‘Help yourself, little bird.’ Ihsan gestured to the sweets. This was what he called her, or the Turkish word, kuş. Swallowing a chewy baklava she went to the window and looked down on Jerusalem. The fire was getting going finally and she watched Ihsan’s back as he crouched in front of it, blowing gently to encourage the shy flame.
‘So, did you do your tasks?’ he said, when done. He patted the sofa, indicating that she should sit down. There was a creaking noise in the bowels of the building. They were both quiet. A sound of keys, a man’s shout, a door slamming and then silence. She found in her bag her notebook and searched for the paper she had transcribed for him.
Originally, Ihsan had been instructed to teach Prue basic Arabic, which she had requested to learn as soon as it became clear that her father had no plan whatsoever for her time or education. She campaigned to learn photography from Eleanora and Arabic from Ihsan. They worked once a week at the Fast, unless Ihsan was busy at his Al Muntada literary meetings or assisting Eleanora – he seemed to be involved in lots of different activities – but recently they had put the Arabic aside to learn shifra code, which could not be discussed outside of ‘these walls’.
Trying not to show that she was feeling important, she pulled out a list of alphabet characters. Her favourite was thā’. It meant the choice part of anything, which seemed to her the perfect expression: I’ll have the choice part of this or that, please. The choice part of life.
‘Open it up,’ he said.
She flattened the page on her knee, ran her fingers along the characters. Admittedly, she did not yet have them all in her mind.
jīm, a strong camel
ḥā’, a stout woman with a sharp tongue
khā’, the hair on the anus (when it is thick and long)
dāl, a fat woman
dhāl, cockscomb
rā’, tiny ticks
zayn/zāy, a man who eats a great deal
sīn, a fat meaty man
shīn, a man who often has sexual intercourse
ṣād, a rooster that wallows in the dirt
ḍād, the hoopoe when it raises its head and cries
ṭā’, an old man who often has sexual intercourse
ẓā’, a woman’s breast when it swings
’ayn, the camel’s hump
ghayn, a camel reaching water
fā’, sea foam
qāf, a man who can do without other men
kāf, a man who settles affairs; a chaste man
lām, a greening tree
mīm, wine
nūn, a fish
hā’, a white mark (on the cheek of a gazelle)
wāw, a camel with a great hump
laam’alif, thong of a sandal
yā’, direction, aspect
She also brought out the page of coded writing she had been working on. Ihsan took it. The shifra scrambled the Arabic. She was using the pictures to remember the key.
‘Shall I read it?’
‘Of course,’ she said, although she blushed. Some of her drawings were very shaky. There were some characters – khā’, for instance, or shīn – that she could not look at without dying inside with embarrassment. She had not attempted to write them out yet.
‘I shall translate it back to you,’ he said, and sprawled himself on the rug on the floor so that the backs of his legs were close to the fire. Prue, sitting in the heart of his sofa, pulled a blanket over her. It smelled damp but she ignored that. His voice was sing-songy.
My mother was taken through a door, and I was left with four boxes: books, wooden ponies, pine cones, paper dolls, sketchbooks, skipping rope. The house we lived in was covered in flint, a useful substance traditionally used in weapons, the tips of arrows. Underneath that house was chalk, also a useful substance, for writing with and crumbling. This part of England is built on chalk. There are similarities between chalk and Jerusalem limestone.
‘Wonderful,’ Ihsan said, tapping the side of his nose and looking at her. Then he put the piece of paper on the floor and turned on to his back. He was always flipping around, springing up and jumping on furniture, not at all like anyone she knew (by which she meant anyone English), and now, from lying flat on the floor he hopped on to the back of the sofa and looked down at Prue with eyes full of something she did not know how to read.
‘You are doing well. Better than expected. It is interesting to write about your mother. In truth, all stories begin with the mother.’
Was he laughing at her?
‘I like that the code means what I write is secret,’ she said and smiled at him.
‘Exactly.’ He touched his moustache.
‘Well. Secret from everyone but you of course.’
