In the afternoon she went to pray in the small university mosque, a room given over to the Muslim students. It was in another building, older and more beautiful than the modern building where her own department was. She found the room dark and empty. She switched on the lights, took off her shoes and felt eerily alone in the spacious room with its high ceiling. When it was crowded during term time, everyone just prayed on the carpet, but now she took one of the mats that were folded on a shelf and spread it out. It was blue, plusher than the one she had at home and with a picture of the Ka’ba under a navy sky. There was more reward praying in a group than praying alone. When she prayed with others, she found it easier to concentrate, her heart held steady by those who had faith like her. Now she stood alone under the high ceiling of the ancient college, began to say silently, All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of all the worlds, the Compassionate, the Merciful… and the certainty of the words brought unexpected tears, something deeper than happiness, all the splinters inside her coming together.
When she finished praying, she looked at the notices on the notice board: the prayer timetable, the dates of meetings of the inter-faith group, a talk on Jerusalem with a speaker coming up from St Andrews.
She walked back to her room through the wet gardens of the campus. Being outdoors in the fresh air was a break in the day, it was colder than it had been in the morning. On days when Diane was not in, Sammar prayed in the room, locking the door from inside. She had an old shawl which she kept in the drawer of her desk and used as a prayer mat. It had seemed strange for her when she first came to live here, all that privacy that surrounded praying. She was used to seeing people pray on pavements and on grass. She was used to praying in the middle of parties, in places where others chatted, slept or read. But she was aware now, after having lived in this city for many years she could understand, how surprised people would be were they to turn the corner of a building and find someone with their forehead, nose and palms touching the ground. She wondered how Rae would feel if he ever saw her praying. Would he feel alienated from her, the difference between them accentuated, underlined, or would it seem to him something that was within reach, something that he himself would want to do?
She switched the computer off and the room lost the steady humming sound that had filled it all day. Diane was at the library and the room without the computer was silent. Sammar was ready to go home and to pass by Rae’s office on the way but she continued sitting. Perhaps he would be different than he had been on the telephone, cooler, more formal, distracted by other things. Maybe the way he talked to her on the telephone was to do with the holidays. These dark mid-winter holidays when everything was closed, and the days were the shortest in the whole year. Days that fell away from normality, gave way to excess.
Diane pushed open the door and came in carrying two bars of Yorkie and a packet of crisps.
‘I just met Yasmin at the ref,’ she dropped her snacks on the desk.
‘She’s back then.’
‘She’s looking real big now,’ Diane sat down and turned in her swivel chair.
‘Really?’ smiled Sammar and then, ‘No, thank you’ to Diane’s offer of a Yorkie bar.
‘She said that Rae’s in hospital.’
The pain came into a specific place, the top of her stomach. ‘Why?’
Diane pulled open her packet of crisps. The smell of cheese and onions filled the room. ‘Apparently some nurse phoned from Foresterhill and said that he had this real bad asthma attack and they’re keeping him in because he’s also got bronchitis. So,’ went on Diane, ‘that sounds like a fine start to his New Year. I don’t know who’s going to take over his classes next week if he’s not back by then. Yasmin kind of thought that they wouldn’t keep him long.’
Sammar stared at the carpet, an indentation where the chair’s leg had stood. He had been coughing on the telephone, coughing and saying that he was feverish and she had not guessed that it was serious. If Diane had not said ‘that’s a fine start to his New Year’, had not filled the room with the smell of cheese and onions, perhaps then it would not hurt so much or there would not be anger mixed with the hurt. She wanted to say, ‘You have no manners, you are rude. When someone is taken ill, when there is bad news, there are certain things that must be said, a sympathetic word, a good wish for them. When that person is someone older than you, your professor, someone who helps you, then you should be doubly respectful. Not so callous, you are not a child to be so callous.’ She pressed her teeth together. ‘Don’t speak,’ she told herself, ‘you are not allowed to speak like that.’ She felt the blood gushing to her nose as if she was about to have a nose-bleed. She wanted it, the soft pluck noise, the sticky blood released from her nose.
