A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

by Suzanne Joinson

  ‘I thought, if Khadega has died, I should at least pay homage to her.’

  ‘But how is photographing the inside of the storm homage to her?’

  ‘I was looking for . . . a centre, for her.’

  She wasn’t making sense. This is the element that always frustrates me about Lizzie: her perversity. I wanted to scold and shout, ‘But you disliked Khadega’, but I stopped myself; what good would it do? It seems to me that Khadega is a presence on our consciences, but not Millicent’s. The room felt constrained, airless.

  ‘Where is your medicine?’ I stood up, looking around the kang room.

  ‘There is none.’ Her head looked large on top of the bright thinness of her body.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I destroyed it. It stops me.’

  ‘It stops you in what way?’ Annoyed, I took the cloth from her, turned her around and removed her kimono. Water fell in streams along her narrow back but she barely seemed to notice.

  ‘It stops you in what way, Lizzie-gosling?’

  ‘The medicine stops me talking to God. Without it, I can talk to Him directly.’

  ‘He speaks to you directly?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, stretching her neck, ‘with Millicent, in prayer.’

  ‘What does He say?’

  ‘We have questions for Him. Sometimes they are answered directly, and sometimes He has other words, other signs.’

  ‘Millicent is usually there?’

  ‘Yes. She agrees, without the medicine the communication is clearer. She has always assisted me in reaching Him. Well, until recently, or I could say, until Khadega.’

  I held my breath as the water rained on her pale skin. I trickled it on to her hair and watched the blonde strands matt and knot as they turned wet.

  ‘But Lizzie, you know what happens if you don’t take the medicine.’

  She shifted and looked at me over her shoulder, ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand, leave me.’ She took the cloth. ‘I can finish this alone.’

  I don’t know what to say to my sister. That sense we once had that the world was ours to take and reduce and make of it what we would is lost. My scatterbrained, robust sister of old is evaporating in front of me and I am witless, incapable of holding on to her.

  Listen (to whom do I speak? Myself, I suppose), I have just understood the recurring dream of a lighthouse in the desert. It is Father’s story, but also mine. In our bed-time tales he told me that I began in Algiers; that I was born during a sandstorm the size of Spain, big enough to cover a town like a curse. Father, a diplomat, said that after I was born he went out to look for a French doctor who lived in the Jewish quarter, shielding himself from the sand with a turban wrapped twice around his head. He feared that Mother would die, or I would, or both. He ran along spiral stone stairways of the Mellah district, hardly wide enough for a single person and searched amongst numerous subterranean rooms, becoming quickly lost. It was so hot that even the French officials in the Arab Bureau slept through the afternoons with their dusty boots up on the desks; meanwhile smugglers and tradesmen crept under the window, pockets and bags bulging with kif and skins and knives and gold. By the time he returned with a medicine man my mother was unconscious and it was two whole days before she would look at him with recognition. Her eyes became right finally, just as soon as the sandstorm abated and the native midwife who had kept me alive handed me to her, wrapped in a sheet.

  After that he wanted to leave Algiers. It took weeks of negotiation, but he finally got the permission to relocate to our new home, Le Phare du Cap Bougarou. The Lighthouse of Bougarou. My cot was next to the window, the air was sea-fresh. My new ears were open to the sad swish of the Mediterranean sea, shifting itself around, as if perpetually searching for a more comfortable position. Every night the lamp-light of the lighthouse reached the ships and in the morning Father held me up against the pane of our watchtower, waving my arm over at unhappy Europe, whose glory was already fading on the other side of the sea. Living in that lighthouse may have brought Father some rare comfort.

  He loved lighthouses. He told us that as a young boy, each week his English governess would walk him to the market square in Calais where they would stand and admire the new lighthouse which had replaced the ancient watchtower. How impressive it must have looked, presiding over the busy market, over the hauling of the fishermen’s boats, sending its signals across the channel as if looking for something lost.

