Jasmine Nights (50 page)

She ran down the steps that led from the stage towards the scruffy tented village, the Nissen huts, the row of rubbish bins. There were no stars that night, just black cloud, and miles of mud and barbed wire. Arleta found her in a gangway between two rows of tents, sitting in the mud sobbing her guts out.

‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ Arleta said, sitting down beside her. ‘I got it wrong. I think it’s time you went home.’

Chapter 43

For several days Dom slipped in and out of consciousness. His wet hair was plastered over his forehead, his lips had turned blue, parts of his parachute were still wrapped around him like a grotesque half-hatched pupa with a human head.

A desert lark was singing its strange
choo eee cha cha wooeee
song on a leafless tree nearby. The pile of ashes that had been the plane was now a soggy mess with a few bits of wire poking out, and smashed pieces of glass.

From time to time a boy, like a figure in a dream, appeared, shimmering and unreliable, sometimes with goats around him. A skinny boy with a look of horrified disgust on his face who muttered at him and occasionally screamed, who feinted and retreated and seemed to want to kill him. This time, breathing heavily, the boy tied his donkey to the tree. He stared at Dom. He inched towards him, his heart pumping wildly, snatched the scattered objects around him, the compass, the razor, the bottled tablets from his escape kit, stuffed them in his pocket, and was about to ride off again when he heard Dom sigh.

When Dom woke, hot and shivering, several hours later, he lay squinting at a sky whose dull grey made it impossible to work out the time. ‘Nothing has changed,’ he said out loud, shocked at how feeble his voice sounded. A few moments later, he froze hearing the distant drone of planes in the sky somewhere far above the blank wall of cloud. They would see him soon; they would get him. As a boy, he’d listened one night breathless with horror as his grandfather, fuelled by several whiskies too many, recalled his time as a prisoner of war – captured in a ditch before Ypres – the chicken-cage beds, the claustrophobia, the beatings, the sense of utter degraded helplessness. Being captured was one of his worst nightmares.

His muscles were taut as violin strings as he listened. The white sky had changed, and he saw, sliding out from behind what were black blobs of reflected cloud, four planes flying in formation above him – 5,000, 7,000 feet? It was hard to tell from here. Four 109s, swastikas painted like large insects underneath them. The sound faded, grew louder. Then, above the German planes, he heard the unmistakable roar of Spitfires and stopped breathing as he pictured himself stretched out like a human target on the sand. Jesus Christ Almighty. Now what?

Face down he lay, listening with his whole body for his own death, and then he heard the sounds of the planes flying away, followed by his own lungs creaking and retching as he coughed.

After they’d gone a wave of pure exhilaration swept through him. He was alive! He was alive. He rolled over on his side, gritted his teeth, took several deep breaths, and yelling, stood up. He was standing, squinting and swaying, watching the dissolving and loosening of solid reality, when he saw the boy again, this time on a donkey coming towards him from some way off. There was a man with him.

The man looked at him for a long time, scratching his armpit. He lifted the aircraft wing and he and the boy stared at him together – a pale, half-dead
agnabi
who had dropped from the sky. Dom started to cry, feeling the stag beetles crawling over him. Two vultures flew above him in a speculative way, and around him the desert stretched out, implacable, vast. It didn’t care. When the sun came out it would roast the flesh off his bones, or if it rained, there were no trees for shelter. He would die within days, if these two people didn’t kill him.

He was still raving as they bundled up the parachute and tied it to the donkey. Telling them to leave him, telling them he wanted to die. They threw him sideways across the beast’s bony back, his flying boots dragging in the mud. They took him back to their temporary home – four ramshackle tents whose guy ropes were covered in tattered bits of cloth. In front of the tents there was a hobbled camel, and a small donkey, now honking furiously at its mother’s return. A skinny dog, its tail at a crazy pipe-cleaner angle, barked at them.

