The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (6 page)

Dear Noura,

I am happy, so happy. I got married to an English gentleman from a very good family, and we are expecting a daughter. We saw the scan. He is also so rich. His mansion is old and big. It is lined with beautiful books, colon ful books from all over the world. The westerners read so much, not like us. They are also nice and humble, not like us. Imagine - the policemen stop the traffic to let ducks cross the road! We are horrible to our animals except my goats, I used to spoil them rotten. How is my mother? I do hope she is taking good care of herself. I still remember her rough hands running over my face, blessing it. I still remember the freshly baked bread, honey and spiced ghee butter sandwiches. She was half blind with grief when I left so I bought her some spectacles. They are expensive, I know, but my gentleman husband gave me the money and advised me to buy the bifocals.

Missing you, Salma

She was crying for me. I held my heart tight and opened the freezer and got some frozen fishfingers out, then stuck five under the grill together with two slices of bread. The fishfingers were almost burnt when I pulled them out, but I would eat them all the same. I had a sip of my flat Diet Coke and started chewing at the cod, whose heart was still uncooked. Leaning on the windowsill, I made out a shadow of a round pearly light hiding behind translucent clouds. I opened the window and stretched those arms covered with dry scabs towards the distant sky. The cold breeze carried her muffled cries all the way to this godforsaken island. If I stuck cotton wool in my ears I might not hear anything: the rustling of leaves; the shunting of trains; Elizabeth drunk and knocking about in the sitting room; Hamdan's whispers; the whimpers and thud thud of my heart.

I was sitting on top of a pile of wheat, scoffing my butter sandwich, when Hamdan suddenly emerged out of a dust cloud and sat next to me. He walked towards me in his white robe like a panther without making much effort. His eyes were fixed on my dark thin ankles, which he pulled almost every night from under the vines. `How is my sparrow?' he said and fixed his white-and-redchequered headdress.

I swallowed hard then said, `I am fine.'

`You look tired. Am I exhausting you with my needs?' he whispered.

I threw away the sandwich to the birds and said, `I am pregnant.'

On the filthy floor of the prison room a bundle of flesh pushed its way out. I shouted, I cried, I begged, then delivered a swollen bundle of flesh, red like beetroot. Alcoholic women, prostitutes and killers of husbands watched while I, the sinner, gave birth on the floor of the Islah prison. Madam Lamaa fixed her pink scarf, wiped her face with both hands and hugged Noura, whose tears were running down her face when she said something that I could not understand. `Some day you will ... One day you will .. '

I SLIPPED OUT OF MY RED UNDERWEAR, WHICH I BOUGHT in the sales, and stood naked on the dirty carpet. `You have improved recently,' I said to my reflection then immersed myself in the water. Just to lie in the hot water inhaling all the scents of soap and bath oils was enough. Enveloped in a cloud of steam and perfume, I felt warm and safe for a few minutes, broken promises, betrayal, shame and death were pushed away to the back of my mind. I stood up, wrapped myself with the towel and began scrubbing my face. My fingers went round the big crooked nose, the narrow forehead, the wide mouth and high cheeks. I scrubbed and scrubbed to get to the clogged pores and push them open. Suddenly the aroma of freshly ground coffee, the smell of ripe olives and the scent of white orange blossom filled the bathroom. I was sitting under the fig tree with my mother drinking mint tea. My mother put her glass down and ran her rough hands over my face, muttering incantations. Every Friday afternoon the whole village gathered around the only radio, outside the house of the sheikh, to listen to the Egyptian diva Faiza Ahmad sing:

`Don't say we were and it was.

I wish all of this had never happened.

I wish I'd never met you, I wish I never knew you.'

I splashed my face with cold water. The mirror looked blurred as if floating in the salty sea.

