‘Sorry, pretty one. I’m nearly finished. Do you want two braids or one?’
‘Two.’
Mahasen said, ‘Two suits her better. Tighten them, last time you made them too loose and they didn’t last.’
Sammar nodded, parted Dalia’s hair in the middle and started to braid it. She could feel her aunt watching her. If she turned away now from Dalia’s hair and looked up at her aunt, she would meet her eyes, see the expression on them. Something like disappointment or disapproval, a kind of contempt. Many times when she met her aunt’s eyes she found that contempt when once, years ago, there was approval and love. ‘I love your mother more than I love you,’ she used to tease Tarig years ago. Another time, before the lines of defeat on Mahasen’s face, her faded eyes.
Sammar concentrated on Dalia’s hair and did not look up at her aunt. Even though the air cooler was blowing she still felt hot. She lifted her arm and with the sleeve of her blouse wiped the sweat that fell over her forehead.
‘Why are you so dishevelled today?’ Her aunt’s voice different than the chatter and music of the cartoon show.
‘I was with the children in the garden. They played with the pool. Nahla came over.’ Politeness required that she looked up. She lowered her eyes again.
‘Insha’ Allah they’re not going to have the wedding party in the house. Loud music and crowding the whole street.’
‘No, she told me they’re booking the Syrian club.’ She was going to add that Nahla was hoping Mahasen would attend, but decided against it.
‘I have no appetite for weddings or parties,’ her aunt said as if she could read her mind, ‘from the day they buried the deceased, I have no appetite for such things. Hanan goes, reluctantly, but it’s her duty to go. It’s expected of her.’
‘Yes,’ said Sammar. She did not like her aunt saying ‘the deceased’, never referring to Tarig by his name. It made him sound as if he was old when in reality he was young, forever young. Nor did she believe that Hanan went to parties ‘reluctantly’. But she kept silent as she finished Dalia’s hair and did not contradict her aunt, did not look up. Over the hum of the air cooler, over the music of the cartoon show, she heard from a distance the sunset azan. She had missed it in Aberdeen, felt its absence, sometimes fancied she heard it in the rumble of the central-heating pipes, in a sound coming from a neighbouring flat. It now came as a relief, the reminder that there was something bigger than all this, above everything. Allah akbar. Allah akbar…
She went to make wudu and had to tidy the bathroom first because the children had splashed the walls with water, thrown towels and wet clothes on the floor. In the bedroom she put on the ceiling fan and picked up the prayer mat that lay folded on her aunt’s bed. Sammar’s clothes and belongings were in a separate room which had locked cupboards and crates of Miranda, sacks of sugar and rice, but she slept in this room with her aunt and Amir. Electricity was too expensive to keep more than one air cooler going throughout the night. That was why they had to share the room, share the one air cooler. Sometimes there were power cuts during the night and the sudden silence of the air cooler would wake Sammar up. She would turn its switch to Off, because sometimes the surge of the power coming back was too strong and likely to damage the motor. Sometimes she fell asleep again in the remaining coolness of the room but minutes later the heat would wake her up. She would open all the windows but sometimes not even a breeze would enter the stifling room. Amir would toss and push the cover away from him, her aunt would sit up and lean against the wall, sighing curses at the government, the electricity company, life itself. And Sammar would get up and go outside, pace up and down the star-lit porch, unsteady from lack of sleep, stunned by the laden sky. In the past everyone had slept outdoors on the roof, wide-open space, a freshness even on the hottest nights. But Hanan had built her flat on the roof. ‘No one, Sammar,’ she said, ‘sleeps outdoors anymore.’ Because of mosquitoes bred by open drains and fumes of diesel rising during power cuts from bright houses that could afford generators.
