She had a bath, but although she was absorbed in beautifying herself, Nahid’s face kept appearing before her. She left a note for Samir, asking him to call her on the mobile as soon as he got in, and took a taxi to the hotel. As she went up in the lift to the man’s room she said to herself, ’Five thousand more, and I’ll go back to Nahid.’
The man was waiting for her. He bent to kiss her hand and she wished she could tell him the truth, and weep for Nahid in front of him. She wanted an explanation. How was it that Nahid was all right the day before yesterday, and now she was dying. The man asked her where her shopping was. ’In the car,’ she lied.
Then he began questioning her about her children and her uncle and whether the police had contacted her. He noticed her expression change suddenly at the mention of the police and he reminded her slyly of her lost money. Her mobile rang just in time to save her from further embarrassment. She rummaged urgently through her bag for it and heard Samir’s voice at the other end. ’Come to the hotel at six,’ she told him. ’Bring the girls and the car. Awatif knows it. It’s by the Pizza on the Park.’
Out of the blue, the man cut in, ’Tell him I’m waiting for the girls too, so that I can line them up on the bed and fuck them one after the other.’
These shocking words hit her like a jet of scalding water, or a sudden cold sweat. Shaken, she ignored him, gearing herself up to escape, pretending she was still listening to the voice on the other end of the line, but the man went on, ’Tell him that I’ll do things he wouldn’t be able to imagine to you as well, even if you are a princess.’
She swung round to him and screamed, ’You slept with me, didn’t you? What difference would it have made to you who I was or where I came from? Do you screw a woman, or is it her title or nationality?’
Her sudden outburst terrified him, and she took advantage of this to pick up a glass of water and throw it at him, then run out, her determination fired by fury. Once she found herself in the open air she made for the Pizza on the Park and sat there, her heart still pumping, and called Samir to tell him to come and pick her up, and to leave the monkey at home.
She put her head in her hands, and jumped whenever she heard a noise. The waitress asked her what she wanted to drink, and she let out a faint shriek and tried to calm herself. She thought about Nahid, and how they’d laughed together and what they’d been through. Perhaps what had happened with the man in the hotel had been a sign telling her to go back to Nahid.
Why didn’t he just laugh, she wondered, and tell me I was a fraud and demand his money back? I would have given it to him, once I’d deducted my fee. Anyway, why should I care? It’s true I’m a prostitute, not a princess.
When she heard Samir’s voice at her side she again yelped in fright and told him that she’d been found out.
’Did he follow you here?’
’No. I threw a glass of water and swore at him and ran away.’
’So what are you afraid of? He’s never going to find you, and what can he do to you anyway? We were together the whole day. I can vouch for it.’
As they devoured a pizza Amira knew she was herself again, and as if the pizza had endowed her with strength, she ordered another. Samir called a taxi and she hurried to get in, glancing back at the hotel and finding it exactly as she had left it, with a porter standing on the steps, and not dozens of her clients pointing her out to the police as she’d imagined.
Chapter Eight
I
’Sweetheart, dear child, Lamis, write that they’re draining the Marshes, depriving them of water. O water of the Marshes, which was my milk, and land of the Marshes, which fed me the dates from your great lofty palm trees. O River Euphrates, they’re drying out your heart, and yours, oh Tigris. Your fish cease to breathe, and die. O birds in your skies, big and small ...’
’Dad, that’s beautiful, but Khalid wants information about the Marshes. I know the draining is important, but what he wants is information about life there, in the past, when you were a small boy. Did you go to school? What sort of games did you play? Was there a doctor where you lived? A shop? What did you eat? What were the different seasons like? Briefly, how do people live when they’re surrounded by water?’
’I know what you mean. Write, my dear. Write this down. My great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather ...’
’You talk about yourself and I’ll put it into shape later.’
’My father, God rest him, forbade me to play or listen to music. Everything I saw around me I perceived first by hearing it. How could he ban music when everything around me was music, bestowed on the Marshes by the Almighty?
