I Think of You: Stories (16 page)

O
utside, there is a path. A path of beaten white stone bordered by a white wall—low, but not low enough for me to see over it from here. White sands drift across the path. From my window, I used to see patterns in their drift. On my way to the beach, I would try to place my foot, just the ball of my foot, for there never was much room, on those white spaces that glinted flat and free of sand. I had an idea that the patterns on the stone should be made by nature alone; I did not want one grain of sand, blown by a breeze I could not feel, to change its course because of me. What point would there be in trying to decipher a pattern that I had caused? It was not easy. Balancing, the toes of one bare
foot on the hot stone, looking for the next clear space to set the other foot down. It took a long time to reach the end of the path. And then the stretch of beach. And then the sea.

I used to sit where the water rolled in, rolled in, its frilled white edge nibbling at the sand, withdrawing to leave great damp half-moons of a darker, more brownish beige. I would sit inside one of these curves, at the very midpoint, fitting my body to its contour, and wait. The sea unceasingly shifts and stirs and sends out fingers, paws, tongues to probe the shore. Each wave coming in is different. It separates itself from the vast, moving blue, rises and surges forward with a low growl, lightening as it approaches to a pale green, then turns over to display the white frill that slides like a thousand snakes down upon itself, breaks and skitters up the sandbank. I used to sit very still. Sometimes the wave would barely touch my feet, sometimes it would swirl around me, then pull back, sifting yet another layer of sand from under me, leaving me wet to the waist. My heels rested in twin hollows that filled, emptied, and refilled without a break. And subtle as the shadow of a passing cloud, my half-moon would slip down the bank—only to be overtaken and swamped by the next leap of foaming white.

I used to sit in the curve and dig my fingers into the grainy, compact sand and feel it grow wetter as my fingers went deeper and deeper till the next rippling, frothing rush of white came and smudged the edges of the little burrow I had made. Its walls collapsed and I removed my hand, covered in wet clay, soon to revert to dry grains that I would easily brush away.

I lean against the wall of my room and count: twelve years ago, I met him. Eight years ago, I married him. Six years ago, I gave birth to his child.

For eight summers we have been coming here; to the beach house west of Alexandria. The first summer had not been a time of reflection; my occupation then had been to love my husband in this—to me—new and different place. To love him as he walked toward my parasol, shaking the water from his black hair, his feet sinking into the warm, hospitable sand. To love him as he carried his nephew on his shoulders into the sea, threw him in, caught him and hoisted him up again—a colossus bestriding the waves. To love him as he played backgammon with his father in the evening, the slam of counters and clatter of dice resounding on the patio while, at the dining room table, his sister showed me how to draw their ornate, circular script. To love this new him, who had been hinted at but never revealed when we lived in my northern land, and who after a long absence had found his way back into the heart of his country, taking me along with him. We walked in the sunset along the water’s edge, kicking at the spray, my sun hat fallen on my back, my hand, pale bronze in his burnt brown, my face no doubt mirroring his, aglow with health and love—a young couple in a glitzy commercial for a two-week break in the sun.

My second summer here was the sixth summer of our love—and the last of our happiness. Carrying my child and loving her father, I sat on the beach, dug holes in the sand, and let my thoughts wander. I thought about our life in my
country before we were married: four years in the cozy flat, precarious on top of a roof in a Georgian square: his meeting me at the bus stop when I came back from work; Sundays when it did not rain and we sat in the park with our newspapers; late nights at the movies. I thought of those things and missed them, but with no great sense of loss. It was as though they were all there to be called upon, to be lived again whenever we wanted.

I looked out to sea and, now I realize, I was trying to work out my coordinates. I thought a lot about the water and the sand as I sat there watching them meet and flirt and touch. I tried to understand that I was on the edge, the very edge of Africa; that the vastness ahead was nothing compared to what lay behind me. But even though I’d been there and seen for myself its never-ending dusty green interior, its mountains, the big sky, my mind could not grasp a world that was not present to my senses. I could see the beach, the waves, the blue beyond, and cradling them all, my baby.

