But he just looked away. I’m going to have to move fast, this means. I’m going to have to think and plan and move fast.
After the phone call I made Baba a cup of tea with brandy in it and we sat watching the TV some more. They’d started to show footage from inside the actual war itself, from the Coalition perspective. Because the thing is: they’ve got camera men in with the troops, actually alongside them. It is fucked up. It looks like the Blair Witch Project, all shaky and green, because they did it at night to take Iraq by surprise and so the cameras have night-vision filters on.
On Al Jazeera they had amateur footage of a market place and a children’s health clinic that had both been bombed. While we were watching, the American woman from No. 4 came banging at the door really distressed saying what did Baba think would happen, and that her husband had insisted on going into work that day because they were closing a big contract and was he going to be ok, etc. etc. And it was only THEN that I realised I hadn’t thought of Ruth and Euan and Anna, not once! I was sick to the stomach when I realised that: it was like I’d betrayed them. I went straight over to their house but they didn’t answer the door. So I went down the back passage, behind the sentry box and over the walls, to see if maybe they were inside watching TV and hadn’t heard the door. But their utility door was locked, too. And then when I got back Baba said we were going to drive across town to Amm al-Harun’s and we spent the rest of the day here and we’re probably going to spend the night here, too.
I hope they’re ok. I really, really hope they’re ok. I would die if anything happened to them. I texted Ruth, but I haven’t had a reply. About five minutes ago I texted her again, just in case the first one hadn’t got through, but there’s been no response to that, either.
Text messages have been going round all day, from distant cousins and random numbers I don’t even know, saying things like, ‘God once drowned Pharoah and his court may he now sink an American aircraft carrier’, and ‘God protect Iraqis from the boots of American soldiers’.
It’s a weird thing – and there have been shouting matches all day about it – because most of the family are in favour of the invasion, but only because of Saddam. And others are saying that America has gone too far and we shouldn’t be in favour of them because think of the last Gulf War, when they’d liberated Kuwait but just watched – and I mean literally watched, they were flying their aircraft overhead the whole time – while Saddam bombed to smithereens the Shia rebels in the south. Some of the aunties are just shaking their heads and crying and saying, Remember how the Americans used to lick Saddam’s backside and it’s all politics and it’s the innocent people who always get shat on in the end. And about five minutes ago it erupted all over again when someone pointed out that today is the Changing of the Qiblah, when Muhammad told Muslims to pray towards Mecca instead of in the same direction as the Jews, and that America chose today because it’s just giving the finger to the Muslim world.
I was getting a bit tired by all of it then, the shouting and the tears, so I came up here to the roof to write this. But Farid followed me. He and I were practically the only ones who hadn’t been waving our arms and shouting and wailing. We shared a cigarette and he told me I looked thin. (!!) I told him he looked thin, too. He does. His face is sunken, and his eyes look like bruises. But when I asked him what was the matter he just said, Nothing, lashay jaded, and then he repeated it in Farsi, khabari nist.
So it obviously was something, but I didn’t say any more. We just shared the cigarette and then he left.
Poor Farid. I wonder if he’s going into one of his depressions again?
It’s dark now, and I’m going to have to stop writing because I can hardly see any longer.
Still no word from Ruth. I hope she’s ok.
9
Christopher phoned to tell them of the invasion and within minutes Euan was up and dressed and ready to go.
‘Go?’ Ruth said, jolted fully awake. ‘Go where?’
To Christopher’s, Euan said: they had been expecting this would happen and they’ve made contingency plans for it that now need to be activated.
‘“Activate”?’ she said. ‘“Contingency plans”? You sound like you’re the ones making military manoeuvres.’
‘But we are,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re fighting a battle, Ruth.’ It was even more important now than ever, he went on, that they were braced for a backlash against Christianity and all things Western. And there was even more danger, now that war had been declared. They had to go through their plans, check and double-check details, prepare for the trip into Saudi. He was excited, she saw. Despite his pacifist sermon, despite the lip-service to peace, he was wildly excited now that the war was real.
