‘Then he would have beaten us up for comparing him to a pre-Islamic poet!’
They both choose a tomato and mushroom omelette. Yvonne stops eating when there is still more than half of her dish left.
‘I’m full.’
‘How can you be full?’
‘And because I won’t be going to the gym today. Don’t forget I’ve got a wedding reception to go to later, and my dress is tight round the waist.’
‘But we walked from your house for about an hour, and if you like we can go back on foot.’
‘Great, and I’ll leave you in the flat while I’m at the hairdresser’s, unless you’ve changed your mind and you’ll come with me to the wedding. Please say you will. Please!’
‘That would be difficult, since I don’t know either the bride or the groom.’
‘You know what, thank God I didn’t eat like a pig. My dress will fit me now.’
‘You’re mean, you let me eat my food and your leftovers!’
They begin walking among the children and their families who are flying colourful paper kites, shaped like birds of prey.
‘You know, Huda, the analyst who helped me a lot this year assured me that going for walks in parks and gardens did me as much good as talking to her. She said observing the constant transformation in nature – the leaves changing colour, the buds, the flowers, the green returning to cover the bare branches – would give me hope that my life too would change just as nature does, and things wouldn’t always remain the same for me.’
‘Certainly. She’s absolutely right,’ answers Huda. Initially when she decided to visit the theatre in London she hadn’t wanted to hear about her friend’s emotional problems, but when they met face to face she was glad to see her and felt ashamed for being so selfish.
Huda had grown increasingly annoyed in Toronto, when she was obliged to listen to Yvonne for hours, sometimes even in the middle of the night, in phone calls and messages about this man or that, and about her perennial bad luck, the doctor who urged her to have a child before it was too late, all this as she shouted, laughed, cried and cursed, because she wasn’t in a relationship, and because she was scared she would never have a child. Huda felt suffocated the moment Yvonne began relating to her what she had said to this or that man and what he had said to her, what she was wearing at the time and how her hair was done.
Huda had even stopped telling Yvonne about her own relationships in case it made her envious, more resentful of her situation, but she found it hard not to tell her how she had had to extricate herself from the arms of Mark, the actor who had taken her to the airport. The day she had begun rehearsals of One Thousand and One Nights in Toronto, as she shook one of the new cast members by the hand, she found herself reaching up involuntarily to a small book sticking out of his shirt pocket and discovering that it was Pirandello’s The Man with the Flower in his Mouth. ‘Do you know it?’ he’d asked her in undisguised amazement, when she asked him what he thought of it. Hardly a week had gone by before she and Mark were in each other’s arms, the mutual attraction too strong to resist.
They pass by Speakers’ Corner again on their way out of Hyde Park. This is deliberate on Yvonne’s part as she has hopes of running into Tahir and talking to him.
A man in his seventies is standing leaning against the iron railings, holding leaflets that he offers silently to everyone who passes him. People go on their way with a sympathetic shake of their heads. It seems he is asking the British government to help Iraq look for the antiquities that have been looted from the Baghdad Museum. Huda and Yvonne talk to him and learn that he used to be in charge of a section of the museum.
Meanwhile an Indian-looking youth approaches the man, offering him a cup of tea and a biscuit. The man takes the cup hesitantly, while the youth goes back to stand behind a table laden with publications, dominated by a photo of what looks like an Indian maharajah. As Huda and Yvonne pass by, the youth hurries to give them a booklet about the Ahmadiyya doctrine, reciting quietly ‘Can I introduce you to Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a saviour like the Lord Jesus Christ, the Mahdi, the eleventh imam,’ but another hand reaches for it before them and takes it and throws it back on the table.
The hand belongs to Ta’abbata Sharran. He shouts at the Indian youth, who barely comes up to his chest: ‘Superstitious nonsense and heresy! An impostor who claimed that he came to this world to guide it.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Yvonne rebukes him.
‘Don’t interfere in things that don’t concern you.’
‘Don’t you interfere in what doesn’t concern you. Are you stalking us, by the way?’
