The Meeting Point

by Lucy Caldwell

Noor sat down, took a spoonful of cereal and raised it slowly to her mouth. The taste was almost too much, too rich – and then it was heavenly. So sweet, so creamy. She felt the liquid soaking into her parched tongue, manna. The day before, she had eaten only an apple and Anna’s leftover yogurt, the day before that (Ashura) nothing at all. She took another spoonful, greedy now, her body overriding the part of her mind that was screeching at her to stop. Sampaguita stepped back, satisfied. Noor coughed, her mouth too full of food. Damp lumps of cornflakes spattered the breakfast bar. She stopped, overcome with a lurch of disgust. She put the spoon down and gulped a mouthful of tea. The bitter taste cut through the creamy milk, washed the taste of it from her mouth. She took another swig. Her self-control returned. She stood up, tugging the flimsy T-shirt material of her nightdress over her bottom and thighs, where it clung and creviced.

  ‘I’m going to finish this in my room.’

  Sampaguita narrowed her eyes, but said nothing. Noor lifted the bowl, turned and left the room, making a show of closing the door. When she was satisfied that Sampaguita had gone back to work, she slipped back into the bathroom and scraped the softening remains of cereal into the toilet bowl, leaving a few clots and a pool of milk behind to make it look realistic. She wanted so badly to lick the spoon – to run her finger around the bowl – but her willpower held firm. She left the bowl on the draining board, unwashed, where Sampaguita would see it – and set about making her plan of action.

  Because Ruth Armstrong had invited her to church tomorrow.

  ‘Of course you can come,’ she had said, ‘if you’re interested.’ Then she had frowned and said, ‘Except, well, would your father not mind?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Noor had said. ‘Oh no, honestly he wouldn’t,’ and she had rushed to explain that her mother was English, that her old school was a Church of England school, with a chapel and Sunday services, everything: of course he wouldn’t mind. This wasn’t quite true. Chapel at boarding school, in England, was one thing: but here in Bahrain, it might be quite another. And this newly devout father of hers, who dressed in a thobe and tried to practise wudu and salah, would surely object, at the very least, to her going to a Christian church.

  When Ruth Armstrong still looked dubious, she promised she would check with her father, to be absolutely sure. This was an outright lie. She had no intention whatsoever of telling her father. He worked on Sundays – it was a normal working day in the Gulf, a Tuesday back home – and so he would just not know of her going.

  She hated lying to Ruth Armstrong – felt physically sick as she was doing it – but she could not bear for the invitation to be rescinded.

  ‘Well,’ Ruth had said, ‘only if you have his explicit permission, all right?’ They were absolutely, categorically forbidden from evangelising to Arabs, she said: if it was discovered they were, they could be thrown out of the country, and there could be consequences for St Thomas’s. Christianity was tolerated in Bahrain because of the country’s long-standing ties with England, but that tolerance was conditional, Noor must understand.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Noor said. ‘I understand, absolutely I understand. I mean – of course. And I will of course get Baba’s permission, I honestly will.’ Again, the lie: she felt sure it was flashing and shrieking, like the siren on a police car, and she felt a flicker of fear, a sudden, tilting intimation of vertigo, as if she was teetering on the edge of something deeper and bigger than she had known. But she couldn’t not go. She didn’t know why: all she knew was that she needed to go, had to be there, near Ruth.

  ‘Well—’ Ruth said, and before she could waver, or suggest that she spoke to Noor’s father, Noor said, as confidently as she could: ‘I promise it’s all right, Ruth. I promise.’

  And she left glowing. Ruth Armstrong was so caring, so considerate – so compassionate. She was so trusting – the way she had trusted Noor to look after Anna, alone – nobody had ever trusted Noor like that, before. Ever.

  The Diary of Noor Hussain

  Saturday, 15th March 2003

  PLANS FOR A NEW ME

  Things I Hate About Myself

  – A stone (at least) more to lose

  – Hair greasy and split-endy

  – Glasses

  – I look like a Bearded Woman

  – Eyebrows join together in the middle into one fat hairy caterpillar

  – Nails raggy and bloody where I’ve bitten them

  – The scars on my left arm and thigh

  – Legs lumpy like cottage cheese

  – No nice clothes

  – My stupid name RA said it was a ‘very pretty name’.