‘I’ll go now,’ she said and put her coat on, picked up her bag. ‘Bye.’
‘See you.’
When she closed the door behind her, liquid dribbled from her nose, but it was clear as tears. Down the stairs, in the street, on the bus, she told herself that she was overreacting, that there was no need for this. He would be all right in a week or two. Bronchitis was not such a terrible thing. She shivered in the lit streets, in the bus that was too slow. The bus stopped too long at traffic lights, it patiently let people climb in and out. Ordinary life, an ordinary day. The passengers seemed to her to be superhuman, people walking around not lumbered with pain. She did not want to cry on the bus in front of them.
She pushed the key into the lock of the building. Loud music, heavy metal. Some of the tenants were back, the Christmas break over. A letter from her aunt, colourful African stamps damp with Europe’s rain. The post, sluggish during the holidays was now regular again. She put the letter unopened in her handbag, walked up the stairs. Her room was no longer a hospital room it had new curtains, a new bedspread. She must not cry. What was there to cry about? Talk to herself, ‘Don’t be silly.’ The music came down through the ceiling. Grating, angry. Why were they angry? She couldn’t understand. She must get away from the music. She knew where she was going to go. Talk to herself, ‘Stop crying, what is there to cry about? Your eyes will be red. He will see you and your eyes will be ugly and red.’
9
Foresterhill was a large complex of hospital buildings. It was interspersed by roads, cars and buses, car parks, bus stops, gardens and a children’s playground. There was the Medical School where Tarig had trained and sat exams, there was the Maternity Hospital where Sammar had Amir. There was Casualty where Tarig had died on a sunny day and she had sat waiting for someone to come from the mosque, while Amir roamed the corridors, touching everything, playing with the fire extinguisher, until she picked him up, shook him and hissed, ‘I wish it was you instead, you are so easily replaceable.’ But he had wriggled away from her, too young to understand, too good-natured to be disturbed by her anger. Only she was left with guilt, dirty like metal.
Sammar pushed her way to the hospital. It felt like that, even though she sat in the warm bus, not walking, not running, not exerting herself. She must not think of the last time she had come here. It had been different, it was daylight then, summer, and she had come wearing sandals, pushing Amir in his pushchair. Now she was coming by bus, alone, and it was winter darkness outside the bus, freezing cold. Why was she going to see Rae? If he was asleep would she just sit on a chair, listen to him snore? If he was very ill, would he not be irritated by her presence, that she was seeing him like that, intruding on something private? What if he looked at her in a surprised way, his eyes asking, what are you doing here?
She should go back home. She should get off the bus at the next bus stop, cross the road and catch another bus going in the opposite direction. To encourage herself, she used cunning, ruses. ‘You can go to him another day,’ she told herself, ‘when he is more recovered. Maybe Yasmin could come with you or even Diane (somehow she doubted that), the other students then, the Algerian lady, then it would look more respectable, people from work coming to see him. It would seem natural then.’ She said to
herself, ‘There is nothing wrong with admitting that you have acted rashly in coming out like this to see him. It is actually wiser to admit a mistake and retract, than to stubbornly go on. So at the next bus stop get out, stand up now and walk to the door so that when the door opens you can get out straightaway.’ But bus stop after bus stop came and went, and she continued sitting, pushing her way to Foresterhill.
The bus stopped in front of the hospital, the automatic doors swished open. She was so slow getting up from her seat, that the doors started to close as she passed through them. They hit her on her shoulder, swung back open again and the bus driver scowled at her through his rear mirror, muttered under his breath.
A glass door to push in order to get inside the building. The heaviest glass door in the world. Her shoulder felt bruised. There was a gift shop in the foyer: stuffed toys, flowers, a shop which sold newspapers and sweets. Lifts to the different wards. She suddenly realised that she did not know which ward Rae was in. This realisation came as a relief. If she could not find him then it would be a sign that she should not have come and she would go away, convinced. If she found his ward, she would ask if he was well enough for visitors, if not, she would go away without leaving her name. If he was asleep she would go away before he woke up. She felt better now. She had sorted everything out.