’I would hear the river swell and know that its water had turned red with mud and would flood any day now. I heard the squawking of the ducks and the croaking of thousands of frogs, the call of the kite, the wailing of children, the barking of dogs, the rustle of palm leaves as the trees bent their tall frames towards the water, and the sounds of the buffalo. And I liked the splatter of my little brother’s pee hitting the water.’
Lamis heard her mother’s voice in the background. ’Why don’t you tell her about the spring?’
’Dear child, in spring there were hundreds of burhan, the waterfowl ...
’No, no. I meant the fleas in spring. They were everywhere, even jumping into your nose and mouth,’ called her mother.
’Are you with me, dear? Your mother is interfering as usual. She saps one’s resolve and destroys one’s imagination. Where was I? Ah ... hundreds of waterfowl rising up off the water, preparing to migrate, beating their wings, bringing a darkness over everything, which disperses when they’re gone. When the water lilies open, the mosquitoes suck their nectar and their humming is like the taste of sugar in the mouth, and the music they make is yellow, purple, silent white, and it makes the buffalo race as if they’re running from slaughter, when they come close and listen to the music.’
’Dad, what’s wrong? Please don’t cry. What you’re saying is so beautiful and soulful.’
’What are you telling her, you selfish man? Why are you crying in front of your daughter, and scaring her? Let me smell your breath. You must have been drinking.’
’Shall I tell Lamis how lucky I was to go to Najaf and meet you?’
’No, tell her the truth. Tell her what an ill-fated day it was.’
’I’ll tell her that, if my father hadn’t forbidden me to play the lute or the tambourine, I would have stayed in the Marshes and never got to know you, and we wouldn’t have had our sweet little Lamis. I’ll tell her how we met, and how you loved my lute even before you met me, and how you hate it now, how you’ve smashed three instruments so far...’
’Hello? Dad?’
But her mother’s voice ripped along the wires again, and made the receiver quiver in Lamis’s hand.
’Write to her, or send her a cassette, or what will young Madame Lamis think, that she’s still paying for her victory and having to spend money left and right? Remind your daughter that at least she should be paying her own phone bills and electricity bills — unless she doesn’t care that her in-laws think of her as a parasite, living off them - and remind her that she doesn’t own the flat. She’s just living there temporarily because the father of her child feels sorry for her. Above all, let her engrave in her mind the saying "Out of sight, out of mind" - her son will eventually forget she exists.’
Lamis slammed down the receiver, wanting to feel angry, but the beauty of her father’s voice remained with her, its reverberations attuned to the beat of her heart, untainted by her mother’s shrill complaints. Her father’s sensitivity made her think of Nicholas - how might Nicholas have talked about the Marshes? Always, she returned involuntarily to Nicholas, although she had finally stopped going to his flat and was avoiding anywhere linked to him, even the supermarket where they used to shop. She had collected up everything that reminded her of him and put it away: the miniature of Majnum Layla, the little bride-doll, the silver bracelets, even the matches he used
to light her single cigarette after dinner. She had started to keep the bedside light on all night because, when she put it off, Nicholas had taken it as a sign that he should come to bed with her; then he’d become like a piece of quicksilver between the sheets. In her desperate efforts not to have any communication with him, she had even wondered feverishly how she could block out the BT tower, as she had hidden the telephone on occasions so that she wasn’t tempted to contact him.
The fleeing lover takes his face away with him, so the other will no longer claim him back, or pursue him and catch him unawares.
Yet Lamis smiled at the thought of Nicholas, then checked herself, as the pain returned. She still loved him, but she was also becoming more certain of his selfishness with each passing day, more aware of his lack of patience. Nicholas had declared war against her and vanished - although she understood, or Amira made her understand, that we all have different ways of ending relationships. After all, she’d not wanted any give or take with her husband, but had just wanted to escape without offering any reasons, hadn’t she?
’But I didn’t love my husband and I love Nicholas.’
’So why don’t you go to Oman?’ Amira asked slyly.
’Without being sure he’s there?’
’He’ll know that you tried.’
She called her father again and agreed with him that he should write a letter or send his memories on a tape.
