by Louisa Young
He wasn’t there. Just a dusty dark empty room, with a too-big, white, curly Louis Farouk wardrobe and a tiled floor. I was rolled in a blanket, from which I disentangled myself. I walked through to the living room, feet bare, head low. He was lying on his back on the sofa, his eyes open. He looked up and we just gazed at each other for a while.
‘Are you all right?’ he said.
I nodded.
‘You fainted.’
I shrugged.
‘Then you woke, then you went to sleep.’
I went and sat. On the other sofa. Pulling a tangled-up rug straight as I did so. I couldn’t sit near him.
‘It’s not very nice, your flat,’ I said.
‘No.’ He cast his eye around. ‘I got it when I thought I wanted somewhere to be away from my family. Then I found that I didn’t really want to be away from them at all. So it is neglected.’
I was glad. Neglected meant no girls.
There were some dishes on the coffee table, beside the roses wilting where he had dumped them. Seventeen roses. The remains of some meat, bread and tomatoes. The turtle-shaped bread of Luxor: fat body, four little blobs like feet. ‘Are you fasting?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ he said. Of course.
He glanced at the dishes and said: ‘I got food last night, while you were asleep. Are you hungry?’
‘No.’
I drank some water though. I would have smoked. But not on my child.
‘I have to leave,’ I said, gently.
‘Again, so soon,’ he murmured, and then he saw my face, and he looked at it in the pre-dawn light, and he moved from the path he had been on.
‘I am angry with you,’ he said. ‘Do you want to know why?’
I knew why. Because of leaving, because of coming back, because of Eddie.
‘Yes,’ I said, and pulled the rug around me.
‘I thought you were here to play with your dangerous toy. To play those games again, where somebody makes you do what you know is wrong and dangerous, but you let them make you. Some people go for Russian roulette; you go for Eddie. I thought you were here to do that again. Do you know why that made me so angry?’
‘You know I do,’ I said.
‘What we knew has been broken,’ he said. ‘Tell me why.’ He picked up one of the dying roses, and looked at it absently. I remembered a night in a club on the Pyramids road, when I danced and he sang, and we cast rose petals and jasmine over each other as Cairenes do in approbation of a performance,
‘Don’t test me,’ I said. ‘It’s all still there. I know, you know, we understand.’
He smiled at me.
‘It’s broken,’ he said.
‘So mend it. Bind it up and let it heal. It’s still here.’
He turned away, putting down the rose, looked at his watch, and pulled himself up to take a long drink of water. ‘Ten minutes till Imsaak,’ he said. Darkness was dissolving around us. I didn’t want it to go, because it gave us an intimacy. Being here was intimate. The day might make us separate. It might bring abstinence.
‘Do you want to get some food?’ I asked.
‘Too late,’ he said. Then: ‘It was my gift to you: set you free from him. Even if you didn’t want me, I wanted you to have that gift. To keep my gift.’
‘I have kept it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know he was here. I came because … yes, because they made me. Because of Lily – they were going to drag it all up, all these things, and make life difficult, maybe take her away …’ My voice went odd as I said those words. I know he heard it. He might want to pretend that we don’t understand one another but that doesn’t make it true. He can’t help understanding me. It’s in his nature. ‘I let them make me because …’ and here I remembered that I cannot lie to this man, or keep truth from him. And I was filled with joy. ‘Because I wanted to come here. To see you.’
And he smiled, and it was nearer to right.
‘Why not just come?’ he said.
‘Because I left,’ I said. ‘Scared,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ he murmured.
I went over and sat on the floor beside his feet, my back to the sofa. He didn’t react. We sat there a long time. I fell asleep again.
I woke turned towards him with a stiff neck and my arm over his thigh, my cheek pressed against his jeans. He was lying back again, still looking at the ceiling. Still, or again. I pretended I hadn’t woken and tried not to stroke my cheek against him, embrace his leg. Impossible. I was about to start kissing his denim seam and taking his belt between my teeth, so I pulled myself away.
