Alone in my dusky room, with only the fan of my laptop purring away intermittently, and these creepy fundamentalists as my guides, I could feel the boundaries of reason start to dissolve and notions from the irrational hinterland encroach into my consciousness. Was this what Ben had felt? I remembered my dream, the formless malevolent spirit, and despite myself I shuddered. Everything in this other world seemed illusive, like a nightmare in which everyday things, like bar codes, seen through a prism of unreason, take on a sinister skew, while war, disease, terrorism, global warming—the scourges of our age—are seized on with glee as signals of the Second Coming. A man who called himself Jeremiah—his website showed him with a neat little goatee beard and a Scotch plaid cap similar to Mrs Shapiro’s—explained that the parable of the fig tree—‘When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh’—referred to seasonal changes from global warming, which were a sign of imminent rapture. Power up the central heating and the air conditioning! Roll on, four-by-fours! Fly by jet! Consume! As the earth warms up and the fig trees blossom, those lucky ones, the elect, will be seized and whisked off into Heaven! His smug little smile said it all.
How come I didn’t know about any of this? I thought back to my Religious Knowledge lessons at Kippax Primary School, Mrs Rowbottom wearing her mauve bobble-knit jumper and a porcelain rose brooch; the smell of closely packed children, and Lionheart the school rabbit snoozing in his cage; the little bottles of pre-Thatcher milk waiting in the crates by the door. We’d learned about forgiveness and mercy. We’d learned about the wheat and the tares, and the Prodigal Son. I’d even got a gold star for my drawing of the Good Samaritan. Mum had proudly put it on the fridge in the kitchen, even though Dad was a subscriber to the opium-of-the-masses theory of religion.
When we were a bit older, we discussed motes and beams, and learned to recite the Beatitudes and Saint Paul’s faith hope and charity epistle off by heart. It had all seemed very uplifting and benign. I had no idea about all this other stuff. Did Mrs Rowbottom know? If so, she’d seemed unperturbed.
Jeremiah’s website had a Promised Land link which took me to a whole page of links to both Christian and Jewish sites discussing God’s promise to the Jews. When was that promise to be fulfilled? In God’s time, in the prophesied future? Or now, in the present-day Middle East? Was the rebuilding of the third Temple in Jerusalem a metaphor for spiritual rebirth? Or was it about bricks and mortar? The cyber-arguments raged. Something else Ben had said came into my mind. When the chosen people go back into Israel, in 1948, that’s the start of the End Times. My mind flashed to the letter in the music stool. Our Promised Land. The date on the letter was 1950. When I’d read it first, it had seemed like a quaint voice from another age. Now past, present and future were in terrifying collision.
And it wasn’t only Christians and Jews who were preoccupied with the Second Coming. Ben had said something about a Last Imam. Google came up with more than a million links to websites anticipating the imminent return of the Imam Al-Mahdi. It all seemed a long way from the Prince of Wales bar codes.
As I surfed from one link to another, the light from my laptop screen threw an eerie coloured glow on the walls and ceiling. I was beginning to understand why Ben was so rattled. Compared with the vast inevitability of this Rapture machine, the world of our own little secular family seemed puny and insubstantial. Dusk dimmed into darkness outside the window, where flumes of rain still pattered on the glass. Yes, the rain. I forgot to ask him about the rain.
30
The broken gutter
By Saturday the rain had stopped but the pavements were still wet, and soft heavy drops dripped from the overhanging trees as I walked along to Canaan House, where I’d arranged to meet Mr. Ali to take a look at the gutter. I’d set out a little early, hoping to catch him on his own. I wanted to ask him about Lydda; I wanted to find out about Islam and the Last Imam. But as I turned into Totley Place, I spotted a small battered red van parked in the lane that led to Canaan House, and then I heard men’s voices in the garden, shouting. I quickened my step. The shouting got louder—I couldn’t tell what they were shouting—it wasn’t in English anyway. Violetta dashed out to greet me; she was running around in circles, mewing.
