by Fadia Faqir
She pointed at the flickering light-blue screen and said, `You can see the words "subject", "author" or "title". Just type the first letter and press enter. What are you looking for?'
`Shakespeare's sister,' I said.
`Aha!' she said. `It must be the article by Virginia Woolf.'
I smiled a knowing smile. I had never heard of her in my whole immigrant life.
`My advice to you is to look under feminist theory.'
I sat on the chair, straightened my back and touched the keyboard. I pressed `subject', `enter' and then typed with my index finger `feminst theory'.
The librarian was watching me. `You have misspelled feminist. Add an 'T' I'
I did, pressed `enter' and a long list of books and articles suddenly appeared on screen. I was lost in the desert without the official tracer by my side. `What shall I do now?' I asked.
`Choose one introductory book such as Mary Eagleton's Feminist Literary Theory!'
`This one?' I asked and clicked on it.
`Write down all the details and come with me please!'
She took me to a large hall lined with shelves decked with books. It reminded me of Minister Mahoney's library, where we celebrated my release from immigration prison and where we used to drink tea and discuss the weather. `Books, Salina, are our only consolation. How can we forgive and forget without books?' he said.
`Here you are,' she said.
`Thank you very, very much,' I said to the smiling librarian, hugged my first borrowed books and rushed back to work.
It was raining heavily in Branscombe when I decided I should leave. It was my turn this time to insist on leaving. It had been almost a year since I moved in with Minister Mahoney. `A guest must not burden his host for more than three days' My English had improved partly because I liked the sound of it and partly because of my devotion for my Quaker host. I used to have a shower, wear a clean dress, tie my hair and wait patiently in the reading room for my evening lesson. I would look at Minister Mahoney's face and wonder why he had never got married. He must have been in his early fifties. The golden light of the fire was gleaming on his flushed face, peaceloving eyes, approving nod and his thin, long fingers. The Cambridge Grammar was open on conditionals. My mother had said to me many times that if you plant `if' `I wish' would grow. I said, `Minister, I am not in the mood for studying tonight.'
`Are you OK?' he said concerned.
`Can you see tired I am tonight?'
`Yes I can see how tired you are tonight,' he corrected me.
`Nothing but we must war, we must war on radio. I cannot sleep.'
`The Friends are opposed to the war and are committed to peace,' he said.
I cleared my voice and said, `If I could help you, I would. If I could stay in this house, I would. I must leave. My stay has finished your hospitality.'
`Aren't you happy here?' he asked.
`Yes, you are so kind. Like ... father to me,' I said, choosing my words carefully in order not to upset this honey man.
He looked away and said, `Can you manage on your own?'
`You told me Exeter the best southern city for jobs. I try,' I said.
`If you try you might fail'
`Yes, but also might succeed.'
`But if you fail you must try better to fail better.' He smiled and left the room.
In the evening all was quiet and still apart from Liz knocking about in the sitting room. I tidied up my bed, wiped the wobbly table, pushed it close to the window and put a piece of cardboard under one of the legs to balance it. I put the table lamp on it and switched it on. Gwen gave me the complete works of Yeats as a birthday gift. I read a few poems then put the book down. I fingered the rough jacket, folded it back, inserted it between the yellow pages like a bookmark. I placed my hand over the book and pressed hard, hoping that the words would cut loose, scatter, then find a way to my head. I wanted to understand all the words, see why the human child suffers, find a cure for weeping.
He must have been a bat, a night person, a scholar who liked the darkness and the quiet. They used to use lanterns then. I opened the feminist book as if it were fragile, made of fine glass, and looked through the index: Virginia Woolf. I began reading about having a room of one's own and enough money to be able to work. My mother had nothing of her own, her brother took her share of the farm; when her husband died Shahla was thrown out of her house so she came to live with us; and all I had was a daughter of my own, who cried and cried for me. My mind drifted to the bleak mountains with the few dusty shrubs, a field of black iris, some olive trees, to a world full of weeping, so I pulled it back to the black-and-white words on the page. Halfway through I saw a reference to Shakespeare's sister. The language used was too difficult for me so I began looking up words in the dictionary: `escapade', `substantial', `guffawed', `morbid'. I didn't know that `offspring', which I came across while flicking through the pages, meant children.
