‘I’ll stock products that the Super-S will never dream of selling.’ He paused. ‘This is pioneering work. I think … it is possible for me to become king of the regional pharmacy. People from across Australia, in other states, they will look at my model and they will copy me.’
‘Why can’t you do this in Sydney?’
‘In Sydney … a pharmacy is a pharmacy. I can make something different out here, in the towns. This is just the beginning. Why own just one pharmacy when we can own a string of them?’
‘And then we can move back to Sydney?’
‘I don’t want to go back to Sydney,’ he said. ‘It would be undignified.’
‘No! It will be different when we go back. People will know you as a pharmacist. Not as a taxi driver, not as a labourer. They will know and respect you.’
‘Little duck, you keep clinging,’ he said softly, reaching for her hand. ‘Dwelling on the past will make you miserable. You have to focus on the future. In this country you can have dreams as big as the sky. With hard work and commonsense anything is possible in Australia. How exciting, ya butta, this is how we make our own luck. Not through inheritance or privilege or ancient feudal history or the winds.’
She pushed his hand away.
‘I will buy you a grand house, a mansion as big as Tom Grieves’ and everything in it will be brand new. We will make lots of money. I promise you. We will be richer than your greedy brothers.’
Words tumbling out fast and easy now, like a thin and runny sauce. Promises made, promises broken.
‘First you bring me to this village-town and now you change your plans. You tricked me into coming here … I left all my friends!’
‘Little duck, I’ll take you on holidays to Queensland and we’ll stay in the best hotels. No, even better, we’ll travel to England and visit all the places that Edward bey has told me about … Hampton Court and Windsor Palace and the West Country. We can holiday to Italy and you can eat as much gelati and cannoli as you want.’ Fawzy’s voice was rising now, into the treetops. ‘It’s for our future. Isn’t this what we wanted—to make our own luck? You chose to make your own luck when you married me. When we left Egypt.’
She stared at his chin.
‘This is the best way, believe me, my duck, this will be the best thing for us. We must be sensible. Our hard work will be rewarded, this is certain. The hardest workers in life are always ready to take their prize.’
Fawzy believed in fairness like he believed in gravity. It was part of the reason why he loved the idea of Australia. ‘You will have your pharmacies. What will I have?’ she asked quietly.
‘The pharmacies will be ours. Our own. You can work with me. Whenever you want. It’s just you and me, ya butta. I won’t lead a line of descendants.’ His voice dropped, almost to a whisper. ‘This is all I have, all I can offer you. You know that. You’ve always known that.’ He looked away, his cheeks red.
Her mouth was a well of water. She swallowed and swallowed again. The choice to marry Fawzy had been hers from the beginning. She had accepted freely. Knowing its limitations, its gaping absences, she had accepted anyway. They would have a new life in a new land and whatever else they could muster of a life shared together. In her new tongue or her old, she had found no words for the muddled swell of feelings that sometimes kept her tossing at night and crippled her with tears. If only she could sort and order her emotions, the way Fawzy could, like dirty washing: into their appropriate colour and fabric type.
‘What about my earring parlour?’
‘The pharmacy can offer ear-piercing services … everything is possible.’
Children are not possible, she thought.
A thread-like vein bulged from his forehead. He winced, as though he’d caught her thought. ‘I will let Pat know that we are open to buying. I would like a commitment from him that I am his preferred buyer. By jolly, this is exciting,’ he said, slipping out of Arabic into English. ‘I will have to write a letter to Edward bey, and tell him all about my plans. He always said, even when I was a young chap, that I wasn’t one to fanny around.’ He stopped to savour the memory.
‘You don’t owe Edward bey anything.’
‘If it weren’t for Edward bey, I would be just like Nabil back in Petersham, a slave to his terrible English and his taxi bosses. I will never be a poor, ignorant, grieving fool. I have Edward bey to thank for that.’
