Admiring Silence

by Abdulrazak Gurnah

  Her name was Safiya. She and her mother were to come visiting the following afternoon. (I was thinking of fixing my appointment with the Prime Minister for then, I said, but was ignored.) They were coming to pay a call as a courtesy at my return, but I was to make myself available for mutual inspection. Then we’d see.

  ‘What does he think about all this? Ba,’ I asked. I felt self-conscious using that word for him and avoided catching anyone’s eye, but the moment passed and I felt virtuous and self-sacrificing for having done so.

  ‘He thinks it’s very funny,’ Akbar said. ‘Though he knows he’ll be laughing on the other side of his face when he has to cough up the expenses of the wedding.’

  ‘He thinks it’s about time,’ my mother said, smiling. I could see that she was pleased with how things had gone, that I had not proved too difficult.

  Later I pondered on why I had not been more difficult, more adamant about refusing even to discuss the possibility. Perhaps I was curious to see what she might look like, whether she might look at me and burst into mocking laughter, or stifle embarrassed chuckles, or whether she might smile at her piece of good luck. But most of all, I was not difficult because I felt sure that I wanted nothing to do with the whole thing, and felt confident that I would find a way of conveying this to my mother unmistakably in due course. I would tell her about my bad heart, and if that wasn’t enough I would invent a disease that had made me sterile. That should take care of it. As I lay in bed that night I toyed with the idea of a young wife and found it horrifying. I would fail her in every way. If necessary I would have to tell them about Emma. Emma. I had not been able to call her since arriving because there was no phone in the house, though I could have found one somewhere, I suppose, if there had been something urgent. I had not even sent her a postcard, distracted by the things that were happening to me, but also so eager to return to her that I could not imagine that a card would get there any quicker than I would. But when I thought of her my body emptied with anxiety. Had we neglected each other for too long? Would she be relieved at my absence?

  Safiya and her mother came late in the afternoon, the customary time that women made courtesy calls on each other: the day’s chores were done (though there was still supper to warm up), the men of the house would have had their siestas and gone out for a stroll or to sit at the café, the children would be out playing in the streets, so even the women could take it easy for a couple of hours. Akbar had gone out for his habitual walk, so I went to sit with my stepfather until I was called to greet the guests. My stepfather spent the late afternoon in the shop too, though as a concession to the more relaxed nature of the time, he sat on a bench outside rather than at his desk. He was too old and ill for strolling or the café, but some of his morning callers would stop by to pick up the threads of conversations they had left trailing earlier on. When the coffee-seller across the street saw a new arrival, he would stroll over and pour him a cup, and on most occasions would refill my stepfather’s cup. He settled his bill with my stepfather in some mysterious way I never witnessed. They consumed a prodigious amount of the stuff. When the coffee-seller was not around, there was always the huge thermos that was sent down for my stepfather on demand.

  When Rukiya came for me, my stepfather grinned but did not say anything. The two visitors had not taken off their buibuis, and were sitting beside each other on the sofa. The mother rose slowly to her feet as I walked in, languidly, confidently. She gave me her hand and I bent towards it as if I would kiss it and then released it. She could have been anybody’s mother, of medium height, matronly, smiling pleasantly. I turned to Safiya, and she gave me her hand without rising. As we shook hands she glanced up and looked away again. I sat in the chair opposite my mother and listened to her conversational courtesies as if they were the knottiest propositions. After a few moments Saifya’s mother took over, and I felt myself growing less tense as I listened to the two women talking about things I had heard a thousand times before.

  She did not look twenty, more like seventeen. Her face was slim and still, everything held in and out of sight. When at last she smiled, she did so slowly, as if holding herself in check. Rukiya had walked into the room, carrying a tray of snacks and some tea, and the two of them had glanced at each other and smiled. Rukiya’s presence changed the pace of the conversation that the two older women had established, and before long they were talking and smiling among themselves as if they had completely forgotten about me. Safiya’s voice, too, was low and measured, as if she had considered what she was saying. Her eyes moved about now, lighting up when something amusing was said, and then turning sombre and steady as the conversation moved. I felt ridiculous sitting among them, on such an errand as I had been called here to perform.

