The Meeting Point

by Lucy Caldwell

  ‘You, do bad things?’ Ruth said. ‘You’re practically a child, Noor. Heavens above, you haven’t done bad things.’

  ‘Oh, but I have,’ Noor said. But Ruth just shook her head and smiled at Noor so sadly, full of so much love and compassion – Noor could feel it, coming in waves, like warmth – that Noor did not say any more.

  *

  It was further evidence of Ruth’s compassion when she invited Noor to stay for lunch – and when Farid came by and offered to take Ruth and Anna on a drive, to show them some of Bahrain, she insisted that Noor came, too.

  Noor wondered, briefly, at Farid coming by. He was the black sheep of her cousins, the outsider; a bit of a loner. He and Jamal had been good friends when they were younger – there was less than a year between them – but in his adolescence, after her aunt Azar died, Farid had become odd and introverted, moody, liable to lash out and unwilling to take part in games or excursions with the rest of them. But it was testament to Ruth’s kindness, she decided, that he was somehow changed: warmer, more open, than she had ever seen him before.

  They drove to Al Bander, and spent the afternoon there, until it grew dark. And as she played with Anna – splashing their feet in the kiddie pool, playing hide-and-seek behind the potted ferns and miniature palm trees, ordering lavish fruit cocktails with cocktail cherries on sticks (as many as they wanted, Farid said, it was all on him) – the first germ of an idea occurred to her.

  The Diary of Noor Hussain

  Sunday, 16th March 2003

  QUESTIONS FOR EUAN ARMSTRONG ( rough draft )

  What about evolution because everyone knows that God didn’t create the world in six days with light on one day and water on the next and trees and animals on the next etc.

  If there is a God why does he let wars happen and why does he let people die of horrible diseases especially babies

  What about all the bad things that are done e.g. the Crusades which you learn about in school as this amazing thing but in actual fact when you hear the story from the other side i.e. your Muslim father and uncles then the Crusaders were a bunch of raping pillaging madmen

  How do you know???

  What happens if you’ve done something really, really bad, something that even a non-Christian knows you’re going to burn in hell for?

  Come on, Noor! WHAT ELSE? You mustn’t waste his time! You’re not allowed to go over until you have ten good questions to show you’ve taken things seriously and thought about them properly ok!!!

  7

  She told Farid she could not see him again and he nodded, grave, and did not protest. She does not see him again. The days pass, long and hot and suffocating, and she is wretched.

  *

  Euan brings home a sheaf of papers, hole-punched and bound with a treasury tag.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  The print is so small, and so smudged, it is almost impossible to read. He takes her by the wrist, impatient, and pulls her to a lamp. It is a photocopy of the King James Bible – a photocopy, he says, imagine. The internet connections in the country cannot always be trusted: you cannot read the Bible online, or download it to your computer, and many of the converts are Filipino or Pakistani, servants and indentured labourers, who do not have their own computers. And so someone in Riyadh, or Jeddah, has worked through the night, photocopying their Bible a page at a time.

  ‘Isn’t that love,’ he says, ‘isn’t that devotion?’

  ‘A man killed ninety-nine men,’ she says, ‘and went to a priest to ask if God would forgive him.’ She stops.

  ‘What do you mean? Is this some kind of riddle?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says.

  He flips once more through the photocopied Bible. ‘I just had to show you this. It just puts everything in perspective, you know?’ He holds it gently, gingerly; as if, she thinks, it was the Book of Kells.

  *

  Noor comes to their door with a list of questions. Her questions are neatly written out, numbered, headings and subheadings underlined. She sits, stiff and formal, flushed with embarrassment and importance, on the edge of the divan. Euan sits opposite, heaving an unwitting groan of air as he settles back. He is exhausted. Whatever the preparations are for his impending trip to Saudi – he will not speak of the details to Ruth, for her sake as much as his, he tells her – they are wearing him out. But weary as he is, he would never turn someone in need away.

