She laughed, ‘What a funny thing to say, from Heaven via Paris.’
He looked tired when he stood up, sat down again on the bed. She said, ‘I should go now, you look tired.’
He shook his head. ‘No please stay. It’s just that standing up suddenly made me dizzy. Stay, I want to talk to you.’
She folded the gift paper and put it away with the perfume inside her handbag. She took out her aunt’s letter. ‘Look what my aunt wrote as the address. “Aberdeen, England” and someone at the postoffice went over England in red ink.’
‘You have just won me to your side, Sammar, in any quarrel you’ve had with your aunt. Aberdeen, England, is unforgivable.’
‘That’s what they must have thought at the post office. It’s a good thing they delivered it.’
‘When I was in Cairo,’ he said, ‘I was often asked, are you English, Ingelizi? and I would say, No. Amrikani? No. Then they would start getting suspicious. I’d say Scottish and they’d say, Oh, is that where the war is?’
‘Scotlandi,’ she said. ‘You should say, Ana Scotlandi mish Irelandi.’
‘Tell me before I forget,’ he said, ‘what does shirk al-asbab mean? I know that shirk means polytheism.’
‘Asbab are causes, intermediaries, so shirk al-asbab means the polytheism of intermediaries. For example to believe in Nature, to elevate Nature which is only an intermediary and set it up as a kind of partner to God. Where did you come across it?’
‘Fareed.’
‘Is he the one you met in Stirling?’
‘Yes. He’s going to be coming to Aberdeen later this month to teach part of my course. You’ll meet him then. I spoke to him about you.’
She wondered why he had spoken about her, how he put her into words.
‘Where is he from, originally?’
‘He came here from Lebanon. But he is originally a Palestinian from Gaza. He was a journalist and he was imprisoned by the Israelis for some time. They gave him a rough time, a real rough time.’
She said, ‘Have you been to Gaza or Lebanon?’
‘No.’
‘My aunt went to Beirut long ago, before all the troubles. She bought me so many things.’ Her aunt had brought her a T-shirt with a round yellow smiling face, a doll that could walk. ‘I forgot I haven’t even opened her letter.’
She wanted to read the letter now so that his presence could cushion the inevitable hurt.
The letter was brief, with an attached list of things that her aunt wanted her to bring. Items from the pharmacy: paracetamol, laxatives, biscuits for diabetes. Also Hanan had just had a baby and seemed to need the whole of Mothercare. Then there were things for Amir: clothes, roller blades. Roller blades? How did they find out about things like that? Sammar put the list of orders back into the envelope, it was too daunting. Her aunt must imagine that she was making millions, an expatriate like those who found jobs in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. The letter itself was breezy, ‘I am so proud that you got this job to go to Egypt, wonderful that they are going to pay for your ticket! This is the right thing, as I’ve said before, to concentrate on your career and your son. It will be good for him to be in England with you, good for his education. So many envy you.’ This was followed by a torrent of complaints about life in Khartoum and how awful Sammar would find it after being away for so long. Then the last lines: ‘I am so glad you seem to have got rid of this ridiculous idea of getting married again – when you see Amir, how lovable he is, you will not have the hard heart to be so selfish and bring him a stepfather, some stranger who will not treat him well. Of course it doesn’t matter where you are, no one is seeing you there but when you come, it would be better not to wear so much colour, you know how people get ideas. You don’t need to get everything that Hanan has asked for, she wants too much as usual, but my pharmacy things be sure to bring them.’
Sammar smiled weakly at Rae. She wanted to speak but couldn’t.
‘So what is the news?’ he said.
‘My aunt thinks that Amir would like roller blades.’
He said that Mhairi had roller blades and went on to talk about children’s toys. She listened to his voice but not what he was saying.
‘My aunt thinks that after living here for so long, I will hate it when I go back to Khartoum. She thinks I will see everything as ugly and backward.’
