The Meeting Point

by Lucy Caldwell

  One afternoon, after she has ignored another knock on the door, she finds a soft, square tissue-wrapped package on the veranda. She unfolds the paper and shakes it out: it is a deep blue cloth, the size of a bath-towel, a very fine, slippery material embroidered with a picture of the Tree of Life, blazing beautiful against a setting sun.

  She rolls it back up and stuffs it into a corner of one of the suitcases, stacked in a corner of the spare room. She does not know why she does this. It is easier, she tells herself, than trying to explain it to Euan, explain its significance, its provenance. But that is not quite true.

  2

  The week was long for Ruth but for Noor it flashed by. This week, she wrote in her diary on Wednesday evening, has been the best week of my life. It felt highly significant that she finished one exercise book, and had to begin another. Before she Sellotaped up the old one and hid it away she read through its entries, which began around the middle of February, when she came out to Bahrain. They seemed, she thought, to be written by another person. Because when I was truly considering killing myself, she wrote on the inside of the back cover, and I mean I really, truly was, I didn’t know that life was just about to change. As I was writing that entry on Thursday 6th March the world had shifted on its axis and everything was starting to fall into place only I didn’t know it yet. And what it makes you think, she went on, is that in the broader scheme of things maybe things will be ok after all. How unbelievable that she could write that sentence! She wrote it again, underlined it. Maybe things will be ok after all.

  Her first entry in the new jotter was about how kind Ruth Armstrong was. She genuinely seemed to like Noor – to want her around. Anna was ‘full of beans’, she had said, the day of the Tree of Life – Noor loved that expression, copied it carefully down – and she could really do with an extra pair of hands to mind her. So Noor started getting up early each morning, showering and washing her hair, putting on Body Shop body lotion and her best jeans and top and going over to the Armstrongs’ villa. She played dolls with Anna, read her stories, watched television. Sometimes Ruth joined them; other times she stayed in her bedroom; sometimes one of the neighbours would come over and Noor would keep Anna out of their way while they had coffee and talked. Needed and trusted for the first time, she was blossoming. Even her father saw the difference: he would look at her suspiciously as she kissed him on the cheek when he got home from work, chattered about her day. Once, he asked her outright what she had done, as if she was trying to cover up for something. But even this just made her laugh.

  Sometimes at night, as she recorded the day’s events in minute detail, she thought: she would do anything for Ruth Armstrong. She could not explain what it was. All she knew was that she liked – wanted – needed – to be near her.

  *

  But Thursday was Ashura: the Day of Atonement. Noor had forgotten this. She came into the kitchen early to ask Sampaguita to iron her best T-shirt, ready to go over to Ruth Armstrong’s, and there her father was, dressed not in the suit he wore into work but a thobe and gutra. It was Ashura, he said, and they were going to the mosque. Noor panicked at that. The day before, she had come up with the idea of making play-dough for Anna, and it had been a huge success. Today, she was going to suggest to Ruth Armstrong that they took Anna to the kiddie play area at Seef Mall, and go for a frappuccino at Cinnabon’s or Dairy Queen afterwards. Her cousin could drive them again, or they could get a taxi: she had it all planned. But now her father was telling her to hurry up and get dressed, and wear modest clothing, not jeans.

  She begged him to let her stay home. But he was adamant: attendance at the mosque on Ashura was not optional.

  ‘You’re living in Bahrain now,’ he said.

  ‘But I’m not Muslim!’ she said, panicking even more. What would Ruth Armstrong, the wife of a Christian missionary, think if she heard Noor had been to the mosque?

  When her father refused to listen to her she went on, and went too far, asking him if Muslims were meant to drink whisky and go to cabarets at the big hotels, and if a person who did such things could really consider himself a Muslim.

  He was furious at that. He was more furious than she could remember seeing him, ever, and she thought for a moment that he was going to hit her. Instead, he seized her by the back of the neck and marched her into her bedroom, ordered her to be ready in five minutes or else.