While trying to put the pieces of the jigsaw together, I heard a sudden slash. It must be Liz. I rushed downstairs and found her standing in the sitting room, riding whip in hand, with three empty wine bottles rolling noisily on the floor. She was wearing her riding breeches and boots, a red scarf knotted around her neck and her straight grey hair tied in a ponytail. Her frenzied eyes looked past me through the window The crash was the sound of her riding whip hitting the bottles and carpeted floor. `Liz. What do you think you're doing? Give me the whip!' I said and walked towards her to ease the whip out of her hand, but I was too slow so she caught the muscles of my forearm. I held the leather handle with one hand and the shaft with the other, pulled to the left, to the right then pushed and pushed until Liz let go of the whip and fell down. By now my arm was bleeding so I rushed to the bathroom, bandaged it, then ordered a taxi. While on the landing waiting for the taxi I heard Liz's laughter, then she said, as if talking to one of her Indian maids, `Slaves must never breathe English air.'
`That looks bad,' said the taxi driver and handed me an old newspaper to cover the back seat. By the time I got to Casualty blood had seeped through the bandage and was oozing out. I was welcomed by neon lights and tired nurses. While examining the winding cut the nurse said, `An incisive wound, I see.We must report it to the police.'
`No,' I said, `there is no need to. I making salad and lost control of the knife.'
`It is a suicide attempt that went wrong then.'
`No. It was accident. If it suicide I wouldn't be here.'
She pulled her short hair behind her ears, looked at her fob watch, pushed up her silver-framed glasses and smiled. She must be used to hearing people's lies by now
After filling in a form she asked me to wait in a narrow corridor full of chairs. The walls were painted lime green and the chairs and carpet were grey. Looking around me I realized that my condition was not as urgent as others. A young man had a big piece of cotton covering his right eye; another's face was bruised and bleeding.
`This is a neat cut,' said the young exhausted doctor, `how on earth did you manage to do that?'
I `I was chopping carrots you see ...
`Look, we must report this to the police.'
'Please not,' I pleaded, `I just lost control of the knife and it was really sharp.'
I could see that two emotions were fighting each other around his eyes, his sense of duty, which required reporting the incident to the police, and his exhaustion, which stopped him from challenging my story. He gave in to his fatigue.
When he unwrapped the bandage he said, `You need stitches.' The wound ran from my elbow to my wrist, neat and winding like a snake. I gave in to local anaesthetic and travelled out of the decaying hospital, out of Exeter, towards Southampton, took the ship back to Lebanon then travelled by car to Hima, where my father with his wrinkled dark face, my mother with her beady patient eyes and Layla with her curly dark hair and her white dress were all waiting for me behind the barbed wire. We embraced and kissed and then I peeled one of the oranges they brought me and pushed it in my mo
uth. Orange juice and salty tears dripped down my face and became mixed together, then hit the ground one bitter-sweet salty liquid. My mother ran her chipped fingers through my hair and my father hemmed, coughed then said, `How are you, daughter?'Then he hugged me, filling my senses with the smell of musk, fertile soil and coffee with ground cardamom pods.
The doctor was surprised to see my eyes fill up with tears. `Surely it is not that painful," he said.
I wiped my eyes with my left hand and blew my nose. For a second the professional mask slipped off the doctor's face so instantly he pushed it back into place. `Do you have relatives here?'
`Yes,' I lied, `my parents and daughter.'
`You must come back to get the stitches checked and the bandages changed the day after tomorrow The antibiotics: three tablets a day and ... and take it easy.'
When I finally waved down a taxi the sun was about to rise and the orange electric lights were going off one by one, leaving the streets covered with the grey light of the morning. `Eighteen stitches, but don't worry, they will leave no mark.' The driver drank some coffee while speeding through the empty streets. I pulled my purse out with my left hand and gave him the money. `Thank you, miss,' he said and drove off. Miss in Hima was reserved for virgins, Mrs for married women or widows, but there was no title for those who had sex out of wedlock for they simply got shot.
