The Inbetween People (15 page)

The bus meanders through the desert, for you are far from Galilee with its winding hills and endless white mountains. You think about how she was the last time you were on leave. Father told you she was not well when you arrived that night; you couldn’t see her as it was late, but you visited her the following morning. She was sitting in her room, the room that she once constructed to resemble her lost home, she seemed to have faded into the great chair, become part of it; yet her eyes were bright and the old sharpness remained in them, her thick white hair was pulled back into a bun at her nape, the immense strength within her was still apparent.

Saleem, she said in a whisper, and she smiled, so that you wondered had she become softer, had this sickness that descended upon her so late in life changed her. She sneezed into a small white handkerchief that she clenched between her hands. When do you finish with them? she said. She sat forward in the chair, rejecting the support it offered, her face turned to the light that came in the window. Six months you said, six months and I’m finished. Good, she said, then she sat back and closed her eyes. She did not speak again for a time.

All your life you were scared of her. You looked at her hands that day, as you sat before her on the patterned couch, and you only saw in those gnarled claws the hands that once beat you, you saw the red hot centre that was her palm when it lashed you across the face. You looked at her hard eyes, narrowing at the corners, and you saw the same eyes that had watched while your father beat you on account of her words, her version of events, your father who never beat you, only at her behest. She sat in front of you that day, your grandmother, erect in her chair, her eyes flashing at you.

Good, she said again, and you tried to love her, love her for her strength and her absolute faith in what she believed. You tried to love her but as you left the room you feared you would never love her, and now you are sitting in a bus, you are going to her and she is dying, you are sure she is dying, and you want to reach her, you pray you will reach her by nightfall because you want to tell her that you love her, love her for her faith and her beliefs and her crazy hatred. You don’t hate like she does, you don’t know how to, but you want to tell her that her hatred taught you how to love, and that even now you don’t know that you love her, but you think it important sometimes that these things are said anyway.

It is late when you reach the village, the last of the daylight still sparkles in the west behind the clouds that roam far away against the horizon. You walk through the streets, nod to the people you know, they return the greeting, shake hands with you, whisper that they are sorry to hear that your grandmother is ill. When you reach your home you note that though the sun has disappeared, all the shutters are still closed against it. Your father comes to meet you, she is very ill, he says, she doesn’t have long. We thought she would have gone hours ago. His hand is flat against your back, pushing you through the rooms, up the stairs, through to Grandmother. She’s been asking for you, he says, she asks for you more than for anyone else, even her own children.

The smell of death meets you at the door, you know this smell, you turn away from it as the stench hits you, breathe it, before entering, nod at the rest of the family. They sit in silence, there is only Grandmother’s heavy breathing. The shutters and the window are closed, making the room stuffier, darker, the smell of the very sick is everywhere. Only Grandmother’s face and hands are visible, the shrunken claws that are her fingers clutch at the sheets, her nails are long and yellow, her breathing is heavy, each breath a gasp, a fight, and when it reaches her lungs there is a moment of triumph, a short-lived victory.

Saleem’s here, says your father. He has arrived, and her eyes flicker open briefly.

You sit down, the seat closest to the doorway. Everyone sits there for a long time. Nobody speaks, you want to speak, you feel you should say something. There is a nurse in the room, she doesn’t have long, she says, and she looks at your father when she speaks. She might not last this hour. She is busy around Grandmother’s bedside, doing what she can; sometimes Grandmother coughs, a terrifying wheezing sound.

At thirteen minutes past three in the morning she speaks. She turns her face to you, words come out of the black hole that is her mouth. Tell them how we left, she says.

Grandmother, you say, and it is a question, for you don’t know what she is asking. You lean towards her, her breath is foul against your face. We didn’t pack, she says. Tell them. Tell them how we left.

Each word is a gasp, an effort. Yes, you say. Grandmother, you told us. We all know about it. Tell them, she gasps, tell them. You look at your father, he nods at you, and you begin to speak. You tell her about that day, leaving her home in the mountains, the pot of soup still bubbling over the fire, cabbage soup, fresh from the garden, spiced with her own herbs and her beloved rosemary, the fire still hot, the grief, the white chalk road in front of them, the heat of the day, the way the sun burnt their shoulders, the crown of their heads, the way your father cried as she pulled him behind her, the blisters that appeared on her feet, the agony of leaving. The plucking of some rosemary from the garden, rosemary for remembrance she told you, planted later in the yard outside her new home, under the jasmine and the weeping willow tree, so that every time the scent comes to her the remembrance rises in her chest in a great bubble of sorrow.

She dies, somewhere in the midst of your words, she dies, she loses her fight and gives up on life, but you continue for a time because none of you realise she is dead, and only when you finish the story, when the words drift away to be cleansed in the coming dawn, when there are no more words in the cooler morning air, no more events to add to that day, then the realisation comes. Your father drops his head and the nurse comes and leans over Grandmother, and when she turns to you there are tears in her eyes.

