Love Comes Later

by Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

  They leave him to the silence of his office, and for a second Abdulla has an urge to call them back rather than face the round of well-wishers he knows will soon descend on his lackadaisical secretary, the back of whose head he can see from the corner of his desk. Hamad won’t do any work today; it will be spent showing off photos of the baby to all and sundry as well as drinking cups of tea with each visitor.

  As if he were at home in his majlis, Abdulla thinks. There will be many of both since, as Abdulla has gleaned from the grapevine, the baby is a much-anticipated boy. He pulls the sheaf of papers toward him, all authorizations for business-related travel, most of it to London, a few trips to Germany, one to Switzerland. He signs, indicating where Hamad should come after him to stamp the various documents. Without a stamp the requests would be returned, as there’d be no proof that the trip was approved, which meant they would be trashed, which meant each applicant would have to do the process all over again. Abdulla is unsure of the veracity of any of the applicants’ needs to go abroad but knows he’d be very unpopular if he didn’t sign. A yearly trip to London with per diem is expected for most of the employees. The male employees, he reminds himself as he finishes, putting the lid back on his pen, are the only ones funded to travel.

  No wonder Hind kept her request to study secret until the last moment. Now she is away, away from him and the pressure to schedule the reception after which they will live together. After her return – he tries not to wish away the year that has been granted to him – she will join the other female employees of his section in a separate part of the building, the women’s area. He’ll have to call or go over in order to see her, or any of them.

  “Alf mabrook!” a well-wisher exclaims in congratulation.

  “Yetrabba fi ‘izzak,” someone else says.

  Despite his best efforts Abdulla still feels his heart clench at the saying, at the knowledge that his own unborn baby will never “be brought up in his father’s glory”, while Hamad’s might.

  “Allah ybarek feek,” Hamad replies, returning their blessings.

  There are three guys in the anteroom crowded around Hamad’s desk. Like a bunch of women, Abdulla thinks to himself. His heart twists at the thought of the photo tucked in his phone case. The edges are fraying; sooner or later it will split in half and the only image he has of his unborn child will also be taken from him.

  “Sheikh Abdulla,” one of the visitors calls out. “Join us this weekend, we’re going to the camp.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got some meetings arranged,” Abdulla says. He is still waiting for a few grocers to get back to him, but the guys don’t need to know nothing is confirmed.

  Hamad shakes his head as if to avert their attention but his visitors carry on.

  “Hamad here will need someone during his wife’s nifas, the forty days she is recovering,” another says as he grasps Hamad by the shoulder.

  Some of the men chuckle, but Abdulla blanches at the reference to the girls, escorts, they would hire for such occasions.

  “Does no one have work to do today?” Abdulla murmurs as he hands the completed dossier back to Hamad. He gives the group one look before he exits, car keys jingling in the pocket of his thobe.

  “He’ll never come,” Abdulla overhears Hamad say in a hushed tone.

  “Into boys?” someone asks.

  Another man, one who cared about these kinds of rumors, would have gone back, double time, and either thrashed them for the insult or taken up the invitation to remove any such doubt. But Abdulla does neither. He keeps walking through the carpeted hallways of the Diwan towards the rear exit. Let them think he is gay. In their gender segregated society it wasn’t uncommon for people to have those relationships – yet another thing no one wanted to talk about.

  When he does have those urges they are often late at night, and he deals with them in the same manner young men all over Qatar do who have no allegiances before marriage. By himself.

  He turns back to the contracts a few international suppliers have sent in response to his request for franchise agreements. The rumors about the oil-rich Gulf are clearly reflected in the inflated quotations. He immerses himself in the increasingly familiar world of contracts, relishing the need to decode their intricate, indirect language.

  Chapter Eight

  Hind throws her mobile across the hotel room in frustration. She returns to Craigslist, hoping there’s a new post. Today’s visit to a property, the latest in a series of failed attempts through estate agents – who divine from the minute they hear her name that she is from the Gulf and made of money, and only show her places well above her student price range – has her despairing of ever settling into this, her best year ever. With the start of classes in a few days, she has yet to settle the most basic of questions about her new life.