  ‘Or else what?’ she screamed at him, and he shouted back that he would send her back to England to live with her mother.

  She wanted to die, then. She could never go back: she knew that. The news all week had been dominated by Iraq, and Saddam Hussein. Even if you tried to ignore it, you couldn’t help hearing it on the half-hourly news bulletins of the pop music stations, or as you flicked through satellite TV channels. It was just her luck, she had written in her diary, to share a name with the evillest dictator in the world. And the irony of it, which nobody in England wanted to understand, was that with a Western mother and Shi’a father, and half of her relatives Iranian, he would have persecuted her as much as anyone else. I hate Julia Hazlehurst, she had written in her diary one evening, in a burst of rage. I hate hate hate Annabel Varley and I hate Lily Carrington-Villiers and I hate Emily-May Brierly. She wrote so hard that the tip of her biro ripped through the next few pages of her notebook. She could never, ever go back, she was certain of it. So she had no choice but to get ready (the sack-skirt again, and a long-sleeved blouse, and a scarf to cover her head) and go with her father to the mosque.

  She had never been to the mosque before – not to worship, anyhow. Her aunts had taken her and her mother there, once, one Easter holiday, because the Al-Fatih admitted strangers, and Westerners, for English-language tours. She remembered being bored: her mother had cooed at the huge chandelier and at the arched windows, the henna area for ladies and the displays of calligraphy. But to Noor it was huge and cavernous, exposing, and it smelt of feet and floor polish, like the school gymnasium.

  But today was different: today was one of the holiest days of Muharram, and the streets and the square in front of the mosque were thronging with people. There were ordinary worshippers, like her father and herself, most dressed traditionally, those who weren’t in thobes or hijab wearing sober black: because for Shi’a Muslims, today was a day of mourning. There were lines of young men beating drums and chanting Ya Hussain, and others beating their chests in time to the drums. And there were processions, too, circling the mosque and the streets around; bare-chested men with flails to purge themselves and others with razor blades, cutting themselves. They were: they actually were, slicing their skin so it bled, and howling, as the blood ran down their arms and soaked into their trousers. Noor had never seen such things before. Any time their holidays in Bahrain had coincided with Muharram and Ashura, her mother had kept her and Jamal indoors while the processions went past. Noor’s head was spinning: she thought she might be sick. She had never felt less Bahraini, less Arab, than she did now, pressed reluctantly close to her father as they negotiated their way through the crowds, the howls and the wailing, the heat and sweat and blood, to get to the entrance of the mosque. There were even tourists among the crowd, gawping and snapping away. Noor tugged her scarf down over her eyes as one particularly zealous man pushed in to get a picture of the entrance to the mosque: what if he was a news reporter, or posted his pictures on a blog, and people she knew saw them, saw her? What if Ruth Armstrong saw her? How disappointed, disgusted, even, she might be. Noor felt utterly miserable.

  They reached the entrance to the mosque. They had to separate at the doors of course, because women and men had separate prayer areas. But Noor’s aunts were there, and cousins, waiting to go in together, and her father pushed her towards them. She stuck close to them, for fear of getting lost, but she felt shy of them. Even those who did not normally wear the hijab or niqab were covered up completely. One of her cousins rewrapped and pinned her scarf for her – it was a plain pashmina, thicker and clumsier than their light s
lips of material – and it made her claustrophobic, bound in; it itched the back of her neck, muffled her hearing and reduced her vision at the sides.

  It was a relief to get inside, out of the clamour and chaos of the square. But as more and more people made their way in, the women’s balcony became packed, people pressing against each other on all sides. There were feet treading on Noor’s heels, and elbows in her side. The balcony overlooked the main hall, but Noor was jammed in against her aunt’s back and could not see down. The thing to do was to release herself – release her self – give herself over to it. Then she would become one with the mass of bodies, and would not, holding herself tight and aloof, feel shoulders and stomachs of others an intrusion. But she did not – could not – and she felt all the more awkward, all the more other, for it.