Huda takes the booklet from the table for herself and begins leafing calmly through it, as if unconcerned by their interaction.
‘Did you say this booklet commemorates the way this impostor died, and describes how his soul and his excrement left his body at the same time in the bathroom?’
When nobody answers, he adds gloatingly, ‘He died a shameful, ignominious death, inappropriate for somebody who claimed he’d come to guide the world to salvation. Anyway’ – addressing himself to Huda – ‘I don’t think you’d be able to distinguish between what’s true and what’s false in his teaching, because you are ignorant of the Holy Quran and its interpretation.’
The Indian youth answers calmly, ‘But, brother, neither the Holy Quran nor the prophetic traditions mention that a person who suffers from diarrhoea and meets his fate in the toilet has died a shameful death! Is he not, furthermore, a human being? Isn’t it reasonable that a person gets rid of his food in the recognised manner?’
‘First of all, I’m not your brother, and enough of this vulgarity! I’m afraid that soon you’re going to force us to witness how you yourself get rid of your food.’
Huda hurries off and Yvonne follows her.
‘Why did you follow me? I thought you wanted to tremble in his arms.’
‘No, no, please. I don’t want to tremble as he strangles me to death.’
‘I’m trying to picture him being intimate with a woman but I can’t.’
‘He’d do whatever he wanted with her, to punish her because she’d agreed to be alone with him.’
‘Let’s teach him a lesson he won’t forget.’
‘I’m one hundred per cent ready, happy to kill him. And I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to find Tahir. I have the feeling that I’ll fall in love with someone at the wedding.’
They walk along a path that is supposed to take them out of Hyde Park. Most of the paths have been blocked off and the grass is being subjected to a beautification exercise, according to the notice that apologises to visitors and promises that the park will be decked out in green again in the very near future.
The ground looks like the squares on a draughtboard. Each square has its own colour – from brown earth to yellow grass to a stagnant pool of water swarming with crows and pigeons who have come to investigate nothingness. Dogs run around playing together, pretending to fight, and the two women are back at Speakers’ Corner again.
Huda sighs. ‘Is it possible that we’ve come back to Speakers’ Corner? Swear to me, Yvonne, that you’re not guilty of bringing us back here on purpose for the sake of that Arab clown?’
‘I swear on the Virgin Mary that I’m innocent. It must be Ta’abbata Sharran. He’s never ever going to let us leave this place. He wants to have his revenge on us before we can teach him a lesson, and God has answered his prayers.’
‘See how the Virgin Mary is in league with you,’ remarks Huda, seeing Tahir in the first group of people, where an Egyptian tourist is chastising his Arab brothers in London for becoming too serious while those who live in the jaws of hell believe that, to quote the old saying, ‘the worst disasters are the ones that make you laugh’. He tells them of a fatwa issued by a shaykh, who agreed that a youth who wanted to become a martyr in an original way by hiding explosives in his bottom could allow another man to have sex with him several times until his bottom grew wide enough, ‘… you know what I m
ean!’
So Tahir protests and assures the Egyptian tourist that the Arabs in London have their fair share of jokes and tells him the story of the Arab shaykh of a mosque who forbade the wearing of Nike sports shoes because the word means fuck in Arabic, and forbade women to drive in case they damaged their ovaries; and there was a woman, yes a woman and not a shaykh, who wouldn’t allow Muslim girls to sit on chairs or sofas because they would get too comfortable sitting like this and it would be easy for anybody, human or jinn, to have sex with them, especially jinns, as they are very fond of human women.
But the Egyptian insists that his stories are more amusing than the stories of the Arabs of London, and proceeds to recount the story of his cousin who suffered from erectile dysfunction while participating in the revolution against Mubarak, and the doctor prescribed sex films, provided the actors were Muslims.
While the bystanders laugh appreciatively, an Englishwoman in her late sixties remarks, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen Arabs and Muslims laughing and joking, even about religious matters.’
