Women of Sand and Myrrh (28 page)

The other man was the one who had come from the department of health because of a dog which used to come to my neighbour’s doorstep at dawn every day with a cat or a large rat in its mouth. The man didn’t even want to look at the dog which we’d shut up in my neighbour’s garden. Instead his gaze shifted between me and my neighbour, and he told me later that he knew from the way I’d spoken to him on the phone that it was him I was interested in, not the dog.

I didn’t think about Maaz again until a tall man knocked on the door of my house one morning. Ringo opened it, smiling, thinking that he’d come to see him. The man ignored Ringo’s smile and as I stood behind the kitchen door listening, I heard him asking if this was Mr David’s house. Then he asked about me. I hesitated before coming forward. ‘I can’t say anything until I’ve consulted my lawyer,’ I told him. The
man looked startled; he said quickly that he was a friend of Maaz’s and had come with a request from him. Maaz had begun to pester me in various ways, hanging around my friends, phoning me and then putting the receiver down or hanging on without speaking; once he’d come to drink Scotch at our place, accompanied by an Indonesian nurse. Why had this man mentioned my husband’s name, and how could he permit himself to come in and sit down on the couch and help himself to a cigarette? I thought the time must have finally arrived when they were going to make me leave the desert. Who was behind this tall Arab? Maaz? The engineer I’d met in the bookshop? Someone from the telephone exchange? The owner of the bookshop? The owner of the drugstore? The man lit his cigarette and said that Maaz had told him where my house was and sent me his best wishes. He was lying, but I regained my composure and said nothing. I stood listening and wondering whether I should contact David, chase him away, phone Maaz, or believe what he said. Then I heard him coolly stating that he preferred them between the ages of sixteen and twenty and that he was ready to pay from three hundred to five hundred dollars provided that the meeting took place in my house. He fell silent while he extinguished his cigarette and I stood before him in amazement. ‘They must be going to force me to leave,’ I thought, ‘and they need evidence against me.’

I told him I didn’t understand what he was talking about. He laughed and struck his hand against his thigh, and I noticed the clean whiteness of his robe, the gold watch, the expensive ring. With another affected laugh, he said, ‘You understand quite well. When will you be in touch?’ He stood up, put his hand in his pocket, and took out a card. I hesitated and then fear made me take it. Under his name I read the title of his official post. This time his laughter was genuine and, adjusting his headcloth, he said, ‘Government officials are men too … and you know the situation here.’ ‘They’ve spoken against me,’ I thought, confusedly. The
neighbours, Maaz, the engineer whom I no longer saw, the owner of the bookshop, the pharmacist. The man went calmly over to the door. He turned to me and reached out his hand to shake mine. ‘Don’t forget. I’ll be waiting.’ Although he spoke in a low voice, his tone was commanding. I held out my hand and he immobilized it between his and said, ‘Maaz’s very lucky.’ Then he thanked me for the coffee and my kind hospitality. I almost leapt back into the sitting-room. I didn’t see the coffee cups but pictured myself packing my bags and cast my eyes around me, taking in everything at a single glance. Mad with anger, I stamped my foot, vowing that I would never leave this place. My thoughts were in a turmoil and I no longer knew how I should act. I called Ringo and told him what had happened, pacing around the table and not paying attention to him telling me in a soothing voice that he was sure the man had genuinely come in search of a woman. I knew there was nothing for it but to enlist Maaz’s help, but he hadn’t been to the house since I’d refused to let him in late one night.

When I couldn’t find him at his office I made my way to his house. Fatima opened the door and seemed astonished to see me. She looked at the telephone as if she couldn’t believe that I’d really phoned her minutes before and here I was now in front of her. Although I begged her not to go away because I could only stay a few minutes, she rushed off into the kitchen. I sat there smelling the same old smell, which I’d never liked. How the house had changed since they’d known me! Everything my eyes fell on was pleasingly familiar: the horn fish, the picture of Mecca worked in white metal, the shaggy mustard-coloured moquette rugs, the artificial flowers which we’d bought together.

