She had to find Nicholas. She didn’t want Khalid to have to sit there one day listening to the crackle of her voice as she blamed herself and her parents and him because she’d fallen in love, and been afraid to live with the one she loved.
Her father’s voice took her back to their house in Najaf. She wondered what Khalid would think if he ever had to listen to a tape made by her: would she talk about the willow tree in Hyde Park or the whine of video games, or her lying in bed reading and crying? Or would she write a letter telling her son how her father had decided to get his family out of Iraq the day his dead mother visited him in the basement where he was hiding - drinking and playing the lute.
’My right eye and my left eye,’ he had said to his daughters, ’I promise you I’m taking you on the wings of a bird to a lovely place with big dolls and chewing gum and sweets, where all the people spend their days eating ice-cream and dancing and singing.’
She dialled her father’s number in Dubai and, when he answered, she told him that he was not only a musician, but a poet and a psychiatrist. She stopped for a second to gather her strength, willing herself not to cry, while she told him that she missed him and also she missed her mother.
’Your sister told me about the Englishman.’
’Ah, Nicholas. You’d like him, but ...’
’It doesn’t bother me, my dear. An Englishman would be very good. Between you and me, it would be your best chance of happiness. What does he do?’
’But I’m not seeing him any more.’
’He didn’t want to marry? He wanted an open relationship? You were right. You were always so wise!’
’He wanted to get married and I said no.’
’If you had the same outlook on life and you loved each other and there was no interfering matchmaker or Snake-in-the-Grass, why didn’t you let fate take its course?’
Lamis laughed at Snake-in-the-Grass, her mother-in-law’s nickname.
’In a while, Dad. Let me wait and see. Not yet.’
’They say that Snake-in-the-Grass is searching high and low to find your husband a wife.’
’I wish him well.’
’And the boy?’
’What about him?’
’He’ll get a wicked stepmother.’
’There’s more to Khalid than meets the eye. Anyhow, that’s all a long way off.’
’You’re right. But I don’t understand what you mean. Not yet? You want to wait? Do you want this Englishman, and do you understand each other or not? That’s the important thing.’
’I don’t know. I’m scared.’
’Scared of him?’
’No. I’m scared but I don’t know why. Of my mother-in-law, of people - Khalid, Khalid’s father, my mother ...’
’Don’t be afraid any more. I know everyone criticised you for leaving the boy. But he’s fine.’
’Does that mean you don’t blame me for what happened?’
’I blame myself, day and night. And I blame your mother ... listen to me, my daughter ...’
Lamis quickly changed the subject. ’I’ve got a surprise for you.’
’Shall I close my eyes?’
’I know somebody who could introduce you to the anchor of that music programme at the Arabic radio station in Dubai.’
’Let your mother and me live quietly in Dubai next to your sister, and let’s not have any more problems. Snake-in-the-Grass must have contacted the authorities about your shipment of dried flowers, may God bar her from His Paradise! To this day your mother and I are taking medication.’
’Dad, she didn’t know that I sent dried flowers.’
’Don’t be naive, dear. That woman would even spy on herself.’
’I love you, Dad.’
To her consternation he suddenly broke into dry sobs. ’I love you too, Lamis,’ he hiccuped. ’I’m sorry. I’ve made you and your mother suffer so. If only we were at home in Najaf, it would be heaven. I miss the birds, and the smell of the earth mixed with the smell of the brazier. And I’d even rather have the muezzins any day than those Russian women singing Umm Kulthum.’
’You’re just feeling nostalgic. If you were there now, you’d be trying to get out all the time. You were tremendously happy when you fled with us. You promised us a country where people spend their days eating ice-cream, chewing gum, and dancing and singing.’
’It’s fine to escape in your mind.’ His voice broke again.
’But Dad, you probably saved us from being killed. Look what’s happened since we left.’
’Forgive me, I treated you badly because I was afraid of your mother. I should have stood up to her and stopped her forcing you to marry.’
’It doesn’t matter, Dad. I’m divorced. That’s the main thing.’
’I’m afraid you’ve got a complex about men.’
’Don’t worry.’
But she too began to sob: they had married her to a man who never hummed a tune, or called her darling, or listened to a song, and who was never seized by any powerful emotion without suffering from severe flatulence. Plans for taking her revenge on her mother and father used to circulate endlessly in her mind during the early years of her marriage, especially when she was told the details of her parents’ own love story for the first time: how her father had cut his head and beaten his chest with heavy chains at the memorial feast of Ashoura, so that Neeran would see his bare chest and, according to tradition, reach out her hand to rub it in the blood, so that she could smear it on the faces of her younger brothers and sisters; how he’d threatened to kidnap her if her father wouldn’t agree to let them marry because of his lute.
II
Was it possible that they were still in London, Samir wondered, as he tried to find the joiner’s workshop in Ealing. The streets and faded shopfronts straggled on endlessly, and the sky here seemed duller, and mist brushed against the windows and hung around the street lights. Among the blackened buildings were a bingo hall and a bowling alley, the most significant landmarks these streets had managed to produce. Samir could count the other people in the street on his fingers. He wished he hadn’t left the Tabbouleh and longed for the noisy welcome of the boys behind the counter.
