Ishmael's Oranges

by Claire Hajaj

  But it all meant nothing, he told himself. How could she ever understand him, this little English Jew? The words his father had shouted came back to him. Abadan! Never! The hand she’d placed on his was a lie. He knew that, even if she didn’t.

  A week later he bought The Brothers Karamazov from a shop on Charing Cross Road and after a brief, fumbling conversation with the bookshop owner, Stendhal’s Charterhouse of Parma. He could make sense of neither. Books were a torment, unless full of numbers and formulae. And Hassan told him that his Arabic was now just as lamentable, no better than a child’s.

  He started walking past the coffee shop from his lectures in King’s Cross every other day. Sometimes he’d see her inside, bundled up against the cold. She never looked up.

  At night, he remembered her blue eyes fixed on his in vague bewilderment. She’d peeled him like an orange with her guilelessness. He felt exposed and irritable. He called Nadia, pretending he wanted to hear all about her life, and tried to be soothed by the gentle, motherly voice crackling on the end of the line.

  In the end, he found her waiting for him outside Virginia’s. He spotted her from a hundred yards away, her yellow hair beaded with cold drops of water twinkling in the pale sun. Bloomsbury traffic swirled madly around her in steely flashes of black, red and silver. Her coat was so big she seemed huddled inside it like a baby animal. He stopped next to her and grinned ruefully. She smiled too, wiping her red nose.

  ‘So, how did you know?’ he asked her.

  ‘I saw you so many times,’ she said, blinking into the low sun. ‘Maybe you thought you were so clever, but even the waitress saw you looking in and teased me about it.’

  He raised his hands to the skies, laughing as weeks of worry suddenly slid from his shoulders and crashed into tiny splinters on the icy pavement. ‘I should have told you I wanted to see you again,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure that you would be interested, and I didn’t want to be disappointed.’ The half-lie felt so easy and right to tell.

  ‘I know it’s complicated,’ she said, blue eyes glassy in the light, ‘but I was hoping you wouldn’t mind. That we could try.’

  He wondered if that was the first time she’d ever told a man how she felt about him, in that oblique way of hers. He remembered how her hands had held the Star of David, and took one of them in his own.

  It was the beginning of something unwritten, Salim thought later. After he walked her back to the lecture hall, on the point of saying goodbye, he stooped down to kiss her lips. As she turned her face up to his, he saw the sun blaze through the whiteness of her skin to the pulse of life inside her. White as a canvas, he thought. White as a new page, a place to make a fresh start.

  For their first proper date he took her to the Finsbury Astoria to see the Walker Brothers. The tickets had been sitting in his wallet for weeks – intended as a present for Margaret, who hated the Walker Brothers but liked Cat Stevens and Hendrix, who were also on the bill. Margaret told him she’d shared digs with Cat Stevens’s sister in Marylebone, and that she and Hendrix rolled their joints the same way, between the thumb and fourth finger.

  Inviting Jude instead had seemed so smart. In the fever of excitement after her lips left his it had been so easy to play the cultured man, to offer to take her out to a concert. But as his front door slammed and he stepped out into the raw evening air he felt crippled by worry. He’d been too quick, too thoughtless; she wouldn’t enjoy it, she’d see right through him.

  He couldn’t begin to afford a taxi all the way from his tiny lodging in south London to Jude’s student halls in Camden, and then even further north to Finsbury Park. But he refused to make her walk, like a fellah’s woman. So he took the Tube to Camden Town and called a taxi from the telephone box just outside the station. When they pulled up outside Jude’s building a few minutes later, he smoothed his hair back to dry his nervous palms.

  Her door swung open the instant he knocked on it – and there she was, smiling up at him. Her hair was pulled into high yellow bunches, her face upturned above a long dress falling in light green circles. In the dimness of the narrow corridor, as people pushed past him and dormitory doors banged shut, she reminded him of a pale, hopeful flower on a slender stalk.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, leaning in to give her a swift kiss. ‘You’re very beautiful.’ He saw her flush, and felt his own cheeks redden in sympathy. It was ridiculous; he wanted to shake himself. You’ve been with a hundred women, idiot. What’s the matter with you?

