‘Would you give me her number please?’
‘Of course.’ Assuming a casual air, she gives him the number of her hairdresser, which she has had ready since the first day, for just this kind of situation. ‘It’s odd that you didn’t ask me to swear on the life of the Virgin Mary even though you Muslims believe in her. She’s the only woman mentioned in the Quran, isn’t she?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Huda. Who else? Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, was a kind of mother to me. I hung a little statue of her above my bed. Whenever I got bad marks at school, I asked her forgiveness, promising her that I would work hard just for her sake. And every time I went home after a date with a boy called Jamil, and I was all red from so much kissing, I wasn’t embarrassed or afraid of anyone or anything except the statue of the Virgin Mary that was no more than twenty centimetres high. I used to imagine the mother of Jesus looking at me with her innocent, sad, pure white face and her head cover, blue as the waves of the sea, and I would whisper to her, “Forgive me, our Lady. You understand me. You are the source of love, and I love Jamil and feel sorry for him. He has no mother.” Then I would lie and say, “When we grow up, we are going to get married and you will be our shabina.”’
‘“Shabina”? Is that an Arabic word?’
‘Yes. A shabina means a witness for Christians in Lebanon. When people get married the bride has a shabina and the bridegroom a shabin.’
She stands up and fetches the phone and looks at the screen. ‘No, Huda hasn’t called yet. Would you like some fresh lemonade? I squeezed the lemons a little while ago, and I’ll add some orange flower water.’
She repeats in a low voice ‘Jamil, oh Jamil,’ as she adds the finishing touches to the lemonade. She puts it down in front of Hisham and returns to her place by the window and sits looking out at the night as if it reflects her own gloom. She sits waiting for Jamil to appear. She smiles as if she hears someone knocking at the door and entering. There is somebody who wants her – it’s Jamil and he’s come from Lebanon. She is definitely crazy! But isn’t it enough that we love something and think about it and imagine that it is happening? The last time she saw Jamil in Lebanon, he hurried away, not wanting her to see him with his bucket and net coming from the sea. Jamil was a fisherman. He must have said to himself when he saw her, ‘Poor me living here, and lucky her living in England.’
‘Jamil,’ she says to Hisham, ‘it didn’t bother him that I had sturdy thighs and a big bottom. I remember he pinched my stomach once and said, “Come on, what a stomach! I can’t wait for you to get pregnant from me when I’m a bit older!” That’s love. Love has to be blind. Love is the important thing, and not the shape of the body. My mother’s beauty and her figure when she was young were, according to my father, “her power and glory”.’
Hisham fidgets uneasily, his hand drumming on his thigh. ‘I’ll be on my way.’
‘Go on, go. Hurry up. I don’t want you to sully your faith by listening to me. Why is it that all religious people are afraid to hear what goes on in real life? I remember when I told the priest that I hated my mother and wished she would die, he was taken aback. I was fourteen. But do you know what our father the priest said to me at the door of his church, without having any kind of discussion with me, “Grow up, little girl. Go home. No mother hates her children.” I told him she’d hit me because I’d eaten the strawberries she’d brought home specially for my brothers and I was cross with her because she liked my brothers better than me. He repeated, “There isn’t a mother in the whole world who prefers one of her children to another. They were all formed in the same womb, my daughter.” “I’m sure,” I said to him, “that she prefers boys to girls.” I began to cry loudly and he ordered me to go home at once and repent and pray and say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. Not knowing what I was doing, I found myself shouting at him and threatening to stop coming to church.’
She sees that Hisham isn’t reacting to her story and is continuing to shift restlessly in his seat because Huda hasn’t called. ‘Sorry, sorry, I talk too much, but I’m lonely, really lonely. The laws of nature have decreed that a woman has to choose between being a wife and mother or having a job if she wants to be successful, and I’m successful in my job!’
She looks at him in case he might offer a word of consolation, but he just jiggles his foot up and down more violently.
‘And you, I wonder who you love more: your mother or your father? They must have loved you more than your sisters. Arabs always prefer males to females, even though it’s the girls who usually stay close to their families.’
‘I’ve taken up too much of your time. I’ll leave now.’
‘Of course you will.’ She gets up to see him out. ‘Sorry about Huda’s behaviour. Goodbye.’
But he doesn’t move from his place and to her astonishment she hears him speak. ‘When did you come to London?’
‘Over twenty years ago. When I was seventeen.’
‘How? Did you escape from Lebanon?’
‘No, I didn’t escape.’
‘Your family allowed you to go abroad?’
‘Yes.’
‘So your mother loves you, otherwise she would have forbidden you to leave.’
‘Actually, she didn’t love me, and that’s why she let me leave. OK and what about you, how did you end up in London?’
‘I left Algeria for France when I was seventeen but I hated it and came here. The French hate Algerians and despise Muslims.’
‘So you turned to religion here!’
‘Yes, here. My mother was a believer. She was really committed and prayed and fasted constantly, unlike my father. But thanks to me, he became a muezzin in our local mosque. I’m the one who planted the seeds of religion in him a few years ago.’
