Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

by Hilary Mantel

The party was held outdoors, and the ladies dabbed cologne on their legs, to keep the mosquitoes away. The hostess circulated with polystyrene cups of fruit punch, and the usual Jeddah party food on oval stainless steel trays. Frances carried her cup to the light. Scraps of apple and banana floated on the surface of the liquid, each with their beading of gray bubbles. The drink smelled stale, nauseating. She clutched Andrew’s arm, wanting him to talk to her. “I have to go and circulate,” he said.

  Something seemed lacking tonight, on the Jeddah party scene; it was a quiet, almost sober gathering. They were all partied to death; they had seen the same people, at one house or another, half a dozen times over the Christmas period, and now their store of small talk was running low, and no one was in the mood for party games, and conviviality must be ground out of them. The men stood in a knot, and spoke of the falling oil price. The women left the garden and huddled together in the kitchen, talking of teething, and microwave ovens, and displaying to each other the bits of gold they had got for presents. Frances hung about on the fringe of the group; turned shoulders seemed to exclude her. I try, don’t I? she asked herself angrily. Always she tried to make polite conversation, to take an interest; but they seemed to know that her mind was elsewhere.

  The conversation became more general at last, as the fruit punch and the siddiqui took its hold; the usual holiday chat. “Did you hear about that girl from New Zealand who was sentenced to ninety lashes?” someone said. “Twenty was for having drunk alcohol, and seventy was for being in a car with a man who wasn’t her husband.”

  “At the Smiths’ party last year,” Marion said, “we had this game. The men were all blindfolded, and the women stood on chairs, and the men had to come along and feel their legs and try to guess who was who. It was a laugh. You wouldn’t play that, Frances, would you?”

  Frances said, “I’d rather die.”

  “Frances is such a misery,” Marion said, sotto voce. “She’s not a bit broadminded. She bothers with those Saudi women in her flats.”

  At eleven forty-five, party hats and streamers were distributed. There was a resurgence of merriment; everyone met up in the garden, breaking out of their huddles and cliques for a final assault on the festive spirit. They put on their hats, unfurled their streamers; a loose circle formed, and several people said that they could never remember the words of “Auld Lang Syne.” People asked what the time was; the minutes seemed to prolong themselves. Watches were consulted; women hauled at their husbands’ shirtsleeves, and peered at the dials by the light of the colored bulbs their host had strung on an outside wall. Conversation faltered and died, and the guests shifted from foot to foot, weariness crossing their faces; they did not seem to be waiting for midnight, but for a bus that was never going to come. Finally, at eleven fifty-seven, the New Year was declared, to trills of forced laughter, and the thin notes of penny whistles. They kissed each other, and stomped to and fro, singing raggedly. Clawing up the streamers from the ground, carrying dutifully into the kitchen plates of half-eaten food, they trooped inside, to dance to the Beach Boys and early Rolling Stones. By one o’clock the party was breaking up.

  The Shores were among the first to leave. They drove home in a tired, companionable silence; as soon as they stepped out of their car, the traces of the holiday were wiped from their life; Frances scrubbed off her makeup. She went into the kitchen, and took out some damp towels from the washing machine.

  “I hope you haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions,” Andrew said, standing in the doorway.

  “Why? Don’t you want anything to change?”

  “I want to keep us on an even keel.”

  “Why pick on me?” she asked, shaking the towels out. “What about your own resolutions?”

  “With most people it wouldn’t matter. They can make them in safety because they know they won’t be kept. You can count on their futility.” He paused. “But you’re not like that.”

  “What will happen to us next year?”

  “I want to see the building through. You know that.”

  “Nothing gives,” she said. She threw the towels onto a chair. A flood of words poured from her. “There’s no life in the land, it’s just people, highways, endless straight roads and rubbish and dust, there’s nothing to release you, there’s nothing to set you free inside. You feel as if you’re starving. No wonder they have such a bloody awful religion. No wonder that when they got rich and went to Europe all they could think of to do was to drink and take drugs and gamble, how would they know how to live their lives? They bought up beautiful houses and gutted them and filled them with nightclubs and Louis Farouk, they tore up gardens and made swimming pools, all they want is white-skinned prostitutes and cocaine.”