  When the service began, she thought she might faint: from boredom if not from the heat. The imam talked on and on, and her Arabic was not good enough to follow what he was saying. She did not know the responses to the prayers, or the words to the songs, and she seethed with anger at her father for making her come here. Her mother, she knew, would be horrified to hear about it. Her mother and father’s compact had been that Jamal and Noor were brought up with no religion; if anyone asked them what they were, they were taught to say that both the Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ were good men, who taught us all to live a better life. But she would not dare tell her mother that her father had made her attend the mosque. It might be enough for her mother to insist she come back to England.

  The one thing the imam said that she managed to understand, because he repeated it so frequently, was that one tear shed for Hussain washed away a hundred sins. But she could not work out what he meant: what sins counted, for instance, and what were unforgivable? Could one big sin take up your whole allowance?

  She wished she could ask Ruth Armstrong about this. She could not, of course, admit to going to the mosque – but perhaps there was some other way of bringing it up. So far, she had not been able to pluck up the courage to ask Ruth about God, or Jesus, or anything like that. She had been on the verge, a hundred times. But each time she was about to speak, her heart leapt to her mouth and blocked the words. She would have to be braver, she decided. And she resolved, then and there, that the very next time she saw Ruth, she would do it.

  *

  When the service was over, they all drove back to the al-Husayn compound. The only good thing about the day, Noor thought, was that it was Fakah, a day of fasting, so nobody ate. She could feel her stomach gnarling with hunger. She hadn’t even picked at dinner last night – chicken macaroni salad with caramel flan for afters – and this morning she hadn’t had breakfast, either. It was a grim, satisfying feeling. Unbelievably, she had found, and unintentionally, she had lost three pounds this week. Being around Ruth Armstrong made her forget about food. And when she did try to eat, it was as if she had somehow forgotten how, the chewing and the swallowing of it. Every bite of food she ate tasted like chalk and dust and rubber in her mouth. And not eating, she found, made her body feel pleasantly jittery, like she had drunk too much Coke, like she had all the energy in the world. She had taken to not eating in the evenings, telling her father that she had eaten already. Already her jeans were looser. She could wiggle a finger in between the waistband and her stomach, when only a week ago she’d had to lie on the floor to do them up and even then the top button wouldn’t go.

  She lolled against a cushion, her mind drifting in and out, as her relatives sat around talking about the situation in Iraq, lamenting the fact that during the whole of Saddam’s rule, nobody had been able to make a pilgrimage to Karbala. Some thought it would be a good thing if he were deposed; others were against the intervention on principle. Noor listened for a while, but the discussions bored her, and eventually she managed to slip away, lock herself in the upstairs bathroom and write her journal. She filled pages and pages with the day, and with speculations about what Ruth Armstrong had been doing in her absence. It was the first day all week Noor had not seen her. She hoped Ruth was managing with Anna, without Noor’s help. Only yesterday Ruth had said: I don’t know what I’d do without you. Noor had written this down, incredulous, underlined it. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

  Now, she added, I don’t know what I’d do without you either, Ruth. Then someone banged on the door and she almost jumped out of her skin, hot and flushed as if she’d been caught in some indecent act.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she yelled, too loud, and she bundled her diary back into her shoulder bag.

  It was Farid outside, wanting to use the bathroom. She stopped, and they looked at each other. She had never had much time for Farid before: he was Jamal’s age, and had been friends with Jamal during their childhood holidays. The boys had oscillated between ignoring the younger girls and running away from them, to teasing them, or inventing new ways to torture them. But now, suddenly, after the day of the Shajarat, they had something in common: almost a secret between them.

  ‘Hello,’ Noor said.

