Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Amira clutched her head and one of the girls brought her a glass of water. They stood around her, as if wanting to hear what had happened and full of concern for her at the same time.

  ’Kauthar got her hand stuck in the lift. She’s in hospital. Pay the bill,’ Amira told them.

  She opened her bag and one of the attendants took a note from her and waved it at the waiter.

  ’I don’t know how much money they’re going to want from me until I get there,’ exclaimed Amira emotionally. ’London is so hard to understand sometimes.’

  She held up a hand and the waiter came over. Looking at her watch, she asked the waiter when the banks closed.

  ’Half-four, madam.’

  One of the girls handed him two fifty-pound notes. He hesitated, and realising what was on his mind, she said, ’We’re paying the bill.’

  He flushed. He’d thought that they were tipping him for telling them when the banks closed; in fact the sum did include a fifty-pound tip.

  Amira tried beaming her thoughts across to the rich Arab: Why don’t you give me the three thousand in your pocket? I know that’s what you withdraw each day for the casino. I’m waiting, waiting, waiting.

  She looked around helplessly, while the attendants did their best to appear pathetic. And then the man got to his feet, approached her and very respectfully asked the Princess if he could help.

  ’Is it true that the hospitals only take American Express cards or cheques? I don’t have either. I get a bag of cash every Friday from the Kingdom, and today’s only Wednesday.’

  ’Please, if you don’t mind, let me give you what you need.’

  ’No thank you. I’m afraid my brother would be furious with me.’

  ’He’ll never know. When the bag comes, you can pay me back.’

  ’But the banks are shut.’

  ’I’ve got cash on me. Is two thousand five hundred enough? I can get more.’

  He kept the cash distributed between the pockets of his jacket and trousers, and there was even some in his overcoat. Her attendant took the money graciously.

  ’Thank you,’ he said humbly, as he handed the last lot over. ’Do you need me to come with you ... I’m like your brother.’

  Amira asked one of her attendants to take his telephone number so that they could let him know that everything was fine, ’and put your mind at rest’.

  The next day she managed to see him alone and to insinuate herself into his room at the hotel. She asked if she could hide there for two hours, she was afraid that somebody would see her. She’d tricked her mother, her aunts, everybody, even her driver, to be at the hotel that afternoon to see him. The Arab, put on the spot, agreed. When the Princess saw that he had a room, not a suite, she apologised. Nevertheless, she didn’t try to leave. She sat on a chair. ’Never mind, you’re like a brother. You were so chivalrous yesterday, real, old-fashioned courtesy. I bet you recite poetry,’ and Amira began to recite the only poem she knew:

  Is it your saliva, rainwater or wine? In my mouth it’s so cool, and in my heart it’s like fire.

  She let a tear fall. She asked him to turn on the television. They sat and watched, then she wept and expressed her greedy desires; she was a wronged, repressed princess. She screamed that she didn’t want her jewellery and she began to undo her necklace and take off her bracelet and hurl her jewellery into the middle of the bedroom; she tore off her jacket and blouse to reveal her large breasts and her coloured lace bra. ’Since I first saw the light of day, I’ve been starved of romance and affection,’ she said, closing her eyes and rolling around on the bed. She flung herself on to the floor, then pretended to think that she might have broken a limb and began to wail, pushing up her skirt and exposing her thighs.

  ’Is my arm broken?’ She rested her arm along her thigh fearfully, and the man, on his knees beside her but hesitant about touching her, heard her whisper in his ear that she was dying for a kind word, a gentle touch, and then she took hold of his hand and said dramatically, ’This throat of mine is dry from swallowing so many tears, for it is my name ... like a curse on me ... al-Inud ... al-Inud ... the cloud full of rain.’