And why? What would have happened if I had?
Oh, he might have rejected me. And anyway it was past Imsaak. Sex during Ramadan is one of those questions – but if you’re going to do it at all you certainly do it at night. And with your spouse.
I sat up, and ran my hands through my own hair instead, and rubbed my own face.
Part of me felt that I could stay in this dingy flat forever. But something in me that was not lovelorn reminded me that where Eddie was, I could not ever be.
‘I have to leave,’ I said again.
Sa’id scrunched his face and shook his head. It hadn’t been what you might call a good night’s sleep.
Oh shit. Chrissie.
She’s going to Abydos today.
I must ring her. Tell her we’re leaving. And ring Oliver. And sign off.
‘Sa’id, habibi,’ I whispered.
‘Yes,’ he said.
I hadn’t realized how much I like the fact that he says yes. Not yeah, yes.
‘I must leave. If he is here I must go.’
He opened one eye.
‘There is … there is some stuff,’ I said.
‘Isn’t there always,’ he said, and unfurled himself from the sofa, and went to wash his face. The tap didn’t work; I heard it clattering and burping. He came back in with a bottle of Baraka and passed it to me.
‘What?’ he said. Stretching.
Does he want to know? To help? Can I involve him again?
‘I’m not here alone,’ I said. ‘My friend – it’s Eddie’s wife. Chrissie.’
‘The mad woman?’
‘We all would be, married to him.’
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Is she redeemed?’
‘On the way. Maybe. But – are you awake?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Well, I will offer him the chance, the chance he took for himself last time without even asking.
‘She found out he’s not dead,’ I said. ‘She wants to find him – don’t look at me like that, she said she’d come anyway. If I hadn’t let her come she would’ve just – oh, caused mayhem, I don’t know. I don’t know what she might have done. Marauded around Cairo getting me into trouble. I thought she would be safer close to me. Safer for her and for me. She’s OK but she’s flakey.’ Every now and then a word is not of his vocabulary. I was sure he’d have learned flakey from me now, because there is some flakiness around me. ‘Damaged. Given to random acts of idiocy. Not to be trusted, but not because she is bad.’
‘Marousha?’ he said.
‘Yes, sure.’
He smiled at me. Pure smile.
‘I must take her too. It’s not part of the plan that she should be near him. I only let her come because everyone said he wasn’t in Egypt. They said he left. They said he’d gone to Damascus.’
‘He’s been here a week.’
‘Didn’t you know the police wanted him?’
‘I only knew they wanted me and Hakim,’ he said mildly.
I apologized. A lot. I said I wanted to apologize to Abu Sa’id and Madame Amina and everybody.
‘How is Hakim?’ I asked.
‘Better. Chastened by our experiences, and sent to Aswan to be sensible. I am pleased with him.’
‘What happened with the police?’
‘All the police here are my friends. We went to school together, did national service together. There’s a bunch of them coming for Iftar. I am a go
od citizen, they are not going to give trouble to my family because of some khawaga who changes nationality every month.’
‘Do they know he’s here?’
‘I don’t know.’
I thought for a bit.
‘The British police really want him. They said he’d left the country, in the confusion after …’
He looked at me. ‘You can say it,’ he said.
I didn’t want to say it.
‘I wept for you,’ I said.
‘For the tourists, surely.’
‘Stop it,’ I said. Almost shouted. Then more gently: ‘Stop it. I’m here. I can’t help it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bring this on you in Ramadan. I wanted to see you. Stop sulking.’ We looked straight at each other for a moment before I continued. ‘Please,’ I said more gently still. ‘Please be your good self.’
He just looked at me, but his eyes were full of something.
‘In the British papers they kept saying fifty-eight tourists killed, not mentioning the Egyptians,’ I said. ‘I wept for everybody.’