As I approached the gate, I glimpsed between the trees a terrifying sight—Mr Ali was dangling in the air, like a rather tubby Tarzan wearing a pink-and-mauve knitted hat. He was hanging on for grim death to a length of cast-iron gutter that had come away from the wall. I watched transfixed as he tried to reach with his toes for the window ledge, bawling something in a foreign language. All that was holding him up was a rusty iron bracket at one end, and a twine of ivy that had clambered over the roof and luckily got a grip on the chimneys. On the ground, floundering among the wet brambles, two young men in flowing white robes and Arabic headgear were grappling with an extendable aluminium ladder that had come apart.
They heaved it this way and that, their robes snagging in the brambles. The ladder definitely seemed to be winning. At last they slotted the three sections together and wielded it in Mr Ali’s direction, trying to catch him as he hung with just one toe now resting precariously on the window ledge, and the other kicking at the air. But they swung the ladder too wide, then overcorrected and swung it too far the other way. Mr Ali let out a tirade of furious words. I could see the bracket straining under his weight and the ivy coming away from the bricks. If they didn’t get their act together fast, he was going to plummet some thirty feet on to the stone terrace in front of the house. I held my breath, and a thought clicked in my head—these young men, they really are unbelievably useless.
In the end they managed to get the ladder under Mr Ali, but it was too short to reach the ground. So one of them held it up to Mr Ali’s flailing foot, while the other one tried to extend it from below, jerking the catch-hooks down over the rungs, Mr Ali shrieking in terror at each jerk. Then he jerked too hard and the ladder fell apart again. Wonder Boy was sitting in the porch watching, flicking his tail with excitement, a beastly look on his face.
I stood on the path, petrified, thinking I should definitely keep out of this. I didn’t want to distract the men’s attention for a single second, for I could see that a momentary lapse might be fatal. But just as they’d almost reassembled the ladder, the one at the front lost concentration at exactly the moment that Wonder Boy decided to make a dash. Swerving to avoid the cat, his foot caught in a loop of bramble and he staggered forward, holding the ladder high and crashing the top section right through the bedroom window inches away from Mr Ali, completely smashing away the bottom frame. A shower of glass tinkled on to the flagstones.
Mr Ali was still balancing with one leg on the window sill and one thrashing the air, yelling his head off. Then he spotted me by the gate. Our eyes met. It was too late for me to back away. He called down to the two men in the garden, and they looked round, shouting and beckoning. So I ran over to help. I grabbed one end of the ladder, determined to show that although I was a woman, I was not utterly useless like them. But it was much heavier than I thought. As I swayed under its weight, the other end swung round, clonking one of them on the head. He staggered back into the bushes and lay there, motionless. I rushed to his aid. Oh, heck! Had I killed him? Mr Ali and the other young man had gone silent, too. Wonder Boy, who had come over to investigate, gazed up at me and I thought I glimpsed in his slitty yellow eyes a look of…was it respect?
After a few moments the young man pulled himself out of the bushes, no harm done, and between the three of us we managed to extend the ladder to its full length and get it up securely against the wall below Mr Ali’s feet. He climbed down, bawling at the other two—he was literally spitting with rage. Then just as his feet touched the ground, all the fight seemed to go out of him, and he slumped down, his head resting on his knees, breathing deeply.
“This job is for a younger, fitter man. Not double excel gentleman my age.”
“But you did excel, Mr Ali. Kee
ping so calm,” I said, though calmness, to be honest, was not the first word that sprang to mind.
“No, size XXL, Mrs George.” He clasped his arms around his hamster tummy. “My wife feeds me too much. No good for climbing up ladders.”
I laughed. “Next time, you should get one of the other two to go up the ladder.”
He shook his head with a melancholy sigh, but said nothing.