But soon enough the joiner’s shop took him back to Beirut with its smell of wood shavings and glue and the sound of nails being hammered in. He felt at home as he sat there waiting for the truck driver and a tape of one of his favourite songs played in the heart of Ealing.
The driver returned with bags of food and groceries. Commenting that Ealing was definitely cheaper than London, he loaded the coffin into the truck, helped by a young lad who worked for the joiner, who kept asking Samir if he knew the boxer Prince Naseem, because he wanted to be like him. Samir went into the toilet and put on hairspray and checked his clothes while the truck driver, an Egyptian, accepted the joiner’s offer of a cup of tea.
’I hope we’ll see you again soon,’ said the joiner, shaking Samir’s hand.
’No, please God, I won’t see you and you won’t see me. I’ve got five children.’
The joiner and the Egyptian driver laughed at the way Samir expressed himself. Samir opened the passenger door and found the seat occupied, not by one passenger but many: packets and packets of toilet paper, vegetables, blankets, bottles of fruit juice and huge cartons of Persil.
’Where shall I sit?’
’On the back of the truck, to watch the coffin.’
’Don’t scare me, mama. Who’d want to steal a worm-eaten coffin? Did they tell you it was for a Pharaoh?’
’No, no. Don’t worry, I was joking. Nobody steals round here, but I wouldn’t fancy eating the food if it had been next to the coffin.’
’But it doesn’t matter about me?’
Samir climbed reluctantly on to the back of the truck and sat facing away from the coffin. He soon forgot about it, in spite of its rattling. He began to feel happy. Sitting in the back of an open truck, like the joiner’s shop, made him nostalgic for Lebanon. He thought of the m
arket porters travelling around in trucks like this, carrying ropes slung over their shoulders, and remembered a soldier who’d thrown a tablet of soap from the back of an army truck, making Samir wonder for days whether the soldier was making a generous gesture, or didn’t like bathing.
He felt cold, and curled up with his hands under his head, enjoying the jolting of the truck. He thought of the shy boy behind the counter in the Tabbouleh. This was the first time he’d allowed himself to fall in love since his teacher, Salah.
He had thrown stones at Salah’s windows on his wedding day and one had hit the bride’s mother in the chest. He called the teacher’s name repeatedly, ’Salah, Salah,’ and rolled around on the ground and banged his head as if he were heading a football.
In the hospital far from Beirut, among the pine trees and singing nightingales, a nun took a liking to him and asked him to water the garden every afternoon. When she and the doctors agreed that he was cured, and should leave, he bent to kiss her hand. She told him to forget Salah because Salah was a young man like himself.
’No, ma soeur, he’s much older than me. I’m only fifteen.’
’I know. I meant he’s like you, he’s a male. While your mother, for example, and your sister and I are all females.’
’But you’ve got a moustache, ma soeur.’
’That’s true! You’re so funny! I meant you and Salah are the same sex. It’s not right for you to love each other and get married, and you’ll never be able to have children together.’ She fetched a picture and explained to him in detail what distinguished a woman from a man, then tested him to make sure he understood. When she had finished, he asked if he could pick a bunch of flowers from the garden, to take with him when he left the next day.
’Who’s the bouquet for, Samir? Your mother or your sister?’
’My teacher, Salah.’
’But as we’ve already agreed, Salah is a man and it’s not right for you to love a man and you know the reason why.’
’I’m too young to be thinking about having children. I’m not going to have children. My father tears his hair and beats himself on the face and says, "Having children was the stupidest thing I ever did." Anyway Salah found out that I’ve got a hole too, like a girl. And I feel like a girl since I wore my sister’s red dress and stood on the roof dancing and singing. Look, ma soeur, I was singing, "Katkouta, katkouta, my sweet little chick ..." ’
’Stop! Stop! I don’t want to hear it.’
Samir recalled the sweet downcast look of the boy in the Tabbouleh as he cut tomatoes into flower shapes that unfolded at his touch, the same colour as his cheeks. This was true love, not blond hair or blue eyes.
They seemed to have reached their destination quickly, as the truck was drawing to a halt. Samir stood up, ready to get out, but realised the truck hadn’t stopped altogether. A creaking sound made him look around and he saw the coffin lid rise and a figure emerge.
’Are we there?’ asked the figure.
Samir threw himself off the truck just as it started gathering speed again. He cried out in pain. The speeding cars swerved round him as he wept and pleaded in Arabic and English. One car drew up, followed by several more, and the driver of a blue Volvo called an ambulance on his mobile. Samir lost consciousness and regained it as he was being lifted into the back of an ambulance, swathed in blankets, with the Egyptian truck driver at his side, repeating, ’Thank God you’re not hurt. It’s nothing. You just had a fright. It was the kid that works for the joiner. He wanted a free trip to the centre of town and I was afraid his boss would think I was helping him skip work.’
