Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (8 page)
Read Eight Months on Ghazzah Street Online
Authors: Hilary Mantel
Frances turned back into the smaller streets, between apartment blocks, to cut back on herself. Over to her right, cranes and derricks split the sky. On her left a wall had been built, enclosing nothing; a gate gave access to nothing but a tract of muddy churned-up ground and some stagnant pools.
She stopped for a moment, unsure of where she was. Her sense of direction had almost never failed her. She steadied herself, her
hand against a burning wall. Her own block of flats was ahead of her, seeming to shimmer a little in the heat; in the two first-floor apartments the wooden blinds were drawn down securely over the balcony windows, and the building had a desolate, uninhabited air.
hand against a burning wall. Her own block of flats was ahead of her, seeming to shimmer a little in the heat; in the two first-floor apartments the wooden blinds were drawn down securely over the balcony windows, and the building had a desolate, uninhabited air.
A man in a Mercedes truck slowed to a crawl beside her. “I give you lift, madam?” She ignored him. Quickened her step. “Tell me where you want to go, madam. Just jump right in.” He leaned across, as if to open the near door. Frances turned and stared into his face; her own face bony, white, suffused with a narrow European rage. The man laughed. He waved a hand, dismissively, as if he were knocking off a fly, and drove away.
Inside the hallway, Yasmin stood by her front door. Her face was agitated. “Frances, Frances, Shams was looking out and saw you just now in the street. Where have you been?”
“I went for a walk.”
“Come in, come in.” With a flapping motion of her arm, Yasmin drew her inside. Her bracelets clanked together. “Sit, please sit. I will fetch you a cold drink.”
Frances perched on the edge of one of the heavy brocade armchairs. She felt dirty. She took a tissue from a box and wiped her hands. Yasmin hurried back with a little silver tray: a glass of Pepsi-Cola, a dish of ice, a saucer of sliced limes. She produced a spindle-legged table from its nest, placed the tray at Frances’s elbow. She hovered above her, speaking not out of curiosity, but in proprietorial wrath. “What made you do it?”
“I just wanted to see how I would get on.”
“But it is so hot, Frances. And men will shout at you from cars.”
“Yes. I know that now.”
“I could have told you and saved you the trouble. Frances, could not your husband’s company give you a driver?”
“I think Mrs. Parsons, the boss’s wife, has got a monopoly on them.”
“I can get drivers. Raji’s office will send a car, if I call up, but I don’t like to ask too often.” She pressed her hands together. “Just tell me where you want to go. I will arrange it. But don’t be walking the streets.”
“It was only round the block,” Frances murmured.
“We can go to Al Mokhtar if you want anything for sewing. We can go to Happy Family Bakery. We can make an evening tour to the souk, Raji would be so happy. Just tell me where.”
“The trouble is, I don’t know where. How can I find out about the city? How can I meet people? Can I learn Arabic?”
“I can teach you a few phrases. It is enough.”
“But what if I want to study it?”
“You can get a teacher. I have a private teacher, but it is for classical Arabic, it wouldn’t interest you. Or perhaps, I don’t know, maybe there is a class somewhere. Don’t think about this now, Frances. You have to get your household in order. You will be meeting your husband’s colleagues and entertaining them. You will be busy, I think.”
Yasmin leaned forward, and brushed the back of her sticky hand with a long, opalescent fingernail. “Listen, Frances, I remember when I first got in Jeddah. I had come from Karachi, you see, where my family were all around me. I have been to Britain, fifteen months in St. John’s Wood, you know, when Raji was working over that side. I am a modern woman, Frances. I have the British passport. I have not lived my life behind the veil. It is hard, I know.” She paused, to let Frances feel her sympathy; took her hand. “Soon you will meet the colleagues’ wives,” she said persuasively. “They will send their cars and carry you away to drink coffee every morning. Perhaps, who knows, you can have a baby soon. The Bakhsh hospital has very well-known and excellent maternity care.”
“Yes, who knows,” Frances said. She stood up.
Yasmin smiled, archly. “So no more wandering the roads? Promise me?”