‘I want to visit someone but I don’t know which ward they are in,’ she said to the nurse at the reception. The nurse asked her questions, a man or a woman, what did he have, when was he admitted, his name. She checked what looked like computer printouts and gave Sammar a ward number.
‘Is he well enough for visitors?’ Wide eyes.
‘You will have to ask at the ward itself. They’ll tell you.’ An impatient smile.
Many people were waiting for the lifts. Near the lifts was a Christmas tree and a café busy with people drinking and eating. Others sat on settees, chatting and reading newspapers. The bustle reminded Sammar of airports. It was hard to believe that people suffered within these walls.
At the ward, she gave his name to the nurse. The nurse had a young pretty face, clear blue eyes. She was so thin that her stomach, held in by the wide red belt of her uniform, looked concave.
‘There he is, fifth bed on the right.’ The nurse pointed her finger down the ward but Sammar did not look to where she was pointing.
‘Is he well enough for visitors?’
‘Oh yes, he’s fine.’ Surprise in the eyes of the nurse.
The nurse hovered a little and Sammar had to start walking away from that look of surprise. Head down, eyes down, grey linoleum, count the beds by counting their legs. One, two, three. She looked up and her eyes took in the whole ward. Straight in front of her, a Christmas tree near a large window. A row of beds either side of a long aisle. Some of the beds had green curtains around them, their occupants hidden away. The rest was a sea of ill men on beds with white sheets, their faces blurred together, indistinguishable. She saw him before he saw her. He was sitting up, not connected to machines or drips. He looked so strikingly familiar that she caught her breath. Here he was, someone that she knew from somewhere else. She knew him better than anyone else here did. She knew him separately from this place. Here he was, someone that was connected to her. So that the first words she said to him did not belong to the rational world. ‘Rae, why did they bring you here?’ He said her name, then his voice got louder, ‘I am so pleased to see you, it’s great to see you.’ He kept repeating himself and his voice was so loud that she became embarrassed imagining that the ward was shifting, its people turning and looking at them. She wanted to bend down and put her arms around him, say to him, lower your voice, you’re speaking too loudly. Instead she put her hands in her pockets and sat on the chair that was next to his bed.
He looked older than she remembered, or maybe she was noticing only now that there was white in his hair. Greasy today, longer than usual, shine on the skin of his forehead and nose. He was wearing grey pyjamas, crumpled and with one of the buttons missing, a black T-shirt underneath. He smiled at her, his lips almost blue and there was a darkness too on his cheeks, the tips of his fingers. He looked happy to see her.
She said, ‘Your voice is very loud,’ and looked anxiously across at his neighbour. He was an elderly man asleep on his side facing them. He looked like he wore false teeth when he wasn’t sleeping. On the other side of Rae, was a bed with a green curtain wrapped around it, across the aisle a young man was reading a newspaper.
Rae did not answer, only smiled and kept looking at her. She looked away. Welcoming her had made him wheezy. He coughed, one small cough, but it was a horrible sound, worse than any time she had heard him cough before.
‘What happened, tell me.’
He shook his head and said, short of breath, ‘In a while… you talk.’
She did not know what to say, what to start talking about. If he would not look at her, it would be easy to talk.
‘Do you want to know how I found out that you were in hospital?’
‘Yes,’
She told him, at the same time twisting the strap of her handbag, which was on her lap as if she was ready to get up and leave at any minute. Her handbag reminded her of her aunt’s letter and she became conscious of it, lying unopened inside her bag.
‘You look nice,’ he said.
This was sudden and made her feel shy. She said, ‘It’s my new coat, I got it half price at the Sale.’
He laughed, his laugh trailed off into another cough. He pressed his thumb against his chest, grimaced and said, ‘This hurts.’