  Things I Like About Myself

  – I’m clever What use is that when you just get called a swot?

  – RA says I’m kind

  – I looked after little Anna all morning

  –??

  To Do By Tomorrow

  – Bleach moustache (again) and also hair on chin and cheeks

  – Dab Dettol on spots

  – Hair mask out of egg-yolk, avocado, olive oil

  – Pluck eyebrows (tweezers in First Aid kit in utility room cupboard??)

  – Fitness routine:100 sit-ups and 3 sets of bicep curls using back of chair and as many star-jumps as possible in 3 minutes

  ALSO: find out about Inishargy.

  Things to talk about so far:

  – the cut-away bog nearby is a prominent feature of the peninsula

  – The issue of EU Milk Quotas and stifling over-regulation in dairy farming (N.B. find out more before you bring this up!!)

  – Has she ever visited the nearby Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart or the brooding Tower of Scrabo which at dusk is silhouetted against the sky like an ominous watch-tower from Lord of the Rings?

  – Does the name Armstrong come from Viking times when raiders crossed the Irish Sea, hence the word ‘Strangfjord’ from Old Norse meaning ‘Strong Ford’? N.B. what was Ruth’s name before she was married?

  Noor closed her diary. This last section had taken her quite some time: hours of Googling Strangford Peninsula and Inishargy, where Ruth had said she was from; looking at photographs, following links. She had found Ruth’s farm on a map, she thought. She had also found minutes from the parish meetings, and photographs of Euan on the church website. It was a strange, illicit feeling, amassing information, gathering and noting and possessing all you could of someone. She was doing nothing wrong, she told herself. She was only looking at what was there, and the information was there, for anyone to see. Nevertheless, she had been careful to delete the browsing history after each time she used her father’s computer; she was not sure why, but she did so, all the same.

  Time to get started. She went back to the kitchen to amass ingredients. Dettol she found under the sink, a big bottle of it. There was plenty of olive oil, and a whole box of eggs. But no avocados. The recipe she had found online stated that two avocados were needed: ripe, mashable ones. But Sampaguita was gone now – she worked only until lunchtime on Saturdays – and there was no point asking her father to buy avocados on his way home from work, because he might not be home for hours, or he might be in a bad mood and point-blank refuse. It was bucketing down outside. The storm that had been brewing for the past few weeks had finally broken, and the sky was cracking with lightning. But there was nothing for it: she would have to brave it. She put on her hated old gym shorts – there was no point getting her jeans soaked – and a hooded top and gathered together as many loose coins as she could from her father’s dresser. She paused on the veranda, and almost turned back: the rain was coming down in solid sheets. But her determination got the better of her and she jumped down into the deluge. She could not resist knocking on the Armstrongs’ door. But it was Mr Armstrong who answered it – Reverend – and she was suddenly tongue-tied. She mumbled something about coming to church tomorrow, and what time they would be leaving – it was half past eight, she knew this, she had checked twice with Ruth, in case she missed it – and ducked back into the
rain, feeling a strange swell and surge of disappointment that it had not been Ruth who answered the door.

  The cold store was only ten minutes away, but by the time she got there and back, she was soaked to the bone, her hair so plastered to her head that she would not even need a shower to wet it before applying the conditioning mask. She peeled off her sodden clothes and towelled herself dry – remembering with a sudden pang the bathtimes when she was little, when she and Jamal would be bathed together, and their mother and father would catch up each of them in a fluffy towelling robe and rub and tickle them dry.

  She pushed the thought from her mind.

