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The Translator

Page 13

by Leila Aboulela


  ‘I’m not content, there are too many things I can’t justify to myself. Of course I’m not content. Isn’t it obvious to you?’

  ‘Nothing is obvious to me.’ Nothing except that she was rubbing her pride back and forth over barbed wire.

  ‘I wish I never trusted you,’ she said and saw pain in his eyes. ‘What did you imagine all this was going to lead to?’

  ‘I imagined a longer time before…’

  ‘From the beginning, you should have looked at me and said, she is not for me.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’ He put his face in his hands, pressed his eyes and forehead.

  She said, ‘Yes, that would have been the sensible thing. Objective and detached, you say. So what do you need from me?’ She had tried to make her voice sound sarcastic, cool and sarcastic but is sounded twisted and childish.

  He did not look at her, he continued to sit with his head in his hands. If he had looked at her she might have stopped talking. But there was nothing to check her.

  ‘I’m not fooled by you. Just because you were kind to me and paid me attention. That’s all. But you would have always been second best… And I don’t want to live here for the rest of my life with this stupid weather and stupid snow. Do you know what I wish for you? Do you know what I’m going to pray and curse you with. I’m going to pray that if it’s not me then it’s no one else and you can live the rest of your life alone and miserable. There really must be something wrong with you to have been divorced twice, not once, but twice…’

  It was a sound that stopped her, a movement of his shoulders. It frightened her. Because his head was in his hands, she thought he was crying. She thought she had hurt him enough to make him cry. For a second there was triumph, the crazy happiness of thinking, he does love me, good, he is not immune to me.

  She walked towards him to put her hand on his shoulders, to say, don’t cry. She did not stop when he mumbled, ‘Go away.’ She did not hear him clearly when he said, ‘Get out of here.’

  Only when he looked at her. Not crying, she had been wrong about that, but looking at her in a way he had never looked at her before. His voice different than the way he always spoke to her. She heard him clearly this time when he said, ‘Get away from me.’

  She obeyed him. She turned and picked up her bag from the floor. She found the door knob, she opened the door, left the room without looking back. Down the steps, out of the building, to the sunshine and the snow. Everything clear and cold. Her breath smoke, the snow speckles of diamonds to step on.

  15

  She obeyed him. She went home and telephoned a taxi to take her to the airport. She carried her suitcases downstairs, knocked on Lesley’s door for the key to the basement to store the boxes she was not taking with her.

  The taxi ride to the airport was slow but the traffic was moving, not at a stand-still as it had been earlier in the day. At the airport they put her on a waiting list. The morning flights to London had been delayed and there was a back-log of people waiting. But one seat to London, either Heathrow or Gatwick, she stood a good chance, they said, of leaving before tonight.

  It was a plush, clean airport, crowded today with oil-men on their way to Shetland, women with small children, men in business-suits. Sammar’s eyes missed nothing. She could see everything, register everything. Her mind would not think, would not dwell or settle on anything. Just her vision, so much to look at, everything gritty bright.

  Airport shops. Sweets for Amir. Something Scottish for Hanan.

  Hunger, acute hunger. A long queue at the cafeteria. Vegetable lasagna, very good, a lot of gooey cheese, white sauce. Chocolate cake. Cappuccino.

  Going to the toilet. Her face in the mirror, not pleasing, but there was no surprise in that. Wash her hands. I don’t like the smell of this soap. Press a knob and warm air rushes out. Modern technology.

  She sat on a green seat reading the information on the screen, Arrivals, Departures, reading it again and again. Feeling the sun outside the window wane. Time to pray and the sadness that there was nowhere to pray in the airport. If she stood up and prayed in the corner, people would have a fit. A story once told by Yasmin: Turks in London praying in Terminal 1 and someone called the police.

  Sammar prayed where she was, sitting down, not moving.

  In a few hours she would leave. Get away. Get away. Get out of here.

  The clock on the wall. Twenty-four hours ago, she did not even know that Rae’s uncle had died. Twenty-four hours ago. Enough to break the mind. Don’t think. Just look around, open your eyes wide.

