Radius Islamicus

by Julian Samuel

  Was it really she who may have snuffed out the lives of ordinary, decent citizens who abided all their lives by real values? Was it really her forefathers who killed all those horses at a parade? Aside from that Queen Elizabeth, how was the parade? What was her exact role in the bombings? She’s a very nice woman, filled with ordinary respectable worries, not one worry too many.

  Her nights are filled with long and short underground train rides to bars away from her neighbourhood to prevent English rules of familiarity from applying. Even the daily newspapers have had to be purchased at a safe distance, many tube stops away, and never ever from the same newsagent twice. She has been given a little car, which is infrequently used. Until recently, she had even had time to stay abreast of her studies at a university on the mainland. Had she really dropped out? Will Europe wait for her to catch up? What was her doctorate on? She’ll tell me one day.

  The phone is positioned on a small brown wooden table beside the coat rack; it is supposed to be answered only if it rings more than six times. Today on the fourth day of the week, she has been given the clearance to express happiness on her mother’s birthday; her little sister, mother of four sons, will have to be called another day.

  “Happy birthday, Mum. I miss you. Been thinking about you.” Everything all right then love? I’m a terrorist and about to kill many people in London. You’ll hear all about it, Mum. I know exactly what I’m doing. I hope one day to bomb the Olympics of Gay and Handicapped People. Five minutes of that. Untraceable. Bye, Mum.

  Her black hair flows over pronounced yet delicate shoulders. Her outward morphology is so finely balanced, her politics so undecorated, direct and robust that her Moslem — so called Moslem — bosses avoid arguing with her.

  It is now Saturday night, 14 degrees Celsius, two days before her period. Her oval face and a long ski-hill nose with a little bump on its end are waiting for a call that will signal a complete end to this stage of things. However, she requires a savage sexual rendezvous. Clichéd desire, yes, she tells me now at the old folk’s home. But she has already started to mentally prepare for an operation within an operation. A jolly good fuck before the splattering of civilians.

  She paints her fingernails, her peering half-moons now subdued into reflective red obscurity. A thin tracing of red lipstick; Joan Baez hoop earrings; black jacket. The grey coat with a sharp, pointed collar, draped over a wooden coat rack with four hooks, will add ten years to her looks; however, the advantage is that when she de-cloaks her tight jeans and black turtle neck will reveal her perennially naive-looking body, which has experienced military occupation.

  This sub-operation starts from the corner of Akenside and another nondescript street, then a smart walk to Belsize Lane, right onto Haverstock Hill with its autumnal hedges. Falling temperature. Now: 12 Celsius. Her low black heels stop clicking in front of the houses which have doors of approximately the same colour, beige, one slightly more annoyingly beige than the other. The keys are in her pocket. Double-check. A casual look back at the similar doors. Then along a series of houses with brown hedges still sagging with the afternoon’s rain. She draws the grey collar ends tightly around her, then continues walking down into the bright yellow tube stop named Belsize Park. Her intent is to meet someone. She sits at the bar; a Senegalese barman addresses her in local English. She responds in local middle-upper class non-Irish. Moments later, he places a pint of Guinness in front of her. She leaves the change on the counter, finds a round brown table, and peers out of a window that frames trees on a patio.

  A youngish, dark-haired man says: “Wonderful view.” She looks at him. “The view is nice — do you think this is so because we are close to a university?” she asks. He teaches modern languages. She takes off her coat and slowly places her hands on her blue-jeaned thighs. He finishes his drink.

  “Can I offer you another?” What do they discuss? Something so frightfully close to home that it surprises her. There had been a small bombing the previous morning, not a job done by her; he brings it up to demonstrate his knowledge of international politics.

  “Well, it is a complicated affair, don’t you think?” She shows sympathy for the cause and for that word, complicated. Better not be taken for a twit by a fully grown British woolly liberal. She offers him her eyes for the peering. The same ones that I peer into now some three or four decades later. A few not-so-erudite historical examples on the Irish question keep her above him without letting the real goal disappear. “Peace and compromise are the total answer. Our troops must leave. We don’t have any business being there at all — what do you feel?”

  “Business?” She asks. His hand gently moves his brown hair from his forehead.

