by Fadia Faqir
I went back to the kitchen and looked at the unpacked and ruffled baby clothes covering the kitchen table and laughed. Gwen and Parvin joined in.
`She is mental,' said Parvin.
Gwen holding Imran's hand began rolling her eyes and babbling.
`Salaam jiddu: hello, Granddad,' I said to the old man in the kebab van on the high street. John was holding Imran, who looked great in the blue cardigan and matching hat Gwen had netted for Layla, a king with a jasmine garland.
`Ahlan wa sahlan binti: welcome, Daughter,' he said.
`Remember me? I am the woman who used to sit behind your van sniffing the air,' I said.
`Yes, yes. We thought you were a tramp or M15.' He smiled. He was tall, spindly, with large eyes whitening with age, grey stubble, thinning hair covered by a crochet white skull cap, wide embroidered black trousers tight around the ankles, brown leather pointed mules and an embroidered North African shirt.
`This is my husband John and my son Imran,' I said.
`Ahlan wa sahlan. By Allah, you must have some falafel,' he said.
My Geordie husband scoffed the falafel and said, 'Shukran: thank you!'
`La shukr ala wajib: don't thank me for upholding my duty,' he answered.
Clapping his hand on the shoulder of a dark young man in blue jeans and black T-shirt with `Bon Jovi No Pain No Gain' printed in large red letters on the front, his thick dark hair spiked up with gel, his eyes large and hidden behind thick black curled-up eyelashes, his eyebrows plucked, his face smooth and glistening in the dim light of the van and his full chapped red lips parting with a smile, he said, `Meet my son Rashid, he a little effeminate like English people, but is OK.'
`Marhba: hello! That's it really. I cannot speak much Arabic,' he said and smiled.
We shook hands, talked and ate on the pavement by the kebab van. If you did not know me you would have thought that we were an ordinary family on a day out enjoying the brief winter sunshine. I should have been happy, but something was holding my heart back. I imagine you, Noura, soaring above our heads, dark, dignified, with arched eyebrows, seductive eyes, crimson lips, your pearl-shaped teeth masticating chewing gum then blowing pink bubbles, Rima and Rami, cured of his diabetes, holding your hands. You look at the square roof of the white van, the black-circle dots of our heads, at Imran taking his first steps towards his father, a frilly blue flower, at the cars skidding behind the van, at my face searching for your light and laugh, an irreverent, resilient, timeless laugh that reverberates in your ribcage.
Black Iris
IT WAS A DARK MOONLESS NIGHT AND I COULD NOT GO TO sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes I heard distant but amplified wheezing as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. I ran in the dark following footpaths all the way down the hill from the Long Well to the farm. Then I stood still, panting, sniffing the air, listening for rustling leaves, watching for movement. Rhythmic squeals came from the other end of the farm. I followed the stench of sour baby milk and rotting limbs. It was the smell that took me to her. Layla was swinging from the fig tree naked, her hands and legs tied together in an obscene way and shackled to the trunk, her neck slashed, face cut up and her private parts rotting. A black cloud of flies buzzed frenziedly around her. She was burning. I got up drenched with sweat, a helpless moth.
`They will kill you,' said Parvin.
I held her face and said, `I have to go. Look for her. She is calling me. She needs my help.'
`I've not spoken to my family since I left. They don't know my whereabouts. Do you think my heart is made of flint? I miss them too, yaar,' she said and blew up at her straight fringe. She was annoyed.
`It my daughter, Parvin,' I said and pushed my hair off my face.
`This is madness. What's wrong with you? Since you've given birth you've gone downhill. You don't eat. You cry all the time. You look like a tramp. Have you started seeing men with rifles again?'
`I depressed. I dream of Layla almost every night. Something must have happened to her. Mother's heart know,' I said.
`I don't know what to say,' Gwen said. `If Salina feels she should go, then we cannot stop her, I'm afraid.'
`I won't let you, Salina. What about our son? What about me?'John choked.
`We can notify the police. Interpol can contact your friend, can look for her,' said Mark.
`I am a British citizen now and the British will protect me,' I said.
