She was weak today. Because of last night’s dream and she had annoyed her aunt. She couldn’t remember clearly what she had done to annoy her aunt, to trigger all that came out of her. The cracks on the ceiling. The fan? The children? The children running around like devils, making a terrible noise, then after Hanan came and went, her aunt said things… Her aunt blamed her for Tarig’s death. That was bizarre. She wished that Hanan had been present or Waleed then she would have felt sane and safe, maybe not so frightened. They would have defended her. Even if they were silent out of respect for her aunt, she would have felt that they were on her side. Rae was on her side. He had told her that in the hospital when she showed him her aunt’s letter, the address on the envelope, Aberdeen, England. He said, you’ve won me to your side in any quarrel you have with your aunt. That was what he had said. She could remember it now. She could remember. The hospital and how the glass door of the entrance was difficult to push. The way he looked when he saw her. She could remember now. Smile, gaze up at the lady in the hooped skirt and the branches of the cedar tree.
It was a joke. You’ve won me to your side, Sammar, in any quarrel you have with your aunt. It was a joke about the address and she had laughed. Someone in the post office had crossed out England with red ink. She had shown him the envelope and he had held it in his hand. There was a plaster at the back of his hand from the intravenous amoxilyn. He had thought she looked nice. She was wearing her new coat, henna-coloured and toggles instead of buttons. It was warm in the ward, too warm, and she had wanted to take the coat off but she had felt too shy. When he told her he loved her it was strange because no one had told her these words in English before. And it was not like in a film, it was just like the way he spoke, normal. If now she could have anything she wanted, she would want to look at photographs of him when he was young, black and white photographs and early coloured ones. His hair and the clothes he wore. She would like to look at his photographs and ask him questions. He would be more interested in her than in the photographs, answering her questions reluctantly, not so keen as she was to talk about the past. It was because of the way he looked at her that things came to a head, the awkwardness she felt, uneasy with everything. If they were not a man and a woman, if they were pure friends, if all that was between them was clear air, she would have been patient when she asked him if he believed and he replied, ‘I am not sure.’
There were people who drew others to Islam. People with deep faith, the type who slept little at night, had an energy in them. They did it for no personal gain, no worldly reason. They did it for Allah’s sake. She had heard stories of people changing: prisoners in Brixton, a German diplomat, an American with ancestors from Greece. Someone influencing someone, with no ego involved. And she, when she spoke to Rae, wanting this and that, full of it; wanting to drive with him to Stirling, to cook for him, to be settled, to be someone’s wife.
She had never, not once, prayed that he would become a Muslim for his own sake, for his own good. It had always been for herself, her need to get married again, not be alone. If she could rise above that, if she would clean her intentions. He had been kind to her and she had given him nothing in return. She would do it now from far away without him ever knowing. It would be her secret. If it took ten months or ten years or twenty or more.
20
This is my first Ramadan since I came back,’ she said, in answer to Waleed’s question.
‘Yes, you weren’t with us last year,’ said Mahasen as she reached for another piece of bread. Sammar had cut the loaves into small portions. Such thin loaves these days, shrinking while their price threatened to go up.
The three of them were eating in the garden. No electric lights competed with the moon, no garden lights. The candle Sammar had brought from inside was unnecessary and she blew it out.
It was the middle of the month of Ramadan and the moon was full. From tomorrow it would shrink and lose itself. When the new crescent appeared it would be the end of Ramadan. The end of fasting, visitors saying Eid Mubarak and new clothes for the children.
It was unusual to be alone with Waleed and Mahasen, without anyone else, without the children. Hanan and her family were with their in-laws and they had taken Amir with them. It was supposed to be only Sammar and Mahasen breaking the fast together but at the first words of the sunset azan, before they had time to eat any dates, the door bell rang. When Sammar dragged open the garden gate, it was Waleed. She had been so pleased to see him and surprised, that she hugged him and he said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘What’s the matter with you coming alone without your wife?’
