Brilliant (21 page)

“But why?” she said, realizing this didn't sound especially receptive. “Did something happen? Harris?”

But their connection was gone, and when she tried to call back on their landline, there was only a recording in Arabic. His mobile didn't seem to be working either.

All the next day she walked around feeling light-headed. What could have happened to change their plans? Perhaps things had heated up with the Emirati student and the provost had advised him to get out of town for a few weeks, that they'd have it sorted by September. Or perhaps Harris had been given another promotion and needed to move up his vacation so as to get back earlier. It hadn't been a particularly close summer, warm with constant communication like their first summers apart. “Dad sure misses you,” Thom would say after Harris Skyped twice in a day. “Tell him to buck up, would you?” This summer they'd spoken only every few days, Deborah secretly grateful to not be receiving daily updates from drama central.

He looked okay at the airport, though his breath smelled boozy. “God, what a long flight. And then I had to wait forever at Toronto Island for the Porter flight here. How're the boys?”

“Honey? What's going on?” And she knew when he turned to look at her, his face unable to contain anything but the truth, his face frighteningly sober, that they wouldn't be going back. The Emirati student's family had enough pull with the ruling family to engineer his dismissal, he told her. The security-camera tape had been “misplaced” and it was simply his word against hers. Hers was the one that counted.

“And now what?” Deborah asked as they pulled up in front of their flat. She had no memory of driving there. “We have an apartment full of stuff, a car. We have Leena. I have a job, remember?” She was afraid she might hit him. “And what about my friends? I can't even say goodbye to my friends!”

“I know it's a lot to wrap your mind around,” Harris said. “Believe me, I'm still reeling. It's been a real blow. But we'll pull through this. We're coming back home. It's what you wanted.”

“It's not what I want,” she said.

“But you hated it there,” he said.

“I didn't. I'd come to accept it. I was just getting started.”

“I only heard how unhappy you were,” he said, voice going cold, no more pleading.

“You weren't listening,” she said and got out of the car, slamming the door so hard the car shook.

The boys were heartbroken. “It's not like any of you were going back to Abu Dhabi in September,” Harris said. “I don't really get the big loss here.”

“You wouldn't,” said Jon.

“Christmas,” said Thom. “I was living for Christmas.”

There were missing parts of the story, the truer bits trickling out over the next few days. The newest provost, an economist from New Delhi, had already formed an opinion of Harris, not a favourable one. Harris was too hard on students, he said, not positive enough about the university's long-range goals. “We need idealists, Mr. Harris, not realists.” They'd had a row, Harris saying things he shouldn't have. When Harris's case with the Emirati student came before the board, the provost said little in his defence. “Fed to the salukis,” Harris said.

And there was something else. It had started in November. And, no, it had nothing to do with not loving her, not caring about her. He didn't want to leave her, not then, not now. And, yes, he finally said, after she pushed so hard that he cried: Yes, sometimes it felt like love, impossible and impossibly exciting. The woman was a student, Moroccan, from an influential Casablanca family. “It was getting crazy. I had to leave,” Harris said. “I'm sorry for all of it.” And then, as if this would be a comfort: “I got Leena another placement. She'll be fine. And I donated our furniture to Take my Junk. Remember the guy who fixes things and gives them to needy people, good causes?” His voice trailed off. “And there might be something else.”

It took him a while to get at what that else was, circling, approaching, then skirting, as anxious to deny as to admit. “I might have hit someone on the way to the airport,” he finally said quickly. “I'm not saying I did. I looked back and there was nothing. It was almost more like a sound than something I felt. It was really early in the morning, you know, with that veil of humidity that makes visibility just about impossible. Remember the haze along Khaleej in the early morning? I thought I felt something bump up against the rental car. Lightly, not like a body. I don't know. It could have been anything, right? I was so stressed out with what was happening at school and…with her, plus knowing I was going to have to come home and tell you everything and what it might do to us. Of course, it could've just been my imagination, my guilt, making me imagine things. Impossible to know for sure, right?” Once started, he couldn't shut up.

Was it all equal? Running someone over, putting himself inside another woman, getting fired, ruining their lives? In those terrible first days of his return, the word
impossible
, his favourite new word, rumbled round her head like a rock in a tumbler.

