‘It is true,’ she said. ‘I am five months gone with child. It shall be our first.’ She took the barmbrack and invited Ruth in to see their house, and the baby’s room. It was strange being in a different villa, the mirror image of her own. Inside it was immaculate: thick cream wallpaper, printed with strawberries the size of Ruth’s fist, mock-crystal chandeliers and rows of oil paintings, all in identical faux-antique gilt frames. In the centre of her living room was a massive cream sofa and matching chaise longue, both angled towards a huge flat-screen television. There were nests of wooden tables with onyx bowls of pot-pourri and other bric-a-brac, candles and censers and everywhere statuettes, large and small, bronze and polished wood, of Ganesh, the Elephant God. The second bedroom – Ruth’s spare room – was to be the baby’s. It had plush carpet and embossed wallpaper, and in pride of place stood a canopy-cot, cascading with lace and ribbons, like an illustration from a children’s fairy tale. Ruth thought she had never seen anything so gaudy in her life.
Both Maarlen and Anjali were twinkling, waiting for her reaction.
‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘it’s quite something,’ and they clapped their hands and laughed.
‘I read about one hundred Hello! magazines to find inspiration,’ Anjali said. ‘Maarlen brings them home from the hospital, sometimes they are a little behind the date but it does not matter so much.’
‘I bet Little Miss Princess has a beautiful bedroom at home,’ Maarlen said, bending down to ruffle Anna’s hair.
Ruth laughed, thinking of Anna’s battered cot – the cot that had been hers, when she was a baby – and scuffed plastic toy-box. ‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘We’ve been living in one of the old cottages on my parents’ farm, until we get our own place. It’s only temporary, and full of their old furniture. We haven’t been able to decorate it at all, really.’
‘Your family has a farm?’ Anjali said, her eyes round.
‘A small dairy farm.’
‘Dairy, this is milk-cows, yes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you have pigs, and sheep, and ducks too?’
‘No. Just cows.’
‘I find this very interesting. Ireland is good for farms, very green, yes?’
‘Very rainy.’
‘That is why she has such a good complexion, Maarlen. The moisture in the air. I know Egyptian ladies who travel to Ireland for their complexions. This is true, Ruth! They go in the hope that Irish rain will make their skin soft. Maybe one day I come to visit you in your farm!’
Ruth had a sudden vision of Anjali holding up the gauzy ends of her sari and tiptoeing through the cow-clap and slurry of the farmyard. She suppressed a giggle. I must tell Euan this, she thought.
But the thought made her immediately sad. She wouldn’t tell him, she realised. She couldn’t. He would frown and think she was being uncharitable, mocking their neighbours. Or even if he didn’t, even if he wasn’t so judgemental, he wouldn’t understand. He would smile, and pretend to, but he wouldn’t really understand. He was not too fond of the smell and muck of the farmyard, either. To him, the cattle were messy beasts with slubbery noses and fetid odours.
*
The villa beside Anjali’s and Maarlen’s was occupied by an English couple working as teachers at one of Bahrain’s private schools. A swarthy Pakistani maid answered the door. She did not appear to speak any English. She stood blankly as Ruth pointed at her villa and at the barmbrack and tried to communicate with gestures that she wanted to greet her new neighbours. Finally, the maid took the loaf and closed the door.
Their final house call was to the last inhabited villa in the compound, where the Arab teenager lived. The girl herself answered the door. She pushed her glasses up her nose and stared at Ruth.
‘Is your mother in?’ Ruth said. ‘This is for her, to thank her for the food she so kindly sent over.’
The girl’s mouth opened, but still she said nothing.
‘OK, then,’ Ruth said. Maybe the girl’s English was not good, she thought. She handed over the barmbrack and stepped back. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘nice to meet you.’ She was turning to go when the girl blurted out, ‘What’s the baby called, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Ruth stopped, surprised. The girl had an impeccable, cut-glass English accent.
‘This is Anna,’ she said.
‘Anna,’ the girl said.
