They arrived in Sudan together. He had omitted to tell his family of his marriage and presented them with a pregnant wife. The muted celebratory homecoming was adjusted to include a Sudanese wedding. My mother objected to being decked out as a Sudanese bride. She hated the henna, the sandalwood and the gold. She wouldn’t fit in. What did she imagine? What were her expectations? I know because she spoke about them; they remained vivid in her mind, for years, because they never materialised.
My father, despite his PhD from the Soviet Union, against all the odds of his generation, struggled to earn a living. This was the reason their marriage failed. Nothing else. Their quarrels were in tangent to this and so in the sporadic times of plenty, there were happy moments, humdrum silent days, stretches of peace. The three of us slept outdoors in the front yard, just below the high wall, my father dragging out the three beds and spraying water on the red bricks of the ground. Thinking I was fast asleep, they would go indoors to their bedroom and then later come out to lie down with their cigarettes and talk in low voices. I liked dozing to the sound of their voices, the pink glow of the cigarettes in the dark. They wouldn’t talk finances at that time of night; instead they spoke about films they’d seen or exchanged news of friends and neighbours. My father, for all his seriousness, enjoyed satire and rumours.
He made a mistake when he prohibited her from working as a physiotherapist. He should have defied convention but maybe the foreign marriage itself was his limit. It would shame me, he said to her, if you touched other men’s backs and shoulders and legs. He did not object to the cake business but my mother registered the curtailment of a vocation she loved. She held it against him, drawing it out in subsequent quarrels, making digs whenever she could. Ironically, when she married Tony and moved to Scotland, her Russian qualifications also hindered her ability to work. But by then, she cared less and felt too old to retrain. By then, even without a divorce settlement from my father, she was content with coffee mornings and shopping, and crucially, Tony was earning enough.
It was not through the cakes that my mother first met Tony. But he ordered a pineapple upside down so that he would see her again. I sat in the car while she rang the doorbell of his villa and went in. The reason I remembered that day was that his was the only villa in which the railing running over the front wall was shaped in letters from the English alphabet. It was as if the villa had at one time been a nursery. For a time I enjoyed looking at the letters while sitting in the front seat, then the back seat, then the driver’s seat until I got hot and bored. I hooted the horn and felt foolish when the few people walking down the street stared at me. At last I got out of the car and rang the bell. Instead of yelling at me, my mother came out animated and smiling. To placate me she bought me a Pasgianos from the corner store. The bottle was warm and I drank it all in one go.
Before the baking, when I should have been in nursery school but I wasn’t, my mother used to lie in bed during the day and read novels in order to improve her English. The bed was in the sitting room because we didn’t have proper furniture. It was something that annoyed her but my father said, so what, very few Sudanese had chairs and sofas in their sitting room, just string cots pushed against the wall. Aunty Grusha and Yasha had a dining table and everything in their house was neat and modern. But we were different; we were unlucky because my father was unlucky. He was on the wrong side of the government and the wrong side of the market. So my mother would lie down in that sunny sitting room, the fan spinning above us while I played on the floor with a jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle was of a scene in Bambi and some of the pieces were missing. It didn’t matter to me, though, because I knew which pieces were missing and I worked around these absences. The sand of our cement floor poked up in between the greenery of a European forest but Bambi and his mother were whole.
Once I looked up from the puzzle and stared at the cover of the book my mother was reading. The large capital letters in green and orange nestling close together and the little picture at the bottom that was hidden by her fingers. I was happy that she was settled in one place. I could work on my puzzle and then look up to catch her turning a page or circling her ankle as it rested on top of her knee. Her toenails were the exact colour of Little Red Riding’s hood, another jigsaw I had. I liked the way my mother’s hair fell over the pillow. She had yellow shoulder-length hair, but near her neck the hair was darker. And her eyebrows too, which she plucked diligently, were darker. My own hair was different – it was like my father’s even though I was a girl and it should have been like hers; instead it was a mistake, a bush to touch and in photographs, a cloud. Like other white mothers with black daughters, my mother had no clue how to deal with it. It left her bewildered and helpless, it made her feel incompetent.
