Minaret: A Novel (21 page)

She speaks about Eid and how the angels are handing out gifts to us. Then she tells us to try and keep up all the high standards of Ramadan, not to slack off like we usually do. The extra prayers, the extra charity, the daily reading of the Qur'an, not back-biting, not gossiping, not envying, not lying - we should make the intention of keeping them up throughout the year. 'And don't forget the voluntary fast of six days of Shawaal. If you can't do six, do five, four. Even fasting one day is better than nothing.' Her words will stay with me - they always do. Strange that she is not my friend, I can't confide in her and when we are alone the conversation hardly flows. Our natures are not harmonious; we orbit different paths. One day she will move on and forget me yet, when she speaks about Allah, when she says, He is talking to us, aren't we lucky? We can open the Qur'an and He is talking directly to us,' there is a breakthrough in my understanding, a learning fresh as lightning. When she says, 'Ya hahibi, ya Rasul Allah', I feel I love the Prophet as much as she does.

In the lull between Um Waleed's talk and the next item on the programme, there are more hellos, memories of sisters who were with us in past Eld parties but who have now moved away. There are more children in new clothes to kiss and admire, the surprise - I almost squeal - of seeing a friend for the first time without her hijab. This one is all peaches and cream, this one is like a model, this one is mumsy with or without her hijab, this one in her smart jacket looks like she wants to chair a board meeting. This one with the glasses and unruly hair looks like a student and she is one, but this one looks like a belly dancer and she is definitely not. She is the staid wife of a lucky doctor with four daughters kept well under control. This one looks like a tomboy. I can imagine her, when she was young, playing football with her brothers; now she's a nursery teacher. This one looks Indian, as if the hijab had made me forget she was Indian and now she is reminding me - in the sari with her flowing hair and jewellery, she is relaxed, traditional. And the one who looks like a model confesses to me in a whisper, don't tell anyone else, Najwa, please, but she was actually Miss Djibouti long ago, before coming to Britain, before having children and covering her hair with a scarf.

I am told: You look like a gypsy,' and I laugh. It must be my earrings and curly hair, the skirt of my dress. Or perhaps I look intriguing, with secrets I don't want to share. This is not a fancy-dress party. But it is as if the hijab is a uniform, the official, outdoor version of us. Without it, our nature is exposed.

Children sing as part of the programme. There is a short play, awkward and badly produced but it still pulls a few laughs. Then Shahinaz dances. She has been practising for weeks - she wanted to get it right, to make it perfect. I hold Mai up so that she can see better. `Look at Aunty, doesn't she look like a princess?' A drumbeat and I watch her feet, her ankle bracelet, the way she moves her hands. None of us can take our eyes off her. Only baby Ahmed is oblivious, chubby and gorgeous in a new sailor suit complete with a hat. When his grandmother brings him over and they sit next to me, I take him from her and hug him. I kiss his smooth cheeks and dimpled hands. Not all babies inspire in me the feelings he does. I whisper in his ears, Are you going to be as good at dancing as your mummy, are you?' He laughs and I look up at Shahinaz, delicate and skilled - it is as if we are watching a proper performance, a film. I catch her eldest daughter watching her, fascinated, as if she is finding it hard to believe that this moving vision is her mum.

In comparison, when we Arabs dance it is all laughter and chaos, nothing ordered, nothing practised. But even Shahinaz finds it hard to copy us, though I know that she has often practised at home. I am warm from the dancing. It makes me laugh but it distresses Mai to see me different. I hold her in my lap until it is time to eat.

While we balance paper plates and children, Shahinaz tells me that she has applied as a mature student to do a degree in social work. I congratulate her and she talks about next year, how her mother-in-law will look after the children, how busy she'll be. You haven't been to my house this Eid,' she says and invites me to go home with her for the rest of the day.

`I wish I could but I have to take Mai home.'

She stands up to kiss me goodbye. `We used to see each other every night at Taraweeh prayers and now everyone will get busy again.'

I know what she means. Ramadan had brought us close together. For a month the mosque had been full of people. We were making an effort, sloughing off our faults, quietened down with hunger. In the last ten nights, it was even more crowded, the recitation more powerful, all of us listening to the same verses, enjoying the same mood. Once, a women next to me remarked, `Today I almost felt like I was in Mecca. It's the same feeling, all the people gathering and the spiritual pleasure.'

Now that Ramadan is over I wonder where I got my energy from - fasting all day while working, then, instead of going home, going straight to the mosque. There I would break my fast, wedged in the crowd, sometimes there was hardly a place to sit and then we would all stand up to pray, and suddenly there was more space and the imam would start to recite.

In Ramadan I was chauffeur-driven home every night. This miracle took the shape of the wife of the Senegalese Ambassador, one of the many women who come to the mosque only in Ramadan. She prayed next me, shoulder to shoulder, every evening just because we happened to like the same spot, away from the radiator, close to the window with the night air coming in from the street. I didn't tell her that, once upon a time, diplomats like her husband and even the President of the Sudan were regular visitors in my father's house. I didn't tell her more than my name and what I did. There was no need - we had come together to worship and it was enough. Our movements matched; she didn't fidget while standing and that pleased me; she stood close to me and didn't irritate me by leaving a gap. Evening after evening, every day for three weeks, we stood and knelt together. Then our periods swung and arrived at the same time. One day I was praying and she was not there. The next day I was absent too.

On the drive home, we hardly talked and she instructed her chauffeur to drop her off first. I liked that about her. She was kind without being condescending. In her smooth luxurious car, I used to doze to the sound of the car's indicator and her voice speaking on a mobile phone in Senegalese. I would dive in dreams to become small again, pampered by my parents. They loved me and I was safe with them, special. I made them laugh. The rest of the year I have hope but in Ramadan I have confidence, the certainty that, if I keep plodding this path, Allah will give me hack that happiness again, will replace the past with something grander, more potent and enhanced.