 

She ordered two shawarmas this time, taking the second to go, or takeaway, as they called it in Abu Dhabi. She must look out of place — an English-Canadian woman of a certain age, in an out-of-style-now quilted coat, eating a shawarma by herself. At some point she would have to get back in the car, drive to the rented condo, make supper for Harris, ask about his day — he'd been lucky to find a one-year contract with the Halton District School Board, an education reform project — wash the dishes, read a little, get ready for bed, try to sleep.

She remembered the location vaguely, a main road somewhere on Hamilton's East Mountain. Stone Church. A pretty name, right for someplace spiritual, even if it wasn't a church per se. Fiona guided her — “Please drive to highlighted route” — and Deborah travelled the long length of the two-lane road, past condo complexes, farmland, a landfill, hoping she would find it without having the exact address, kind of like Abu Dhabi. Surely there would be a minaret lit up in the green luminescence she used to search for on the highway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. There would be a crescent moon atop a dome perhaps.

The mosques in the
UAE
were beautiful, though none more stunning than the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. It was — like everything Abu Dhabi — the biggest and the best, though this time they actually got that right. The block-long expanses of hand-knotted Iranian carpet, the ton-heavy crystal chandelier, the gold, the mosaics, and the domes, which reflected the phases of the moon. Navy clouds played over the white marble when the moon was a slivered crescent. Soft clouds of lavender grey undulated over them as the days eased on. And finally at month's end, they glowed brilliant white. One could mark time by the domes. On every return trip from the airport, the mosque had been there to welcome her reluctant self.

“Arriving at destination on left,” said Fiona. But it was a Leon's, the big-box furniture store which seemed to have outlets everywhere. They'd gone to the one in Burlington when they'd first arrived, outfitting their generic condo with a generic sectional. They had nothing any more, the house in Ottawa rented for another year, their Abu Dhabi furniture in a labour camp.

“Why didn't he drive back to look, Fiona? How could he not have done that?” But Fiona had nothing more to say. Deborah pulled into the closest driveway to turn around.

And there it was, stuck between Leon's and a bowling alley called Splitsville. It could have been a real estate office or a government building, sitting brown-brick ugly in an empty parking lot. A peeling sign read: Hamilton Mosque. Discover Islam. And as she sat there, looking at the sign, smelling the wrapped shawarma, all that she might have discovered hit her with the force of the wind outside.

On her last visit to the Grand Mosque she'd taken a tour with a female guide, a statuesque woman with an Australian accent and unnaturally bright-green eyes — coloured contacts? Deborah had wondered — her auburn hair just visible along the edge of her
shayla
. A Western woman! A female at the holiest of holy places! But most moving was the way the woman explained her adopted faith, the way her voice deepened into perfect Arabic when she said the words
Holy Quran
and
Allah,
the way her body bent to the carpet in surrender.

There was another sign, Deborah now noticed, at the exit of the parking lot: “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. All praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgment. You alone we worship and to you alone we turn for help.” She read the words silently, then aloud, then got out of the car, though it was now beginning to snow. No, it was freezing rain, the stinging wet pelting the top of her head.

“Help,” she said.

 

The sand is a sea. It touches the far shores of sky. The sand is a wasteland of craters and cliffs, a furnace burning under tender feet, a twister absorbing all in its path, a carpet, a blanket, a cradle. How can sand be only particles of dirt and rock, when it is, in fact, everything?

Our driver navigates the narrow crests of dunes, searching for the perfect plunge point, and then we are falling and falling, before surging up again to another height. Standing in the back of the open Land Rover, hair whipping my face, arms open, I feel every plummet and rise. I could be tossed out with the next jerk or drop, but this place is making me brave. “Here in the desert I had found all that I asked,” wrote my hero, Wilfred Thesiger, the British explorer who criss-crossed these lands on camel in the late '40s, nearly twenty-five years ago. He had been leaving for the last time, heartbroken and despondent about what he saw coming. “I was averse to all oil companies, dreading the changes and disintegration of society which they inevitably caused.” I will admit the sight of black-orange flames — gas flaring off at the oil wells as we came into Liwa this afternoon — looked strange among the curving dunes. Still I pray I will never leave the way he did, or perhaps never leave at all.

