The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (12 page)

I still would not eat.The stomach cramps were so bad I had to curl up on the ex-army bed for hours. Parvin put the mug of soup on the side table and began rummaging in her rucksack. She produced a small silver cassette player, put it on the table, looked for a socket, then plugged it in. She pulled out a plastic bag full of tapes and selected one, opened the cassette door, slid the cassette in and pressed one of the buttons. Like the aroma of ground coffee music filled the room. The lyrics were so clear and for the first time I was able to understand them. The singer sang in a husky voice about arduous journeys uphill, about heartache and pain. When Parvin joined in I realized that she knew the words by heart. The singer's deep voice and Parvin's sweet voice soared together in the hostel. Parvin pretended to be holding a microphone. `I screwed up real good.' Her voice was loud and shrill by now `But I drink tea and chew biscuits. Drink and chew Drink and chew Drink up the soup and chew the bread then screw up agaaaain!'

When she pressed `stop' I held the now cold mug and began drinking.

On board the Hellena Miss Asher slept on the bunk bed and I slept on a mattress on the floor. We also got used to eating cold food and stale bread. The dining room was small and smelly. Crockery, cutlery, napkins and sugar bowls were laid out on the side table. I was not confident about using the cutlery so I ate cheese and bread and drank tea. A nice woman with three daughters would come to the dining room sometimes. Mrs Henderson, who worked as a nurse in a British hospital in Cyprus, was travelling back home to see her family. `I cannot bear the heat and clear skies any more. I cannot wait to feel the rain on my face," she said and smiled. She must have noticed my discomfort, so one morning she came to my table while I was chewing the bread and sat down. `My name is Rebecca, and these are my daughters Margaret and Lucy.'

I looked at them and said, `Pleased to have met you,' which Miss Asher had taught me in lesson three. Her daughters tackled the food with such ease and confidence.

She said, `I hope you don't mind me saying this, but why do you eat cheese and bread all the time?'

I don't know how,' I said, moving my hands as if they were carrying a knife and fork.

`I will teach you," she said.

From then on she started teaching me table manners and English while her daughters giggled in the background.

`You finally had a shower,' said Parvin one morning. `You must be feeling better.'

`Yes,' I said and wrapped my hair in the towel.

`We have to look for jobs,' said Parvin, `but first I must ask you about this scarf you keep wearing.'

`People look at me all time as if disease,' I said.

She sat down next to me on the bed and said, `It will be much harder to get a job while you insist on wearing it. My friend back home, Ash, was sacked because of his turban although they said that he did not meet his targets.'

`The doctor said too much past,' I said.

`Yes, Salina, too much past,' she said as if talking to herself.

`Too hard though,' I said.

`Yes, I know, I know,' she said.

I looked at the dainty padded pink satin shoes hanging in the window display like a crescent. The soft dreams of babies, the pink halos, nursery rhymes and whimpers. Layla was faceless, but three years ago I decided to give her a face. I dressed her up, combed her hair, gave her a bath and kissed her a thousand times goodnight. `In the film the guy who ran the projector gathered all the kisses that were censored by the priest and put them on one reel. When the boy he used to love so much came back to the town he ran the reel that had all the censored kisses just for him,' said Parvin. Layla would be sound asleep in her pink cot and I would bend down to kiss her.A three-year-old Layla would be chasing the hens and I would run towards her, hold her in my arms and kiss her. Layla would be crying, afraid to go to school for the first time; I would hold her, wipe her tears with my veil and kiss her. Then Layla, a teenage girl, would be telling me about a boy, like Hamdan, she had met on the way to school; I would rub her back then kiss her. `The young man was in tears, watching all the kisses,' but I walked on back straight, face dry, muscles taut, wrapped up in my raincoat.

On board the Hellena, leaning on the railing, I watched dry-eyed the sea churning and surging. The ship was pushing and shoving the grey water around leaving lines of white foam behind. Under the critical gaze of Miss Asher I received Rebecca's gentle instructions about table manners and the English language. This was the small bread plate, this was the main course knife and fork, this was the soup spoon and this was the dessert spoon. I had learnt how to corner the green lettuce, cut it into pieces, shove it in my mouth and eat it unwillingly as if I were full. I had learnt how to butter a piece of bread, hold it with two fingers and eat it with the soup. I had learnt how to be patient and wait for others to start eating and then start after them. I had learnt how to wait for others to stop speaking before I started talking. I had learnt how to start each conversation with a comment about the weather.

`Good morning, Sadiq. The weather is lovely today,' I said.

He pointed his finger at me, jerked his chin sideways and said, `Salma, Salina, you are becoming a memsahib. Soon you will be English also.'

`Stop being so sarcastic,' I said, holding my shopping bags tight.

`Well, you have even forgotten how to pray to Allah,' he said.

`What about you? Praying all the time and selling alcohol to infidels!'

`Business is business also.'

`So what do you use to keep your hair so shiny?' I asked to change the subject.

`Indian oil called Sexy,' he said and ran his hand over his sleek hair then smiled.

`Give us some then,' I said.

`You know, Salina, I would have taken you as a second wife if you were not so coconut.'

`A second wife, you must be joking,' I said and smiled.

`All we need to do is send my first wife two hundred pounds a month for her and the kids. If you help me with the payments I'll marry you.'

`I am supposed to pay you to get married to you as a second wife? Who do you think you are? Casanova?' I said and smiled again.