I sat with my hand on my belly and waited for the tiny eruptions, the small flutterings that told me how she lay and what she was feeling. Gradually we came to talk to each other. She would curl into a tight ball in one corner of my body until, lopsided and uncomfortable, I coaxed and prodded her back into a more centered, relaxed position. I slowly rubbed one corner of my belly until
there,
aimed straight at my hand, I felt a gentle punch. I tapped and she punched again. I was twenty-nine. For seventeen years my body had waited to conceive, and now my heart and mind had caught
up with it. Nature had worked admirably; I had wanted the child through my love for her father, and how I loved her father that summer. My body could not get enough of him. His baby was snug inside me and I wanted him there too.

From where I stand now, all I can see is dry, solid white. The white glare, the white wall, and the white path, narrowing in the distance.

I should have gone. No longer a serrating thought but familiar and dull. I should have gone. In that swirl of amazed and wounded anger when, knowing him as I did, I first sensed that he was pulling away from me, I should have gone. I should have turned, picked up my child, and gone.

I turn. The slatted blinds are closed against a glaring sun. They call the wooden blinds
sheesh
and tell me it’s the Persian word for glass. So that which sits next to a thing is called by its name. I have had this thought many times and feel as though it should lead me somewhere, as though I should draw some conclusion from it, but so far I haven’t.

I draw my finger along a wooden slat. Um Sabir, my husband’s old nanny, does everything around the house, both here and in the city. I tried at first at least to help, but she would rush up and ease the duster or the vacuum cleaner from my hands. “Shame, shame. What am I here for? Keep your hands nice and soft. Go and rest. Or why don’t you go to the club. What have you to do with these things?” My husband translated all this for me and said things to her which I came to understand meant that tomorrow I would get used to their ways. The meals I planned never worked out. Um Sabir
cooked what was best in the market on that day. If I tried to do the shopping the prices trebled. I arranged the flowers, smoothed out the pleats in the curtains, and presided over our dinner parties.

My bed is made. My big bed into which a half-asleep Lucy, creeping under the mosquito net, tumbles in the middle of every night. She fits herself into my body and I put my arm over her until she shakes it off. In her sleep she makes use of me; my breast is sometimes her pillow, my hip her footstool. I lie content, glad to be used. I hold her foot in my hand and dread the time—so soon to come—when it will no longer be seemly to kiss the dimpled ankle.

On a black leather sofa in a transit lounge in an airport once, many years ago, I watched a Pakistani woman sleep. Her dress and trousers were a deep yellow silk, and on the dress bloomed luscious flowers in purple and green. Her arms were covered in gold bangles. She had gold in her ears and in her left nostril, gold around her neck. Against her body her small son lay curled. One of his feet was between her knees, her nose was in his hair. All her worldly treasure was on that sofa with her, and so she slept soundly on. That image too I saved up for him.

I made my bed this morning. I spread my arms out wide and gathered in the soft, billowing mosquito net. I twisted it around in a thick coil and tied it into a loose loop that dangles gracefully in midair.

Nine years ago, sitting under my first mosquito net, I had written: “Now I know how it feels to be a memsahib.” That
was in Kano, deep, deep in the heart of the continent I now sit on the edge of. I had been in love with him for three years, and being apart then was merely a variant of being together. When we were separated, there was for each a gnawing lack of the other. We would say that this confirmed our true, essential union. We had parted at Heathrow, and we were to be rejoined in a fortnight in Cairo, where I would meet his family for the first time.

I had thought to write a story about those two weeks; about my first trip into Africa: about Muhammad al-Senusi explaining courteously to me the inferior status of women, courteously because, being foreign, European, on a business trip, I was an honorary man. A story about traveling the long, straight road to Maiduguri and stopping at roadside shacks to chew on meat that I then swallowed in lumps while Senusi told me how the meat in Europe had no body and melted like rice pudding in his mouth. About the time I saw the lion in the tall grass. I asked the driver to stop, jumped out of the car, aimed my camera, and shot as the lion crouched. Back in the car, unfreezing himself from horror, the driver assured me that the lion had crouched in order to spring at me. I still have the photo: a close-up of a lion crouching in tall grass. I look at it and cannot make myself believe what could have happened.

