I Can't Think Straight (4 page)

‘What does your father do?’ Reema inhaled again, hungrily.

Footsteps were moving quickly down the hallway. Leyla had an instant mental picture of a rich, well-dressed Middle Eastern daughter with immaculate hair, nails and make-up, accessorised and high-heeled to within an inch of her life. Instead, a tall young woman in jeans strode in and shook her head at Reema.

‘Stop interrogating the poor girl, Mama.’

Leyla stood up quickly, watching as Ali grasped Tala in a bear hug and when Tala turned to her, Leyla held out a hand, friendly but formal. Tala regarded the hand with an air of amusement before leaning to kiss the girl on both cheeks. Leyla smiled and recipro-cated, not wanting to appear awkward, although she was. She had never learned how to decide when to offer a hand versus a kiss.

Other people seemed to drift easily into the right method for the right person; there must be some intricate web of body language that Leyla had not grasped, or perhaps it was her innate reserve that held her back more easily than it urged her forward. Tala smiled, noting the indecision in Leyla’s movement.

‘Sorry to break your British reserve,’ Tala said. ‘But we always kiss in the Middle East.’ She paused and leaned forward conspirato-rially. ‘Usually just before we slit your throat…’

Leyla smiled and took in the young woman before her. Tala wore a soft shirt, open at the throat to reveal a thin, plain gold chain. Her nails were short and unpolished, her shoes immaculate, but flat and practical. Her hair was curly and untamed, and it lent her an air of slight madness, as though the thoughts in her head were springing directly out through her scalp. Leyla became aware that her face was advertising her surprise because Tala was watching her, amused.

‘You’re not what I expected.’ Leyla spoke the most coherent sentence floating in her head and then closed her eyes slightly against her own forthrightness.

‘That’s because Ali paints me as a rich, spoilt princess,’ Tala replied dryly.

‘Isn’t it true?’ he asked her with gentle sarcasm.

‘I’m not a princess,’ she replied with a smile.

‘Just rich and spoilt,’ her father noted, filling in the gap with the punchline that Tala had deliberately left open for him.

She smiled and sat on the floor, waving away offers of a seat. Her gaze moved back to Leyla.

‘And are you what my mother expected? I heard her giving you the third degree, even from the hallway.’

Reema cleared her throat in preparation for her own defence, which evidently her daughter was going to make necessary tonight.

Even in front of guests, she had a habit of ignoring social niceties that was unbecoming and occasionally embarrassing.

‘I’m not sure,’ Leyla said, with a lack of wit that she immediately regretted.

‘Mama.’ Her mother addressed Tala in the Arabic style, by using her own title. ‘I was having a polite conversation. She is a lovely girl.’ Reema’s eyes again passed over Leyla as she made this pro-nouncement, taking in the well-proportioned features, the glossy dark hair (which could be styled a little more) and the figure which was acceptable, although the girl clearly lacked the awareness of how to enhance her natural assets. She looked to be decent enough, perhaps lacking a little polish, but there was still the matter of her father’s work that had to be flushed out.

‘How many people work in your family’s business?’ Reema asked, by way of subtly gauging the size of the concern.

‘About one in three,’ Leyla quipped. It was a habit of hers, when she was self-conscious, to fall back on small jokes but she was immediately sorry for it. Reema regarded her blankly, and only the fact that she began the ritual of preparing another cigarette prevented Leyla from withering entirely under the older woman’s gaze.

Tala, however, laughed.

‘There are ten of us here,’ Leyla replied quickly. ‘And about ten in Africa – we have a couple of offices there.’

This pleased Reema immensely. ‘A worldwide operation,’ she said. An overblown and inaccurate vision of her father’s business as a multi-national conglomerate passed briefly through Leyla’s mind as she smiled politely at Reema.

‘Mama,’ Tala said. ‘Ease up on the questions. She’s marrying Ali, not me.’

Everyone laughed, but beneath the stretched tension of Reema’s powdered face, her cheeks burned. It was an easy, flippant comment, but Tala’s referral to marriage, to herself in relation to this girl; the throwaway suggestion of union between two women, set Reema’s teeth on edge. She reached for the flaming palm tree once more and waited for the first drag on her cigarette to relax her.

‘I hear you’re getting married,’ offered Leyla. ‘Congratulations.

