Minaret: A Novel

by Leila Aboulela

Randa's parents were a little mad according to my parents. Ever since they had studied in England, where Randa was born, they had come back with eccentric English habits. They went for walks, invited people to dinner with cards and kept a puppy. Randa's mother was one of the very first women professors in the country. For this reason, Randa's inability to get into university was a sore disappointment. Now they were going to send her to England to study - another hold move as not many girls went on their own to study abroad.

  The grown-ups had finished eating and were in the garden so we didn't have to say hello and chat. Just before the servant started to clear up the dining room, we heaped plates full of food and went hack to Randa's room. I think she was heartbroken about Amir so she didn't eat much. I finished my plate and ate the rest of hers.

  `Did you see Sundari with her marine?' I laughed. `Things are getting serious ...'

  `You know, the other day I saw her car parked in front of the Marine House.'

  `You're Joking?'

  `I'm not and it was siesta time!'

  I shrieked and Randa laughed. She became herself again and we were soon giggling together, gossiping about everyone in the disco (except Amir of course) - what they wore, who they danced with and how close. I waited for her to speak about Amir but she didn't. She took the empty plates to the kitchen and said she'd bring back dessert.

  Alone in her room, I did what Mama had tried over the years to stop me doing but never succeeded. I snooped around. I opened Randa's cupboards, looking through her drawers. I found a photo of both of us at school, wearing identical uniforms - the navy pinafore and white belt. We were arm in arm and smiling at the camera. It was nice in those days to see Randa every day, every single day; to sit next to her in class, to chat during lessons and annoy the teachers, to swap sandwiches and drink from the same bottle of Double Cola.

  I leafed through a Jackie and found it childish - why did Randa keep having them sent from London? I turned the pages of an old Time magazine. Khomeini, the IranIraq War, girls marching in black chadors, university girls ... A woman held a gun. She was covered head to toe, hidden.

  Randa came in with bowls of creme caramel, apples and bananas.

  I put the magazine on the floor and reached for my bowl.

  `Totally retarded,' she said looking at the picture and handing me a spoon. `We're supposed to go forward, not go back to the Middle Ages. How can a woman work dressed like that? How can she work in a lab or play tennis or anything?'

  `I don't know.' I swallowed spoonfuls of creme caramel and stared at the magazine, reading hits of the article.

  `They're crazy,' Randa said. `Islam doesn't say you should do that.'

  `What do we know? We don't even pray.' Sometimes I was struck with guilt.

  'I do sometimes,' said Randa.

  `Yeah, when?'

  In exam time . . . A lot of good it did me.' She laughed.

  `When I fast in Ramadan, I pray. A girl in school told me that fasting doesn't count unless you pray.'

  Randa raised her eyebrows. You spend half the month saying you've got your period and can't fast!'

  `Not half the month. I cheat a hit but not half the month.'

  `Last year we were in London and we didn't fast at all.'

  `Really?' I Couldn't even imagine Ramadan in London, London in Ramadan.

  `How can anyone fast in London? It would spoil all the fun.'

  `Yes it would.' I looked down at the picture and thought of all the girls in university who wore hijab and all the ones who wore Lobes. Hair and arms covered by our national costume.

  `Would you ever wear a tope?' 1 asked her.

  `Yes but a tope is different than this.' She jabbed the Time magazine. 'It isn't so strict. With a tobe, the front of your hair shows, your arms show.'

  it depends how you wear it, what you wear underneath it. The way some of the girls in the university wear it, they're really covered.'

  `Huh,' she snorted and I realized I should not have mentioned the university, a sore point. I put the magazine away and finished my howl of creme caramel.

  `I didn't study enough,' she said glumly. `I just didn't take these exams seriously.'

  `It's SO unfair. You're smarter than me.' The only reason I was able to get into Khartoum University was because I could sit on my fat bum for hours memorizing.

  `I suppose I should he happy,' she said quietly. `I suppose I am happy that I'm going to London, though I might not he going to London. I might go somewhere outside London.'