  An email alert from the laptop: more questions from her mother and sister. The preparations for the wedding continue in her absence, the presence of the bride unnecessary, much in the same way it was for the engagement. Ideas for centerpieces, photos of dresses and suggestions for favors trickle in as the money her father gave her for the first term trickles out. She can’t ask for more money and raise further questions about the feasibility of her being out on her own, though he would probably give her whatever she wanted. As it is, the family is trying to tighten the noose and get her to stay with one of their relatives.

  “If she wants to be an overeducated wife, fine, but without any family escort, ill- advised,” her aunts issue dire warnings. Her father waves the worries aside whenever his wife parrots them at the dinner table.

  “He’s agreed,” he says, meaning her husband. Hind shudders again at the thought of Abdulla, more or less a stranger, having such an effect on her life. If there is a silver lining, it is that much in the same way he slipped out of their engagement dinner, he is staying in the shadows now that they have permission to talk, text, as much as they like. She doesn’t know whether to be grateful or resentful of his inattention. If she had been in Doha, Noor would have surely taken issue with their negligence of the privileges of the engaged and pushed them to spend time together. At the thought of more awkward gatherings, Hind realizes what a blessing being in London is. Ten times what she originally intended.

  She tries not to count the texts, phone calls and emails as anything other than the price of freedom, the penalty of lusting after an advanced degree that no one sees the point of since her engagement to Abdulla. Instead she perseveres with the estate agents, learning to Google them for client comments before finding one earnest British Algerian woman who seems to take pleasure in their shared Arab identity, her tight curls bouncing in delight as Hind replies to her questions in Arabic.

  “Ahlan, ahlan,” Assia says, welcoming Hind into her office. Hind is grateful for the woman’s effusiveness: this is the first person she’s spoken to after a weekend spent alone and this even in Arabic. Assia takes Hind on an exhausting set of tours that are as depressing as the previous ones, only this time because of how little space her father’s generous allowance gets her. This plus the modest salary the government gives her for studying, money she had hoped to save up for she doesn’t know what, all go into the apartment they finally locate in a building in South Kensington.

  Hind manages to sign a lease and unpack five suitcases before the orientation day for new graduate students at the university; outfitting the rest of the apartment will have to wait.

  When she arrives for orientation, bang on time, which would have been considered early in Doha, she is the last student there. So much for trying to avoid the stereotype of being on Arab time. The British are so punctual. Everyone else in the auditorium lobby is checking and rechecking the status of their book orders, unused pens and pencils, or clocks on their cell phones.

  She pushes her bangs off her forehead, wondering if she has time to head to the bathroom and touch up her makeup, when her phone rings, breaking out in the loud tones of Rihanna’s “Rude Boy”, a joke she’d allowed h
erself after the disappointing meeting with Abdulla. In the hallway it peals out, announcing her status as a non-intellectual. She silences the ringer, glancing at the caller ID. Another phone call from her mother wondering what she’s up to, will she come home during the winter break, wouldn’t she rather stay with some cousins from her mother’s side who are also studying in North London, one of the aunties is actually there getting some medical treatments, does she want to live in her extra room?

  “If I wanted to live under the eyes of your sisters, or my cousins,” Hind answers in increasingly loud Arabic, “I would have stayed in Qatar!” She grinds her teeth, knowing her mother can’t see her. For now I have a year in London, she reminds herself, mentally steeling herself against the idea that the tentacles of domesticity are reaching across the ocean for her. A year, she keeps repeating, as if the words are some kind of prayer.

  Her shoulders are still shaking with what’s left of her fury as everyone else files into the auditorium, the doors of which have opened behind her. She stands still for a while, trying to will away the negativity as Oprah is always telling her viewers. Instead of feeling grounded, a sob rises in her chest. She hiccups but soldiers on, not wanting to miss a moment of what she’s paid for with her future.

