They leave the café and before they go their separate ways he entreats her: ‘Please tell me if you find her at home, God willing.’
‘I will.’
She heads in the direction of her office, turning to make sure he isn’t following her. She watches him hurrying away. He’s very tall. If he hadn’t been so handsome, Huda surely couldn’t have forced herself to have sex with him, even as an act of revenge.
When there is no message from James, she finds herself looking on the internet for the sites where she used to chat with other single women.
Not a grain of patience remains inside her. She thinks of contacting James now, but hesitates once again. The best solution would be to look for the Holy Bible she’d inherited from her grandmother and taken everywhere with her since childhood, and swallow one of its pages, like their neighbour in Lebanon who suffered from kidney stones: each time a stone moved and he was attacked by a wave of pain he rushed to the Bible and ate, according to the level of the pain, half a page or a whole page.
*
Huda enters the flat, calling, ‘One Thousand and One Nights will be on the British stage in a couple of months. We’ll begin rehearsals in ten days!’
‘God must love me,’ answers Yvonne at once. ‘He wants you to stay in London for my sake.’
A flood of messages arrive from Hisham, which she answers one after the other as they arrive, helped by Huda while they have lunch together in the courtyard at Somerset House. She laughs because he writes her name in English ‘Yfonne’, using the letter ‘f’ instead of the foreign ‘v’.
‘Brother Hisham, Huda came while I was away and took her things and left a note apologising for not saying goodbye to me. She had to leave suddenly for reasons beyond her control. She’ll contact me from Iceland in about eighteen months, God willing.’ Then Yvonne feels sorry for Hisham and writes ‘in a week, God willing’ instead.
‘Can you give me her number?’
‘Sorry, I have to ask her first. The main thing is she’s fine. I’ll be in touch with you soon.’
‘I don’t understand why you have to ask her first.’
‘She told me not to give you her number. Sorry, my hands are tied. Really sorry.’
‘But I have to talk to her.’
‘I’ll tell her.’
‘She knows. Tell her from me, if she’s got any sort of a conscience she has to contact me.’
‘How are you going to get married in front of two witnesses if she’s in Iceland! Are you planning to go there?’
‘Certainly not. Please convince her to contact me.’
That night Yvonne escapes with Huda to a Sufi centre in Talgarth Road where would-be Sufis whirl around in the dance of the dervishes to meet their Creator and become one with Him. A member of one of the lonely women’s chat rooms described this experience as a temporary solution to feelings of pain and despair.
To begin with, Huda refuses to join the circle of novices with Yvonne, scared that she will burst out laughing, but the rhythm of the music draws her gently in and she thinks to herself if only her parents had whirled around to music at home, alone with God, silent and humble, instead of all the threatening and browbeating and fear.
Yvonne whirls round and round with the others and after numerous attempts stops crashing into people. As she spins she opens her heart wide to chase away grief and let in tranquillity. To help herself focus, she digs into herself like an egg digging a place for itself in the womb in order to become a foetus. She whirls round and round but instead of becoming aware of her Creator she becomes aware of her nipples and instead of becoming one with her Creator she becomes one with James. She falls asleep quickly that night, but wakes up in the morning as if from a terrifying nightmare, and as if everything she achieved the evening before was only a dream, with no basis in reality. When she enters her office, Hisham is waiting for her.
‘I can’t wait a whole week. I have to contact her today. It’s absolutely vital.’
‘She hasn’t been in touch with me, and I tried to call her but there was no answer.’
‘If you don’t want to give me her phone number, then what about her email, or is that forbidden too?’
She bursts out laughing. ‘Huda and email, you must be joking. Huda hardly knows how to answer her mobile. She refused to let me teach her how to use a phone. Listen, brother Hisham, we’re in exactly the same boat. I’m suffering just as much as you are. I got to know a man and I thought God had finally made my wishes come true. But he disappeared, melted away like an ice cube. I advise you to accept that you were with her for a day, it was a passing thing and it’s over. That’s what I did, and I was with my boyfriend for six months.’