  Lizzie was born in Calais, and another baby who died. Later, in Saint Omer, Nora came. Later, in Geneva, I would lie on my back in the neat Swiss park, listening to chaffinches and sparrows, belonging not quite here, nor there; lying next to my friend, Vera, who smoked cigarettes and spoke of Bolshevism and Anarchism and Libertarianism, our bicycles laid out next to us, the pedals digging into the green grass. Then, ‘home’, to an England that did not want us. Now, all this distance passed, these long, vast train and sea journeys and I find I cannot see her properly. Lizzie is like light, she is like water.

  July 25th

  Today Lolo informed me that Rebekah has stopped producing milk. This is connected I am sure to the milk-thieving children.

  ‘But why, Lolo?’

  ‘I don’t know, Memsahib.’

  ‘Please don’t call me Sahib, Lolo.’

  Lolo has changed; he no longer smiles at me, he does not even pretend to take my orders, though he takes care of Ai-Lien. He moves around the gardens and rooms with a heavy presence and the language gulf between us makes a casual enquiry impossible. I cannot begin to articulate the questions I want to ask him in our crude jumble-language. Frustrated, I followed him and pointed at the cow who stood, despondent-looking and sad.

  ‘Where’s the calf?’

  He shrugged, picking at his teeth and I felt sure that he knows more than he is saying. I put my hand on his elbow and looked directly at him.

  ‘What? Lolo, what?’

  Finally, his demeanour shifted. ‘Grey Lady bad. Kill Mohammed daughter Khadega.’

  ‘Lolo, I don’t understand, come.’ I took him to find Lizzie, with her clever tongue. She was in the kitchen drinking water.

  ‘Lizzie, please ask Lolo to find out what is happening here.’

  After several minutes of broken, animated chatting and arm waving, she turned to me.

  ‘He thinks, as do all of these errand boys and the neighbours and villagers, apparently, that the ghost of Khadega has put a curse on us as revenge for her murder and that is why Rebekah has lost the calf and why her milk has dried up.’

  I stared at my sister nonplussed, but she simply shrugged and turned back to her drink, as if what she had just said was mundane and normal. Ai-Lien began to cry. I went to pick her up, and to find Millicent.

  As usual, Millicent was with Father Don Carlo and they were heartily engaged in the consumption of his wine. They were crowing over their mimeograph machine and for some time I let them explain to me its workings and the implications of what they could now achieve.

  ‘Mr Steyning mentioned that he has something similar, am I right?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Millicent, ‘Steyning does have a press, a little larger than this one.’

  Father Don Carlo took out a fountain pen, wiped off its leaking ink, and began to write in Arabic script. I took the translucent page from him. For a shaky, ancient man his hand is remarkably steady and his calligraphy surprisingly skilful. I said as much and he smiled broadly in response. I held it for Lizzie to see.

  ‘I studied both Arabic calligraphy and Chinese,’ he said.

  ‘I am impressed, Father. You are a man of great knowledge. Millicent,’ I said, ‘would you mind if we talked to you about something?’

  She looked up. ‘Of course not,’ she pushed the lever of the machine up, running her finger along it, then pushing it down again.

  ‘It’s about Khadega’s death.’ Millicent looked up and glanced at Father Don Carlo, and moved her head, slightly,

  ‘I do hope you don’t mind me inte
rrupting you, Father?’

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ his red-skinned hands patted his cadaverous cheek.

  ‘I think that people in the town will see us as responsible for her death, and for causing trouble more generally.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Millicent looked dismissive, ‘she drowned. We weren’t anywhere near her. Besides, not many people really knew of our association with her.’

  ‘Rebekah has stopped providing milk and they all think that she has put a curse on us.’

  They both stared at me for a moment, gaping like calves themselves and then Father Don Carlo sat forward, and slippery lipped said, ‘Don’t listen to the soothsayers of the East, Eva.’

  I agitated my feet on the floor and shifted Ai-Lien up on to my shoulder. Millicent stood next to the priest as if she were his helper and said:

  ‘Well, something must be done about the milk situation. For Ai-Lien’s sake, if not our own.’

  The curious thing about the priest is that he never quite looks at one directly. The eyes meet, then flicker down and sideways, unless there is wine and food about and then out comes a flurry of greed, champing and taking and not thinking about whom else might need to eat. I don’t like greed, particularly when it is accompanied by eyes that won’t rest still and reasonable whilst in conversation.

