There is a cane chair out on the patio, and I wonder, if I brought it in and put it in a corner of the kitchen, would it make the room look better? I draw back the sliding doors and step out, into the heat and light of the morning. There are a few trees up here, sustained by hard salty borehole water; their branches, no thicker than twigs, are bent by the currents of air that blow straight from the desert. Squinting into the sun, I can see the black spine of a stony hill, topped by a string of barbed wire. The sky is clear. It must be over 100° today The glare bounces back at me from the walls of the carport. I seem to flicker, I am whited-out. I pick up the chair, bounce it gently on the concrete to shake out the dust. I turn with it, and catch my reflection in the glass doors. My face is black, deeply shadowed, with empty eyes, and a pale ragged aureole encircles my head. I have become the negative of myself.
I go back into the house and put down the chair. I look out through the glass, on to the landscape, the distant prospect of traveling cars. Window one, the freeway; window two, the freeway. I turn away, cross the room to find a different view. Window three, the freeway; window four, the freeway.
NOTE
Saudi Arabia employs the Hijra calendar, which starts from the year A.D. 622, when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina. It is a lunar calendar, and the Hijra year is eleven days shorter than the Gregorian year. The months (with many variations in transliteration) are as follows: Muharram, Safar, Rabi al-awal, Rabi al-thani, Jamadi al-awal, Jamadi al-thani, Rajab, Shaban, Ramadhan, Shawal, Dhu-al-qudah, Dhu-al-hijjah. By a recent Royal Decree, a 365-day year has been instituted for fiscal purposes, and 22 December 1986 became 1 Capricorn. The recalculations involved make the fiscal year some forty years behind the Hijra year. So, not the least surprising aspect of life in the Kingdom is that time can appear to run backward.
ALSO BY HILARY MANTEL
Every Day Is Mother’s Day
Vacant Possession
A Place of Greater Safety
A Change of Climate
An Experiment in Love
The Giant, O’Brien
Fludd
Giving Up the Ghost
EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET. Copyright © 1988 by Hilary Mantel.
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First published in the United Kingdom by Viking
First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company, LLC
First Picador Edition: September 2003
Designed by Paula R. Szafranski
eISBN 9781429900614
First eBook Edition : June 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mantel, Hilary.
Eight months on Ghazzah Street: a novel / by Hilary Mantel.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-42289-X
I. Title.
PR6063.A438E35 1997
823'.914—dc21
96-49819 CIP
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel Page 30
