Homecomings

by Yvette Rocheron

  ‘I like Lilleth very much.’

  ‘Good! What about you? Aren’t you bored? I’ve long lists of stuff to get for that other wedding. At last it is the end of the season! Come out with me tomorrow. New Damascus is so much better than Hama for shopping.’ She embraces Zaida again. ‘It’s a marriage of love this time. Fancy that!’

  ‘Is that unusual?’ Zaida, assaulted by fast-delivered lines, finds Aunt Halima’s enthusiasm nearly intolerable.

  ‘For our Hama relatives, yes. They met as students at our university. The bride, one of your third cousins, is a young, modest and beautiful girl.’

  ‘Naturally!’

  Halima, who is so keen to enlighten her protégée, misses the ironic tone. ‘Yes! It’s the best day of her life.’

  ‘Were you never as happy?’

  Halima chooses not to hear the challenge since the poor girl has no mother to help her understand women!

  ‘You’ll see the bride with pearls all over her dresses. We’ll dance in circles with Bakaza in the middle. Your heart will burst at the singer! Just like that wedding in Hama.’

  ‘I wasn’t really dancing.’

  ‘Practise with Lilleth first. Sway with the band. Our joy is irresistible. One day you’ll be feted as much as Bakaza. You see, in our culture, every bride becomes extraordinarily beautiful.’

  Bored with the lesson, Zaida points to the luggage Walid has quietly brought to the courtyard. ‘So many bags for just two days!’

  ‘We’ll fill them up, I have a long list. Go and ask Mariyam to bring some tea. And say I want a quick wash before Khalid is back.’

  Zaida leaves her bossy aunt, relieved to hide her ignorance of things Damascene girls should know.

  Exchanging compliments about their good health, brother and sister settle into the sitting room. Halima serves the delicate cups of an Assam rose-tinted tea.

  ‘She is a pet, Khalid. I love her! Inshalla, I’ll teach her our ways as I do with my daughters. But you listen to me! Wearing a pair of skinny shorts in front of a chauffeur is indecent. She’ll get a bad name.’

  ‘For God’s sake, she’s just a kid!’

  ‘And stop giving her cuddles, she isn’t a baby any more. She’s got bigger breasts than my youngest girl. Look! She’d better go to the evening prayers on the women’s side.’

  ‘Honestly, you are being fussy!’

  Halima puts her cup down, staring quizzically at her brother who grins back in an attempt to get off the hook. ‘Sister, why are we speaking in English?’

  ‘We always spoke English in Leaford. That was Dad’s rule. “Children, speak in Arabic to Mother and no-one else.” Do you remember talking a funny mix of Alawite and Arabic to annoy him?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You remember Seema? She looks like her!’

  ‘Not sure. Be careful as to what you tell her.’

  ‘Wait!’ She pokes inside the canvas handbag lying at her feet and, with an expectant look, straightens herself to hand Khalid a tired-looking photograph with torn edges. Very small. Stained. Faded in places.

  ‘My God, where did you get it from? Dad?’

  He holds his breath. A girl getting water from a rudimentary tap over a pile of dirty tin saucepans in the foreground. In a long shapeless cotton gown. ‘Seema in that camp!’ Her face is slightly out of focus as she had turned her head away from the camera to watch the pail filling up. The urge to cry is overwhelming.

  Halima also blows her nose. ‘Isn’t she cute? Dad carries it in his breast pocket. I must give it back tomorrow. Is she about 11? The same oval face. The nose. The tense smile.’

  ‘I beg you, don’t overdo it. Promise you won’t show it to her?’

  ‘Why not? These two look like – what’s the phrase? – two peas in a pod!’

  ‘No! No! One is dead and the other is alive! God! They are not alike! And I don’t want Zaida to know too much about Seema. She’d be devastated, though she is pretty clued-up for her age.’

  Halima sniffs back her tears. ‘Can you see those rotten camps? Us kids scavenging for used batteries, shooing off the rats? And later, in those few months we had left together, can you see our big sister, so lost in that horrible distress, her hands shaking, her eyes accusing? Our ruined Seema. When Dad—’

  ‘Shut up! I can’t bear it! Promise you and Father will never tell the whole truth. She thirsts for ghastly stories about refugees, spies, massacres. They poison her mind. And she is too young to understand why Seema ended her own life! Seema died of malaria. Promise me you’ll stick to that?’