She thought of the Stop the War march, the day after Valentine’s Day, in Belfast city centre. She had left Anna with her mother and gone with a group from church, in a minibus; fifteen or sixteen of them piled in with their placards and banners, cracking jokes and singing songs. Euan had been unable to come: he was meeting Richard Caffrey that day, she suddenly remembered. He had been vague about the reason and the arrangements, but she had not thought to question him further at the time: why should she? Now she thought: that was the day he collected the contraband Bibles; they must have planned to use the distraction of the day as a smokescreen.
He was still talking, but she had stopped listening: just saw his mouth moving, a fleck of spittle on the corner of his lips.
They had walked up Royal Avenue, from the Arts College to the City Hall. There had been a sense of carnival: people in fancy dress, like Victorian undertakers, tribal drummers and chanting. Politicians had been there, too, from all of the parties. They had laughed at the cries of Ulster Says No! and even at the speaker who said, The last time we listened to a Bush we spent forty years wandering in the desert. She had been back much later than planned – by the time the march was over and their party reassembled, the roads were chock-a-block, with traffic ground to a halt for miles out of the city centre. Her mother had been cross when she got back, and they argued, once more, over the forthcoming trip to Bahrain. And Euan, later on, watching the footage on the news, had said the marchers were naive.
‘You wanted this to happen,’ she said, interrupting him. ‘All along, you wanted this war to happen.’
‘Ruth—’ he said, and heaved a sigh, and looked at her as if she was unspeakably simple-minded. ‘The first Gulf War,’ he said, ‘brought about tremendous persecution of Christians in Saudi by the Mutaween, the religious police, who are a very powerful authority there. People were thrown in prison, their families threatened, their homes trashed. Many were horribly tortured. Believers need to know, now, that they are not alone. That we walk with them. That we will enter the lions’ den alongside them.’ He slapped his hand on the wall for emphasis. Then he said, ‘Look, this is ridiculous. I haven’t got time for this. I have to go.’
‘You’re not leaving me,’ Ruth said, the initial stab of fear twisting into a mounting fury. ‘You’re not leaving me and Anna alone here when war has just broken out. You’re not doing it.’
She could see Euan trying to calm his mounting exasperation and this made her even angrier.
‘You think it’s appropriate to leave your wife and baby daughter in a strange house in a strange country when war has been declared?’
Again, he was betraying her: again.
Euan said, keeping his voice steady, that he thought she was exaggerating, that of course it was unsettling, the news of war, but it was hundreds of miles away, she was safe here, she had a TV and radio to keep up with what was going on and she had friends nearby – your Indian friend, he said, the American, and she caught his flicker of annoyance at himself that he could not remember their names, because he prided himself on such things.
She did not back down.
Christopher arrived at the door: he had already been on his way to collect Euan when he phoned. Ruth felt stiff and cold with anger
. It was all planned, she realised. They had planned for Euan to go off with Christopher without a second thought for her or Anna, left behind to fend for themselves.
She told Christopher that he must wait for them: that she and Anna were coming, too. Euan’s jaw tightened and his eyes hardened but he would not argue with her in front of someone else, especially not someone from the Church. So the men waited while she got dressed and woke Anna, packed a bag with things they might need – nappies, baby wipes, beaker; some bananas and biscuits and a couple of soft toys.
She took her time getting ready, daring Euan – just daring him – to tell her to hurry up.
*
The sun had not yet risen as they drove through the city. She had never seen the streets so empty: they were strange, flat, ugly places, devoid of movement or life beyond a few stray cats and dogs and the occasional labourer trudging to work, bent double under his dirty bundle. How bleak this city was, she thought. How man-made and makeshift and lonely. It was nothing like the city she had seen from the plane, nothing like the land she had glimpsed with Farid.