  ‘Well now,’ he says, smiling a particular smile, a smile Ruth recognises, where he tilts his head to one side and presses the tips of his fingers together just below his chin. It is his encouraging smile, his disarming smile. He smiles as if he is all yours, and only yours, with all the time in the world.

  Ruth goes to make tea. She makes an infusion from a paper twist of babunag or camomile, stirring and mashing the dusty, apple-skin-scented flowers with the back of the teaspoon. Camomile grows wild in the meadows at home, creeping along the lee side of the hedgerows and ditches, sending its feathery leaves flittering into the air. Her father always warned her against picking it, in case she picked its impostor, stinking mayweed, instead: blistered hands and severe vomiting, if you brewed and drank it by mistake. It is impossible to tell, from the appearance alone, which is the real and which the poison. By their fruits you shall know them. She strains the straw-coloured liquid into three mugs and adds a spoon of honey to each. The smell, of farmyards and hay and the inside of barns in summer, makes her ache for home. But it isn’t a home she can go back to, any more: it is a time, not a place, and she left it long ago.

  When she goes back into the living room, carrying the mugs on a tray, Noor is folding and unfolding her piece of paper and frowning. She glances at Ruth, quick, beseeching, and Ruth feels suddenly sorry for her, and sad. A far-off, distant sort of sadness: for the time when she was Noor.

  ‘Evolution,’ Euan says. ‘Noor was asking about evolution, saying she’s pretty sure she believes human beings grew from monkeys.’ He smiles, sips his tea. He is on firm ground. ‘I was just explaining to her that the Anglican Church is not against theories of evolution, not at all. The Church recognises that scientific findings in fact make a significant argument for the likelihood of evolution. And what’s more, Noor –’ he says, turning back to the girl, leaning forward, about to deliver the coup de théâtre, ‘considered in the correct light, there is no conflict between evolution and faith. None at all! Because, you see, they are two different things entirely. Theories of evolution seek to explain how things came to be, whilst doctrines of faith deal with the meaning of things. You with me?’

  Noor darts another glance at Ruth and nods dubiously.

  ‘The thing is,’ Euan carries on, eyes glistening, in his element, ‘the two deal with different realities. The story of Adam and Eve – the dust of the earth and the breath of God, the rib fashioned into a female form – it does not explain how things came to be, but what they are. Do you follow? Evolution is one way of trying to understand how humans came to be, how we developed and grew, but it can’t – and, actually, doesn’t even try to – explain what we are here for, what our purpose is. The two realities are complementary, not mutually exclusive.’

  Noor is frowning. She folds and unfolds her page again. ‘But—’ she begins, then stops. ‘But—’ she tries again.

  ‘Yes?’ Euan says. ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘Evolution – I mean I don’t know, but what I mean is – evolution just says we’re here, and that’s it. It’s not about why, or any of that. We just are because that’s the way things work.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Euan says. ‘But that’s not enough, is it? You know there’s more. I know you do, because you wouldn’t be here, asking these questions, if you didn’t. You know there’s more to life than that, than a simple, arbitrary accident of, of bacteria in the Petri dish of a universe, if you will. And the mystery, the why, can only be explored within the realm of faith.’

  ‘OK,’ Noor says, slowly.

  ‘You follow me?’


  ‘I—’

  ‘I can see you’re a bright girl, I can see that straight away.’

  Noor reddens, unaccustomed to the praise. She bends down and lets her black curtain of hair fall to hide her face. ‘Can I ask another one?’ she mumbles.

  ‘Of course,’ Euan says, ‘ask away, ask away. The only way to learn.’

  ‘OK. Um – this is probably an obvious one, but – suffering in the world, right?’

  Euan puffs out his cheeks, exhales, and leans back. Ruth gets to her feet. They are always the same questions, always: already she has heard them all before. But it is Euan’s job to treat each question, each statement of doubt or accusation, as if it is the only question, asked for the first and only time.