  Tacitly, they share the same subterranean pain until, after clearing his throat, Khalid breaks their mourning. ‘I’d like Zaida to stay with us until Christmas. I’m not sure how but I’ll work it out. I don’t want to tell anyone yet, not even her. Can you help me look after her?’

  ‘I will do anything to help. Just ask.’

  ‘It is not easy for a dad to take a pretty girl out. Men look at me as if I have no morals.’

  ‘What else do you expect?’

  ‘On the way to the Azm Palace, we stopped at Hammam Bakri. Zaida found the black and white architecture interesting but once in the courtyard, she wanted to join the queue of foreign and local women getting tickets for the main baths. I refused. She wouldn’t speak for a whole hour! You see what I mean? I don’t know her well really.’

  ‘Do parents know their children?’

  ‘Do children know their parents?’

  Brother and sister share a fragile certitude: we all muddle through, groping for each other under layers of unintelligible thoughts and feelings.

  ‘A last favour. Can you take care of her when I go north overnight to Qamishli?’

  In spite of her impressive size, Halima ejects from the seat in a blink and, standing up, confronts her brother, shouting down at him, ‘No, I won’t. That’s out of order. But we’d be only too glad to have Zaida at other times.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too much risk. Father is begging you to be more cautious. Uncle Omar has warned him too. You must stop seeing those Kurdish people. That’s also why I’ve come today. To tell you how anxious we are.’

  Khalid defies the confrontation by stretching out further into the cushions, yawning with feigned boredom at the rant. ‘My dear sister! Thank Uncle Omar for his blessed concern. His beloved nephew is not a hero; he only meets a few evicted families wishing to regain their lands. Surely this is still within the laws passed by young Al-Assad three years ago.’

  ‘Khalid, don’t mock!’

  – 5 –

  Tugs of Love

  Over the following days, Marianne settles down to a morning routine. She is an early riser with plenty of time to brush up her English before breakfast. She reads anything: bulletins of the Acupuncturist Association, Rural England, children’s books belonging to Zaida. Thrilled to share them with the girl, she is swept along by the tales, unflustered by the occasional obscure word. When she trips over in conversation, the Franklins rebuke her gently like a sick child. Sticky tenses bother her. Always the teacher, it annoys her to take so long to work these things out. Better stick to the infantile present and forget the “have beens” and “might have beens”. All malignant traps! “Zaida should be with us on Sunday.” Is that different from “Zaida ought to be back on 7th November?” And what about the future? ‘‘Will she? Is she?’’

  Stacking newspapers and books into neat piles by her bed, she wonders when she last saw Zaida. In Chamonix, a puny 8-year-old, trailing behind on her sledge. A funny girl. Quite brittle and shy, resistant to physical exercise. Short-tempered, she had brightened at the mention of computer games, or shopping for her father. Hurt that he had just left home, sorting the good from the bad, she had pushed Virginia off: ‘I don’t do hugs anymore, except from Daddy.’ Soft as a kitten at the sound of her dad’s even
ing call. Two years later, he moved to Damascus. The girl had had to toughen up.

  There is much to understand about the Al-Sayeds. Thankfully, Walter was forthcoming. Zaida is discovering a thousand relatives, not all of them Sunnis. One great-grandmother was an Alawite who had grown up among impoverished goat farmers, on the margins, like most Alawites at that time. A maid in Sunni Hama, she learned the Koran by heart. Piety and beauty did the trick, and she married the younger son. A mixed marriage, Abdul had explained to Walter: for his own people, Alawites were beyond the pale of Islam, like pagans. By good fortune, the bride-to-be agreed to practise as a Sunni. Walter went on. One daughter killed herself in a camp before their escape to Britain.

  Romance and tragedy! Two poles that would prick Zaida’s curiosity for days, especially as her grandfather is a brilliant man, they all say. In the 1950s, he completed his training in a Lebanese French hospital. Later, with Nasser in his sights, he got interested in politics. A liberal family, Walter reckoned, opposed to the dictatorship of Hafez Al-Assad. One of Abdul’s brother was killed in door-to-door fighting and two others murdered in prison.