  “Tissue?” an Indian girl with a disconcerting American accent asks as Hind slides into the empty seat beside her. Black lashes so long they surely aren’t real frame eyes full of unasked-for sympathy. “My parents are the same way,” the girl says, patting Hind’s shoulder.

  Hind returns her intrusive kindness with a shuttered glance.

  “You’ve been screaming down the phone for the last twenty minutes, sweetie. Anyone who got here early heard it all.” The girl offers a sympathetic smile, exposing white, even teeth.

  Hind accepts the tissue, dabbing at her eyes with one hand while the other worries a strand of pearls. “Thank you for the tissue.”

  The girl smiles again, giving Hind’s shoulder a squeeze. This is the first time anyone has touched her in the month since she moved to London. Even so, her instinct is to move away from, not toward, this over-friendly person.

  “I’m Sangita,” the girl whispers. The tutor drones on in the front of the room about when they can get their class assignments.

  “Where are you from?” Hind asks, taking in the girl’s accent and silver halter top, which are odds with her golden skin and long, black hair.

  “India,” Sangita winks, “by way of America. The Brits aren’t used to that!”

  Neither, Hind has to admit, is she.

  At the department lunch a few hours later, Sangita seeks her out again.

  “Where are you living?”

  “South Ken,” Hind says, and then allows herself a moment of pride: “I just signed.”

  Sangita gives her a high five and Hind, feeling slightly teenagerish but still proud, follows through.

  “Mine isn’t going half as well,” she says without being asked. Comfortable with self-disclosure, Sangita tells Hind more in their first twenty minutes than Hind has ever revealed to many of her family members in Doha. Sangita refuses to take money from her parents, because this would mean they could come and stay whenever they wanted.

  “I’m looking at places in North London,” she says, taking a bite of the department-provided fish and chips.

  “That’s forty minutes away,” Hind says.

  Sangita shrugs. “Price of freedom,” she replies.

  This is a sentiment Hind understands, so she doesn’t continue with the brimming questions she has about safety in North London. Besides, from the confident way her disheveled acquaintance moves, Hind surmises that she can handle herself, or if nothing else yell loudly for help.

  As the first day ends Hind trudges back to her empty apartment, missing her sister Noor in a way she never would have believed possible, even though many tried to warn her. Sitting on the bar stool at her kitchen counter, drinking tea, she doesn’t know why, but in the center of London, living her dream, she feels loneliness growing in the silence of the apartment she has fought so hard to live in unchaperoned. The evening news darkens her mood even further. The grainy footage of a mall fire in Qatar is on AlJazeera’s English channel. Hind watches the footage, phone in hand to the live Twitter stream, the computer open at her feet, as children are lifted through the roof of Villaggio Mall, plumes of smoke blackening the blue sky. Tears roll down her cheeks as her family calls her periodically through the night.

  Thirteen children, four teachers and two firefighters, all dead from toxic smoke because no one could get to the activity center inside the mall where they were trapped. The recriminations start; the government mobilizes a press conference. Hind watches it from the Skype camera Noor has trained on the Qatar TV channel in the family’s living room.

  She has never felt so far away from home.

  She receives a text. All of her family is on BlackBerry Messenger or WhatsApp.

  Saw the fire. Terrible. Call me if you want me to come over. Sang.

  Hind wipes fresh tears away, startled by the girl’s thoughtfulness.

  A thanks is all she manages to send back.

  The scale of the tragedy is unlike anything Hind or anyone in Qatar has ever seen. She goes to bed knowing that the idyllic world she left behind in Doha no longer exists, unsure if she is prepared to face the new one.

  Chapter Nine

  Hind fills the hours as best as she can, not with shopping, as her family does on its summer vacations, but with reading the hundreds of assigned pages for her courses in theory, literature and statistics.

