Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

  “The King doesn’t trust his relatives?”

  “Recent history,” Carla said, “gives him no reason to.”

  “I don’t think I really knew this.”

  “Nobody knows till they come here,” Daphne said.

  Carla looked up. “I should suppose the State Department knows. And the British Foreign Office. It’s not that these things are secret. It’s that we don’t talk about them.”

  “Why don’t we?” Frances said. “You mean really, it’s not stable here, it’s not safe? There are far worse things happening than people being raped in the souk?”

  There was a silence. The guests looked down at their plates, as if slightly ashamed of themselves; as if they had egged someone on to tell a piece of scandal, and knew they had gone too far.

  “Well, we know it won’t last forever, don’t we?” Eric Parsons said at last; in his sane, reasonable, soothing tone, which Andrew had already learned to distrust. “We’re just here to do our jobs, make our pile, and get out. All we hope is that it will last our time.”

  “I’ll get some more coffee.” As she passed her husband, Frances rested her hand for a moment on his shoulder. She felt slightly queasy. As she left the room Jeff’s voice floated after her.

  “Of course, you know what the Al Saud do with their dissidents, don’t you? Take them up in planes over the Empty Quarter, handcuff them, and drop them out without a parachute.”

  “Yes, I heard that,” Carla was saying. “But the handcuffs seem superfluous.”

  This time it was Marion who followed her. She was clearly bored with the politics; she looked sleepy, and fractious, as if she were one of her own children. “Lovely dinner, Fran,” she said. She stood by the sink, cooling her bare feet on the lino tiles, and picking at the strawberry tart, of which more than half remained.

  “Here.” Frances cut her a slice. “Eat it while he’s not looking.”

  “He does go on,” Marion said. “About my weight. Have you got any cream left?” She licked her fingers. “By the way, I meant to ask you, what are we going to do about Christmas?”

  “Oh, not Christmas,” Frances groaned. “What happens at Christmas? Are we allowed to have it?”

  “The men get a day off. Unofficial, of course. We could get together at our compound and have Christmas dinner. You can come in the morning and help me cook. Carla and Rickie might like to come. It’s always so sad at Christmas, when people haven’t got children.”

  “I’m sure we’ll feel better for sharing yours.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean you, Fran.” Marion’s mouth was full of strawberries. “I expect you’ll have some, won’t you? When you get round to it. Only Carla, she’s so libby, know what I mean? It’s probably cos she’s not very attractive.”

  “You ought to put something on those bites,” Frances said.

  “Oh, do they show?” Marion sucked her spoon. She wasn’t going to bother; she felt glamorous, anyway, and that was half the battle.

  “So is it all right then? Will you come?”

  “Will Jeff be there?”

  “Oh, I always have Jeff, at Christmas.”

  “Well, just promise me, will you, that if he starts talking about dirty Ay-rabs, and Pakis, and all that, you’ll get up with me and walk out. Because I can’t stand it.”

  “He is a bit of a racialist,” Marion said fondly.

  “Promise?”

  “Okay,” Marion said vaguely. “I’ll take that coffee through, shall I?”

  Andrew had managed to move them all from the table to the armchairs, which Frances had arranged earlier into a rough circle. The candles had burned out. Jeff obtained from Andrew a private bottle of red wine, which he put on the floor by his chair. “Not bad stuff this,” he said. “You’ve got the knack.” Rickie Zussman occupied the end of a sofa, his face abstracted and his eyes on the far wall; his wife’s hand rested loosely in his own. Neither of the Americans took further part in the conversation, but Eric and Jeff bored on for a while, about immigrants in the UK. “Let’s face it,” Jeff said. “They’ve got different customs. They’ve got different values. They’ve got a different way of life.”

  “Incidentally,” Russel said, “do you ever catch a glimpse of the people in the empty flat?”

  “The dark lady,” Daphne said.

  Jeff chortled. “Who knows what’s under the veil?”

  “No, we’ve never seen anybody,” Andrew said. “Frances thought she heard footsteps once. But she wasn’t sure.”