Frances fitted the key into her front-door lock. Again Yasmin stood at the door, watching her across the hall. The taste of the sweet drink lingered in her mouth. She did not feel that she had conquered the street; but she did not feel, either, that the street had conquered her.
Later that day she asked Andrew, “Would you describe me as a timid person?”
“Quite the reverse.”
“Good,” she said. She had not told him about her trip out. She was not sure why she had not told him. She had not done anything wrong, so why was she keeping it from him? They had been married for almost five years, and in that time they had never had any secrets at all.
The following evening Raji rang the doorbell. “I’m off downtown,” he said. “What’s it to be?”
Raji: silver wing tips of hair, a wide white boyish grin; a dark expensive Western suit, gold rings; comfortably plump, gently mocking. “Well, Miss Frances? What is your desire right now? Box of Medina dates? Some nice sticky baklava? Large gin and tonic?”
“We’ve already made one major foray tonight,” Frances said. “We’ve been to Safeway for the greengrocery.”
“Ah, a Safeway Superstore is streets ahead for iceberg lettuces. Say those who know.”
“It’s such a major occupation, shopping.”
“We have to keep the womenfolk happy.” Raji spied Andrew, appearing behind her. “Hello, old boy,” he said, his tone much more serious.
“How’s tricks, Raji?”
Raji shook his head, smiling, and made a plummeting motion with one hand. “Oil is down,” he said. “So our Minister’s temper not the best. We will be getting a cut in our funding for the department if this goes on, those fellows at the Ministry of Finance are so tight. They are having one mighty royal sheep-grab in Riyadh tonight, so that the Princes can talk it all over. That is how I come to be on the loose.” He turned to Frances. “You’ve met Samira, from upstairs?”
“Not yet. Yasmin promised—”
“Me neither. I’ve seen her flitting shape, mark you. Yasmin chats with her every day, but I’ve never seen her face, you know, which I find somewhat bizarre. Abdul Nasr keeps her locked up, the old devil.”
“That’s not unusual, is it?”
“No, but that is one very religious man.” Raji slapped his palms together. “Nothing, then, for you good people?” Producing his car keys, he made for the front door. “I’ll get Yasmin to call you for dinner one night,” he said over his shoulder.
Abdul Nasr was a young devil, in fact. Frances saw him striding down the stairs a couple of mornings later, about ten o’clock, when she was on her way out with a bag of rubbish. He was a lean young man, with a delicate bronze skin and a heavy black mustache. He nodded to her; did not look her in the face.
“Eyes like coals,” she said later to Andrew. “Now I’ve seen them. I thought they were a fiction.”
Frances Shore’s Diary: 28 Muharram
Wrote a batch of letters home today, Clare, my mother, Andrew’s lot. He never writes to them, they wouldn’t know if he was dead or alive. Strange to think that by the real calendar it’s nearly November and that people in England are boosting up their heating bills and settling into their urinter dourness. It seems no cooler here, though it should be. Whenever you mention the heat the old residents say, “There’s worse to come.” They enjoy telling you that.
When I look back on this diary it seems to be all about money. At least, it’s always there between the lines. Some of the writers in the newspapers take the line that Saudi Arabia has been spoiled by its wealth, that before the oil there was a golden age when everyone lived in tents and was simple and religious and kind to old people. I am suspicious of this, but certainly greed is not attractive in anybody, is it? I’m waiting to see what our humble wealth will do to me, and if I shall grow nastier and harsher in character, bank draft by bank draft. Andrew is quite right when he says that we must stay here and stick it out and make some money. We’ve spent our lives on living, not accumulating, and now it’s time to start trying to do both, and to grow up, and be farsighted, and not spend time agonizing over ideals we might once have possessed. In other words, we must try to have the same concerns as other people.
The man on the plane—Fairfax’s colleague—had been quite wrong. There was a map of Jeddah. Andrew brought it home. “Now I can begin to make sense of it,” Frances said.
She spread out the map on the dining room table. Five minutes later she looked up, disappointed. “It’s useless. It’s too old. The shape of the coastline is different now. This road appears to end in the sea. And look where they’ve put Jeddah Shops. They’re five blocks out.” She traced the length of Medina Road. “How old would you say these flats are?”