And you look at her body, fading rapidly into nothing and you know that nothing that she built here, nothing about this house, where she remained all these years, could match the home she once had, could equal what she’d lost when she lost her former home, for she lived her life with the knowledge that she couldn’t have it again, could never have it again; and so it was not that what she lost was more beautiful than what she later gained in her new home, it was just that she had lost what she loved and nothing new was ever of equal measure in her eyes.

C
HAPTER
21

O
utside my window the line of cypresses lead away from this cell, down a grey, treelined driveway, towards the desert sky. I turn my face to the wall, it is visiting day, most of the other prisoners have gone to meet their families.

Zaki raps at the door. Avi, he says, you have a visitor. I turn to face him, the wind hurls the rain against the window. Who, I ask, and in that instant I believe it could be my mother, my heart lifts as it always does at the thought of her. Are you coming or not, he says, and then, it’s that girl, the one who was here before. She came back.

I sit on the bed and pull my hands through my hair. Come on, he says. I have to get back. I go with him, through the dark corridor, into that room, it is filled with people, their faces wet, water streaming from their hair, surrounded by the pallid light that emanates from an unshaded yellow bulb, pale against the November darkness. As soon as I am inside I feel the need to contract, remove myself from people’s gazes. I see David, his wife is there with two small boys, they sit with their faces towards the ground, wet hair slicked against their foreheads, an unconscious sadness upon their small faces, for their mother is angry, her voice is raised. Sahar is there, in the cubicle next to them, her hair is wet, and there are streaks of makeup across her face, I see that she has trailed wet footprints across the floor. Avi, she says, her voice filled with doubt, doubts that she has lived with for the past week, since I last saw her, they rise to the surface, I can see them in her eyes, she struggles to contain them.

Why did you come? I say. I thought you were not coming again. She turns away from me, rubs at an ancient ink stain on the rough wood between us, takes a deep breath that seems to fill her with resolution. There is another story, she says. I came to tell it to you. You should know after all.

Come home now, David’s wife says, the children are here because they need you. One of the boys rises to his feet, reaches towards the corner of the cubicle, traces his finger along a spider’s web, then plunges his hand into its midst. I can’t, David says, patient, tolerant, I’ve told you, I will serve my time here, I have no other option. After that I will return home. The boys need you, she says. She strokes the back of the boy’s head and he prods his finger through the web. You need your dad, don’t you, she says to him, and she cuddles the other child closer to her. Don’t do this, David says, don’t do this, how can they possibly understand.

I run my hands through my hair. Another story, I say.

Sahar looks at me, our eyes meet, I read in her black eyes a determination, the uncertainty of last week has dissipated. Yes, she says, the rest of the story. She fiddles with the cigarettes she has placed in front of her. When did you start smoking? I say. I brought them for you, she says, and pushes them towards me under the gauze. I was thinking how unpleasant it would be here for you if you ran out of cigarettes.

What the boys understand, David’s wife says, what they understand is that their daddy is gone. Darling, he says, I would be gone in any case, I would be in the Occupied Territories, carrying out work that is against everything I stand for. I cannot do that work anymore, he says. I will not do it, I’ve tried to tell you but you don’t listen.

What are you talking about, Sahar, I say, why are you back here, what story do you need to tell me. Did the passport arrive, she says, I nod, and she leans forward, pushes her face against the gauze. She closes her eyes. The rain is falling against the windows, great driving sheets of water. How was the drive? I say. Her eyes cloud, I hate coming here, she says, it crawls inside me somehow and doesn’t leave. She moves her face back from the gauze, her skin remains white where it was pressed against it. The drops of rain are drying on her skin. She looks right at me. You must listen, she says, you must listen to what I say, for it is exactly how it was. I turn to the great windows, the sky outside is oppressive, the cypress trees lead away to the hills, dark, darker even than the black sky.

M
Y
MOTHER
was content all through May and June, she sang to herself, smiled and laughed, as beautiful as she’d ever been. She awoke early in the mornings, made special treats for Father and me in the evenings, Yorkshire pudding that she said was an English recipe much loved by my father, and jam tarts, just like the ones her mother used to make when she was a child, and apple strudel, an old recipe of her grandmother’s. She put makeup on one day, took the bus to the town, returned in the afternoon with shopping bags full. She chatted a lot in the evenings, made conversation with my father, discussed the gardens with him, and his vision for the future, expressed an interest in politics. She tidied the house, sorted through all my old clothes, brought them to the laundry where she said they could be donated to another family, placed my father’s old gardening magazines in neat stacks on the coffee table, threw out old toys of mine and general junk that had accumulated around the house, polished the wooden table they had brought from the house in Tel Aviv after her family died, filled vases full of wild flowers that spewed their magic vapour around the house, so that every room was filled with an odour that was sweet and enticing and full of secrets.