‘Yes, but I don’t count. You can trust me on that.’ He closed his eyes.
After a moment Prue wondered if Ihsan had fallen asleep in this position, squatting on the back of the sofa. His eyelashes were very long; she leant forward to really look at his face and then his eyes opened a tiny bit and she jumped backwards.
‘Let me tell you something, Prue.’
‘Yes?’
‘A word is treachery, sweet English child. Every word, a written letter, a character. Be careful what you write. Before the end of the war I used the shifra code to write about Cemal and my father. I did not write of the mother.’ He laughed and then suddenly looked at her very intently.
‘Have you done any more of the colouring in for your father’s maps?’
She had told him, last time, about her father’s plans for the city, and how she had spent an afternoon helping him shade the areas which he called zones. Thick-shaded area: Jewish. Light-shaded area: Christian. Dots: Muslim. Tiny crosses: Armenian. Industrial area: slanted lines on a red background. Business and residential: slanted lines on a white background. ‘New Military Area’: a grid.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
Ihsan sighed and slid down into the sofa; he tugged Prue so that she came forward, her face close to his, noses almost touching, and she could see that in his brown eyes there were flecks of a lighter brown. His breath covered her skin.
‘I don’t understand the English,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think I ever will. Your father, forgive me for saying this, has been appointed as civic adviser to a city he knows nothing about, has not lived in for very long and does not understand. He talks of the unsanitary maze and tangle of streets but, as always with colonisers, even the ones who truly believe themselves liberators before the killing starts up again, they do not take the time to listen. They make their plans before they have even lived here.’
Prue pulled back from Ihsan; she did not understand what he was saying.
‘I think his main intention is to create a garden; there’s nothing so bad in that, is there?’ she said.
‘Your father wants to bring a garden in, and trees. This city is abominably dry, I heard him say. And I said: You are aware, I am sure, that it is against the Quranic law to plant trees in public thoroughfares?’
But then Ihsan’s face changed and he caught her hand and held it. Without realising she had obviously been flapping again. The skin on her palms was red-hot, prickly.
‘I am sorry, dear Prue,’ he said. ‘I do not criticise you and I don’t mean to speak ill of your father.’
She pulled the moth-nibbled blanket up to her chin. Prue had spent the long journey from Portsmouth to Port Said worrying about whether she would recognise her father, but in the end she had known him immediately, when he came into the room in the Casino Palace. She was quarantined for a week in Port Said on arrival due to a fever, and when he was finally let in – the last time she had seen him was when she was three – he sat on the edge of her bed and without asking permission took her sketchbook from her, and flicked through the pages.
‘These are rather good.’ Prue had flushed all over. ‘Rotten about this illness. Not much of a welcome, hey? Bad luck.’
Not a single person had explained to her why, one rainy Thursday afternoon, h
er mother had been taken to a hospital that was not really a hospital called Graylingwell, in Chichester. Or why a woman, standing at the black gates of this Graylingwell place, had offered Prue a handkerchief with an embroidered cockerel in one corner and told her to keep it for the drying of tears. What tears? Was she supposed to be crying?
He had shifted about on the bed, was trying to be kind, she could tell, and then Prue remembered something her mother had said about him: when he is sitting down, he wants to be standing up. When he is standing still he wants to run. Your father: he is always travelling in two directions at once.
‘We’ll be living in the Hotel Fast in Jerusalem, until we can release the scoundrel Canon Brown from his villa which will be ours.’ He had explained: the Canon was supposed to have vacated his villa in the nearby village of Lifta several months ago but he was touring with his suitcase harmonium and a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern, carousing and wassailing the villages, and nobody could make any contact.
‘Once he returns we’ll ask him to hand it over and make us a home, but there are papers to be signed, as you can imagine. I hope you will be comfortable enough?’
She had nodded and he had pulled from his pocket a small neat sketchbook and showed her drawings of his own, his large hands turning the pages, his nose red at the tip.
