Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

  “Oh, surely not.”

  “If it gets damaged I’ll kill somebody.” Suddenly he was full of venom. “Jeff’s an idiot,” he said.

  Andrew hugged his mug of tea, and lapsed into thought. He is losing faith in Turadup’s bosses, in their technical competence. Not that they bother with him much. His building, the multimillion-riyal building, seems unimportant to them compared to the underground silo at the missile base. Whenever he wants something, Parsons and Pollard are having a high-level meeting; or say they are. People he doesn’t know arrive at the airport, and occupy office space, and monopolize the telex machine; they break Turadup’s photocopier, and expect him to mend it, as if he were a maintenance mechanic. Once he found that one of these strangers had taken over his Portakabin, and pushed all his drawings aside. “You’re not working on the silo, I gather?” this chap had asked him, and he had said, “No, the building, I’m working on the building, and you are in my space.” He had been violently rude. Parsons, in his mild way, had upbraided him.

  And anyway, he thought, sipping his tea, ignoring his wife: isn’t the whole project misconceived? Building an underground silo on limestone? It’s permeable, it cracks, it’s continually flooding. They should have put the missiles inland, on granite. The site’s in the wrong place. It should be up on the escarpment, not down by the sea. But then, officially there are no missiles. There are no Americans. How can you point out the flaws in a project that doesn’t exist?

  And mixed up with his larger doubts (after all, Saudi defense strategy is not his affair) are the little things that niggle away. If he goes to the Ministry—the Ministry that wants the building so much—nobody seems prepared to deal with him. The fact is, they seem not to know who he is. Four or five men loll around in the Deputy Minister’s anteroom, drink coffee, and read the newspapers. They give him a blank stare, and return to their conversation.

  When Jeff Pollard recruited him in Gaborone, he said that he would be a valued member of a team; but he doesn’t feel like one. Parsons and Pollard don’t know how to make someone feel valued. Havana-sucking half-wits, he thinks. Captain Hook and Smee had more notion of personnel management. Far more.

  “Awful tea,” Frances said. “Want another cup?”

  He shook his head. “I’m supposed to be getting this consultant out from London,” he said. “Though when he’s coming I don’t know. Perhaps we can have him over to dinner when he does get here, keep him away from Parsons and Pollard. He’s an expert on air-conditioning. His name’s Fairfax.”

  “Really?” Frances looked up. “Who does he work for?”

  He told her. “I feel as if I know him,” she said. “I came over on the plane with some of his colleagues. They talked shop the whole time. Poor Fairfax, I think they had a down on him, they weren’t very complimentary.”

  “Well, I hope he’s some use. I spoke to him on the phone. He was going on about the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Says they’re doing it up and it’s going to have the biggest central air-conditioning system in the world.”

  “I suppose the Believers have to be kept cool.”

  “I said to him, well, you can’t go to Medina. Only Muslims can go to Mecca and Medina. He said, I really need the order, how can I convert? And then he started laughing like a maniac.”

  “I’m sure that when he comes here he’ll sober up.”

  “Probably. You know what Rickie Zussman was telling me? He’d been to this management seminar, and they’d had a lecture from some Indian psychiatrist, a chap from Hyderabad. He was making a tour of the Middle East to research into the effects of stress on immigrant workers.”

  “Strange,” Frances said, “how Indians are immigrant workers, but we’re professional expatriates.”

  “He said all the Indians who work here are shot to pieces mentally. Totally paranoid. They come here and they’re suddenly cut off from their families, they’ve got language problems, and they start to think everybody’s out to get them. Our Indians are like that, at Turadup. They think all the other Indians are after their jobs. They think people are talking about them behind their backs. And they’re always going up to Eric Parsons and asking him complicated questions about the labor law. They think he wants to cheat on the terms of their contract, do them out of their baggage allowances or something. They’re obsessed with their baggage allowances.”

  “I expect Europeans are the same, when they’ve been here for a while.”