“Five years.”
“On this map we’re a vacant lot.”
“Sorry,” Andrew said. “Only trying to help. Thought bad maps were better than no maps.”
“That’s not so.” She picked up her pen and wrote on the map CARTOGRAPHY BY KAFKA. “We don’t exist,” she said.
Pollard called her on the new telephone. “Daphne Parsons will come for you with a driver on Tuesday morning,” he said, “and take you to the souk.”
“Oh, will she?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Well … thank you for arranging that for me.” Though I could hardly claim, she thought, that I was doing something else. Everyone knows what my life is like; I’m at their disposal.
“That’s okay,” Pollard said. “Any time. Dryer all right?”
“Yes.”
“Happy with it?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. He said, “Is there anything else you want?”
“Yes, let me see … how about some flock wallpaper for the bathroom? And a half tester bed?”
“Joking, are you?” Pollard said. She got rid of him. Only later she realized, with a kind of sick shame that she knew was unwarranted, that he might have been making her a sexual proposition.
She reported the conversation to Andrew; not to make trouble, but so that she could have his opinion. “He asked me if there was anything else I wanted.”
“He probably meant a new ironing board,” Andrew said.
“Do you think so?”
“You’re fussy about ironing boards, aren’t you?”
She trawled her memory for instances. Perhaps she had expressed an occasional opinion about them, over the last week or two. Hausfrau’s conversation, now. She felt that a change must be coming over her, but that Andrew took the change for granted.
“Yasmin said that she would teach me to do some of their cooking,” she said.
“Oh good. I like curries.”
From eleven each morning the smell of Yasmin’s cooking hung over the flats. Shams was useless in the kitchen, she complained, and there was a dinner party most nights, and soon Raji’s mother would be coming from Islamabad to stay for weeks and weeks, and she’d be asking all her Jeddah friends around. Yasmin stood in the kitchen, barefoot, chopping and frying, frying and chopping, dicing and stirring, her face shiny, the smell of ghee and herbs impregnating her clothes; tasting, muttering, licking her lips and frowning into the pans. Frances stood in the kitchen doorway, Selim straddling
her hip. The air of formality between them had abated; the guest need no longer be entertained. One busy morning, when twenty people were expected, Frances washed the best dinner service, thin white china with the sheen of a pearl and a single chaste gold line, and then she polished the heavy crystal glasses that Shams was not allowed to touch, and set them out on the table, ready for the mineral water and orange juice they would contain that evening. “I’ve got nothing like this,” she said.
her hip. The air of formality between them had abated; the guest need no longer be entertained. One busy morning, when twenty people were expected, Frances washed the best dinner service, thin white china with the sheen of a pearl and a single chaste gold line, and then she polished the heavy crystal glasses that Shams was not allowed to touch, and set them out on the table, ready for the mineral water and orange juice they would contain that evening. “I’ve got nothing like this,” she said.
Yasmin said, “I’m sure you have very fine china, at your home in England. I’m sure you have beautiful things.”
“No, honestly. I haven’t got anything.”
Yasmin looked up momentarily from the pan she was stirring, where something bubbled gently, something venomously red.
“Did you not have wedding presents, you and Andrew?”
“No, not to speak of. We didn’t really have that kind of wedding. We just had a couple of witnesses down at the DC’s office, and then we went for a drink. We got married in a bit of a hurry.”
Yasmin’s wooden spoon hovered in the air for a moment. “I see. Well, I didn’t know that, Frances, you didn’t tell me.” She looked at her appraisingly. “Not to worry, I think most people have had some miscarriages.”
“Oh no … not that sort of hurry.”
“I thought you meant …” Yasmin broke off, and sighed. “You see, because of living in England, I know how some young girls act. But not you, I felt sure.”
“I was in Africa when I got married. I just meant, it was informal.”
“A pity for you. It is a big day in a young girl’s life.”
“I daresay. I wasn’t a young girl exactly.”
“You had … men friends? Before?”
“One or two.”
Yasmin wished to know more. She took a cucumber and a sharp knife and began to dice it very finely on to a wooden board. “When I was in St. John’s Wood …” she said.