Sheikh Shakhbut has requested the pleasure of a visit. Now that it's winter and cooler again, Pat, Marion, their children, Aslam, their houseboy, and I — plus five days' provisions and bedding — are making our way from Al Ain to the Liwa Oasis, the Al Nahyan ancestral home. On the way we lunched with Bedu, who waited on us hand and foot, the family insisting we rest from our travels and cool off in the shade of their tent, while they slaughtered the goat and cooked rice. A few hours later we reached the beach at Tarif, setting up camp right on the sand, an expanse of startling white.

And now the sands of Liwa. We stop at the bottom of Mehreb Dune, so tall that a forty-five-gallon oil drum at the top looks as small as a can of cola. How do you climb a dune? I don't think you do. I scramble on hands and knees, while the children push past me, laughing. The sand here is fiery red, so different than Tarif and different than the gold of the dunes that border the Empty Quarter. We are close to Saudi Arabia here and those epic first journeys of British explorers — Bertram Thomas, St. John Philby, Thesiger himself. The Bedu, of course, have been crossing this beautiful desolation, Rub al Khali, for centuries and will keep doing so.

At prayer time, as the dunes turn auburn in the setting sun, their shadows unfurling, our driver lays a small rug on the flattest spot he can find, drops to his knees and touches his forehead to the ground. Before him, sand without end. I feel him praying for us all.

 

I am greatly indebted to Gertrude Dyck, the pioneering Canadian nurse who spent thirty-eight years in the United Arab Emirates. Her wonderful book,
The Oasis: Al Ain Memoirs of Doctora
Latifa
(Motivate Publishing, 1995), gave me the foundation for the “Oasis” meditations and a sense of what had once been.
Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in the
World's Richest City
(2009), an honest and startling book by British journalist Jo Tatchell, added greatly to my own Abu Dhabi experience. Thanks also to
The National
, the English-language newspaper of Abu Dhabi, and to radio station Abu Dhabi Classics, for publishing and broadcasting “The Gift of the Magi” on Christmas Eve 2010. The largest thanks go to my husband, Raymond Beauchemin, novelist, journalist, editor beyond compare and one-man cheering section. Someday,
insha'allah
, we'll go back.

 

Some of the names of companies and places have been changed, and events altered, to suit the needs of fiction.

Abaya — A loose, usually black, robe worn by Muslim women.

Agal — A thick, double, black cord fastened around the keffiyeh (see below) to hold it in place.

Alhamdulillah — “Thanks and praise be to God.”

Areesh — A palm-frond house.

Baklawa — Middle Eastern sweet with a ground-nut filling between layers of phyllo.

Dirham — The
UAE
currency, pegged to the
US
dollar at 3.67 dirhams to one
US
dollar.

Falaj — An aqueduct or canal system that uses gravity to deliver water for irrigation.

Fatteh — Dried pieces of flatbread layered with yogurt, garbanzos, oil and pine nuts.

Fattoush — A Lebanese tossed salad, heavy on the lemon juice, sumac and featuring toasted pita chips.

Fils —
UAE
currency equal to one hundreth of a dirham.

Ghutra — Another term for keffiyeh.

Habibti — Term of endearment equivalent to “darling” used to address a female; the masculine form would be “habibi.”

Hajj — Annual pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is required to perform if financially and physically able.

Halal — Acceptable. Particularly used in reference to foods.

Halloumi — A salty, semi-hard, unripened white cheese.

Haram — Sinful. Any act forbidden by Allah.

Insha'allah — “God willing.”

Iftar — The meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan.

Jelabiya — A loose-fitting cotton garment.

Kayf halek — “How are you?”

Keffiyeh — The traditional headdress of an Arab male, it is made of cotton and can be checked or solid white.

Khandoura—Ankle-length, loose-fitting garment worn by Gulf Arab males; usually white, always starched.

Khnafeh — Arabic cheese pastry soaked in sugar syrup.

Maamoul —Small shortbread cookies traditionally filled with dates, pistachios or walnuts.

Majlis — An outer room, used particularly to entertain guests.

Masha'allah — “As God has willed,” used in praise and recognizing all good things come from God.

Muezzin — The man who calls Muslims to prayer.

Saluki — A tall, slender dog bred in the Arabian Peninsula.

Sfiha — An Arabic pizza-like dish, often topped with lamb.

Shayla — A thin black veil worn by Emirati women.

Shisha — Tobacco for smoking in a hookah, especially when mixed with flavourings such as mint and apple.

Shalwar kameez — Cotton pants and shirt worn by men and women of the subcontinent.

Yalla — All right! or Let's go!