It was only in the month of December that she saw the British not singly as usual, but out in families or with their friends and neighbours, carrying bags of shopping. She saw them alone again in summer, women in Laura Ashley dresses and flat sandals getting on the bus as if they were climbing the steps of a temple.
She pictured the face of the language teacher, Alison, and her cat. The teacher was chuckling as she told a new student, ’I had an Iraqi woman who almost choked on the piece of wood I put on her tongue to hold it down when she said the letter "r".’
Lamis arrived at the Montessori nursery opposite Selfridges, the polling station for the local election. She looked at the statue of the woman holding the clock at the entrance to Selfridges. Whenever the clock struck while Lamis and her son were hurrying to the nursery, they used to stop, raise their linked hands and bring them down with each chime. She went into the school now, looking at the wall on her right in the hall, where the coat hooks used to be, and the names of the children, including that of her son Khalid, next to a photo of his dog. She went into the classroom, a smallish room with white walls covered in children’s paintings. She did not see the bronze statue of St Mark or the piano or the dark-brown chairs and tables, only new, brightly coloured chairs and tables piled up at the side to make room for the polling booths.
When he first joined the nursery she stayed with him for ten days. She did not like to see him cry when she got up to go, and had welcomed Mrs Lubbock’s suggestion that she should stay till he got used to the school. Any place away from the house had been paradise then, even among twenty children coughing, swallowing their phlegm and wetting their pants.
She used to share in all their activities, listening to stories, singing songs, being taught how to hold scissors. If she had not always drifted far away in her thoughts, she might have improved her English pronunciation a lot then, as she was only eighteen years old at the time. When Mrs Lubbock complimented her on her patience, Lamis nearly told her that she was happier there than at home, but thought better of it. How things had changed; she used to have a strong affinity for this place, as if she believed that her son was going to remain that age for ever, like the size of Chinese women’s feet in tiny shoes.
She made her mark next to the candidate’s name, and dropped it in the box, and found herself saying to the young woman in charge, ’My son went to school here.’
The young woman merely looked at her sleepily and forced a smile. On her way out a woman handed her a pamphlet from a local residents’ association. Lamis recognised her as being the mother of a girl who had been at the school with Khalid, known as Plum because she was fat, round and red in the cheeks. Lamis spoke to Plum’s mother, who pretended she remembered Khalid and asked where he was at school now, then tried to find out which way she’d voted. What concerned Lamis was the feeling that she belonged in England; the politics of the candidate she was voting for were secondary.
Lamis walked along reading the pamphlet; it was urging the authorities to agree to give priority parking to local people, Sundays too, now that Oxford Street shops had Sunday opening. St Mark’s Church needed a financial miracle. There was still a blazing row going on over the bar that disturbed local residents’ sleep. The publication regretted the closure of the post office - it had been replaced by a shop selling cotton T-shirts - and feared the street would begin to lose its charm.
Finally Lamis read about Rose Dunn, aged one hundred and three, who lived in a council flat above the very room where she’d first seen the light of day. Rose Dunn was born as Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique had its premiere, grew up in the period when Wilbur Wright made his first flight and Oscar Wilde died, had lived through two World Wars and the reigns of six kings and queens. She had outlasted the muffin man and dancing bears in the streets, and now heard revving engines instead of the clatter of horses’ hooves.
Where do I stand in all this? Lamis wondered as she walked around and came to a halt in front of the buildings where Rose Dunn lived. What do I contribute, apart from my confusion, the sound of my footsteps and my vote in the elections? How can I reach the heart of the place and make it see me?
What she was reading did not concern her, and yet it lay on her chest like a heavy weight. A pigeon flew into a rubbish bin and she was afraid it would get trapped, but it flew out again. Here, where I’m looking now, Rose Dunn is sitting with her stooped back, and I’m allowed to look: because I’m not from here. I can swagger about wherever I please. Like an eagle circling I can alight on any spot I choose and declare that this is where I’m going to settle down. Not like Rose Dunn who lives directly over the place where she was born.
She went back to the flat and called the BT information office.
’Why do you want to go up it?’ asked the impatient English voice.
’Because I want to see London from above.’
’Sorry. It’s not possible.’
’Just a minute, please. The writer Jonathan Raban in his book ...’
’Sorry, no. Goodbye.’
Jonathan Raban had climbed to the top of a building in Sanaa in Yemen. Whoever took him up had felt proud that a foreigner wanted to see his city from above. However, it was impossible for an Englishman in an official position to think: This woman’s not from here, and she’s called dozens of times. I’ll let her go up the tower.
She knew there were foreigners who developed fixations about certain features of their adopted cities. There was that Asian woman who’d sneaked into an office at Scotland Yard and come out undetected, in full riot gear, or Samir who thought his monkey could climb up to the clock on Fortnum and Mason’s and get him either Mr Fortnum or Mr Mason.
’The tower guides me like a lighthouse, as if I’m a lost ship.’ The comparison must have appealed to the BT office because one of their staff eventually rang her back. ’We’ve sorted it all out. Please bring some proof of identity with you.’