After she prayed she went out to the garden. It was different without the children and she did not need her sunglasses now. She could have all the colours that she had missed in Aberdeen; yellow and brown, and everything else vivid. Flat land and a peaceful emptiness, space, no grey, no wind, no lines of granite. The sun had rimmed the houses down the road and left behind layers of pink and orange. In the east there was the confident blue of night, a flimsy moon, one, two, now three stars. Still the birds rushed to the trees, screeching, rustling the leaves, noisier than the children had been earlier on. On the other side of the road, the nightwatchman of the cooperative was serving his friends tea. They sat on the pavement on a large palm-fibre mat; prayer beads and laughter. Coals glowed, a kettle of water boiled and let off steam in the twilight. Her homesickness was cured, her eyes cooled by what she saw, the colours and how the sky was so much bigger than the world below, transparent. She heard the sound of a bell as the single, silly light of a bicycle lamp jerked down the pitted road. A cat cried out like a baby and everything without the wind had a smell; sand and jasmine bushes, torn eucalyptus leaves.
17
Her brother Waleed lived with his wife in a second-floor flat in one of the newer apartment blocks. They were newly married and both worked for the same architecture office. Sammar parked Hanan’s car under the dim yellow glow of a street lamp. The driving lessons she had taken in Aberdeen had come in useful after all, though at first the change to driving on the right was difficult. Amir and Dalia opened the car door and jumped out. ‘If we were in Scotland,’ she said to them as they crossed the road, ‘you would have had to sit in the back and wear seat-belts.’ What she said made no sense to them. They had never seen anyone wear a seat-belt; they could not imagine a place far away called Scotland.
The road they walked across was pitted with potholes, strewn with rubble from the new buildings. Bricks and scattering of cement were everywhere, the playthings of children who lived on the streets. There was a small canteen next to the building and some of the children were crowded near the entrance. They were in torn stained clothes, bare feet covered with dust up to their ankles. They wanted lollipops and gum, and were laughing and jostling each other, their teeth bright white in the poorly lit street. And though Sammar had come back from rain and a rich city of the First World, the meagerness of this place was familiar. Shabbiness as if the sun had burned away the lushness of life and left no room for luxuries or lies.
As soon as Waleed opened the door for them, the power failed. There was much confusion in the sudden dark with Amir jumping about in a state of great excitement, laughing and calling Dalia names because she was afraid. There was a fumble for candles and a torch, attempts to soothe Dalia, a joke about Sammar cutting off the electricity, bringing in the darkness with her.
Waleed led them through the flat and out to sit on the balcony. This pleased the children who started to pester the pigeons asleep inside a large crate caged with mesh. They stuck their fingers through the holes in the mesh, trying to reach the pigeons. All the neighbouring houses and roads were in darkness, proof of a major power cut and not a fault in the building. Only far away shone the lights of the airport, yellow and red. In the canteen below, someone lit a hurricane lamp and a shout in the street was answered by laughter. There was enough light from the moon and the stars for Sammar to see her brother clearly, the jellabia he was wearing, the large gap between his teeth when he smiled. He said that his wife had gone to her German lesson.
‘Why is she learning German?’ asked Sammar, her mind on the stars, that they were innumerable, some further away than others. How could this be the same sky as the one in Aberdeen?
‘Do you think I know?’ he said. ‘She wants to learn German, what can I say, don’t learn German?’
‘I thought she was doing computing in Souk Two.’ Everyone could look up at this sky, no admission fee, no money. In Scotland there were shops for everything, selling everything and no one could bu
y a sky like that.
‘She was, but there weren’t enough computers to go round and she didn’t get much chance on the machines. She got the notes and she can use the one we have here…’
‘Actually I want to use your computer today,’ Sammar said, ‘I need to write a letter, two really. But now there’s no electricity.’ She turned to Amir and Dalia, ‘Stop it you two, leave the birds alone.’ Amir banged the mesh with his palms. One of the pigeons stirred but did not wake up.
‘Insha’ Allah it will come back. Yesterday it was out at this time and back after fifteen minutes.’