He lowered his eyes, and looked up at me again.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
He gave me his hand for a moment. I had such an urge to put it to my belly. Resisted it.
‘Were you …’ I said.
‘At the fabrique. We heard the gunfire, went up there. I’ll tell you about it. Some day.’ He left the room again, and I heard him in the kitchen, murmuring. Bismillah el rahman el rahim, el rahman el rahim, el rahman el rahim. The merciful, the merciful, the merciful.
‘So where is your friend?’ he said on his return.
‘At the hotel. She said she was going to Abydos today with these people she met …’
‘Abydos! If it’s going, the convoy leaves at eight – we should get her before she goes.’
It was seven forty-five.
‘Do you have a phone here?’
He gave me a look, and took out the mobile. Call one told us that the convoy was going today, yes at eight. Call two said Chrissie had already left the hotel.
Shit.
‘Let’s get down there, get her out before it leaves,’ he said.
Ya habibi. He’s going to do it.
ELEVEN
Convoy
For a moment outside the flat the Merc sat in its cold dusty parking place and refused to start, to the amusement of a couple of small children. Sa’id called them over and made them laugh some more, and gave them a bit of money, and then it started.
‘God’s blessings are not always so immediate,’ he murmured. I just curled up in the front seat with my cloth pulled round me and felt happy, safe and beautiful, in this crappy old car, in this crappy parking lot, unwashed and unbrushed, on this cold morning, among these dusty concrete houses, all sprouting thick twists of steel wire for when the owners’ children got married and they needed to build an extra storey for the newly-weds to live in. I leant forward to rattle through the tapes, and found Khaled, and put it on, and hummed. There’s a line in one song where he sings the word sa’id, I don’t know what he’s singing about because it’s an Algerian Arabic that’s beyond me. But the word is there. I smooched with myself a little, next to the man. Happy as a hummingbird. Just because I was with him, and he hadn’t chucked me out, saying you’re on your own, habibi.
It was our – joke. He’d call me habibi, for a man, rather than habibti, for a woman. It was a little personal/political thing, for when I was being all independent. It was a kind of joke.
When we got to the street from which the convoy leaves, the sun was a quarter of the way up the sky, and the cold and strangeness of the night and the dawn had left us. The river was swift and limpid as we came back down the Corniche, the fairy lights off. The town looked even more unlike itself in daylight. Empty. No fat bums in inappropriate shorts; no small boys shouting, ‘Welcome to Alaska! Lovely Jubbly!’ and equivalent jokes in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and German. No business, basically. Deserted.
The convoy was small. Four cars, to be precise, a minibus and a police jeep. Usually what they do is stick a policeman in the leading car as well. The minibus had diving stickers all over it and was presumably on its way to the Red Sea, to Hurghada.
More significantly, it was setting off. We were able to slot in just in front of the police van drawing up the rear. Sa’id waved cheerily to the driver and mouthed something as he cut in front. It seemed to work. Great thing, community.
Actually, it’s not just community, it’s him. He knows everyone here. Knows everything that’s going on. Ga’dda is what he is. A big man. A good old boy. Strong in his community. I’ve seen it in the way the children know him, and in the respectful way he treats his elders, in his giving money and receiving blessings. In that thing with the roses. When I was here before he was always having to talk to people who wanted him to solve things for them. So young and yet so wise. Half the town seemed to be his ezwah, his – oh, how to explain it? Ezwah is a … a belonging thing. A homeboy thing. A favour bank, a loyalty, a protection. Your ezwah will look out for you among strangers, help you in time of need, see you all right if he can, know that you will do the same for him. ‘Long as I got a biscuit, you got half’is Texan for ezwah. Harry, perhaps, is the nearest I have to ezwah.
I think that Sa’id does it on purpose, despite – no, because of – going to Paris, and being half English. It’s his stake. For all he is so educated, multilingual and cosmopolitan, when he is home he wants to be the heart of his home.