I lined my lips with a red pen, trying to make them look smaller and fuller. I sprayed myself with deodorant. Up and down my body went the cold scent. I chose the tightest and shortest skirt in the wardrobe and squeezed myself into it, slipped my legs into sheer transparent black tights then wore my shiny black high-heeled shoes. I fixed my wired bra and pulled the straps up to give my breasts a younger, fuller shape. The black crochet beaded blouse was tight enough to enhance the breasts without showing the ageing stomach. I stood erect in front of the mirror and pulled my stomach in. Those were the few precious moments of the evening when I forgot my past. Those moments when I looked at my reflection as if looking at a stranger were the best. My mind would be busy finding a new name and history for myself. `Tonight I am going to be a movie star!'

If I kept stitching and fasting, if I kept silent, I would slip slowly out of my body like a snake shedding her old skin. I might stop being Salma and become someone else, who never had a bite of the forbidden apple. Time might pass quickly so I would slide gently from prison to grave. No pain, resistance or even boredom. I stitched my mother's letter together with the lock of hair inside a leather pocket and turned them into an amulet, which I wore around my neck like a necklace. The pale handwriting of Miss Nailah, who wrote the letter for my mother, was engraved in my head.

This is what Allah willed for you. I called you Salma because I had high hopes for you. I wanted you to be able to decode writing, to get married to one of the sons of the sheikh of the tribe, to eat almonds and honey for the rest of your life. I wanted you to have a better life than mine. But your tuft of wool has always been derent from the other girls of the tribe. You dyed it scarlet. You liked attention. They told me that you have stopped eating and drinking in prison. I cannot visit you because your father haj Ibrahim and your brother Mahmoud forbade me to come. They said they would shoot me too. When I look at your black goats looking lost without you and getting thinner and thinner, I say to myself may Allah bring a merciful end.

Wrapping my mother's black shawl around my shoulders I tiptoed out of the house. Liz was having a chat with Sadiq, `the Pakistani chap in the off-licence', her supplier of cheap wine. `Madam, this is excellent, a good vintage also. Just try it, madam. Excellent also.' She would crack some jokes and laugh until her eyes were full of tears. This was her best self, when she was a little tipsy and her spirits were high. Her hand on his elbow, she would say, `Sadiq, you should be ashamed of yourself, flirting with an old English woman like me.'

He would jerk his chin sideways as if looking for words, then say, `Madam, you're not old also.'

Her laughter was so loud, affected, somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. Then she would break into another language. `Kaise no tum?'

`This is not Urdu, madam, this is Hindi,' he would say indignantly.

`Theeh hail' she would say and shrug her shoulders.

Sitting behind the old Singer sewing machine, I pressed on the pedal and rolled the needle over polyester, cotton, satin.Whatever the prison's wardens gave me I would sew: sleeves, trousers, collars, the hem of the warden Naima's skirt, the pocket of her uniform jacket, which was torn off by one of the inmates. I tightened my white scarf around my head and started stitching it back to the jacket. The room was stuffy and smelt of machine oil and urine. All you could see were bent, covered heads and all you could hear was the rhythmic shunting of the old sewing machines. `Just keep those fingers moving,' I said to myself, `and you will be all right. 'I wanted to mend my life. I used to fit collars carefully and stitch them by hand first, then run the machine over them. What was written on the forehead, what was ordained, must be seen by the eyes. `Isn't she a good seamstress?' the inmates used to say while looking at the carefully made garments. They didn't know that they were looking at my wasted life. `I always thought that you are not white like jasmine or pure like honey in its glass jars.You are a slut!'