The other two were perched uncomfortably on the triple edge of the ladder. They had got out a packet of cigarettes, and were lighting up. I wondered why they were wearing those bizarre outfits—they looked more like extras out of Lawrence of Arabia than any Palestinians I’d seen on TV. They were younger than Mr Ali, taller, and incredibly handsome in a dark-flashing-eyes white-flashing-teeth kind of way. (Tut. Isn’t this an utterly incorrect stereotype? Get a grip, Georgie. They’re young enough to be your sons.)
“Hello,” I smiled. “I’m Georgie.”
They nodded their heads and flashed their teeth at me. It was clear they didn’t speak a word of English. Mr Ali struggled to his feet.
“Allow me to make introductions. Mrs George, this is Ishmail, my nephew. He is completely useless. This is his friend Nabeel. He is also completely useless.”
The useless young men nodded and flashed their teeth. “What a misfortune at my age to have two complete uselesses for my assistants.”
Then he spoke in Arabic to them, and something about the way he looked at me suggested that he was saying I was pretty useless, too. They nodded politely at me and smiled some more.
When they’d finished their cigarettes and stubbed them out on the ground, they put the ladder up against the wall and Nabeel held the bottom of the ladder while Ishmail started to mount it, his feet tangling in his robe.
“No, no, no!” yelled Mr Ali, jumping up, then he yelled something in Arabic. It was obvious even to me that the ladder was too short and the angle too steep to be safe. “We must get a bigger ladder. I told you this one is no good.”
The Uselesses heaved the no-good ladder on to the roof-rack of the van with a lot of purring and shouting, then sat on the step of the porch and lit up again. They were grinning at each another like a pair of naughty kids and batting each other with a folded newspaper printed in Arabic. Mr Ali reached across and confiscated it.
“This house—it needs too much work,” he sighed. There was a big damp patch on his trousers from sitting on the wet ground. “I do not know if I can do it with these uselesses.”
“I’m sure you can,” I said making my voice especially calm, which I felt was called for in the situation. “There’s no hurry. I think Mrs Shapiro will be away for a while.”
“You think? Hm.”
He paused and gave me an oblique look. The Uselesses were still sitting in the porch, but now they’d started arguing in loud voices and shoving each other off the step. Then Mussorgsky appeared at the broken bedroom window (how had he got in there?) and began yowling with gusto, and Wonder Boy yowled back from the garden, a smug self-satisfied yowl.
“You know, Mrs George, I am thinking is a pity so big house must stand empty.”
Mr Ali stroked his neat beard and looked at me thoughtfully again. “This, my nephew, Ishmail—he has no place to stay. Sleeping on floor in my apartment. Drive my wife mad. This other useless one, too, sometimes sleeping in there.”
I could see what he meant—they would drive me mad, too.
“Well…1 don’t know what Mrs Shapiro would think…” I started. Then it occurred to me that these two might be useless at house repairs, but they could do a great job of keeping the likes of Mrs Goodney and Nick Wolfe at bay. And they could feed the cats. “It would have to be on the strict understanding that they move out when Mrs Shapiro conies back.”
“No problem. Even if they stay for short time it will make big difference for my wife. Give her chance to clean it up.”
I wondered what Mrs Shapiro would say if I told her they were Palestinian.
“I am sorry they have no money for paying rent. But they will repair the house. Everything will be fixitup like new.” He saw the look on my face. “I supervise, of course.”
I suppose I should have said no there and then, but there was something irresistibly cuddly about Mr Ali. And besides, I was on the scent of another story.
“Where did you learn all your building skills, Mr Ali? In Lydda?”
He shook his head.
“No. We were sent away from Lydda. Do you not know what happened there?”
“You mean the terrorist attack? I know about that,” I said, pleased with myself.
“Ha! All of the world knows this.” He seemed annoyed. “Terrorists shooting on innocent Israelis. But you know why? You know what happened before?”
I shook my head. “Tell me.”