‘She’s eating with her parents,’ he said and nothing more. Sammar didn’t ask him why he had not gone too, it became busy with the three of them breaking their fast, dates and kerkedeh, her aunt saying to Waleed, ‘If we knew you were coming we would have made grapefruit juice.’
After Sammar put the jug of kerkedeh back in the fridge and threw away the date stones, they prayed. They prayed together with Waleed leading and Sammar and Mahasen standing close, their arms and clothes touching. Mahasen’s movements were slow when she bent down, knelt down and put her forehead on the mat. Sammar felt Waleed deliberately pausing, slowing his pace so that Mahasen could keep up. When they finished praying there was a power cut. The sudden silence of the air cooler, the sudden loss of the lights, the fan slowing down. In the stillness and faint glow of sunset, Sammar counted on her fingers twenty-seven times, There is no god but Allah and I seek forgiveness from Allah for my wrongs and for believing men and believing women…
Her aunt’s voice was loud in the room, ‘Allah curse them and their day, is this a time for this?’ ‘Them’ was the electricity company and the government, the two inseparable to Mahasen. She went on, ‘They’ve made us hate life…’ The room without the air cooler was gradually getting warm but they could still see each other without the lights.
Waleed stood up and folded his prayer mat. ‘Aunt, the supplication of the one who is fasting is granted,’ he smiled. ‘The electricity company must be in a bad way by now.’
‘The whole neighborhood is cursing them,’ said Mahasen standing up.
Sammar took the mat from Waleed and picked up hers and her aunt’s off the floor. It seemed to her funny if the whole neighborhood was really cursing the company, all that energy rising up in the sunset air. Some people were so serious about power cuts. Like her aunt, getting angry to the core.
‘Let’s eat outside in the garden, Aunt,’ she said and Mahasen sighed and nodded in agreement. Since that bad day when Mahasen had said, ‘You killed my son,’ the relationship between them had strangely improved, mellowed. It was as if Mahasen had said the worst she could possibly say and there were no more accusations after that.
In the kitchen, by candlelight, Sammar heated the food, her shadow swinging huge against the walls. The kitchen was hot and airless without the fan and she could hear the cockroaches stir and dart across the floor. But once they were seated outside, cushions on the chairs, a tablecloth on the wobbly table and there was a breeze, the food tasted good and it felt better than indoors. Much better than a normal day eating indoors with the air cooler and all the lights.
‘Last Ramadan,’ said Mahasen, scooping up stew with her piece of bread, ‘not once did the electricity cut. Things are supposed to get better and they just get worse.’
Waleed did not speak much when he was eating. Grunts of agreement with his aunt and, ‘Pour me water, Sammar.’ He looked tired, she thought, not just the normal tiredness from fasting. He might have quarrelled with his wife and that was why he had not gone with her to her parents. Instead he was here with them today and Mahasen was being tactful, not asking questions, glad to see him. Mahasen could be surprisingly tactful when it suited her. Waleed’s presence livened her up. If it had been only her and Sammar, she would have been silent and withdrawn.
When they finished eating, Sammar carried the dishes to the kitchen and made tea. She pu
t mint leaves in the pot, topped the sugar bowl with sugar. She put the candle on the tray to make her way back outside, walked from the kitchen to the hall to the sitting room, holding the tray with one hand and opening the door to the porch with another, closing it behind her so that stray cats would not creep in. On the porch there was the grey light of the moon on the pots of cactus plants and dark bougainvillea. She could blow out the candle now, walk down the steps of the porch to the voices of her aunt and Waleed.
The peace of sitting with them and not talking, not even listening while they talked. Waleed expansive now after the meal and with a glass of tea in his hand, making Mahasen smile. This good feeling was because of Ramadan, because of eating and drinking after fasting all day when the sun was too hot and it was thirst more than hunger, and not wanting to speak to anyone, economising words, saying what was only necessary, what was only enough to get by. A whole month free like that and looking up at the round moon, knowing that the month was half way through, two weeks and the focus would be gone. The closeness to the depth would be gone.