  In the kitchen, she cracked two eggs and separated their yolks, beat them up with the avocados and enough oil to form a thick, slow sludge. She spooned it onto her hair, trying not to gag at the smell, and wrapped her head in cling film, as the recipe instructed. Once that was done, she mixed up the hair-lightening paste and spatulaed it liberally over her upper lip, cheeks and chin, then dabbed the stinging Dettol on the worst of the spots on her forehead. She lay carefully down on her bed to wait the necessary twenty minutes. It was impossible to read – even the slightest movement displaced the fuzzy bleaching cream – so she closed her eyes and let her mind slip into the grooves of her new fantasy. It was elaborate, now, each detail considered, turned over and over and added in only when Noor was satisfied with it. She was in bed, with a fever – not an ugly, sweaty fever, but the sort of fever they had in novels, where the heroine’s cheeks were delicately flushed and her eyes were dark pools. She lies there, drifting – and Ruth Armstrong comes in, pausing at the door and then rushing to the bed, dropping her bag. (She is carrying a bag, filled with grapes and flowers, because she has heard that Noor is ill. How exactly she heard had caused Noor quite some thought – but she had settled on the maids, Sampaguita mentioning to one of Ruth’s maids, and knowing the name of the hospital.) Noor’s father is not there, nor is her mother – her father has been called away to some medical emergency elsewhere and her mother does not know she is ill, and Ruth is the first, the only, person there. She is kneeling at Noor’s side. Noor’s eyes are closed, and Ruth thinks she is sleeping, and so she just strokes, gently, the hair from Noor’s forehead with her slim, cool fingers – and she murmurs a prayer, so softly, like a lullaby. And then Noor opens her eyes, and Ruth’s face is inches from hers, eyes wide, lips parted in concern. And Ruth says, Shh, now, shh, it’s all right, everything’s all right in her low, lilting Irish accent, and Noor closes her eyes again and Ruth kisses her forehead, so gently, so gently she can hardly feel it …

  *

  Noor is hot, suddenly, and it is difficult to breathe. She feels hollow inside, as if the floor of her stomach has fallen away. She is tingling, all over. She touches her fingertips to her stomach, lightly, so lightly she can barely feel their touch, and it is as if her fingers are someone else’s fingers. She has never known before this yearning, such emptiness.

  *

  When she scraped the cream from her face, the skin below was pink, but the dark hairs were definitely thinner and lightened. The Dettoled spots looked red and shiny as always – but perhaps, she reluctantly decided, one application was not enough; she should do it again before bed and then perhaps she’d see results tomorrow. Lashings of Rimmel concealer would have to do, otherwise. Her hair was another matter. As she washed the mixture out, it congealed into smelly, drain-clogging lumps and she was forced to kneel with an unbent metal hanger and poke the plughole clear. And there was an odd, sulphurous smell that seemed to trail with her wherever she went. It was only as she was drying her hair that she realised: the yolks had scrambled in the hot water as she rinsed them, and her hair was caked with clumps of rank-smelling egg.

  It took five shampooings before her hair had ceased to smell. Any benefit from the hair mask was undone by the number of times she had to wash and dry her hair, and by the time it was finally clean again, she was behind her schedule. She found the tweezers and got to work on her eyebrows, but she was het up and rushing; she could not seem to get them even, plucking first too much from one side, then the other. Eventually she threw the tweezers down in a panic and decided she would have to draw the missing parts of her eyebrows back in.

  It was six o’clock now. She had not even managed one set of her fitness routines, and her father was home. He was annoyed at the mess of mixing bowls and whisks in the kitchen, furious that there was no hot water. He cursed Noor in Arabic as he stomped about, boiling a kettle for hot water to shave, trying to wash over the sink with a wet flannel and bar of soap. He was going out tonight, he said, how was he supposed to go out tonight? Sakheefa, he shouted, hablah!

  It took all of Noor’s wit to apologise and pacify him. A few weeks ago, she would have screamed and sworn right back at him: but this was no longer the way. She needed him to be as calm as possible. She grovelled.

  By the time he left, she was exhausted. Her body, though purged, felt raw and sore, and her limbs were heavy. She weighed herself – that was the bright spot of the day, she had lost another two pounds, which meant almost half a stone in total – then curled up in bed, ready for tomorrow.

  5

  Saturday was her first full day with Euan since they had arrived in Bahrain. It was miserable. They had planned to go sightseeing, or to the souk, but a thunderstorm broke: the mawsim, heralding the start of the hot season. From now, the temperature would rise almost daily; in a few weeks it would be reaching 40° with the ease of a stretching cat, a panther, effortless and languid and terrifying. Almighty was how Euan described the storm, as they stood by the front door watching the rain lash down. It bounced up metres where it hit the ground, churning the dusty road of the compound into a seething, semi-viscous mass.