`Oh! Yeah! Look at the colour of your skin. You are a second-class citizen. They will not protect you,' said Parvin.
`No one would recognize me now Especially if I have my hair cut and dyed.'
`They will recognize your smell. So many Asian girls were killed when they went back,' said Parvin.
`She wouldn't stop crying. Her sobs echo in my head,' I said.
Parvin stood up with difficulty and held me tight. `Please, please don't go!'
`Cannot you see?' I screamed. `I've got no names. I haven't even got Noura's or Madam Lamaa's family name. I have to go. My daughter is in danger.'
`What about your son?' asked Gwen.
`Sons are treated better. They can fend for themselves. Daughters are helpless,' I said.
`You're wrong. He needs you," she said.
`He has a good father. He will take care of him if anything happens to me.'
John hid his wet face and walked out of the kitchen holding Imran against his ribcage the way my father used to hold me.
I had the same dream again, but this time Layla's muffled cries intensified. My heart knew that I had to go and find her before it was too late. I got the red silk Chinese box, which Parvin had given me for my birthday, out of the wardrobe, opened it and began tidying up its contents: a return rail ticket to Exeter now yellow around the edges, my mother's letter, a lock of Layla's hair, Noura's mother-of-pearl hair combs, the bottle of perfume, the Mary Quant lipstick from Madam Lamaa and Francoise's turquoise silver necklace. When I pulled the lock of hair out of the leather pocket I had made especially for it and my mother's letter an electric current ran all the way up the fingers of my right hand, my arm, my shoulder then the back of my neck. The fine hairs at the back of my neck stood up and my scalp twitched. I put everything back in the box, shut the lid, and secured the loop around the button made of twisted silk fabric sewed together.
I began writing a letter in my head: To whom it may concern: My name is Salma Ibrahim El-Musa; I have been in Islah prison. During the first year I gave birth to a baby girl and she was instantly taken away to a home for illegitimate children. I wonder if you can help inc locate her. My postal address is ... then I tore the imagined letter up. How could I reveal my true identity and address? I would risk being traced and killed. How could I ignore Layla's cries, her calls, her constant pleading? I stood in the kitchen, a woman with a twisted neck looking both ways: backwards and forwards. The tea I made at four o'clock in the morning was tepid, tasteless; the floor tiles were so cold against my bare feet. The hills, which were covered with green grass, weeds and shrubs, were suddenly erased - puff - and turned into dry brown mountains covered with silver-green olive trees, plum, almond and fig trees and grapevines. What was better: to live with half a lung, kidney, liver, heart or to go back to the old country and risk being killed? If my son, who was sleeping peacefully in his cot in the bedroom, began crying I would run upstairs without thinking and hold him close against my jugular vein until he felt safe again and stopped crying. Over the years things must have changed in the old country, people change, I changed. I might not get killed even if I were recognized. I had my hair cut, straightened, dyed blonde and bought some crimson-red lipstick. If I wear a sleeveless low-cut top, a short skirt and sunglasses they would never think I belonged to their tribe, they would see only a shameless foreign woman, whose body, treasures, were on offer for nothing. Why would you give her family twenty camels if you could get her for free? When I finally looked up the hills were covered with Hima's black iris, which swayed in the wind in unison and whispered her name. A feeble sou
nd echoed in my head, `Mama? Mama?' then it suddenly stopped. I covered my face with both hands pressing hard on my forehead, just above my eyebrows and eyes. How precious was your eyesight? How precious was your daughter? I must not go, I should not go, I would not go.
Imran was nine months old and it was time to wean him. I wrapped my nipple with cotton wool and offered it to him. He spat it out and began crying. I held the bottle full of brewed camomile and aniseed up and placed the plastic teat in his mouth. He spat it out, spilling the tea around his chubby neck and began crying again. His soft bib had `I love whoever feeds me' printed on it. I wiped his tears with it and pulled him out of his cot. When I held him close he stopped crying, but when I kissed his fine dark hair he began crying again. This time it was a heartrending cry as if he had just lost a limb.