  My mother brought me into the conversation with the announcement that I taught in London. Who could fail to be impressed by that? It even made Safiya speak. What did I teach? she asked. English, I said, and saw her smile sympathetically.

  ‘You mean a foreigner is teaching English to the English,’ her mother said, a joke which everyone who made it seemed to think was original. ‘Can’t they speak their own language?’

  ‘Where do you teach?’ Safiya asked.

  ‘In Wandsworth. Do you know London?’

  She shook her head, and smiled embarrassedly, as if I had caught her attempting to pass herself off as knowledgeable about the great metropolis, I think. ‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Do you teach in a college?’

  ‘A school,’ I said. I wish I could have said that I taught neurology at University College London, and in my spare time took a clinic at Guys Hospital, and at times appeared on TV when one of my cases caught the public imagination. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have got the disconcertingly crestfallen smile she gave me. This would have been the moment to say something about the kind of school I taught in, and the barbarians who were my students. And then perhaps towards the end of this description I could slip in that the work was so crushing that I had suffered a heart attack (God forbid). That should take care of all talk of marriage. But I couldn’t. Pride forbade it, I think. But in addition I certainly found myself beginning to enjoy the idea of making this young woman like me – in a hypothetical way, of course, because I was bound to say it was impossible in the end. It helped that our acquaintance predisposed us that way, allowed room for us to like each other. That made it less arduous in some senses, more abstract.

  ‘Schools in London are even better than our colleges,’ Rukiya said, loyally coming to my rescue. ‘And the universities are the best in the world.’ Imagine getting a medical degree from London! This was what was left unspoken. I beamed at Safiya, to confirm Rukiya’s perspicacity. To my surprise, she laughed delightedly. Smiles spread round the room and looks were exchanged. Emma, how I missed her.

  After they left, I asked for more time. ‘What for?’ my mother asked in exasperation. ‘Didn’t you like her?’

  ‘She seemed pleasant, and attractive, but . . . well, I hardly know her,’ I said.

  ‘Know her! What do you want to know about her? I had hardly spoken to your father when I married him.’

  Yes, and look what happened to you, I wanted to say but didn’t. That really would have been to put the whole thing on a different plane of seriousness. Anyway, I think the same thought crossed her mind, for she retreated, fell silent. Akbar shrugged and Rukiya looked disappointed. Why should she care? Perhaps it was just the project of getting two people married off that appealed to her. Perhaps she just wanted everybody to be as happy as she was, seemed to be.

  ‘What do you mean by time?’ she asked. ‘How long?’

  ‘I don’t know. Long enough to know what to do. And anyway, I expect that she’ll send word tomorrow to say that she is not interested.’

  ‘That’s not your problem,’ Rukiya said, bristiing for the first time.

  It was wrong of me to ask for more time. I should have said I was not interested in marrying her or anyone else. And could they please stop
looking for someone for me? But even before Safiya and her mother had got up to leave, I had found myself thinking about her as a woman I might be attracted to, and after they left I was unable to stop. I liked the self-assurance with which she kept parts of herself out of sight, out of harm’s way. There was in her manner a suggestion that danger was nearby. It was not that she seemed frightened, but as if she was conscious of being at risk and wanted to act calmly when the assailant broke cover. Yes, a kind of powerlessness in the face of circumstances. Who is the third who walks always beside you? Perhaps I am wishing this on her because I feel so often like that myself, but to be sitting in that room, having your life sized up by an infirm mediocrity like me, must seem a little like coming face to face with the mugger who has been stalking your life. Yet I could not resist toying with the idea of her, even though the thought of her youth was horrifying. I would fail her in every way. Yet I lay in bed that night imagining what it would be like not to feel such an alien in England, to be able to live with someone to whom I could speak casually about things without having to give long explanations, what it would be like not to live in England at all, but here, in a crowd, rather than always being and feeling on the edges of everything.

