I Am Pilgrim (15 page)

The growing Americanization of his sisters caused escalating arguments between the boy and his

mother until one night she spoke to him hard and straight. She told him Bahrain was their only future and she wanted the girls to fit in, to find the love of friends – she wanted that for all her kids – and if it meant rejecting everything about the way they had lived in Saudi then she would not cry one tear for something that had brought them so much misery.

She said loneliness was a razor that cut a heart to shreds, that a child had a right to dream and that if the girls didn’t strive to be happy now they never would. She told it to him with insight and honesty, and why shouldn’t she? She might as well have been talking about herself. He had never heard his mother so on fire and he realized that while to the outside world she was still a Muslim, at the heart of her – feeling abandoned by God – she really worshipped only life and her children now. Deeply troubled, he reminded her that Allah was watching them and made his way to bed.

After he fell asleep, his mother went to the girls’ room, woke them quietly and put her arms around

their shoulders. She told them she knew they were growing towards a different light but they could no longer offend their brother in his own house. The music had to stop and, when they left the house for school, they would wear the veil.

The girls were like their mother, in looks and temperament, and they both started objecting. She silenced them and told them it was because their brother loved them and he was only trying to discharge the huge responsibility he felt towards their father. She looked at their faces, pleading with her to change her mind, and she almost smiled – she was about to share a secret with her girls, and

she had never done that with anyone except her own mother.

‘I need your help,’ she said. ‘There’s something I have to raise with him that’s very important –

he’ll never agree if he thinks you are being corrupted.’

The two girls forgot their protests, wondering what on earth their mother was planning to broach.

‘We can’t go on like this,’ she said. ‘It’s not just the house, your grandfather isn’t young – what happens if he dies and the money stops?’ She let the grim ramifications sink in before she told them:

‘I have applied for a job.’

Of all the lessons the girls would learn as young Muslim women, the one their mother

demonstrated that night was the most important: to take command, to realize that the only stairway to heaven is the one you build yourself on earth. They stared at her in wonder. A job?!

She told them she’d heard about the opening from one of the mothers at their school and had phoned the company weeks ago. She had been on the point of giving up, but a letter had arrived that

day asking her to come for an interview. She explained she had said nothing to their brother in case she wasn’t hired – let’s be honest, she said, it was almost certain she wouldn’t get it, not on her first try – as there was no point in having an argument without anything to gain. Beyond those simple facts she would tell them nothing, insisting that it was late and they get to sleep.

By morning the girls had thrown their support behind their mother in the only way they knew how

– the posters were down, the stacks of magazines were stuffed in garbage bags and all their music and

make-up was hidden away.

On the day of the interview, with the kids at school, their mother gathered what little savings she had and, following a carefully thought-out plan, went to a small boutique in one of the best malls and bought a good knock-off of a Louis Vuitton handbag and a pair of Gucci sunglasses.

In the public washroom she swapped out her handbag, dropped the old one in the trash and removed her veil. She was determined to give herself every advantage, including the one commented

on by her son a few months earlier. Overcoming a lifetime of modesty wasn’t easy, though, and even

with the sunglasses in place she still couldn’t work up the courage to look at herself in the mirror.

Appearing modern and very beautiful, she finally slipped out of the door and walked to the office

tower next door: the head office of Batelco, the local telephone monopoly. Tingling with fear and excitement, she sat on a couch and waited to be called for the interview. It occurred to her that her feelings weren’t far removed from those on her wedding night – and right now she felt about as naked.

No wonder women enjoy going out like this, she thought.

A secretary approached and showed her into a conference room, where two men and a female executive explained that the company was expanding its number of ‘customer relations’ officers.

What did she think of that? She told them it was a good idea – the company’s reputation for service

was so bad it was difficult to believe they even had any to start with.

The senior guy stared at her and then laughed. All day they had heard prospective employees tell

them what an outstanding company it was. Finally they were interviewing someone who at least understood the job was necessary. Still smiling, he said most of the work was dealing with customer

complaints about overcharging, explaining billing cycles, unlocking the mysteries of pricing plans.

She told them she didn’t have any experience but she was still an expert; as a widow on a small income she had to understand and analyse all the household bills, including Batelco’s. Out of anxiety she kept rattling on, not realizing that even though they were nodding their heads, the panel members were barely listening.

They knew the job was more about handling irate subscribers than technical qualifications. The woman in front of them seemed to have a rare combination of intelligence and style – enough to give

pause to even the most rabid customer.

The committee looked at one another, communicating in a shorthand of raised eyebrows and tiny

shrugs, and without a word between them came to a decision. The senior guy interrupted and asked if

she could start on Monday. She was so excited she couldn’t answer, and it was only after he repeated the question that she managed to say yes.

She walked out of the conference room with a maelstrom of thoughts crowding her head but, even

in the midst of it, she knew she couldn’t share the news with her daughters. Everything could still fall at the last hurdle: her son.

After dinner, casually, she asked him to go with her to the nearby grocery market. She had been planning it all afternoon and, as they set out, she saw that her timing was perfect. It was the start of the weekend and groups of youths had gathered outside a car customizing shop, squads of Pakistani men

who lived on site at local factories squatted on street corners and carloads of rowdy boys headed into movie houses in the city. As they walked, she pointed out every unsavoury aspect and told him that soon, veiled or not, the girls would be of an age where they would no longer be able to leave the house.