  “Yes, sure. This psychiatrist says so. He says there are phases. When you get here and everything’s so strange, you feel isolated and got at—that’s Phase One. But then you learn how to manage daily life, and for a while the place begins to seem normal, and you’ll even defend the way things are done here, you’ll start explaining to newcomers that it’s all right really—that’s Phase Two. You coast along, and then comes Phase Three, the second wave of paranoia. And this time around, it never goes.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “You leave, before you crack up.”

  “But some of your lot at Turadup—they’ve been here a few years. They may not be up to much, but you can’t say they’ve cracked up.”

  “Oh, not in any obvious way. I don’t mean they attack people, or scream and hammer the walls. They’re just cracked up in small ways. You just listen to their conversation.” Andrew stared into the depth of his empty mug, as if he were reading the tea leaves. “Parsons,” he said. “You know that big flash car of his? It’s got a tinted windscreen. It’s tinted at the top, so you’ve got this arc of blue sky.”

  “That’s not insane, Andrew. It’s just tacky.”

  “It seems insane to me,” Andrew said. “Nine days out of ten the sky is as blue as you could want. Unnaturally blue. But the real sky isn’t good enough for these madmen.”

  Frances was thoughtful. “I wonder what phase we are in?”

  “Getting into the second one, I suppose. Because we seem to be coping, don’t we? There are days when I really feel the place is normal.”

  Speak for yourself, Frances thinks. Dunroamin begins to feel a more and more problematical world. When she goes out into the hallway she is watchful; she listens; she casts a glance over her shoulder and up the stairs. If she hears a door open, her heart leaps. There is a feeling that something is going on, just outside her range of vision. If the time and the place came together, she would grasp it; she would know what it was.

  “Perhaps the process can be accelerated,” she said to Andrew. “Perhaps I’ve already reached the third stage.”

  “Oh no,” Andrew said seriously. “No, I wouldn’t worry, Frances. This psychiatrist was talking about guest workers, expatriate labor. I don’t think it applies to women at home.”

  Letters home. Frances writes to her cousin Clare, and gives the letter to Andrew: “Can you post this?”

  Andrew’s heart sinks. “I’ll be late then,” he says.

  The post offices of Jeddah are breezeblock cubes, sited on vacant lots; they are difficult of access, and have eccentric opening hours. The people who man them seem to be chosen for their piety, because post offices are almost always closed for prayer. When at last the staff take down the gates from the main door, and throw the office open, a long and cosmopolitan queue forms at once, and snakes outside the cube and into the dust by the roadside. The clerks deal with this queue at their own speed; they take time out to read the newspapers, Okaz and Al-Madinah and the Saudi Gazette: often perching cross-legged on the counters while they do so.

  In the year 1403, a great innovation appeared in the Kingdom: post boxes. Mostly these too were situated on vacant lots, but a few were near the habitations of men, and friends could exchange news of them, and draw each other maps. At first it seemed that everyone would be saved a great deal of time and aggravation. But of course, to post letters in the post boxes, one needed stamps, so it was necessary to go to the post office anyway.

  What happened next was a shortage of stamps. On the pavement outside the main post office, wh
ich in those days was situated near the Happy Family supermarket, a sort of sub-post-office system grew up; enterprising men sat on blankets, and sold stamps at blackmarket prices.

  A little while after this, the main post office closed down. Overnight, it stood deserted, and for days no one knew where to find its successor. Post office boxes went missing, and clerks were out and about all over the city, looking for them.

  O, Bride of the Red Sea! You give your suitors a hard time.

  The post boxes, too, were a failure. They were seen every day to be stuffed with letters and small packages, with overflowing mail to Madras, to Salt Lake City, to Kuala Lumpur and to Leamington Spa; but was it fresh mail, or the same mail every day? A rumor got about that the boxes were never emptied; and the Europeans, at least, started their search for post offices again.

  It was, of course, only a rumor. The Arab News says that the Kingdom has excellent postal services.

