Strangers

by Carla Banks

  ‘My mother…’ Najia’s voice had dropped, and Roisin had to strain to catch what she was saying. ‘When I was eight, my mother took part in a protest. She drove, with other women, to show that the laws against us driving were wrong. She lost her job, and my father almost lost his. And all of us, the children, were threatened. It made my father afraid. He divorced my mother and wouldn’t let me see her. My brothers grew up believing that what she did was wrong. It was dreadful what happened to her, to all of those women, but if they had done it now, I believe they would be killed, and their families with them.’

  Roisin had a sudden flash of Joe in London, the first evening they spent together, when he’d talked a bit about the Kingdom. It’s like one of those optical illusions. She had been seeing a society at a point of change–exciting, challenging, fraught with difficulties but moving forward. And suddenly the pattern had switched, and what was in front of her was a country clinging to its feudal past in which talented, vibrant young women like Yasmin and Najia were broken on the wheel of tradition and repression. And what had looked like a bit of student radicalism, the posting of mildly subversive articles on a web site, was actually a dangerous and revolutionary act.

  ‘I’m sorry, Roisin,’ Yasmin said. ‘You come here and we tell you all our troubles.’

  ‘You know I’ll help you if I can.’ Roisin thought about Damien O’Neill at the party. I don’t think it would help if a Westerner was to take up the cause–they’d lose a lot of credibility.

  The two women exchanged a quick glance, then Yasmin said, ‘There is something you can do for Najia, this is what we wanted to ask you. Her brother won’t allow her to attend college. She won’t be able to complete her degree. Could you go on teaching her English?’ She checked quickly over Roisin’s shoulder again.

  ‘So I can get my Proficiency exam.’ Najia looked at her with doubtful hope.

  Roisin’s impulse to laugh was prompted more by her dismay at her own fears than by amusement. She’d been afraid they would ask her to do something subversive, when all they wanted from her was her teaching skills. But she was looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. There were countries where the education of women was just that–an act of subversion. ‘Of course I will. I’ll be glad to.’

  There was silence for a moment. Roisin picked up her coffee. She got the impression that Yasmin had something else she wanted to say. There was an air of tension about the two women that couldn’t come from a simple request for English lessons. Or was she still looking at this through Western eyes? In taking lessons, Najia would be disobeying her brother.

  ‘There is something else,’ Yasmin said.

  Roisin nodded. ‘I thought there was.’

  ‘It is just–very simple, but hard for us to do. There is a girl who is missing–we want to know where she is, but we haven’t been able to find her.’

  Once again, they’d surprised her. ‘A missing girl…’ Roisin wasn’t sure where this was going.

  ‘We thought that…maybe you would be able to help us?’

  There was a guardedness in Yasmin’s voice that made Roisin uneasy. Yasmin wasn’t telling her everything. ‘I’m not sure I’d know where to start. I don’t have any access to…’ She had access to the British Embassy. Was that what Yasmin was hinting at? ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She was a maid. She worked for one of the families here–she ran away. I would like to know what happened to her.’

  Roisin frowned as she drank her coffee. This was tricky. She wanted to help, but she had to know what she was getting into. ‘Yasmin, why do you want to find her? Why is this so important?’

  She saw Yasmin and Najia exchange a quick glance. All of their lives their activities had been curtailed by people with the power to give or withhold their permission. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘But I can’t do much. I can ask some questions.’

  ‘I know. But you can ask people that we cannot.’

  With the feeling that she had just stepped on to the top of a long and slippery slope, Roisin said, ‘You’d better tell me about her. What’s her name?’

  ‘Jesal. Jesal Rajkhumar.’

  Roisin jotted the name down quickly. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Not old. Maybe twenty-two, twenty-three.’

  Roisin looked at the name, frowning. ‘Is she British?’

  ‘No. She is Pakistani.’

  Roisin looked at the two women, who were watching her with barely concealed anxiety. She was at a loss to understand why they had asked her. She had no way of looking for a missing Pakistani woman. You can ask people that we cannot.