So the British were like the Arabs after all: they found loopholes in the regulations when necessary.
The waiting area in the BT tower was like a bar in broad daylight. An isolated patch of yellow on the carpet nestled against the blues and greys, not wanting to be on its own.
The lift attendant taking Lamis up to the thirty-fourth floor told her that he didn’t feel dizzy with the speed and his ears didn’t pop. When the woman assigned to accompany her showed Lamis out and she stood in front of the thick aquamarine glass, face to face with the sky, she knew the reason for the lift attendant’s pride. She looked out at the rays of sunshine distributed equably over the whole of London: if scientists were to attempt to measure them, they would not find an iota of difference between one and another.
Now she realised how the sun lit London, and that the sky was a protective skin. At any moment she expected to see God in human form, as he appeared in religious paintings, the light descending from his fingers like rods of water which had gradually become frozen over hundreds of years.
Buildings stretched to the horizon and rose up like cacti in cowboy-film deserts. She looked down on buildings that were unremarkable except for their windows, which were like kohlrimmed eyes; a touch of mascara opened them up and coloured eye-shadow lent them a magical allure and whisked them out of the bedroom into a carnival atmosphere. Blue and orange neon lights were locks of hair falling on their foreheads. The tallest skyscraper, Canary Wharf, appeared lit up with happiness because it was not alone. There were turquoise domes greenish with rust, the Tower of London holding its brother’s hand, afraid it might fall, the green of the grass pushing against buildings, then being pushed aside in turn by ponds and lakes. But she couldn’t see the ducks and the geese.
In her mind’s eye she saw her son Khalid, like a young shrub in a garden, in a house that carried no trace of her. It was crowded with his father’s friends. Each of them sat on his inflamed prostate, which was swollen up like a giant prayer bead. Khalid was surrounded by electric wires, computer games, and by money-coins dropped here and there, and no
tes-each time the boy touched something, money dropped into his hand and he filled his pockets. His grandmother defending her grandson regardless. In that flat, Iraq turned into a mere word tossed against the walls, not a country, a country that was so far from her, in distance and in memory.
Her eyes returned to the buildings, which breathed from their tops, while New York buildings breathed from their feet. She saw Nicholas gazing at his sketches of the Devedasis, concentrating on their eyes, as if trying to interrogate them about Lamis’s reaction when she realised that the drawings were also her, and to quiz them about what she meant when she covered the sketches with the bunch of keys.
Where do I have to look to spot Anita’s neighbourhood? Anita hadn’t been able to deal with Lamis’s pleading telephone messages - she left them hanging in the air without answers. When finally Lamis caught her on the telephone, Anita had lied ’that she had been away’ and interrupted Lamis’s repetitive saga saying that all stories of lovers leaving each other were utterly boring.
She picked out the main features on the wall map and let her eyes run over them: the Roundhouse, London Zoo, Baker Street. She looked out at the designated spot and saw the square and the buildings, a flag on an embassy, and her eyes moved rapidly to the back of her building. She could make out the colour of the roof tiles, the two little lips: her bedroom window.
She saw herself in her bedroom, looking out at the tower, and looking back from the tower to the bedroom. There she was, a pebble stuck in midstream, no longer carried along by the current. Nobody stared out of the window like that so earnestly, except a lonely stranger willing herself to fly out and alight in those places that she observed so often, places that gave her the feeling that their inhabitants would welcome visitors coming to sit on their sofas, and at the end of the visit would wave them off; she saw herself without a roof over her head, and with no income, and she imagined herself summoning her courage and entering the flower shop she had always admired and asking for a job in it.
As Lamis left the tower she received a packet of chocolate and a folder with her name on it from the reception desk. She opened the chocolate as soon as she stepped outside and munched on a light-brown telephone, followed by a dark brown. She opened the folder and there was a certificate stating that Lamis ... had climbed 158 metres above London on 14 November 1999. She bumped into a man, knocking against the paper cup he was carrying, and coffee spilled on the ground, spraying his shoes.
’I was in another world,’ she apologised. ’I’ve been up the tower.’
’Never mind. The view must have been fantastic.’
’It really was.’
’I didn’t know the restaurant was open to the public again.’
’No, it’s not. I just wanted to see London from above.’
As she walked she continued thinking: I wanted to see London like an outstretched palm, like something lying in front of me without a past or a present, or like the past holding the present in its grasp: the Tower of London, the river and the South Bank - all on view, without foreigners, accents, languages, the Queen, homeless people, traffic wardens; and to see the whole place disappear when I put my hands over my eyes, and when I took them away again, to see a spot of colour - children playing basketball in a school playground, dots of colour, their skin and clothes all mixed up.
She hurried to the flat as if she needed to remove a stone from her shoe and relax, but found many hindrances awaiting her, the first of which were the remaining boxes that blocked the hall. She opened the box closest to her and immersed herself in her past life briefly, and then it died. She opened one after another until all of the past contained in the boxes had died. She went back to the English-language exercises and read them again, but discovered that after all her efforts she still hadn’t managed to change the way she spoke to her satisfaction. How could she exchange the English word ’dishwasher’ with the Arabic word ’washwasha’?