She is lying, or perhaps not, if she adds her few hours with James to the two days with Lucio, the weeks with the Lebanese lawyer, those months with the French Moroccan and all the entanglements and infatuations with different men over the years.
‘No, please, you misunderstand the situation. This is between me and my Lord and my religion. I want to clear my conscience. Of course you won’t understand what I’m saying. That’s why I have to talk directly to her. I’ll go to any lengths to talk to her. My mind won’t rest until I do.’
‘But you have to understand that Huda’s a modern woman and she doesn’t believe in marriage as you’ve described it to me! I admit she cut short her trip and went back to Iceland because she didn’t want to be forced into doing something against her will.’
Hisham converts his hand into a fist and instead of striking the table strikes his forehead, shaking his head as if he wants to deny what he has heard. ‘We committed the greatest sin possible. That’s why I want to put it right and return to a life of piety. Your friend has plunged me into sin and the only way I can atone for this is by her agreeing to marry me in front of two witnesses. There’s no other way.’
Yvonne gets up to fetch coffee and biscuits for him, and asks one of her employees to come to her office in five minutes.
‘I’ll help you talk to her, be assured of that, and if she refuses I’ll give you her number, even if she doesn’t want me to.’
He stares at the coffee without attempting to reach for it. When he stands up, the pulsing vein in his temple looks fit to burst.
‘Goodbye. Peace be with you,’ and he hurries away.
All the same, when Yvonne leaves the office, she dawdles through shops, cafés, underground stations, entering and leaving via different exits, and waits in a bookshop for about half an hour before finally calling a taxi and hurrying home, where Huda is waiting for her.
‘How lucky you are, Huda! Hisham is obsessed with you and I don’t believe this all just stems from his desire to keep God happy. His love seems to have grown in spite of the disastrous effect my lies had on him.’
‘Yvonne, I bet you that in a few days he’s going to try and sleep with you!’
‘How much?’
‘A thousand Canadian dollars!’
‘It’s a deal. I’d better start practising what to say to him. Is it “Allahu akbar, I marry you”? But tell me, Huda, why don’t you call him and hear what he has to say? Of course you’re supposed to be in Iceland, but just listen to what he says, then either apologise or scream down the phone at him.’
‘Yvonne, my dear, you listen to me. It’s no use trying to have a dialogue with someone like him. He told me he wanted to save money so he could invest in gold. When I asked him why, he said because gold is mentioned in the Quran!’
‘Perhaps I should buy shares in gold and keep an eye on the stock market instead of thinking about James’s blond hair.’
Yvonne stops answering Hisham’s phone calls and text messages. She has explained to him time and time again that she can no longer help him by acting as a go-between. She assures him that she is obeying her friend’s wishes. She instructs her office to tell Hisham that she has taken some weeks off, in case he asks about her. When Hisham persists in coming to her office, she decides to work from home for anothe
r three weeks until Hisham and his name fade away. Huda has, at this point, returned to London with her play’s cast and started on the rehearsals of One Thousand and One Nights in the Chalk Farm area.
But somehow Hisham manages to appear on Yvonne’s doorstep early one evening. He doesn’t press the bell, but gives a couple of faint taps on the door. Oblivious, she opens the door. Without even a fleeting glance around him, he says: ‘Is there a time difference between Iceland and London? Can you help me contact Huda, please? I’ve tried to forget about the issues with her, but I can’t.’
‘First tell me how you managed to find out where I live?’
‘I followed you a few times, but didn’t manage to get into the building before. This time I pretended I was delivering a prescription from the chemist. I don’t understand why she is refusing to talk to me.’
‘Nor do I, and it’s for the best if I don’t,’ Yvonne sighs. She doesn’t ask him in, but as he keeps staring at the ground, she feels sorry for him and gestures to him to enter the flat. She leaves him in the sitting room and walks into the kitchen.