  ‘Well,’ she hears him saying as she closes the door to, ‘that’s the biggie, isn’t it?’

  She knows what he’ll say. He’ll start by saying the Bible itself tackles the very same issue, head-on. He’ll quote from the third book of Job (she always imagines Job as high-voiced and querulous, though goodness knows he has enough reason to be), Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure … For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, only turmoil … He’ll talk about free will, about how we have to be responsible for our actions. He’ll say that however much we suffer, it is only a fraction of how God suffers, to see us, his beloved, his creation, abusing and hurting and killing each other. He’ll go on to explain how the emphasis of the Old Testament – Job’s plaintive outcry of Does God care? Has He forgotten to be merciful? – is replaced in the New by God-made-man, made manifest in the person of Jesus, who came to show us the way, and to remind us that in Him is to be found a joy, a security and hope that even the greatest suffering cannot overwhelm. He’ll talk about living a Christian life, to make sure you minimise your capacity to injure others; he’ll quote passages from the Sermon on the Mount as the only viable code by which to live. He’ll talk about giving unconditionally, so that the left hand does not know what the right is doing, and he’ll probably quote from 2 Corinthians, Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. He’ll talk about how we do not and cannot ever understand or hope to understand God’s plan, and that how we find ourselves on earth – alone and miserable and sinning – is in one sense all we can ever know of humanity. When Noor persists – as she will, as people always do – and asks why God lets babies die and innocent people suffer horrible illnesses, sufferings that do not occur at the hand of others, he’ll sigh and look grave and say: he does not know: he admits that there are no answers. He will not talk about the pain of childbirth as a punishment for womankind, or the sins of the fathers being visited on the children. He will say instead that not a single sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of our heavenly Father, and that in His eyes even the very hairs on our head are numbered. This we know, he will say, and we must take on trust that there is a plan for the rest of it, for us, for the world. That is what hope is, that is what faith is. He will speak sadly, and solemnly, and persuasively. It is hard not to believe him, when he talks like that. Noor will believe. She believed.

  She wanders through the kitchen and out of the back door, into the narrow strip of wasteland running between the back of the house and the rough-bricked compound wall. It is dim here, and dank; it smells of gutters. The air-conditioning unit is dripping steadily down the wall; the flaking white paint of the house is stained a dull rusty colour, like dried blood. She has not come out here before. The pathway is scarcely wider than the width of her body. She walks a few steps along it. A low wall marks where their villa ends and next door’s begins, but it is little more than waist-high; you could easily clamber over it. She shivers, in the heat: thinking suddenly of escape routes and smugglers, burglars, illicit activity. You could sneak around the compound, if you were so inclined.

  Not that it would get you anywhere. The flat, blind backs of the villas were still bookended by the dilapidated tennis court on one end and the barbed-wire fence and sentry box on the other. There was no real escape, not really.

  She goes back inside. Euan is on the sparrows bit. She listens for a moment, hovering behind the door. Love cannot exist, he is saying, where there is not the freedom to choose. His voice, melodious and gently insistent; Noor’s stilted, marble-mouthed interjections or capitulations. It is not an even contest. It will not be long.

  She checks on Anna – fast asleep – and goes into their own bedroom.