Fatima appeared with a big bowl of fruit and a broad smile. She pointed to her stomach and said, ‘I’m having a baby.’ I smiled back at her, as if it didn’t concern me, which it didn’t. All I wanted now was to seek help from Maaz so that I could stay in this country. When I asked Fatima where he was
she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Son of a bitch,’ I said in English. ‘Thank you, Madame Suzanne,’ replied Fatima, smiling delightedly at her English. She pointed at the dish of fruit, then at me, wanting to know why I wasn’t having anything. When I started towards the door, she stood in my way seizing me by the hand and dragging me towards the fruit. She held out the bowl to me then took a banana and apple from it herself and pushed them into my hand.

I went back to the car. I must be imagining things. This wasn’t the way to drive me away from here. Maaz must come and visit us again like before. He was a lifeline: his regular visits to us had given me a sense of security and I was beginning to miss it on occasions, like today for example. Or the man may have been genuinely after a woman and known Maaz. He must surely have heard about my daughters’ visit from the States: perhaps he’d followed us and conducted his own investigations, or perhaps he knew about me from friends of Ringo’s. Ringo’s desert admirers were on the increase and he accepted every invitation, claiming that in this way he stood the chance of meeting one suitable person and then he would break off his numerous relationships and settle down. It wasn’t that easy: the desert was full of people like him; European firms had begun to favour appointing gays to desert posts for both practical and financial reasons. They spared them the expenditure on large houses, family travel, children’s schooling, and problems with wives who had too much time on their hands. There was no desperate longing for a woman, no sexual frustration leading to lack of concentration at work and an inability to tolerate the desert, and requests for transfers back home or continual holidays.

It could have been the engineer whom I hadn’t wanted to meet again after I’d visited his scheme in the desert. Although he phoned frequently and circled the house in his car, he was the one man I couldn’t even bear to remember. The journey had been long, two hours’ drive into the heart of the desert with nothing to see except black crows against the changing
hues of the great expanses of sand. The Filipino driver had met me at the door of the store as I’d agreed with the engineer, and all the time he looked at me in the driving mirror which he’d trained on me for the purpose. He played one tape after another until we reached an outpost of human existence dotted about with tools and machinery and workers with their heads and faces swathed in cloth as an armour against the stinging sand.

It wasn’t easy to recognize the engineer when he was dressed in trousers and a shirt. To my surprise he began to take me on a tour of the place, explaining to me seriously how the machines worked and what the men were doing. The sun grew hotter by the moment as we walked to the furthest point of the scheme and he took me into a trench, talking and explaining non-stop, redoubling his efforts when he saw that the men were watching us. I asked him where he’d got his American accent from, to shift things on to a more personal level. ‘New York State University,’ he replied, walking a few steps ahead of me. I despaired and caught up with him and we arrived back at his office, a concrete room smelling of cigarettes and wet cement. He sat down at the table and asked me about my Arab friend, but before I opened my mouth he stood up and opened the door for me saying, ‘The air-conditioner isn’t working in the office,’ and took me back into the sun. Disappointed, I felt that I’d been wrong to come, and was angry at myself and sick with exhaustion and the heat. He went up to one of the workers and the man handed him a bundle of photographs. He began giving me one after the other, pictures of steel foundations and trench-digging equipment. I told him irritably that I was thirsty. His features didn’t change. Retaining his solemn expression he led me over to the car and opened the door for me. As soon as I got in I wished I was still in the sun. It was boiling inside the car. I swallowed down a scream. My thighs were almost on fire from the plastic of the seat. I wiped sweat off myself with my hand, thinking that I was no longer of an age to be able to
handle these tiresome escapades. He stopped the car in front of a small building and I followed him out; I’d begun to understand his behaviour: he was afraid and on edge. The coolness spreading through my body in the little cafeteria, which was fragrant with the smell of curry and rice, made me forget the outside. He spoke constantly to the workers who were seated at tables round about us, then he showed me the photographs again and stood up. I was scared of the burning car and wished I could stay in the restaurant or go back home straightaway. So I said that I had to be getting back. He nodded, as if this request of mine had made him feel easier. He said that he wanted to go in the car to fetch some papers and although I didn’t understand my connection with these papers, I nodded and followed him out again. Without waiting for the air-conditioner to take effect, I opened the car window and stuck my head out. We only went a short distance. When he got out, I stayed in the car, but he signalled to me to get out too. I did so hesitantly, telling myself that I’d soon be free of him. There was a secretary typing there. He introduced me to him, then led me into another room. The moment he’d closed the door he took hold of me and we stood there right by the door. He felt my breasts, then opened his flies at speed, as if he was receiving orders from somewhere. He brought me close to him, and I was forced to cling to the wall to keep my balance. Then he turned away, closing his flies and straightening his shirt. He picked up an envelope off the table and began talking to me again about engineering terms. There were signs of annoyance and impatience on his face now. He was hurrying me and didn’t wait even while I reached for my bag. Still talking in technical jargon that only another engineer would have understood, he went out ahead of me. Then he gave me the envelope which he’d been holding. ‘Say that this is for the firm,’ he instructed me, and I was left completely at a loss.