That’s wonderful news.’

Reema sat back and listened and decided that she liked this girl Leyla after all.

‘You’re welcome to come to the wedding, if you like, it’s in six weeks,’ offered Tala. ‘Have you been to Jordan?’

Leyla had been nowhere in the Middle East. It spoke to her of starry nights and sand dunes (both images gleaned from 970’s Turkish Delight advertisements). It suggested liquid, smoky eyes glimpsed over a hijab, cardamom-infused coffee and romantic souks. She tried to communicate this to Tala with the necessary tone of irony, aware that Reema was regarding her strangely.

‘The souk in Amman is a dump,’ Tala informed her. ‘But I can have someone take you there if you like.’

‘That’s kind of you,’ Leyla replied. She was secretly shocked by the presumption that the sudden wedding invitation would be accepted. ‘But I’m afraid I won’t be able to come. I have to work.’

‘Do you like it?’

‘What?’

‘Your work?’

Leyla hesitated. ‘Mostly. It’s finance and numbers, mainly.’

‘But it’s not your passion?’

She did not know how to answer such a question. It was the first time she had ever been asked it. She looked at Tala’s eyes, softly brown, intent, alive.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not my passion.’

Apparently unconscious of the impression she was making, Tala reached for the small tray of syrup-drenched pastries that accompanied the tea, offering them around before putting one into her mouth.

‘Mama, we’re having dinner in an hour,’ Reema said reproachful-ly. ‘And there is not a millimetre to spare in your wedding dress.’

‘I’m not going to starve for another six weeks, Mama.’ Tala ate another pastry and looked at Leyla. ‘Join us for dinner?’

‘I don’t know, we…’ she looked to Ali, but he was explaining supply chain economics to Tala’s father. Quickly Leyla cast around for another question to ask.

‘Will you get married in a mosque?’ she asked, falling back on the wedding plans as an acceptable avenue for small talk. But she noticed Reema’s eyebrows meet in a frown.

‘A church,’ Reema corrected. ‘A church.’

‘Not all Arabs are Muslims,’ Tala said.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…’Leyla began, but Tala interrupted her.

‘Are you a Muslim?’

Leyla wondered if Tala simply did not know how to ask questions about the weather. She sat up as she nodded. The ornate, carved chair in which she sat was becoming uncomfortable, but she felt an unusual pulse of energy moving through her limbs.

‘Why?’ Tala asked.

‘Mama, what kind of a question is that?’ Reema demanded. ‘Because she was
born
a Muslim.’

‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Tala.

‘Weren’t you?’ Reema asked. Leyla felt her mouth opening uncertainly and then closing again, but Tala left no time for any reply.

‘She was born female and a certain race,’ Tala told her mother.

‘And if she’d been adopted by a Jewish family, she’d have been Jewish.’Reema sat back and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke in relief.

‘Thank God she wasn’t adopted. What the Middle East doesn’t need is more Jews!’

‘Mama, please!’ Tala closed her eyes, shook her head and sat back.

Out in the hallway Rani, the housekeeper who, as always, had travelled with Reema from Jordan, pushed out the swing door from the kitchen with her ample backside, for her hands were holding a silver tray carrying a crystal tumbler of water. She paused for a moment in the dim corridor, listening briefly as Reema expounded on politics and religion. She spat into the water, and then, with a slight flourish, dropped in a tablet of soluble painkiller that fizzed its way up the glass.

Leyla felt the room spin for a moment, but the moment passed.

She forced herself to focus on the arrival of an Indian housekeeper, bearing a small gilt tray upon which a glass of effervescent liquid rested.

‘Your headache medicine, Madam,’ Rani said. Leyla watched the housekeeper intently, seeking respite from the aggression of the conversation, but found instead that the woman’s eyes held what seemed like a malicious gleam as she watched Reema lift the glass to her lips.

‘I don’t have a headache,’ Reema remembered suddenly. Rani’s face dropped as she pushed the tray nearer.

‘But it is seven o’clock, Madam. Your usual headache time.’

Despite the logic of this reply, Reema dismissed her with a flick of the hand, then rose and excused herself. She had no more than three quarters of an hour to re-apply her make up and get dressed for dinner. Even from the hallway, she could hear Tala’s hectoring tone. The girl was lucky anyone would marry her, she thought to herself, let alone a gem like Hani.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Tala said.