  Then she seemed to be positioning the man above her so that he could examine her arm, but her fidgeting and constant mindless chattering made her move with a certain rhythm that aroused him and he fell on her, not caring about her origins, or whether what he was doing would land him in trouble. With the routine cadences of sex, she forgot that she was a princess and resumed her trade, letting slip a word or a gesture that fired the man’s enthusiasm in spite of his surprise. Then she realised her awful mistake and said something in tones closer to those she’d used at first, while she recovered herself and reverted to being withdrawn and shy, as if her shameless behaviour had been an aberration. Her eyes were closed throughout, even when she stepped out of her skirt, and they appeared still to be closed as she gathered up her jewellery, fastened her blouse buttons, picked up her bag and left the man in a state of blissful happiness, as if he had just slept with one of the houris of Paradise. Had he really fucked royalty, a distressed, unfulfilled princess? He’d thought that by helping her royal highness he would have acquired a certain status, and her family would be beholden to him. The hotel had been transformed, in spite of its luxurious drapes and comfortable bed, into a course of obstacles and terrors that he had overcome. He was Clever Hassan, hero of thousands of folk tales, who had reached the jewel in the dragon’s mouth and snatched it from the flames.

  Amira left the hotel full of self-confidence, without having given the man so much as a conspiratorial backward glance to acknowledge what had happened between them.

  IV

  Samir was in Amira’s flat with John the Policeman, hardly able to believe that this was not one of his daydreams. John took off his uniform, including his policeman’s helmet, then pulled his vest over his head to reveal taut muscles and a smooth stomach. Samir barely stopped himself from exclaiming aloud.

  John went up to Samir and took hold of his nipple and Samir went into ecstasies and felt as if he were going to faint. When he came back to reality, he shouted, ’See, John, I’m a virgin. A virgin, not a prostitute.’

  John did not understand most of what Samir said, but Samir made him laugh. At the same time Samir felt cheated. He’d paid eighty pounds for John the Policeman to touch his nipple for a few seconds.

  John had been investigating a traffic hold-up in Edgware Road when he had seen an apparition in red boots and a purple boa weaving her way, laughing, between the cars, as she tried to cross the road.

  ’Bloody hell,’ he said to the other policemen with him. ’Did that witch just fall out of the sky?’

  ’Witch? Me?’ Samir had turned round reproachfully, envisaging an old hag flying through the air on a broomstick. ’Don’t say that, mama. But you’re a very beautiful policeman. I’d go to prison for you!’

  Samir tried everything he could think of to make John the Policeman stay longer in the flat; he said he wanted to introduce him to one of his friends, an Egyptian musician, who’d never tasted the English; he tried tempting him with a glass of whisky, or a meal, but only the monkey succeeded in keeping him a few minutes longer.

  ’But John the Policeman, you were so quick with me.’

  ’Listen, mama, we agreed on eighty pounds. Besides, if your friend Amira comes back and finds me here with you - that is, with another man, in her flat - she’ll hit the roof.’

  ’Why should she mind? Are you a thief or a leper? You’re an English policeman, a beauty. She’d be honoured.’

  ’Maybe she’d be jealous. I’m sure she fancies you or she wouldn’t let you stay here for nothing.’

  ’Firstly, she and I are soulmates. Secondly, didn’t I tell you that I help her? I’m her right hand, her both hands. Look at how clean the flat is. I cook, I iron and wash everything. Open a cupboard and see how organised everything is. I pray to God for Amira day and night, and He listens to me. "Oh God, may the sand Amira touches tu
rn to gold," and she knows by now that my prayers are all answered.’

  ’I can’t see any gold. Only broken furniture.’

  Samir nearly told John the Policeman just how generous Amira was. All the time.

  ’Johnny Guitar! Nahid couldn’t help me extend my visa. The man she wanted to contact has left the Home Office. Can you help me, please?’

  ’I’ll try, but you’ve already told me you have five kids and a wife, back at home. Were you fibbing?’

  ’What do you mean, fibbing?’

  ’Were you telling me a bunch of lies?’

  ’Never. They are there, all of them, in Sharjah ... the Emirates. Why did you remind me of them?’