I never wrote the story, although I still have the notes. Right here in this leather portfolio which I take out of a drawer in my cupboard. My Africa story. I told it to him instead— and across the candlelit table of a Cairo restaurant he kissed my hands and said, “I’m crazy about you.” Under the high
windows the Nile flowed by. Eternity was in our lips, our eyes, our brows. I married him, and I was happy.

I leaf through my notes. Each one carries a comment, a description meant for him. All my thoughts were addressed to him. For his part, he wrote that after I left him at the airport he turned around to hold me and tell me how desolate he felt. He could not believe I was not there to comfort him. He wrote about the sound of my voice on the telephone and the crease at the top of my arm that he said he loved to kiss.

What story can I write? I sit with my notes at my writing table and wait for Lucy. I should have been sleeping. That is what they think I am doing. That is what we pretend I do: sleep away the hottest of the midday hours. Out there on the beach, by the pool, Lucy has no need of me. She has her father, her uncle, her two aunts, her five cousins; a wealth of playmates and protectors. And Um Sabir, sitting patient and watchful in her black galabiya and
tarha,
the deck chairs beside her loaded with towels, sun cream, sun hats, sandwiches, and iced drinks in thermos flasks.

I look and watch and wait for Lucy.

In the market in Kaduna the mottled red carcasses lay on wooden stalls shaded by gray plastic canopies. At first I saw the meat and the flies swarming and settling. Then on top of the gray plastic sheets, I saw the vultures. They perched as sparrows would in an English market square, but they were heavy and still and silent. They sat cool and unblinking as the fierce sun beat down on their bald, wrinkled heads. And hand in hand with the fear that swept over me was a realization that
fear was misplaced, that everybody else knew they were there and still went about their business; that in the meat market in Kaduna, vultures were commonplace.

The heat of the sun saturates the house; it seeps in through every pore. I open the door of my room and walk out into the silent hall. In the bathroom I stand in the shower and turn the tap to let the cool water splash over my feet. I tuck my skirt between my thighs and bend to put my hands and wrists under the water. I press wet palms to my face and picture gray slate roofs wet with rain. I picture trees—trees that rustle in the wind, and when the rain has stopped, release fresh showers of droplets from their leaves.

I pad out on wet feet that dry by the time I arrive at the kitchen at the end of the long corridor. I open the fridge and see the chunks of lamb marinating in a large metal tray for tonight’s barbecue. The mountain of yellow grapes draining in a colander. I pick out a cluster and put it on a white saucer. Um Sabir washes all the fruit and vegetables in red permanganate. This is for my benefit, since Lucy crunches cucumbers and carrots straight out of the greengrocer’s baskets. But then she was born here. And now she belongs. If I had taken her away then, when she was eight months old, she would have belonged with me. I pour out a tall glass of cold bottled water and close the fridge.

I walk back through the corridor. Past Um Sabir’s room, his room, Lucy’s room. Back in my room I stand again at the window, looking out through the chink in the shutters at the white that seems now to be losing the intensity of its
glare. If I were to move to the window in the opposite wall I would see the green lawn encircled by the three wings of the house, the sprinkler at its center ceaselessly twisting, twisting. I stand and press my forehead against the warm glass. I breathe on the windowpane, but it does not mist over.

I turn on the fan. It blows my hair across my face and my notes across the bed. I kneel on the bed and gather them. The top one reads: “Ningi, his big teeth stained with kola, sits grandly at his desk. By his right hand there is a bicycle bell he rings to summon a gofer,” and then again: “The three things we stop for on the road should be my title: ‘Peeing, Praying, and Petrol.’ ” Those were lighthearted times, when the jokes I made were not bitter.

I lie down on the bed. These four pillows are my innovation. Here they use one long pillow with two smaller ones on top of it. The bed linen comes in sets. Consequently my bed always has two pillows in plain cases and two with embroidery to match the sheets. Also, I have one side of a chiffonier full of long, embroidered pillowcases. When I take them out and look at them I find their flowers, sheltered for so long in the dark, are unfaded, bright, and new.