  “Oh, come on,” Andrew said. “That’s not entirely true.”

  “It is entirely true,” she said, more quietly. “But not the entire truth.”

  “You say Jeff’s a racist, but you’re really just as bad.”

  “I’m not a racist, Andrew, I’m a xenophobe. See—I’ve been going through the dictionary to find out what’s wrong with me. There’s England and France, and after that it’s madness.”

  He said, “Do you want to go home?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s too late for that.”

  Andrew made love to her that night. As he entered her she felt as if she had plunged, suddenly and without hope, into a long dark tunnel; as if inch by inch, her body rigid, she fought toward her climax, while the walls of the tunnel fell in softly behind her, leaving her just one direction but no glimmer of an end. She felt herself sinking out of sight, her whole spirit toiling underground, darkness enfolding darkness; she was wiped out, she had forgotten her name. Andrew grunted, and lay on top of her with his whole weight. Suddenly she became conscious of the smell of soap on his skin, of a prickle of cramp in her legs; of the rattle and hum of the air-conditioner. She was back inside her own body. No subterranean toil for Andrew; it was as easy as crossing the road. Or, since this was Jeddah, easier.

  When he released her she turned her face at once into the pillow. She would sleep. She would sleep soon. She would sleep in the next second. The rifleman, lurking on the sidewalk, was the last thing on her mind.

  Part 2

  Jamadi al-awal

  Anyone for Jeddah gin?

  Take four large potatoes, four oranges, four lemons, four grapefruit. Cut them up into small pieces. Put the pieces in a plastic jerrican. Add five kilos of sugar. Top up with water. Dissolve a tablespoonful of yeast; tip it in. Forget it for two weeks.

  Then pour the stuff out of the jerrican into saucepans. Leave it till the sediment settles: two days. Pour it into bottles—use a tea strainer, because there will still be large bits of brownish fruit bobbing on the surface.

  Tonic? Ice and lemon?

  Frances Shore’s Diary: 1 Jamadi al-awal

  I really don’t know how I went on before I had the Saudi Gazette and the Arab News to tell me how to run my married life. For a start I haven’t been treating Andrew right when he gets home from work. When he says, “What sort of day have you had, petal?” I say, “Rotten. I have a headache, and the pipes have burst”—or something to that effect. This is not the right way to do it, because according to the Arab News, “When he enters his home it is his right to find complete relaxation to regain his great powers and abilities in order to face the next day.” If there are any problems I’m supposed to have dealt with them myself, so that I can “greet him with a beautiful smile”—and if the problems have been beyond my wits or capacity (and many problems must be beyond the capacity of the Saudi housewife) then I must wait for a suitable time, before raising them in the most tactful way. “It’s not reasonable, for example, to bring them up while eating. This might ruin the man’s appetite and lead to an exchange of words between the two partners that could disturb the calm in their lives.”

  Samira asks me probing questions about my past life. I don’t know why I won’t oblige her with tales of drunken
parties and sexual perversion. Surely that’s what she wants to hear. Or does she really care for me? In that case I could put her mind at rest, and tell her I was married a virgin. She would clasp my hands, and smile into my face, and her bracelets would jangle. The Arab News says, “Love after marriage is the true, the long-lasting fond. Love before marriage is naïve, weak, and baseless.”

  Since New Year there have not been many parties. All the people who saw too much of each other over the holiday are now staying at home, by unspoken agreement—as if they had called a truce. Andrew and I are alone most evenings, and meanwhile Yasmin’s mother is still in residence across the hall, and the junketings get more strenuous week by week, and Yasmin gets more weak and tearful. In the mornings, if she can, she comes here for a cup of coffee, and for five minutes’ refuge—and I commiserate with her. She does not mention our meeting on the roof. She says, And where have you and Andrew been? And I say, Oh, nowhere really.