  ’Jesus! Do you need people to remind you?’

  ’No, I mean right now. I remember them always, but I’m so happy on my own here. But I’m going to go back and visit them soon.’

  Samir had been in London two months. It was strange, he felt he belonged there and nowhere else, and he missed nobody. If he dared to tell the truth, he would say that he didn’t even miss his children. He opened his eyes every morning to see the monkey and his face lit up. He felt as if he were in a hotel, on holiday; everything around him was new, and had nothing to do with him. A great contrast to his life in Sharjah, where everything depended on him, from the oven - seeing if it needed gas - to the fridge - seeing that it was full of food. Furthermore, he hated the sound of the air-conditioning there, where it was endemic, a must. Here, he and Amira had so many things in common. They shared the same taste in songs, films, jokes. She made him enjoy the company of women: ’They hug you, wipe away your tears and tell you their secrets.’ He had a new family now: Amira, the monkey - and Nahid, even though she sometimes fumed for no good reason, as she did a week ago when Cappuccino stole her lipstick. But the most important reason for loving it here was that he was doing what he always wanted to do: make people laugh, and he was being paid for it, rather than doing it for nothing as he had for so many years. There was a respect here for everything, even for laughter; it was his job, a career, like any other, just like being an engineer, a doctor or a bus driver.

  Back home people thought that London was walking in the mist wrapped in a heavy coat and a furry pair of boots (as indeed he had when he arrived) and that London was Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace.

  London was freedom. It was your right to do anything, any time. You didn’t need to undergo a devastating war in order to be freed to do what you wanted, and when you did do what you wanted, you didn’t have to feel guilty or embarrassed, and start leading a double life and ultimately end up frustrated.

  God must have started up the war in Lebanon so that people would leave him in peace, Samir had thought, so that they would stop watching him and to enable him to give up his job in the hotel peeling potatoes. God had given everybody life and death to play with, and, in that war, Samir wore what he wanted, telling his wife that if he disguised himself as a woman he could avoid trouble at checkpoints and buy bread more quickly. He wore brightly coloured trousers and a long coloured shirt, and glasses with red frames. Sometimes he dressed as a dancer in a club and performed for the soldiers when they were high on drink and drugs and loneliness. He moved about between the various factions of fighters wherever he could, in trenches, in beautiful villas that they’d appropriated when the owners fled. He bought and sold bottles of gas, and he filled up containers with water in one part of the city and took them to other parts, where the water was cut off. His mother was the first to praise his brilliant subterfuge, as he presented her with additional sacks of foodstuffs that he’d been given by a militiaman - even though she’d been the one to have him admitted to a mental hospital when she first saw her son wearing a dress.

  Samir’s mother had caught him singing and dancing on the roof terrace wearing her blue nylon nightie, her lipstick and high heels, when he was eleven years old. She called her husband who was having a siesta and edged away from her son, scared that he would throw himself off the roof if she went closer. Her crazy relative had jumped off a roof. Mad people hated anyone touching them when they were having one of their fits.

  In the psychiatric hospital the doctor advised them to show Samir plenty of affection and to take an interest in him - his father, especially - and said that children of that age fantasised a lot. But three years later they took Samir back to the same hospital, after he had attempted suicide.

  Chapter Five

  I

  Lamis glanced over the flowers she had arranged in vases and distributed over the fireplace, on the hall table, even in the cloakroom. Just as if I was still living with my husband, she thought, as she filled glass ashtrays with water and scattered rose petals in them, and lined dishes with coloured paper to receive the pistachio nuts. There were two things she had not done before: burned Omani incense in the incense-burner next to the dishes that Nicholas had prepared, and bought ready-made hummus and stuffed vine leaves from Marks and Spencer’s to supplement them.

  Ever since the previous day, Lamis had been restlessly anticipating this evening, when Nicholas was going to introduce her to his friends and acquaintances, so that she would have a ’family’. ’So you don’t go on being alone,’ he said to her.