  I was only toying with the idea, but once I began I found myself imagining more: where I’d live if I returned, what work I’d do – perhaps the translation project was worth considering, after all. It would only be for a while, until the Prime Minister had had a word with someone and had me moved to do something more exacting. For if I came back it would be to do something exacting, otherwise what would be the point? And my wife would be a young doctor devoted to her profession as all doctors are, unconcerned about the meagre pay, rewarded by her people’s gratitude and affection.

  My stepfather was gloomy the following morning when I went to sit with him, uncommunicative. I assumed he had heard about my prevarication and was irritated with me, but I was wrong. ‘Have you heard the word that’s going round? The Prime Minister has been arrested,’ he said. ‘Now they’ll start locking people up again.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. What about my appointment, Tour Excellency? or however Prime Ministers are addressed. ‘What has he done?’

  ‘Nothing, probably. They don’t do these things for a reason. It’s just a sport to them. They lock people up or kill them as they feel like. This one was beginning to sound sensible.’

  Further reports came throughout the morning. Each of my stepfather’s callers had something to add on their arrival and something to take away. The reports were not just delivered, but their sources and credibility also examined, hadithi sahihi au si sahihi. The excitement of my stepfather’s callers, most of whom were as old as him, was in dramatic contrast to his supernatural calm. Some of the stories would have stirred a well-fed sloth. It was said that the Prime Minister had been planning a coup with some elements in the army. (Coup against whom? He was the Prime Minister.) Or that he had been selling state secrets to our enemies. (What state secrets? What enemies? Who cared enough about our state to pay money to know about it?) Or that he had been implicated in an embezzlement ring, had made the mistake of getting caught. Or, most dramatically, that he had inadvertently insulted the Rais of our Federal Republic, who is notoriously incapable of suffering insults, inadvertent or otherwise.

  There were variations on these luscious stories, and my stepfather listened to them and transmitted them calmly, while his visitors grew increasingly excited as the morning wore on. It was only later that I learned that he was on tranquillizers which he had prescribed for himself, for some reason, and which he obtained in his old ways. When I came back from the midday prayers I went into his room, where he sat leaning towards the transistor, listening to the news. ‘Have they announced anything?’ I asked, sitting down by his other side. ‘No,’ he said, leaning closer to the radio. ‘Go and have your lunch.’ He could be a charmer when he wanted to be, my stepfather.

  Over lunch, Akbar delivered his own stock of stories. His sounded more authoritative and were more detailed than the lurid tales the old men had carried from shop to café to office. The Prime Minister, according to Akbar in his technocrat mode, had tried to hurry through a law legalizing the formation of political parties, other than the Revolutionary Redemption Party, of course. The Rais of our Federal Republic did not like the sound of this. It went against everything we had been working towards for a generation, he was reported to have said. It betrayed all our principles. So he ordered our own little Rais to have his Prime Minister put under house arrest on whatever charges he cared to concoct. ‘It’s been coming for a while. He’s been pushing hard for this law. All those Ministers and Members of this-or-that Council of the Revolution were sitting on their plump arses not liking it at all, thinking of all the cheap thrills they would be denied and all the money they would no longer be able to steal. They weren’t going to let him get away with it. This was coming. Everyone knew that.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know that,’ Rukiya said, irritated by Akbar’s smug tone. ‘What’s the point of legalizing political parties? We’ll only have all that nasty bickering again, then these monsters will get provoked and start their business as they did before. Anyway,’ she said, turning to me, the hardness still in her voice, ‘Safiya is coming this afternoon.’