Weaning was three days of intermittent crying, sleepless nights, dribbling, trying to feed him with a spoon, bribing him with sugar, and holding him and pacing around the house until he finally went to sleep. My mother did not wean my brother Mahmoud until he was three and his long legs were dangling and almost touching the floor. He used to go and play with the dog and come back ruffled and say, `Give me your ziza: teat!'
But I had to stop breastfeeding Imran and to teach him how to eat normal food. I had to go to look for Layla. I began seeing her swollen face everywhere, on window panes, in my breakfast bowl swimming in the milk, in the water whirling down the drain of the kitchen sink, in all the mirrors. I began hearing her muffled cries whenever a breeze hit my face.
One early morning I held the cold washbasin and looked at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror. Imran was finally used to eating from a spoon whatever I blended for him and drinking from a cup. He was sound asleep next to his dad. I was the one who was neither eating nor sleeping. I also began talking to myself, `Oh, how I love you, Imran! Oh, how I love you, Layla! He will be all right. I will cook him enough food for a month and put it in the freezer, a bag for every day I am away. Marked clearly,' I said to my reflection. `Hug him as much as you can, and don't leave him at the nursery for more than three hours. Hold his hand when he walks towards you because his feet are still weak. Cup his head and hold it close against your chest, he is used to that. When he cries make a sash bundle of aniseed and crystal sugar and put it gently in his mouth, behind his tiny white tooth. Cover him with his blue velvet blanket and hold it close to his tiny hand. Love him treble: one for you, one for me and one for his Arab grandmother. I command him to your protection, John,' I said and wiped the tears with the back of my cold hand.
The taxi ride to my village took about two hours from the airport. With my dyed short hair, straw hat, sunglasses and short sleeves the Bedouin taxi driver, with the red-andwhite-chequered kufiyya fixed into place by a black rope, assumed that I was a hhawajayya: a foreigner. He mumbled his disapproval under his breath. He thought that I had come to their country to study their way of life and get them some money to encourage them to continue living in squalor, sleeping with their camels and sheep. `Cigara?' he said, pointing an unlit cigarette at me, leaving the car to steer itself down the narrow run-down road.
`No, thank you,' I said.
He lit the cigarette, turned down the window to release his tea glass, secured between the roof and glass panel of his car window, and had a swig then a puff. He swung the car left and right without spilling one drop; the sticky liquid swirled in the cup, a mini storm in a tea glass.
`Smoking bad.' I pointed at his cigarette.
`Wife bad. Smoke good," he said, tilting his headdress to one side and raising his eyebrows.
It reminded me of Hamdan's secret mating call, which I answered by rushing to the vineyard and taking off my pantaloons. Hamdan would propose, I thought, but he left me in the valley and took to the mountains.
Looking at the almost bare brown mountains, the olive groves, the relentless sun and hazy blue sky, I felt my mother's rough hands run over my face. I sniffed my father's musk and snuggled against his ribcage.
When I saw olive trees in the distance I felt like running back. I wanted so much to be sipping tea with John in our kitchen in Exeter, but the driver was singing along with some new pop singer,'Bahibak ahhh: I love, yeah' and pressing on the accelerator. The street sped towards me and the village was approaching with its makeshift concrete houses and mud storage rooms. The sun was sitting behind the thorn-covered hills and the sound of shepherd dogs and the call to prayer filled the air. I wiped the cold sweat on my forehead and was about to ask the driver to turn round and drive me back to the airport. Then I saw a group of young men walking up to the mosque, slapping each other's backs, fixing their headgear, twisting their moustaches, and suddenly changed my mind. Layla was out here somewhere and I must find her. Olive, apple, plum trees sped across the car window I would help her settle in the new country, teach her English, register her in a college. If my eyes would ever meet hers we would both be fine.
When I saw the two storage rooms that used to be our house I asked the driver to stop and handed him forty dinars.
He spat on the ground and said, `Adjnabiyyeh wa bahhileh: foreign and mean.'
A woman in black was sitting on the raised platform in front of the two badly built new rooms. I waved. She did not wave back.