‘This is my sketch of the Via Dolorosa,’ he said. He flicked through the images: the West Wall of Jerusalem. The Well of the Magi. Maps and maps. The Dead Sea. Hebron. Mount Nebo. Kerak. Jerusalem from the Skull Hill. Damascus Gate.
‘You will see soon enough the charms of Jerusalem.’ The fan on the ceiling above them span and for a moment she had thought it was a shot bird, falling towards her bed. ‘And the wonderful work we will do here.’
‘Yes, Father.’ And she had said it; it was real. Father. At this point there had been a little cough from the other side of the room.
‘Ah, forgive me, I have not introduced you. Prudence, meet Frau Baum.’ From the wall where she had been hiding, or disguising herself as a curtain, emerged a petit woman wearing a feathered hat. She had a bright red mouth.
‘Welcome. Welcome.’ The woman was dressed in black with a collar also made up of feathers so that she looked like a person in costume. She came in close, smelling of acids, lemons it might have been, and placed her cold hand on Prue’s forehead as if she were blessing her. She handed Prue a box covered in blue paper and tied with string.
‘A small present, and you should call me Elspeth. You must be very tired after the illness. Was it a terrible passage?’ She had a strong foreign accent.
Prue hadn’t known what to say. What makes a passage good or bad? The companion had ignored her and played whist with a group of American women. She had befriended the ship’s mouser cat. This isn’t the children’s boat but it may as well be, an old woman said, whacking at Prue’s calves with her stick for running on the deck. Prue spent the evenings alone in her cabin. There had been one particularly stormy night and she had been sick.
‘It was fine.’
Frau Baum and her feathers leant towards Prue’s father, whispered secrets into his ear and then left the room, giving a wave. Alone again. Explanations were clearly felt needed.
‘You will like her,’ he said. He patted the bed. Prue pulled herself up a little, wishing she wasn’t in bed, wishing her hair wasn’t stuck to the side of her face, wishing she were dressed and presentable and clean.
‘Yes, Father.’ She said it again.
He cleared his throat. Frau Baum was a German who had returned to Jerusalem after admissions had been relaxed. They were all expelled, of course, during the war. She was civilised and discreet and it was a thrill not to discuss the war with her. Actually, it was a thrill to – he paused – be friends with a German. Did she, Prue, feel strange about this? (No, she did not.) Good. He continued to talk, about things Prue did not really understand: the problems of Palestine, of which she was wholly ignorant, his plans for the city, which sounded complicated and brilliant. Prue’s fingernails picked at the edges of the present that Frau Baum had given her but she felt she could not rip it open yet.
‘How is your mother?’ he said, getting round to it finally and not looking at her but at a discoloured square on the wall where a picture must have recently hung.
‘She is not very well.’
‘Yes. They wrote to me about this.’
She waited for more; he was silent for some time and then he said, ‘I remember you so well, as a three-year-old, unstoppable hiccups and red cheeks.’
Why did you want me here? Why was I sent? He didn’t answer the question but she was misremembering because she had not asked it out loud. When he left her in bed to organise their transfer to Jerusalem she had opened the package from Frau Baum. It was a bronze rabbit statue, with one ear bent forwards and the other upright, and she had put it on the bedside table in the room and did not remember to bring it with her to Jerusalem.
‘Prue? Little bird?’ Ihsan was waving his hand at her. He gestured all around the room. ‘The hours I slogged in this very building working for Rusen Bey,’ he said. ‘Almost transferred to the Suez to fight the British and now here I am with you, little English girl.’ He sprang down on to the floor again.
‘So, tell me about this new pilot from England. Does he talk about his plans, will he fly?’
Prue was surprised that he was interested in the pilot. Eleanora’s pilot. She did not particularly want to talk about him.
‘All I know about him,’ she said, black mood descending, ‘is that he is an old friend of Eleanora’s.’
Ihsan’s eyebrows shot up at that.
‘Father is bringing in an aircraft sometime next week and he will fly Eleanora around so she can photograph the city.’
‘I see,’ he was looking closely at the expression on her face, ‘and are you not going?’