This turns out to be tempting fate, as Ta’abbata Sharran descends on the Egyptian, threatening to stuff his mouth with cotton wool if he doesn’t leave at once, so the Egyptian raises his hand in farewell: ‘OK, never mind. Bye bye, London.’
‘Have you noticed that Ta’abbata Sharran is like a ghost who appears as soon as he hears the word Islam?’ comments Huda. ‘It looks to me as if he goes around all the groups picking out his victims.’
‘But where’s Tahir gone?’ responds Yvonne.
The bystanders disperse like swarms of bees to other groups, but the Englishwoman who praised the cheerful spirit of the Muslim debaters approaches Huda and asks her if she’s Muslim, as she has a question for her.
She doesn’t say yes or no when asked ‘Are you a Muslim?’ For her the Quran is an amazing riddle, conversing with her, making her contemplate and marvel, scaring her, but also entertaining her like a good book. She loves the images, as if God is entering her heart via the figs and olives. She sees herself in vast fields among fig trees laden with delicious fruit and olive trees producing delectable olive oil. It’s as if the Creator understood that the fanatics were going to destroy all of life’s beauty, and in order to prove to them that feeling and imagination and the senses were all as important as the mind he said to them, ‘By the fig and the olive and Mount Sinai and this safe city of Mecca …’
She used to whisper, ‘Oh Lord, how wonderful your language is. There’s nothing like it.’ So when she listened intently to the Quran being explained, either at home or in religious education classes at school, it seemed normal and ordinary, earthly rather than divine, as if it was telling stories about people in her neighbourhood, and she would apologise to the Quran and the Creator of mankind. As the days and years went by, her mind took her to another place, as far as could be from the Holy Book and the subject of religion. Her life went in a different direction and she would resort to silence rather than commenting on religious topics. But after the explosion of the twin towers in New York she was surprised how angry it made her when she saw religious leaders turning into monsters and relying on spurious theological arguments to defend themselves. She would rush to call devout relatives or family friends from Toronto, or even religious men who had known her father, urging them to form some kind of group with their peers, not only to express their repugnance at the barbaric crimes committed in the name of religion, but to officially condemn those who incited young people to become martyrs.
She went even further than that, writing to the Pakistani Taliban after they shot the student Malala because she had insisted on her right to be educated and urged all girls to do the same. In her letter to the Taliban, Huda wrote: ‘Has it slipped your minds, you who wanted to kill Malala, that killing a human being is killing a person made in the image of the Creator? Can a believer allow himself the authority to eliminate another even if he disagrees with him?’ She finished her letter off by saying, ‘It seems that you have forgotten the Sura of the Blood Clot.’ Then she quoted the first few lines of the sura: ‘Read† in the name of your Lord, who created man from a blood clot, read in the name of your most generous Lord, who taught the use of the pen, taught man what he did not know …’ She wrote, ‘The first thing that the Prophet’s inspiration demanded of him was that he should read, not that he should pray or fast or give alms or do the pilgrimage or jihad, but that he should read and write with a pen and learn.’
She gave this letter to a Canadian friend who went on a visit to Pakistan. ‘It’s not important that the letter reaches the Taliban. Just put it in a post box and somebody’s bound to read it.’
She signed the letter ‘Huda, daughter of Shaykh So-and-So, who is proud of the father who encouraged her to study and absorb learning so that she could become a lawyer, although in the end she chose the theatre.’
In response to the Englishwoman’s question, ‘I was born to a Muslim family,’ answers Huda.
‘I’m Muslim and not Muslim, Arab and not Arab, and now I’m English,’ teases Yvonne.
‘I can see that you’ve become English by your hair and your accent,’ the Englishwoman tells Yvonne.
As Huda smiles encouragingly at the Englishwoman, she sees Ta’abbata Sharran standing on a crate like the speakers. He must have heard me saying that I was born to a Muslim family, and now he’s getting ready to have his revenge on me. Then she breathes a sigh of relief when she hears him announcing that a demonstration for Syria would take place in front of the American Embassy at three that afternoon.