My son, my heart, was teething. He was drooling, irritable, endlessly chewing on things. He began crying again so I took him to the guest room, which used to be my bedroom when Elizabeth was alive, placed him on the bed, wiped his face with a wet cloth and ran my finger gently over his sour gums. He chewed at it then began crying again. I held him tight against me and began rocking him and singing:
Finally he closed his eyes and sighed. I covered him with a blanket, got a pair of scissors out, cut a tuft of his shiny, soft hair and hid it quickly in my pocket. I sniffed his neck, filling my heart with his baby scent; I ran my hand over his tender head, placed the palm of my hand over his heart. Would he be all right if I left him for two weeks? John was a good father whispering poems in English and endearments in pidgin Arabic in his ear all the time.
I looked through the window at the dark silhouette of trees bordering the fields on the hillside. They were all swaying in the wind, now this way and now that. When I pushed the window up a gust of wind rushed into the room. I stuck my head out and looked at the outline of the hills, the sheen of the river and the steel rail track. The rustling sound of leaves was followed by a swish.
There he was. His dagger tied to his side, his ammunition belt wrapped across his chest, his leather sandals worn out, his feet covered with desert dust, his yellow toenails long, chipped and lined with grime and his rifle slung on his right shoulder.
Listen for the galloping of horses, for the clank of daggers being pulled out of scabbards, for flat-faced owls hooting in the dark, for bats clapping their wings, for light footsteps, for the abaya robe fluttering in the wind, for the swishing sound of his sharp dagger. Sniff the air for the sweat of assassins. Listen to his arm grabbing Layla's neck and pulling it right back, to his dagger slashing through flesh and breaking bones to reach the heart. Listen to your daughter's warm red blood bubbling out and drip dripping on the dry sand. Listen to her body convulsing on the ground. A ululation. A scream. Rending of black madraqas. Rhythmic banging of chests. A last gasp.
`Kill me instead,' I screamed at Mahmoud's shadow by the steel railway.
Everything seemed smaller, the well in the yard, the storage rooms, the horse tied up to the fig tree, the dog, my father's riding saddle, the pots and pans, even the plum and apple trees. `Hajjeh, are you all right?' I said to the woman sitting on the raised platform and hiding her face with the black mask. Her head was covered with a black veil tied into place by a black head band, the sign of mourning. Her protruding green veins ran down her dry and wrinkled leathery hands.
`Who is it?' She cocked up her covered head towards the sound.
There she was, hajjeh Amina, my mother, whose letter had kept me alive all these years, fine tunnels of wrinkle
s running down her cheeks, yellow discharge oozing out of her sticky eyes. She looked as if she were smiling, the red cracks on the corner of her pale lips tilting upwards.
`A visitor to your dwelling,' I said in Arabic, holding my heart tight.
`Ya hala bi it-daif: welcome to our guest,' she said and got up leaning on the metal door frame. `I will brew you some tea,' she said and ran her fingers over the mouldy wall. She stood in the middle of the room lost, not knowing which direction to go. `Where is the damn Thermos cooker?' It was in front of her, but she could not see it.
I held her hand and asked her to sit down. She pulled it back as if it were smouldering iron bars ready to cauterize. `Who are you?' she asked.
`Shahla sent me,' I said.
`She is dead,' she said and sat on the uneven cement floor, wiped her eyes with the end of her veil and added as if she were addressing the whole tribe, `All our guests are welcome.'
I put seven spoons of sugar in the brass teapot and a spoonful of tea then boiled the water. I carefully handed her a slim cup. When she sipped the tea she began crying. `Are we alone?' she asked.
`Yes, Mother," I said.
I spent hours sitting on the kitchen floor leaning on the cabinet. When John found me I was unable to speak, the muscle on the right side of my face, under my eye, had seized up. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
`You are letting this nightmare destroy our life.You have a chance of happiness and what do you do? You throw it away,' he said, pulled me up and hugged me. `You are so thin and cold.You must stop this madness, sweetheart.' He sat me down and made me a cup of sweet tea.
When I'd had a few sips my face muscles began moving. `I will. I promise,' I said. My voice was hoarse as if not my own.
`Please hold on to Imran and let go of Layla,' he said.
When I heard her name coming out of his lips my ribcage collapsed as if I was punched. I breathed in, but no air whatsoever entered my lungs. I began coughing hard to be able to breathe.