  “The Deputy Minister’s nephew, isn’t it?” Marion said.

  “Brother, I thought.” Andrew turned to Parsons. “Eric, didn’t you tell me his brother.”

  “Did I? Must be then.”

  “I thought it was the nephew,” Jeff said. “Greasy character. Looks the type. You’d know him if you saw him, Andrew, he hangs around the Ministry.”

  Andrew smiled. “Don’t think I would, you know, Jeff old boy. All these colored chappies in white frocks look the same to me, don’t you know? Tea towels on their heads. Filthy foreign food. Eat goats, you know. Dreadful types. All right with that bottle down there, are you? Get you another?”

  Surely they would go home soon. Frances closed her eyes. She saw skeletons, neat, bleached, reticulated, on the vast desert floor. Andrew touched her. She jumped. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said.

  “You were.”

  It was two o’clock when everyone left. Andrew waved a hand at them as he opened the gate, meaning hush, keep the noise down. The roads were empty, the night air was mild. They stood for a moment in the shadow of the wall, their arms around each other, then reentered Dunroamin, locking the doors behind them. Inside, a procession of cockroaches was wending its way along the hall toward the kitchen bin. Andrew went for the spray. “I’ll sweep them up in the morning,” he said; and then, violently, brought down his foot on the largest of them, squashing it into the tiles.

  “Oh, Christ,” Frances said. The mess was horrifying; quite disproportionate. Blood, debris, detached legs. A slaughterhouse.

  “The others will eat it,” Andrew said.

  “I’ll have to rinse all the plates off. There’re ants, as well.”

  Andrew took her shoulder, pulled her toward him, ran a hand over her breast. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Come to bed.”

  “You can’t do it,” she said. “You’re too drunk.”

  “I can try. Or do you hate all men tonight, is that it? I don’t think I’d blame you.”

  Over his shoulder she saw the pans piled up in the sink, the tray of sticky glasses, the saucer overflowing with Russel’s cigarette butts, and the stained napkins in a heap on the drain board. She laid her head against his chest. “No,” she said. “You’re all right.”

  Rabi al-thani

  Frances Shore’s Diary: 1 Rabi al-thani

  Sometimes I wake up saying, I hope nobody crosses me today.

  Sometimes the air seems too thick to breathe.

  Since the dinner party life has just gone on. I cook, and we shop. We sleep late at weekends, watch a film. When I am in a good mood I think of the money mounting up in the bank. Now the shops are full of “seasonal trees.” The Embassies are holding carol services, which they call “Family Welfare Meetings.” The word “Christmas” is not to be mentioned, but nobody can impede the progress of goodwill to all men.

  Andrew accuses me of lacking tact. He says that it seems to him that I ask too many questions, and don’t I remember that when we came to Dunroamin we were told to be careful? He says I shouldn’t be allowed out into the hall without a UN peacekeeping force.

  My neighbors say women are not veiled because they are despised, but because they are revered. It is out of self-respect that they cover their faces and bodies, and out of respect for them that men do not look. At first this is plausible—but it bothers me. Something is wrong. I know what it is. I just don’t believe it.

  Everything is fine, for about two weeks at a time. But then some word, some event, some tri
vial incident, will trigger off a screaming rage. I don’t scream, of course, but sometimes I cry a little, in private, knowing that if I could cry properly, yell and bawl and shed tears, I wouldn’t wake up in the mornings with such a leaden weight inside my head. I would like to tear the roof off, and let some light into the flat. I would like to run down the street, hitting people. Run amok. I would like to stride up to the next veiled woman I see and tear the black cloth from her face, and rip it up before her eyes.

  I know that would be wrong. But I would like to do it.

  Andrew says the leaden feeling is sinus trouble. He says you get it from living with air-conditioning.

  CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM

  FROM: Director, Turadup, William and Schaper, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

  TO: All expatriate staff

  DATE: 2 Rabi al-thani / 24 December

  We have received extremely strong hints, from our valued and most reliable contacts, that the police will be out in force over the “Festive Season,” that Breathalyzer equipment has been issued, and that random roadblocks and on-the-spot checks are to be expected. Everything indicates a blitz aimed at putting a damper on expatriate festivities therefore PLEASE remember that in the event of your being picked up under the influence there is very little that Turadup can do for you.

  May I wish you all the compliments of the Season, and a happy and prosperous New Year

  When Frances went across the hall, and rang Yasmin’s doorbell, a huge yellow sari opened the door; and Raji’s mother looked down at her, in silence. She did not speak any English, or if she did, she didn’t speak it now; and she folded her arms across her matron’s bosom, seeming to squash it into overlapping layers and yellow folds. Her face was jowly, her eyes direct; her body was slow, deliberate, pachydermatous; soon she might bellow. There was a fringe of hair on her upper lip; and her arms were bare to the elbow, as if for combat.

  “I’ll call later,” Frances said.

  But later there was a banging at the door, and Yasmin hurtled in, her pointed nose reddened at the tip, a square of lace handkerchief scrunched in her hand. “Oh, she will kill me, she will kill me,” she said. “She has called thirty people for dinner tomorrow night. She finds fault with everything, everything. She says Selim is stunted.”

  “He looks all right to me,” Frances said.

  “She says I am not feeding him. She is holding his nose and forcing things down his throat. Tell me, Frances, please find out from one of your friends—there must be some drug I can give him, to make him grow?”

  “That doesn’t sound a good idea.”

  “She watches me every minute. And Shams is sulking because she is turned out of her room.”

  “Where’s she sleeping then?”

  “Well of course, on the dining room floor.”

  “But your guests don’t go till three, these mornings.”

  Yasmin shrugged, crossly. “It is me who is suffering, not Shams, I can tell you. Everything in my life is wrong for that woman. Everything I do.”

  “How long’s she staying?”

  “How can I know? Raji says, it is my mother, as long as she likes. Really, Frances, she is blind to him. Blind to his faults—”

  “Let’s hope the singing doesn’t keep her awake at night.”

  Yasmin looked at her, directly, then brought her palms together, secreting the handkerchief between them. She dropped her eyes. “I am interrupting you,” she said. “I had forgotten it was Christmas Eve.”

  “Send Shams across tomorrow night, and I’ll give her some pudding for you.”

  At the door, Yasmin said quietly, her eyes on the floor, “Frances, I do not see why I should have to live with shame.”

  “But they didn’t, did they?” Jeff Pollard said. “They couldn’t, could they? Spoil our Christmas.”

  It was the festive day now, 3 Rabi al-thani. Marion sat slumped at the other end of the table. “I miss the Queen,” she said.

  Carla looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Her speech. She makes a speech.” Marion sighed heavily. “Somebody ought to watch those kids in the pool.”

  Somebody. But not me. Marion rubbed her forehead with a dazed, sweaty, gravy-stained hand. “There’s a huge lot of everything left.”

  “Give it to the gatekeeper,” Russel said, lolling back in his chair. “He can have his pals round.”

  “Will he want cold sprouts?” Frances asked.

  “He wants anything.”

  “Onions and rice, that’s what he eats,” Marion said. “He’s saving up to go back to India.”

  It was four in the afternoon. The children had opened their presents, and were outside trying to drown each other. Christmas was the same everywhere, Marion thought. But hot, it was so hot here, and the drink was so poisonous and giddying. And she had worked so hard, what with this year’s mysterious tinsel shortage, and the dearth of good potatoes for roasting. Dust lay already on the spines of the plastic tree; before I pack it away, she thought vaguely, I could just put it under the shower.

  “At Ramadhan,” Jeff said, “they make life a misery for us. They make sure we take account of their festivals.”

  Frances said, hopelessly, “It’s their country.”

  “I can’t understand you,” Jeff said. He propped his elbow on the table, and fingered his Credit Suisse token; a purple streamer half detached itself from the ceiling, and swung gently over his head. “I can’t make you out. First you attack these people, then you defend them.”