‘I don’t think you will see everything as ugly and backward. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Your aunt doesn’t know you,’ he said.
‘She’s known me for most of my life!’ She pretended that she did not agree with him while inside her she was thrilled by what he had said. She had wanted him to cushion the hurt from the letter and he had done more than that, effortlessly, easily, as if by magic.
‘What were you going to tell me before?’ she said.
‘When?’
‘When you told me to stay?’
‘Yes, I was going to tell you about Fareed. I started to but I didn’t go on. I’ve known him for years now, we’ve written some papers together. Every once in a while, he would suddenly have this outburst. Why haven’t I accepted Islam, how can I study it, know it and still not see that it is the truth, and wasn’t I afraid when the time comes, when I die and I will be asked, wasn’t I afraid that I would not have an excuse, I would not be able to plead ignorance? Anyway, he goes through all this with me every once in a while.’
Sammar winced at hearing her own thoughts crudely put by someone else. She looked at Rae, questioningly, wary, why was he telling her all this?
‘Well, I was just wondering,’ he looked away, ‘I was wondering why you don’t say things like that?’
She struggled to find an answer. She could say so many things. Things that would be truthful and yet not truthful at the same time. She said, ‘Yasmin once told me that it annoys you when Muslims expect you to convert just because you know so much about Islam.’
‘And you are afraid of annoying me?’
‘Yes.’
He said, ‘The arrogance annoys me,’ then he was silent like someone who had more to say but was choosing not to speak.
‘Is Fareed very arrogant then?’
‘No. No, I would not describe him as arrogant. The reason he goes on is that I view the Qur’an as a sacred text, as the word of God. It would be impossible in the kind of work I’m doing, in the issues I’m addressing for me to do otherwise but accept Muslims’ own vision of the Qur’an, what they say about it. To Fareed, though, this is tantamount to accepting Islam, and so he can’t understand it when I say I am not a Muslim.’
Sammar couldn’t understand it either. Hesitantly she said, ‘I think I agree with your friend.’
‘Why?’
She wanted to say, because unless you become a Muslim we will not be able to get married, we will not be together and I will be miserable and alone. But she said. ‘It would be good for you, it will make you stronger.’
He was quiet and she thought, ‘I have hurt him now. I have said the wrong thing.’
A visitor arrived for the elderly man in the next bed, his wife. She nodded at Rae, straightened the blanket that covered her sleeping husband, sat down and after taking out her glasses from her bag started reading a book. Someone had switched on the television that was perched up on the wall at the far end of the ward. Horse-racing, the sound of galloping hoofs, the voice of the commentator.
‘Some of these horses have Arab names,’ Rae said.
They spoke about the names of horses, Sammar watching his face, making sure that she had not hurt him by what she had said.
She had been given the chance to say something intelligent about Islam and she had lost it. She could have said things about truth, or eternal relevance or about distinguishing faith from cultural traditions. Instead, she had said something personal, ‘it will make you stronger’, words that carried criticism. She despised herself.
‘I have to go now. It looks like you are going to have dinner.’ The
young nurse was pushing a trolley down the aisle, handing out trays. The ward was filling up with the smell of cooked vegetables. Sammar stood up. ‘I’m sorry I made you tired, I stayed too long…’
‘No,’ he said, ‘you of all people could never make me tired.’
She smiled but she was still a little anxious, ‘I can say the wrong things.’
‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry about that…’
In a rush she said, ‘I feel so bad that when we were speaking on the telephone, I didn’t guess that you were so ill. I thought it was just flu. I should have known.’
‘But I myself didn’t know. I thought it was just a chest infection. I get them frequently. I must admit I got a scare this time. Breathing in and the air just wouldn’t get through. I thought that’s it, my card’s been called.’
‘You were wrong.’ She forgot that a few minutes ago she had despised herself.
