of rollerbladers in the park, had once said such sweet things about a tree?

  ’We’re not going shopping. I want to talk to you.’

  ’What about?’

  She suddenly wished that she could share with him her devastation about Nicholas.

  ’About your school. Your friends. How’s William?’

  ’Do you know what my grandmother did to him? She made him eat Iraqi kibbeh. His stomach was really sore and his mum phoned my gran to ask her what was in it. And my gran was furious.’

  ’Never mind. We’ll ask him to come with us to Namco next week, if you like.’

  ’His mother wouldn’t let him. She phoned and said we spend too much money on him when Dad takes us out, and she can’t do the same, and my gran got fed up with her and said that it was a tiny amount and Arabs are generous.’

  She was frustrated and saddened by their conversation; she realised how young her son was and how much he was in need of her to pull him away from the life she had run away from.

  ’If your father agrees, you could live with me! Shall I try to persuade him?’

  ’I don’t want to have a different room. Anyway my father won’t let me, I know.’

  She glanced at him. He was watching the boats gliding over the lake among the ducks and gulls. He had taken a rowing boat out with his father once.

  ’I want to row. Let’s hire a boat,’ he said suddenly.

  ’But I don’t know how to.’

  ’I do. I do.’

  I ought to be happy he’s taking it this way, she thought. From tonight I’ll sleep with my eyes shut, not like a ghoul. A deep sleep.

  His self-confidence gave him the upper hand, and she acquiesced and sat in the boat, thinking fearfully: Why do you always go backwards when you row? How can people see behind them?’

  ’Khalid, let’s go back,’ she said aloud.

  ’You’re scared. Swear you’re not. Swear you’re not.’

  She was worried her son wouldn’t be able to get them back. They were far away from dry land, and he was rowing more laboriously.

  ’Let’s rest for a bit.’

  ’You’re scared. You’re not like a mother. I know you’re scared of water, snow, horses, riding a bike, insects, the dark, dogs. But I taught you to like dogs.’ He reeled the list off triumphantly.

  ’But I got you a teacher to give you swimming lessons when you didn’t want to, and your father and grandmother were against it too.’

  ’I remember peeing on the teacher’s feet.’

  ’Let me row with you.’

  ’You don’t know how to. You’re scared.’

  ’Teach me. I want you to teach me.’

  She let go of the oar and her heart jumped after it in a panic, but she retrieved it. She felt more confident as she followed Khalid’s instructions. Unusually for her, she concentrated and listened to him and they were soon heading for the shore.

  They crossed Hyde Park to Park Lane and hailed a taxi. Khalid was so pleased that he’d taught her how to row, but as they entered the flat his disappointment was obvious.

  ’Mum, I don’t believe you live like a poor person. Everything here’s ancient, and the TV ...’

  ’I’m going to change it all. But not for a bit. I want to make a room for you, like your room at home, because you’re going to come every week and stay with me. Did you have a nice time today?’

  ’I love you, Mum.’ He hugged her. ’Why don’t we go to the cinema and Planet Hollywood?’

  IV

  As the sun intervened in the lives of the English, so it did in the lives of Amira and her entourage. When the first signs of the real summer appeared and the roses opened in pots and tubs, in squares and parks, like women in beautiful hats bending their heads to see who was passing, the English streets and stores filled up with black abayas and veils trailing perfumes that lingered but never blended with the stale London air.

  Amira and her attendants entered Hyde Park, an oasis for Arab families, where there was water, and trees and grass, ducks and geese, horses and rollerbladers. Unlike the park’s elderly English patrons, the Arab promenaders enjoyed watching the young rollerbladers, who each had his or her own way of turning, dancing and jumping.

  What upset them were the dogs, especially the ones that ran free, sometimes far from their owners. They felt a prickle of fear and disgust at the thought of having contact with them. So the Filipina servant girls hurried to gather the chairs scattered here and there on the grass, searching out and cleaning up the traces left by the dogs in the spot where the family had chosen to sit. The daughters of the family asked the adults’ permission to walk by the lake. They pushed the black abayas back off their heads on to their shoulders, and looked like coloured butterflies with dark eyes, stealing swift glances at the young men from their countries, who had come to Hyde Park to meet their future wives, even if only at a distance. For this was the age of getting acquainted and exchanging a few words before making an offer of marriage, and London was the ideal place, far away from society’s prying eyes and whispered remarks, and Hyde Park offered plenty of chances, in poetic surroundings. Edgware Road and Whiteley’s had become too much like home.