  Time to board. The early darkness of winter. Outside the double-glazing of the terminal, freezing gusts of air… walking up the metal steps to the airplane. Smiling stewardesses, too much make-up, handing her the evening paper. Navy seats, the characteristic smell of airplanes, the fumble with overhead lockers.

  Fasten seat-belts. British Airways’ policy of no smoking on its domestic flights.

  On the front page of the paper, a picture of the hijacked airplane on the tarmac at Cyprus. Today’s date written on the paper. Today Thursday. Tomorrow was the day she was meant to leave. Just tomorrow. There was really no drama in this flight. No one will notice that she had gone. She had wasted her money on an airline ticket, wasted the train ticket she had for tomorrow. But he had said get away, get out of here.

  Take-off, the roar of take-off, the running, running leap into the air. The airplane rose up over the city. In the twilight, the world below was splashed with snow. Sammar looked out of the window and saw miniature houses, cars and trees; the pale frothy sea. Small, compact city that belittled her hope.

  PART TWO

  … the fog cleared and I awoke, on the second day of my arrival, in my familiar bed in the room whose walls had witnessed the trivial incidents of my life in childhood and the onset of adolescence… I heard the cooing of the turtledove, and I looked through the window at the palm tree standing in the courtyard of our house… I looked at its strong straight trunk, at its roots that strike down to the ground, at the green branches hanging down loosely over its top, and I experienced a feeling of assurance. I felt not like a storm-swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots…

  Tayeb Salih (1969)

  16

  She wore sunglasses now. They darkened the blue of the sky, the building that had sprung up in the once empty square in front of her aunt’s house. A cooperative which in working hours filled the road with noise and parked cars. Her glasses tinted the garden blue, its patches of dry yellow, the Disney characters on the children’s paddling pool. She had straightened up the sides of the pool and put it in the shade, filled it with water that gushed from the hosepipe hot. Two hours before sunset and the sun was a spot of blue heat, still too piercing for eyes that had seen fog and snow. Sammar sat on the porch near the old cactus plants in their clay pots, bougainvillea in dimpled mud. Children’s voices and laughter. The sight of them. They were in their underwear: Amir’s pants sagging with water, Dalia’s white, clinging and transparent, and the twins, Hassan and Hussein, in striped red and green. They had soaked the grass around the pool and it was now mud and slush, flat in the shade of the eucalyptus tree.

  Behind Sammar the house was sleeping, hummed by fans and air coolers. Siesta before sunset and the time for praying and tea, going out or visitors parking their cars on the pavement outside. Her aunt’s house was a busy house, a lot of coming and going, snapping open the tops of Miranda bottles, boiling water for tea, special trays for guests, an elegant sugar bowl. Hanan lived on the top floor with her husband and four children. Sammar had known Dalia, who was the same age as Amir, but she had seen the two-year-old twins only in photographs. And of course the baby was new, asleep now with Mahasen downstairs. Sammar sat on the porch and there was no breeze, no moisture in the air, all was heat, dryness, desert dust. Her bones were content with that, supple again, young. They had forgotten how they used to be clenched. Her skin too had darkened from the sun, cleare
d and forgotten wool and gloves. She waited for everything else to forget: the inside of her and her eyes. Her eyes had let her down, they were not as strong as they had been in the past, not as strong as the eyes of those who had not travelled north. She must shield them with blue lenses and wait for them to forget like her bones had forgotten and her skin. She wanted to pick up life here again. People smile when I come into a room and this tree is for me, this scrawny garden, this sun. These children are all mine, the one I carried inside me and the ones I did not.

  No one will tell me get out of here, get away, get away from me.

  ‘Sammar, Sammar’: it was the neighbour’s daughter calling from across the wall. Sammar walked across the porch, down the steps towards the car-port. There was a tap and a sink on the floor with a raised cement edge. Standing on it she could talk to Nahla who was standing on the arms of a chair. Two days ago, in this same position, Nahla had lost her balance and fallen. She was undeterred though and now shook hands with Sammar and kissed her over the wall.

  ‘If you fall again, you’ll break and be in bandages at the wedding.’ Nahla was getting married next month. She was beautiful, with dimples and dark-coloured veils that never slipped off her hair, rectangular gauze falling at each side of her face, balancing somehow without the aid of a pin or a broach.