  The taxi back to her place takes too long. While they kiss, she plays with his balls. She’s not allowed to have anyone in the safe house — otherwise, how would it remain a safe house? He freely admits that he has a wife and is not unhappy about it. Rules invite the use of non-rules.

  On this moonless night, she need only wait for a few minutes longer before she has his condom inside her. He pays the taxi driver. They walk upstairs to the safe house. The white door of her apartment gently clicks shut. They stand under a yellowish lampshade in the tiny hexagonal hallway. She draws his tongue out under the light and licks it as though it were a detached autonomous republic. She bites and sucks his lips. She brought sex into the safe house. He draws away in surprise. Do I know this man? Is he who I am thinking he is? She is down on her knees undoing his fly. He bends over to touch her waist from behind. She’s far too gentle for a mass murderess. Slowly, she stands and turns around; condomcloaked modern languages are inserted. She can detect his patient wife’s training. She has fallen madly in love with him. Perhaps, after the war, this English sod will move to Belfast and have kids with her. She is now eighty and telling me all this. I never suspected this when I knew her during working hours.

  Months of pent-up loneliness unfold: her eyelids slowly open and she looks directly back at him. The phone is in front of her; it hasn’t rung in days. Her hand gently reaches back to his buttocks to stop him but not to retract. The command is direct and forthright. The phone is ringing.

  A melodious voice emerges from Europe: “Hello. Thanking you for picking up on exactly sixth ring. Ha Ha. Efficient. You are well-trained, I must to say. Things have gone well here and there, I hear. How are you?”

  “When should I expect you?” she asks.

  “Early morning landing in capital of empire, brunch,” he replies. She tactfully repeats the word “brunch” for the liberal inside her who acknowledges comprehension by pulling back on her hips.

  “Goodbye,” she says.

  “What happens if I want to see you again?” he asks. She holds him close to her. Promise you’ll never leave me. Promise. He walks out into an ordinary morning. She lets the curtain fall back. The sunlight enters her room in the old folk’s home. Nothing was compromised.

  Two operations in one day. I hear all about the complexity of the Irish question, arms acquisitions, expeditions and love affairs. This is what pulls me to her, at this closing chapter of her life.

  “So all is hunky-dory. Usha — nice name I gave to the operation, don’t you think? I’ll be bringing along a new friend. He can stay with us for a few days?”

  “With pleasure,” she replies.

  I can hear her son shouting on the phone — surely her hearing can’t be that bad. I look up at my article on “those involved in the medical process of miracle assessment welcome new scientific tools . . .” She freezes in midsentence: she’s dead. Gone without chatting to the media. God bless her. This is how He takes us: in mid-sentence with a trans-Atlantic son fading in the cochlear implant. Calmly, I take the thin phone from her warm hand and explain to her son James, whom she has told me lots about. As I put the earphone to my ear, I hear him asking: “Mom, are you still there? Mom, are you still there?” Yes, she is still here.

  “James, I think your mother has passed out. I’ll call
a nurse. Hold on a moment. Please. Hold on a moment.” I haven’t a trace of panic in my voice. I press the buzzer. A nurse rushes in and expertly takes her pulse at the neck and wrist. Er, James. How shall I say this. Yes, James, your mother has left us both. I’m afraid. What are we to do? This is what happens, James. She was pushing the very late seventies or eighties. She was a great mass murderess.

  “Are you able to come over to take care of things? I’d like to meet you.” I am tempted to add: Your mother and I were friends. She killed many people at my beckoning. She showed me a world, the world. The son is silent for seconds. Exactly what were the chances she would leave on Monday at 10:36 on 14 February? Planets never exactly retrace their orbits. “Yes, I’ll come as soon as I can.” James watches flakes of snow over the Shannon waves and says goodbye to me. I have her print of Franz Kline — a black and white painting of a bridge without a world underneath it. Just black paint on white paint, that’s all it was. I had known this version of his mother for exactly six months, fourteen days and ten hours. Compressing life-times like a spiral arm of a galaxy twisting into a few points. Where will she be in a few hours? They’ll be taking out her last breakfast at the embalmers at 15:00.

  I think about her at dinner time that same evening. I put a forkful of food into my mouth. I think back on my chat with her son. She’s hardly a heartbreak to me. Good while it lasted. I’ll look up Tatjana Lucrece down the hall, but before I visit her, I think I’ll review material from my past.