‘I’m not Jewish,’ Leyla answered with a slight smile.

Tala laughed. ‘Why not?’

‘Why aren’t you?’

‘I don’t subscribe to any religion,’ Tala explained.

‘So you live without any faith?’ asked Leyla, feeling more controlled now, more like her father. She waited for a response, but for a few moments Tala only met her gaze intently.

‘I didn’t say that,’ she said gently.

Disarmed and disconcerted, Leyla looked away. ‘Why should my beliefs offend you?’

‘They don’t,’ Tala smiled. ‘I just want to know why they don’t offend you.’

Leyla suddenly longed for just a small touch of her father’s sales techniques. He would never have let the conversation get this far out of hand. He would already have converted to Islam the woman with the expressive hair, sitting on the floor.

‘Okay,’ Leyla said, desperately. ‘I’ve been brought up to follow this religion, this path. Is that so bad?’ Leyla detected an edge of whining defensiveness in her own ears that was not attractive.

‘Yes’ Tala said. ‘Why aren’t you Jewish? Just by choosing one of these paths, you’re implying there’s something better about the one chosen, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe not better, just preferred,’ Leyla replied.

‘But did you prefer Islam? Or do you prefer it because it’s what you were brought up with? How would your parents feel if you ‘preferred’ Judaism?’

‘It’s more than a preference,’ Leyla said, desperately. ‘It’s faith.’

‘I see,’ Tala said, smiling. ‘Faith. So no questioning allowed.’

‘You just questioned me.’

‘And you didn’t proclaim a fatwa on my head,’ she laughed.

‘Thank you!’

The cold wind of the London night caught Leyla with violence on the side of her head as they left. Ali reached for her hand, but she could not bring herself to take hold of something which brought so little comfort, so little emotion of any kind. She felt raw, as though the scars had been picked from old, dried wounds, and the exposed cuts were now being dipped into salt water. She glanced up, towards the old lamps of the park, to the gracious brick buildings whose warm interiors spoke of comfortable, pleasurable lives. But these gave her not an ounce of consolation, no salve to spread over the mental beating she had just received.

They got into the car.

‘Did you like them?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ she replied and she was speaking the truth, at least partly. Some corner of her battered mind was grateful for the exchange that had just happened, was inspired by the simple, yet undeniably clear possibilities that this unknown girl had casually placed before her, as though offering a tray of sweetmeats. But the rest of her was relieved to sink into the leather seats of Ali’s car and to shut the door and enclose herself in the small, warm space with only him beside her.

Chapter Three

They had dinner, just the three of them, at a nearby Italian restaurant. Omar had known the place for years from his constant visits to London, and liked it because the service was efficient and he was not made to wait half an hour between courses. Reema liked it because the lighting was sensitive to a woman’s complexion and the clams in the spaghetti vongole were (correctly) removed from their shells, thereby saving her the irritating task of picking at stubbornly attached bits of seafood in the semi-darkness. Tala, on the other hand, had decided inwardly that she would never visit the restaurant again – it was gloomy inside, and the suspicions raised by the overly rapid service of the food were confirmed when she tasted it. Nothing was freshly cooked. Her father ate too quickly to fully taste anything, and her mother’s taste buds must have been annihilated by years of heavy smoking. Her disappointment at the food was not relieved by the company of her parents. On the contrary, dinner conversation consisted primarily of listening to Reema hold forth about weddings, family gossip or, her new topic, Tala’s attempt to set up her own business. Reema’s insistent assessment of the requirements of her daughter’s company was made from data she had gleaned perhaps twenty-five years ago, and was therefore lacking in any relevance whatsoever, but she enjoyed applying herself to management solutions all the same. Omar half-listened, while simultaneously counting the number of people in the restaurant, and checking the number of minutes between courses (he generally allowed ten minutes longer for the main course). This left Tala with the burden of listening and responding, if required, to her mother’s soliloquys.

‘If you’re going to start making your own products, you should manufacture in India or Africa,’ Reema was saying. ‘Choose a poor country.’

Tala looked desperately for her father, but he had chosen that moment to go to the bathroom.

‘Why?’ she asked, willing herself to remain calm.