But now we were going somewhere. Which hadn’t been the plan. Not that I minded. It meant that he couldn’t walk out on me.
Sa’id said never mind, we could jump out at Qus or Qift, and speak to her then, see if we could hang out with the road block, and come back with the next convoy. I said I was sorry, he must have had things he was meant to be doing that day. I made some kind of facile and idiotic suggestions about how he should be getting back to work. He ignored them, and he drove, and I hummed. The little carts rattled along on the hard shoulder, young lads bounced along perched on the coccyxes of their trotting donkeys, and the layers of countryside glided by: sky, mountain, valley, mud, Nile, mud, valley, mountain, sky. Like puppet-show scenery: sliding by at different speeds, depending on the distance. I felt what I feel every half hour: why don’t I live here? Warmth seeped into the car, and we opened the windows a little. The smell was green: sugar cane coming to ripeness. Greenness burst out of the pink earth; shades of beautiful rolling green covered the plain as fertility crowded in upon itself. Burgeoning puddles of green and puddles of irrigation. Tight rows of vegetables in beautiful little packed vegetable gardens served by tiny irrigation channels, leading from bigger canals, leading from the illustrious Nile. Years ago someone said to me: ‘Is it true in your country your Nile falls from the sky?’ We passed villages. ‘Hello! Hello!’ shout the children, barefoot, smiley, girls in pink and yellow, boys in gallabeyas. Lots of them had shiny rucksacks on their backs: going to school. God bless them all.
I’m not going anywhere without Lily ever again. Anywhere Lily can’t go, I’m not interested in. Except to bed with Sa’id. And maybe to the cinema. If there was a Fellini season at the Riverside Studio … I was off on a La Strada fantasy, with me as the girl and Sa’id as the lover, chanting under my breath, ‘E arrivato – Zampano!’ which for some reason is my favourite line from the film, the tender uselessness of her as she tries to do what he wants, beating the drum and announcing his show, and fails so sweetly, so completely … and wondering when Lily will be old enough to enjoy Fellini.
I wanted to put my hand over his on the gearstick. I wanted to gaze at him. I wanted, I wanted. But I can’t. He hasn’t taken me back. He has only not thrown me out. It’s not the same thing.
I hadn’t really noticed how it had crept up on me. When I had thought, last night, that there was hope, I hadn’t identified it. But now, god, it was simple. Him, me, together, anywhere, somehow, no matter what. Please. All I wanted was for him to love me.
I think perhaps it was Nippyhead, calling out to his own flesh through the medium of mine, calling to his own blood out there in the world, pulling the father to the mother. Or my pregnant hormones, designed to want that man, so that he would guard the cave door and fight off the mastodons when I go into labour. Some ancient animal thing.
I also felt a bit foolish that during these moments of emotional delicacy and potential danger, it was lust that rippled through me. My breasts were growing by the minute, my backbone melting. My arms ached for him – they did! And as for my belly, his child, all that – all I can say is I felt it, physically. I felt magnetic and immoveable. If he didn’t make love to me within twelve hours then Hathor, Mother Nature and the lot of them would give up and go home.
And why wouldn’t I make love to him, earth goddess that I was?
Because, and because. Something to do with dignity. His, rather than mine.
‘How is your mother?’ I asked. Meaning, how are you about her, tell me your heart, confide in me, talk to me on this unexpected journey, come back to me.
‘We’ve been talking a lot,’ he said. ‘E-mailing. She is coming back here, soon. She wants me to go to her university and do a research project there. With her. She wants to make up for lost time. Send me to school, boss me around.’
‘What’s the project?’ I said. Buying time. Sa’id in Brighton. Oh.
‘On gam’iyyaat,’ he said.
I’d heard the word, but couldn’t place it.
‘The financial networks in the communities,’ he said. ‘The savings associations. A form of micro-banking. Do you know about them?’ I didn’t, really.
