The Jewish Neighbor (5 page)

§

One
day when Umayma was cleaning the windows with old newspapers, she saw Felix. Or
at least three quarters of him. His face was printed on a torn sheet of
newspaper. Was he some sort of celebrity or public figure? She tried but failed
to find the other part of the torn sheet to read what was written about him.
Still, she kept his partial image tucked in her purse with the one dollar bill.

Waiting
by the sidelines for something to happen wasn’t taking Umayma any closer to
Felix. If she really wanted to see him again, she would have to take more
decisive action. 
But how?
I am not like these
other women who can be forward with a man. I don’t have the courage to show up
at his door step and launch into a confessional about how I feel. How he makes
me feel.
Not to mention such a forward gesture would have to be surgically
planned around
Kamal’s
schedule. There had to be
something else she could do.

§

One
Sunday evening, Umayma made a delicious semolina desert called 
hareesa
 which was
Layal’s
favorite. She saved some and put it in a Tupperware container. The next day on
the way to
Layal’s
school, she left the sweets with a
note on Felix’s doorstep. She expressed her gratitude and remorse for what had
happened between them and requested a meeting.
A chance to
explain herself.
She said asked him to meet her by the cereals section
at eleven the next morning at the nearby Sainsbury’s Local supermarket.

§

Like
an adolescent pulsating with the chemicals of desire,
Umayma’s
heart was about to leap out of her chest as she stood waiting for Felix between
shelves of sweetened grains in colorful boxes. Her face was flustered and she
contemplated leaving a million times every second. Whenever someone walked by,
her heart would come to a standstill expelling every molecule of oxygen out of
her lungs, leaving her light in the head, and close to fainting.

Then
she saw him. He was giving her his back, one aisle across in the rice and pasta
section comparing brands. She took a breath as full as the galaxy and forced
her dough-like legs to take her to Felix, one terrified step at a time. When
she was standing a few inches behind him she tried to get herself to say
something, but her voice had long made a run for it.
Overdrafting
her last reserves of courage, she raised her cold hand and tapped him on the
shoulder.

“Can
I help you?”

The
man who looked like Felix from behind must have thought Umayma was out of her
mind when she dashed out of the supermarket, without explaining why she had
tried to get his attention. Outside the supermarket, Umayma waited for another
thirty minutes before she decided it was time to go. Her nerves gave way to
disappointment, and ultimately self-immolation. 
What an idiot. How
could I even think for a second he would accept to come? I humiliated him and
he’s giving me a taste of my own medicine. Bravo, Umayma.

With
a boulder pressing down on her chest and a sunken head, Umayma dragged herself
home in defeat. On the way back she stopped by Felix’s house and found the gift
and the note she had left him were no longer there. Another stab to her already
shredded heart. Felix had received her message but had chosen to ignore it.

Later
that night when
Kamal
came for her, she did not
fantasize about Felix. As she lay there being hammered by him, she felt
nothing. The man she needed was ignoring her. And the man she loathed was
inside her.

§

For
many weeks after being crushed at the supermarket, Umayma tried to exorcise
Felix out of her soul but to little avail. Exactly eight months after he had
rescued her from rape and possibly death, Felix was still the first and last
thing Umayma thought of when she woke up and before she went to sleep. Her raw
feelings for this man were like nothing she had ever experienced.

Kamal
had pushed her to hate her life and consider ending
it. But Felix, even in absence, had taught her to do the exact opposite.
To love and lust unconditionally.
And what a ridiculous
notion that was.
 I have fallen madly in love with a man I’d barely met
and whom I know nothing about.

§

Umayma
woke up one night gasping and screaming in her sleep. In her nightmare
Kamal
had discovered her in bed making love to Felix and
was suffocating her with a pillow. She begged for mercy, but there wasn’t an
ounce of humanity in
Kamal’s
glassy eyes. And Felix
was there, just standing. Not protecting her or trying to intervene as he had
once done. Behaving like any other man.

When
her breathing had slowed down, she got out of bed frantically and wrote a long
and impassioned letter to Felix. She undid the latches shuttering her heart and
allowed everything inside to gush out for the man she was now certain was all
she ever wanted in this world.

The
next morning she delivered the letter to Felix’s house on the way back from
dropping Layal to school. She loitered around the property for a little longer
than
necessary,
hoping to run into him, but the house
was beginning to look abandoned.

§

Ten
days elapsed and Felix had not taken any action to suggest he had received her
letter or that it meant anything to him. On her way back from the supermarket
one day, she noticed an unfamiliar car under Felix’s carport. It looked like
one of those expensive German machines driven by the rich oligarchs back in
Damascus. Felix had an old-looking red car with Aston Martin written on it.

At
the corner of her eye, movement inside the house caused her to instinctively
duck for cover behind the mail box. She zeroed in on the scene inside. Umayma
had little spatial recollection of the layout of Felix’s house. The room she
was spying on was probably not the main living area where she had come around
after Felix had rescued her. Praying whoever was inside would be
Felix,
Umayma telescoped her neck sideways to take a closer
look. At first she could only make out a figure of a person at the far end of
the room. Perhaps cleaning or tidying. But when the figure came closer to the
window, Umayma could see who it was. Not Felix. Not even a man. But a stunning brunette
dressed like the socialite who had stepped out of a lifestyle magazine, striding
with confidence, behaving like the queen of this castle.