  ‘And you’re very handsome,’ she replied, taking his hand. ‘Dashing, my grandmother would have said.’ He felt her fingers squeeze his, the lightest pressure, but it lifted the cloud of anxiety a few inches.

  He opened the taxi door for her, and they made small talk for half an hour through the darkening north London traffic to Finsbury Park. When they pulled up outside the Astoria on Seven Sisters, the cabbie said, ‘A quid, mate,’ and Salim handed it over with a careless smile. He’d saved the same amount for their journey back and that was the last of his monthly budget. For the next few days he’d be living on boiled rice.

  He hurried round to open Jude’s door, and she looked up as she pushed herself to her feet. ‘Wow. Look at it.’ His eyes followed hers. The Astoria rose up grey and enormous in front of him, on an island circled in pandemonium, a swirling centrifuge of horns and headlamps sending cars plunging back into the London night. Its notched brick façade was dark with smoke and dust, and red posters glared bright from its supporting pillars. His mind twisted and it was Jaffa’s Al-Hambra cinema in front of him, or its ghost, its white walls and red flags turned grey and pitted. He took Jude’s hand, blinking the picture away.

  Inside, a throng stood between them and the concert hall. He could hear drums beating over a human roar, and a guitar wailing in a way he’d never heard before. The air was humid with smoke, sweat and weed, the queue a tangle of bare legs and straggling hair. The man next to Salim had taken his shirt off; a peace symbol was tattooed on his back under the words hell no we wont go. A girl leaned against him, dark curls falling slick onto his shoulder.

  Jude stood still as water beside him, while Salim waved his tickets at the doorman. The music inside had stopped, and a rising tide of shrieking had taken its place. The doors were barred shut, two burly men standing in front of them, arms folded.

  ‘There must be a problem or something,’ Salim said, desperate. He looked down at Jude. ‘I guess this isn’t really your kind of thing, is it?’ She glanced away, as if the question embarrassed her.

  ‘I had a friend who liked this kind of music.’ Her hand rose to touch the chain hidden under her dress. ‘Back in Sunderland. It always reminds me of her. We liked to play it after school, and dance and things like that. We gave each other nicknames, like we were famous. My parents didn’t approve.’

  ‘And so? What happened?’

  She shrugged. ‘We’re not friends any more. Sorry, Sal. Can you wait? I need the toilet.’

  He watched her push through the sweating crowd towards the cloakroom. She looked so out of place that it moved him, a bittersweet echo of indefinable kinship. We’re not friends any more. He found himself thinking of Elia and Mazen and even little Rafan, the brother who used to cling to his legs at night. Maybe they feel sad about losing me too. It felt strange to imagine someone else paying a price he’d thought was his alone to bear.

  The bare-chested man in front of him was kissing his girlfriend when Jude came back, his face pushing wetly into hers. His wandering arm knocked into Jude as she pressed her body back into the line; his girlfriend stumbled as the couple lost their balance. ‘Watch out, man,’ he protested, and the girl rounded on Jude and Salim, her lips still shiny with saliva, hair tousled under a red bandana. ‘Hey, step off,’ she said, her voice loud enough to turn heads all around them. ‘What’s the fucking rush?’

  Jude said, ‘I’m sorry,’ as she flushed, eyes dropping under the sudden scrutiny of the crowd. Salim was astonished. ‘Don’t apologize to them,’
he told her. ‘It was their fault.’

  ‘Yeah, right? Your girlfriend rammed us, man.’

  ‘You were rolling around like animals. She was just standing here.’

  The girl laughed, tossing her hair back. ‘Get him, eh? Animals. What an arsehole.’ She stuck her tongue out at them, pink and round as a painted nail.

  ‘Check it out, babe.’ The bare-chested man had oily hair falling across his eyes, and a sneer over his goatee. ‘Paki and Square don’t like us.’

  Salim felt the warmth of Jude’s shoulder pressing against the burn of the insult inside his chest. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, trying for disdain, but the BBC English felt suddenly clumsy on his tongue. ‘She’s better than a hundred of you idiots.’

  ‘Whatever. Fuck off, Mustapha.’

