Refuge

by N G Osborne

  “Hardly.”

  “Well say something then.”

  She thinks.

  “Dank u,” she says.

  “Dank who?”

  “It means thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Voor het redden Kamila.”

  “You got me on that one too.”

  “For saving Kamila.”

  Charlie smiles. He sits on the ottoman across from her. She can smell him from here; burnt charcoal, cigarettes, faint aftershave, the sweat that comes from having worked a full day under a relentless sun.

  “Why did you save her?” she says.

  He rubs the scar on his cheek.

  “You want the fake reason or the real one?”

  Don’t answer that question.

  She tries to stand and finds it impossible. His eyes stay fixed on her, and she can’t help but look right back at him.

  “To be fair the fake one’s not entirely fake. I did it because I wanted Kamila to have a better life than Ameena.”

  Noor bites the inside of her lip.

  “But the real reason?” she hears herself say.

  His hands reach out and clasp the ends of her fingers.

  “Because I’d do anything for you. Because I’ve fallen totally and utterly in love with you.”

  Charlie leans in, and touches his lips against hers. It’s like no sensation she’s ever felt before.

  It’s from heaven.

  His lips part, and she finds hers parting also. Their tongues meet, and his hand reaches around her waist and pulls her closer. He runs his hand up her back and through her hair. Inexplicably, she reaches out her own and slips it under his shirt. His breathing becomes ragged. She runs her fingers along his smooth chest. His hand slips under her kameez and unclasps her bra so easily he might as well have designed it himself. He pulls the strap off her right shoulder and his hand caresses her breast. She moans and kisses him harder. She feels her groin moisten.

  And then she hears a creak.

  She pulls away, her hand ripping off one of his buttons as she extricates it. Bushra enters the room and looks their way.

  No one says anything.

  Noor breathes heavily; it’s impossible not to. She spies the button lying on the floor. It seems as incriminatory as a bloody knife at a murder scene.

  “You’re getting better—” Charlie says.

  She looks over. He’s holding her Dutch books in his hands.

  “Think Elma’s going to be really impressed with the work you’ve done.”

  Charlie gives her a reassuring smile. Noor nods, and he hands her the books. She totters out of the room, her bra hanging loose, her underwear damp. She feels Bushra’s eyes on her all the way. She stumbles outside and down the driveway. Once past the gate she leans back against the hedge. She is so lightheaded she thinks she might collapse. She draws her tongue over her lips; they no longer feel like hers but some appendage sown on. She hears the clip clop of an approaching donkey and opens her eyes. A teenage boy with the faintest of mustaches rides high on a cart stacked with tree branches. The boy stares down at her.

  Does he know? Can he smell it on me?

  She waits until the cart has moved on and fixes her bra. She starts walking the opposite direction.

  “Oh Allah, what have I done?” she says.

  She knows it was wrong. It went against everything she believes in. However when she closes her eyes her recriminations disappear, and all she wants to do is turn around and run back to Charlie.

  Stop it. You’re not thinking clearly.

  She picks up her pace. SUVs speed past her delivering the aid worker elite back to their homes. She thinks about what Charlie did for Kamila, the danger he must have put himself in, and knows that at his core he’s an honorable man.

  He said he loved me, surely that means he wants to marry me.

  But would you want to marry him? a voice asks.

  She arrives at Elma’s driveway with her very belief system under threat.

  I don’t need to answer that now.

  She looks up the driveway and sees someone in the front seat of Elma’s SUV. She approaches the side window. Elma’s head is bent forward, her long hair covering her face. Noor leans in closer. Elma twists her face in Noor’s direction. It is so sudden that Noor screams. Elma’s make-up has run down her cheeks in dark rivulets, her eyes are hollow, her long hair all bedraggled. Noor opens the door.

  “Elma? Are you okay?”

  “It’s been a bad day, that’s all.”

  “I can come back tomorrow, when you feel better.”

  Elma takes a deep breath as if summoning all her willpower and steps out of the SUV.

  “No, I could do with the company,” she says. “Come on, it’s cold out here.”

  They head inside, and Elma leaves Noor on the couch in her sitting room while she freshens up. Noor wishes she’d had the presence of mind to do the same.

  She closes her eyes and once again imagines Charlie’s lips on hers and his hand delving under her kameez. The foreign sensation she felt earlier returns, and her hand drifts towards her right breast. She hears Elma coming down the corridor and sits up straight. Elma enters the room. She has scrubbed her face clean and done her hair up in a simple ponytail.

  “So how was your day?” Elma says.

  Noor can’t help but blush.

  “It was…”

  Noor bites her lip. She can’t think of a suitable lie. Elma sits opposite Noor and gives her a curious look.

  “I need to tell you something,” Noor says.

  “Go on.”

  “For the last two months I’ve been living at Charlie Matthews’ house.”

  Elma nods as if Noor’s revelation comes as no surprise.

  “He needed someone to look after his friend, Wali, and thought my father would be a good candidate. It meant naturally that our whole family had to move in.”

  “I am sure that pleased him no end.”