Downstairs, in the hospital foyer there were mirrors along one wall. Her eyes were a little pink, but their lids were as if rimmed by kohl and there was colour on her lips and cheekbones as if she was wearing make-up. She carried in her handbag a small bottle, sold by a man in Edinburgh who told his customers that the perfume had come all the way from Heaven, via Paris.
10
What’s this about you visiting Rae in hospital?’ Yasmin sat on the only armchair in the room watching Sammar ironing.
‘How did you know?’
‘Who doesn’t know! He’s been telling everyone.’
He was back at work now, but only coming in for the lectures. ‘Then I go home and collapse into bed,’ he had told Sammar.
She said to Yasmin, ‘Did he tell you himself, what did he say?’
‘He said you were very courageous.’
‘Me, courageous!’ She smiled and sprayed water on the skirt she was ironing. Courageous.
Yesterday, while with him, the department’s secretaries had surrounded her, gushed, ‘How sweet of you, Sammar, to go and visit him,’ and she, overwhelmed, had stepped back closer to him, away from their smell of talcum powder and Gold Blend. He looked pleased with himself. When they turned away, he whispered to Sammar, ‘Coup d’état.’
‘So speak, what is going on?’ Yasmin said.
‘You know that masha’ Allah you look bigger than five months, are you sure you counted right?’ Yasmin sitting, looked like something large and round had fallen from the sky on to her lap.
She ignored her and went on ‘You are the last person in the world I expected this from. What do you imagine you’re doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you going to marry someone who’s not a Muslim?’
‘Of course not, that would be against the sharia.’
‘So what’s the point then of running off to see him in hospital?’
Sammar managed a smile at the running off to see him, ‘I’m being optimistic’
‘Did he tell you he was going to convert?’
‘No,’ she said lightly. He had not even told her that he wanted to marry her. ‘I think he could, why not?’
‘Why not? Because someone like him is probably an agnostic if not an atheist. The whole of the department are atheists. These people are so left wing, “religion is the opium of the people” and all that.’
Sammar did not know what agnostic meant. She concentrated on the pleats of the skirt, manoeuvring the iron. She wished Yasmin would talk about something else. And he was to blame for this. She couldn’t understand why he was telling everyone that she had been to see him at hospital. At times he seemed to her reserved and secretive, at other times open like this.
Now she would have liked to ask Yasmin about his ex-wife, what colour were her eyes? Instead Yasmin was intent on giving her a lecture of some sort.
‘I’ve seen the kind of Scottish men who marry Muslim girls.’ Yasmin went on, ‘The typical scenario: he’s with an oil company sent to Malaysia or Singapore; she’s this cute little thing in a miniskirt who’s out with him every night. Come marriage time, it’s by the way I’m a Muslim and my parents will not let you marry me until you convert. And how do I convert, my darling, I love you, I can’t live without you? Oh, it’s just a few words you have to say. Just say the shahadah, it’s just a few words: I bear witness there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. End of story. They get married, and she might as the years go by pray and fast or she might not, but it has nothing to do with him. Everything in his life is just the same as it was before.’
Sammar shrugged, ‘It’s not the same situation.’
‘Is he going to say the shahadah without meaning it, just to marry you?’
‘I don’t know.’
Yasmin didn’t say anything in response. She moved her chair to face the bed and put her feet up. Her stockings were a colour Sammar would not wear. Sammar thought that if she had offered to do Rae’s laundry for him, his socks would be drying now on the radiators. What would Yasmin have said about that?
‘You’re leaving in a few weeks’ time,’ said Yasmin. ‘If I were you, I’d avoid him like the plague till then. Go home and maybe you’ll meet someone normal, someone Sudanese like yourself. Mixed couples just don’t look right, they irritate everyone.’
‘But he’s very nice. Don’t you think he’s nice?’
‘All that coughing and spluttering gets on my nerves.’
Sammar laughed. ‘You’re horrible,’ she said.
‘I’m worried, that’s all,’ said Yasmin. ‘Have you talked to him about becoming a Muslim.’