Tonight, like last night and every night until the end of Ramadan, she would wake up hours before dawn, pray once and again, read the Qur’an. This was the time of night when prayers were answered, this was the time of year…
‘Sammar, isn’t Nahla’s fiancé working for Abu Dhabi’s electricity company?’ asked her aunt.
‘Qatar, not Abu Dhabi. He’s in Doha now.’
‘So he managed to get a good job after all.’ There was admiration in Waleed’s voice, envy under control.
‘Yes, after fuss and quarrels and they had to postpone the wedding twice,’ said Mahasen. ‘That girl was supposed to get married months ago and now she’s still sitting.’
‘Working for Qatar’s national electricity company is a very good job,’ said Waleed. ‘How did he get it?’
‘Someone who knew someone,’ said Sammar.
‘Of course someone knew someone,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘but who?’
‘I don’t know. I could find out for you.’
‘I was just asking,’ he said dismissively and finished his glass of tea.
‘They’re not going to get married until December,’ said Sammar addressing her aunt. ‘Nahla told me yesterday. They have the visa to sort out and she has re-sits. She wants to graduate before she goes there.’
‘That’s better for her. Qatar is good, she can get a good job there.’ Mahasen said vehemently. She wanted everyone to get wonderful jobs, make good money, rise up in the world.
‘I have a friend in Qatar,’ said Sammar, ‘a Pakistani woman I knew in Aberdeen. Her husband works in oil and he got transferred there. She likes it very much.’ Yasmin was in Doha now, with her daughter and Nazim. Yasmin was not even in the same country as Rae anymore. Sammar could no longer write and ask her for news of him. When the option had been open to her, she hadn’t, but now it still counted as a loss and she thought, ‘I have no link with him now, in terms of people. Who do I know who knows him? Diane? Fareed? Neither of them can I ever have the courage to write to.’
But there were other links, a dream, an awareness that would suddenly come and stay with her. One day in the garden with the children, her feet bare and wearing another of Hanan’s unwanted dresses, she had stood admiring the mud of the flower beds, under the jasmine bushes, the way it was smooth and dimpled. She had pressed her toe into the mud, made a little depression, and then she had knelt down and touched the mud with her fingers. It was like dough or plasticine and yet her fingers stayed clean when she looked at them. Clean, heavy mud. He was like that, heavy inside, not like other people. It was there with him when he came into a room and when he paused in the middle of saying something, paused before he answered a question she had asked.
Another time, opening the fridge to get her aunt a glass of water. The sudden chill when she opened the fridge door on a day that was too hot; the blue cold, frost and it was Aberdeen where he was, his jacket and walking in grey against the direction of the wind. White seagulls and a pale sea, until her aunt behind her shouted, ‘What are you doing standing like an idiot with the door of the fridge wide open. Everything will melt.’
It was like that at first, the moment in the garden and the moment in front of the fridge, vivid, sudden. But the more she prayed for him, the more these moments came until they were there all the time, not only thoughts, not only memories but an awareness that stayed.
Waleed talked to her aunt and the moon was still unchallenged by the lights of the city below. Here was a gift for her, clearer than water, clearer than the sky…
Rae saying, ‘I dreamt of you, the same dream. I am climbing stairs, steep stone steps, stairways that are damp and narrow. At the top I open a door and you are there.’
‘Am I happy to see you?’
‘You are… very much. You give me a glass of milk to drink.’
‘Milk, how childish of me!’
‘But when I drink it something happens. It can only happen in a dream… Pearls come out of my mouth, they fall in my hand. I hold them out and show them to you.’
21
December. A cool wind blowing, carrying dust, and everyone’s skin was chapped. She thought, ‘I love this time of year,’ and looked out of the car window at the trees that lined Nile Avenue: thick trunks and behind them the gushing Blue Nile. She looked, she took off her sunglasses and looked until her heart hurt.
Nahla was driving. They had gone to the video shop and then Nahla had picked up her wedding cards from the printers. The cards were on Sammar’s lap, stiff white envelopes in packets.
‘Why are you quiet today?’ asked Nahla.