Tamer is in the flat when we get hack. I see his shoes in the hall but he is in his room with the door closed. I give Mai her dinner. She is hungry because she had refused to eat anything at the Eid party. Even the party hag each child was given, full of sweets, balloons and crayons, stayed clutched in her fist, unopened. She relaxes now that she is back in familiar surroundings. The kitchen is as we left it this morning, with her highchair and the dinner I had quickly cooked knowing I wouldn't have enough time in the evening. She sings and babbles away, hanging her spoon on the table. `You'll wake your uncle,' I say. `Maybe he's asleep.'

He had spent the last ten days of Ramadan in seclusion at the mosque. Lamya disapproved. She told me so in a rare moment of friendliness. `He's missing days of classes, how will he ever catch up! It's so unnecessary. I don't know why he does these weird things.' He came back home the last evening of Ramadan with a large hag of laundry and a scraggly heard. He looked right through me, his eyes clear and shining, as if he really could see other things, as if he had been through a cleansing, humbling experience. I long to hear him talk about it, what it is like to spend days away from it all, fasting and praying and reading Qur'an.

He walks into the kitchen carrying in both hands what looks like a box inside a plastic hag. He says it is for me; it is for the Eid. He smiles and, though we had not spoken for days, it is as if our friendship is taking off from where we left it. I wipe my hands on my apron and open the box. It is fine buttery biscuits submerged in castor sugar: Eid ka'ak. I thank him and he ignores me, ruffles Mai's hair, lifts her from her highchair. She shows him her bag of goodies and I explain about the party.

He stops smiling and says, `Lamya should have given you the day off.'

`It's no problem. Mai was no trouble there at all.'

`But still, Lamya made a mistake. If I had known, I would have spoken to her about it.'

`She probably has important classes she can't miss.'

`She doesn't have classes. She's doing a PhD.'

I shrug. `Well, it's over and done with. You needn't be concerned about it.'

He looks straight at me, his bright eyes even more intense since he'd done the retreat. `It's nice for Mai that she went with you. What has her mother done for her? Nothing. No new dress, no toys, no outings.'

I automatically defend her. `She's busy with her studies ...'

He interrupts. `Studying, studying, it's an obsession with this family! It's actually a religious obligation to celebrate. We should he happy, we should give it time.'

I offer him one of the ka'ak, as a way of changing the subject. He shakes his head, `No, they're for you.'

`Please. We can have them with tea.'

He sits down and I fetch plates from the cupboard, put the kettle on.

He says, `Instead of complaining that Lamya hasn't done anything for Mai, I should do something.' I smile and he goes on. `If you would like, we could take her tomorrow to the zoo, if you like . . .' He sounds vague, it's shyness.

`Tomorrow is my day off.' I am going to see Omar.

`After tomorrow then.'

I nod and in the pause that follows say, `Tell me about your seclusion at the mosque. What was it like?'

`I found the first two days hard but at the end I didn't want to leave. It felt strange at the beginning not to watch TV, not to go to lectures. Time went slowly. I missed having my own bathroom, sleeping on a bed. There were quite a lot of us there and while I was asleep they'd be talking in a loud voice or reciting Qur'an. I couldn't sleep well. Then, after the second day, I got used to it, like I settled into it and I didn't mind any more about the bathroom or the curry they gave us at three o'clock in the morning for suhur. Imagine!'

I laugh. `I can only eat cereal or toast at that time in the morning. I can never eat a proper meal.'

`I'm the same, but cereal was in short supply.'

`Next year, next Ramadan you must remember to he well stocked.'

`Yeah,' he says as if next year is too far to think about. I used to have that feeling too when I was young, that time was slow and heavy. Now it skips along; these moments watching him relax, hanging on to his smile.

You looked changed the day you came out of seclusion. Like there was a light coming from your face.'

`Have I lost it now?' The almost girlish interest in himself.

I pause. `No.'

He makes a face; he doesn't believe me.

`You won't lose it that fast.'

He had not said this to anyone else, I can tell from his voice, the slow words. 'I did feel spiritually strong. I did reach a kind of detachment, like things didn't matter, not in a careless, angry sort of way but more like I could take them in my stride. So what if I didn't like what I was studying, it would just be three years and they'll pass fast. But the feeling didn't last long. I couldn't get it to last. While it did though, while I was there, I was happy.'

I take my first bite of ka'ak, savour the sweetness, the way it sticks to my teeth. Looking at him across the table, I become conscious that I am celebrating; I am not fasting any more. I have danced in the afternoon and now this gift in the evening. Happiness makes me bold enough to say, `Can I ask you something but promise you will answer with the truth?'

`Yes.' He's serious, both hands around his mug of tea.

`Did Lamya tell you to get me these biscuits?'

He shakes his head, `No, she didn't.'

`She didn't say to you, "Tamer do me a favour, get something for the maid for Ed"?'

He smiles, `No, she didn't.'

`So why are you smiling?'

`I am just smiling.'

`It sounds like you're not telling the truth.'

He smiles. `I am. Really. Do you want me to swear?'

try and take the feeling of Eid to Omar but the prison puts me in my place. It shrinks me like it shrinks him. I wish it would purify him, wring him and bring him back to me restored. Instead, it contains, habilitates. He had been put through courses designed to make him `address his crime', `acknowledge his guilt'. But there is no catharsis, no purge. There are things that can't be said, thoughts that never see the light of day. I wish that he had been punished the very first time he took drugs. Punished according to the Shariah - one hundred lashes. I do wish it in a hitter, useless way because it would have put him off, protected him from himself.