Gwen would be asleep and I didn't want to disturb her so I had to open the door of Swan Cottage and tiptoe to the sitting room. Liz was lying face down on the carpet of the hall. I wouldn't be able to take her to bed so I turned her head sideways, made sure she was breathing then covered her with a blanket. How could I allow them to report the incident to the police against this old drunk woman? Why create problems for her? Why create problems for me, Salina not Sal or Sally, an outlander, who must not confront the natives? You begin to climb the stairs without leaning on the railing; you throw yourself in bed after you lock your bedroom door; you switch off your table lamp and think about Shakespeare's sister; you adjust your mirror and drive on exploring this new land; you sleep between the cold sheets not knowing where to put your arm, how to adjust its position so you would not feel the pulsating pain, so you would close your eyes and drift away.
After finishing my late shift at the hotel I walked to the high street as if drawn by a steel rod to the kebab van parked by the tower. I sat on the bench inhaling the smell of falafel rissoles bubbling away in the hot frying oil and listening to North African Arabic.
`Nadi? Belhaq miziana, but that one is as ugly as your grandmother, vraiment, haraq w mahhabel,' an old man said.
`Wha'?' the young man replied. `Ma namsh. I don't understand the Arabic.'
`I saidYasin has no papers and no brains,' the older man said.
`He is a "ten-pee" then,' the young man said.
`Yes, you slot the ten-pee coin in a public phone, call immigration, finish him off,' the older man said.
They threw a fresh batch of falafels in the frying pan. The aroma of crushed chickpeas, garlic and parsley balls hitting the hot oil wafted to my nose again.
Khairiyya parked the car by the uneven pavement, switched the engine off and got out. From what she told me I assumed that we were in the main road of one of the villages of Levant. She walked to the small grocery shop with a few wooden boxes full of fruit and vegetables laid out neatly on the tiled platform. I grabbed the handle, turned it, lowering the window, then stuck my head out and sniffed and sniffed, filling my heart with the smell of freedom. The warm and gentle air full of the aroma of rich food being fried felt like precious Indian silk against my face. I deserved to be dead, but I was not only alive, I was free.
She headed towards the large cauldron balanced over a brass kerosene cooker on the wooden table and said something to the man with a white cap busy stirring the contents of the vessel with a large spoon. He fished out some crisp brown balls and tucked them in the pockets of slit pitta bread. With his right hand he pressed the bread against the table, squashing the brown balls, dripped a ladle full of white sauce inside the sandwiches, added some lettuce and tomato slices, wrapped them with a piece of thin white paper then placed them gently in a brown bag. Khairiyya gave him some money, picked up the brown bag and walked back. `Here you are - a falafel sandwich!' she said and handed me one of the wraps.
I tore the soft tissue off and bit into my first falafel. The crisp balls broke under my teeth filling my mouth with the flavour of garlic, cumin and crushed coriander. `What is it?' I asked.
`It is made of chickpeas, fava beans, parsley and onions with some tahini sauce,' she said and bit into the white bread.
The taste of falafel and the aroma of rich spicy food filled the car and the dusty wide road.
My scalp twitched as if someone had blown cold air against the back of my neck so I looked back at the mirage at the end of the dusty road and saw my grandmother Shahla in her black Bedouin madraqa crossing the road in a cloud of dust carrying a leather bag full of milk. I breathed out and shook my head.
'Mkhabil gultilah,' said the old man in the kebab van parked on the side of the main street.
`Wha'?' said the young man.
`The top floor of his head is empty,' said the old man.
`Nobody want buy falafel. Only chips, chips,' said a third man, who might be Yasin, and sniffed.
`They are English, what do you expect?' said the young man.
`Look at the young sir,' said the old man.
`Stop fucking pointing at me. I am Algerian me,' said the young man.
`You? Algerian? And my goat blond," saidYasin.
They laughed.
`Yes, I cannot speak the Arabic, but I am Algerian,' the young man said.
The smell of crushed cumin, black pepper and coriander filled the busy high street. Sitting on the bench in the dark I could not be seen, but I could hear the sound of police sirens, a man throwing up in the rubbish bin and a group of young men singing, `ENGLAND ENGLAND MIGHTY MIGHTY ENGLAND.' A woman shouted, `Get off me, you drunk git!'
I had a last sniff, vowed never to come back here again, and walked home.