  There was the British Embassy–but why would they know anything about a Pakistani woman–and, if they did, why would they tell her? She suddenly thought of Damien O’Neill. If anyone would know where to start looking, he would. But would he be willing to give her the information? She could find a way of asking. ‘OK. I’ll try.’

  Yasmin glanced across the mall, checking again to see if Bakul was returning. The words came even more reluctantly now. ‘She…was hurt.’ She gave Roisin a significant look. ‘This is what she told…someone. And the police may have been looking for her.’

  Roisin felt the ground under her feet start to give way. She gave Yasmin a level look. ‘Why?’

  ‘Before she ran away, her…employers, they said she stole. I don’t know if she did, but this is what they told the police.’

  Stole. The penalties for theft in the Kingdom were harsh. ‘Is there anything else I need to know?’

  Yasmin bit her lip. ‘You understand, she had great difficulty. I was worried about her. I tried to help her, but then she disappeared and…no one seemed to know what had happened to her.’

  Roisin thought quickly. ‘If she went into hiding…’ The woman had been hurt. Did Yasmin mean she had been raped? It happened–the maids had little protection from their employers. Amy had talked about a clinic where women could be helped. Maybe this runaway maid could have gone there. Amy might know. Or she might know where to ask. She watched Yasmin scan the café again. ‘If she was hurt, could she have gone to the hospital? My husband, Joe, he’s in charge of the pathology department. I can get him to ask a few questions. I’m not sure if there’s—’ She jumped as Yasmin’s coffee cup clattered to the floor.

  There was the silence that follows a sudden noise, and then the voices around them started up again.

  ‘I have a headache,’ Yasmin said. ‘I feel unwell.’ And she looked unwell. The blood seemed to have drained from her face.

  Najia looked at Roisin in alarm. ‘Yasmin, I am calling your driver. You must go home. Where’s Bakul?’

  ‘Do you need help?’ Roisin stood up.

  Yasmin shook her head. ‘I will be well again soon. It is just small thing. But I need to go home.’

  Najia was talking quickly on her phone. She snapped it shut. ‘They are send her car,’ she said to Roisin. ‘And Bakul is coming now,’ she added.

  Yasmin said something in Arabic and Najia helped her to her feet as Bakul began to collect their bags. Roisin could see the distinctive logo of Louis Vuitton.

  ‘Let me help you,’ she said again. ‘I’ll come with you to your car.’

  ‘Thank you, but we will manage,’ Najia said.

  ‘It’s no trouble.’

  Yasmin wouldn’t meet her eye. ‘No, Roisin. I will be fine.’

  Defeated, Roisin stood back and watched them as they left the café. She could see Najia talking agitatedly as they crossed the open space of the mall, and Yasmin’s gesture of dismissal. Then they vanished into the crowd.

  Damien was at home when the phone call came. Majid’s voice, filled with suppressed excitement, came on the line. ‘Damien, God bless you, how are you, my friend?’

  ‘Majid. I’m well. How are you?’

  ‘Very well. I have to tell you something. Soon I will be a father. My wife, she was just taken to the hospital and I thought I must tell my good friend my news.’

  ‘Congratula
tions. You’ll be a great father.’ Damien was pleased and touched. The traditions of Arab hospitality made them generous in all walks of life. Majid wouldn’t step across Damien’s threshold without a gift, and when he had good news, he shared it with his friends to spread his happiness around.

  But Majid’s joy made his own life feel stark and empty. It was almost a week since he and Amy had said goodbye, and the raw edges of that parting still chafed like a wound. Why had he held back? He’d known from the start that Amy was different but he hadn’t had the guts to go for it. And now? He could try–he could go to Amy, talk to her, persuade her that…

  ‘We will celebrate,’ Majid was saying. ‘When my son is born, we will celebrate and you will join us.’