  She came on her own, looking as elegant and untroubled as before. I wondered if her mother knew where she was. When I shook hands with her, she smiled. Rukiya fussed around for a while and then left. Presently she called for my mother from the kitchen, so they even contrived to leave us alone for a few minutes. We talked mostly about studying in England: fees, entry requirements, that sort of thing. It was depressing talk, but I suppose it indicated the drift of her mind, the direction in which she was leaning. I liked her, and because I felt stirrings of longing for her, I also felt ashamed for my betrayal of Emma. By the time she was ready to go, I felt sure I knew what she would say about the proposal. Not that I knew anything about these things, about women. Emma was the only woman I’d ever known. She still is. What could prompt a beautiful young woman like Safiya – yes, she was beautiful – to want anything to do with a man like me? Just an education? I am not saying that because of my age alone, although that is advanced enough compared to hers, but because I would have thought it obvious to anyone what a spiritless hulk I am. It was only Emma who moved me, and at times she moved me to tears.

  Perhaps it was a habit of submission that made Safiya agree, or appear to agree, to an arrangement so clearly unjust. And perhaps it was the same habit, learned in childhood and transported to England before I had had chance to learn the full might of male adulthood, that made me retreat in so many of the confrontations I had with Emma. In any case, it was clear that I was going to have to stop the whole thing going any further. Not because I was afraid that I would forget myself and be unable to resist the seduction they had organized for me, but because I feared they would feel even more betrayed if matters progressed any more. I thought of saying that I simply did not find her attractive, but I could imagine the look of incredulity on Rukiya’s face. I had seen her glance at me with a secret satisfied smile as I stared unguardedly at Safiya.

  So that left telling them the truth about Emma. Somehow, I had thought all along that I would, and perhaps I wanted to. I was leaving at the end of the week, and would have preferred to delay the telling until as near the leaving as possible, but I did not think I could do that now that they had brought the whole thing with Safiya to a head. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said, before either my mother or Rukiya could ask me anything. I wished that I was away from there, that I was back in Battersea with Emma, back home. It wasn’t England that was home (so you can roll back the red carpet, or file away, if you care, reproaches against the alienated native), but the life I had known with Emma. It was the secretest, most complete, most real part of me. I knew that now, and wanted to finish with what needed to be said and done and return to her, return from here that is no longer home.

 
3

  The Prime Minister was on TV that evening, hale and hearty, if a little indignant. He said nothing about the rumours of his arrest, and the proliferating tales of his misdemeanours and misjudgements, but there were several significant pauses in his address, and the general emphasis was on wounded self-vindication. His government’s new development plan would come into operation as scheduled. All the formalities were now complete: the Revolutionary Council for the Redemption of the Nation had approved it, the Rais had signed it, and the Rais of the Federal Republic had rubber-stamped it. And earlier that morning he had received several representatives of the diplomatic corpse who had come to express their support and offer assistance. The people, the people’s representatives, the people’s leaders and the donor’s delegations were all in favour of the new plan. All that remained now was for the people to address themselves to the task before them with the necessary zeal and self-sacrifice, and commit themselves without reservation to their patriotic duty, and prosperity and progress would be inevitable. It was no small thing he was promising, but the fulfilment of all our dreams: better schools for our children, better hospitals and health care, enough food for everyone to eat, adequate shelter, electricity and running water to every home in the land, and the end of dependence. If we were to put our backs into it and pull together, this was not an impossible dream. And with the help of God, and the funding he had been promised by the donor’s representative, it was a dream which was likely to come true in the very near future.

  As I listened to him speak, earnest and growling with the duplicitous truculence of the truth-speaker, I felt the fun-loving part of me diminish and quail. It is a faculty of limited value, and I only have a small charge of it in normal circumstances, but watching the man on the screen hectoring the world to save his paltry life made it cringe and squirm into something submissive and self-contemptful. He made me dislike myself so much that I could sit and listen to him, and feel unease both that I would fail his lying vision, and that I did not get up and leave or spit in the general direction of his whining image.