‘I have a neighbour who wears a burka,’ complains the Englishwoman to Huda. ‘I’m sorry to say that I’m scared each time I see her, and I only feel reassured when I hear her voice. Sometimes I think she might be a man! Maybe she’s like the terrorist who managed to escape from a London mosque hiding behind a chador and burka, or the thieves who wear burkas and rob jewellers’ shops! Anyway, my question is this: is there a text in Islamic law that says women have to cover their faces?’
Huda answers sharply, ‘Islam doesn’t say that a Muslim woman has to wear a niqab or a burka. This is a heresy, otherwise you’d see all the Muslim women on the pilgrimage to Mecca with their faces covered. I remember the religious studies teacher at my school in Lebanon told us a nice story about the origin of the niqab. He said that the niqab wasn’t known until a young girl from an Arab tribe covered her face when her father tried to marry her off to a man against her will, and in those days a woman couldn’t go against her family’s wishes.’
‘Sorry, what period are we talking about?’
‘The eighth century, and maybe this is still the case in some Arab and Muslim societies. The point is that this girl tried to convince her mother to take her side on the pretext that she was too young, but her mother refused to listen to her, and when the mother of the prospective bridegroom came to visit the girl’s family, as was the custom, to see what she looked like, and confirm that she had reached puberty and would make a suitable wife for her son, the girl began to put her plan into action: she covered her face with a piece of black cloth that reached below her neck and had two small round holes for her eyes, and went into where her mother and the mother of the groom were waiting, and began dancing and rolling her eyes as if she had lost her mind. She snatched a cup of coffee from in front of the groom’s mother and made as if to drink it and spilt it on her black face cover, at which point the mother of the groom took to her heels. When the girl’s father heard of her trick, he swore that he would make her wear this black cloth for the rest of her life. News of the event went around the other tribes and as a result girls who wanted to refuse forced marriage resorted to the same strategy. Subsequently the niqab became a recognised tradition in the girl’s tribe and with the passage of time it spread to the other tribes.’
The Englishwoman gasps in surprise. ‘How strange! I wonder if women who wear the niqab today know this story?’
‘I don’t know,’ answers Huda.<
br />
‘Of course you don’t know, because you’re not from the nation of Muhammad, peace be upon him. This tale must be your own composition, a product of your imagination. I’m sure you invented it, but I’ll look into it,’ says Ta’abbata Sharran.
So he was behind her, following her, watching her, like her brother in Beirut, and exactly like the neighbour who tricked her father into coming to the beach to catch her wearing a swimsuit.
‘What’s the name of this tribe, wise philosopher?’
‘It’s none of your business. I’m talking to this woman. It’s between me and her. I’m not giving a speech.’
But the group around Huda has begun to grow bigger.
‘Naturally you’re avoiding the answer because you don’t know it.’
When she sees the smile of malicious delight on his face and senses the resentment coursing through him, she can’t help saying in a superior tone: ‘Ah, I forgot to mention the name of the girl’s tribe. It’s Matir,’ and she looks at the man from the desert with a smile fierce as a dagger’s blow. But he pays no attention to her reaction and replies sarcastically, ‘You said before that it was the religious studies teacher who told you this fairy tale, but you didn’t mention which religion! If you say it was Islam, then you’re deluded, and you’re not a true Muslim, for here you are with your head and face uncovered and arms bare.’
Huda had removed her light jacket, underneath which she wore a silk shirt with a low neckline, printed with birds of all shapes and colours, and skinny blue jeans.
‘Ah, I also forgot to say that Islam does not oblige a Muslim woman to wear long dresses that drag on the ground. They were a product of the desert too and were the tribal girls’ idea. They used to creep out to meet their lovers under cover of darkness, and in an effort to make sure that people didn’t discover their footprints in the sand, they devised these long dresses that trailed over the sand and erased them.’
He interrupts her, moving closer to her: ‘You’ve gone too far now. My patience has run out. I forbid you categorically to talk about Islam in this irresponsible way.’
The Occasional Virgin Page 9