‘Just looking around. Do you think you will miss Khartoum when you go to Qatar?’ At the end of December Nahla was going to get married and go away, move to Doha where Yasmin was, with her daughter and Nazim. If she ever could afford it, Sammar would go and visit them both.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nahla. ‘Not at first, maybe later. Now we just want to get away, we’ve been delayed so much.’
‘Insha’ Allah everything will go alright this time.’
‘Sometimes I’m afraid,’ said Nahla, changing gears, ‘sometimes I think someone’s going to die either from my family or his. Some senile uncle or grandmother or aunt is going to drop dead any minute and ruin everything.’
Sammar laughed. ‘Just say insha’ Allah something like that won’t happen.’ There was a boat on the river, its sails beige and brown, there were farmers on the opposite bank, bent over with hoes. The sun hit the moving water and made its surface light, but underneath it was blue after blue.
Last December in another place, there was no sun. Christmas, and Rae was in Edinburgh with his ex-wife’s parents, presents wrapped up for Mhairi. Did he still do the same things? Drive around Scotland listening to Bob Marley, Ambush in the night, all guns aiming at me… Did he mark students’ essays, watch CNN and VH-1, read lots of books. Sometimes say, ‘I’m an old-fashioned socialist,’ sometimes say, ‘… behind the Western propaganda of Islamic fundamentalism’. A year in his world might be shorter than in hers, not so many changes. Here new laws were passed, prices went up, the old died easy and children grew and changed. Did he still use the same Ventolin inhaler? Did he teach his students that the difference between Western liberalism and Islam was that the centre of one was freedom and the other justice? She didn’t know what he was doing, this moment, this day but it didn’t matter, he was near like in the dream. A dream of night on the porch, no moonlight and she was a child playing, square tiles, hopscotch. Many people were on the porch, adults standing talking in the dark and he was one of them. She saw him and it did not surprise her that he was here in this continent, in this country, on her aunt’s porch. She was content to play, her hands on the wooden rails, skipping down the steps, the lines of the tiles. She lost sight of him and forgot him like children forget, her mind on the steps until he put his hand on her shoulder and when she looked up, he smiled and said, ‘Did y
ou think I wouldn’t find you in the dark?’ She did not say anything, she became perfect and smooth like water from the garden hose.
What kept her going day after day: he would become a Muslim before he died. It was not too much to want, not too much to pray for. They would meet in Paradise and nothing would go wrong there, nothing at all.
Yesterday she and Mahasen had gone to visit Tarig’s grave. Driving out of the city to where there were no buildings blocking the wind. Travelling and finding flat ground, sand, knowing Tarig was there. Greeting him and all the others. Her aunt sat down on the ground, not moving, the Qur’an unopened on her lap. They found dirty things on the graves, things that the wind had carried through the barbed-wire fence. Orange peel, an empty cigarette carton, the remnant of a nest. A Miranda bottle top, indented and blurred. It grazed Sammar’s hand when she picked it up. She started to clear the ground, on her hands and knees reaching out, careful, she must not step over the people lying underneath. ‘We should get that keeper fired, he should be doing this,’ she said to her aunt but got no answer. She was afraid of finding worse than the rubbish she was now collecting: the signs of stray dogs. The keeper’s job was to keep stray dogs out, keep the cemetery clean, protect the graves from thieves. But he was not, thought Sammar, as a keeper of graves should be. He did not have clean white hair, a prayer mat, a melodious voice which recited the Qur’an. Instead he was young and gangly with broken teeth and a smell of hashish. Now as she gathered the rubbish, he stood leaning on the wall of his room, leering at her from far away. It made her angry and she went up to him and said, ‘If I find dog-shit, you will have to start looking for another job.’ He whined some excuse and skulked into the darkness of his room. She shouted after him, ‘I am not joking, you know.’ She felt safe with all the graves around her, all the truth. Cleaning up: a greasy newspaper page with the familiar face of a politician, a razor blade, some leaves. When she finished, she washed from the tap near the keeper’s room, made wudu again. She sat next to her aunt, put her arms around her, kissed her cheek. Then she took from her the Qur’an and started to read, word after word, verse after verse, page after page.
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