‘Say hello, Anna,’ Ruth said, prising Anna’s fingers from her skirt. But Anna buried her face in Ruth’s legs and squirmed.
‘She’s at a funny stage,’ Ruth said.
‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty-two months. She’ll be two in May.’
‘Two in May,’ the girl repeated in the precise, clipped accent. ‘That’s a lovely age. I like babies. I really, really like babies and your baby is beautiful.’
‘Well, thank you,’ Ruth said, taken aback.
A man called in Arabic from inside. The girl froze, then turned around and shouted something back. The man appeared. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered man of about fifty, Ruth guessed, dressed in a white robe and flip-flops but without a headdress. His greying hair was brushed upwards and greased back. He took off his glasses and peered at her.
‘Who are you?’
His brusqueness was disconcerting. ‘I’m – well, we, I mean my husband and daughter and I, we’re your new neighbours, we’re across in the third villa,’ she floundered. ‘My name’s Mrs Armstrong, Ruth Armstrong, and this is my daughter, Anna.’ She stopped. The man said nothing. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Ruth said. ‘I just wanted to give this, it’s Irish, typically Irish, it’s called “barmbrack”, it’s a sort of cake-bread. We eat it sliced, like a loaf, or toasted, with butter. It’s to say thank you for the food your wife so kindly sent over.’
‘My wife?’ The man frowned. Then he looked at the girl and said something rapid in Arabic. She replied, her fat cheeks quivering. The man turned back to Ruth.
‘I must apologise,’ he said, in accented English. ‘There seems to have been a misunderstanding. My wife is no longer with us, and I knew nothing of any neighbours, or food parcels. It appears that this is my daughter’s doing.’
The girl was staring at her feet, flushed and miserable. Ruth felt a pang of pity for her.
‘Well, it was very kind of your daughter,’ she said. ‘The salad she brought over was absolutely delicious, and it was a very thoughtful gesture.’ She smiled, firmly. The girl’s head had jerked up at Ruth’s words, and she was staring wide-eyed at her. ‘Very kind indeed,’ Ruth repeated. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the girl.
The girl whispered something.
‘Speak up,’ her father barked.
The girl cleared her throat. ‘Noor,’ she said.
‘Noor,’ Ruth said, ‘what a pretty name.’
The girl gaped. Then she collected herself, swallowed, and spoke a few words to her father. He sighed, then inclined his head to Ruth. ‘My daughter reminds me,’ he said, ‘that I am a negligent host. This is most unforgivable. In the Arab world we pride ourselves on our hospitality. Will you please come in?’
He evidently did not mean it.
‘Thank you,’ said Ruth, ‘but—’
‘Oh please,’ the girl burst out. ‘Do come in and have a cup of coffee. I was just about to make some more, wasn’t I, Baba? Oh please, Mrs Armstrong. Please come in.’
‘Indeed,’ the man said. ‘And let us introduce ourselves properly. I am Hisham al-Husayn, Dr Hussain, if you prefer.’ He inclined his head again. ‘Please, after you. Baytiy baytuka: my house is yours.’
Ruth could not refuse. ‘Shukran,’ she said, carefully; her first word of Arabic.
*
Inside, two more Arab men were drinking glasses of coffee and smoking.
‘I’m afraid I have interrupted something,’ Ruth said.
‘Oh, no,’ the girl – Noor – said. ‘Don’t think that. It’s only my uncle, and my cousin. It’s nothing special.’
*
Unlike his brother, Sayyid al-Harun was expansive, charming. Within a few minutes he had invited Ruth and her husband to his house, offered the use of a car, his daughters as babysitters for Anna. But nonetheless, Ruth felt ill at ease. She had realised, suddenly, that she did not know them at all: they were Arabs, Muslims, and she must not slip up or give too much away. She answered even their simplest questions about her husband and Ireland evasively, and tried to speak about the Seafarers’ Mission as if it was a charity, only incidentally related to the church, hoping they would ask no further. She talked instead about Bahrain, about what she had seen and done so far – the Pearl Monument, the Marina Corniche, Seef Mall.