  *

  Rosa had come, one afternoon, to take her to the souk, as promised. Ruth left Anna with Noor, and they wrapped silk scarves around their mouths and hair against the dust and the taxi driver dropped them at the Bab al-Bahrain, the entrance to the markets. The souk was not what Ruth had imagined. It was a grid of concrete streets lined by metal-box shops with corrugated-iron canopies. The shops were cluttered with tat: viscose dresses and fake designer sunglasses, handbags that looked more plastic than leather. Misshapen pouffes and overpriced sheesha pipes, carpets in lurid colours and strings of stuffed toy camels. Rosa led her along, chattering happily, pointing out shops that sold mops and mop buckets, cut-price cleaning fluids, tinned food and crates of soft drinks. They turned down one street made entirely of gold merchants’ stores, the windows crammed with flashing, vulgar yellow-gold bracelets and necklaces that looked like chains. The souk was hot, airless and claustrophobic; everywhere you went men called or leered after you, followed you the whole length of a street entreating you to come into their shop, promising you the best prices for saucepans, kaftans, dinner sets and wall hangings. Ruth bought a sticky cardboard box of baklava, a bottle of rose water, one of the tacky toy camels, just to have bought something, just to appease Rosa. Rosa treated her as if she was a young girl, naive, able to be excited by baubles and glitter. Rosa slipped her arm through Ruth’s, and asked innocuous questions about Anna, about Easter, as if Ruth is stupid. Ruth thinks that she might despise Rosa.

  *

  The magic is gone from Bahrain and she misses Farid. She cannot stop thinking about him, even as she tries so hard not to think about him. Her thoughts – though they are not quite thoughts, more images half-glimpsed, conjured without her mind’s permission – are of his curved lips and sinewy arms, the tautness of his body underneath its clothes. At night, strange, unlikely pictures come to her: him pinning her by the wrists, crushing his mouth against hers, licking her, biting her. She is scared, and troubled by these pictures. This, she knows, is desire. She feels it low in her sacrum, her pelvis, dark, hidden places: a dull, pulsing ache. She has never felt desire like this before. She has never been so miserable in her life.

  8

  The Diary of Noor Hussain

  Thursday, 20th March 2003

  Well, life as we know it may very well be coming to an end because WAR HAS BEEN DECLARED. Baba woke me up at half past six this morning to tell me and we sat in his bedroom for more than two hours watching it on TV, flipping back and forth between Al Jazeera and BBC News 24 and a couple of the American stations to see what they were saying. Neither of us said much, we just sat there watching. A lot of it was shaky, filmed from the distance, so it just looked like dodgy camcorder footage of someone’s firework display. It was so hard to believe in it. Al Jazeera had footage from inside Baghdad, but it was mostly just anti-aircraft guns rattling and deserted streets. And then of course all the pundits and politicos, the American ones saying it was to free the People from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, and the English ones saying it was WMD – which Baba says is a total lie. Any weapons in Iraq, he says, are left over from the last Gulf War and everyone knows it. It’s the West, asserting their dominance over the East, that’s what Baba says.

  Al Jazeera says there’s going to be big trouble in the Middle East.

  Then of course Mummy r
ang, quite hysterical. She had woken up to it on the radio and she was watching it on the TV and crying. She said she’d logged onto the Foreign Office website and there was ‘a high risk of terrorist attacks against Westerners in the Middle East’ and they were ‘advising against all non-essential travel’ and she wanted me to come home immediately.

  No way – NO WAY – am I going back there. I actually will kill myself if they make me go back there.

  I put the phone onto speakerphone during Mummy’s rant so Baba could hear it, and he took the phone from me and started trying to calm her down. Bahrain is millions of miles away, Bahrain is the safest place in the Middle East, Bahrain can’t and won’t do anything to alienate the Western expats it relies upon. But what about fucking Saudi? Mummy said. That’s only a handful of miles away and it’s the most fucked-up crazy country there is. What if something happens from that direction? And every time Baba tried to calm her down on one count she went off on another one. He said: think of Kuwait. It was over in days. He said let’s see how the next few days pan out. Then he got cross and said For God’s sake Veronica it’s not as if you didn’t know this was coming and Mummy started yelling back at him. She wasn’t on speakerphone any longer but I could hear her as clearly as if she was.

  When Baba was finally off the phone I said, I’m not going back there, I swear I’m not, and he said, We’ll see, and I said, You have no idea what it was like there, you and Mummy have no idea, which is the closest I’ve come to telling either of them what really happened.