§

For
a few weeks later, Umayma resorted to every last trick she had yet to try to
get Felix out of her system. But nothing worked. Even after seeing this other
woman who clearly belonged to Felix far more than she
did,
the temperature of
Umayma’s
passion for her neighbor
had not dropped by even the slightest degree. It may have even been enhanced.

There
were times when she was able to temporarily suspend her obsession with Felix.
When she escaped with Layal into a fanciful world of childhood
innocence and dreams.
Or when other pressing thoughts
were at hand.
Like her determination to rid herself of
Kamal’s
scorpion clutch on her throat. The ability to dream
of a future with even the faintest hope she would be free of
Kamal
had enabled Umayma to rebel against the preordained
outcomes her husband had laid out for her—to stay a slave or to return to hell.
Umayma had stumbled upon a third fate. It was
Kamal
who needed to disappear.

Umayma
couldn’t slaughter a chicken, let alone murder a human being.
Even someone as despicable as
Kamal
.
Not to mention she lacked the resources to do it in a clandestine way to avoid
getting caught. But she could no longer ignore the huge number of skeletons in
Kamal’s
oversized closet. He was skirting with dangerous
men and engaging in questionable activities. Surely he was breaking some kind
of law and if Umayma could bring that to the attention of the authorities, it
could be all she had to do to break out from under his domination. She had
passed the posters near the bus stations that prompted citizens to report
suspicious activities:
It's probably nothing, but if you see or hear
something that could be terrorist-related, trust your instincts and call the
confidential anti-terrorist hotline. Our specially trained officers will take
it from there.
0800 789 321.
Your call could save
lives.

The
problem was always going to be
Kamal’s
prudence. Men
like him don’t get to where they are in life by leaving loose ends lying around
for others to exploit.

Paying
attention however was one of
Umayma’s
strong suits.
Most people get distracted by the finer details of day-to-day life. From a
young age Umayma came to understand that sometimes the difference between
getting what you seek in life and falling short comes down to recalling the
most trivial details. Just like the village idiot who sweeps it all at a quiz
show, outwitting the other smart contestants. Her memory was photographic and
her internal storage of everything and anything she came across was boundless.
When she had first arrived to London, Umayma had to visit the Syrian embassy to
request some paperwork required for her residency. It was on number eight
Belgrave
Square.

One
afternoon before one of his infamous dinners with the war council,
Kamal
was busy working in his study when she served him
sugary mint tea and a small plate of crumbly, buttery 
ghraybe
 cookies
she had baked. At the corner of her eyes, she glimpsed him absorbed in a
printed map and the internal schematic of a building. On the top of the
schematic, she read,
Number Eight,
Belgrave
Square
.
Kamal
was charting different marks like an architect
refining his design. But he wasn’t building or creating anything.

It
didn’t take Umayma much speculation to understand what he was up to. For a
while now she’d been certain
Kamal
and his friends
were bankrolling terror attacks in Syria. They had the means and the depravity
of spirit to engage in such activities. But this was different. 
Kamal
and his accomplices were plotting to bomb
the Syrian embassy in London.
 Her heart raced wildly.
Trust your
instincts
, the police poster had said. This was starting to taste like a
chance of a lifetime had fallen from the sky. That one loose end she was
looking for.

“We
ran out of mango juice,” she stated casually.

Kamal
ignored her at first and continued working on his map
and schematic with autistic focus.

She
repeated the statement again, and this time he looked up.

“Sheikh
Hamza
likes to have it with dinner, you know that,”
he snapped back.
Hamza
was the oldest man in the
group, and
Kamal
seemed to revere him.

“Why
didn’t you buy some yesterday when you went shopping?”

“You
only told me they were coming for dinner this morning. No one else in the house
drinks it when I buy it. We end up throwing it.”

There
was a short silence as
Kamal
processed this
information. “Have you taken care of dinner?”

“Yes.
Everything is set. I just need to fry the 
kebbeh
 and
dress the 
tabouleh
 when the guests
arrive so they’re served fresh.”

“Then
go. Go to the supermarket and buy the mango juice quickly,” he ordered.

Umayma
smiled on the inside. She grabbed her purse and mobile phone, replaced her
house slippers with gym shoes and covered her hair with a powder blue scarf.
Surreptitiously, she took out the cartons of mango juice she had hidden, put
them in a shopping bag, and dashed out of the house before
Kamal
could see her. She had less than forty five minutes to get the job done.

The
mobile phone shop was right across from the supermarket. It was a tiny
operation serviced by one or two people. Usually young Pakistani or Indian men
who were cordial and seemed to do the job well.

Umayma came here every fortnight
to top-up her credit.
Kamal
had only allowed her a locked-down,
limited services phone, mainly to keep tabs on her and Layal. It was the sort
of plan an overprotective parent would only sanction for their child. She
couldn’t make any outgoing calls except to a predefined list of numbers like
Kamal’s
, his parents, the house phone, and
Layal’s
school and pediatrician. And she certainly couldn’t
dial overseas.

She took out her phone from her
purse and smiled at the young man behind the counter. He had a pencil thin
goatee and thick black hair slicked with gel.

“May
I help you?”

“My
daughter’s school is holding a concert in a few days. I wanted to know if my
phone can record the sound.”