  Farid nodded. He seemed to hesitate, and then he said, ‘Have you seen the missionary’s wife?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Noor said, ‘I see her a lot, actually. Ruth Armstrong’ – she spoke the name carefully, savouring the chance to use it aloud – ‘has asked for my help with Anna, quite a few times. Yes,’ she finished in a rush, ‘I see her most days, come to think of it.’ She felt the skin on her face burning. She stood her ground.

  ‘So she’s OK?’ Farid said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Noor said, ‘I should think so. I think’ – she lowered her voice, authoritatively – ‘I think she’s finding it hard, away from home, and her husband working so hard. He’s away most of the time, you see, most days.’

  Farid looked at her. ‘OK,’ he said. Then he changed his tone. ‘Well, if you’ll excuse me …’ and gestured towards the bathroom.

  ‘Oh,’ Noor said, ‘sorry,’ and she stepped aside to let him through. He closed and locked the door behind him. Noor stood for a moment. She felt, oddly, as if she had betrayed Ruth Armstrong by talking about her. It had felt so good to speak so confidently about her, to assert her, Noor’s, closeness with Ruth. But now, afterwards, it felt somehow wrong.

  Inside the bathroom, the loo flushed. Farid was coming back out.

  She went quickly back downstairs, before she had to see him again.

  3

  He came for her on Friday morning.

  When she saw him, she had a shock: she had been wanting, she realised, to see him. She was immediately self-conscious. It did not help that her trousers were creased and her shirt food-spattered, her hair unbrushed, and she knew there were shadows beneath her eyes. She smoothed down her shirt and tried to clear her throat. They looked at each other, and neither of them spoke. He was in a thobe again, but no headdress, and bright white trainers. His dark hair was gelled back, and a pair of mirrored sunglasses was pushed up on his forehead. The overall effect was somehow incongruous. He looked younger than she had remembered, fresher-faced, and she reminded herself that he was barely twenty.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Noor’s clear, crisp tones resounded down the hallway. Noor had come over shortly after Euan left, as the maids were arriving. She had been chattering, ever since, about Islam and the mosque, Atonement and Iraq – Ruth could not quite follow the thread of what she was saying, and she was starting to worry that the girl was making a habit of coming over, uninvited. It had barely been eight o’clock when she knocked on the door. But Ruth had not been able to bring herself to turn Noor away. Farid’s eyes flickered to Noor, then back to Ruth. She felt a slow blush creeping up the back of her neck. They had been standing there, looking at each other, for several moments now, and neither of them had yet spoken.

  Noor was standing beside her, hands on her hips, frowning. Ruth collected herself. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘As-salaam alaykum.’

  Self-conscious in front of Noor, she did not reply.

  ‘Would y
ou like to come in?’ she said instead.

  ‘Thank you,’ Farid said, ‘but no.’ He paused, glanced at his cousin. Ruth felt her stomach sag – how unexpected this was – with disappointment.

  She began to speak, but Farid spoke too, at the same moment, and there followed an awkward dance of you-first, no-you, while Noor stood frowning.

  ‘I have come to ask if you would like to come out,’ Farid said, eventually.

  ‘Come out?’ Again, Ruth’s body acted without her prior knowledge, or consent: her skin tingled, and she blushed even more.

  ‘You were disappointed, I think, at the Shajarat. You were hoping for something more … mythical. Well, I would like to show you some things. I feel responsible,’ he added, before Ruth could speak, ‘for not realising, not warning you about the Shajarat before taking you there.’

  ‘Well, I—’ Ruth began, and stopped. She was a mother, a voice said inside her head. She was a wife, and a mother. She was a stranger in a foreign country. She could not go out. She should not go out.

  ‘I don’t—’ she began again. ‘I don’t know if – I don’t think—’

  ‘Where do you want to take her?’ Noor cut in.

  ‘To the museum,’ he said. ‘The national museum.’

  ‘To the museum? The museum’s boring. You used to hate going there.’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Armstrong will not find it boring.’

  They both turned to her.

  ‘You don’t want to go, do you?’ Noor said. ‘To the museum.’