  3

  A week passed; and they were, as Yasmin put it, called for dinner. Yasmin had been cooking for three days; but when she opened the door to them she had banished the sweat and grease, the smell of spices that crept into her clothes and hair, and stood, smiling guardedly, in an embroidered shalwar kameez; she wore ruby studs in her ears, her lashes were heavily mascaraed, and her ivory skin seemed polished. “Come in,” she said. “Let me introduce you to our friends.”

  She led them around the room. “This is Shabana. This is her husband Mohammad, this is Mohammad’s friend Farooq.” The men wore dark business suits; the women were dressed as Yasmin was, or else in their evening-party saris; one or two wore long velvet skirts, and high-necked blouses with frills. They smiled politely, and asked the routine questions: and how do you like Jeddah? And with the arrival of the Shores, the whole party, which had been conducted in Urdu, switched smoothly into English.

  It was difficult. Shams, her eyes downcast, circulated with a tray: a choice of Pepsi, 7-Up, or a fizzy orange drink of a peculiar sickly sweetness. Shabana’s dimpled paw hovered over the tray, her diamond rings glittering. She was a little doll of a woman, with faint dark down on her upper lip; her mouth was plump and cushioned, her manner confiding. “And have you been to the carpet souk?” she asked. “Are you wanting to collect some carpets?”

  Raji appeared at Frances’s side, and took her arm. “If she wants carpets I will show her the best buys,” he said. “Tell me, Frances, where do you want to go?”

  Raji, that night, was ebullient, bouncing around from guest to guest. “What I’d like to see,” Frances said, “is this Tomb of Eve I’ve read about.”

  “Ah,” Shabana said. “I see you are becoming interested in some bits of Islam.”

  “Yasmin has been explaining things to me. Is it really the tomb of Eve?”

  “They say so. After Adam and Eve got reconciled with God, Eve died and was buried—”

  “Downtown,” Raji said, smiling, “behind a big wall. Near the Foreign Ministry, I think, isn’t it?”

  “Haven’t you seen it?”

  “I don’t think it is widely publicized,” Raji said. “It is not what the Saudis would make a tourist attraction. You must know, Frances, that here they are Sunni Muslims.” He sounded detached, almost cynical. “They don’t go for shrines and tombs and processions. They call these things superstition.”

  “It is the Shia who go after such things,” Shabana said.

  “You must ask Samira,” Raji said. “Frances has a Saudi friend,” he explained. “She will tell you that the Shia are so extreme. They are flagellants. Suicidals. Martyrs.” He touched his forehead delicately. “They are all martyrs, you understand me, in the head.”

  Shabana said, “You must read the Holy Koran. Of course, in translation—”

  “Yes, I know,” Frances said. “I understand that without Arabic you can’t really appreciate it. But you can look about you, and see its effects in the outside world.”

  Raji laughed. “You are often amusing yourself at our expense, Frances. You think I cannot tell when you are sarcastic. You do not think much of us, and who is to blame you.” An arm around her waist, he patted her, like a fond uncle. “Come now, let’s not be so solemn. You ought not to bother about such things as tombs. You must take your husband down to the gold souk, and make him buy you something nice.”

  “Ah, have you heard?” Shabana turned aside and touched her husband’s sleeve. “Mohammad, will you tell about the latest goings-on at Jeddah International Market? Do please tell Raji.”

  Mohammad obliged, clearing his throat, pushing too large spectacles back on his nose. “The police are banning mirrors in the jewelers’ shops. Or so they say. The Saudi women are down there provoking the shop assistants, getting them to fasten necklaces on them, while they look in the mirror.”

  “That’s right,” Shabana said, almost in a whisper. “And they stretch out their hands, with their nails painted red, and let the men try bracelets on them.”

  “Young women will find some way to flirt,” Raji said indulgently. “It is the way of the world.”

  Mohammad darted a look at Frances. “Quite a hotbed, they say, the Jeddah International Market. The story goes that the girls walk around looking in the shop windows, with a piece of paper hidden in their hand, and their telephone number on it. Well, you know how the young men hang around there. They just slip it to someone, and then they phone up.”

  Shabana tittered. “They have a relationship on the telephone.”

  “It’s rather sad,” Frances said. “Don’t you think?”

