Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  The night, now, in long purple swathes, in soft gradations of lemon and pink, hung over a vast car park; a sky like ruffled silk. SANYO SANYO said a neon sign, beginning to wink. “Why are Jeddah sunsets so beautiful?”

  “It’s all the dust in the air.”

  “There’s no wind today. It’s not coming in from the desert.”

  “No. It’s from the cement works.”

  “Andrew, what you told me … about the empty flat—”

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Don’t go on about it, Fran.”

  I was wondering, how often … ?”

  “How should I know?” They sat in silence for a moment. The spaces around them began to fill up, as the end of prayers approached. Black shapes were disgorged from cars. Maids, and a few blond nannies, clutched the hands of the small children. Little girls too young for the veil, with saucer eyes and beribboned topknots, wore sequined dresses with bouffant skirts, sewn over with scratchy lace. Charm bracelets clinked around their thin brown wrists; and sometimes a mother’s abaya would drift a little, and you would see that she was draped and weighted with gold, with mayoral chains of it, from which hung gemstones the size and color of boiled sweets.

  “Just the average Saudi housewife, having a casual evening out,” Frances said. “They look like … I can’t think what they look like.”

  “Prussian empresses … on coronation day.”

  “The little girls look like a formation dancing team.”

  “Women aren’t allowed to dance.”

  “I know, Yasmin told me that. Men dance. When they have a get-together.” She turned her head away, and caught sight of her face in the wing mirror; her obstinate mouth. “Andrew, about the flat, the point is …”

  “The one thing I have never understood,” Andrew said angrily, “is this way you have, of suddenly developing concern about complete strangers.”

  “Why? Don’t you think I care about people, as a general rule?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know whether you do or not. But you’re very down on people, aren’t you? You take them apart.”

  “Is that what I do?”

  “You have your own ideas, about how people should live. And God help anybody who doesn’t come up to your standards.”

  “Oh well then, I’ll stop.” She seemed spiritless, withdrawn; she licked her lips, dry from dust. “I’ll try just to have everyone else’s ideas, shall I?”

  “That might be better, for the while. And everybody’s idea about the empty flat is that it’s a bit of a joke. And none of our concern.”

  “Okay,” she said meekly.

  He squeezed her hand. “Come on. Prayers must be over now.”

  These monotonous marble halls again. The supermarkets are all well stocked, but there is always some elusive item; this breeds the desire to go to more supermarkets. Shopping is the highest good in Saudi life. Every need and whim under one roof—Lebanese pastries, a Mont Blanc pen, a diamond snake with emerald eyes; a pound of pistachio nuts, two tickets to Bermuda, a nylon prayer rug with built-in compass. Perhaps some blueberry cheesecake ice cream, and Louis Quinze fauteuil; a new Toyota, and a portrait of the King. The car parks consume acres, the facades glitter like knives. Glass-fronted lifts whisk the shoppers from floor to floor; grooves of dark green plants drip costly moisture, and dusky armies, with a slavelike motion, polish the marble at your feet.

  They made for the pharmacy. There was a young Indian behind the counter. “Could I have a bottle of paracetamol?” Frances said.

  The man looked down at the glass-topped counter. He heard. His face, impassive, was dimly reflected; his black mustache, his melancholy eyes. “Or aspirin? Something for a headache?”

  She felt Andrew’s presence behind her. The pharmacist looked up, over her left shoulder. “Sir?” he said. “Large bottle, sir, or small?”

  They stood outside by a goldsmith’s shop. “Am I visible?” she asked.

  “Perhaps too visible,” Andrew said. “Shall we get some takeaway pizza, and save you cooking?”

  She seemed to have come to a dead halt—mulish, the bottle of pills in its blue plastic bag held between her hands.

  “There’s Marion,” Andrew said. “Hi there, Marion.”

  There was a small fountain, greenish water against mosaic tiles: THESE SEATS FOR FAMILY ONLY said a notice. Saudi youths occupied them, stick-thin, aquiline, blank-eyed, and watched Marion advance, puffing a little, pushing her shopping cart, her thin Indian smock pulled tight across the bolster of her bosom.