  I wish this man Fairfax would come. I’d like to spend an hour with someone from the real world.

  Andrew and I talk a lot about our leave, about what we are going to do in the summer. July seems a long way off. I realize that we live in the future. That seems no healthier than living in the past.

  Andrew’s paycheck hasn’t come yet. It’s not just Turadup. Other people are in the same position, all over town. Until now everyone was paid on time, by the Arabic calendar. So the men would look at the full moon, and say, in their romantic fashion, “Ah, halfway to pay day.” But they don’t say that anymore.

  We talk: about the building. Even when funds start to flow again, Andrew will have to cut corners, which is foreign to his nature. What can I say to him? There are other things I would like to talk about. How long are we going to stay here, and what kind of person will I have become before we leave? I might have become a Muslim. Or I might have joined one of those feminist groups which believes men should be kept in cages and periodically milked for their semen, so that it can be used for artificial insemination—there being no other use for them, and no other need, and they being the source of all misery and wars.

  But when Andrew asked me if I wanted to go, I couldn’t say yes. I know he would leave tomorrow, if he thought I was seriously unhappy. I’m not unhappy, not really. I just want to talk about the things that really bother me, but when I try to do that I get some sort of block, some sort of impediment in my throat. I think I am afraid that Andrew will laugh at me.

  The Saudi Gazette says: “Love may be a most important basis for marriage only in novels and poetry. In practical life, however, it does not provide a firm foundation for a happy married life. This is due to the fact that people change with the passage of time. It is well known in all societies that the overwhelming majority of marriage cases based on love do not last long.”

  If we did leave here, where would we go? We don’t belong anywhere, physically. If we didn’t have each other we wouldn’t belong anywhere emotionally. We sit in the evenings, looking at each other, and I feel that he wants something that I can’t give him, and that I want something that he can’t give me. A familiar problem in marriage, I suppose. I feel weak with need for him, mental need, physical need. Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times you sleep together, you don’t get any closer? I feel that perhaps by nature we are lonely people. Then I think, perhaps everyone is like this, and their need to be together is only just a bit stronger than their need to be apart. I agree that love doesn’t guarantee anything. But with the odds stacked up as they are, love certainly doesn’t do any harm.

  One thing is clear, anyway. I cannot bring up the matter of the rifleman while Andrew is having his grilled sirloin and green salad. That would not be the time to do it. I cannot find a time to do it that would not upset our long-lasting fond.

  January weather: overcast, windy, cool. A stack of concrete slabs has been moved on to the vacant lot, and some builders’ vehicles; the Yemeni workmen have knocked together little shacks, which will keep the sun off them, when the sun comes back. But today the sky hangs low over Ghazzah Street, and the crane that bisects the view from the window seems very close to the ground. Every speck of gray dust is visible on the leaves of Dunroamin’s single tree. Soon the King, the court, and the Muslim scholars will hold rain-prayers; but as they wish to reinforce faith, not to injure it, they will not ask for rain until the weather forecasters promise that it is in the offing. Meanwhile Dunroamin is quiet: the pipes gurgle, there is a crackle of voices from a radio, but there are no footsteps up above. Even the rats seem to have gone back into their holes. The branches of the tree toss soundlessly. A car engine splutters, out of sight. Inside the flat a dim silence reigns; but the doors rattle in the draft.

  At a quarter to nine there was a battering at the door. It was the landlord, greasy and rotund as ever. Behind him stood a wan and gangling figure, unkempt, straggle-haired, knock-knees bare under a tunic and dhoti.

  The landlord smiled at Frances. “Madam,” he said, “we are going to paint you. All buildings in Jeddah must be brilliant white. By Order. All unsightly wooden structures must be demolished.”

  The bare-legged man rested his gaze on the lintel. He didn’t acknowledge Frances, didn’t seem to notice her presence at all. He looked, with his sepulchral features and his wrappings, like the subject of some dull religious painting, who is rising from the dead; and whose thoughts, understandably, are elsewhere.