  I waited for her to talk about Amir, to complain about how he had ignored her the rest of the evening. She did and I told her the rumours about him and the girl from the Arab Club.

  It was past three in the morning when Omar picked me up. I had started to worry and phoned round asking about him. Everyone in Randa's house slept and we stayed up watching videos of Dallas. It was lucky that Mama and Baba were away in Cairo; otherwise he would have got into trouble. When he finally came to pick me up, he looked tired and smelled of beer and something else, something that was sweet.

  You drive,' he said and I didn't like that. I drove home and he didn't put Bob Marley in the tape recorder like he usually did. He just sat next to me, quiet and distant, but he wasn't asleep. I smelt him and guessed what the smell was. But I didn't want to believe it. Hashish? Marijuana?

  We heard the dawn azan as we turned into our house. The guard got up from where he was sleeping on the ground and opened the gate for us. The sound of the azan, the words and the way the words sounded went inside me, it passed through the smell in the car, it passed through the fun I had had at the disco and it went to a place I didn't know existed. A hollow place. A darkness that would suck me in and finish me. I parked the car and the guard closed the gate behind us. He didn't go back to sleep.

  'Omar, we're home ... Omar.' I leaned and opened the car door for him. He opened his eyes and looked at me blankly. We got out of the car and I locked it. There was not a single breeze. The night tight, no coolness, no flow. Still I could hear the azan. It went on and on and now, from far away, I could hear another mosque echoing the words, tapping at the sluggishness in me, nudging at a hidden numbness, like when my feet went to sleep and I touched them.

  The servants stirred and, from the back of the house, I heard the sound of gushing water, someone spitting, a sneeze, the shuffle of slippers on the cement floor of their quarters. A light bulb came on. They were getting ready to pray. They had dragged themselves from sleep in order to pray. I was wide awake and I didn't.

  Four

  t no longer surprised my friends that Anwar waited for me after lectures. We usually went to the Department of Science cafeteria because there were fewer people there who knew us, although Anwar was a familiar face because of his political activities. He didn't speak to me a lot about politics but sometimes he asked me strange questions.

  'How many servants do have in your house?'

  I started to count something I had never counted before. The cook, the Ethiopian maid, the housebov, the guard and Musa the driver. That's all. No, then there's the gardener, but he doesn't come every day.'

  'Six.'

  `Yes . . . SIX.'

  And there's four of you?'

  We have a lot of guests.' This I said defensively. The campus was nearly empty. This was lunchtime, naptime, everyone was indoors away from the sun, but it was winter now and the sun was bearable. At four or five o'clock the light would start to soften and the campus would fill up again for the evening classes.

  `Does it not strike you that it is wrong for such wide discrepancies to exist between people? There's famine in the west. This country is one of the poorest in the world.'

  I fidgeted in my seat, said, `There is nothing I can do about it.'

  His voice softened a little and so did the way he looked at me. `But this isn't true. It's up to us to change the system. It's always up to the students and the workers to change things.'

  I told him what I'd read about the Iranian revoluti
on in Time. He seemed amused that I read Time. Perhaps because it was in English and my English was very good because I had gone to a private school. Or perhaps because Time was American.

  I wanted to know what he thought about the revolution. He talked about it for a while, approving of the deposing of the Shah but unsupportive of an Islamic government. He echoed Randa's words - `We have to go forward not back' - and was contemptuous of the black chadors.

  `You're very progressive then, where women are concerned?' I smiled, pleased with the turn in the conversation that followed, the chance to flirt and prove to myself again and again that, in spite of all his disapproval of my background, he liked me.