  “Look, I don’t have any theories. I just go issue by issue. I just speak as I find.”

  “As long,” Jeff said, “as you don’t take them seriously. As long as you remember that, basically, you’re dealing with nignogs.”

  Frances rose from her place, dabbing her mouth with her napkin and taking off her paper hat. “Excuse me,” she said. She was not going to make a scene, but she meant to keep her promise. She dropped her napkin on her chair and looked across the table at Marion. Marion looked back at her, stupidly. Frances walked out of the room. She stood in the hall, trying not to listen to the conversation, and wondering if Marion would follow her. No one came; neither Marion to join her protest, nor Jeff to apologize, nor even her husband, to persuade her back to the table and give her a chance to state her objections.

  After a few minutes, she realized that no one was ever going to come. They didn’t know she had walked out in protest. They just thought she had gone to the lavatory. She went back in and sat down at the table, and put her paper hat back on.

  Half an hour later, when the women were clearing up, the Parsons arrived. They were doing a round of the Turadup parties; they were anxious to assuage the uncaring impression of Eric’s very necessary circular. So that he himself could drink, Eric had requisitioned Hasan for the day. “Hello there, everybody, compliments of the season,” Eric called, walking in through the open door; his footprints left dust upon the carpet. Hasan sat outside, his car door wedged open, his sandaled feet in the dust; speaking a pidgin Arabic with the gatekeeper, and flicking his fingers at passing flies.

  “Well?” Russel demanded. “Been stopped, have you?”

  “There was a roadblock on King Khalid Street.”

  “Oh yes, Hasan get Breathalyzed?”

  “Actually they were just asking for papers. Just took a look at us and waved us through.”

  Russel grunted. “Looking for somebody then, aren’t they? Not interested in booze. I don’t know why you’re getting your knickers in a twist, Eric. Jesus, when I think back … those Wine Festivals we used to have, competitions, you know … had them at somebody’s house, Andrew, everything done properly, evening dress … the Ambassador used to come. I remember the Arnotts showing up at one, when the Saudis let them out on bail.” “Yes,” Eric Parsons said, a little more sharply than usual. “But those days are over.”

  Daphne spread herself on the sofa, gracious in her silk suit; she dissected a mince pie with a pastry fork, peering closely at every mor
sel she ate. “Did you make these, Frances dear?” she inquired. To Marion, walking around with stacks of dirty plates, she said, “Don’t you have a dishwasher?”

  The Shores walked home. It was the best time to be out: a sky of gold and dusty pink, blossoming lights in the evening streets, and the crackle of the mosque’s loudspeakers, the muezzin’s amplified wail. At weekends, cars jostle nose to tail on the Corniche, half the city turns out to see the sunset; which sometimes occurs with astonishing speed. Inland dark falls more quickly still, the sun dropping behind concrete towers. Night closes in on the city, as if night were its natural milieu.

  “Do you remember the garden?” Frances said. Andrew walked along the pavement’s high edge, as if to demonstrate that he was sober; she walked in the road, a foot below him, keeping close to his side. “Do you remember, when we were shopping one night, I pointed it out to you?”

  “Can’t say I do. Where was that then?”

  She thought about it. “I’m not sure. I’d lost my bearings.”

  “That’s not like you.”

  “It was a while ago.” They turned into Al-Suror Street. White figures, sharp in the gloom, hurried toward the mosque. “But you must remember, there was a gate, and a light inside, and you could see a lawn. I’ve been wishing we could go past it again.”

  “What for?”

  “I’d just like to see it.”

  He was prepared to gratify her; take her at once, if she liked. But “Could be difficult to find,” he said. “Haven’t we passed it since?”

  “We don’t seem to have.”

  “Perhaps we were going round a diversion, or something. Road works. Or maybe they’ve just changed the one-way system. They’re always doing that.”

  Inside the gate of the Ministry of Pilgrimages’ office, a nightwatchman squatted in a kind of lean-to; lamplight splashed across his dhoti, and showed his downcast face, his hands hanging loose between his knees. Cats squalled, invisible, behind a wall.