‘That would be good.’ She wondered why she did not care so much about the power cut, why she was not annoyed with this obstacle. Usually she liked getting things over with once she had reached a decision. Perhaps it was because of the sky and the breeze, dewy and clear. Or the feeling all around of surrender. The stars had mocked the lights of the earth and won.
‘What were you doing before we came?’ she asked.
‘Watching a video.’ He scratched his head and yawned.
‘Remember in the past we used to go to the cinema a lot.’
‘No one goes to the cinema now.’ By ‘no one’ he meant his circle of friends and family.
‘It’s a shame.’
‘Things change. You want to go away and come back and find everything the same?’
She shrugged in the dark. There was always a tone in his voice that seemed to her harsh. But she knew he didn’t mean it. She was the one who had become too sensitive. She was the one who had been away for too long.
‘I want to get away from here,’ he suddenly said. ‘I’m fed up. I’m truly fed up.’
‘Of what?’ her voice was light as if she wanted to dilute his resentment.
‘Not going forward. Things just aren’t moving ahead.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘The Gulf or Saudi Arabia. The Gulf preferably.’
‘Go.’
He laughed, ‘Don’t be stupid. Everyone wants to go there and make themselves a bit of money; it’s not so easy.’ He was genuinely amused, shaking his head, looking into her eyes, ‘You have no idea, do you? You’re blank.’
She started to laugh too and looked up at the stars, ‘I’m blank.’
Dalia came and leaned close to her, whispered in her ears, ‘I want to pee.’
The bathroom was hot and airless. In the mirror over the sink, Sammar saw her face by candlelight. How long would it be before she started to look as she should look, a dried-out widow, a faded figure in the background?
‘I’ve finished,’ Dalia said. Sammar had to yank the toilet handle three times before it finally flushed. Dalia’s anxious face settled into a smile and Sammar noticed that the cistern did not fill up again with water. ‘It must be that when the electricity cuts, the pump that lifts the water up to this floor stops working. Let’s try the taps.’
Dalia twisted the tap. A few drops spluttered out noisily and then there was nothing.
‘They’ve got a pail…’ said Sammar. There was a pail full of water in the bathtub and a metal pitcher. She filled the pitcher with water and Dalia washed her hands in the sink, the white bar of soap large and awkward in her hand.
They walked back carefully through the darkness, Sammar carrying the candle, to the coolness of the balcony. In their absence Waleed had brought a tray of Pepsi bottles and glasses with ice, plates of peanuts and dates.
Amir and Dalia were soothed by the drinks, made silent by the peanuts. Sammar shook the ice in her glass. It was one of the things she had missed in Aberdeen, ice cubes in drinks, the feel of a cool drink in the heat.
‘So what do you think of this dark country of ours?’ Waleed asked putting his hands behind his head. He meant the power cut.
‘Beautiful.’
He laughed. His laugh was loud and contagious.
‘At last you’ve gone mad,’ he said in between his laughter.
She smiled and said slowly, ‘I swear by Allah Almighty, I see it more beautiful than anywhere else.’ Because she had mentioned Allah her heart glowed and because she spoke the truth.
‘I’ll give you a couple more weeks,’ he said, ‘you’ll take Amir and run back.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m not going to have a job to go back to. I’m here today to write my letter of resignation and send it off.’
‘Why are you going to do that?’ It was almost a yell. He sat forward in his chair, intense now, no longer laughing, ‘You must never do that. Do you think jobs are lying about waiting for people to pick them up? Do you think you’re going to find a job here?’
‘I’ll just have to try, Insha’ Allah I’ll find something.’ She flicked away some peanut husks that had fallen on her lap and wished she hadn’t told him. If his wife had been at home, he would have been more subdued, not so hyped-up. Now he went on and on.
‘What sort of work do you think you’re going to find?’
‘Maybe the “Erasing Illiteracy” programme…’
‘The pay will be nothing, nothing you could live on, you’ll just regret it. And you’ve never taught before…’
‘They’re desperate for people, they won’t fuss…’
‘Yes, they won’t fuss, but why, when you have a very good job already in Aberdeen, why give up a chance?’