  Anwar wrote for one of the student newspapers, the one for the Front. Every week the newspapers were handwritten and stapled on to the hoard in the cafeteria. There would be quite a rush for it at first, many students crowding round, standing on tiptoes to read the top pages, sitting on their heels to read the bottom. After a day or two when the crowd subsided I would go and have a look. Most of the articles bored me, but I always read his and tried hard to appreciate them. Most times though, the colours of the letters and the beauty of the handwriting distracted me from the meaning of the words. Titles in large flowing script, red shaded with black, a hold 3-I) effect. There were sometimes illustrations too, a leaf to mark the end of an article, a flying clove. Cartoons too, sketches and a cynical joke. Within the walls of the university, free speech was allowed. The WAS of the university were sacred and even the police were not allowed to go in. But everyone knew that there were spies. With pride, Anwar told me that the secret police had a file on him.

  The way he said my name. The way he said, You have an effect on me.' Sometimes he hurt me, said I was stupid, sometimes he made me laugh.

  I told Mama about him. She said, 'Don't risk your reputation and waste your time on someone who is never going to he a suitable husband for you.' She could see I was not convinced and her argument became tense. Your father would never approve. And you wouldn't be able to live that kind of life, no servants, no travelling. Believe me, you'd feel had in front of your friends and the family. It would he such a humiliation for you and us.'

  OK,' I said, my voice too loud, 'OK.'

  Her voice became smooth, trying to explain. 'I hrought you up so that you can have a position in society, so that you can live at a certain standard.'

  I walked out of the room catching a glimpse of the genuine alarm in her eyes. She was afraid that I would disobey her, afraid that I would do something rash. But I was held back by the rhythm of going day after clay to the university, sometimes seeing him, sometimes not. I didn't know if I had a place in his future plans; he gave no hint. As for me, I dreamt dreams shaped by pop songs and American films. Then I would shake my head and tell myself that these were the sorts of things he despised.

  His English was good in terms of vocabulary and grammar, but his accent was, I had to admit, poor. His clothes were tidy and in nice colours - but they were oldfashioned and he wore sandals instead of socks and trainers. He had not gone to a private school, he had not had private tutors, he was clever just by himself, just reading and going to talks and debates. His father was a senior technician with the railways. His two uncles, one a qualified architect, had been imprisoned for membership of the Communist Party. He had seven brothers and sisters; the eldest, a policewoman, was married with one child, one brother was studying in Moscow, one brother in the Khartoum Branch of Cairo University, then Anwar, then two younger girls in primary school. One of his younger sisters was ill but he didn't like talking about it. His mother was a qualified nurse but she didn't work anymore. He had an aunt who struck lucky and went with her husband to Saudi Arabia. He lived in the hostels and rarely went home, even though his house was across the bridge in Safia. He smoked every day but drank occasionally. He smoked only cigarettes and didn't pray. He never fasted in Ramadan; he did not see the point of it. He had never been abroad but he had travelled around the country, he had been to Port Sudan and the Nuha mountains, El-Obeid and as far south as Juba. I had never been out of Khartoum.

  `Why do you go to Europe and not want to see your own country? Our country is beautiful,' he said, striking a match, lighting a cigarette. When no one could see us, in the evenings when the university was poorly lit, we would hold hands or sit close together so that our arms touched.

  The speaker stood on an overturned Miranda crate, under the tree. A soft wind blew and the sun was gentle but still I held my copybook over my head and squinted. The crowd was thick around me. There were girls in white tobes and a few like me holding copybooks over their heads. Some of the boys sat on the grass, others on the ledge that separated the paths from the garden. In the distance a sprinkler twirled, shooting out gusts of water at the flowerbeds and the grass. There was a good microphone today and that made a difference. It drew a bigger crowd, and the echo of Anwar's voice reached the cafeteria and inside the library.