  “Where’s your sense of humor?” Raji demanded. “We also enjoy laughing at the Saudis from time to time, you know. Oh, they know we do it. But then we are,” he said smoothly, “only the hired help.”

  “We are the hired help too,” Frances said. “I was wondering, do you see much of Abdul Nasr? Our neighbor,” she explained to Shabana.

  “I don’t know him well,” Raji said. “I don’t have contact with him in my work. Of course, his family are not Saudi, you know. I think he was born here, but they come from Iran. So, he will never really get on.”

  Yasmin approached, to urge them toward the table. “Everything is ready, do please come and eat. You are talking of our neighbor?”

  “We can hardly be on social terms,” Raji said. “If we called them to dinner Samira would have to sit behind her veil. Thank God we don’t all have to keep their rules, or there would be no parties like this one.”

  “It seems a pity,” Frances said to Yasmin. “When you two are such friends.”

  Yasmin caught her eye. “I don’t know why you think it is a pity,” she said quietly. “Whatever would Raji and Samira find to talk about?” Then she smiled, and turned back to her guests.

  The fruits of Yasmin’s three days of labor were laid out as a buffet on the long table with its stiff white cloth. The party ate standing up, in a concentrated, voracious silence. Frances picked at the food, which was too spicy for her stomach, and turned it over with her fork. Andrew complimented Yasmin. He was enjoying himself. He could eat anything; it was one of his social assets. Raji alone talked between mouthfuls, holding forth on this and that. It seemed a pose, almost; look at me, he was saying, I am a worldly, charming man. If there had been a slight tension in the room—caused, Frances thought, by the European presence—it was now dissipating. But she looked across the table and saw Yasmin watching Raji, with an expression that was narrow and appraising. It was the face of a nun in a lingerie department: baffled, almost hungry, and yet full of a growing appreciation that things are worse than one had thought.

  Samira came down. She rang the doorbell, and when Frances answered it—she had been busy in the kitchen—her neighbor was huddled into the doorframe, as if trying to efface her black shape into the texture of the wood. Inside the door, she unwound her head, revealing her perfect maquillage; her eyeshadow in three complementary shades, her shaped and frosted cheekbones, her precisely outlined and glossed-in lips. All this, Frances thought, for
other women: and never, never for any men. Except your relations, of course. She held out an arm, and Samira’s black silk abaya floated onto it; Frances laid it over the back of a chair. Samira wore her jeans again, and a silk shirt with a sequined butterfly embroidered across her large bosom. She had brought her little girl; the child had been dressed for an outing, in a frilly white dress with a sash which made her appear as wide as she was high. Her dark round face was truculent; she had a doll in one hand, hanging by its blond hair, and with the other hand she clutched and patted at her mother’s unyielding denim thighs.

  “Oh, that woman of mine!” Samira said. She seated herself, and threw her head back so that her long electric hair crackled over Turadup’s tasteful oatmeal cushions. “That ignorant woman! I have brought the kid down so that she can get on with the sweeping.”

  “Does she still cry so much?”

  “All the time. Do you know, Frances, before we brought Islam to those people they lived in the jungle and ate pigs.” And now they are not grateful, her tone implied. “They colored their body with pictures, what do you call it, tattoos. Sometimes they ate each other.”

  “Some coffee?”

  “Yes, but don’t set up that machine, just make it quickly in the cup, it’s all right.” Her exasperation, temporarily quelled, broke out again. “He says—Abdul says—I should be glad that she doesn’t speak Arabic. He says I don’t want her corrupting our children with foreign ways. By the by, I am expecting again.”

  “Are you?” Frances said. “Congratulations. Are foreign ways always corrupting?”

  “You can’t complain if we think so,” Samira said, with a sigh. “After all, we have seen so much of the youth going to Europe and getting into bad ways with women and nightclubs. The newspapers are always ready to give them bad publicity.”

  “Have you been to Europe, yourself?”

  “Yes, of course. We often go. Paris. Rome. Only,” she said fretfully, “Abdul never tells me his plans. He just says, come on, we are traveling.”