’Lamis, give me an Arabic word - any word without an "r" in it, and with a "sh" sound and a "w".’
’Washwasha.’
’That’s a nice word. What does it mean?’
’Whisper.’
’Great. It’s a word without an "r" and it’s going to be a big help to us because as you know the letter "r" is the stumbling block and if it’s not there you can relax. Every time you want to say "dishwasher", think of the word "washwasha". Washwasha. Dishwasher.’
Washwasha. It evoked the voice of the speaker sliding into the listener’s ear, a discreet bearer of secrets. Was the teacher turning it into a machine to wash plates?
She had a British passport, and despite this she felt that the country was remote from her, that she was still on the margins. She was certain that Dalal, Samira, Fatima, Zaynab, Suad and another Lamis, schoolfriends with whom she used to share milk and biscuits and cod-liver oil capsules in Najaf, were going around now shaking trees and digging in the sand to feed their children. She would be like them now if she’d stayed, sweating and crying, trying to nourish her sick children with kisses. She used to want to be a nurse, and had stolen white gauze dressings from school until her father promised she could study medicine. Of course he forgot his promise after they left their home in Najaf, when she was twelve years old, and went looking for another, which they never found, in the valleys and on mountain tops and arid plains.
When they first stopped to rest on a rocky hillside, Lamis complained to her mother that she wanted to keep going until they got there, with the doggedness of a child who sensed that nobody knew where ’there’ was.
Lamis felt now as if she had been asleep all the years since, that she was just waking from her sleep in London, as if she herself were twelve years old, with a son almost the same age, who asked her where Patagonia and Queensland were, which she’d always thought were countries out of Peter Pan, and whether Somalia was an Arab country. She used to hide her embarrassment at her ignorance and blame leaving Iraq, bad schools, marrying too young.
’I want to begin where I left off. I want to study again,’ she told the woman at the local college.
’Do you have a school-leaving certificate, anything from Iraq or Lebanon that we might be able to use?’
’Nothing.’
’Then do a couple of A levels and when you pass them you can get into a university.’
’Study with people much younger than me?’
’There are places for mature students. But you haven’t said what areas you want to specialise in.’
Lamis kept silent. How could she know, since she felt as if she were only twelve, the age she’d been when she left her home and school in Iraq, sporadically attending schools in Syria and then Lebanon, insignificant schools because she was a refugee with no money, depending on aid from governments and political parties. The woman sensed Lamis’s confusion and smiled, and said, ’Of course, it’s early days for you, and very difficult for you to decide what you want to specialise in. But I think there is something on the bulletin board ... try to have a look at it before you go.’
Lamis thanked her and on her way out she read the clipping pinned up on the noticeboard:
The Independent, Monday 29 November 1999
A medical secretary, aged 37, has beaten off competition from 18-year-olds throughout England to score top marks in this year’s A-level English exam. Frances Hill, who left school at 16 to work in a factory, will receive a silver medal tomorrow from the examination board, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance. To gain it, she beat more than 62,000 other candidates.
Epilogue
The Arabic phrase ’my tongue’s warm’, meaning ’I won’t tell your secret’, translates into English as ’I want to be kissed’. At least, that was how Samir translated it when he reassured John the Policeman that he would be completely discreet if he called the station asking for him.
’Do you see, Samir,’ said John, ’how you flirt with me constantly, wherever we are? I don’t want anybody to know, especially about the money I took from you,
otherwise I’m finished!’
’Of course everybody knows,’ replied Samir in Arabic. ’When I first saw Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk I said to him, "Who are you kidding! ’ ’ ’
But in English Samir said, ’You beautiful girl, Johnny Guitar, you wicked thing!’
Amira was managing to deflate the ball that rested in her stomach and making some headway with the other two that constituted her buttocks. She had succeeded in losing weight by eating buttermilk mixed with a substance that tricked the stomach into thinking it was full. She had even gone back to work, not as a princess in a fix, after all, but as a witness to what had befallen the Princess. Her clients laughed and were much entertained, and asked her to repeat a phrase or a tale as she recounted how she’d outwitted the British intelligence services, this sheikh, that prince, and how they’d all believed that she was a princess. Word got around, and people queued up to listen to her stories and descriptions of men in high office, how she’d ridiculed them, how she’d said to one, ’Are you sleeping with a woman, or is it her title or nationality that turns you on?’ Or, ’I’ve done you a service by posing as your relative. Imagine if you’d really taken advantage of a woman like that being down on her luck, where would you hide your face when you went back home?’
As she took on the role of jester, Amira reflected that she’d lost her innocence. She should have believed in love, the love of her fiancé whom she left because she was humiliated by and angry about his mother’s spiteful treatment of her when her own mother failed to provide the promised dowry of a lounge suite. It was after this that Amira had decided either to take her own life, or to disappear and return only when she was rich beyond belief. The fiance went on writing to her for years in his tears and saliva, as he put it. If she’d believed in his love she wouldn’t be afraid of life now. Samir came in with a tray on which were several lettuce hearts. ’These’ll make you sleep like a dead man.’
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