‘Not really, no. But he always says good things about Islam, things I didn’t even know. He understands…’
‘That’s his work, the field in which he is very highly thought of. But his interest, as far as I know, is just an academic interest.’
‘But it could become more than that…’
‘Do you know if he even believes in God?’
‘Of course he believes in God. He’s not empty inside.’
‘Atheists can be as nice as anyone else. Being good or kind has nothing to do with it.’
‘Also, he told me that he believes that the Qur’an is a sacred text…’
‘That’s the way they do research nowadays. It’s a modern thing.
Something to do with not being Eurocentric. They take what each culture says about itself. So they could study all sorts of sacred texts and be detached. They could have their own religious views or be atheists…’
‘You think Rae is an atheist?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. I would not be surprised at all.’
Sammar put the iron down. Never in her life had anyone she cared about been an unbeliever. Not religious, yes, not praying, not particularly caring about what’s right or wrong, but always the faith was there, always Allah was there, His existence never denied. It was unbearable to think that Rae was so unaware.
She left the ironing, hurried and put her coat on, covered her hair with a scarf, rummaged for change from her purse.
‘Where are you going?’
His number, where did she have his number? Drawer opened, papers thrown out. She had never telephoned him at home before.
‘What’s wrong with you, where are you going?’
She found the number, ignored Yasmin. She ran down the stairs to the landing. One of the tenants was getting his bicycle from under the stairs. Leather jacket, long hair tied up with an elastic band, the source of the loud music that came through the ceiling. She was frightened of that man and usually listened and checked that he was not coming up or down the stairs before she left her flat. Now when she saw him she dropped one of her coins on the ground and had to bend down and pick it up. When she stood up, he was sneering at her. Then he jerked his bicycle from under the stairs and rattled away. There were chains around his trousers, the sharp step of his boots. When he opened the front door, a gust of cold wind blew in. She shivered. The telephone. Dialing, her fingers awkward, clumsy. Ringing. It rang and rang. She let it ring. It
rang and rang. She shivered and the telephone rang, each unanswered ring cutting through an emptiness, a windy place. At last, a sleepy voice, recognition.
‘Rae, do you believe in God?’
In his silence, she banged her head against the wall, gently, rhythmically. The wall felt cool against her forehead, pleasantly solid. The receiver in her hand kept slipping. She thought, I love his voice, he must have been deeply asleep, he is still not well. His voice and how heavy he is inside, heavy enough for me to sink in. All this will be forbidden to me? Where will I… She closed her eyes, banged her forehead against the wall. Mid-January and the afternoon light seeped into the hall, the day beginning to get longer, a subtle change in the sun’s light. When he spoke, it was as if she had expected the silence to last forever, his clear voice startled her, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’
‘You’re not a… an… atheist?’ She struggled with the word, so seldom used. She mispronounced it.
‘No, I’m not.’ There was a smile in his voice.
She sat down on the stairs.
‘I thought you knew,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t sure.’
‘I should have been more clear.’
The landing, the bicycles under the stairs, Yasmin upstairs were superseded. ‘I woke you up,’ she said. ‘You were fast asleep.’
‘I dreamt of you.’
‘Tell me.’
He said, ‘I was in a big house with many rooms. It was almost like a mansion. I was hiding because outside the house, I had been followed, chased for days. I carried a sword in my hand and there was blood on it, my enemies’ blood, but I myself, my clothes and my hands were clean and I was proud of that.’
He paused and then went on, ‘I went into a room full of smoke, a lot of smoke but when I checked there was no fire. When I left the room, the handle of my sword broke. I held it broken in my hands and knew that it could never be mended, it could never be reliable again. This was a terrible loss, I don’t know why, but I had this feeling of deep loss because I had to go on without the sword. I walked the other rooms of the house, searching. There were many rooms, halls, passageways. I found a staircase and I began to climb. At the top of the stairs there was a room and you were there.’
The Translator Page 9