  ‘I do not know, Millicent, if Lizzie has ever actually told you this, and I tell you now in greatest confidence because I am concerned for her.’

  The priest made busy work of examining his papers as I spoke.

  ‘But Lizzie has an illness. She has had it all her life. A doctor in Geneva finally diagnosed it, much to my mother’s relief. It can be controlled, with a ketogenic diet and her medicine. It is a form of epilepsy. She is shy and does not usually let anyone know.’

  Millicent pushed her eye-glasses up her nose impatiently. ‘Of course I know of it, Elizabeth has spoken of it often.’

  ‘Oh. Good,’ I coughed. ‘It is manageable; it is greatly helped if she eats foods rich in cream and butter, and avoids stressful situations. I am worried that here . . .’

  Father Don Carlo rubbed his beard, ‘Ah, Lizzie, divine Lizzie, her soul is delicate. Ella cammina con gli angeli.’

  There was silence, I continued, ‘Lizzie hasn’t been taking her medicine.’

  Millicent pushed the lever of the machine down, quickly, so that it made a vicious sluicing noise, her nose shining. She glanced down at Father Don Carlo’s delicate script.

  ‘The paths of their way turn aside, they go nowhere and perish.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ responded Father as if they had been in the middle of a theological discourse.

  ‘Job,’ he turned to me, ‘the directions we take, the pathways are sometimes mysterious. In Samuel: “you enlarged my path under me; so my feet did not slip.” ’

  I was determined not to be derailed.

  ‘Were you aware, Millicent, that Lizzie has barely been eating? That she is not taking the medicine? Are you aware of the consequences?’

  Millicent looked up, cross and out of balance, like a half-trodden-on beetle.

  ‘Most of us are mortal. Most of us walk this earth with anchored feet that hold us down, narrow and blind and stumbling. That is you and I, Evangeline,’ she continued, ‘but some of us walk with angel feet, some of us can fly like birds.’

  Father Don Carlo’s teeth were stained berry-red so that his smile looked painful. He watched us both carefully.

  Millicent carried on, ‘Some of us who talk in the manner of birds have the capacity to talk to God. Modern medicines do not always understand this and can interfere.’

  Millicent turned to Father Don Carlo, pointing at the transcripts and I understood that I was being dismissed. As I walked out, Millicent said:

  ‘I am surprised at you believing the evil superstitions of the natives.’

  So: I am at a loss. I think of poor Mother. I have hunted about the kang room for the medicine package but nothing is there; I don’t know if it truly has been destroyed or not. Meanwhile, we have no milk, only ghosts. Millicent and the priest plan an entire day of distributing pamphlets tomorrow. They intend to hand them to people who gather at the Id Kah Mosque.

  22. London, Present Day

  Norwood

  A photograph can do this, unpick at time.

  In Irene Guy’s kitchen was a back door that neither of them had thought to look out of previously. The key was in the lock and Frieda discovered that it opened up on to a tight, contained courtyard that had clearly been tended with care. Buckets were filled with flowers, there was a Victorian park bench and a proliferation of ivy encouraged around the walls. A medium-sized maple Acer tree stood in a sun-baked terracotta pot and several rose bushes were coaxed upward by means of bamboo sticks as support. The ivy, and the pieces of slate and rocks on the floor which were interspersed with natural-growing moss, gave the sense of a trapped piece of wilderness, or a secret grove. Still holding the photograph, Frieda breathed in the sticky city air, and felt slight dots of hesitant rain on her hand.

  Looking again at the picture she almost physically fell backwards: Family photographs are slips of time, trap-doors to the past, and she wasn’t prepared for confronting her mother. Not here. Despite desperately trying not to, she was falling, all the way back to the Isle of Sheppey where the seaweed looks like dead hair and dogfish are tangled up in fishing nets, back to Frieda at fourteen: her father, leaning over the plastic table so that his shirt cuff dips into spilled coffee, saying, ‘Happy fourteenth’. Two plates of chips, veggie sausages and beans slammed on to the table by a girl with electric-blue mascara. Breakfast in the supermarket is a tradition, so glam, and the breakfasting shoppers surrounding them, each marooned on plastic-table-islands with their individual food trays. Poor Arthur left in the car, in the lonely car park and Frieda knowing without looking that his wet, black nose will be pressed up against the window in the pose of heartbreak.