She pours two glasses of orange juice. She then gets her phone and immediately sends Huda an urgent text to contact her.
Returning to the living room, she points to a chair, and sits facing him. He hesitates before sitting down and then says: ‘You must be tired. I noticed how much you love walking. I had to stop and catch my breath when I was following you.’
He can’t keep his eyes off her phone which Yvonne has laid on the table in front of them. She picks it up, punches a few more keys and says: ‘I’ve just sent her a text message.’
‘I’m so sorry to be such a nuisance, but Almighty God has guided me to you so you could help me.’
How I wish that God had guided someone else to me so I could be in heaven tonight, she thinks.
She leaves him again after securing the phone in her pocket, walks into the kitchen, and pours herself a double vodka which she camouflages with orange juice. As soon as she is back in her seat, he asks ‘Nothing?’, thinking that Yvonne is looking at her phone to check if there is a message from Huda.
‘It’s twenty to nine now and she hasn’t called.’ He shakes his head, the picture of misery.
‘Shall we eat something?’ she asks him.
‘No, I don’t want to eat, thank you.’
‘You’re very modest.’
‘I’m very worried.’
‘Take a deep breath, go on, five deep breaths.’
All he does is stare at his watch.
She sips her vodka-laced orange juice. Maybe he wants to pray. His tight black jeans, leather jacket and burgundy scarf are completely out of keeping with someone who prays regularly. He looks more like a person who does yoga. He must be around eight years younger than her. His face reminds her of illustrations in children’s stories, and Persian miniatures: the eyes are large, like moons, black eyebrows like two swords, and full lips betraying innocence, not lust. She tries to picture him sleeping with Huda.
She gets up and comes back with half a cold roast chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, bread and olives, and puts them all together on the kitchen table. ‘Come on, let’s eat something.’
‘No thanks, I’m not hungry.’
‘This chicken’s halal. The woman who helps me in the house and cooks for me is a Muslim from Eritrea, and she only buys halal food.’
‘I’m not hungry, thank you.’
‘I am. Come and sit with me. Don’t worry, we can hear the telephone from the kitchen.’
He sits in the chair, bouncing his foot up and down nonstop. She begins eating, then pauses suddenly: ‘Maybe you only like eating with other Muslims?’
‘What are you talking about!’
He goes over to the sink, washes his hands thoroughly, and then looks around for something to dry them on. She hands him a sheet of kitchen paper and indicates the rubbish bin. Before reaching for the food, he mutters ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful’, then starts very calmly to eat. To her astonishment he breaks the silence: ‘They say that sitting around a table helps resolve important issues.’
‘I don’t think talking to Huda is that important. If I were in your place I wouldn’t be thinking about it. It’s quite straightforward: you have to recognise whether you matter to the other person or not, even if the truth is painful. They say an hour’s pain is better than pain every hour. If Huda cared about you, or even about me, she would have called us back.’ She pauses to say to herself, God help you, Yvonne, you’re such a liar. But needs must, and I want to finish with this Huda business tonight.
‘I just want to hear with my own ears her answer to one question, that’s all.’
‘What question is that?’
‘A question.’
He looks at his mobile. ‘It’s nearly ten o’clock.’
‘Do you think in ten or twenty years wristwatches will be obsolete?’
‘I’ve kept you for too long. But you haven’t told me how she got a visa and leave to remain in Iceland. We Arabs rarely seek asylum in Iceland.’
‘Her brother was a tourist guide in Lebanon. He met some tourists from Iceland and exchanged addresses with them. After a while he contacted them, saying he’d like to visit their country, so they helped him arrange his visit and once he was there he managed to find work and stay there.’ Yvonne was actually relating the story of one of her relatives. ‘But maybe you are being hard on her. She’s running away, you know. Poor thing, I feel sorry for her. She loved this important politician in Iceland for years but he wouldn’t marry her and it left her with a complex about the whole idea of marriage and …’
‘No, I don’t think her relationship with him was what you think. She was a …’ but he stops in mid-sentence.