It was because of Edward bey that Fawzy was talking such nonsense plans for this pharmacy empire. It was Edward bey who had promised Fawzy that a glittering career was possible from the study of science, who hand-fed him as a boy with the desire for all things foreign. Fawzy had traded the music of Om Kalsoum for Frank Sinatra and had spent his childhood longing for a house supplied with electricity all night long and fields of rolling green. It still bothered her, after all these years, how Edward bey’s English friends would shift their eyebrows and mouths and cheeks in a language of twitches and innuendo that only they understood. She remembered how, as a fifteen-year-old, Fawzy had taken her and Hassan to meet and sit with these wealthy, arrogant foreigners as they smoked and drank and lounged about in Edward bey’s palatial apartment in Sidi Bishr. Did Fawzy not see? She wondered how many times Fawzy had been in that crowded room and not understood a joke, laughed anyway, and half-felt that the joke was on him.
They sat in silence for a moment and regarded the blank television screen. She remembered the precise moment she decided she could marry Fawzy. Her oldest brother Ramy had just handed her a large jewellery box. All her brothers were gathered and were watching her expectantly. Fawzy had made them all mint tea. In the apartment that she and her brothers had all happily shared with their parents a few months earlier, in the only home she had ever known, she opened the box. A beloved pair of her mother’s earrings sparkled on top. There was a ruby necklace beneath and several bracelets embedded with gemstones. Heavy gold earrings sat forlornly on the bottom.
‘You give her these souvenirs? This is her inheritance? You heartless dogs,’ Fawzy yelled at her brothers with all the hurt and fury that she herself could not yet express. In that moment she decided she could love him.
Fawzy had been her shadow after her parents died in that horrible tram accident, after her brothers turned on her and turned on each other. It had been a surprise to all of them to learn that Soraya had been bequeathed a substantial estate from her wealthy parents only three months before her own death. Soraya had been estranged from her parents for so long that Nayeema and her brothers had almost forgotten that their mother had a family at all.
Suddenly they were very, very wealthy. They had inherited interests in cotton, wheat, commercial property, a concrete plant, and even factories. Soraya’s father’s business activities were so prolific that a small town beyond the fringes of Alexandria had been named after him. Soraya had left no will. Amid the dirty contest between her brothers, Nayeema, the youngest and only girl, had become invisible.
In that dark period, when she was still mute with shock and anger, Fawzy fought hard for her share of the inheritance. He would always fight for the concrete facts, he told her. He would always fight for fairness. There was nothing but disappointment and battles for them in their homeland. He would take her away, somewhere new, somewhere wonderful. She’d listened to him, half-numb. She was eighteen and ready to be rescued.
It was Fawzy who saved her, whisked her away and let her run as far from her brothers as she could. The continents that now separated her from her brothers were not enough—she remembered them when she hankered for an argument, heard their voices whenever she and Fawzy played a game of tarneeb. Her brothers constantly moved inside her head like pieces of popping corn. Of her four brothers it was the oldest, Ramy, who had once been her favourite. She could recall an entire childhood’s worth of memories with her brothers, if she chose to. But it was better to forget about them altogether. The good memories had been soiled by the bad. The dead in her family were more alive to her than the living.
>
‘Ya butta,’ whispered Fawzy, reaching over and hugging her. His slim body pressed against hers. He kissed her on the lips. His breath was peppery. ‘Come to bed with me, it’s getting late.’ She felt the stir of anticipation in his groin.
She traced the outline of his ear with her finger. Felt the pliable movement of the thin plate of cartilage, the capacious cavity of the concha, and the elegantly rounded helix on top. When they were first married, Fawzy was surprised to learn about her fondness for touching the ear. At first, she was timid and gently pulled on his ears. After a while, her courage grew to flicking and massaging his ears. She liked to tug at them until they clicked. Sometimes she used her fingers, sometimes her tongue. He had a good ear—an honourable ear—and she had high regard for an honourable ear. It was possible for a good ear, especially on a man, to cause a flutter through her body that warmed her feet. She thought of this month’s Cleo centrefold, a group of men from a jazz band, all of them naked. Bold as brass. Her husband failed to inspire any such body flutter.
‘Later,’ she whispered back.