‘I like that,’ she laughs. ‘It’s nice that you influenced your father instead of the other way round. That’s much better. It seems he trusts you so he listened to what you had to say and agreed with you. Shall we eat some cake?’
‘No thanks.’ He places a hand on his chest in a gesture of gratitude.
‘I’ll bring you some more lemonade then.’
She hurries to the kitchen, pours herself a vodka and orange and takes a few gulps, then goes back to him with lemonade and a chocolate cake.
She is surprised by her sudden burst of mental activity and hurries over to the table to fetch a drawing she made the night before. She lays it down in front of him.
‘Tell me what you see.’
Hisham looks at the sheet of paper without commenting, but makes a face, then looks at her as if to say, ‘What’s got into you, you madwoman?’
‘This is an ant and this is a cockroach,’ she says.
‘I know what they are, but I don’t understand why they’re important.’
‘Because the ant catches the cockroach and drags it alive to her nest to lay her eggs on it. Then the larvae feed on the insides of the cockroach until all that’s left is its outer shell.’
Hisham stares at her, the furrow between his eyebrows growing deeper, the more he scowls and frowns at her.
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at. And the cockroach is disgusting.’
‘The main thing now is what you infer from this drawing, what you learn from it. Didn’t you wonder for example how a tiny ant defeated an insect that was much bigger and stronger?’
‘Glory to Him who created it and taught it and granted it strength. Of course I see this divine miracle, but what I don’t understand is why you chose this miracle in particular when there are much stranger miracles that God produced in creatures more beautiful than this repulsive cockroach. God forgive me, I take that back. They are all God’s creatures and every one of them is useful in its own way.’
‘The truth is that I chose the ant and the cockroach to tell young people that they should say no to drugs and not experiment even with a tiny amount, the size of an ant, because it will defeat them l
ike the ant defeated the cockroach.’
‘Have you tried drugs?’
‘Me? Of course!’ She hurries to reassure him when she sees the signs of panic on his face. ‘Of course not. This poster will be displayed in schools and trains and a lot of other places.’
She catches him looking at his watch again.
‘Sorry, I’ve talked too much. Shall I try calling her?’
‘No, no.’
She gets up and opens the cupboard and returns with an envelope containing photos of her and Huda in Italy, and of her with Lucio. He glances quickly at the first photo – Huda and her in bikinis – and puts it face down on the table. Yvonne remembers the day the photos were taken. She had asked Huda ‘How can I become slim like you?’ and Huda had replied ‘I can’t tell you, just as you can’t tell me how I can be confident and attractive like you.’
‘Do you think if your mother was still alive she would have liked Huda, or preferred me because I’m fair and my eyes are green?’
At first he says nothing, but puts a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. Then he says, ‘Your questions are very strange, and embarrassing too.’
‘How did you marry Huda in secret? Did the two of you read from the Quran and that was enough?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m curious, that’s my nature. Unless it’s a secret you don’t want to reveal!’
‘We exchanged this sentence: “I have married you before God and His Prophet.”’
‘So now you’ve married me!’ she says, laughing.
‘No I haven’t, because you didn’t repeat the same sentence back to me. I have to go now. Peace be upon you.’
‘What do you want me to say to Huda if she calls?’
‘Nothing. Peace be upon you.’
As soon as she sees him descending the staircase through the spyhole in the door, she rushes to the phone: ‘God, Huda, such a bizarre meeting with Ta’abbata Sharran. Do call me back. From Iceland!’
Once again, there’s a faint tap on the door. She hurries to look through the spyhole to check who it is. As expected, it’s Hisham. I’m not going to open to him. He must have tried to contact Huda in Iceland and has come back to tell me off for giving him the wrong number.
But she opens the door as his knocking grows louder. She smiles to overcome her confusion and prepares an answer in case he begins to reproach her.
‘Sorry to bother you. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘That’s fine, don’t worry.’
‘The truth is that since I left I’ve been thinking about you. I mean about your relationship with your mother and your feelings towards her. I wanted to advise you to reconcile with her and stop harbouring a grudge towards her. For as the Prophet said, “Paradise lies at our mothers’ feet and the main gate of heaven is reserved for children who have taken care of their parents.”’
‘You’re right. I might think about visiting Lebanon in the very near future.’
She is astonished to see him undoing one of his bracelets and handing it to her. She takes it from him.
‘Why are we standing at the door? Please, come in. Oh, this bracelet’s heavier than I expected.’
‘It was my mother’s anklet. She always wore it round her leg.’
‘It’s so beautiful. Your mother must have been slim.’
‘Slim and tall, God rest her soul.’
She notices him muttering something and keeps silent. Maybe he is reciting the Fatiha for his mother’s soul. When he’s finished, she hands him the anklet and he clasps it and her hand at the same time and then suddenly embraces her. She closes her eyes, happy at this warmth that is so completely unexpected. Long legs, beautiful white teeth. Most likely he never eats sweets and he certainly doesn’t drink wine. She is aware of his sex, hard against her, and she fidgets, trying to disengage herself. She doesn’t want to have a weird temporary marriage with him.
