Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  Very politely, another of them said, indicating the chair, ’Please have a seat. Just a few quick questions. Have you used the bath?’

  ’Yes.’

  ’What’s your name?’

  ’Amira.’

  ’You just phoned his royal highness.’

  ’No, I didn’t.’

  ’Do us a favour.’

  ’I didn’t.’

  ’We know you did. The telephones here are computerised. You called the switchboard operator and asked for his suite. Could you tell us how you knew his royal highness was in this hotel, and what you wanted from him?’

  ’I didn’t call him.’

  ’What did you want from him? He doesn’t know you.’

  ’Who told you he doesn’t know me?’

  ’What about your passport. It says ...’

  ’What’s my passport got to do with it? The Prince could have been lying to you when he said he didn’t know me.’

  ’We’d better take her to Savile Row,’ said another.

  ’Sorry. What are you proposing? I didn’t catch it,’ said the Arab.

  ’We’ll take her to Savile Row Police Station.’

  ’Where the tailors are?’

  ’Exactly. Savile Row Police Station.’

  ’I want to go to the bathroom,’ said Amira.

  She put her hand in her jacket pocket, touching the little mobile phone as if it was Aladdin’s magic lamp.

  ’You can wait.’

  ’How do you know? Are you inside me?’

  She went into the bathroom, flushed the toilet, called Samir, then flushed it again and came out.

  The Arab asked the Special Branch men if he could speak to her in Arabic. ’Look, madam. The Prince is on a secret visit. Don’t make matters worse for yourself. These men are English, not Arabs. They want you to give them the pure milk.’

  ’What?’

  ’I mean tell the truth. The more you lie, the deeper in you get. They think there’s a plot against the Prince and they’re treating it as a serious case. Did you come to make some money?’

  ’And who are you, sir?’

  ’The Prince’s secretary.’

  Feeling as if a weight had been taken off her shoulders she asked him if he knew Maureen.

  He smiled. ’So she was the one who told you. Look. Keep this a secret, or I’ll lose my job.’

  He smiled again.

  ’OK, OK, I did call the Prince,’ she told the policemen.

  ’Why?’

  ’I wanted to talk to him.’

  ’Why?’

  ’I wanted to borrow money from him. I’m ill. I need treatment.’

  ’How did you know he was here?’

  ’I came, as I always do, to buy an Arabic newspaper in the hotel and I saw a lot of cars and people who looked like minders and bodyguards at the entrance, and one of them was saying, "Prince, Prince." ’

  ’Who told you his name?’

  ’I don’t know his name. I said to myself, I’ve arrived at just the right moment, and I took a room because I knew that the hotel wouldn’t let me talk to him.’

  ’Are you certain you just wanted to ask for financial help?’

  ’Yes, I swear on the Qur’an!’

  ’Did anyone else know about it?’

  ’As I told you, I acted on the spur of the moment.’

  ’Why do you need money if you’ve got enough to pay for this room?’

  ’I thought I’d be able to pay with the money he was going to give me.’

  ’So you were confident he’d give you what you wanted?’

  ’Definitely. Princes are extremely generous, especially if someone’s really in need. A colleague of mine had to have an operation and a princess she didn’t know at all paid for the whole thing. And there was Prince - I’ve forgotten his name - who gave money for the child on TV who needed a liver transplant. On That’s Life.’

  ’What are you doing in London?’

  The secretary intervened. ’I’ll ask the Prince if he’s ready to pay for her room. And perhaps he’ll take pity on her and give her what he can.’

  ’Do you mean you’re going to drop the charges?’

  ’I think so. I’ll go and explain things to His Highness and come back and tell you.’

  The Lebanese left the room with one of the detectives, while Amira collapsed in relief, saying, ’Thank you, my brother.’

  ’Oh, so you think the Prince will take pity on you like his secretary said?’

  ’I don’t know. It seems I scared him. His wife must be with him. Or his wives.’

  The two men laughed.