  “No, for a long time we didn’t even see him. He’s up early, home late, but the longer we’ve stayed the more I’ve come to know him, and I’m not afraid to say that alongside my father he’s the best man I know. He’s kind, brave, sensitive, more intelligent than I ever thought possible, and most of all he treats me as an equal. I don’t think it matters to him whether I’m a man or a woman.”

  “Yet he’s not attracted to men, is he?”

  Noor blushes. She imagines herself up on the scaffold like Hester Prynne, her sin there for the whole world to see.

  “Has anything happened?” Elma says.

  “We kissed, just now‌…‌more than kissed—”

  “Did you have sex?”

  “No! We were interrupted by my sister—”

  “But you could have?”

  “No, never.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  Noor looks towards the fireplace.

  “Noor,” Elma says, “Think back to that moment when you were kissing him. Imagine what would’ve happened if your sister hadn’t come in.”

  Noor closes her eyes. She sees Charlie sweep her up in his arms, their mouths searching each others as they make their way up the stairs. He drops her on his bed, lifts her kameez over her head and—

  Her eyes flash open. Elma sits down beside her, and takes Noor’s hands in hers. Noor feels compelled to look at her.

  “When I was seventeen, I fell in love with my politics tutor. He was young, still in his twenties, passionate, he had a way of speaking that made you want to fight for every one of his causes. He was intelligent too, kind, sensitive, brave, he’d been arrested a number of times taking part in all sorts of protests, but it never deterred him even when the principal threatened to sack him. At first I thought there was no hope, that it would remain just some fevered fantasy of mine. He was married to a beautiful woman, had a young child, and in class he was no more attentive to me than he was to any of the other girls. And then one day I spoke passionately about nuclear disarma
ment. It must have caught his attention because after class he called me over, told me about a march in the Hague that weekend, I could even drive with him if I wanted.

  “That weekend was the first time we had sex, and over the next three months I don’t think a day went by when we didn’t. It was thrilling, romantic. There we were in crowds of thousands, linking arms, shouting slogans, running from the police, and afterwards we’d fuck until sleep finally took us. Then one day I missed my period. It’s funny you’d think I’d have been distraught, but I wasn’t. All I could think was that I was going to have this wonderful man’s child, and when he heard the news he’d leave his wife, and we’d live this incredible life together.

  “That night I cooked dinner for him at my mother’s house; she was away visiting my grandmother. I spent hours slaving over it, but when I told him all I saw was shock. ‘You have to have it aborted,’ he said, and it was then I realized that he was never going to leave his wife. He handed me four hundred guilder as if I was some whore he’d fucked for the first and last time. ‘Get it fixed,’ he said. After that everything was a blur, that is until my mother returned and found me lying on our kitchen floor.”

  A thought worms its way into Noor’s brain.

  What if Bushra hadn’t walked in? What if I had become pregnant. What would’ve been Charlie’s reaction then?

  “I tell you all this because I see a lot of you in me. The drive, the fierce independence but also a naïve innocence, especially when it comes to men. This Charlie Matthews, I promise you, he’s no different than my politics tutor. All men want a fantasy and you a poor, beautiful refugee are like no other. He wants to save you, I dare say he may even want to marry you, but once he has, reality will set in, and the passion will fade. ‘Men were deceivers ever,’ that’s what Shakespeare said, and it’s as true today as it was then, and as a woman who wants to be independent and free you need to see what your ‘love’ for this man really is. Nothing more than a silly schoolgirl crush that threatens everything you’ve worked so hard to realize.”

  Noor knows Elma is right.

  You have not only deceived yourself, you attempted to deceive Allah.

  Noor collapses into Elma’s arms and sobs.

  “I promise you,” Elma says, “six months from now you’ll be in Holland, immersed in university life, and you won’t feel a thing for him.”

  Elma holds Noor tight, and eventually her tears fade. Noor wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her kameez.

  “I want you to come live with me,” Elma says.

  Noor looks at Elma in shock.

  “I’ll need to talk to my father first,” she says.

  “Then call him, the phone’s over there.”

  “No, I couldn’t do that to Baba. I need to tell him face to face.”

  “You’re aware from the moment you step foot in that man’s house that you’re in danger of falling into his web again.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  Elma looks at Noor with the air of a stern headmistress.

  “You need to promise me you won’t see him. If he attempts to talk to you, you must walk away. Lock your bedroom door if need be.”

  “I promise.”

  “And if you’re not here tomorrow night, I’m coming to get you. You understand?”

  Noor nods.

  “Fine, I’ll drive you to his place.”

  It takes no more than three minutes to get there, and before Noor gets out, Elma makes her promise one more time. Noor creeps up the driveway and opens the front door an inch. She hears Wali and Charlie having a boisterous conversation in the sitting room. She presumes her father is there too or on the verandah. She creeps upstairs to her room. She’s relieved to find that Bushra is not there and heads into the bathroom. She stares at herself in the mirror.

  Who are you?

  She has no ready answer. She takes off her shalwar kameez and her yellowed bra and underwear. She catches a glimpse of her naked body; the curve of her right breast, the mound of hair between her legs.

  To think how close he was to seeing it all, to possessing it.