  ‘You fuck off.’ Jude had swung around and her face was red, the words bursting out without warning like steam from a pressure cooker. ‘How dare you use that name? How dare you? You’re not cool, you’re horrible, and you don’t know anything about us.’ She was standing between Salim and the couple, and for the first time he noticed the heaviness of her northern vowels. ‘Go on, fuck off!’ she shouted, as the bare-chested man took a step back, his sneer becoming an incredulous smile. Then she turned and ran out, Salim following in her wake, leaving the throng behind.

  As the fresh night air hit them, she turned back to him, red spots on her cheeks fading back into white. He saw the apology surge to her lips again, and he said, ‘Don’t. Don’t say it.’ He reached out to her and she froze at the gesture, her arms hugging the trembling rise and fall of her chest. ‘Jude. You were amazing. A real fighter. Like a lion.’ Standing there under the white brilliance of the streetlamps she could have been a knight, one of the Christian kings from the Frères’ tales he’d loved, from the games they’d mocked him for playing. ‘Jude the Lionheart,’ he said without thinking. He saw her eyes soften, heard her laughter, and it came bubbling up inside him too as the sound released his heart.

  They walked down Seven Sisters Road to Finsbury Park, leaving the roar of the road behind in the dark green and the silence of grass. Winter had left the park trees bare; Jude saw their empty arms reaching up to the blackness, their new buds just points of shadow on the boughs. London’s night walkers passed them by – some of them arm in arm, others with dogs, their faces neither old nor young but a universal blank in the half-light. It was the opposite of loneliness, Jude thought, as if they were all peaceful planets travelling on their own course, feeling the comforting tug of each other’s presence.

  Salim’s arm was around her shoulders; he leaned on her as if she were his protector, as she’d leaned on Rebecca and maybe even Dora. His arm pressed her down but strength seemed to flow through it into her. Something had vanished between them, some fundamental human separateness. She was no longer just Jude; her body was filling up with a stranger that only Salim recognized.

  A light filtered through the trees ahead, carrying reedy singing with it. Someone had made a campfire of dry twigs and a group of people had gathered around it, shadows flickering over their faces. Stopping just outside the circle, she began to recognize the song – and from the vibration of Salim’s chest she saw that he, too, was singing the words under his breath. If you should ever leave me, though life would still go on believe me, the world could show nothing to me, so what good would living do me? He broke off to look down at her and said, ‘Now this is more your kind of music, isn’t it?’

  ‘One of my favourites,’ she told him. The old Jude would have given a reason, but now she felt too full for explanations. The guitar player was harmonizing with two other newcomers; it was sweet – as good as the Beach Boys ever were, and the fire transported her out of London to somewhere warm and kind. He was still leaning into her, and she felt herself strengthening with his weight, as if finally pushing roots deep into the ground. The words of the chorus came into her mouth, reminding her of a phrase Rebecca loved to use – her grandmother’s answer to all of life’s mysteries. And she whispered it to herself along with all the other voices, God only knows, God only knows, clasping Salim’s hand as the sleeping wood breathed around them.

  Hassan came back from Nazareth in May. The skies had cleared; warmth was trickling back into England over the wide Atlantic – a faint ghost of the heat filling the orchards of the southern Mediterranean.

  Salim dreaded this early touch of summer – it meant final exams, the end of study and the start of difficult choices men must make if they want to eat.

  But it was easy to drown his anxiety in Jude. They spent the spring walking along the marble-grey Thames under the blossoming trees of the south bank, the stories pouring out of them. They did not call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. They still were not lovers, no more than a kiss. They were innocents on a boat floating down a river, dipping their toes into unknown currents and gazing up together at the limitless sky.

  At first she talked about Paris and Flaubert and Voltaire and he talked about the harvest season and the desert dances of the Nabi Ruben festivals. But then came the other stories: the tale of Kath and Peggy at the door and Elia and Mazen in Clock Tower Square, of the slam of the gates in Jaffa and the knives above the cellar in Kishinev, the empty room in Nazareth and the sirens in the street in Ryhope Road. Salim had never known anything like it – this sharing of souls, this unburdening of griefs and shames. He knew the Christians received absolution from God or their priests; once Hassan had dared him to sneak into a confession box – it was lined in red and smelt of sweat and humid wood. Let them keep their forgiving God. Jude was human and imperfect, but she understood him without judgement. And that was better than any kind of divine justice.