I was searching for the piece of Bambi’s eyes which was central to the whole jigsaw when I noticed a movement and saw that my mother had raised one knee and hugged it to herself. The dress she was wearing slipped and her thighs were white and smooth all the way to her grey underpants. Milky white, not like her face and arms, which were regularly touched by the sun. A pressure rose in my chest but also a glow as if I was wearing a golden necklace that weighed too much. Even though I was with her, even though I could move towards her for a cuddle and a kiss, I was not like her and might never be, I was in another place, lonely because she would never join me. I stood up and walked to the bed. With my whole hand, I pinched her inner thigh as hard as I could, until she cried out and dropped the book and scolded me – but she was laughing now and tickling me, tickling my stomach, feet and armpits until I was squealing. When I burst into tears, she thought that it was because I had laughed too much.
One day my mother wanted to go and see a film at the cinema but my father didn’t. They argued about it and instead my mother went with Grusha and her husband. I didn’t like that: to stay a whole long evening with my father all by ourselves. He didn’t speak to me. There was a power cut so we sat in the moonlit garden. He with his drink and radio and I with nothing to do but look at our tall metal door and will my mother to walk through it. There was talk coming from the radio and military music among the static. My father didn’t walk indoors to the bathroom. Instead he stood up and peed into the flower bed. This upset me and he laughed, saying it was good for the plants. He gave me a sip of his drink and it tasted like perfume. I didn’t understand what the radio was announcing but it couldn’t have been anything cheerful because he became sullen again. It was as if I could read his thoughts and this made me anxious. I wanted to help him but at the same time I wanted to move away. I wanted to be her daughter, not his. Yet I empathised with him, I knew that he was uneasy about my mother and this, in turn, made me worry that she would not come back from the cinema. I went and stood by the door, leaning on the warm black metal, aching to run out and search for her. Years later, when Tony appeared on the scene, I spent many such evenings alone with my father. We never spoke about her but she was the tension between us, the new meaning of shame, a restrained lurid excitement. I felt that I was her accomplice because that metal alphabet on the walls of Tony’s villa beckoned me to a better life, the first rung on the ladder of opportunity, and my father was the one we both kicked away.
These dips into the past guzzled time. Three cupcakes for lunch and I drank my last mug of tea without sugar and milk. More people were coming into the café carrying their Christmas shopping; I should leave to make room for them to sit. Instead I looked out of the window and saw the girl in hijab who had come with Oz to my talk on Monday. She was crossing the street with the calmest of expressions. Most likely she had not heard yet about Oz’s arrest. The belt of her coat was undone and her purple Uggs looked like they were brand new. She saw me and smiled a little, like there were no hard feelings between us, like there could be a beginning. Behind her two bearded men walked in the same direction. This was a higher than usual rate of Muslim sighting for our small town. It was Friday of course and they were heading to the mosque. I thought of Oz missing this
prayer and of Malak praying for his release.
On the way out of the café, I threw the pro-life leaflet into the bin. A friend once said to me, ‘You’re not the first or last woman to have had an abortion. Get over it.’ But I was a Sudanese woman or at least, when I learnt the facts of life, I was preparing to be one. No matter how much I changed when I came to Britain, changed my behaviour and my thoughts, there would be layers of me, pockets, membranes and films that would carry these other values and that other guilt.
The thought of guilt led me back to Oz. What if he wasn’t innocent? How could I be sure of anything? Sit on the fence and be neither this nor that, believe in everything, believe in nothing. Know only excess and hunger. Too much sugar in my blood and a need for a roof over my head. The repairs to my flat were likely to take weeks, delays because of Christmas, delays because it was winter. Until then I would be a nomad, living in temporary accommodation and on the weekends with Tony or friends. The afternoon sun was hidden behind more snow clouds. It was time for me to head back to the university.