  To her shame, she feels a similar feeling as before infect her groin. She steps into the shower and lets the cold water blast her until her body is numb. She sniffs the water up her nose and grabs the bar of soap and scrubs her feet, her legs, her vagina, her breasts, her face, her hair, even the inside of her mouth. Only then does she turn off the shower. She dries herself and puts on her nighttime garments. She opens the door, and finds Bushra sitting on her bed. The two sisters stare at each other.

  “Baba wanted to know if you were coming down for dinner,” Bushra says.

  “Please, tell him I have a headache.”

  For a moment it seems as if Bushra is going to say something, but then she stands and leaves the room.

  Noor takes a deep breath and focuses on her prayers. She asks Allah for forgiveness, and by the end she feels a comforting heat envelop her body as blood returns to her skin.

  I am forgiven.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  NOOR LOOKS AT the clock for what feels like the hundredth time. It’s five. Time to go. She slips out of bed and is shocked to see that Bushra is already up.

  “What are you doing?” Noor whispers.

  “I need to wash Wali’s bandages, and then run his bath.”

  “You bathe him?”

  Even in the dim light, Noor can see her sister is blushing.

  “Who do you think I am?” Bushra says.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just surprised that’s all.”

  “It’s a job, Noor. Someone must do it.”

  Without another word, Bushra leaves. Noor dresses and creeps down the corridor to her father’s room. She kneels by his bed and looks at his peaceful face, his spindly body warm under a feather comforter, his reading glasses perched on the bedside table. His eyes open.

  “Baba, we need to talk.”

  He gives her a befuddled look and sits up. She proceeds to tell him everything. He doesn’t condemn her, if anything he blames himself for ever putting her in such a position, but she won’t have any of it.

  “It’s no one’s fault but mine,” she says. “Not Charlie’s, and certainly not yours.”

  She tells him about Elma’s offer, and after that her father’s mood revives. He tells her not to worry, he’ll explain it all to Charlie.

  “You should get going, my love,” he says.

  She spies his alarm clock. He’s right. It’s already five-thirty. She goes to leave when she realizes that tonight will be the first time in nine years that she’s slept under a different roof than him. She tells him and he smiles.

  “See it as preparation for when you go to Holland.”

  She tiptoes back to her bedroom. Outside her door she spies a gift wrapped in plain brown paper with a simple white envelope stuck to its front. It can only mean one thing.

  Charlie’s up.

  She knows she must leave, but before she does, she picks up the gift.

  All day it sits on her classroom desk, and now, with her class dismissed, she finds herself staring at it.

  Don’t open it. What good can come from it?

  The shutters bang in the wind but she doesn’t look up. It’s as if the gift has magical powers.

  It’s fine, I’m stronger than any words he’s written.

  She peels the envelope off and opens it. The note is on a piece of paper he’s torn from his sketch pad.

  Dearest Noor:

  Forgive me. I don’t know what came over me yesterday. No, that’s a lie - I do. I’m completely in love with you, and I let my passion get the better of me.

  Perhaps you did only have a headache last night, and I’m stupid for worrying, but I’m petrified that I’ve scared you away. Please don’t be - scared that is. I promise never to place you in a position like that again. Your honor means more than anything to me.

  Please reply to this - even if it’s just a one sentence answer. I’ll be a nervous wreck all day if
you don’t.

  I love you.

  Forever, Charlie

  p.s. I got this for you a few day’s back - as a Christmas present. I hope it inspires you as you inspire me.

  Noor trembles, all her previous feelings for Charlie come tumbling back. She imagines him at home already waiting for her, and her heart breaks.

  Remember what Elma said.

  But here in this moment, everything Elma said seems false. Wasn’t it Elma after all who’d once told her that she was going to meet someone and fall in love with him without even realizing it?

  And I have found that man. I know I have.

  She rips off the wrapping paper to find a black, leather notebook. On the front cover there’s an embossed quote:

  ‘The reason one writes isn’t the fact she wants to say something. She writes because she has something to say.’

  She recognizes it as one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s.

  Except, of course, Fitzgerald wrote it in the masculine, and Charlie’s changed it to the feminine.

  She feels an intense longing to see him; to kiss him; to hold him; to tell him her love’s as strong as his. She jumps up from her chair and looks for her burqa only to realize that in her earlier haste she must have left it at the house. She thinks about finding another and discards the thought. The black 4x4 hasn’t been back in weeks,.

  Besides, I’m beginning to get much too comfortable in it anyway.

  She picks up the notebook, makes certain her weekly wage is secure, and strides out of the room. In the next door classroom Miss Layla calls after her, but she ignores her. She is too desperate to see Charlie to delay. She runs across the courtyard and out the front entrance towards the main road. She feels raindrops on her face and gasps. It’s their first rain in six months. She raises her face towards the sky and breathes in the fresh earthy smell. She smiles.

  It’s a sign. I’m absolved.

  Up ahead a black SUV turns up the road. Her stomach turns.

  It can’t be.

  She pulls her shawl tight around her face and stares at the ground. The SUV comes up upon her. She holds her breath. The tires crunch, and the hum lessens.