  Eventually, Salim dragged himself down to see his brother. Hassan had become one of history’s simple soldiers, achieving exactly what he’d always promised, no more and no less. Now nearing thirty, he ran a profitable car repair shop in one of the capital’s outer suburbs. He’d married a big-breasted Palestinian girl who had immediately started producing children. Two were already in nursery, speaking more Arabic than English, and another one was on the way. Their house smelt of rosewater, allspice and salted nuts. They fasted at Ramadan, although Hassan refused to stop smoking, and sometimes talked about going to the local mosque. Their friends were all cut from the same cloth. But Shireen made an exception for her contingent of long-nailed, blonde girlfriends from the nearby salon – women Salim had heard Hassan complaining about and seen him flirting with.

  He was grateful when Hassan asked to meet at his garage. It was where his brother was at his most cheerful, and least likely to give Salim a hard time. The smell of oil and grease was pleasantly relaxing after the relentless hardness of the lecture hall desk and the sharpness of ink on his fingers.

  ‘Abu Saeed!’ He called Hassan’s honorific out over the groan of the faulty engines. Hassan had, most predictably, named his eldest boy after his own father.

  ‘Abu Mushkila,’ a voice shouted back. Salim grinned despite himself. Hassan’s way to protest that Salim had not yet married at twenty-six was to call him father of trouble. Hassan always milked every available ounce of humour out of his own jokes, often far beyond the cow running dry.

  ‘Come over here, old man,’ Hassan shouted again, from his office behind the mass of cars, doors open and engine parts spread indecently over the ground. Salim stepped gingerly over them, wishing he’d changed the good shirt he wore to see Jude that morning. Hassan came out of the office door to meet him, and slapped him on the back with oily hands. ‘What the hell have you been doing for the last week? I expected you every day.’

  ‘Studying,’ said Salim, pretending to look at the red Beetle being dismantled over Hassan’s right shoulder. ‘I came as soon as I could, big brother.’

  ‘You study too much. Anyone would think you were bloody Einstein. You’ll end up with big brains and no balls like he did.’

  ‘Where do you get these ideas?’ Salim pushed his brother’s shoulder wi
th a smile. ‘It’s my final year, I have to study. One day when I’m a rich accountant living in Mayfair I’ll send my Jaguar to you to fix, don’t worry.’

  Hassan bellowed with laughter. ‘Okay, so I’ll wait for your bloody Jag. Now, let’s have a beer and I’ll tell you about the disaster in Nazareth.’

  They cracked open a beer from the office fridge and Salim listened with half an ear as Hassan complained about everything from the Nazarene imam to the relatives. The only person who stirred his emotions in any way was Nadia. It’s not fair. We never gave you anything in life, and we left you with all the shit. He wondered what Nadia would make of Jude. How could she not like her? They were two gentle souls set in different shades.

  Sharing a beer with Hassan always reminded Salim of his first day in London, on that mouldering brown sofa. He’d worked so hard since that day to fulfil his promise. Those first years he’d laboured like a fellah, Hassan’s garage by day and school at night, to qualify for university. He’d a head for numbers and a way with Englishmen that impressed them while reminding them they were the master race. When his passport application came through at last, he remembered walking home with it in a daze of triumph, the hard black book weighing in his pocket like a loaded gun.

  ‘So what’s up with you, ya habibi?’ Hassan was bored with Nazareth, and now wanted details of Salim’s love life. ‘Still seeing that crazy woman, that Margaret?’

  ‘Not any more.’ Salim wondered how to bring it up with his brother. ‘She found someone who didn’t mind getting his eyes scratched out every other day.’ Hassan laughed.

  ‘Too bad I’m married,’ he hooted. ‘I could do with my eyes scratching sometimes. And my arse too, if she’s not busy!’

  ‘Well, she’s all yours,’ Salim said. ‘I met someone else.’

  ‘Yes? Who, who?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Salim suddenly felt his palms getting sweaty. ‘She’s at university too. She studies literature. She reads Russian and French poems.’