“Yes?”
“They were going to pass a law that all young girls in England must not go out at night, except with their fiancés.”
“Oh, but Yasmin, they couldn’t. We could never have such a law.” Frances shifted Selim’s weight to her other hip. “You look hot,” she said crossly, “shall I get you a drink out of the fridge?”
“I will have Fanta,” Yasmin said. “Yes, because you see, most girls in the UK have lost their virginity by the age of twelve.”
“That’s rubbish. Who told you that?”
“You only have to read the newspapers. Naturally Parliament is concerned.”
“But you must have got it wrong. We don’t have those sort of laws. We don’t have laws to make people moral. We don’t think that’s what law is for.”
“You should try to make people more moral,” Yasmin said. She pushed back a long strand of her black hair, and leaned over the pans again. “The West is so decadent, and such behavior makes people unhappy. In the long run. I am telling you.”
“England’s not like that. Not really.”
“But I have seen it.”
“Then it must be a funny place, St. John’s Wood, that’s all I can say.”
Yasmin never raised her voice, never insisted; just plowed her lonely furrow. Almost every day she would unveil some new, astonishing viewpoint. Shams was on her knees in the hall, working on the carpets with a brush and pan, on red hand-knotted rugs whose seamless geometry recalled the unfathomable nature and eternal vigilance of Allah himself. The kitchen filled with steam.
When she was back in Flat 1 Frances found she could not follow Yasmin’s recipes. “Oh, you just take a handful of this,” Yasmin would say, “and take some of that—”
“How much?”
“Oh, just what you think you need …”
And to Frances’s objections, and queries, she would say, “It comes with practice. All English food,” she would say, “is boiled. That is why it has no taste.” She would tap her spoon against the
side of the pan, and exhale with theatrical weariness, and hold out her hands so that Frances could pass her a towel to wipe them; the artistry was over, Shams would clear up the mess. “I will send you some of this, later,” she would say. “Shams will bring you a dish of it across.”
side of the pan, and exhale with theatrical weariness, and hold out her hands so that Frances could pass her a towel to wipe them; the artistry was over, Shams would clear up the mess. “I will send you some of this, later,” she would say. “Shams will bring you a dish of it across.”
Frances got Andrew to take her uptown, to the lending library run by the British community. “I want to borrow some cookery books,” she said, “and get it all straight in my mind. Listen, Andrew, why doesn’t Yasmin distinguish … why doesn’t Yasmin distinguish … between private morality and public order?”
“Because Islam doesn’t,” he said, his voice toneless, his eyes on the moving traffic. “This country is governed by the Sharia law, which is Allah’s own sentiments as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. In Islam there are no private vices.”
“So there is no difference between sins and crimes.”
“Not that I can see.”
“So if you commit a crime—”
“You appear before a religious court. This is a theocracy. God rules, OKAY? Frances, shut up now, I’m driving.”
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD AND AVOID DISTRACTION, a notice warned. The city passed: Shesh Mahal Restaurant, Electric Laundry, Wheels Balanced Here; a sculpture, twenty-five feet high, made of blue metal tubes like organ pipes. Small children swarmed loose in the speeding cars, scrambling over the seats, pulling at the drivers’
ghutras,
while the women in charge of them sat like black pillars, their hands in their laps; in any given year, how many of these little mites must crash howling through the windscreen to death or mutilation? “Haven’t they heard of seat belts?” Frances inquired.
ghutras,
while the women in charge of them sat like black pillars, their hands in their laps; in any given year, how many of these little mites must crash howling through the windscreen to death or mutilation? “Haven’t they heard of seat belts?” Frances inquired.
“Bit of a dodgy concept,” Andrew said. “Allah has appointed a term to every life.”
“Who tells you this stuff?”
“Oh, guys at work.”
It was sunset; oily colors mingled in the sky. An airplane hung low over Prince Abdullah Street, unmoving, its roar drowned
out by the usual noises of the city. On their left was a private villa built to resemble one of the minor Loire châteaux. On their right was a big expatriate housing compound, where the apartments looked like packing cases, stacked one on top of the other. YOU ARE FAST, said a sign, BUT DANGER IS FASTER. Another sculpture; a human fist.
out by the usual noises of the city. On their left was a private villa built to resemble one of the minor Loire châteaux. On their right was a big expatriate housing compound, where the apartments looked like packing cases, stacked one on top of the other. YOU ARE FAST, said a sign, BUT DANGER IS FASTER. Another sculpture; a human fist.