  “Hi,” Frances said. “The man in the pharmacy’s just ignored me. He gave me what I wanted but he pretended that Andrew had asked for it. As if I were a ventriloquist’s doll.”

  “Oh, well, yes.” Marion scraped her foot along the floor, as if in embarrassment; her baby-blue eyes were downcast. “That’s what they do.”

  “They’re afraid,” Andrew said. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud. “They’re afraid of looking at strange women. In case they’re accused of something. Where’s Russel?”

  “He’s at his field-camp. I’m with Jeff. He’s buying a newspaper. Jeffs very good,” she said to Frances. Her soft, toneless voice, if it had expression, would have been defensive. “He takes me shopping. You know Russel never will.”

  Frances too shuffled her feet; looked at her watch not too surreptitiously, to indicate, let’s not wait around for Jeff.

  “What have you been buying?” Marion asked.

  “Headache pills.”

  “Oh.” Marion sounded disappointed, as if she would have been just as happy to take part in someone else’s spending. She indicated the pharmacy. “Only they’ve got an offer on Chanel No. 5.”

  They made for the nearest exit. The indoor streets were kept icy cold; as they stepped outside, the door held open for them by an overalled Filipino, the hot air would drop over their heads like a blanket. A dozen TV sets, in the shop windows, showed Prince Sultan arriving at an airport; the screen flickered, the scene changed, and there Prince Abdullah was arriving at another. Between the bursts of commentary the national anthem played; it was a frisky, unmemorable tune. Before the Pierre Cardin boutique, turtles swam in gritty pools.

  “Of course, you know what they do?” Andrew said.

  “What who do?”

  “The police—they seal this place off from time to time, wait until it’s really crowded after night prayers, and then they block all the exits. They separate the men from the women and everybody has to show their identification. Then they match up the men with the women. And if the person you’re shopping with isn’t your wife or near relation—you’re in trouble.”

  They drove out of the car park. “What sort of trouble?”

  “Deportation, for the expats. I don’t know about the Saudis. Who knows what kind of trouble they have stored up for each other?”

  It was slow to sink in. “So Marion and Jeff … ?”

  “Are taking a risk.” He pulled up at a traffic light. “But then, it’s like drinking. Everybody does it. You have to take risks to live here at all.”

  It often seemed to her now that it was only in the car they had their real conversations. She had become used to Andrew’s profile, which gave so little away; to the interjection of a curse, as someone cut in on them; to conversations that died when his concentration switched elsewhere, as he executed a U-turn under one of the dark bridges. The simplest task—like posting a letter—seemed to mean an hour in a traffic jam; but what would she do if she were left at home? She had started reading novels, crime stories. Sometimes she was distracted when he came in, her eyes distant, her mind unraveling the complexities of the plot. What he was saying—about the building, about politics at the Turadup office—seemed to have nothing to do with her. She would rather have talked to Hercule Poirot, or Commander Adam Dalgleish.

  “Look, Andrew,” she said, sitting up. “Did you see that garden?”

  He had turned off the main road, into a narrower, dimmer street; a g
ate stood open, a gate to a private villa, and for a second she glimpsed the house itself, ramshackle, with a tin roof. In front of the house there was a lawn; a moth-battered bulb, hanging from a wall on an iron bracket, cast a shivering light on to real grass. She wanted to catch at his arm and persuade him to turn the car around, so that she could see it again: a promise of greenness, turned to dappled monochrome by the onset of the night.

  “Did you see? It must be the only lawn in Jeddah.”

  “No, I missed it. I think the embassies have lawns. You ought to go along to those wives’ coffee mornings, if you’re yearning for gardens.”

  “Maybe. But they make you do handicrafts. You have to make Christmas crackers, for their bazaar.”

  “And then there’s that grass verge outside the airport, you know, where the Saudis go for picnics.”