  ’Come on, let’s put money on how much he’s going to give me,’ said Amira.

  ’Don’t involve us, young lady. And we’re policemen, not a betting office.’

  ’Thank you. Thank you.’

  ’Don’t thank me. Thank his secretary when he comes back and signs something to say he waives his rights.’

  ’I’m thanking you because you called me young lady. Anyway, what happens to me if he doesn’t drop the charges?’

  ’We take you in for questioning, then who knows.’

  She wasn’t worried. She had the secretary eating out of her hand. He came back; he was extremely elegant.

  ’The Prince has agreed to everything, and we’ll take care of the room.’

  He handed her an envelope.

  ’If only I’d asked for champagne and caviar!’

  The secretary laughed, and the others joined in.

  ’So. Can we consider the case closed?’ the Scotland Yard officer said, astonished, convinced that the Arab mentality was a puzzle. The Prince had made a complaint, then forgiven the woman. It was as if she’d broken into a shop and the owner not only dropped the charges but invited her to take what she wanted.

  ’Yes. I hope the lady stops playing with fire.’

  ’I’m at your service, if you need anything,’ she said to the secretary.

  ’Take care. Goodbye.’

  Amira picked up her bag, looked at the bed and said to the secretary, ’You shouldn’t pay for the room. I didn’t even use the bed.’

  As a result of her brush with the law, Amira started to feel like a suspect as she went over the evening’s events again and again in her mind. One new factor in particular made her worry. She’d given the hotel the details of her credit card in order to book the room - Scotland Yard could use that information to find her again. Why, when Maureen told her that the Prince’s secretary was arriving to have his chest and back hairs removed, had she jumped at the opportunity, instead of remaining with her companions in the harmonious surroundings of the hotel lobbies, the bedrooms, the Rolls-Royce? But she needed more money, and she needed it fast.

  In order to be a princess she had to keep cash moving in a steady flow, into the Rolls-Royce, her attendants, restaurants, the afternoon teas, the tips for her informants who worked in the hotels, casinos, airline companies, banks, cabarets, and the stylists in the hotel hair salons, all of whom gave her the names of their regular clients. Amira also followed the doings of the princesses and sheikhs in the Arab newspapers and weekly magazines that were published in London.

  Her mother had always believed that the poor spent money on the rich, not vice versa - she had once used up all her savings organising a huge lunch for a relative who worked as a nurse in the Gulf. She had been anticipating a length of silk, or a gold watch, but the relative brought along nothing but her fat bottom, which had gained an additional kilo by the time she finished licking the plates clean.

  London evaporated from Amira’s mind. She could think of only two things: she must find a taxi, and see Nahid. She did not open her bag to check the money, as she usually did; she was afraid that her newly earned cash, which she was aware of with every beat of her heart, would burst out of her bag like air bubbles and disappear.

  Nahid was not home, and her mobile phone was asking Amira to leave a message. Amira looked for Nahid at Bahia’s, and at a few coffee
shops. Only when she asked Samir did she remember that Nahid’s sister must have arrived. ’But why’s Nahid hiding from me? Her sister likes me.’ She went back to Nahid’s and decided she’d wait for her outside her door, for hours if necessary. But this time Nahid was there. She opened the door and kissed Amira on both cheeks and joked with her as if nothing had happened.

  ’So are you punishing me because I’ve turned into a princess? I don’t see you any more. Where’s your sister, anyway?’

  ’I made her cancel her trip. I told her that I’d moved to your place because the roof of my flat was leaking. I’ve been generally feeling a bit under the weather, as the English say. For no particular reason.’

  ’I know why. It’s the whisky.’

  ’I swear by my eyesight that I had only one drink yesterday, and that was in great secrecy because Bahia invited Katkouta over.’

  Amira was jealous. But what did she expect her friend to do now that Amira was a princess, a lonely lioness out hunting for prey on her own, instead of in a team, as she and Nahid had been in the past?

  She told Nahid what had happened to her in the hotel.