  ‘I’m not going to fall off. Last time I had these stupid sandals on and they made me slip’.

  ‘What are you wearing now?’

  ‘I’m barefooted. Bring the children and come over.’

  ‘I can’t. They’re swimming.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I got them this paddling pool when I came. Aunt Mahasen wanted me to get roller blades for Amir but I got the pool instead. I’ve been here a month and only got round to filling it up for them today. Come and see them. They look nice.’

  In a few minutes Nahla was admiring the paddling pool. She took off her sandals, lifted her skirt and waded in, adding to the children’s excitement. Amir leaned on the side and the water started spilling out.

  ‘Stop it, Amir. You’re getting rid of all the water.’ Nahla took hold of his arm and pulled him but he wriggled free, his ribs showing and his knees covered with scars from cuts and mosquito bites.

  Sammar got the hose to add to the water in the pool. She sprayed Amir and Dalia and they squealed and ran out of the pool across the garden, the ribbon in Dalia’s hair wet and falling over her shoulders. Hassan got water on his face and he started to splutter and gasp, his hair wet curls covering his brow.

  ‘I’m sorry, my love.’ Sammar put the hose down and wiped his bewildered face. He wasn’t crying and soon went back to his game of filling a cup with water and pouring it over the side of the pool.

  ‘Sammar, come in, the water’s nice. I don’t feel so hot now.’

  ‘No, I’m too old.’ She smiled and turned to spray the dust off the jasmine bushes that lined the border of the garden.

  ‘You’re not old,’ said Nahla. ‘Haven’t you seen Hanan?’ Nahla puffed out her cheeks and did an exaggerated waddle from one side of the pool to the other.

  Sammar laughed, looking to check that Dalia hadn’t noticed they were speaking about her mother. It was true though. Hanan did look matronly and walked as if she was still pregnant. ‘It’s just because of the baby,’ she said, putting down the hose to water the flower beds. ‘She’ll become slim soon especially now she is back to work.’ Hanan was a dentist.

  ‘She was like that even before the baby, you didn’t see her. No, you look years younger than her.’

  Sammar took off her glasses. The sunlight was startling white, ruthless. She wiped water off the lenses with the hem of her blouse. Compliments on her looks hardened her inside. What was the use?

  ‘How’s your mother now?’ she asked. Nahla’s mother was ill with malaria. Yesterday Sammar and Mahasen had gone to visit her.

  ‘Al hamdulillah, she’s up today. Lots better. But I’m afraid all the preparations for the wedding will tire her,’ she kicked the water, made little waves. ‘Our luck isn’t very good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The Syrian club is booked on the day we want.’

  ‘Try another club.’

  ‘The Syrian is the best, so we might change the date.’ Nahla bent down and started playing with the twins’ cups and beakers, showing them how to pour from one to the other.

  ‘I haven’t been to a wedding for ages,’ said Sammar. ‘Yours will be the first.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to weddings in Scotland?’

  ‘No.’

  Nahla looked at her with wide, kohl-rimmed eyes, ‘Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t know many people there. Sometimes I saw wedding couples outside churches having their photographs taken. They don’t get married like us at home. They get married in church or…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen them in films.’ Nahla didn’t seem interested in how people got married in other parts of the world, ‘I hope your aunt Mahasen will come to my wedding.’

  ‘I don’t know. Has she been going to weddings?’

  ‘No, not since Tarig,’ Nahla paused, ‘Allah, have mercy on him.’

  ‘Allah, have mercy on him,’ Sammar repeated. ‘Even if Aunt Mahasen doesn’t go to the party at the club she’ll come to the agid at your house.’

  Nahla stepped out of the pool splashing her sandals with water. Pretty ankles, painted toenails, all the preparations for a bride. Sammar was like that once, years ago, years ago before Scotland, before Tarig died.