‘I was supposed to be back at work last week. They’re probably wondering what happened to me.’
‘That’s not a reason to resign.’
She looked into her glass, melting ice, dark-golden Pepsi, ‘Living there wasn’t a great success.’
‘How couldn’t it be? You’re so fortunate. A good job, a civilised place. None of there power cuts and strikes and what not… What’s the matter with you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just like that.’
‘Just like that.’ There was guilt in her voice, a kind of stubbornness. She could see the irony of the situation. She had the option of a life abroad and wanted to stay, while he was keen to leave and couldn’t.
She said as if to explain, ‘Being exiled isn’t very nice.’
‘If you took Amir with you, you wouldn’t be lonely and it would be good for him. You don’t know how schools here have become.’
‘I wouldn’t be able to handle him on my own.’ She wished she could explain how desolate it would be, her and Amir alone in Aberdeen. The long winter evenings, the small room they would live in, just them, the two of them, face to face, claustrophobic.
‘That’s rubbish. Here you’re handling Amir and Hanan’s children. Didn’t Aunt Mahasen fire the maid as soon as you came back?’
Sammar laughed relieved at the turn in the conversation. Waleed smiled reluctantly. She said, ‘No one fired anyone. The woman left, she just disappeared a week after I came back. And Aunt Mahasen hasn’t been able to find anyone else.’
‘Oh really,’ he said with sarcasm, ‘Aunt Mahasen and Hanan put together couldn’t find anyone.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said, ‘I truly don’t mind.’ The housework and Hanan’s children kept her busy, tired her out so that there was no time to dream at night.
‘How has she been with you?’ His voice was cautious now, the question tentative. If his wife had been at home he would not have asked.
‘Fine.’
‘You know that she kicked ‘Am Ahmed out of the house?’
Sammar shook her head, bit her lip. It was all her fault. He didn’t deserve that. She wondered how many people knew the whole story, almost a scandal. The elderly religious man, already married with two wives, setting his eyes on a young widow, her husband not yet a year in his grave. And the foolish girl did not turn him down straightaway. Instead she said she would consider it. An educated girl like her!
‘What happened?’ Her voice was quiet with reluctance, as if she didn’t really want to know.
Waleed shifted in his chair. ‘He came for a visit. I was there. It was the Eid, some time after you left. We were all just sitting
there normally then Mahasen suddenly turned on him and shouted, don’t ever set foot in my house again; Tarig’s wife will never be yours… And on and on.’
‘Oh my Lord.’
‘Yes, it was unpleasant. We went and apologised to him later, me and Hanan. He was staying with his brother in Safia.’
‘Hanan never told me about this.’
‘There’s no need. The whole matter is finished. I think he doesn’t come to Khartoum so often now. Business isn’t what it used to be. I’ve lost touch with him. He was cordial enough with us when we went to apologise, but things can’t be the same again.’
‘He’s a good person,’ she said. He was a life-long family friend. When she was young, he used to lift her up to sit on top of his van, he used to give her sweets. She was never afraid of him.
‘What he did was an exaggeration.’ Waleed’s tone was dismissive.
She didn’t say anything and he went on, ‘I was just concerned with how Aunt Mahasen is with you. If you’re comfortable living with her. Especially if you’re insisting on not going back to Aberdeen.’
‘She never speaks about what happened. As for living with her, Amir and I both have a share in the house. It’s our right to be there.’ At one time the house was shared between Mahasen, Hanan and Tarig. After Tarig’s death Mahasen’s share increased, Hanan’s remained the same, Sammar inherited a share and to Amir went the biggest portion. The biggest in comparison to the others, but it was less than half of the house. None of them had the cash to buy the others out. If they sold the house and divided the money, it would not be enough for each of them to get a decent place elsewhere.
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