Dom had stopped his noise. He ached all over now, he longed for nothing more than to lie down. They took him to the largest of the tents and unrolled a thin mattress for him behind a curtain. He lay all night in this windowless corner, breathing in the fumes of a tallow candle, and camel dung, and the goat’s hair the tent was made of. His lungs squeaked, his face burned. While he slept, three toddlers came to the mouth of the tent, barefoot and in grimy pyjamas, picking their noses, laughing nervously. From time to time a man’s curious face appeared around the door and stared at him without expression. He called his wife in to look at Dom. They did not know if he was German or English, and it did not particularly matter because an
agnabi
was an
agnabi
and their war had ruined the land, the cotton crops, the price of fuel, and made their lives even harder than they already were. As soon as he was well, he would go.

The boy’s mother, Abida, who was only twenty-eight and softhearted, felt differently. Her last job of the day was to check on the goats, to put fava beans on to cook for tomorrow’s breakfast, and lastly to pull down the various bits of sacking that made their dwelling relatively watertight. Before she went to bed, she went out into the vast star-studded night, crept round to the side of the tent where he lay and, raising a candle over his face, sneaked another look at him. He was soaked with sweat, coughing and muttering. He was a handsome boy, and he was dying. It was the will of Allah, but it was sad.

Chapter 44

One Wednesday morning she was in the sitting room at Antikhana Street when Mr Ozan walked in. He was plumply poured into a beautiful dark suit and held an enormous bunch of lilies in his hand. She jumped.

‘Saba, my dear.’ His voice was stern, his eyes full of concern. ‘You are a woman alone, please lock your door in future.’

He sat down and looked around him. Arleta, who had the occasional attack of neatness – Tiggywinkles, she called them – had draped the sofa with some silk throws and put a bowl of Turkish delight on the table to try and tempt Saba, who was still too thin.

‘Nice, very nice,’ he said approvingly. ‘I’ve only just heard about your accident.’ Her hand went instinctively to her head. ‘What can I do?’

‘You’ve only just heard?’ Hard not to sound sceptical.

‘Yes!’ Ozan sounded angry. ‘I was travelling, and when I came back you’d gone and nobody knew where.’

His eyes looked capable of murder as he asked for details, reminding her of her father during similar interrogations. Who was at the house that night? Who was driving her? Who did she blame most?

‘That’s all I remember,’ she lied. If she told him about Severin, she would have to think about it again, and male outrage would follow, and the thought of that exhausted her – she no longer cared.

‘I would kill him if I knew.’ Ozan’s dark eyes flashed. ‘The German house is boarded up now, and I’ve heard that Engel was sent back to Germany to go on trial there. The ambassador knew nothing about the party house, and was furious about it; some of them were even selling drugs from there. They stole the drugs from military hospitals. They were very bad men.’

For a moment she thought he was going to cry. ‘I had no idea they were such bad men, Saba. You should not have been there – for this, I can never forgive myself.’

‘You heard about Felipe?’ Her eyes filled with tears.

‘They shot him. I heard that. Yes. This was a terrible tragedy. I was very fond of him. I should never have taken you to Istanbul,’ he said mournfully.

‘No,’ she told him. ‘It was my fault too. I’d heard all about your clubs. I must take some of the blame.’

‘If your father was here, he would blame me, and me only, but . . .’ Mr Ozan gave a shrug so big he seemed to be trying to turn himself inside out. ‘I wanted new singers, I thought you were good. I was excited.’

‘I don’t think my father would care any more,’ she said. Wearily she told him about the letter. ‘He doesn’t want to see me again,’ she added, ‘he hates all this.’

Ozan kneaded his forehead between his fingers, he made the clucking sound Tan made when she was upset.

‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘you saw his village.’ As if this explained everything. ‘There was nothing there for you,’ he said, staring at her. ‘Was there?’

‘No.’

She felt a pinch of pain just thinking about it. They’d gone to Üvezli on a perfect autumn day – hard bright sunshine, the bluest sky imaginable – but Ozan was right: not much there, apart from a few whitewashed houses, a mosque, a primary school, a sleepy café beside a square, with cats snoozing under the tables. They’d taken flowers, presents, all the rich promise of Ozan’s wealth and Saba’s youth and beauty. The stage set for a beautiful reunion, except no one came: no cries of joy from ancient relatives, and no stirring of memories in the half-dozen houses they’d called at. Just a few old men sitting on wooden chairs in the dusty street, each one shaking his head. Closed as oysters. They either hadn’t understood or hadn’t wanted to, or they’d come too late.