None of them spoke. Christopher had the radio tuned in to the BBC World Service. The reception was patchy, but they could make out the calm, mournful voices of the announcers describing that at half past five local time, ninety minutes after the forty-eight-hour deadline had expired, the so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun. She clutched Anna close to her. There was no child seat, so Anna was strapped in on her lap, sharing her seat belt. It was dangerous, she knew. She imagined something happening – some accident – and Euan blaming her. Well, she would blame him right back, she thought. She thought, with a rush of nausea, that she almost hated him.
*
There were several men at Christopher’s and Rosa’s apartment already, mainly Indians, drinking chai tea or coffee brewed in a pot, clustering round the television in the living room, talking rapidly and waving their arms.
So this is you, Ruth thought, taking them all in. You’re the cell. There was something alarming about their animation, their intensity. It was nothing she could put into words, but it was there, palpable, as present in the room as any of their physical bodies.
She watched Euan greeting them. He talked to them not with the easy smile and self-deprecating humour he used with acquaintances, nor with the authority and vigour he used as a preacher, but with something else entirely, something Ruth had never seen before. It was a peculiar sort of animation: a quickness, a concentration, almost a furtiveness. It was something she had not known he possessed.
‘Come,’ Rosa said, smiling her white smile and slipping her arm through Ruth’s. ‘We will leave the men to it.’ If she was surprised to see Ruth and Anna, she did not let it show. She led them into the kitchen, keeping up a steady stream of conversation, not seeming to mind that Ruth was not engaging. If Ruth had not known better, she might have thought Rosa slightly simple: charmingly, childishly talkative. But the wall of words was a deflection, a distraction, thrown up to disarm you. It was a weapon, used against her: because she, though not the enemy, was not one of them, either.
Euan, she knew, had not told them he had confessed to her: it might throw all of their plans in jeopardy, because while he knew he could trust her, they did not. She imagined what a silly, trembling, coltish thing they must think her, how simple, how easily deceived.
It was an effort to control her breath and the sudden shaking of her hands. She bent down and fussed over Anna, who was squatting in a corner watching a curled-up cat.
‘Careful, Annie, don’t touch her, she might get angry.’ She propped Anna up on a cushion and gave her a beaker of milk, scattered her toys around her, then took up a knife to help Rosa, who had started chopping vegetables and grinding spices to make dhal and other curries. It was not yet eight in the morning and the smell of onion and garlic made her feel queasy but she took a gulp of her milky tea and got to work, trying to keep her face as blank and her voice as light as possible, all the while feeling hatred, anger, treacly black rage, bubbling inside.
She had had enough.
*
The following day, she phoned Farid. She got his number from Noor. Noor had texted, three times, to check that Ruth was OK. Thanks for your concern, Ruth texted back. We’re fine. I hope you and your family are OK too. And your cousin. Could I have his number, to send him our regards? She hesitated for a long time over that last phrase, and over the phrasing of the whole thing. But in the end, she just pressed SEND – and there, the message was sending, sending, sent. Her phone bleeped with a reply only minutes later. SO GLAD 2 HEAR UR OK. F WITH US SO NO NEED 2 WORRY. ILL SEND HIS NO NE WAY. And there it was. She took a breath, and dialled it, before she had time for second thoughts, before she had time for any thoughts.
*
He took her to a restaurant downtown, a Persian restaurant. It was secluded, he said, and discreet; they could have some privacy there. Anna came too, of course: Ruth knocked on Noor’s door but she was not there, so there was nobody to babysit. Farid was distant in the car, polite; they talked of the war, but little else, and neither of them mentioned Al Bander. But Ruth thought the air between them hummed, and wondered if he could feel it, too. She had never felt so nervous or so sick in her life as when she was waiting for him. He had answered the phone immediately she rang, and said he’d come over that morning. But even so, she had paced the house, restless, unable to sit for a minute, waiting for her phone to ring and him to cancel. When she saw him, when he was finally there, she had hardly been able to look at him.