‘I am positively disinvited.’ She felt full of shadows and corners where thick emotions were sheltering and it seemed that Ihsan liked to shine lights into these places.
‘I believe,’ she said, and then lost courage to continue.
‘Yes?’ said Ihsan lightly, as he jumped up and retrieved the plate of sweets from the table.
Her eyes wide, mouth dry, Prue said, ‘I believe he has come here to steal away Eleanora.’
There. She had said it. She thought of the bloody little heart she had held in her palm, and the way Eleanora had turned from her, no longer interested.
Ihsan, who was, Prue knew, very old friends with Eleanora’s husband, did not look shocked, as she thought – perhaps hoped – he might, but he was staring at her. Really looking at her, until she blushed at the attention. She was amazed at herself, for saying it aloud, and it was . . . what was the word? . . . satisfying to have said it. Her father, when talking about Eleanora, said: ‘I don’t know what it is about her, but she just has a ray. A bright ray.’ Do I have a ray?
Prue went to her knapsack and pulled out her Kodak. She waited for Ihsan to say something but he was staring into space. When Prue first met Eleanora, during her first week in Jerusalem, Eleanora had given her a present: a seahorse, suspended inside a crystal paperweight. Oh it is just something I had, I thought you might like it and Prue had been so moved that she could barely say thank you. She took it back to her room that night and held it up in front of the candle flame. The seahorse inside shimmered. Its long snout and heraldic fins were pristine. It was perfect, with its blur of horse and insect and sea, and with that gift Prue had fixed herself on to Eleanora, like a puppy who hitches all its luck on to a new owner. She had felt them: real little hooks flying from inside her, catching on to Eleanora’s skin, her hair, eyelashes. Nails.
‘Will you do something, dear Prue?’ Ihsan was still looking at her.
‘Yes?’
‘Will you slip into his room, this pilot, and bring me what you can? Any identification, or books? It will be useful, to understand why he is here. His . . . intentions regarding our lovely Mrs Rasul.’<
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Prue was rather taken aback, but she hid it quickly as Ihsan turned and squeezed with his forefinger and thumb a tiny dancing fly that had landed in her hair. The nicest smell of the baklavas and rosewater came from him. Her hair was always straggly, in a mess, plaits coming undone. Great embarrassment; one of many she had.
‘I know that Eleanora loves you the best, dear Prue. I understand that. She loves you better than this pilot.’ Prue tapped fingernails on her knee to stop blushes; he could read her mind too easily. She picked at the frayed edge of the rug under her feet, dared herself, and then did it.
‘I have a question for you, Ihsan.’
‘Go on, little kuş.’
‘Why does Khaled Rasul go away?’
‘He travels for his work, taking photographs of our great lands.’
‘But his photographs are usually taken in the studio.’
‘Well. He has other work, too, why do you ask?’ And then Ihsan sighed. ‘Khaled is my friend since we were children. I have known him for ever, but I say to him, you keep going to Damascus, wherever you are going, looking for a Syrian unity, you leave your wife alone too long.’
From outside a long hoot from a motor car, voices, a squabble in the street followed by the loud braying of a donkey reminded Prue that she was not in England but Jerusalem. Often, she thought: is this real? She was unsure.
‘I shall help you get to the bottom of it, do not look so worried.’ He took both of her hands and squeezed them. ‘This is what we must do: you get me what you can from his room. That will be a wonderful place to start.’
She was unsure; she frowned and then stood up. She was too tall for her age; she was like the trees, knobbly and bony.
‘We must be on Eleanora’s side, surely? We must do what we can to protect her.’
Yes. That was true. He stood up too. ‘Also, but only if you feel like it, dear bird,’ he smiled, ‘if you can let me know a little more about your father’s plans for the city, these ideas of areas, these crosses and dots, that would be so wonderful too.’
‘Of course Ihsan. If I can.’
‘We should both get ready for the Pro-Jerusalem Society party this evening?’ He did not look enthusiastic and then he laughed at her. ‘The English always looked so worried.’
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