Women of Sand and Myrrh (11 page)

I entered my house like a whirlwind. I didn’t let Umar watch the end of his TV programme. ‘Into the bathroom this minute,’ I shouted, rushing ahead of him to wash my face. I piled my hair up under a plastic shower cap, undressed, and finding the hooks on the back of the door empty, I bent and took a shirt of my husband’s out of the clothes basket, smelt it, threw it back in the basket, looked around me, then picked it out again and put it on. I turned on the showed and the water came out looking murky. I exclaimed in disgust, ‘Ouf! They say the sea water’s been desalinated and look at it, it’s still sandy!’ When the water was warm I called Umar at the top of my voice, and called again. He ambled along and took off his clothes holding on to the door handle, then got into the bath. He approached the spray of water from the shower then backed away again. ‘What? Is it too hot or too cold?’ I asked irritably. He said, ‘From here it seems cold. When I get used to it, it’s nice,’ and stayed where he was. Again I asked irritably, ‘And when are you going to get used to it? Next year?’ And again he tried to stand under it, keeping at a
distance until I took his hand and pulled him right under. When I started rubbing his hair he wriggled about and said, ‘The shampoo’s stinging my eyes.’

‘This is Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. It doesn’t sting.’ He didn’t stop fidgeting and moving away from under my hand, until I slapped his hand hard. Then he realized I wasn’t playing, and even when the water got hotter he just said quietly, ‘This water’s getting really hot,’ and squirmed. I dried him quickly and knew that I was rubbing him too hard. Handing him his underwear and pyjamas, I said, ‘Put them on in your room, darling. I want to have a bath.’ Then I unhooked the shower and washed away the few remaining traces of soap, hung it up again and filled the bath. I threw Basem’s shirt back in the dirty clothes basket and stood close to the mirror, examining my face. I was struck by the way it hadn’t changed; my turbulent emotions, my confusion, my resolve didn’t show on it. I felt happier at the thought that Umar hadn’t seen a different face. The water gradually covered me. It was very hot but I withstood the temptation to add some cold to it and lay there sweating. This seemed to strengthen my resolve and I said to myself, ‘That’s it. I’m leaving this country, whatever happens. I’m no better off than the people still living in Lebanon.’

I would let Basem know of my decision, which I felt was irrevocable. I pictured him coming home from the office, tired and hungry. He’d ask me the reason and I didn’t know what I should reply, even though the reasons were flying around in the air, indoors and out, evident and tangible. I was like a prisoner who couldn’t give convincing reasons why he should be released.

‘I can’t tell myself this is just an experience which I have to go through. I’m an Arab. I’m supposed to feel that I have some connection with the culture here, but I feel none at all. I’m completely detached from it. I’m getting older. I’m wasting my time.’

My words were unconvincing. They were words that the
heroine had learnt by heart. I tried again: ‘Let me go. I want to live a normal life. I want to walk about, not go in the car all the time, and I want to dress how I like. Yes, I’ve got a small mind. I don’t want to feel afraid when I send a film to be developed if my arms aren’t covered in the photos. I don’t have any reasons. I can’t tell any more lies. I don’t want to be afraid. I don’t want to tell lies.’

I was overflowing with emotion. I felt as if I was trembling and I lifted my hand up out of the water then let it sink back in. I didn’t want him to say, ‘It’s just one of these fits you have every now and then. It’ll pass like it always does then you’ll calm down again.’ I had to convince him that this time I was serious and there was no room for discussion.

I wavered before Basem, who was sitting with his papers from work spread out in front of him, his pipe cupped in his fingers and traces of sweat on his shirt. Life seemed normal and ordinary and my decision irrelevant. But because of the tone of voice I used and my general coldness I made it sound firm.

Knowing the answer in advance, I said, ‘You mean you wouldn’t think of leaving and going back with me?’

He interrupted me, stuffing tobacco into his pipe: ‘Me? Now? You’re mad! Not for at least two years.’

I sat in front of him mentally blocking my ears so that his words wouldn’t get through to me. It was as if I’d smeared my body in anaesthetizing fluid to deaden my senses, although I hardly needed anaesthetizing: for months now I’d been getting gradually more impervious to external stimuli. He said, ‘You haven’t got enough to do, that’s the trouble. Go and look for some kind of work again and do it at home.’