’My dear, write this one sentence before it slips my mind, because sometimes I note things down so fast that I can’t read my writing, or don’t understand what my signs mean:
’ ’ ’A child of the Marshes can hear before he can see, so that our hearing was like a dog’s." No, no. Put that it was like another heart. "My ear was so sensitive that I couldn’t sleep whenever I could hear my own breathing not keeping time with my ear’s pulse beating on my straw pillow ..." There. Goodbye ...’
A week later, Lamis found an express package from her father in the post, containing tapes, accompanied by a long affectionate letter:
My dear, I can’t help but relate to you all my conflicting feelings. Take out whatever you want to and be sure that your father will understand and won’t hold it against you. But I must stress that you should encourage Khalid to be English. There are Englishmen with Arab names.
I begin my journey with these words: The alphabet seemed to me like a homeless child with no place to live, even though it was kept cased in a museum, and I began to follow it in its wanderings, so I could take it in my arms.
Lamis read this and thought what a poet her father was until she read on. ’I borrowed these lines from the poet Adonis.’
She put the tape on. ’Hello. Hello.’ Her father’s voice echoed in the flat as he addressed his grandson.
’Khalid, you should explain to the teacher that the lute was what brought your mother to London. If it hadn’t been for the lute you wouldn’t have been born in London. The lute took me from the Marshes to Najaf, and led me to marry your grandmother, Neeran - her name means fire - it carried me away from my world, my family and my childhood companions. And you, my dear child Lamis, forgive this lute, which you were always trying to look inside; it was what made you grow up without roots, without a proper education, and even without a bed of your own. One, two, three. We’ve begun.
’The lute was the young man’s passion when he arrived in Najaf from his birthplace, the Marshes. Neeran saw the lute on the table, when she was peering from behind the washing hung out to dry, trying to see into the room of the student who’d recently moved in. Her heart leaped. The sight of the lute made her think of a film with Shadia and Abd al-Halim Hafiz singing beautiful love songs, which she’d seen in Basra when she was visiting her aunt.
’The lute turned her thoughts to love, a sentiment far removed from this city, where there were no cinemas and where music was more or less forbidden, and the radio disapproved of, unless it was playing recitations of the Holy Qur’an and the Traditions of the Prophet. But Neeran knew about love from the songs she listened to with the volume turned down to a whisper, and from stories about the poets of Najaf and their secret lovers whose identities were known only to the pages of letters, and also from Egyptian films which only a few saw, but whose stories were told and retold.
’Neeran stole a glance at the young man who’d come from the Marshes as he played the lute in the room. His eyes were closed and she couldn’t hear any notes. He was playing in his heart, while his fingers moved up and down the strings. Nevertheless he drew her to him, like a male bird drawing in a female. He was respecting the atmosphere of that city where sleeping and waking were regulated by the calls to prayer. Only the crowing of cocks and the call of migrating birds claimed the right to be heard, while an old woman was disregarded when she tried to silence the chirping of one happy sparrow. "How can you allow yourself to sing here?" she scolded.
’But it was music that brought me, that young man, to Najaf. My father’s worst fear was that I would become an entertainer at weddings and circumcisions, or a professional mourner, and this made him listen to the UN adviser to the Marshes; he was urging people to send their children to school and then to the big cities to continue their education and, as a result, my father sent me, not to Baghdad or Basra or even Mosul, but to the holy city of Najaf to do religious studies.’
Then suddenly her father’s voice was raised in irritation, and Lamis started in fright.
’What’s happened? Why are you cutting me off?’ he asked.
For a moment Lamis, whose thoughts were far away from London, didn’t understand. She wound the tape back and heard her father ask irritably, again, ’What’s happened? Why are you cutting me off?’ Then there was a pause, then again, ’Why are you sitting looking at me? Didn’t I say I don’t want you here?’
’I’m not interfering. I’m just sitting here to cut my nails.’ Lamis heard her mother’s voice on the tape.
’Do you think I don’t find that expression on your face intrusive? That unpleasant, self-righteous, sarcastic smirk?’
’Stop the tape if you want to ask me why I’m smiling.’
’I’ve stopped it.’