  ‘It always rains on your birthday.’

  Frieda doesn’t answer because she is thinking about her mother, thinking that this is what lost or displaced mothers do, they hang over your birthday, making it rain, making you want to cry. The café is full of tired old people and she can hear all the conversations separately but also at once, a morning orchestra: this tea is cold. Such a windy day. What a horrible colour. Her Karen’s got the kids up at the dad’s. I do hate the wind.

  Frieda at seven: her favourite book is In the Beginning – Creation Myths from Around the World. Although this was not quite what she had asked for, in fact, she’d specifically requested the Bible (and not a children’s annotated version) but her mother had given her the Creation Myths instead, saying something like this way you can read all of them and if you still want the Bible rather than the Up-Ani-Shads then, well, we’d better concede.

  The book was beautiful. Indians believe in the mountain lion, Nigerians in the stream of life. There was an old spider, a Viking god and the Seven Days of Creation, under-earth people from Australia, the dance of life, the Japanese twins. From this Frieda learned that she began somewhere. She was created and begun, named Frieda because her mother thought it meant freedom. Her mother in the caravan kitchen spooning up the green lentils saying, ‘Well I can’t be free, so you may as well be’. Slop. Slop. Slop. But as Frieda knows, you only have to take the time to look in a book to find out that Frieda means peaceful, not freedom. But where is the peace? She should’ve been more careful with names.

  Frieda at seven: sitting in the garden, next to the swing. From the house the intermittent sound of a low, soft ommmmm. It was called the Knowledge, with a capital K, and if you ate enough seeds, went to enough satsangs, touched the Margarine’s hand and grew your hair, you got it, according to Bill the Arthurian specialist who was living in a caravan along with his wife Stacey. They had been learning about the Knowledge for much longer than Frieda’s mother and father. Bill had even met the Margarine twice.

  ‘Maharaji, Frie’, not margarine. Guru Ma-ha
-rah-ji.’

  There was a picture of the Guru in the kitchen: black hair, Indian, young. He didn’t look like God, the Devil, or Krishna, none of those. He looked normal, like Raj from the shop. Stacey, whose hair reached her arse when she let it down, said, ‘When you’ve touched the Margarine’s hand, then you get the techniques, and when you’ve got these, you become God.’ But then Stacey was what Frieda’s father calls a Fantasist and so difficult to believe. Stacey didn’t stay too long; she went to Australia to learn about wine and the agricultural industries, but Bill stayed and Frieda’s mother said the rent would put us right. Him and his wife were on a sab-bat-i-cal.

  ‘Go and do something, Frieda, we need quiet.’

  Frieda at fourteen again: she is moving the HP sauce bottle in front of her father as he lights a cigarette. He sucks on it, then sends the smoke out away from her, towards the other people.

  ‘It’s lovely out there, isn’t it?’ Frieda says, for something to say. Sarcasm’s not nice. When he smiles he looks like he is in the process of injuring himself.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t sorted anything better out for your birthday.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ Sometimes, he still looks invincible. Other times, he seems folded up on himself or as if he’s been turned inside out.

  ‘Frieda . . .’

  Oh oh. She blanks him out, turns teenage on him again, like it’s a script she’s following. She doesn’t want to hear any of it, these confessions. She closes her ears to his, ‘I made it happen’ and all this looking to her for validation. Especially as, since Christmas of this year, he has taken to coming into Frieda’s room in the night, drunk, swaying everywhere, knocking over her books, leaning on and breaking her papier-mâché globe of the world and on one occasion (that she doesn’t think he can remember) opening his trousers at the end of the bed and pissing: a long stream of his urine reaching as far as her writing desk, hitting the metallic bin on the floor. She doesn’t want to hear again, ‘Frieda, forgive me for making your mother leave,’ like she is a judge who can release him or redeem him.