  ’But I’m happy as I am. I’m satisfied with you. Unless you’re fed up with me?’

  The friends began to arrive and she felt as if she were crawling instead of walking. Babyish sounds came out of her mouth.

  She tried to brush her mind like a shoe so it shone bright and sharp, to regain her composure, but failed miserably. Their conversation moved quickly in a sphere of which she had no knowledge, total Englishness, in which she was incapable of being polite, hypocritical or inventive. The talk revolved around local politics and rules and regulations. She decided she would have to learn the newspaper by heart in future, but then realised this wouldn’t work, because their conversations were like artefacts inlaid with the whims and preoccupations of the individual. Even when talking about food they constantly slipped in phrases she did not understand, like ’gastronomical delights’.

  She found herself blaming Nicholas. Like a silkworm, she had been spinning her cocoon slowly and, deeply content, she had been preparing herself for flight. But Nicholas had taken her out before she was ready.

  Surely she could break into the guests’ closed circle in a single step if she spoke a sentence. Why didn’t she chat with them as she did with him? After all, she could tell that he found her interesting, amusing. One sentence. She should let it out now.

  She had to be quick. Her chance had come. There was a breeder of falcons at the table who had lost his job because a sheikh in the Emirates had declared himself bankrupt and sold his birds. She was about to intervene and say that her father used to train birds to sing, but she stopped herself, because she would have to link this story to the falcons, and then one of the guests was asking the breeder if a blue-beaked falcon was in the sheikh’s collection, a strain said to cost between eighty and a hundred thousand pounds.

  ’Oh yes. They smuggle them from the south of Siberia with the hawks. The Russian authorities are starting to uncover vast smuggling operations on a daily basis.’

  ’Maybe the Russians want to sell them to the Mafia!’

  ’Do you think they’re a protected species?’

  OK, she had an idea now. There was something she could say. She was going to come out on top here. They liked joking. If only she could make them smile, she would become worthy of their notice.

  She wondered how they would react if she told them about her aunt who had rushed out of their house in Najaf, slamming the door behind her, running across the stony ground shrieking and wailing, ’God help us! They’re all at it in there. The child’s fucking the chair, the birds are fucking their perches, and the parrot shouts, "Hello! God is great!" all the time and mounts the other male.’

  She continued to smile and agree, trying to pitch her voice in anticipation of speaking her firs
t words. She did not want them to come out in a series of short squeaky sentences because she was unused to talking in a large group of English people.

  At last one of them, who must have sensed her growing unease, turned and addressed her. ’You’re Iraqi. So you must have come to London to escape from Saddam’s repression?’

  Lamis answered confidently, ’Actually I came to marry an Iraqi man who was living here.’

  With one sentence she had extinguished the expectation in the man’s eyes. Nodding his head, he said, ’Aah,’ then turned to talk to the person on the other side of him about British politics and their boycott of the Iraqis. So he’d decided that because she’d come to London in what he deemed normal circumstances, she wasn’t worth spending time on.

  She tried to recapture his interest, and interrupted him. ’We fled from Iraq to Syria and Lebanon before coming here, also my father was an artist - a musician - and he couldn’t bear the way religious fanaticism dominated his life, and my grandfather ...’

  ’Religious fanaticism? But Iraq isn’t Iran, or Algeria! I didn’t know there were Muslim extremists in Iraq.’

  ’I mean Najaf. My father ...’ Then she fell silent. It was a long story and would require many digressions. She made do with saying, ’It’s a long story,’ waiting to see if he asked her what it was before she continued, but he excused himself and turned away to pour more wine into his glass.

  She blamed herself for not telling him that they fled because they were frightened of Saddam Hussein, and felt guilty she couldn’t bring herself to tell her story.

  ’Nicholas tells me that you’re from Iraq. From Baghdad?’ Another guest was addressing her in very correct Arabic; he’d obviously decided that he had to have bulging eyes and protruding lips in order to be able to pronounce it.