  “Yes, I remember it. They must spend millions of riyals on cultivating that grass verge. It gives a totally false impression of the country.”

  They drove on in silence. She looked sideways at Andrew; a corner of the check he had got from the money changer protruded from the breast pocket of his shirt. He doesn’t like anything here, she thought, he doesn’t commend it, but he seems pleased with the way things are going. At the corner of Ahmed Lari Street she looked up automatically, to see if the laundryman was at work that night. But the curtains were drawn at the first-floor window, and the room behind was in darkness.

  “Anyway,” Andrew said, as they pulled up outside Dunroamin, “why don’t you give it a go? Once you got down to it you’d probably be really good at making Christmas crackers.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Andrew let them in at the gate. He had an awesome proficiency with the locks and keys; she didn’t go out enough to get the practice. Something scurried away, in the shadow of the wall.

  “Was that a rat, do you think?” Andrew said. “We have them on the site. We could put some poison down.” He unlocked the main door, with a scrape and a clank.

  “The stray cats would eat it.”

  “That would be no loss.”

  The lights were on in the hall. There was a figure on the stairs, moving rapidly upward; a woman, hunch-shouldered, her abaya flapping. She gathered up her skirt, taking the stairs two at a time, yet seeming to make no headway; a thin yellow calf trailed after her, a calloused heel in a flapping sandal. Andrew stopped in the open doorway, his arm stretched across it, as if to keep out the night. Frances ducked underneath. She put her own arm around him, her hand against his solid ribcage, and her head, as if she needed comfort, briefly against his shoulder. “It’s Abdul’s maid,” she whispered. “Come in. Close the door.”

  It clanged behind them, and the woman stopped in her tracks, as if a pistol shot had been aimed at her back. She turned, for an instant, and showed a dark oval face, wet with tears, and a mouth stretched wide with panic or grief. Andrew called out after her. She vanished at the bend in the stairs. He stood with his lips pressed together then; to call out had been a natural reaction, which already he regretted.

  “I don’t know her name,” Frances said. “I’m not even sure where she comes from. Yasmin thinks maybe Indonesia. She doesn’t speak any English and only a few words of Arabic, so nobody knows much about her.”

  “What do you think she’s crying about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Andrew seemed upset. “Let’s have a drink,” he said, when they got inside the flat. “The wine should be ready. I’ll pour some off and see.”

  He disappeared into the small second bathroom that they used for their home brewing. His voice carried to her in the kitchen, a muffled echo. “It’s a bit cloudy. But it’s distinctly alcoholic.”

  “Hush,” she said. If sound carried down from the bathrooms, sound must carry up. A few weeks earlier a warm odor of yeast had pervaded the flat; frowning, Yasmin had asked, “What is that strange smell?”

  Andrew met her in the hall, a brimming jug of red liquid in his hand. “Get some glasses,” he said. “I need this. Been a tough week. Do you know,” he followed her along the hall, “it always says in the papers that foreign servants are an immoral influence.”

  “Well, so they are. Yasmin says that the educated Saudi women are starting to want to go out to work, so the government’s campaign against maids and nannies is a way of nipping that in the bud. Making sure they don’t delegate stewing the goat.”

  “But they used to have slaves,” Andrew said. “They only abolished slavery in the sixties.”

  “Yes, but I expect that was when they had to herd camels and make their own tents.”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said. “In the days when all the Arabs were happy and God-fearing, when every desert day was mini-paradise and there was no crime and no disease, before the wicked West came along and drilled for oil and gave them all that rotten rotten money.” He entered the living room and threw himself into one of the many chairs. Even the experimental draft seemed to have gone to his head. He looked restless, reckless. A friend in Africa had once said, “Whenever I see Andrew and he’s had a drink, I can always tell. He reminds me of that expression ‘a bull in a china shop.’”

  She handed him her glass.

  The wine, poured out, was a soft raspberry red; a sediment was appearing at the bottom of the jug.

  Yasmin said, “You are looking pale.”

  “Oh … I’m always pale.”

  “Late nights?”