A virgin for ever. Naturally! says Yvonne to herself.
And Hisham reverts to his original nature: suddenly he changes back into Ta’abbata Sharran, tall and imposing, with flashing eyes. He gets up and hurries to the door. ‘Peace be upon you.’
To her surprise she hears a faint tap on the door again, only a few minutes after he’d left so abruptly. ‘Does religion forbid him to press the bell?’ she says in an audible voice that echoes in the emptiness of the flat. Hisham rushes back in without greeting her. ‘Sister Yfonne, you have to talk to her.’
She enters Huda’s number and when she hears her voice, she passes the phone to him, so he can hear the recorded voice repeating, ‘Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks for calling.’
When he hangs up without leaving a message, she pretends to tap in the number again: ‘Hi Huda, this is Yvonne. Where are you hiding? Please call me. It’s urgent.’ Still holding the phone she rushes into the kitchen and shouts, ‘I forgot I had something in the oven,’ and deliberately leaves the phone in the kitchen. ‘What would you like to drink? Tea?’
‘Nothing, thank you.’
He sits there, shifting his gaze from the floor to her, to his fingers, to the bracelets on his arm and back to the floor. She feels a sudden flood of affection and warmth at the sight of this tall figure in her flat, his breathing, his heartbeat, and the silent furniture all around.
‘Tell me, brother Hisham,’ and she doesn’t know what she is going to say, ‘where did you get those beautiful bracelets?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t imagine that religious men like you wore bracelets!’
‘Why? Are we any different from the rest of humanity?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean … Can I see them?’ reaching out a hand to take one from him.
He purses his lips into a thin line, raps his palm against his thigh, moves restlessly in his seat, touches his bracelets, and instead of taking them off looks at his wristwatch.
‘Is it true that the Casbah in Algiers has four hundred and seventy-two steps?’ she asks him.
‘I haven’t counted them, but there are a lot.’
Rather than having someone like James besi
de her now, exchanging passionate words and kisses with her, she has to put up with the silence of this tormented man.
She has given herself an ultimatum of the two months till her thirty-eighth birthday, not a day more, to try and get into a relationship and have a baby. She will stop obsessing about the fertility app on her phone and go to the sperm clinic. She has been haunted by the red hearts and red flowers of the app; the red flower telling her that she is ovulating and the red heart indicating that she’s had sex. Once, she added a red heart next to the red flower, pretending she’d slept with a man, challenging fate. She’ll leave for a few days’ break. She’ll go to Rome, the city that got her back on her feet after what Lucio did to her. To confirm that she likes herself, she’ll eat gelati and sleep soundly. Or maybe she’ll visit the Casbah in the Algerian capital and climb up and down the four hundred and seventy-two steps. At Christmas she’ll go to Lebanon and volunteer to help refugee children from Syria. Who knows, maybe she’ll adopt a child! And she’ll see her family in the north of the country for two or three days. Strange, how her mother has never thought of visiting her during all these years, not to mention her brothers or her sister. They must be scared of her.
She pretends to call Huda again. ‘Huda, we’re waiting for you. Please call back at once.’
‘Swear on your mother and father that you and Huda aren’t using a secret code.’
‘I swear on the life of the Pope and the Virgin Mary that Huda and I aren’t using a secret code.’
‘Why don’t you swear on your mother and father’s life?’
‘Because I love my father more than immi, but he’s dead.’
‘Swear on your mother’s life anyway.’
‘I swear on immi’s life that Huda and I aren’t using a secret code.’
She laughs. He’s like a child. She feels as if she is still playing with her classmates at school in Lebanon. On the Virgin’s life, on my mother’s life, on the Pope’s life.
‘Immi? What kind of a word is that? Are you sure it means mother?’
She laughs again. ‘That’s what we say in Lebanon. How do you pronounce it in Algeria?’
The Occasional Virgin Page 19