  ‘It would be an honour.’ Majid’s voice had shaken as he said the word ‘son’. Even now, a lot of Saudi men only wanted sons. Hell, a lot of Western men wanted sons–it wasn’t just Arab misogyny that was the problem here.

  A boy, born as the Kingdom struggled with its own rebirth. Damien wondered what the child’s future would be.

  22

  Roisin ran over and over her encounter with Najia and Yasmin in her mind as she waited for Joe to come home. She went into the kitchen and pulled stuff out of the fridge. It was a motley assortment. She decided to make soup–they could have soup and salad. And she could make some bread.

  She wondered how Yasmin was. She had no way of finding out–she didn’t have home addresses or telephone numbers for any of her students. Yasmin had looked tense and weary from the start. It probably wasn’t good for a woman in late pregnancy to get stressed. Maybe that was what had caused her sudden illness.

  Hard as she tried to focus on what she was doing as she chopped onions and thawed out some chicken stock she’d made a few weeks ago, her mind wouldn’t stay away from the events of the afternoon. They’d been talking about this woman Yasmin wanted to find, this maid called Jesal, a migrant worker alone and apparently guilty of theft in a country where such crimes were brutally punished.

  And then…just before she became ill, Yasmin had glanced round the mall, looking out for Bakul’s return. And something had made her drop her cup in shock, causing the colour to drain from her face. She hadn’t seen Bakul–Najia had had to use her phone to summon the maid. She’d seen something else that had upset her. Roisin tried to picture the mall again, but she’d had her back to whatever it was Yasmin had been looking at. And after that, her attention had been focused on the two women and the importance of getting Yasmin home.

  To stop her mind from fruitlessly going over and over the incident, she started thinking about the problem Yasmin had set her. She hadn’t asked, but the question that was bothering her was, why? Why did Yasmin want to trace Jesal Rajkhumar?

  Jesal had been in trouble–that much was clear from Yasmin’s reluctant admission. Yasmin had tried to help her, and then Jesal had vanished…

  A young woman escapes from her Saudi employers, claiming they are abusing her. She has stolen from them, and applies to another Saudi woman for help. Why Yasmin? Why would a runaway woman in trouble turn to Yasmin?

  The ‘cultural salons’. Yasmin had talked about the cultural salons that she and her friends had. Roisin had asked Damien O’Neill about the women’s movement in Saudi Arabia. It looked as though she might have found it. If so, what Yasmin and Najia were doing was dangerous. There was a government department whose Arabic name translated as ‘the rejecting evil and evoking right association’. She could remember joking about it with Joe, but to women like Yasmin and Najia it was deadly serious. ‘Shit.’ Roisin didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until her own voice broke the silence. If she was right, Yasmin’s request meant trouble.

  She tipped the chopped vegetables into the stock and began frying chicken. In her bag, she had the contact number for Damien O’Neill–he’d given it to her and Joe on that first day. She was certain that he had the means to get her the information she needed–either where Jesal was, or how she could find out–but he’d want to know why she was asking. She tried to think of a pretext that wouldn’t involve any mention of Yasmin or Najia.

  She put a tight lid on the pan and left the soup to cook over a low flame. On impulse, she picked up the phone and keyed in O’Neill’s number. There was no point in being evasive with him, she decided. She would simply put the question with no explanation. Either he would tell her where to look, or he would refuse to help.

  The phone rang seven times, then his voice came on the line: l can’t take your call at the moment. If you need to contact me urgently, call my mobile. Otherwise, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

  She hung up without leaving a message–this was something for a direct conversation.

  Of course, there was Amy. Amy probably knew a lot more about the women’s movement–she worked with women, and she had hinted, briefly, that she had given some assistance to women who were pregnant and single. Amy might be able to help. Roisin had been waiting for Amy to call her since that day she had visited, but there had been nothing. Maybe she felt awkward about pushing the connection. It was time for Roisin to take the initiative.

  She tried the number Amy had given her, but once again all she got was the answering service. This time, she left a message. ‘It’s Roisin. How are you? Let’s meet sometime soon.’

  Then there was nothing else she could do.