`Shoo, shoo, go lick the feet of your English landlady.'

In the evening, around sunset, I would walk outside and climb the nearest stairs to the higher decks to watch the Mediterranean closing in on us from every direction. I would linger on the observation deck watching the sky change its colour from glowing gold, to grim grey, to indigo then luminous black. I would just stand there hugging myself to stay warm. How the colours intermingle, disperse and then shift. It was a change of colour, and the colour of tomorrow would be like the green meadows I saw in a magazine called Woman's Own, which I found on one of the chairs on the deck. It had photos of plants and gardens full of colourful flowers. `Hinglaand sweet. Hinglaand beautiful,' I said to Rebecca.

Pea-green was the colour of the hills. Parvin told me once that the farmers used chemicals to kill the weeds and make the crops look greener than normal. Since then I would look at the green hills from my bedroom window and think of the layers of poison underneath the ground. While looking at the deep green grass of the cathedral, which no doubt had been sprinkled with some fertilizer, I remembered that Liz had asked me to buy her some bread. Projecting the words slowly I said, `Granary, please," to the sales girl.

`Say that again?' she said.

`Granary bread,' I said.

`This one' She pointed at a brown loaf.

I was too embarrassed to say no, the one to the left, so I nodded my head in agreement. I always felt that there was a long queue of old English ladies behind me, huffing and puffing. Of course I was an alien. It must show in the way I pronounced my `o's, the way I handled the money, the way I was dressed. My thin ankles betrayed me. I moved out of the queue before I had even put the change back in my purse. Elizabeth would crucify me because she had asked me to buy granary bread.

I noticed that after few nights of lectures about Jesus the Saviour and the Holy Trinity, Miss Asher stopped giving her nightly sermon. I would sit politely on the floor of the narrow cabin, hug my knees and listen to Miss Asher reading me stories from the Bible. `The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, "Your servant my husband is dead ... But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves."' I would listen as if listening to Jadaan, our village storyteller, whose stories of travelling to faraway lands and heroism were punctuated by playing the rehab. Whenever the fiddle struck the strings a rich thick sound, like the muffled cries of a woman, filled the yard. Miss Asher would translate some of the words into Arabic and then read the stories in the original English. Although I understood little, I really enjoyed listening to the tunes of a different language. One evening, I said to Miss Asher, as if divulging a great secret, `I play the reed pipe. Shall I play while you read?'

Miss Asher made sure that the top button of her white frilled collar was in the buttonhole, placed the Bible on the bed and said, `No. I am reading a sacred text.You must listen carefully and try to learn something.' She crossed herself and began undressing. I turned round and stretched on the mattress on the floor. I could feel the ship swaying here and there and through the small rounded window I could hear the rhythmic swoosh of the water.

I saw him walking down the alleyway to the cathedral close. `Hello,' I said to Jim.

`Jesus! You startled me,' he said.

I looked at his grey eyes, his waxy complexion, his ponytail and felt that Saturday night was so distant, hidden away in one of the storerooms of his mind. I began fiddling with the strap of my bag.

`I am in a hurry, I am afraid,' he said.

`Yes, of course,' I said. I was nervous and kept shifting my weight from one foot to another. `A cup of coffee some time?' I asked.

`I am really busy these days. See you around," he said and hurried down the cobbled alleyway.

I waved a feeble goodbye and walked up the alleyway. I turned round and saw the back of his grey shirt, his long thin arms, his delicate fingers and his sensible shoes disappear around the corner.

Parvin had already told me about the `see you around'. `It means I never want to see you ever again, adios, goodbye. Capish?'

I looked at my reflection in the hostel's one and only mirror. I had lost so much weight, my eyes and nose looked larger and my skin looked darker. I was so thin my trousers were slipping down. `It's a journey, a crossing to adulthood,' said Parvin. `The Chinese call it the little death that prepares you for the real big bang.' I was ready to go out for a walk. I wore blue jeans, a T-shirt and tied my white veil under my chin tightly. I looked again at my reflection then slowly began untying the knot of my white veil. I slid it off, folded it and placed it on the bed. I pulled my hair out of the elastic band, brushed it and tossed it around. I was so thin that my frizzy dark hair fell over my face almost covering it completely. I looked again at the veil, which my father had asked me to wear and my mother had bought for me, folded on the bed. I rubbed my forehead and walked out. It felt as if my head was covered with raw sores and I had taken off the bandages. I felt as dirty as a whore, with no name or family, a sinner who would never see paradise and drink from its rivers of milk and honey. When a man walked by and looked at my hair my scalp twitched. I sat down on the pavement, held my head and cried and cried for hours.

River Exe split into two branches forming a small island. It was a peaceful space covered with green grass, wild flowers, and on its borders birch, chestnut, oak and rowan trees grew I sat down on my jacket listening to the water rushing down to the sea, afraid to go home and face Liz. She might ask me about Jim. He said, `See you around.' And it sounded like: `You sleep around' Was I too easy, too available? Maybe I was too dark and foreign with my frizzy hair and sage tea. Was I too stiff and unwelcoming? I might be too inexperienced. My obsession with cleanliness might have put him off. I got a cheese cube and some bread out of the plastic bag, then broke the bread with my hand. I started chewing. I had borrowed Hidden Greece from the library so I took it out and began looking at the photos: the vine trees, old houses, cool whitewashed cloisters, women in permanent mourning and cold mountain springs.