  Here in this house, in this language and this place, were all the memories. All that had been taken away from her. A photograph of Tarig when she had walked into the house for the first time. Smiling, sitting back in a chair, at ease with everything. So young. So young and confident compared to her. He did not know her anymore. The young man in the photograph did not know the Sammar who had lived alone in Aberdeen. The photograph made her cry, tears coming from the fatigue of the journey, the strain of the past weeks in Egypt, the excitement of seeing Amir again, and he so cool, accepting her hugs and kisses as he would from the many visitors and relations who crossed his life. When she cried her aunt and Hanan started to cry. Hanan feeding the baby, sniffing into a tissue, Mahasen still and straight-backed, her tears falling without her face crumpling, without the indignity of sobbing. Only after they had cried together did the awkwardness of their meeting begin to break, the years she was away. Only then was it as if reaffirmed that she was who she was, Amir’s mother, Tarig’s widow coming home.

  She walked Nahla to the gate, then it was time to get the children out of the pool, take them indoors, give them showers. The bathroom was so hot that she dripped with sweat while they dripped with water. Soap and squeals. ‘You put soap in my eyes!’, screams, guilt, Hassan’s blood-shot accusing eye, his slippery arm beating against her skirt, ‘Bad Sammar, ugly Sammar.’

  Talcum powder and fresh clothes. ‘I’m not wearing this,’ Dalia folded her arms across her chest with all the authority of her mother.

  ‘Why not, it’s lovely. This is a lovely rabbit.’

  ‘It’s ugly.’

  ‘Amir, do you think it’s ugly?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘See, Amir thinks it’s lovely and Mama when she wakes up will think it’s lovely and Grandma Mahasen…’

  ‘I want to wear the red one.’

  ‘The red one is in the washing; it’s dirty.’

  ‘I want the red one.’

  ‘You can’t wear the red shirt. Wear the rabbit one and I’ll take you out with me and Amir this evening.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Sammar pulled the rabbit T-shirt over Dalia’s head. There was no resistance. The child pushed her arms through the sleeves and looked at Sammar expectantly.

  ‘We’re going to Uncle Waleed’s house.’

  Dalia frowned. She could not remember who Uncle Waleed was.

  ‘My brother,’ said Sammar. ‘Remember, they have a balcony with birds in a c
age.’ She smoothed Dalia’s eyebrows, ruffled by water and the neck of the T-shirt. ‘Let’s get out of this heat,’ she said and pulled the bathroom door open, glad to get out of the stuffiness into the coolness of the hall.

  The hall led to the sitting room, where the television and the big air cooler was. There was two beds along the wall and three old armchairs. There were stools for the children to sit on and a low circular coffee table made of light wood, which wobbled and swayed but still served as a dinner table, and for the homework Amir and Dalia did every afternoon. The house had another sitting room, the sallown as everyone called it. It was for formal guests, a lifeless room, not for everyday use. Sammar had received some of her friends there when they had come to welcome her back. She had sat with them conscious of a wedding photograph of her and Tarig, she as a bride looking ignorant and young. ‘Don’t you think it is better to take down that photograph from the sallown?’ she had asked her aunt and was answered with a look of suspicion, a quick no. And Mahasen must have complained to Hanan, for the next day Hanan said, ‘My mother still can’t get over it. Sammar, please, for Allah’s sake, don’t annoy her. He was her only son.’

  Her only son. It was like that from the day she had brought Tarig home, carried in an airplane, in a box. Her only son. The words on everyone’s lips, said in disbelief, Mahasen’s son died, Mahasen’s son died. Her only son. He left an orphan. Poor orphan. My heart is breaking over this orphan boy. My heart is breaking over Mahasen, her only son. It was like that from the day Sammar brought Tarig home from Aberdeen and she the one who was carrying failure, her life ripped, totally changed, losing aim, losing focus, while Mahasen and Hanan went on as before and Amir could not miss the father he could not remember.

  In the sitting room, her aunt was awake but the baby was still asleep on the bed between the wall and Mahasen’s back. In spite of the grief that had aged her aunt’s face, there was still an elegance about her, something refined in the way she sat and the way she talked. She was watching a video with the children. A cat chased a mouse on the screen, forever frustrated, forever unfulfilled. Sammar greeted her aunt and sat on one of the stools to comb Dalia’s hair. If she didn’t comb it and braid it now while it was wet, it would frizz up and be impossible to untangle. The wide-toothed comb was slippery in her hands. ‘Aw,’ said Dalia, her concentration still on the screen.

 

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