Iain walked into my office and closed the door behind him. He said, ‘I’ve just had two officers in my room interviewing me about Oz Raja.’
Why Iain? Because even though he was head of the department, he was Oz’s tutor too. I should have expected this.
‘What did they want?’ I wanted my voice to sound casual. Business as usual, as if this was another administrative issue, serious and urgent, but not out of the ordinary. I noticed that Iain’s hair was even bigger than usual today. He must have been a Duran Duran fan back in the eighties.
‘They wanted to know if Oz had been behaving suspiciously. They wanted to know if he drinks alcohol.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘They wanted to know if he has a girlfriend.’
I paused for a second and then I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ Why drag the girl into this?
Iain shifted his weight. He pressed his back against the door. ‘They wanted to know whether he had always worn a beard.’
On another day, on another occasion we could have been laughing. All of this was the stuff of jokes. ‘Yes,’ I replied. I noticed Iain’s shirt was striped and his tie was striped, navy bars straight and slanting.
His voice rose a pitch higher. ‘They wanted to know why in the reports we submitted about the students vulnerable to radicalisation, Osama Raja’s name never showed up?’
I had written these reports. Two of them. I had written them well and I had written them with care. But I had not written them about Oz.
‘I had everyone backing out of this saying they won’t spy on their own students.’ Iain spoke more softly. ‘You volunteered for the training course. You wrote these reports. So what happened?’
He was right, hardly any academic member of staff wanted the added task of monitoring their Muslim students. ‘This is Scotland, not Bradford,’ was one of the comments, and ‘We don’t have enough Muslim students to justify the time and effort.’ I remembered Fiona Ingram saying, ‘I will not shop my students and end up losing their trust in the process!’
But I had no qualms. I had figured out, long ago, that it paid to do what the competition found difficult, distasteful or even just a waste of time. Besides, we had to show, in addition to our publications, that we were undertaking Continuing Professional Development. Attending this training course would count as such. It was held at another university and I went by train. It was only as I gazed out of the window at the Scottish green and shimmering grey sea, that I admitted to myself that I was doing this to distance myself. From Hussein and from the titles of my papers. The two consultants who led the workshop were ‘industry specialists’ and not academics. It was assumed that we agreed with the effectiveness of the strategy to prevent radicalisation and by extension another terrorist attack. I remember thinking, ‘If you say so.’ I remember knowing that I was a hypocrite; I remember the reach to grab yet another opportunity. But the awareness was banal and familiar, like the fact that I was overweight, another fault I could live with.
Later, I applied what I had learnt at the course and referred two students. One of them was an international post-grad who was skipping classes. The UK Border Agency had already suspended one Scottish university’s licence to sponsor overseas students – so it was right that I should expose any irregularity. The other student, son of a halal butcher in Glasgow, was a nasty little number. Misogynist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, he had no qualms in sharing with me his extremist views. Instead of trying to argue some sense into him, I let him speak his mind and ended up writing a report that swarmed with details. There was no point in attending a training course if I was not going to put what I had learnt into practice.
I opened my mouth to explain but Iain went on, ‘Why couldn’t you identify Oz as being at risk, when now the police have him in for supporting websites that recruit Chechen Jihadist fighters who are linked to al-Qaeda? And what on earth were you doing in their house when he was arrested?’
The last question was the easiest to answer. To start with my research on Shamil was the sturdiest of footholds. To talk of the snow, their house, their connection to Shamil soothed me. He heard me out without interrupting.
‘Oz didn’t tick the right boxes,’ I said to Iain.
He remained standing and I remained sitting. The stripes of his shirt dazzled my eyes. They merged and moved. ‘Oz wasn’t lonely, he wasn’t depressed or isolated. He didn’t seem to me to have more political grievances than average. He wasn’t disadvantaged, and he wasn’t estranged from his family. His parents are divorced but his father supports him. His father is, as far as I gathered, a successful businessman in South Africa and his mother’s an actor, so I judged Oz to be integrated and well adjusted. They’re pretty well off. I mean, how many people can afford a state-of-the-art treadmill in their house?’