When the patter of Fawzy’s feet receded into the bedroom, she went out to the verandah. There was now enough chill in the air that her scalp tingled. She dragged one of the white chairs to the edge of the verandah and sat down on it heavily, throwing her feet up against the timber railing. She dreaded the thought of another sleepless, airless night beside Fawzy as he breathed deep and rhythmic, oblivious and childlike.
There was a light on in the Grieves house, which pushed timidly into the night. Straight ahead there was nothing but garden and sky. It was a lumpy dark, the sort of dark that always followed a vaporous sunset, full of shapes that grazed and shifted.
Nights like this invited thoughts to drift among those shapes. Her father wearing his brown suit and a vest, a stunned smile painted across his face. They stand together in the middle of a crowded piazza, it is familiar but she can’t recall exactly where they are, and her father begins to run away from her. ‘Catch me, Nayeema,’ challenges her father, ‘see if you can.’ She shouts out to him, ‘Don’t leave.’ But he does, he runs without stopping and soon she can no longer see him. Memories dripping out that find a way back in.
Nayeema’s head throbbed with the disappointment of Fawzy’s new plans. This Burraboo craziness of Fawzy’s had to end soon. Her thoughts were airborne and agitated; like a million pieces of pollen shaken by a wind current. She would find a way to get back to the city.
CHAPTER NINE
Tom sat on the armchair in Neema and Fred’s living room with a not-very-cold beer cradled in his hands. Warm beer would normally provoke from him a savage outpouring of expletives; he’d sack staff at the Royal for warm beer, but the smell coming out of his tenants’ kitchen was so darned good he’d drink the beer anyway.
He pushed away all thoughts of the Horizon and his burnt-out Dodge, the posters, the dairy farm, the hippies. Not tonight. He’d been looking forward to this dinner all day. What a sad sap. Truth was, he was already pretty pleased with how the evening was panning out. He figured he should have at least an hour alone with Neema. Asking Pat Morris to divert Fred at the pharmacy tonight was a masterstroke. It was good of Pat to oblige, although he suspected it hadn’t taken much effort to detain Fred. Oh, Fred’s ambition crawled all over his face; it was as obvious as a bonfire on a clear night, and it had tripped him tonight like a can of paint thinner in the flames. Tom had helped to stoke those ambitions himself with a few choice ideas about the pharmacy. Bet Fred hadn’t told Neema about the conversation they’d had last week. Fred was becoming quite the character about town. Everyone knew him now, but no one seemed to talk about Neema, except to say that she was stuck-up. Course, he knew that wasn’t the case. The poor kid was as shy as all hell. She could barely string a sentence together without turning red in the cheeks.
Pots clanged in the kitchen. He heard a lid scudder over the bench top. The seal of the oven door squelched open. There was a hell of a lot going on in there. He leaned back into the chair and took a slug of beer as Neema bounced into the room carrying a bowl of mixed nuts and a small plate of black olives.
‘You okay? I will be with you in five minutes,’ she said, depositing the plates onto a low table then springing out of the room.
He followed her into the kitchen he had just refurbished. ‘Real nice of you and Fred to have me over for a feed. I’ve gone back to having dinner at the Royal, but it’s just not the same as your plateful of surprises. Fair bit less garlic and chilli, you understand. I reckon I’ve lost a bit of weight since you’ve stopped making dinner at mine.’
‘You come any time. You always welcome to eat here.’
‘I wasn’t fishing for an invitation.’ He watched her give the hot oven tray a few vigorous shakes. Glistening discs of sliced potatoes slid against the bronzing chicken and she grunted with satisfaction. Pushing the tray back into the oven, she scurried from stove to fridge, from fridge to oven, commandeering the production that employed every hotplate and all the available bench space. Her earrings jangled as she moved around the kitchen. They were large and ornate and dropped off her lobe like a chandelier from a ceiling.
‘Please, you sit in lounge room. I will be with you soon.’
He returned to the folds of the floppy armchair. He sensed that it was in this room that Neema spent her lonely hours. He could smell it. He knew about loneliness.