At the British Community Library there were several excellent cookery books. They enrolled, and were given tickets. It all seemed so normal; there was a lady volunteer behind the desk, who wore a nice white blouse with a tie neck, and behaved as if she were in Tunbridge Wells. There was a notice-board, giving details of forthcoming concerts, and offering cars and hi-fi sets for sale. “So many people are going home,” the nice lady said, “you’ve come in at the end of things really. We’ve done seven years, it’s passed in a flash. Well, yes, I’d say I’ve got a lot out of it really, I don’t think it’s right to moan all the time. We’ve learned scuba diving, it’s great fun, there are clubs if you’re interested.” And “Poor you,” she said, “stuck in a block of flats without any European neighbors, no, I really don’t envy you.”
It took them the best part of an hour to get home through the traffic. “Do we need any shopping?” Andrew asked. “Everywhere’s open till ten o’clock.”
“No. I’m sick of shopping. Yasmin is sending us some food tonight. Would you like to be here for seven years?”
“No. But think of the money they must have stashed away.”
“Do you think they’ve suffered for it?”
“Not really. It depends what you want out of life. I can’t think of anywhere better … for scuba diving.”
They pulled up in front of the flats. “Well, there you are,” Andrew said. “Dunroamin.”
“Yes, what a good name for it. Perhaps we could get one of those pokerwork signs made, and hang it on the gate.”
They went inside. “I’ve got work,” Andrew said. He wandered off. Frances sat down at the desk in the living room where she wrote her diary. She read the information sheet the library woman
had given her, with its regulations and list of opening times. There was only one indication that life in Saudi had its tiny upsets. “
PLEASE
,” begged the handout, “
make EVERY effort to return your books if you have to leave the Kingdom hurriedly and unexpectedly.”
had given her, with its regulations and list of opening times. There was only one indication that life in Saudi had its tiny upsets. “
PLEASE
,” begged the handout, “
make EVERY effort to return your books if you have to leave the Kingdom hurriedly and unexpectedly.”
The doorbell rang; there was Shams on the threshold, her face stretched in the grim ghost of a smile, an oval stainless steel platter resting across her forearms. Legs and wings of chicken protruded from a great bed of rice. “Thank you, Shams.”
Shams stepped back a pace. From beneath her arm, like a conjuror, she produced a length of black cloth. “From Madam,” she said. “For the souk. Tomorrow.”
Balancing the dish on one arm, Frances put out her other hand, hesitantly. “A veil? She’s telling me I need a veil?”
“For the head only,” Shams said, in her gloomy mutter. “Leave open the face.”
“Damn right,” Frances said. She thrust the cloth back at Shams. Shams backed off another pace, and put her hands behind her back. The ghost of a smile had quite vanished. She rested her eyes on the dusty hall floor; thinking, perhaps, I shall have to clean this soon.
Frances closed the door on her. She carried the dish into the kitchen. Then she made for the bathroom, the cloth trailing from her hand. One edge of it had soaked up some of the fiery sauce which smothered the chicken. She turned on the bathroom light. On the floor, a party of ants, like pallbearers, were carrying a dead upturned cockroach. The cockroach influx had not been temporary; it was part of Jeddah life, she was told, a squalid corrective to luxury. She stepped over the funeral procession, which was making for the back of the bidet. Looking at herself in the mirror, she held up the material and draped it over her head. Outlined in black, she looked pale and tired. She pulled the folds down over her face. Now, together with the smell of pine disinfectant, she inhaled a faint odor of mothball. The outlines of the bathroom furniture were fuzzy; only the cold tiles under her hands told her that the world was solid and sharp.
She reached for the door handle, fumbled down the hall. “Hi, Andrew. I’m a headless monster.”
Andrew had plans spread out all over the desk and the big table. He looked up. “Where did you get that?”
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