In a clearing in the brambles Wonder Boy and Mussorgsky were hissing and going for one another with their claws. Violetta was hovering close by, waving her tail and making little yelping noises of encouragement, though I couldn’t work out which one she was encouraging. Mr Ali flicked the newspaper at them to chase them away.
“In 1948 all Palestinians were sent out from Lydda. Not only Lydda—many many towns and villages in our country were destroyed. To make way for Jews. People still are living in the refugee camps.”
He went suddenly quiet.
“But…but you learned to be a builder, yes?” I encouraged, wanting to reassure myself that something positive had come out of all that displacement, all that history clogged up with memories of unrighted wrongs.
“In Ramallah I trained for engineer.” (He pronounced it inzhineer.) “Here in England I must make new examinations. But I am old and time has tipped his bucket on me. This useless one,” he pointed at his nephew, “he will study for engineering, too. Aeronautical.”
“Aeronautical?”
That sounded quite brainy. I tried to imagine going up in an aeroplane engineered by Ishmail, and felt an uncomfortable tightening in my chest.
“He has a scholarship.” He lowered his voice to a proud whisper. “Other one, I don’t know. Now they are both learning English. First-class English language course nearby to here—Metropolitan University, next door from Arsenal Stadium.”
The Uselesses, realising that they were being talked about, chipped in.
“Arsenal. Yes, please.”
Yes, it would need to be a first-class English course, I thought.
“So why did you come to England, Mr Ali? I mean, wasn’t your family over there?”
“You are asking difficult questions, Mrs George.”
I could see he didn’t really want to talk, but I was still filling in the gaps in the story.
“I’m sorry. It’s a Yorkshire habit. Where I come from, everybody knows everybody’s business.”
He hesitated, then continued. “You know after my youngest son died, I saw no hope. No possibility of end to this conflict. I wanted only to come away from this place. I have a good friend, Englishman, he was a teacher in Friends School in Ramallah. He helped me to come here.”
“Your son died…?”
Suddenly, my nosiness had led me into a darker avenue than I’d intended.
“He had a burst appendix.” He stared at the ground as though his son’s face was pictured there. “We were in Rantis, visiting wife’s family. We wanted to take him to hospital in Tel Aviv but we were delayed at the checkpoint. My wife was weeping and pleading with the soldiers—one soldier—he was a boy of eighteen but he had a power of life or death over us. He was playing with his power. He said we must go back to Ramallah. When we got there it was too late.” His eyes glinted with a harder brightness. “How can I forgive? My son was fourteen years old.”
On a corner of the newspaper, he’d started to draw a map.
“This was five years ago. Now with wall is worse. You can see. Green Line. Wall line.” He drew another snaking line. I stared at the map—the crazy curling line—and felt a flutter of panic. Maps. Not my thing.
But why did it snake around so much. In fact, why was there a line at all?
“So you wanted to leave…?”
“Now my daughter is married with this Englishman. I have three grandchildren.” He smiled briefly. “Drive my wife mad.”
I thought I’d like to meet his wife one day.
The Uselesses had finished their cigarettes, and gone off to sit in the van. They must have had a CD player in there, because I could hear strains of Arabic music, sweet and melancholy, drifting incongruously over the damp lawn and dripping brambles.
But maybe all places have their histories of sadness and displacement, I was thinking. People move in, others move on; new lives and new communities spring up among the stones of the old. In school, we’d learned about the history of Kippax, how in the 18405 miners from Scotland and Wales had been recruited as scabs to break up the union in County Durham—desperate hungry men sucking the marrow out of the bones of other desperate hungry men. When the seam at Ledston Luck was opened up, their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren were brought down from County Durham to Yorkshire and settled in Kippax. There are men who shape destiny, who draw lines on maps and shift populations about; and there are men like Dad and Mr Ali who live their lives in the interstices of the grand plans of others, labouring to provide food and shelter for their families.
2009 - We Are All Made of Glue Page 20