His embrace is his way of laying the trap and she doesn’t intend to fall into it. She feels his sex again and remains silent and unmoving, enfolded by his brown limbs. This is Yvonne, who used to surprise men by taking the first step. Now she’s waiting for the right moment to make her escape, as soon as she hears him saying ‘I have married you before God and His Prophet’, and asking her to repeat his words. She will protest that she doesn’t know the rules of Arabic grammar and will make mistakes with the vowels and the case endings, and if he answers that this doesn’t matter, she’ll ask him if God knows Arabic grammar well, then he’ll lose his temper and change his mind about sleeping with her. Or would it be best to be completely honest and say ‘No, I’m not a Muslim and I don’t believe that we have to repeat this formula before we make love’. Or ‘Actually I’ve got my period. Sorry’. Or ‘I don’t fancy you’, or ‘I’m engaged’, or ‘I don’t want to marry the husband of my dearest friend’.
But he says not a word, and instead she hears him panting with desire. He’s the ant and she’s the cockroach and he is trying to immobilise her so that he can suck the nourishment from inside her, and meanwhile his body stops her brain functioning.
They begin to embrace again, then she stops him once more, to take off her skirt and to make sure that she hasn’t lost her sense of hearing and that he really didn’t repeat that phrase to her. She isn’t afraid. She says nothing, but closes her eyes while the thoughts go spinning around in her head. Now does he think that by having sex with me, he will somehow get through to Huda?
‘Are you going to marry me and make me marry you!’
When he doesn’t reply, she says, ‘Now I understand. Secret marriage can only take place between two Muslims.’
When his only response is to pull her towards him, she answers him with a kiss on his shy lips, trying to transfer even just a little of the warmth of his body to them, before abruptly moving him off her.
‘By the way, are you going to tell me what you want to ask Huda?’
‘If she’ll agree for us to marry on Skype in front of two witnesses, then after the legal three-month wait I’ll divorce her on Skype too. That’s what the imam told me to do.’
She takes him by the hand and leads him into her home’s pink trap. The curtains are just threads of silk hanging to the floor. The patterns on the wall are her own design and they are like flowing locks of hair without beginning or end. The lights are low, reflecting on the dressing-table mirror, the coloured glass flowers, the Lebanese Tabbara calendar she bought in Edgware Road and the statue of the Virgin Mary that has been with her since she was a child, placed next to the mirror so she would see it every morning when she woke up and every night as she went to sleep. When this bedroom of hers receives not even a passing glance from Hisham, she knows for certain that he is like the men in her family, because usually anyone who came into the room remarked how strange and special it was.
She leads the way to her bed. When he falls on top of her, she whispers to him to take off his trousers and he obeys her, almost losing control of himself in his excitement. She is totally ready to make love and begins to feel waves of intense pleasure, and when he finally withdraws from her and collapses on to her stomach, she smiles to herself – this is the starting line, and she will eventually reach her goal, adding the red heart to the red flower, for real this time. He drifts off to sleep for a few moments, she guesses with a smile on his lips. Then he starts, as if waking from a deep slumber, and looks at his watch. ‘There is no power or strength save in Almighty God. What’s happened to me? I haven’t even washed or prayed. I have to rush to work. Shall we meet tomorrow?’
‘Why not?’
‘Until tomorrow then. I’ll call you anyway.’
She waits until she hears him going down in the lift before she leaps over to the phone and calls Huda and describes in detail what has just happened between her and Hisham. ‘I’m so happy we didn’t agree on a price when you bet me that Ta’abbata Sharran would try and sleep with me!’
‘But we did. One thousand Canadian dollars, you cheat.
But I’ll accept sterling since I’m here! See you on Thursday as we agreed.’
Yvonne goes back into her bedroom. She pulls the sheets off the bed and winks at the statue of the Virgin Mary. ‘Until tomorrow then.’
†The word ‘Read’ here is ambiguous and is sometimes translated as ‘Recite’, but Huda, along with many others, prefers to interpret it as ‘Read’.
†Huda: guidance on the right path; truth; the true religion.
††In Arabic ‘dalal’: straying from the right path; error.
A Note on the Author
Hanan Al-Shaykh is one of the Arab world’s most acclaimed writers. She is the author of the short story collection I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops and her novels include The Story of Zahra, Women of Sand and Myrrh, Beirut Blues, Only in London, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and The Locust and the Bird, a memoir of her mother’s life. Most recently she published One Thousand and One Nights, her acclaimed reimagining of Arabic folktales. Her work has been translated into 28 languages. She lives in London.
A Note on the Translator
Catherine Cobham is a lecturer in Arabic and head of the Department of Arabic and Persian at the University of St Andrews. She has translated the works of a number of contemporary authors from Arabic, including Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Hanan al-Shaykh, Fuad al-Takarli and Ghayath Almadhoun. She has written many articles in academic journals and co-written with Fabio Caiani The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts.
Also available by Hanan Al-Shaykh
One Thousand and One Nights
One Thousand and One Nights are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad under sentence of death to King Shahrayar. Maddened by the discovery of his wife’s orgies, King Shahrayar vows to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. To survive, his newest wife Shahrazad spins a web of tales each night, leaving the King in suspense when morning comes, prolonging her life for another day.
The Occasional Virgin Page 20