The ringing of the payphone in the hall woke me up so I rushed down the stairs and picked up the receiver before Liz could hear it. Max was shouting, `Where the hell are you? The department store are asking for all the trousers back.'
I lost my tongue. How on earth was I supposed to finish fifty trousers in one day? It was not a straightforward job. They had turn-ups too. When I finally composed myself I said, `There was an accident. I cut my right arm and had it stitched. Give me just today. I'll come to work on Monday.'
`You mean two days' leave' Max had included Saturday, which I normally took off.
`Right, two days then,' I said.
He surprised me by saying, `I hope you'll feel better soon. With no family and all.'
`Thank you, Max. See you Monday,' I said and put the receiver down.
Weakened by the nausea and the vomiting I saw tiny spots of lights swimming around when I suddenly got out of the ex-army bed. In the hostel, which was so inhospitable they switched off the heating after nine in the morning, I stood in the middle of the cold room looking for answers, a foothold, for something to grab, for an anchor. I rummaged in Parvin's rucksack looking for her plastic bag full of cassettes. I picked one that had `When Doves Cry' written on it in purple ink. I plugged in the cassette player and slid the tape in the pocket then pressed the `play' button. I held the pen in my hand ready to write down the lyrics. A taut sharp voice sang of courtyards, violets in bloom and doves crying. This was followed by a barrage of squeaks that sounded like a drawing of breath followed by sobs. I looked up the words I did not understand in the dictionary and read and reread the lyrics until I memorized them. Then I rewound the tape and played the song again. I stood up and held the back of the chair to steady myself and began dancing to the music, stepping in then stepping out the way they do on television. Then I began jumping then landing on the tip of my toes then relaxing my t
oes until the bottom of my feet touched the cold carpet then jumping again in the air higher and higher until my hair flew off my shoulders. Parvin walked in on me.
`What the hell do you think you're doing?!'
`Why do we scream at each other?' I asked her.
`I am not screaming,' she said.
`Maybe you are just like my mother,' I sang.
She put her briefcase on the table, kicked off her shoes and sat down on the edge of her bed. She placed her bowed head between her hands.
I stopped singing and dancing and sat next to her and said, `I tired. I ill. I look for flowers in bloom.'
She held both of my hands and said, `If only you weren't losing so much weight.'
`Conditional sentence. I see. Express wish,' I said like a schoolteacher.
When I turned round, I realized that Liz was standing right behind me.
`Good morning.' She smiled.
`Good morning,' I said and was about to rush back to my room.
`What happened to your arm?' she asked.
I looked at Liz's dishevelled hair, swollen eyes, her hand pressed to her forehead, her pointed nose and said, `Nothing' Standing there in the hall she looked tired, washed out.
`What is wrong with your arm, Sal?'
`Nothing, a minor accident,' I said. She genuinely couldn't remember last night.
`This late-night job you're doing is dangerous," she said.
I knew what Liz was thinking: a lower-class immigrant slut, hustling down on the quay, must have been stabbed by her pimp. All of that was written on her hangovered face. `I must go now,' I said.
She parroted my accent. `I moost go noo,' she said and smiled.
It did not sound like me, it sounded like a programme on television about masters and servants, some sort of a northern accent. Come to think of it, it sounded like Dr John Robson. I rushed up the stairs and shut my bedroom door.
With three days' break I would be able to finish my essay on Shakespeare's sister. I began writing, Why was I asked to write about Shakespeare's sister not Shakespeare although so much has been said and written about him? He must have had friends and women to help him. Nobody talks about the women. I remembered the stories ofAbu-Zaid El-Hilali, the hero whose adventures were memorized by both the young and the old. Nobody ever mentions his wife, daughter or mother. I spent the whole morning writing the seven pages the tutor asked for, using some of the stories I was told as a child as examples. Between sipping cold coffee, peering out of the window at the crisp clear morning and writing, I finished the essay.The conclusion was about my own experience as an alien in their land. They, and I, think I don't live here, but I do, just like all the women who were ignored in these tales. Comparing my essay to the book it sounded like a gossip column in the Sunday Sport. That was it. I cannot write like them. If I were able to I wouldn't be stitching hems.