It was inconceivable that any of these men would have
reported me, I told myself confidently. I stood up and, on Ringo’s advice, I called the man who’d come to the house the next day but he wasn’t there. After I’d tried for several days in a row, I was told that he’d gone away. When I’d had numerous conversations and the voice at the other end had started to get flirtatious, although I wasn’t sure whether it was the man himself or another man in his office, I felt reassured. My fear evaporated altogether when I saw him by chance in the street with a veiled woman, and he hid his face in fright.

6

I returned home one day and Ringo rushed to meet me saying that Maaz had called dozens of times. Instead of going to the phone I went to the fridge to look for something to drink, Ringo started to tell me that Maaz had been shouting in a way that wasn’t like him, and he’d scarcely finished speaking when the telephone rang. I rushed to pick up the receiver not expecting it to be Maaz again so soon. His voice came weakly and thinly down the line. He asked me to visit him; he was ill, he said. He must have thought I’d refuse because I was angry with him since the day he’d come to ask about Sri Lanka and gone off there without me. He went on urging me to come and I made the excuse that there wasn’t a driver around. ‘What about Ringo?’ he asked. Then I heard him cursing in a loud voice: ‘God damn the yellow bastard. He can bring you.’ It usually made me laugh when he cursed Ringo, but not this time. ‘Tomorrow,’ I replied. ‘I’m tired.’ And I put the receiver down. I’d scarcely flung my head back on the couch
when the phone rang again. It was Maaz and he was pleading with me. I got up in spite of myself. I thought I knew exactly why he was so insistent, and it was as if just for a moment I missed our times together. I asked him why he didn’t come here; I was tired. Lunch with the owner of the drugstore and his family had been a heavy meal and the drink had flowed in abundance, but he persisted to a degree that was uncharacteristic of him.

When Fatima opened the door to me, I knew that something was wrong in spite of the broad smile and her kisses on my cheek. ‘Maaz’s ill,’ she said, clasping her hands together then pointing to her head and inclining it to one side. I followed her, still beset by feelings of tiredness. The smell of incense seemed extra powerful that day. We passed through the sitting-room and I couldn’t help noticing the new things: there was a picture on the wall looking like a television screen, depicting slowly changing images. I remembered the present which he’d been promising me since he returned from Sri Lanka. Maaz was in bed in the room which I’d thought would one day become part of my daily life. There was nothing in it but the bed against the wall, a pile of mattresses against the facing wall and a chest. Smoke from the incense rose into the air.

Maaz was thin, his face was pale, there were mauve circles under his eyes, and his hair was on end. Inclining his head to one side, he accosted me with words that I couldn’t understand. He talked about electricity, lights flashing on and off in his face, a dirty house. Then he spread out his hands in front of me, and made them shake. I was struck by how bad his English was and wondered how I’d understood him before. I must have helped him to express himself and here he was now unable to do it, even with the help of Arabic words and sign language.

I found myself turning to address Fatima who stood there looking at him and talking about him as if he were a stranger, not her husband. ‘He doesn’t eat. Doesn’t drink coffee, tea.
The poor thing has a few crumbs at each meal, and a drop of water to get them down.’