My last sentence didn’t soften the mood. Iain’s head was tilted down towards me. I noticed that he was holding a pen in his hand. ‘Natasha, if this boy is found guilty how are we going to look?’
‘He’s not guilty,’ I said.
‘The police don’t go around arresting people at random.’
‘It still doesn’t make him guilty.’
Iain spoke to me as if I was someone else. ‘You aren’t answering my question. So I will ask you again. If he goes down, how are you going to look?’
‘Not good.’
‘That’s right. And I don’t want that and you don’t want that. So here is what you’re going to do. You are going to write me a report on every conversation you’ve had with Oz Raja. I want every email he sent you and every paper he’s ever submitted in your course.’
So I would write that he made snowmen and chopped practised cutting their heads off with a sword.
So I would write that he joked spoke about setting up a jihadist camp in the countryside.
So I would write that he was researching weapons used to use for jihad.
I must have scowled. I might have even shut my eyes. I couldn’t look at his shirt stripes any more. They were like electrical circuits.
Iain said, ‘I think the police might want to ask you more questions and check your desktop. I hope they won’t decide to seal off this room. Everyone walking down the corridor will want to know why!’ His tone then became friendlier, as if we had finished a meeting and now we were chatting informally. He even put his hand on the back of my chair. ‘Natasha, you’re astute enough to know what needs to be done. You’ve always been an asset to us and I want you to continue to be so.’
He turned to leave the room. He put his pen in the pocket of his shirt and his hand on the doorknob. ‘And I don’t need to remind you that your contract of employment warns you against bringing the university into disrepute.’
No, he did not need to remind me. And I noted that he had not mentioned Gaynor Stead or the fact that her complaint had been upheld. A complaint against me was already in the system, being examined, being processed. Iain would expect me t
o feel grateful that he hadn’t brought this up. He would expect me to respond.
2. DARGO, THE CAUCASUS, SEPTEMBER 1854
Quickly it became also about money. Zeidat towered over her. ‘Shamil Imam doesn’t want it for himself; he doesn’t care.’ Her Russian had improved or more likely Anna was finding it easier to understand. ‘Look how we live!’ Zeidat’s hand swept over the bare room ridiculously referred to as the guest quarters, the walls stained with damp, the tired cushion Anna was sitting on. She was mending a ragged piece of netting brought in to protect Alexander from the flying insects that bit him through the night.
‘Look,’ Zeidat repeated as if Anna, in this confinement, had not noticed the broken chimney or the small lopsided window – and this room, as she had found out, was one of the better ones.
Anna continued with her sewing while Zeidat paced up and down. This flexing of muscles, her voice louder than usual, was because Shamil was away. His departure, a dawn gallop of horses, had not woken Anna. After bedtime, she would listen to Alexander’s steady breathing and to Madame Drancy who snored softly in her sleep. For hours, Anna would vibrate with injustice until, in the middle of an unspoken accusation, sleep would dunk her down and keep her oblivious to the break of dawn and the early movements of the aoul. ‘Lazy,’ Zeidat had said in front of the other women. ‘Brought up in the lap of luxury, never done a day’s work. Satan pisses in her ear, that’s why the infidel can’t hear the call to the dawn prayers,’ she would laugh to the others, who always objected, who often defended Anna. Shamil’s orders were that she be treated as a guest but she was not fully shielded from Zeidat’s daily knocks, her twists of the mouth and sighs of exasperation. Today she was even more reckless because she was the one solely in charge now, she commanded and forbade. So breakfast had been water and dried bread for the hostages, no tea. Later, Anna guessed, it would be tepid unappetising soup or even no dinner at all.
The Kindness of Enemies Page 14