  11

  Mild Cognitive South

  A warm November afternoon hovers outside my window. It’s easy to get to my window from downtown Montreal by car or public transportation. The Home Office gave me a pass. From Gare Centrale in Montreal, you take the Deux-Montagnes train going to Roxboro-Pierrefonds where you get off and take the 68 bus. Sometimes, the stations will seem familiar, Gare Centrale, Canora, Mont-Royal, Montpellier, Du Ruisseau, Bois-Franc, Sunnybrooke, Roxboro-Pierrefonds; sometimes they are as new as a baby who doesn’t yet have a name. But that religious institution near train stop Mordechai Vanunu has a name and a confessional affiliation. Doesn’t it? Oh doesn’t it? Sometimes, especially when this happens infrequently, one forgets the stop one is supposed to get off at and suddenly panic fills the brain when I see the following stops glide by: Île-Bigras, Sainte-Dorothée, Grand-Moulin, and finally Deux-Montagnes. At this last stop I have to get off, get another ticket and head backwards in time: Deux-Montagnes, Grand-Moulin, Sainte-Dorothée, Île-Bigras, Mild Cognitive South, Mild Cognitive Roxboro-Pierrefonds and lastly Not-So-Mild-Impairment-North. Sitting directly in front of the map is a good idea, but then I have to coordinate the map with a visual sighting of the station. Alternatively, to challenge the older mind one takes the bus from downtown Montreal to the Fairview Shopping Mall, followed by the 201 bus to my window. Ninety minutes on the 201 to splendour and intestinal vomiting in Pierrefonds. Train stops are like biomarkers that are used to detect our early-onset memory-fade.

  Linda — you’ve given me the keys to your apartment near the park in Montreal and I have taken the 68 to Roxborough to Gare Windsor then the métro to Places des Arts, followed by the 80 bus northbound to Mont Royal. I’m not dreaming this from my home for the aged, am I? Did I really buy a train ticket? Or am I actually in my home for the contemplative with my old friend Anver? I gather that it’s apparent that he is Anver.

  At any rate all this split-up reality bores me.

  I am now thinking about an old girlfriend who was from the dark world where only a certain class has access to democracy — a democracy that transpires in the living room. Linda is not like her. Usha is not like her. From Damascus or Cairo. I tell her you’re over seventy-two and you have not moved across town as you said you would. I think I’ve come to celebrate your birthday, but I’m not sure. You said you’d moved out during the last century. We’ve decided to age together, haven’t we, after all?

  The bathroom, in an apartment in the Plateau-Mont-Royal area of Montreal, has small tessellated, hexagonal white tiles. As agreed, the door is left open. I walk in and see the steam issuing from the bathroom. You’ve left the door ajar, and the sound system on, Bach cantatas and scented steam. Will you have a heart attack if I come in now and surprise you? I don’t want you to die. You’ll die if I throw a cold glass of water on you when you’re under a hot shower like that. Dear Diary: what’s wrong if I admit to having these thoughts?

  A fine steam issues from the bathroom. It curls around your childhood photos on the beach, it almost meets me at the front door, which is three metres away from where you are now, basking under hot water. But why isn’t a light on? Strange of you. I walk to the door and you smile; you’re not going to die at all. I look down and see a list of soap suds going down the drain to eternity. A wan November light falls all over her. She gently rubs soap on herself in a stream of hot shower water. I go to the living room and turn down Bach so I can better see you in the steam. Volume and vision are the same thing in old age: the louder the volume the less clearly I can see things. Then an accident. I touch the wrong dial or button and the radio comes on. Apparently, it’s news time: the author of the London Art Gallery bombings, Iqbal Masoume has been . . . Thought I’d heard that already. When did I hear it? The last century? The wonders of old age. Why did we bomb all those Francis Bacon paintings? I enjoyed bombing western art institutions the most, but the down side was that there were no injuries at all. The rich got more angry at us for doing modern paintings.