But it seemed that her father had not succeeded in stopping it, in his agitation at her mother. Her mother’s voice came on the tape again.
’I can’t help laughing at you when you take yourself so seriously, and describe yourself as a musician, as if you were of the calibre of a player like Sharif Muhi al-Din Haydar.’
’Ah, if I’d realised my hopes, you’d be talking in a different tone now. You’d pick up that lute as if it was your child.’
’But who stopped you doing what you wanted?’
’Your city stopped me. Your family.’
’So why did you stay?’
’Love dulled my senses. My passion for you deluded me into thinking I could delay confronting the uncertainty I felt in every pore of my body, and be content with you.’
’Love is supposed to feed art, whether you’re happy or unhappy.’
’Not when your beloved wakes up scowling and says, "My sister’s fridge is bigger, my cousin’s bracelet is better," and when she turns her back on you in bed and you try to please her and win her round, and she gives in, but says, "So will you buy me anything I want?" ’
’I was putting pressure on you so you’d stir yourself and find a job.’
’Of course, everyone who didn’t go to the Gulf wasn’t really working, you’re right. What about my job in the post office?’
’You yourself said that that job was for a half wit ... Oh, I’m sorry, I’d forgotten that you were the head of the music academy,’ she said sarcastically.
’Go on, make fun of my birds, but if it hadn’t been for the lute, would we have got over the Iranian border? If it hadn’t been for the lute, would the British customs official have treated us with such respect?’
The tape stopped here.
Lamis double-checked that it was finished, then went to fetch the other tape. Bef
ore sitting down to listen she went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. She thought back to their home in Najaf, and to the birdcages that became the most important feature of the house for her, with their anonymous little sparrows with drab feathers. Lamis’s father had set himself the task of brainwashing the sparrows so that they would forget the limited songs they had been born with and load up the spirals and convolutions of their brains with songs that were mellow and rhythmic. Day and night he played them a tape of nightingales singing until they learned to copy the sounds perfectly. Their powers of imitation were so exact that he caught them trying to copy the click of the tape, and thanked God he noticed before their vocal cords popped like so many bubbles. He would take hold of them one by one and kiss them and give them their graduation speech, ’Go out into the big wide world and spread your sweet song among the tombs and mosques.’
Then Lamis thought of their arrival at Heathrow for her wedding, when he’d talked to the customs official who began inspecting his lute so that the customs official would know that he was not from Najaf but from the Marshes, and of how her father explained that Lady Drawer had distributed toys and warm hats to them when he was a small boy, and ’Wilfred’ had taken a photo of him, and that this was proof that his family was not against the English.
Lamis suddenly could not bear to listen to the other tapes, could not take another dose of sorrow over her father’s failure and her mother’s resentment. Her father, the beautiful dolphin who’d lost his sense of time and place, yet still led his family out, in the belief that they would otherwise be embroiled in daily harassment, only to find himself in a swamp trying desperately to breathe. Her father blamed her mother and love, because both had made him turn aside from following his great hope.
She saw her father now as a man, as an individual with limitations - not as a machine called ’father’ who has to manufacture solutions, hope, happiness and wisdom. She found herself watching a hand peeling away a thin mask that had forbidden her to breathe or to laugh for so long, a mask similar to one that she saw in her childhood, being peeled off the face of a young woman who wanted to remove her freckles. Taking with it the wailing, sobbing, sighing and whispering that made her heart beat faster and faster to free itself from the lungs and find a safer place to hide. Away from her childhood home, her father’s drunkenness and his smell of alcohol. The troubles and rumours in Najaf, the terror that engulfed her town expecting Saddam Hussein to come in person and wipe them all out. Away from the mountains and valleys where they were waiting for smugglers to take her family and others to safety, while adults wept out loud and her mother coated Lamis’s and Lamis’s sister’s bodies in sand mixed with water to disguise the smell of fresh flesh from the hyenas. Then the safety that was squatting in run-down places in Damascus and Beirut, seeing everything and saying nothing, and finally came the marriage, a frozen oasis, and still she was seeing everything and saying nothing!
Only in London Page 24