  “We haven’t got any unsightly wooden structures,” Frances said. She felt unfriendly; blocked the doorway with her body.

  The landlord stabbed his finger in the direction of the vacant lot. “Uncomformable to regulations,” he said. “All these must go. Otherwise you will get the hajjis living in them. The pilgrims, if you understand me, madam. They come for their pilgrimages and try to stay. They will set up anywhere.”

  “Really, will they?”

  “These Third World persons are disease-bearing,” the landlord said. “Have you not had the hajji flu, madam?”

  “We weren’t here at the pilgrimage season.”

  “They have plagues,” the landlord said. “Still, it is unlucky for them. Madam—” he paused, and smiled his bristling smile, seeming to remember why he had come; he pointed to the gangling man, drawing attention to him, as if he were an object in a picture book. “Madam, this is an Egyptian. I want you to know this man.”

  “Is he your foreman?”

  “Boss-man, yes. I’m telling you so he don’t alarm you, going up and down, up and down the stairs.”

  “He don’t alarm me,” Frances said. She felt an urge to stretch out her hand and give the Egyptian a little push, to see if he would keel over. Still he stared ahead of him; a film of sweat glistened on his face. “Will he be going up and down for very many weeks?” she inquired.

  “Finish next week,” the landlord said. “I promise you.”

  “Ins’allah?” Frances said.

  “Ins’allah.”

  Later that day the men began work. They wedged open the gate in the wall, and carried vats of white paint to various points about Dunroamin. They took great brushes, and sloshed about, accidentally painting the ground, and sometimes their feet. They broke off for noon prayers, and then brought ladders, and came at the upper story; they splashed paint on to Samira’s balcony, and splattered the leaves of the tree.

  Frances watched from her window. Once she went out into the street, and watched from across the road, by the ditch. The landlord, bustling in and out, darted a look of horror at her short skirt and bare legs. He hesitated, and seemed about to cross the road and remonstrate with her; but she folded her arms, and gave him a hard look, and went back inside in her own good time.

  The men carried some wooden boxes up the stairs; then they carried some wooden boxes down. Tools of their trade, perhaps; no doubt it was all part of the renovation work, of what Yasmin called The Beautification of Jeddah.

  Early in the afternoon the landlord knocked at the door again.

  �
��Hello, madam. We are going to varnish your blinds with shiny varnish. So when we are up to that, you must wind them down. You must keep them down for three days, to let the varnish dry.”

  “But I’ll be in the dark,” Frances complained. “I won’t be able to see out.”

  “But it is for the good of my building!” the landlord said. He gave her what he took to be an appealing glance. “Please give me the cooperation.”

  “Okay,” Frances said. “But I’m not putting them down until you’re ready to start work. So just give me the nod, will you?”

  The landlord looked at her dubiously; uncertainly, he nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”

  Frances understood that she must carry messages. It was her job to warn the other women of Dunroamin to stay indoors, because there were strange men at large. The landlord did her the courtesy of telling her what was happening, so that the far more important privacy of Muslim ladies would not be violated.

  She rang Yasmin’s doorbell. An eye appeared at the spyhole, and blinked, and vanished; it was Shams who opened the door. Yasmin emerged from one of the bedrooms; she looked cowed and miserable.

  “Oh, Frances,” she said. “I am missing talking to you.” Frances touched her shoulder. It was the most she could manage. If you want my sympathy, she thought, you must tell me what really ails you. To comfort you would be to embrace a time bomb, and listen to the tick.

  “We’re being Beautified,” she said.

  “Are we?” Yasmin managed a smile. But when she heard the extent of the work, she looked horrified. “Selim,” she said, “his chest is so delicate. The fumes, and the dust, and the noise … oh dear.”

  “There will be people going up and down stairs. For a week.” Frances paused. She hoped it was a meaningful pause. “You must take care.”

  Yasmin nodded. Her eyes slid away. “We must all take care,” she said.