  12

  Wrinkles

  Her breasts in streaming water; thrombotic veins all over her falling breasts. She’s standing in the tub, water falling on her long and elegant skeletal structure no longer covered with smooth, olive-coloured skin. Her facial bones prop up the weathered tent of her oval face — the delicate chin. She is beautiful, I always knew that. Light-filled, hazel eyes. One of her hands has dark spots which comically trail towards her armpits. I loved watching her hands pluck fresh coriander leaves. Her lined palms quickly move a few strands of frizzy grey hair out of the eyes; she froths up soap in an ancient and familiar way. Her face gently leans into the stream of water as she washes the suds in distinct white fluid lines down to her armpits. This is the view from the door. You’re a little hard of hearing and your hearing-aid is out in the bedroom. You’ll place it in your ear after things have dried. When we cuddle we wear our hearing-aids. The amplified sound enters our ears and increases our love for each other. We tried without the chips, but it’s no good. Her old age and mine are interlocked in hearing-aid happiness. Are you sure about this, old boy? Really sure that you’re really remembering things as they were or are? She lives far away from you now. No she does not, her house is just down the street. I live with her in her home, forty kilometres west on a smooth highway not built by the Romans. Yes, this is right. I live with her. We’re growing old together, and are we or are we not living in an old folk’s home together?

  She has a perfectly healed scar under one drooping breast. I know, I saw it heal day by day, month by month, year by year. An Arabesque fine lattice work of wrinkled skin covers her breasts in cross-hatched lines that radiate outward from her armpits to the top of her hip, where the flesh becomes so dense that it falls over itself. I noted the evolution of this exact droop. The pleasure of aging together. In your fifties your flesh was firm when I touched it; in your sixties it bulged like saturnine rings of orbital fat. The folds actually happened rather recently. Almost suddenly. You see, this is how I’ve maintained my intimacy with you, I’ve been watching your body as if I were a camera — John Macleod set to take a fluid series of very fine resolution images every five years. I whiz them through my mind on a daily basis, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but they are there, these images. Sometimes I make them move, in sequence, fast, sometimes I slow them down so I see the transformation in yearly bits of images without sound. This snap snap of your softening body is my sense of your history: I’m the observer, and when I observe, I control hist
ory and its outcome.

  I recall, as I too aged, watching you go from firmness to fleshy fluidity. My daily observations of you show me the rate at which you will evolve into small particles. I know you’ve noticed the changes in me.

  She lifts her breasts and soaps them within the folds underneath her nipples. Wrinkles reign over every part of her body. Her crotch — still lovely to me — the valley between her thighs is lined with diagonal, horizontal, vertical wrinkles. One does not view your body as something with a recent past. I don’t. The magazines of nude young women have a beauty as well, but age produces a body with a different set of late wrinkle harmonics, a different sexual aggression antagonized by a flesh that yields, or not at all. We’ve developed together. Her toes, painted, shyly shine through the suds on the floor of the bathtub. Her bowl-shaped hips, now near-translucent folds of flesh, fall everywhere; her buttocks hang down in triplicate, white, creamy terraces seen only on faraway planets.

  A man’s hand enters the scene — it’s my hand and I tenderly touch the small of her back. She looks back at me with fake surprise, and smiles. The hot water catches the fading yellow light falling in from the window. A luminous bead of water rolls down a skin canal; I follow it with the tip of my finger. Dutifully, you wash your crotch. I watch a galactic arm of soapy suds moving down the drain. We hear a man’s voice, it’s my voice, and I ask: “I like your fins, are you becoming a fish?” Lovingly, the man rubs the soap off her wet body. I see her dentures on the shelf near the sink. Mirrored tenderness: “I’m becoming a fish, yes. And thank you for coming, Joseph. Nice surprise.”

  Lovingly, I, Joseph Macleod — the same age as her, perhaps older — drape a long white towel around her shoulders. She reaches for the reading glasses she uses despite laser surgery, which now returns your eyesight to when you were eight. Here, let me get those for you. Underneath your nightgown you’re wearing a green pair of shorts or something. When you were younger, I remember the operation on one of your breasts. The doctor said that your breast had hardened due to an infection. I know we don’t have any problems like that nowadays. They had to re-cut your breast again and this time they let it heal without stitching it up. You had home visits by a kind nurse who would poke a three-metre-long wick into the gash in your breast to soak up all the defensive pus your body was obligated to produce. The nurse’s pussoaking wick became shorter and shorter as your breast healed. Your breast was like the green on church roofs; the oncologists’ slashes in your armpits were a coppergreen and flesh-pink. That’s what I remember.