On their way back home, Ozan had explained in a low, apologetic voice, as if he were personally responsible, that many of the people here were descendants of the Turkish Muslims from the Caucasus who’d fled from the approaching Russian armies during the Ottoman war with Russia in 1877. Others were driven out in 1920, first rounded up by the British and French who had occupied the area around Istanbul, then shot for joining the irregular Turkish nationalist forces. They were naturally suspicious of strangers. As her father had been, all his life. She saw this clearly now.

Later that day, Ozan, obviously still smarting, had urged her to write a letter to her father:
At least he’ll know you tried to find him; he’ll know you cared
, she’d tried, but found it impossible to finish. There were too many barriers between them now, and she felt something else too, something the war had taught her: that she had no God-given right to secrets he didn’t want to tell.

Mr Ozan was kneading his forehead again, trying to find some sliver of hope here.

‘There is one thing I would say about your father’s decision,’ he said at last. ‘It will set you free as an artiste – just as Faiza had to be set free, and Umm Kulthum. It is hard for people like you to serve two masters.’

She said nothing, because that part of her felt so dead now and because the word artiste seemed falsely grand in connection with her. Hearing him sigh again, she passed the box of Turkish delight.

‘Who gave you this?’ He stopped her arm and looked at her bracelet.

‘A friend. An English pilot.’

He examined it closely. ‘It’s beautiful. These two,’ he touched the tiny engraved figures with the familiarity of old friends, ‘are Bastet and Hathor, they are both the goddesses of music and other things. This one,’ he moved his fingers to the right, ‘is Nut, she is for the sky and the heavens. They call Bastet the Lady with the Red Clothes; do you know why?’

Because she could not talk, she took the bracelet off and handed it to him. While he was squinting at the inscription, she mopped her eyes hurriedly on the hem of her skirt.

‘Ozkorini,’ he said. ‘How does an Englishman know these things?’

‘Because . . .’ he waited for her patiently, ‘he was with me in Alexandria when I learned the songs. He was interested in such things.’

‘He was a good man.’

‘Yes . . . He died while I was in Istanbul.’

She was training herself to say this now, it cut out speculation and false hope, and having to listen to stories about other people who’d walked into camp months after they’d been shot down.

Mr Ozan closed his eyes. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

‘I am sorry for this.’

‘I should have expected it,’ she said. ‘So many of them have gone.’

‘But these are such young men. How old was yours?’ There was a stillness about Mr Ozan, as if he had all the time in the world to listen.

‘Twenty-three.’ She heard her own voice, watery and choked with regret. Without a word he handed her a beautifully monogrammed handkerchief.

‘Saba, listen to me,’ his voice was gentle, ‘this is an awful thing for you, but you will meet someone else,
inshallah
.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Many men will love you because of who you are. They’ll want to marry you.’

‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I let him down.’

‘What happened?’ His voice was gentle, so like her father’s when he’d been kind.

She said more than she meant to: about the burns hospital, about Alexandria. He listened, calm and attentive.

‘Who knows,’ he said softly when she was finished. ‘He may still come back – not always do bad things happen.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I thought that for a while, I don’t now. So many have gone.’

Every breath is a new beginning and a new chance
. Felipe’s words. Not true. Not for him.

She suddenly felt exhausted by Ozan – his crinkled forehead, his big kind eyes, the large spotlight of his attention on her. She hoped he would leave soon.

‘Would it help to find out how he died?’

‘No . . . not necessarily . . . I don’t know. Anyway, we’ve tried.’

He consulted the gold watch nestling in his hairy wrist.

‘I’m flying back to Istanbul tonight,’ he wiped his chin, ‘so forgive me, but I must ask you one more thing before I go. When the war in Egypt is over, which
inshallah
it will be soon, I make a big party for everyone: for Egyptians, for Turkish people, for the English, for everyone in Alexandria and Cairo. Faiza will come, and I’ll get the best dancers, acrobats, jugglers. I want you to sing.’ He looked at her expectantly; this was supposed to be a great treat.

She stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the sky was grey again, the day drawing in; soon it would be Christmas.