His words revolved in Samir’s head and he fell asleep, then woke to hear the paramedic saying on the car phone, ’Middlesex Hospital.’
’No!’ shouted Samir. ’I’ve mended my ways. Take me to a normal hospital.’
III
Amira and large numbers of other women lined up in the main hall of the mosque, clothed in black, but decorative black: transparent headscarves, some with lace and black sequins, and jewellery round their necks and wrists. One woman apologised to her neighbour, as she tried to hide her rings: ’I was afraid my flat would be broken into.’
’Look,’ responded the neighbour, opening up her handbag and showing the first woman all the jewellery she owned, wrapped in chamois leather.
Nahid was in the coffin and two clerics were praying over her. Amira was fuming: she’d clashed with the doorman on her way into the mosque because he’d made a remark about the length of her skirt which came to just below her knee, despite the fact that she was wearing a black headscarf and no make-up.
The cortege prepared to move off to the Muslim graves in Walthamstow Cemetery. It was not a normal funeral procession, as it contained in its ranks the owner of the cabaret, the musician, and the cleaner from the same club, as well as Nahid’s close friends who had brought along their own close friends, for death in exile was one of the hardest things faced by the friends and relations of the deceased. Nahid’s mother had advised her daughter, in the period when she was pleased with her because she’d given up her dancing career, ’Whenever somebody Egyptian dies, Nahid, even if you don’t know them, you should go with them to the graveyard.’
The drummers, the champagne waiter, the revue-bar compere, all those who never rose before three o’clock in the afternoon, had got up at ten that morning. It was raining, as the English say, cats and dogs, and as the Arabs say, hard enough to split the sky in two. The gravedigger had to go down into the grave with a bucket to scoop out the rain and mud. As fast as he emptied out the water, the heavens replaced it. Those carrying Nahid in her shroud grew impatient as the rain began to seep through. They tried to push the covering more securely round her body and the longer they delayed putting her in the grave, the more mud and water the grave discharged. A collective gasp went up as part of Nahid’s naked corpse appeared. Amira and a veiled woman pounced, demanding that the gravedigger provide plastic bags and trying to shield Nahid with their umbrellas. The gravedigger came running back with black dustbin liners, and again the assembled company gasped, but the two women were unconcerned and tried to cover Nahid with the bags, to hide the body that had worked for her all her life.
The cleric bent over Nahid, speaking his final words of warning, ’Beware of the Devil, Nahid. Drive him away. Say to him, "Get out of here! I’m a Muslim, Islam is my religion, the Prophet Muhammad is my prophet and the Qur’an is my book.’
The rain began beating down on the cellophane wrapped around the bouquets of flowers, berating them, and the card Stanley had written to Nahid turned to a navy-blue pulp.
The English put cards with their bunches of flowers, as if fully expecting that the dead would rise up and read them, or else that the spirit of the words would reach them, even though they were dead. And why were the flowers wrapped in cellophane, instead of being scattered on the ground around the grave?
Along with the huge bouquet that she carried, panting under its weight, Bahia had brought a toy cat. The cat annoyed Amira, and she criticised Bahia to herself for the way she blindly copied the English.
Nahid’s death and this burial were a space where Amira could come to a stop and reflect. Those who had come in answer to death’s summons were the ones Nahid had withdrawn from in the last days of her life, but she remained one of them in life and in death. Even her family in Egypt had said to Amira in sickly-sweet tones of flattery, when she suggested bringing Nahid’s body to Cairo, ’Don’t go to all that trouble, sweetheart. Bury her near her friends. All of you are her family now.’
Did Amira believe what people said as the grave filled up with water, and the earth turned to mud and silt, ’It’s as if God doesn’t want to take Nahid back.’ Did she cover her head and become a good Muslim before she knew she had cancer?
I wonder who’ll be at my funeral, she thought.
Funerals were like weddings, a superficial display of a person, a snapshot of a place taken from an aircraft. This is what the dead person
was like; a character study in a couple of words, like the quick competitions in the press that show the eyes of a well-known personality. And she would be Amira, the whore, and perhaps they’d say she was a good laugh too.
Amira was full of aches and pains and was forced to stay in bed after the day of the funeral. Most people assured her that it was the shock of grief for Nahid, or perhaps she’d used muscles she’d never used before as she walked through the cemetery, extricating her feet from the mud at every step. She wanted to include these among the reasons why she wasn’t having sex as before.
Samir, who had come out of Middlesex Hospital that evening, brought her food she did not want, repeating prayers for her speedy recovery loud enough for her to hear. He had trained his monkey to sit beside her, and to turn a page of her magazine each time she fed it with a peanut, while she kept asking Samir, ’Why didn’t I talk to Nahid more? Why didn’t I stop everything to be with her?’
IV
Lamis was convinced that the heart could think, it projected its own logic — she felt she had to visit Nicholas’s flat in Pimlico. She felt her mind had been cleared of hostile thoughts that had grown up like weeds around her image of Nicholas and this encouraged her to enter his life all over again, as if she were the one who’d walked out of it.
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