‘I swear, I’ve never been properly employed here,’ I burst out vehemently. ‘I was just killing time.’ Suddenly I felt angry and depressed and I shouted, ‘Do you think my job in the supermarket was a real job? Or my teaching at the Institute? A woman who’d only been to primary school could have taught there.’

This outburst seemed to give me some comfort. Things appeared to be straightforward. I found myself staring at him as he fiddled with his pipe, and I sensed his uneasiness. All of a sudden I wasn’t interested in hearing what he had to say. I began to remember the day he and I had decided to get married.

We were in the terrace café of a Beirut hotel. All the other tables were empty even though the sea was only a few metres away. We’d never thought of coming to this café before but that day we’d met early to apply for British visas so that we could go to Wimbledon, and they’d told us to come back for our passports in two hours.

The ice creams were melting although the heat was pleasant. I looked at the rust on the metal canopy, the potted plants on the tables. ‘Maybe this is the first time anybody’s sat here,’ I said.

Basem replied abstractedly, ‘Did you notice the questions in the embassy? What’s your relationship to each other? Are you engaged? It must have been to find out if we were fedayeen, or perhaps just because we were a young man and a young woman travelling together. Of course he would have been surprised. He wasn’t a European.’

Embarrassed, I remarked, ‘Even Mata Hari and Philby wouldn’t have been interrogated in so much depth. But it’s good we convinced him and he’s going to give us visas.’

Basem spoke first: ‘Let’s get married in London.’

I was taken aback. Although we’d spoken of it before, the sudden mention of marriage now confused me. The beating of my heart seemed to take over my whole body, but I said lightly, ‘Why the sudden decision?’

‘Because I love you,’ he said, taking hold of my hand.

I wanted a house of my own. I would go back to it, open the fridge, take out a bottle of beer, listen to music turned up as loud as I wanted, sit alone or talk with friends in an atmosphere which would be quite different from my parents’ house, although that was comfortable enough: people
couldn’t help relaxing in the atmosphere created by my mother. They all loved visiting our house, eating there and spending the evening with us. The food was always delicious, the drink flowed liberally, and my mother was a talker; she wanted to be the focal point of any gathering and without meaning to, she was always waiting for approval: of the food, the furniture, the pistachio nuts, or of her hairstyle, her lipstick, her outfit, her high heels, the way she’d preserved her youth and had so few wrinkles in spite of her fifty years; then of her liveliness, her original conversation, and the way she kept up with politics and world affairs.

I went on sitting in front of Basem, deliberately blocking off all the ways into my mind and heart. He sat with his head in his hands. I asked him if he was hungry. He raised his head and said, ‘Does that mean you care about me?’ I didn’t answer and decided that I wouldn’t enter into any more discussion with him and that it would be better if I left the room. As I stood up he said, ‘What about Umar’s school? Or doesn’t that make any difference to you either?’ I answered, ‘I’ll wait till his term’s finished, of course.’ When he sensed my stubborneness he played his last card: ‘I’m sure you’ll change your mind after one week there. Life with your mother isn’t easy; you’ll probably quarrel with each other the day after you arrive. And I’m not prepared to come back with you to sort out the house or buy a flat at the moment. And renting’s impossible …’ I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Too bad. I’ll have to put up with it for now.’

It seemed the canary sensed my determination to leave. He dropped the piece of biscuit which he was pecking at and flew on to my shoulder.

Tamr

1

I sat in the car alone, queen of all I surveyed, and breathed deeply, inhaling the air through my nose and into my lungs; although my face was swathed in black I looked at the other cars out of the corner of my eye. Riding in a car was no longer a wish or a dream: I was bowling along the streets at great speed and rejoicing; I hadn’t reckoned on the distances being so short and all the places so close. I thought, now I can do anything I want.

When I’d first caught sight of the gleam of the car, which was waiting for me at the battered wooden door, my heart beat faster, and I felt the same as when I had a sudden vision of a luscious fruit or cold water on a hot day.

Now I was passing tall buildings with glass fronts and others with façades of marble and gleaming tiles; handsome villas surrounded by trees; foreign restaurants – Filipino, Korean, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Yemeni and Lebanese; numerous little plots of green grass and half-finished hotels and apartment buildings.