  He spoke steadily at first, almost coolly and then with a kind of controlled passion. He held himself back, waiting for the challenges and provocations that came with the questions. Only then would he give his best lines, the sharpest argument, the sarcasm, and the punch line, after which he would grin and raise his eyebrows as if to say, `I rest my case'. A joke, a good joke to ridicule his opponent, make those sitting on the grass chuckle and those at the hack smile. I felt proud of him, and the pleasure of looking and listening to him was like a treat - like ice cream when I was a child, a chocolate sundae with cream on top and wishing it would not end. But then he hurt me, and I should have expected it. I should have seen it coning, the inevitable dig at the bourgeoisie. It was his favourite word. But even worse, he was explicit now, using my father's name - my surname, so familiar, so close - and it was like a punch in the stomach, high in my stomach. My breath caught and I went cold but my cheeks were burning. A roar in my ears - the laughter rising around me - blocked out the rest of his sentence. He did not once look at me. I was invisible but that was my name in the direct accusation of my father. That was my name that made everyone laugh. I was an aristocrat, yes, from my mother's side with a long history of acres of land and support for the British and hotels in the capital and bank accounts aboard. And if all that wasn't bad enough, my father stood accused of corruption.

  I pushed my way out of the crowd, deaf and not knowing if anyone was looking at me. I knew that I mustn't cry, that I must walk with dignity to my car. I sat in the car, on the hot sticky plastic seat. I released the handbrake, twisted the key in the ignition. As I started to drive off, there was a knock on the window. Omar. Omar in a good mood, smiling. Not Omar of the seedy parties and suspect smell but Omar fresh in a white T-shirt and jeans, smiling. I rolled down the window.

  `What's wrong, Nana?'

  How did he know? Once long ago we were asleep inside Mama's stomach together, facing each other, twisting and kicking. I would like to go back to that time. The stupid tears come now.

  `What's wrong, Nana?'

  `Nothing.'

  'OK, let me drive.'

  `But you don't want to go home now.'

  `It's OK, I can come back.'

  `That's silly.' I wiped my face with the back of my hands, sniffed.

  `Come on, move over.'

  I got out and moved around the car to the passenger's seat. I felt floppy and I didn't want to talk.

  We saw an accident on the way home. We heard the glass smash as the two cars hit each other: one was a taxi, the other a blue Datsun. People crowded round and all the traffic came to a standstill. Omar turned into a side street to get away from the jam. The side street had a ditch, houses with metal doors. On one of the doors was a design of aces, diamonds, hearts and clubs. Omar put Bob Marley on the tape recorder and sang along to `Misty Morning'.

  Five

  dived into the pool and the January water was a shock. I surfaced with a catch in my chest, out of breath. `Freezing,' I spluttered.

  `You're mad,' Randa
shouted from under the umbrella of a poolside table. She had on glamorous sunglasses and was eating a grilled cheese sandwich. My only choice was to swim, keep swimming until I warmed up. The surface of the water was warm where the sun had been hitting it all morning. It was much colder below and so I didn't swim underwater. I reached the shallow end, turned and pushed my legs against the wall, started to breaststroke to the deep end. Some foreigners were on deckchairs sunbathing, slathered in Ambre Solaire reading Sidney Sheldon, but I had the whole of the pool to myself.

  It took three lengths before the stiffness of the cold melted away and I began to enjoy myself. My eyes tingled with chlorine, the familiar taste of it in my mouth. My arms and legs separated the water, making a way for me to go ahead. Yesterday I walked right past Anwar without saying hello - he was with some friends pinning up the latest newspapers. It made me feel good to ignore him. He was waiting for me when I came out of the Accounting lecture all nice and smiling as if nothing had happened. He expected me to go walking with him but I just went oft with some girls to the cafeteria. I could still feel, moving in the water, a dull anger towards him.

  When I got out of the pool, I wrapped a towel around my waist and sat next to Randa.

  The lifeguard couldn't take his eyes off von,' she said.

  `Very funny.' I stole a quick look at him. He was wearing a yellow polo shirt over swimming trunks. He was Eritrean.

  I took my comb out of my hag and started to tug at my hair. I did not have nice, smooth hair like Mama's.

  `Aren't you going to have a shower and shampoo it?'

  `No.' After what she had told my about the lifeguard I felt too shy to go and stand under the showers which were just next to him.

  `He'll get a good view of you then,' she giggled.

  `Exactly.' I felt uncomfortable for no reason. Mama didn't object to me swimming as long as I didn't wear a bikini but, ever since I started university, I had begun to feel awkward, even in my black full-piece.