  23

  Roisin hadn’t been looking forward to her next session at the university, but she had too many things to think about now to let it worry her. Now that the end was in sight, Joe was relaxed and happy. He was home by four most days and they spent their spare time together, sometimes walking in the cool of the evening, sometimes sitting in the garden they’d barely used in the two months they’d been here. It didn’t matter. They were just enjoying themselves. Roisin stopped doing the extra days at the university and spent her free time catching up with neglected correspondence. She wrote to old George back in London–guiltily aware that this was only the second letter she’d sent. And she started sorting their things out for the time they could leave. Once they left Saudi, they planned to take a month off so they could go back to the UK before they travelled to Melbourne.

  ‘It’s going the long way round,’ Joe pointed out when she suggested it.

  ‘I know, but I want to show you Newcastle. And Bamburgh, and Seahouses. And Druridge Sands.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ He was laughing at her.

  ‘You wait. It’ll surprise you.’

  Coming back to the campus was like stepping back into a different world. She felt detached from it all, as though their new life in Melbourne had already begun. She knew it was far too soon to start wondering if she might be pregnant, but the prospect made her smile at people she didn’t know as she walked along the corridors of the women’s campus.

  She’d expected to find instructions about the new regime in her pigeonhole when she went into the office, but nothing seemed to have changed. The seminar room was set up and the students were waiting for her. They worked hard and cheerfully, their voices rising in a buzz as they tried out the English Roisin had taught them. Even Haifa was as friendly as she seemed capable of being. The only sour note was the absence of Najia. No one remarked on the empty place. There was no sign of Yasmin either, but it was one of the days she was chauffeured to the villages outside Riyadh to teach English. Still, Roisin felt anxious, remembering that Yasmin had been unwell at the mall. None of the students seemed to know anything.

  She didn’t see Souad until the end of the morning when she was packing her bag to leave. The professor came into the seminar room and greeted her, sounding friendly enough. She looked at the notes on the whiteboard, and at the handouts Roisin had been working with. ‘This is interesting,’ she said. ‘May I have a copy?’

  ‘Of course. I put everything I use into the resource bank.’

  ‘I know. This is all most helpful to us. I have come to tell you that I have booked the lecture theatre for you from nex
t week. You will be ready by then?’

  ‘Whenever you want me to start.’ Roisin gave a mental shrug. Today had just been a brief hope of a reprieve. It didn’t matter now anyway.

  ‘We will record your lectures for other use, so please dress appropriately.’ She spoke as if Roisin was in the habit of teaching in crop-tops and shorts.

  ‘Will what I’m wearing today be suitable?’

  ‘Perfectly acceptable,’ the professor said. ‘As long as you wear your scarf. You will lecture to all the students who are studying English,’ she went on. ‘We have beginners and intermediate as well as advanced. So you will do three lectures.’

  Suddenly it was clear to Roisin what Souad had in mind. Roisin would lecture, they would film, and then Souad would have a teaching resource she could use for as long as she wanted without having to worry about employing another troublesome foreigner. Roisin was being asked to cooperate in her own redundancy. In addition, the programme amounted to six times the work she’d been contracted for. ‘I’ll have to concentrate on the intermediate level this month. As you know, that’s what I came here to teach.’

  Souad’s eyebrows lifted. ‘But you have done the other levels. I don’t see the problem.’

  ‘Ah, but not as lectures. If you wanted me to do seminars and classes, then I could do it at once. Lectures will need some time to prepare.’

  ‘I believed, when we employed you, that you were prepared at all levels,’ Souad said coldly.

  ‘I am. For seminars. As we agreed.’ Roisin smiled helpfully. It was a small victory, but she was enjoying it. She’d still be busy most of next weekend as it was. Except the party. She was damned if she was going to miss the party because of Souad al-Munajjed. ‘But I’ll be ready to do the intermediate work next week.’ She didn’t want to get tangled in an argument so she said quickly, ‘I haven’t seen Yasmin today.’