I shook my head, muttering to myself in admiration, ‘It’s what God has willed,’ although I knew I’d never enter them. Once I’d been on the point of entering the white hotel: I’d bought tickets for a fashion show for me and Batul but it was prohibited. Anyhow all that kind of thing was for men, and for foreigners, who lived a different life. I saw a high wall with patterned tiles. Two marble columns framed the gateway, inlaid with fragments of copper and crowned with copper urns. Said must have heard me gasp. ‘That’s a new mansion,’ he said. The wall stretched away endlessly in front of my eyes. Perhaps this was the place which the Institute had thought of for the Heritage Revival Festival. The woman director had exhorted us to go back to eating local dishes in the open under palm trees, preparing them in big cooking
pots over open coal and wood fires in the bedouin manner. The message was clear: we should return to the food of the people, rely on the produce of the area, stop imitating foreigners and be proud of our desert land. I reached out to touch the car’s blue upholstery and found myself thinking with faint sadness how it was this which had stood for a long time between me and so many things: shopping, flying visits, celebrating when a relation or friend had a baby, sharing in the sorrow when someone died. The car made me think about the constant apprehensive planning required to gain access to it. It wasn’t there for the taking, and was bound up with long waiting, standing firm in the face of despair until either my aunt visited us or my brother Rashid was in the mood to take us on a short excursion. Days here passed like months or years except when there were wedding celebrations and for these I was allowed to stay up till dawn, and they were the only times I felt free.

The car was one of the reasons why at first I hadn’t been allowed to go to the Institute to learn how to read and write. The roar Rashid let out when my aunt tried to persuade him to let me go there is still ringing in my ears: ‘I didn’t like the idea of your going to London in the first place. I know you. You’re a rebel. All your life you’ve played with boys. You ran away from Ibrahim, and you told me that the sheikh got so drunk he divorced you. And now you’re asking me to hire a car for you and Batul so that you can go off to weddings unchaperoned with any driver you can find.’ My aunt interrupted him: ‘I don’t know what she’s done wrong. The sheikh divorced her after a month of marriage and married someone older, who wasn’t as beautiful as Tamr and didn’t come from such a good family.’ Quickly I replied, ‘Really, I’m quite happy. If the sheikh hadn’t divorced me, I’d have divorced him. I’m happy now.’

Rashid was silent. Then he spoke again: ‘No, Aunt. I have boundless affection for you, and Tamr won’t interfere with it. But who gave her a roof over her head and supported her and
her son? And who snatched Muhammad away from his father? It was me, no one else. No, Aunt. Tamr’s not going to the Institute. I swear that it doesn’t bother me having her to live with me. But she must think of her future.’

I went off into my room crying. After a bit I got up off the bed, wiped my eyes and went back to my aunt and Rashid. Struggling to control my voice and slow down my breathing I said: ‘What’s wrong with me going to study? The Anaiz girls, the Mabruk girls, all of them go, even the old women. And Qumasha and Mawda. Rashid paused on his way out and replied, ‘You’re not going. I haven’t time to take you there anyway. And you’re not going in their cars. You’d do better to think about getting married.’

‘I’m not marrying for a third time!’ I looked first at my aunt, who was sitting with her head bent and her hand resting on her crippled leg, then at my mother who had her hand up to her mouth. I rose and went to bed, but I didn’t sleep at all that night. So transport was the problem? He could take me then; he’d occasionally given us lifts when Batul had asked him to. Perhaps Batul would have to enrol at the Institute, but what was to be done about her five children?

The next morning I measured out rice from the sack, picked it over, and cooked it along with the broth, the meat and the vegetables, then had a bath and put on my dress, and my abaya and veil. My throat muscles tightened as they did whenever I rebelled and did what I wanted to do. As I shut the door behind me I called out, ‘The food’s ready and I’m off to the Institute.’ I walked along determinedly in my thick abaya, my throat growing tighter and my palms sweating. Only once I looked back towards the house and saw that its iron door was closed. I didn’t notice the heat, or my sweat, or the distance. Instead I concentrated on the obstacles in my path which forced me to cross from one side of the street to the other – heaps of stone and steel beams and mounds of sand left lying about the streets. I couldn’t see the Institute
building, but it didn’t matter. I heard a car horn and stopped myself turning round, drawing my abaya more closely round me and wrapping the black head cover twice round my face. A car horn, and Rashid’s voice calling to me. I turned then; he’d opened the back door for me. I stood where I was for a moment but my thoughts were a jumble. I climbed into the back seat and Rashid didn’t speak the entire way home. Gradually my throat muscles relaxed, and as I sat in silence I decided to go on hunger strike. When my mother and Batul pleaded with me for the sake of my son Muhammad, I agreed to drink a little tea without sugar, but I ate nothing for three days.