  She takes first one, and then a second bus to campus, past Harrods and the other haunts of their summer visits, and then walks several blocks to campus. This is no cab ride to Oxford Street. No matter how much she reads, underlines and marks up the pages, the words won’t come to her when she’s actually in class. Despite the best training at an American university in Qatar, she is at a loss in the graduate rooms in England, hoping no one else can see how much she struggles to keep up.

  Danny, a fellow student in their cohort, volunteers to moderate the first class discussion. “Yes, but why did Edward Said become such a luminary?”

  Hind is put off by the question and by him, his stained teeth and tattered sweater, his calculated sloppiness. These Brits. With a slight shock, she realizes Danny’s owlish gaze, along with everyone else’s, is trained fully on her.

  “Orientalism is so obvious,” Hind stammers, “if only to the Orientals.”

  No one looks satisfied, but her throat is dry and her mind empty of any other words. Instead of sinking down into her chair or running from the room (her original impulses) she sits up straighter, trying to pull something out of the tangled jumble of words on the page in front of her.

  “People are products of their culture,” the girl Sangita cuts in, filling the awkward gap, “so they can’t see how complicit they are in their own racism. Said made it impossible to overlook.” Everyone nods, even Danny; Hind realizes with amazement their balding tutor appears to be actually taking notes. The tractor beam of attention moves on, further around the table, as the discussion then turns to how to prep for the first exam.

  Hind catches up with Sangita after class as everyone else trickles out of the building toward the pubs.

  “How did you have time for all the reading?” she asks, pulling on her bangs in frustration as she shoots the girl a sideways glance, equal parts jealousy and admiration.

  Sangita throws a companionable arm around her new friend.

  “I didn’t,” she admits.

  Hind stops in their progression toward the door.

  “You didn’t?” Her red leather messenger bag sinks to the floor.

  Sangita returns her gaze without blinking.

  “But you were so confident. And I knew what I wanted to say, I just didn’t have the words.” Hind’s shoulders cave in. She blinks as her vision begins to swim in tears.

  “Oh, come on, let’s get a cup of
coffee and I’ll give you a crash course in Bullshitting 101.”

  Sangita drags the astonished Hind down the steps and into a nearby coffee shop. They sit on metallic stools, the only seats available to them, and watch passersby as they wait for their orders to be called up.

  “Skim,” Sangita says. “Skim the headings, the intro, the conclusion, and you’ve got the essence.”

  Hind takes a huge sip of her cup of Earl Grey and contemplates the girl she has spent at least a few weeks without noticing. Sangita is chugging a Coke from the bottle and has the text open to show her what she means. Hind pulls out her own already well-worn copy of the reader, embarrassed by the color-coded highlighting across the pages.

  “You need to get macro,” Sangita says, “not lost in the details.”

  Hind gulps down more of her tea.

  “That’s how you fake the readings?”

  Sangita nods.

  Hind reaches for a pen.

  She feels the girl’s eyes lingering on her face, though she looks away quickly when Hind meets her gaze.

  “Something wrong?”

  Sangita shakes her head.

  Hind begins to underline the chapter headings of the next assignment.

  “So here, in this section on Fanon, I would go off at a tangent about what?” She catches Sangita staring again, this time at Hind’s neck and ears.

  “Anything related,” Sangita says.

  Hind puts down her pen carefully. In Qatar there is a substantial underground community of women with close female friends. Very close. She wonders if in her loneliness she has stumbled into a misunderstanding.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Sangita takes a deep gulp of Coke and shrugs her shoulders, eyes wide.

  Hind gathers her things. The last thing she needs is a lesbian stalker. This must be the kind of look Noor tells her the boyas use at the university when picking their girlfriends. Butch Qatari girls or a girl on girl infatuation were not high on Hind’s list of things to do. Though according to Noor people tolerated this as it was a sign of status, to have a girl like you. What else could you do in a gender segregated society, as Noor explained it. Well, she wasn’t there right now, so she for one could do something. Hind brushed away the thoughts of home.