‘But what else have you seen?’ Sayyid al-Harun asked, in mock dismay. ‘You cannot tell us that you come all the way to the Gulf of Arabia, and all you do is drive round downtown, and go to a mall? What about the beach at al-Jayazir, the wildlife park at al-Areen? The holy tombs at a’Ali, the Q’aalat Fort or the basket-weavers at Karbabad? Yallah!’
She wanted to see all of these things, she said, feeling a wave of sadness at the hopes she had had for Bahrain. She had wanted to see the Tree of Life, in particular. But, she shrugged. Her husband was very busy.
‘But you must see these things!’ Sayyid al-Harun exclaimed, slamming his palms on the coffee table. ‘If you are so set on seeing them, my son Farid will be glad to drive you there.’
Farid inclined his head.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but—’
‘It will do him good,’ Sayyid al-Harun said. ‘He should be studying, or working; he is doing neither. He will do this for me. You must not go back to Ireland, and say that the Bahraini people are not hospitable.’
‘Thank you—’ Ruth tried again, but this time Farid himself interrupted her.
‘It is no trouble,’ he said. His voice was low, softly accented, husky around the edges. He flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette. ‘No trouble at all.’
‘You decide on a time,’ Sayyid al-Harun declared, ‘and my son will take you there. What about tomorrow? There is no time like the present. Tomorrow morning, he comes for you and takes you both there. And my niece will go too,’ he added, ‘to help you with the baby. There, it is settled. Tomorrow, you go to the Shajarat al-Hiya, inshallah.’
‘I have to ask my husband,’ she said.
‘Of course. I will speak to him myself, if he has any objections. Perhaps, if he is not too busy, he will go too.’
‘Well,’ Ruth said, helplessly, ‘it is a very kind offer and I will pass it on to my husband.’ She stood up. ‘I must get my daughter to bed. Thank you for your hospitality.’
‘You won’t have one more cup of coffee?’ Noor said. The girl had hardly spoken, the whole time, just crouched in a corner, watching them.
‘No, thank you.’
‘You’re positively sure?’
‘I am, thank you all the same.’
Noor scrambled to her feet. ‘I’ll see them out, Baba.’
They said their goodbyes. As she opened the door, Noor hesitated and said, ‘What my uncle said – I mean about me going with you, to the Shajarat.’ Her face was flooding scarlet.
‘If we do go,’ Ruth said, feeling sorry for the girl, so clumsy and awkward, ‘if we do go, of course you can come. But we’ll see. I do have to speak to my husband.’
‘Thank you,’ Noor said. ‘Oh, thank you so much,’ and her face was glowing.
*
As Ruth and Anna crossed the gritty road, the evening wind was setting in. Dust twisted, swirling in loose puffs and eddies, making whirlpools at her feet. She was suddenly exhausted. The buzzing was still inside her head, like a loose wire, or distant bells. She put Anna down and went straight to bed herself, without waiting up for Euan. But although she slept, her mind did not; it swirled like the dust clouds in the street, making shapes that she could not quite get a hold on, even in her dreams.
8
Ruth and Euan and Anna Armstrong, Noor wrote in her diary that night. Ruth Armstrong. Then, underneath, she copied down the things Ruth Armstrong had said. The salad was ‘absolutely delicious’, and Noor was ‘a very pretty name’. Noor could not remember the last time someone had used the word pretty about her, or had complimented her on anything. But Ruth Armstrong had been charming, polite – just like an angel, Noor wrote. Her heart had stopped when she heard the knock on the door: because she had known (she did not know how, but she had known) that it would be the missionary’s wife standing there. She had been almost too shy to look her in the eye, let alone talk to her. But the missionary’s wife had come in for coffee, staying for almost twenty minutes, and Noor had played with the baby on the rug while she and Noor’s father and uncle talked. Baby Anna, Noor wrote, is adorable. She has pink-and-white skin that Mummy would say is peaches-and-cream. She has golden ringlets and the cutest little squashy cheeks and red lips and little pearly teeth. She is twenty-two months old and will be two this May – and Ruth Armstrong said I was very good with her, ‘a natural’ were her words.