  ’Thank God! But now the young Lebanese man is going to kill Maureen, and then she’ll kill you.’

  ’Everything in life has a price. I’ve paid Maureen already. But tell me what’s going on. Why are you upset with me, Nahid? Why are you avoiding me? Please tell me. I want to know what pillow I’m supposed to be sleeping on ... please open up, tell me what’s wrong.’

  ’Do you remember when you came back from Dubai, and you wanted to take stock of your life and think about your future? Well, it was contagious. I have started to consider my future.’

  ’Good, then be my partner for a year. That’s all it would take. Then we can retire, happy and secure.’

  ’And start to have baby boys and girls, you mean? We should have kept our babies.’

  ’Don’t think of the past. Let’s go to the casino and have fun.’

  ’You’re so right. But don’t you think that God might be at work here, making me so irritable day and night, and sending you that visit from the police?’

  ’Thank you, God. But where were you before, God? Why didn’t you visit us before?’

  The memory of making this choice of career flashed through Amira’s mind. The same thought fleetingly made itself visible on Nahid’s face. Both women pushed the memories away immediately.

  Amira could remember when she decided to become a prostitute. It was when the cook and the driver at the restaurant where she’d worked tried to jump her, or maybe even before that, when her uncle pulled her hand and forced it against his crotch, insisting that she was his wife now — he’d agreed to a registry office wedding with Amira, after the Moroccan government stopped issuing passports to single women because they were rushing off to Europe in hordes like locusts; and there were the men who made the shawarmas in the Syrian restaurant, and the gardener at the mosque, they’d all tried to jump her, just as if she were a pigeon in the park, and she’d begun to make the connection, and to think seriously about her body and men and wealth.

  Revulsion and surprise struck her when the Syrian woman for whom she worked as a cleaner told her she must be pregnant. Her employer had noticed Amira run to throw up in the toilet at the sight of wax dripping down the side of a candle, and taken her to a doctor who’d confirmed that she was pregnant, although Amira persisted in saying that she was a virgin - how could she be pregnant from a few minutes squashed in the van with the Pakistani driver she used to see every day when he brought the home deliveries? He’d torn her pants and promised to marry her as soon as he got his law degree.

  How could she lose, she’d thought, if sex was over that fast, and was that ordinary, like a seed popping in your face, a private act performed by the man, at which she felt merely a spectator, as uninvolved as the van seat.

  If only I’d just arrived in London, she thought. Eighteen years and I still haven’t bought a house by the sea in Morocco or a flat in a new building, or even a little sandwich shop. If only my name was still Habiba and I was walking down the narrow alleys in my home town ...

  When she ran angrily away from her mother and her pail of dirty water, an English tourist stopped her, and asked her in French if she could tell her the whereabouts of the famous old wall. Habiba waved a hand then said in French, ’Follow me. I’m going there. I’m going to ...’ She did not know how to say ’commit suicide’ in French. She walked along with the tourist and felt as if London were walking beside her to the high outcrop of rocks beyond the old town wall, a place much frequented by local people. Everyone in the town, government employees newly awakened from their siestas, housewives, old people, adolescents and children flocked to the spot where the waters of the Atlantic pound against the wall, to watch the sunset.

  ’London’ stopped briefly, looked out at the wall and the sea and back at the houses of the old town clustered behind her, then thanked Habiba and said goodbye. Habiba thought how nice ’London’ was, and how well mannered, and she no longer wanted to take her own life.

  She wished she could have asked the tourist a lot of things about London, and went on an urgent mission to find her uncle, seeking him out in the streets and shop doorways and, when she could not find him, she went looking in the Divine Refuge Café, built into the rocks, where an assortment of tourists and local hash smokers sat round the tables smoking joints. Boys hung around the doorway, afraid to go in, and parents hurried their children past as if the place was contaminated, and they could not believe it when they saw Habiba stride in just like a man. As soon as she was sure her uncle had seen her, Habiba turned and walked out again without a word. Habiba, wailing and swearing and striking her face, ran towards the sea and climbed the rock beyond the wall. Standing at the place where single women always stood - if seven waves touched their feet, it meant God would answer their prayers and send them husbands - she threatened to throw herself off the wall. Her uncle did not ask her why. He did not seem to care, until all of a sudden he screamed at her, ’You foolish girl, have you lost your virginity?’ But the only thing wrong, as he later discovered, was that Habiba wanted to go to London, and find a job there.