  ‘If we lived in another age,’ he said, ‘we’d think that the storm was the wrath of God.’ He was making a joke. But privately, Ruth agreed with him. Storms like this were the reason people did believe in God, she thought to herself. It was too easy to believe, if you knew no better, that a vengeful, furious god was hurling the lightning bolts, spitting the winds. I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me.

  Inside, there was little to do. Anna was restless and badly behaved; she had not seen enough of Euan recently and she was punishing him for it. He tried to read her story books, but she wriggled and bit him – she had never bitten, never – and she howled when he tried to punish her for it by taking her toys away.

  ‘How do you do this all day?’ Euan said to her, and there wasn’t admiration, but incomprehension, and even condescension in his voice. When Anna was born, he had been a dutiful father, taking his turn to get up in the night and change nappies, mix up formula and sterilise bottles. But she had never shaken the fear that he resented the baby – even if only at some deep, barely conscious level – for forcing them too early into marriage and curtailing his options, making his final months at Braemore so difficult. Now, he prayed over her at night and tried to teach her grace and other simple prayers, patiently, over and over again; he read her story books and engaged her in conversation. But Anna was at a difficult stage, contrary and stubborn, and Ruth was beginning to sense anew his exasperation with the child, how eager he was to throw up his hands and leave her to deal with tantrums.

  Was she sensing it, or was she just imagining it? Suddenly, she could not be sure. He was busy, she told herself, that was all. But since their arrival in Bahrain, and the realisation of what – or how little – they both meant to him, she was starting to see all of his behaviour in a new light, registering every flicker of annoyance towards them.

  Eventually, as she expected, Euan shut himself in the bedroom with his notebooks and his Bible and she was left with Anna. She turned on the TV to distract and soothe her. They found a children’s channel and curled up together to watch it. It was a cartoon adventure about children discovering a new world. She thought it might be too o
ld for Anna, but Anna seemed to follow the story, and the bright colours and music were hypnotic. Anna’s shuddering breaths lengthened. After a while, Ruth stopped watching the television; watched her daughter, instead. How avidly she watched it, how trustingly. For the first time, Ruth felt a twinge of real, ineffable sadness. It was something she could not have put into words, even if she had tried. It was a feeling of pure loneliness, an understanding of the stories we tell ourselves to combat that loneliness, and the loss that knowledge brought.

  She sat there, tears rolling silently down her cheeks, and she wondered what Euan would do, if he came back in to find her weeping at a cartoon. Would he laugh at her, or would he be concerned, take her in his arms and hold her close?

  *

  They made love that evening. It was the first time they had done so since arriving in Bahrain. Ruth clung to her husband, pressing him deeper in her, as if by doing so she could press herself into him. But it was no use. Afterwards, she curled up against him, fitting her body to his, shaping herself along the curve of his back, her knees spooned in behind his, her arms around him. She matched her breathing to his, but it didn’t work. She could not stem the creeping rise of a slow, wordless terror.

  *

  She has been trying not to think of Farid, but it is no use. He has been in her thoughts; he has been her thoughts. He had given her a piece of paper when he left the house yesterday. It was lined paper, torn from a file pad, written with neatened spidery letters in black ink. THREE STORIES ABOUT GOD was written at the top, in capital letters. The stories were short, little more than a line or two each. One. A prostitute sees a thirsty dog scratching at the ground. She goes to a well, and fetches water for it in her shoe. Two. A man who has killed ninety-nine men goes to an imam to ask if Allah will forgive him. The imam says yes, and the man kills the imam to make it a round hundred. Three. An unbeliever watches a flower unfolding in a garden. The imam had told him these stories, Farid said, when he was twelve, and his mother died. She had ovarian cancer, which ravaged her so quickly, so comprehensively, that she was dead within three months of the first diagnosis. He had been angry; bewildered; raged at Allah. The imam, a kindly old man who meant well, had recited these stories to him, and although he did not know what they meant, and although he had scoffed at the imam and at Islam, he had not been able to forget them. The following year, he had stopped attending the mosque, and his father had not forced him. But he had always remembered the stories, and perhaps they would mean something to her.