He looked around the room. On the walls and the entertainment unit were half-a-dozen photos, all identically framed in brass. Black-and-white family shots mainly. Rather oddly, no wedding photos of her and Fred. Back when he was a newlywed, this very house was almost wallpapered with embarrassingly staged photographs of his nuptials. The witless child groom and his child bride gazed adoringly at each other in every room. What a joke. He winced.
There were a few kitschy trinkets on the entertainment unit. Plastic flowers in coloured vases were placed on each end of the built-in shelving. Several paintings were hung on the walls, mainly of flowers and unremarkable landscapes, but his eye caught a very different painting on the far wall. It was painted on a delicate sheet that was the colour of wet sand; perhaps it was papyrus. Although it had been mounted and covered with glass, one corner was pulling away from the mount and was curling like a pencil shaving. It was one of those pharaoh-style paintings, of a kingly-looking figure with a circle above his head. He was standing upright in a narrow canoe and beneath the canoe was a coiled snake. Tom had a distant memory of having seen something like this before.
‘You like this painting?’ Neema’s voice startled him.
He nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s er … it’s an interesting painting.’
‘Sorry, I no mean to make you jump. You get scared by me,’ she teased.
Good. She was loosening up already. ‘What paper is that?’ he asked.
‘It should be papyrus. Properly it must be papyrus, you know. But I buy it cheap. I think it is banana paper.’ She paused. ‘It is not so surprising that you like this painting because it shows the sun god. You know Ra?’
The question made him feel as though he were wearing nothing but his Y-fronts. He didn’t respond.
‘The sun god has different names, you know. You see here in this painting, look, I show you,’ she said and urged him off his chair to make a closer inspection. ‘You see here he travels in a boat across the sky with the sun on his head.’ She pointed at the circle above the kingly character’s head. ‘When the sun is at its full power, maybe around midday, he is Ra but when the sun comes down the sky he becomes old and weak,’ she paused and smiled, ‘then he is called Tem.’ She brushed his arm lightly.
‘Tem, hey?’
‘I think that what is very wonderful is that after the sun god has dropped across the sky, he falls beneath the earth, beneath the horizon, and begins his journey through the underworld. This is our night time.’
Tom flicked his gaze to Neema quickly. She was deadly serious, speaking about as earnestly as a person could a
bout myths and ancient gods and rites. Bit pagan. But he liked it. The dependability of the sun, earth and stars … it made more sense to him than most other things, it made sense in his gut. He didn’t know why, it just did.
‘He must fight many battles during the night time,’ Neema continued. ‘He has many enemies, especially the serpent, you see him under the boat. After the sun god wins all his battles he leaves the underworld and is reborn at sunrise. So every morning is a rebirth of the god. But if the sun god loses his battles, he cannot be reborn.’
‘It’s nice to imagine we can be reborn at all.’
‘Yes.’
He took a small step towards the painting for a closer inspection. His elbow grazed hers. Speaking to the wall, he said, ‘A big boofhead like me likes the idea of a stoush in the underworld.’ He whistled. ‘But it’s a heavy load the sun god carries.’
‘Ah, yes, but the sun god gets help. There is another god, called Aker. He is the guard of the horizon. The horizon is where the sun god enters and leaves the underworld. Aker is the guard of the gates for morning and night. He is the god of yesterday and today. Sometimes you see him as two lions, one face looking at the horizon on the east and the other looking at the west. For this reason, Aker is called the double-lion god. He lets the sun god in and out of the underworld. He also stops the serpent of the underworld from escaping through the horizon to eat the sun.’
Blimey. She knew a lot about these gods and whatnot.
‘You want more drink? I get you another … maybe I bore you so much with my sun story.’ She leaned forward eagerly to take away his empty, the top of her blouse dropping slightly lower, her youthful breasts barely registering the movement.
‘Nah, I’m right. Only one beer a night. Gotta keep the cogs in good nick,’ he said and tapped his temples.
‘Okay. Fawzy is late at work. He eats later. We eat now. I decide we eat outside today. Come, please,’ she said, and guided him out of the living room and onto the back deck, as though he were entirely unfamiliar with the property.
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