Walking along the road I was able to hear the shunting of trains, the sound of metal hitting metal. Slam. Slam. `It was a bit chilly,' I heard myself say in `Elizabethan' English. My landlady was haunting me. If not careful I would turn into an Elizabeth, an English rose, a Sleeping Beauty without a prince. A huge brightly lit board was the first thing I noticed about the railway station. They took down the advertisement for Tetley's tea with the Sleeping Beauty and the seven dwarfs and replaced it with a sleek image of a red Chevrolet convertible. A new company called Fax Home had taken over the rundown building next to the railway line. They sandblasted the outside, installed double glazing, brought in photocopying and faxing machines, and offered their services for a reasonable price. I could see the machine in the dimly lit office faxing away messages to missing persons. Mrs Smith of Post Office Counters smiled whenever she saw me rushing through the door, but it was a weary smile. She must be thinking to herself, `Here she comes again, that dark woman!' Whenever I gave her another bundle of letters she used to put on her reading glasses and inspect the addresses. `To Whom it May Concern', or `To Noura, Islah Prison, Levant', she would read out, then lower her reading glasses and look up at me with her penetrating grey eyes. `This does not seem right.' But later she stopped checking the address. She would shrug her shoulders and say, `Oh! You must have so many friends out there!'

`Oh! Yes!' I would say in a cheerful tone. I had friends: my teacher Miss Nailah, my dearest friend Noura, Madam Lamaa, Officer Salim, Sister Khairiyya, Sister Francoise, Minister Mahoney, Gwen and Parvin.

`Who made this white dress? I want to meet her,' shouted a woman in a Lebanese accent at Officer Salim, the prison governor. `My name is Khairiyya and I want to see her.' She was my first visitor ever. I stood up, straightened my flowery dress and put on my plastic shoes. I was guided by the prison guard through the maze of corridors to the governor's office. A beam of sunshine lit the grey desk. I blinked and tried to make out the people in the room. A small dark lady in a high-collared grey dress was holding the white dress I made years ago. Officer Salim said, `Sit down, Salma.'

I swallowed and sat down on a chair next to the woman.

The officer was balding and tall, but had a kind expression on his face. `Did you make this white dress?'

I spent hours making that baby-girl dress. I spent hours trying to imagine what a white water lily would look like floating in clear water on a luminous jolly night: Layla. I tried to make the shape of the dress similar to that of a lily. I was willing the life of whoever wore it to be happier and whiter than mine. The zigzagged hem, the flowery collar, the small rose-like pockets, the tiny puffed sleeves, the satin belt and the glistening pearls stitched around the collar.

I nodded my head ...

The large steel hangar where the post was sorted was brightly lit. They sorted and delivered thousands of letters, but mine never came. What would it take to receive their letters or, even better, hear their voices? If I lay in the middle of the street like a sleeping policeman, then got run over by a big red Royal Mail van, would they notice me? Whenever I was about to have an attack I would look at the barred window and recite my mother's letter several times until my heart stopped beating and the sweat on my forehead dried up. I could read between the lines that my mother was advising me to start eating again, but could not say it openly, afraid of the men of the family. `Why don't you wear my bra," Noura said, `it might ease the pain.' I shook my head. I would press on my sore nipples gently to relieve my breasts of the unused milk, then change the pads. The dried-up milk felt like pebbles inside my raw breasts. My nipples became darker and longer with all that futile pulling and squeezing, with all that grief.

The night was cold and dry but the Exe ran wild over the rocks that blocked its way down to the sea. It sounded like an ululation followed by a scream. The Turk's Head car park was full of cars with misty windscreens: smart cars, expensive cars, the kind of cars that I would like to be driven in. Over time the two floors of the pub were divided across age lines. The old went up the winding stairs to the ground floor and the young stayed downstairs in the cellars. Through the misty windows I saw the colourful disco lights and heard the hoarse voice of the singer. Tens of young English men and women were jerking their heads and swaying their hips to the music. Some were drinking, some were nuzzled against each other, some were kissing, and others were dancing alone.The sign on the door announced `A private birthday party'.

`I want to help you get out of the country,' said Khairiyya then crossed herself.

`Please introduce yourself to Salina" said Officer Salim.

`I am a civil nun from Lebanon. I have saved many young women like you. I prayed for all of you for years, but now I only travel between prisons and smuggle out women. I cannot bear the thought of an innocent soul getting killed. Here it is. Driving around in the dark is my fate,' she said hurriedly.