  The bridegrooms-to-be, although often close enough to see each other’s facial expressions, walked around chatting to one another on mobile phones, which often carried pictures of their countries’ leaders or national flags, a speciality of a shop next to the Park Lane Hilton. They swaggered about wearing flamboyantly designed Italian suits, drenched in cologne so pungent that it drove the ducks and swans back in
to the water.

  Mingling with the crowds, Amira knew what was going on in the minds of these men: Here we are at last, a paradise that has all the elements of the old adage - water, greenery - now all we need is a beautiful face.

  She and her retinue crossed Hyde Park, stopping at Speakers’ Corner to listen to the laughter and noise around an Arab orator who was haranguing the crowd in English.

  Amira felt as if a queue of words was forming in her heart, tumbling up her throat, then stopping before it reached her lips. Words with which she would have liked to push the speaker off his two Pepsi crates, so that she could announce, ’It is so simple - in this world there are the rich and the poor. The occupation of the poor is to milk the rich, to save the rich from being bewildered and confused about how to spend their fortunes.’

  Having found no nectar in the park, she thought of taking her retinue along to the Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner.

  Amira sat sipping tea with two of her attendants in the tearoom which she had been told resembled the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. To her disappointment there was not a single Arab there, although she had heard that Arabs liked it, and that one wealthy customer had left without paying a bill of several thousand pounds. She wondered why the hotel still welcomed Arab guests after such an incident.

  She sent an attendant off to reconnoitre, another bee seeking out the sweetest flowers. The young woman wore bright-orange lipstick and Amira saw it flashing like a beacon at her as she returned to let her know she’d found an Arab man. Amira got to her feet and went over to the telephone. Because she had filled her stomach with two pots of tea and several slices of gateau, she found she was unable to think up a new story and she repeated the old one about the flour she needed to bake special loaves, making sure that the Arab her attendant had pinpointed was listening, and adding for good measure, ’London’s nice, but life here can be complicated. You get tired of it ... From the phone in the hotel. They say the mobile can give you a blood clot in the brain and my uncle ... told me not to use it.’

  The name she gave her imaginary uncle was the musk on the seal, the gilt on the gingerbread, the crowning touch, that made the man’s pocket handkerchief tremble in surprise, and the buttons on his jacket and his gold watch begin to rattle. Amira returned to her table and waited for him to finish the cake he had ordered. She shouted, ’Oh Lord!’ so that all the tables turned to look at her. She tipped her bag upside down, emptying its contents on to the table and into her lap.

  ’I’ve been robbed,’ she announced loudly to her attendant. ’Cheque book, credit cards, and seven or eight thousand pounds, I’m not sure exactly how much, in an envelope. Perhaps it was in Harvey Nichols, when I put my bag down for a moment to try on that nightdress.’

  She sent for the driver so she could tell him to go to Harvey Nichols and the police, but from that first cry, the man had been hers, with his Arab decency and chivalry, and she stayed with him in the hotel until the following day, having sent her companion back home to look after the ’children’.

  ’Don’t smoke in front of them,’ she’d warned her. ’Order Lebanese take-away from Maroush. I’m embarrassed, but never mind, tell them to make a note of how much I owe.’

  Naturally this had prompted the man to hold out a wad of notes to the companion.

  Amira was ecstatically happy with him. She was the rebellious princess, the adventurer, who’d at last found the right man after being loved by Omar Sharif and Izzat Alaili. ’They were crazy about me,’ she told him, almost convincing herself of her star-studded past.

  She did not leave him until noon, with money for her shopping and the rent. They arranged to meet back in the room around four.

  Amira hurried home, afraid her young woman attendant might have disappeared with the money, but when she arrived she found a message on her answering machine from Bahia, saying that Nahid wanted to see her. She called Nahid’s number and an unfamiliar voice said, ’Come quickly. Nahid’s very ill.’

  Amira held her heart and felt the end had arrived. A few days before, when Nahid had not been able to tolerate Amira’s perfume and Bahia’s handbag, she had sensed that her friend was half gone.

  Nahid’s flat was bursting with people and smelled strongly of fish. Amira pushed her way through to where she was lying in bed and hailed her, laughing and fighting back the tears.

  Nahid smiled and reached out a hand to Amira.

  ’What’s wrong?’ Amira said. ’Come along, let’s go out and enjoy ourselves.’