The entrance to the restaurant was nondescript, on a nondescript street of apartment buildings and office blocks, shabby steps leading up to an unmarked door with a bell, and no sign or menu displayed outside. But inside was luxurious: wood-panelled walls hung with swirling Persian tapestries, antique brass lamps swinging low from velvet-draped ceilings, thick-pile rugs lining the floor. Farid slipped off his shoes; Ruth did the same, and unbuckled Anna’s, and a smiling, heavily kohl-eyed hostess handed them embroidered slippers. The hostess led them down a corridor of tapestries, then lifted one up to let them in. All of the tapestries, Ruth realised, were doors to little booths, where you sat and ate in privacy. Their booth had a wooden table with cushions piled around on which to sit. The hostess gestured towards a leather-bound menu on the table, then spoke a stream of Farsi – it was Farsi, Ruth realised, not Arabic; it had a completely different sound. Then she left, lowering the tapestry door behind her. Their booth was a strange, almost claustrophobic place. It was big enough to sit perhaps six people, no more, and the ceiling was barely six foot high. An ornate ceiling fan, carved from dark wood, shuddered round, causing the hanging lamp to sway slightly and cast strange, soft shadows, so that you could almost be underground, in some deep cavern lit by flickering torches. The thick, dark wall hangings and rugs muffled all sound, so you could not hear any other diners.
Ruth settled Anna, unpacking a colouring book and crayons for her, and then she sat down herself, and turned towards Farid.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘here we are.’
‘Yes,’ she said. Then she said, ‘Thank you for coming.’
A bell tinkled outside. Farid turned and called a few words in Farsi, and the tapestry lifted to allow a waiter to bring in tall glasses of frothy, milky liquid on a silver tray. He bowed and set the tray down, then spoke to Farid. Farid replied, reeling off a rapid string of instructions, and the waiter bowed again and lifted the menu, left.
Farid had ordered, he explained, a series of typical dishes. Would this be all right for Anna?
‘Oh yes,’ Ruth said, and they both turned to look at Anna, who was absorbed in her scribbling. ‘Oh yes, she eats anything, she’ll eat whatever I’m having.’
She thought she could hear her heart pounding. She turned her attention to the glass in front of her, dabbed at the froth with the tip of her finger. It was flecked with tiny bits of green – she tasted one: mint.
‘This is doogh,’ Farid said.
>
‘Is it alcoholic?’
‘No.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘I am not trying to get you drunk. Taste, it is typically Persian.’
She took a sip. It was disgusting: thick, fizzy, fermented, minty yogurt. She put the glass down and tried not to gag. Farid started to laugh.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting – well, that.’
‘You said, once, that you wanted to learn about Bahrain, Bahraini food and culture. Well, this is what we drink when we are homesick for Iran.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, ‘I don’t mean to be rude.’ But he was still laughing, and something loosened inside her, and she laughed, too.
‘Maybe you’ll get used to it,’ he said.
She looked at him. He had stopped laughing now. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe I will.’
They said nothing else, for a while. It was difficult, with Anna there. The waiters came with food, dish after dish, and she accepted the spoonfuls Farid doled onto her plate – this a spicy couscous, this a seasoned sheep’s milk cheese, this a yogurt with cucumber and mint, this a mashed fried aubergine. She had to force herself to eat, to swallow. All of the food tasted the same in her mouth, and the praise she gave each dish was perfunctory. The waiters brought more dishes: minced fried lamb with prunes and cinnamon, marinated chicken pieces with slices of peach, a bowl of pomegranate syrup, brought at Farid’s request. He ate quickly and efficiently, moulding the food with his right hand and scooping it up with ripped chunks of nan bread, keeping his head bowed close to the plate. She hardly ate at all. It was not until after the mint tea and sorbet – little gilded glasses and matching glass bowls – that she spoke.
The Meeting Point Page 15