She thought, ‘I must not say anything that could make him laugh. Laughing makes him cough.’ They were quiet, neither of them speaking. Time passed. She felt like she had travelled miles to get here, struggled, pushed her way through fog and quicksand. Now that she had arrived, she felt settled, her heart and mind settled, no swishing thoughts. Everything was here now, filling up the silent time. Minute after minute and the smell of disinfectant. Hospital sounds: footsteps, trolleys, people’s voices, the ringing of a telephone far away. A telephone that had nothing to do with them. She stopped twisting the strap of her handbag. She smiled at him and looked away. It was not a dream, her eyes and ears were calm, missing nothing.
‘What is that on your hand?’ she asked. He had a plaster on the back of his left hand.
‘I’ve been getting amoxyillin through an intravenous drip, but from tomorrow I’ll be getting it as pills to swallow.’ He seemed more able to talk now and he told her how his chest had got worse in the last few days, how the drive from Stirling to Aberdeen had been a nightmare ending in the biggest asthma attack he had ever had.
‘I drove straight to the GP and he referred me here. I haven’t even gone home yet. I still have all my things with me.’
‘You should have seen a doctor in Stirling; you shouldn’t have driven back if you were feeling so ill.’
He didn’t answer her and instead said, ‘I just remembered I have something for you, right here with me now.’
He got up from the bed slowly. She saw that he was wearing socks, odd colours, one navy and one black. He bent down and pulled a suitcase from underneath the bed. He opened it and started to pull out from it clothes, what looked like his laundry, a jumble of books and tapes.
‘I am usually more organised than this,’ he said.
Sammar had to bite her lips to stop herself from offering to take his laundry home, wash his clothes for him. She wanted to fold them, smooth them out, align the sleeves together, sort them into piles.
‘Can I look at your tapes? Is this what you listen to in the car?’
He nodded and went on searching his suitcase. She recognised some of his tapes, Bob Marley’s Survival, Babylon By Bus, Uprising. He drove around Scotland listening to reggae; the call for Africa to unite… ambush in the night… we’ll be forever loving Jah. The words came back to her with their tunes… Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds… Where had sh
e heard these songs? Back home, in the petrol queues of Souk 2, from the radio of a Toyota pickup, the cars bumper to bumper, the whole queue like a segmented snake burning under the sun. The smell from the bakery mixed with the smell of oil, and petrol fume addicts squatting near the fuming pumps, beggars leaning on the cars, thrusting their fingers through the windows. There were the songs and here in this cold city Tarig bought the tapes from a shop on Union Street, for the ones back home had long ago melted in the sun. Look out at the dark rain, hope that Tarig was doing well in his exam and teach Amir to sing, Sun is shining, the weather is sweet…
She held one of the tapes in her hand, opened and closed the box. Flags of Africa on the cover, green, so many of them green. Reds, blue, crescents and stars, a torch held up high. In her own hospital room, on good days, she had played that same tape, someone telling the truth, by the power of the Most High we keep on surfacing.
‘I got you this from Edinburgh,’ said Rae.
It was wrapped in light-blue paper, square shaped, a little box. He began to put his things back into the bag, slowly but carelessly stuffing them away.
She unwrapped the present, careful not to tear the paper. It was a bottle of perfume, oval shaped, with a stopper not an atomiser, liquid the colour of amber. She had thought all the time he was looking in his bag that he was going to give her the Azhar thesis he wanted her to translate. She said, ‘Thank you,’ and opened the bottle. The scent was neither fresh nor spicy but heavy and sweet. ‘It smells nice,’ she told him, even though she knew that this was not the way to judge perfume, she should first rub it on the inside of her wrist, wait for it to settle. But she could not do that now and looking up she saw that he was as embarrassed as she was.
He said, still kneeling on the ground putting his bag away, ‘The man who sold it to me was French. He said, this perfume is new, it’s the best, it’s come from Heaven via Paris.’
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