But best of all was the fact that Noor was invited on an excursion with the missionary’s wife the following day! She did not quite know how it had happened. The conversation had been about the Tree of Life, the Shajarat al-Hiya, and before Noor knew it, her uncle volunteered his son Farid to drive the Armstrongs there, and Noor to accompany them. She had wanted the ground to open up and swallow her when he foisted her on them like that. But when Ruth Armstrong was leaving, she said, ‘of course you can come’, just like that, ‘of course you can come’, as if it wasn’t even a question. I think, Noor finished off, that she is the kindest person I have ever met.
*
She hardly slept that night. She had hardly slept at all, since that day in January. When she closed her eyes she saw Hong’s face, blank and accusing, the tongue lolling, the broken veins, the red eye crying a trail of bloody tears. And when she did drift off she had nightmares, wordless terrors from which she would wake too paralysed even to scream, the sheets soaked. Twice, to her utter shame, she had wet the bed, and been forced to lie there, squeezed to one side, as the urine cooled and dried beneath her. But tonight was different. Tonight’s sleeplessness was in anticipation: of what, exactly, she did not know; only that it was the first time since arriving in Bahrain that she had something to look forward to.
She was wide awake as her father got up and performed the fajr. Afterwards, as he made coffee and studied his portion of the Qur’an, Noor went into the bathroom and locked the door. Since that awful January day, she had avoided all mirrors: keeping her eyes fixed down in the bathroom, turning rapidly away at any glimpse of a shiny or reflective surface. But now, she decided, she was ready to face herself. She could not quite meet her own eye in the mirror, and focused instead on the lower half of her face. In the strip light of the bathroom, her skin was pale and sallow, and the dark hairs on her upper lip, chin and the side of her face stood out. She had started bleaching them, a year or so ago, but she had not done them for several weeks. There was a packet of facial-hair bleach under her bed, somewhere, in the plastic bag into which she had swept the contents of her locker and bedside table, and not touched since. She found it: and it was still half-full. She stirred together the cream and powder, leaving the sharp, fizzy mixture on longer than the guidelines advised, to be sure of it working. When she wiped it off and dabbed her face with lukewarm water, the skin was mottled, coming up in a series of hard, itchy white lumps. She almost panicked, but then remembered the potted aloe vera on the veranda. S
he cut a stalk and smeared the meaty-smelling gel onto her face. It dried in sticky brown streaks, making her feel uglier than ever. But it was not yet seven o’clock; in an hour, her face would calm down.
Her father rattled the bathroom door. He was surprised to find her there. For the past few weeks, he had had to remind her to take showers: now, she was up early, and in the bathroom of her own volition.
‘Open the door,’ he ordered. ‘Let me see what you’re doing in there.’
‘I’m taking a shower, Baba,’ she called. ‘I want to wash my hair.’ She opened the door a crack, so that he could see her.
‘What’s that on your face?’
‘A facemask, Baba. Now please let me have my shower.’
‘What’s got into you this morning?’ he persisted.
‘Nothing! I just want to wash my hair, for God’s sake!’
He hovered. ‘It must be a relief to know you’re starting a new school.’
‘Yes,’ she said, to appease and get rid of him. ‘That must be what it is.’ Still he hovered. ‘Baba!’
‘You should probably have some new clothes,’ he said. ‘Next weekend, we can go to the mall, if you want. Or I can give you a card and you can go by yourself.’
That stopped her in her tracks. ‘Really?’ It wasn’t the prospect of clothes – there was no way she would go shopping, looking like she did now – that startled her, but the offer itself. Her father was trying, she suddenly saw, and the attempt stirred something in her.
‘You probably should,’ her father said again, then he turned abruptly and walked away.
The Meeting Point Page 7