  ’Look, Nahid. How beautiful London is.’

  They were in a taxi on their way to the Mayfair Hotel casino. They passed South Audley Street, and checked to see if the two huge elephants were still in the window of Goodge and Sons.

  ’Listen, Nahid, don’t feel guilty and low because of what we do. It’s not just you, or me. Have a look at all those buildings. They’re there because of sex. Hospitals for delivering children, for making people better to make more children, and schools to educate them, and shops to feed them and clothes to keep them warm, and casinos for people to win or lose so they’ll have more money and sleep with more women. What’s all that for? It’s for what you and I do. Everything. Even airports, planes, telephones, computers - everything comes from what you and I do ... manhood proves itself, and women get pregnant; like a male peacock spreading its feathers, a man spreads his millions ... his virility. Believe me, this is what it’s all about.’

  ’You forget those two elephants in the window, Amira. Do they exist because of what you and I do?’

  ’Of course. The man who buys them will feel strong and mighty and powerful when he brings them home to his wife or his mistress, who’ll then jump into his bed even before he does.’

  ’But the elephants aren’t for sale.’

  ’Even so, I mean, because they’re not for sale. That only goes to prove my point. When Mr Goodge told his wife how much he was offered for the elephants, and that was for just one of them, so double it, and that he’d declined to sell, she fainted out of admiration and lust - his power was such an aphrodisiac it was as if she had sniffed the powder made from rhinoceros horn.’

  III

  Samir started to look for Mrs Cunningham after the art student and his friend smiled at him at the bus stop. They were smiling at his scarf. Sa
mir pulled it off and handed it to the boy, who began inspecting it like Cappuccino inspecting his tail for lice. Samir insisted he take it, and the boy refused: he couldn’t afford it.

  ’You won’t pay anything. Believe me, it’s not a problem,’ Samir assured him.

  Then Samir backed down suddenly, afraid that the boy would disappear into the great unknown of London, and he did not let him go until he had taken down the boy’s phone number, promising to tell him where he could get a scarf like it.

  Samir wanted to be close to the boy, and would have been content just to walk in the park with him. A glance from him satisfied his craving and made life longer. He was like Boy George, especially his pencilled eyebrows.

  ’ "Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, Red, green and gold, Red, green and go-o-o-old," ’ he sang.

  His oldest son used to love that song.

  Amira did not know how the scarf had landed up in her house. ’It’s definitely not from Morocco.’

  Samir dialled the boy’s number several times but all he ever got was the answering machine, and he repeated the same message. ’There’s no problem. Take the scarf today for seven pounds, please. Call me on this number. Don’t forget to call me. If seven pounds is too much for you, I know you’re a student, give me five, OK. OK? Don’t forget to call me. I’m waiting.’

  He called again one more time, then went to sleep full of bitterness. He had a dream in which he saw the Englishwoman, Mrs Cunningham, cutting the scarf into pieces and distributing it among the patients in the hospital in Lebanon. Samir saw his hospital bed and remembered the feel of the sheets, and heard the squeak of the bed’s metal feet on the tiles. He began to toss and turn until he woke up, his heart beating. Mrs Cunningham. How was it he’d not thought of her before? Would she remember him, an adolescent in Lebanon for whom nobody else had any sympathy? Mrs Cunningham had sent him with her driver to the dentist and undertaken to pay for his treatment, and bought some shoes for him when she saw him slopping along with his feet spread out flat, because the shoes he’d inherited from his father were too big, even with three pairs of socks.