  “Not really. We’re usually in bed by eleven. Andrew gets up at six, he’s out of the house by six-thirty.”

  “Our guests don’t disturb you, I hope? Leaving so late?” Yasmin sighed. It was becoming a habit with her. “You think I’m a slave to the kitchen now, but wait till Raji’s mother comes. Go through, Frances, sit down, I will make us some herb tea.”

  Raji, like Abdul Nasr, never left for his office before midmorning; but then he would work through the early evening, and entertain his guests into the small hours. Most of the guests were official ones, people to whom he was obliged; or people to whom he was extending patronage. Then there were nights when he would be entertained elsewhere: all-male occasions. “We never sit down to dinner together,” Yasmin said. “I envy you, Frances. Our life is not so simple.”

  Frances trailed into the living room and flopped into a brocade armchair. She knew that Yasmin did not envy her at all. She still felt weak and sick, the aftermath of their night’s drinking. Andrew said that perhaps they would have to change their recipe. Maybe there were people around who brought a little more finesse to the business than Jeff Pollard.

  “Yasmin,” she said, as her neighbor brought in the tray, “I was reading this thing in the newspaper.”

  “Oh yes?” Yasmin arranged the cups and saucers—a delicate clink of china, and the more decisive clink of her bracelets. Frances counted them: eight today. “Frances, remind me, I have got for you a translation of the Holy Koran. Perhaps this will answer some of your questions. You must understand that the very language of the Holy Koran is sacred, and so this Penguin Book is just a little lacking the nuances.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “Now,” she passed a cup, “you wanted to ask me?”

  “Well, I’m sorry to bring this up, I know it’s only what ignorant Westerners are always asking, but—”

  “Oh yes.” Yasmin nodded, almost brusque. “I saw that dreadful case too. I thought it would be troubling you.”

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  “Not really.” Yasmin smiled faintly. She too looked tired and pale. “It’s just that, as you say, all Westerners want to know the same thing. I remember even when I lived in St. John’s Wood, I was asked questions on this point.”

  “You see, I’ve been trying not to be self-righteous about it, because we had capital punishment in England until quite recently.” Yasmin nodded. She raised her cup to her lips. “But only for murder. The woman in Mecca wasn’t accused of murder. Only of adult
ery.”

  “Don’t let the tea get cold,” Yasmin said. “You see, Frances, although we may feel pity for someone, no one can reduce the punishments that Allah has laid down.”

  “But if there was a case where no one was harmed, and there was no violence? Yasmin, surely these things must happen, sometimes, and people aren’t found out?”

  “I am sure they happen. When they come to light the punishment must be always the same, but it is much better if the need does not arise. The Prophet says that if you make some slip you should try to keep it secret, you see, so that it doesn’t scandalize other people, and then you should try to do better in the future, and hope Allah will forgive you.”

  “I see, so it’s not a question of what you do, it’s whether you’re found out or not.”

  “I think you are twisting my words just a little, Frances.”

  “That’s not real religion, is it? It’s just law enforcement. Keeping people in a state of fear doesn’t make them good people. You’re just controlling their actions.”

  “Surely controlling actions is enough,” Yasmin murmured. “Who can look into the heart? Let me tell you, there are safeguards. There must be four male witnesses to the crime …”

  “Male?”

  “You cannot have the testimony of women, when it is a question of adultery.”

  “Why not?”

  “Think what women will do to each other! Think what they will say! Four witnesses, Frances, and they must have seen with their own eyes.”

  “That can’t happen very often.”

  “This is what I am telling you.”

  “And yet there are convictions?”

  “There can be a confession, of course.”

  “Ah, a confession.”

  “It must be voluntary. The person must know what they are admitting. They must know the punishment.”

  “Why should anyone confess then? Unless of course they were forced to?”

  “You always think the worst, Frances.”

  “It’s a reasonable question.”

  Yasmin dropped her eyes. “Guilt. You know of guilt? Also, of course, if you take your punishment in this life you will not get it in the next.”