  Zaida’s life springs from the Franklins, rooted in green Middle England, and the Al-Sayeds, rooted in the red earth of Middle Eastern tragedies. A fragile graft, according to Virginia. Maybe not if the child is allowed to grow by herself. Something both parents should understand eventually, with a bit of help.

  Khalid is a caring man, aware of the brittle destinies of migrants. How could he cut Zaida off from the Franklins?

  She has crisp images of that first time they met in Albi, the Cathar town manicured for the summer – the homeless, winter weeds, plucked out by the mayor – on the Pont Vieux over the Tarn where knights and thugs had assembled for the liberation of Jerusalem. In the photos she took that afternoon, le petit ami is attractive, tall and troubled. He glared at the crowds, shouting something which stuck to her brain like… there are .. ‘plenty of guys who fuck us up again’. Pressing her breasts against him, Virginia had kissed him on the mouth, in the full view of passing cameras. A scandalous couple with faces high on hope and misunderstanding.

  Naturally, she was jealous, but not for long.

  Over coffee, he had talked fast. His engaging grins belied a tormented past, fists clenched. He’d never go back to Syria; it was a dump. Virginia believed him, too intoxicated to understand the shards of terror at his very core. He’d survived the shelling of Hama by hiding underground near the ruins of a museum, scavenging for food at night. Memorable stories. Among shattered bodies and cement slabs, he stumbled over a clay pot left untouched by the bombs, the size of a watermelon, sealed: a funeral pot – baby’s bones inside. He cried, starving after three nights. It had been an all-out war among brothers, complicated. His father, at first, had backed Hafez Al-Assad but changed sides after so many deaths. He had a dream! To help refugees. That’s why he was studying law. And he will never go back. The boyfriend was dark and idealistic. She was won over as well as Virginia.

  She slips on a thick woolly jumper. However much she likes England, she can’t bear the burial-chamber feeling of its autumns. The boy refugee, too, had felt the chill... and the uncrowded streets, the measly fruit, the stench of wealth.

  She can’t leave her bed unmade: the Egyptian cotton sheets have to be tucked underneath the mattress and each corner folded in envelope pleats. A way to pacify her nights and think her own thoughts.

  In the last five years, people like the Al-Sayeds have returned under Bashar Al-Assad. Syria is healing, that’s why Zaida can be entertained by her successful relatives.

  The Franklins have a lot on their plate. How can she help apart from offering money? Mildly despondent, she looks around the room for a lead, startled again by the clutter of china birds. Gwen, Walter said, became obsessive after Ian left. Ian indeed! She has to put sexier times out of her mind to concentrate on Virginia and Khalid! The present calls her.

  Zaida. What else does she know about her? Only a couple of close friends. She rarely chats online but is hooked to an online strategic game, which is quite unusual for a girl. In World of Warcraft, she plays as a healer, not in the elite guilds class yet. Needs to test herself out of her comfort zone, that’s what the boys say at school. Impressive. More mature than most, she’d guess. Yet Zaida was never allowed abroad with her father. Virginia’s solicitor set up a ‘port alert’, ensuring that he couldn’t take her out of the country without her mother’s consent. Why does Virginia see Khalid as a Death Knight? How galling for him!

  She would have played it differently.

  As she pulls the bottom sheet tighter, she muses about the explosives separation leaves behind. Any teenager worth their salt could stir the feud between the families, enjoying the full assault at Level 80. Play for real, full of hurt and anger. An inchoate love. For Zaida, does Syria seem like WOW? Indubitably, a far cry from the miserable Cornish B&B where she faced an uprooted father during their annual one-week holiday. Her first days have embellished Syria. Everyone is beautiful, especially the bride – an oriental princess, polished and shiny.

  A cushion slips off the bed. She tidies the room, oblivious for once of the birds flapping on shelves. She saunters down the swirling oak staircase with its fluted spindles; strong enough years ago, she remembers, to let her and Ian slide down the banister, going off into peals of laughter, their adolescence erupting in blurted-out confidences, mean and generous in turn.

  She sees very little of her friends after breakfast. She will walk into town, maybe along the canal, grateful for the long hours stretching in front of her. Above the hall mirror, one of Gwen’s birds returns her stare like an antique dealer appraising an object overvalued by its owner, assessing age and detail.