He nodded; he’d thought about it too. As a male, he was the head of the family and responsible for

the women’s virtue.

‘We have to move to a better area,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘And how do we pay for it?’

‘I get a job,’ she said quietly, conveniently omitting to mention she already had one.

He stopped and stared at her. ‘That’s ridiculous!’ he said.

She lowered her veiled face in obedience, wisely letting the first blast of anger and surprise blow

by. He turned to walk on towards the grocery store but she didn’t move.

‘Ridiculous maybe, but give me an alternative,’ she said steadily. ‘How else do we keep the girls safe?’

He continued towards the store. And still she didn’t move, determined to fight her son for a chance

at a better life.

‘We can’t live on charity for ever!’ she called after him. ‘What man would want it? No mother would allow it. With a job we could afford a new life—’

She didn’t finish. He turned and stalked back to her, furious. ‘The answer is no – it’s wrong!’

He started dragging her by the sleeve, but she had seen the opening she had been so desperately hoping for. ‘A woman working may not suit some idea of manhood, it may offend a few wild-eyed

imams, but it isn’t wrong,’ she said coldly.

Her son glimpsed the chasm opening in front of him, but he couldn’t take back what he had said.

Instead, he tried closing the whole subject down, indicating the groups of men watching the unfolding domestic dispute. ‘Come on!’ he said. ‘You’re making a spectacle of us!’

But she wouldn’t move. ‘It’s years since I did my religious studies,’ she said, ‘so tell me – where in Islam does it say it’s wrong for a woman to take honest work?’

‘It’s wrong because I say—’ but she didn’t even let him finish that nonsense.

‘Your opinion is greater than the Prophet’s, peace be upon him?’ she wanted to know.

To even think such a thing was a sacrilege, and for a moment he couldn’t reply.

His mother hammered the advantage: ‘It was God’s will you took your father ’s place – now start

acting like him. You think he would want his daughters living like this? You think he’d want his
wife
?!’

The boy knew the answers. He looked across the vast expanse of gender that separated them, and

into a tiny window. It was the narrow slit in her veil – for over a thousand years the only way by which men and women in the Arab world have observed each other.

She held his gaze with her beautiful, shadowed eyes. ‘I asked if you thought your father would want

us living in these circumstances – now answer me,’ she demanded.

He tried to stare her down, but she wouldn’t have it and his eyes slid away. She was still his mother and he loved her dearly. ‘How much would a job pay?’ he asked at last.

Chapter Five

THE FAMILY’S INDIAN summer might have continued for ever except for a group of Bangladeshi construction workers.

Within a month of her son agreeing that she could work, they had moved to a house in a good neighbourhood and, five days a week, she got on the bus with her daughters and went to her job.

Never before had she felt so much purpose in her life, or such quiet enjoyment of her two girls. It came to an end two days after the construction workers started building a small office block next to the boy’s school.

Unfamiliar with the finer points of site preparation, the Bangladeshis drove a mechanical backhoe

through the underground water and power lines, killing off the air-conditioning in the school. While the hapless driver looked at his barbecued machine, the kids cheered him from their windows, fully

aware they would be given the rest of the day off.

The Saracen decided to surprise his mother and take her for lunch, but the Manama bus service was

about as reliable as Jeddah’s and he arrived a few minutes after the Batelco building had closed for the break. Assuming she was inside in the staff cafeteria, he went to the mall to get a drink and to consider how he might spend his free afternoon.

He stepped off an escalator, saw her from thirty yards away and, in that moment, whatever small

life he had constructed for himself in Bahrain fell to pieces. Unveiled and wearing lipstick, her Gucci sunglasses pushed up on to her head, she was having lunch at a café with a group of co-workers.

He stared at her unveiled face and make-up, shattered. She might as well have been naked in his eyes. Even worse than her immodesty, though, were the four men who were sitting at the large table.

One look at them, and he knew they were not the fathers or brothers of any of the other women.

A wave of sudden retching, of betrayal, almost choked him and, just as he beat that back, he was swamped by the rolling desolation of failure: he realized that he had let his father down in the worst imaginable way.

He considered confronting his mother in front of them, covering her face and dragging her home

– but somehow he managed to force his legs to walk away. Angry, wounded virtually beyond repair,

he went to the only refuge he knew – the mosque – desperate for comfort and advice from the imam

and the other soldiers of the Muslim Brotherhood.

He returned home so late that night and was deliberately so tardy in getting up the next morning that he didn’t see his mother and sisters until dinner time. Strangely, he made no reference to what he’d seen at the mall but, all through the meal, his mother was aware something was wrong.

When the girls had gone to bed she asked him what it was but, withdrawn and surly, he wouldn’t be

corralled into talking about it. The only thing she could think of was that it had something to do with a girl, so she decided not to pressure him; she’d had brothers herself and she knew how hard the teenage years were for boys.

It took several days, but he finally sat down and spoke with her. With downcast eyes, he said that,

after months of introspection, he had decided to follow a religious life and would one day – God willing – become an imam.

She looked at him, taken aback, but made no attempt to interrupt. Whatever dreams she’d had for

her son, they had never included that.

He told her quietly that he knew a spiritual life was a hard road but, since the death of his father, religion had brought him greater consolation than anything else and, as the imam had told him on several occasions, it was a decision of which his father would have been immensely proud.