  ’Tell me a joke,’ Nahid said. ’Cheer me up. And don’t eat the fish. It smells awful.’

  If Nahid had not been on her last legs, the two women would have laughed uncontrollably at Nahid’s friend, the drummer, who had gone to the trouble of bringing her fish from Egypt, fully confident that if she only ate it her health would be restored. One of the women Nahid had met recently at the mosque, who was standing guard at the bedroom door, kept repeating to Nahid’s English ex-husband, Stanley, ’No, no, no. You can’t.’ Then she raised her voice: ’Please, can someone explain to the foreigner what’s going on? Help me, please.’

  Another woman spoke up, her mouth full of fishbones. ’It’s forbidden in our religion, Stanley. You’re not allowed to go in and see her. You don’t have the right, now you’re divorced.’

  ’I want to see her,’ yelled Stanley. ’I want to talk to her, say goodbye, and give her this bunch of flowers.’

  ’Give them to me, and I’ll take them in to her.’

  ’No. I want to see her myself. Have you said to her that Stanley wants to see her? I bet you haven’t.’

  Amira stood up when she heard Stanley sobbing like a child. She whispered in Nahid’s ear, then rushed out to confront the woman who would not allow him in. Controlling herself so that she did not slap the woman in the face, she screamed, ’Are you saying that quack faith healer who took the Dupont lighter and said he’d have her back on her feet in a couple of days has more right to be in her room than the man she lived with? What kind of nonsense is that?’

  But when the fish-eating women grew more determined, the musicians and dancers from the cabaret massed outside Nahid’s door and began pushing away the woman with the headscarf, so that in the end Stanley got in.

  Amira found herself sitting near the fish-eaters and, to tease them, she asked one of the musicians, ’Do you remember when Stanley fell in love with Nahid - he tried to warm her up with his coat as soon as she’d finished dancing. After that night they ended up getting married, and she took him to Egypt. It was love at first sight? How happy they were...’ Amira did not continue with the story of how they were divorced a few months later, straight after their return from Cairo. They had gone there on a visit, so that Nahid could crow to her family that she had found a husband even though she was a dancer, and for Stanley to see the pyramids, the Sphinx, to ride a camel and smoke hashish. But he began slinging insults at her and her compatriots, prompted by the sight of the emaciated, overworked donkeys. ’Look, look! See their ribs sticking out. You’re savages.’

  As a result Nahid threw his clothes over her parents’ balcony one morning. The neighbours gathered them up and brought them back, and her mother, who’d been getting on well with her son-in-law until then, shouted incredulously at the couple, ’Are you really quarrelling like this about donkeys you don’t even know?’

  As soon as Stanley left her room, Nahid said, ’Pray for me, Amira. I’m dying. I can’t breathe. The phlegm’s stuck in my throat.’

  Amira tried to find Nahid’s doctor, then called the hospital who promised to send an ambulance, despite the objections of the women wearing headscarves. Then there was Bahia, whom Amira hadn’t noticed before, coming up to embrace her and the two of them started crying, then Bahia composed herself and said, ’We must collect money for the funeral expenses, the coffin, the grave in the Muslim cemetery and the clerics from the Regent’s Park Mosque to recite the Qur’an for her.’

  None of this had occurred to Am
ira, but she tried to make up for her oversight. ’We must contact her family,’ she said. ’I’ll call them. We should take her back to Egypt.’

  ’But it would be very expensive for us.’

  ’It doesn’t matter. I’ll pay for everything, even if it costs a million pounds.’

  ’Amira, you’re such a loyal friend. Lucky Nahid, I want to die with a friend like you beside me.’

  Amira and Bahia went in the ambulance with Nahid and, when they saw that she was settled, they left the hospital feeling their breasts for lumps. ’Shall we go to Whiteley’s?’ asked Bahia, but Amira demurred, so Bahia went back into the hospital, not knowing where else to go.

  Since Nahid had been confined to bed, Bahia had visited her daily and felt for the first time that she had a routine that filled the void in her life, much to the relief of the rich man who had bought her flat for her.

  Amira went back home and when Samir was not there, she began to feel annoyed with him. She hid the five thousand pounds under her mattress. She would have to send Samir to the Moroccan joiner in Ealing where the coffins were half the price of the normal ones.

  When, over the phone, the joiner tried to discuss the dos and don’ts regarding Muslim coffins, Amira begged him to stop, as she was wary of letting religion intrude in her life.