  She turns the corner into Friars Street where a secondary school has mushroomed in less than two years, designed by a friend of New Labour, which runs the town. Walter is one of the governors, oddballs with whom French schools do not have to cope, Dieu merci. Her mobile rings when she reaches the canal.

  ‘Sorry, Virginia, I do not listen…’

  ‘I thought you’d be happy to know my brother is arriving three days before Zaida. It’s mad. Bye for now.’

  Struck dumb by contradictory emotions, she hurries past the first row of boathouses glistening with gloss paint, announcing the tail end of the white middle-class zone. She will see him. The joy of it! She has never fully understood why he left. What ghastly timing though. Will Virginia feel displaced yet again? What will he make of the situation with Khalid?

  Look! Fish jumping, silver specks in the sluggish water. She takes snapshots of warehouses, empty of wool, boarded-up; old engineering factories now making pork pies, sausages, walahi lunch boxes, crisps and pizzas. The British diet!

  She is nearing an area optimistically called Green Park: an ill-tended lawn embellished with the odd carrier bag and a few strays eating their own shit. She finds an empty bench. Should she take a picture of three large bouncy dogs, coats shining, held back by two down-in-the-mouth, moth-eaten, skull-shaven white youngsters slouching past her, obviously smelly and louche?

  Ian could become some kind of ally but she doesn’t yet know how. He won’t convince Walter they could borrow from her. She fidgets with the camera bag, clouds of anxiety enfolding her again. Faute de mieux, she could leave Zaida a “welcome back” present. What exactly? Virginia, so full of her daughter, has given no clue apart from Zaida’s love of shiny knick-knacks and Bollywood movies. By rooting around the right shops, she should find something. And a present for Ian.

  As she stands up, someone coming from the back jostles her, trying to snatch the leather bag strapped over her shoulder. She fights back, screaming at the top of her voice as the dogs bark at her French. The attacker runs. ‘Dirty cunt!’ the youngsters shout at the vanishing figure while patting their ‘boys’ to calm them down. She leaves the park, annoyed with herself for sitting in such a desolate
place. Better get the presents later.

  In the hall, she bumps into Virginia huddled up on the bench close to the massive coat hanger, head buried behind a curtain of coats.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ A few sniffles. ‘You crying?’ More groans. ‘Please come out. I can’t see you’.

  Virginia pokes her face out. ‘I’ve just had another email … Don’t tell my parents yet.’

  ‘Why? Tell me.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Let me see!’

  ‘It can’t happen to me!’ Wiping her eyes, she lets Marianne sit down next to her.

  My Dear Mummy

  Don’t be cross with me but I don’t want to come back so soon. Dad will pay for a teacher to teach me Arabic. There are many people in the world who speak Arabic. Much better than learning French. There are no French people I can talk to in Leaford so what’s the point of coming back early when I am learning many more things here? My teachers will understand. Now I want to learn a language, why stop me?

  ‘You see! I told you! I am losing her.’

  ‘No! You are hysterical.’

  ‘The cheek!’

  ‘The point is valid.’

  ‘Don’t start!’

  Dad said I should make things clear. I stay until the end of the month or I leave. I don’t want to yet. Mummy, I won’t see you for another three weeks. Can’t you take a holiday in Canada and see Uncle Ian? Funny Mummy, you wouldn’t like it being so crowded but it’s OK. Grandad took us to see a film – it was on a huge screen and the sound was horrible. I couldn’t understand the story but I loved the clothes and everyone sang. They chat during the film, they spit seeds on the floor and other things… I don’t know. Oh. Time for my first lesson. I am a bit worried. This serves me right, I know, Mum.

  Feeling self-righteous while making an effort to control it, Virginia pours out her misgivings. ‘Why is she doing this to me? I don’t believe they have no working phone yet. Don’t be taken in, Marianne, by her babble. She is lovely. But remember what’s happened. Fact one: the Al-Sayeds took Khalid from me. Fact two: they can hold onto Zaida as well, easy-peasy. Fact three: he adores her, she adores him. Fact four: she has her own passport! I hope I’ll not live to regret it. See what comes next.’