Minaret: A Novel Page 14

  We leapt up, scurrying, guilty. Yes, guilty. And it was a relief that Ameen headed straight to the sitting room, the familiar on and off blare of the TV as he searched the channels for the news. Anwar and I thought the same thing: `A coup in Sudan, the government has fallen.' Another coup. Musical chairs, the carpet pulled out from underneath someone else's feet. Anwar dashed out of the room. We could go back now, I thought, and pick up our lives again. I could go back to the university, he a student again, Anwar would get his job back. We would get married.

  I walked to the bathroom, conscious of every step, a little dazed, like I had been feverish for a long time and now was cool. I walked slowly as if I were fragile. My right hand was too weak to flush the toilet or turn the tap - I needed both hands. My face in the mirror looked as if nothing had happened. My hair was dishevelled as if I had been asleep. I smoothed it down with water, cleared my throat. Would my voice sound normal? 'Yellow suits me,' I thought and a memory came of another bathroom mirror, of me admiring myself while Baba packed and Mama fussed over him. Admiring myself in my yellow pyjamas, while Baba left the house for the last time. I should have been with him instead. When I vomited into the basin, there were bits of tomato like flecks of blood.

  The room looked wrong, messy, student-like and smelled of Anwar's cigarettes. It should not he like this. It should be a room in the best hotel in Khartoum, my wedding dress hanging in the cupboard, the sheets white and crisp. A view of the Nile and henna on my hands. I would slip my arms through the sleeves of a new dressing gown that matched my nightdress. Mama had bought Ille that set from Selfridges, peach-coloured, expensive. And she would have told the sales girl that her daughter was getting married and they would have smiled the smile they save for foreigners with money. I should not be wearing my ordinary jeans and yellow T-shirt. My mother should be a phone call away, anxious, waiting to ask, Are von all right?'

  Anwar came into the room, smiling, shaking his head, and tapping his finger to his forehead. `Ameen is mad. He's excited and the news has nothing to do with Sudan.'

  `What happened?'

  `Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.'

  So the Khartoum government hadn't fallen and we were not going hack.

  `Why are you so glum? Are you all right?' He was trying to be kind but he was thinking of the news. I said, `I have to go home, I'm not in the mood for Ameen.' He understood and did not urge me to stay. I walked down Gloucester Road and thought that whatever happened to me, whatever happened in the world, London remained the same, constant; continuous underground trains, the newsagents selling Cadbury's chocolates, the hurried footsteps of people leaving work. That was why we were here: governments fell and coups were staged and that was why we were here. For the first time in my life, I disliked London and envied the English, so unperturbed and grounded, never displaced, never confused. For the first time, I was conscious of my shitty-coloured skin next to their placid paleness. What was wrong with me today? I had a warm bath when I got home. I heated up a tin of soup. My dislike of London went away and left me feeling ill.

  He said, `I love you more than before.' I wasn't sure whether I loved him more or less or just the same. I belonged to him more now, he knew me now more that anyone else and more than my family even knew me. It was strange that someone could come close to me like that. His voice became distant as I worked out when my next period was due. Who would care if I became pregnant, who would be scandalized? Aunty Eva, Anwar's flatmates. Omar would never know unless I wrote to him. Uncle Saleh was across the world. A few years hack, getting pregnant would have shocked Khartoum society, given nay father a heart attack, dealt a blow to my mother's marriage, and mild, modern Omar, instead of heating me, would have called me a slut. And now nothing, no one. This empty space was called freedom.

  `Talk to me, Najwa, don't daydream.' imagine telling Anwar about a peach satin nightdress, clothes bought specially for a honeymoon. He said the soreness would go away. He said the guilt would go away. `Like every other Arab girl,' he said, `you've been brainwashed about the importance of virginity.'

  He was right about the soreness but the guilt didn't go away. His stories of prospective Sudanese brides paying for operations to restore their virginity depressed me. He had a friend, a doctor, he said, who was doing quite well performing illegal abortions on unmarried girls. You would think them demure,' he said, `covering their hair and acting coy, but all that is hypocrisy, social pressure. Do you remember the girls who went missing whose photos were shown on TV? They weren't lost, these girls, they weren't missing - they were killed by their brothers or fathers then thrown in the Nile.'

  He went on as if I were a child who needed to be taught the facts of life, as if I lived in a happy, innocent world and needed shaking up. `Arab society is hypocritical,' he would say, `with double standards for men and women.' I remembered how Omar was allowed to smoke and drink beer and I was not. The seedy parties he went to without taking me. I had taken these things for granted, not questioned them. Anwar told me that most of the guys in university used to visit brothels. Then they would heat up their sister if they so much as saw her talking to a boy.

  `Did you go to a brothel?' I asked him and knew he would say yes.

  `There was a girl there who became attached to me.' He laughed a little. She was an Ethiopian refugee as so many of them were. He seemed surprised that a young prostitute would have feelings for him. It annoyed me that he was talking about her as if she were a pet.

  `Why shouldn't she love you? You were probably nice to her.'

  He laughed and said, `Are you jealous, Najwa?' I threw a pillow at him and he ducked.

  He tried a different line of argument. He talked about the West, about the magazines I read - Cosmo and Marie Claire. `Tell me,' he said, `how many twenty-five-year-old girls in London are virgins?' That was when I laughed and felt a little better. It became a game for us, every time we were out, looking at girls. `Is she? Isn't she?' He was right, I was in the majority now, I was a true Londoner now. I could take a quiz in a magazine: `How Hot is Your Love life?' or `Rate Him as a Lover!' I could circle the answers based on experience not on imagination. `I know you're Westernized, I know you're modern,' he said, `that's what I like about you - your independence.'

  But I would have preferred the breathlessness of a wedding, its glow of approval, not his room smelling of cigarettes, the sheets he rarely changed, not his flatmates' laughter, the knowing way they now looked at me. At times there would he a moment of clarity, a moment with no sound, no touch and I would wonder, staring at a strand of my hair clinging to his pillow, what I was doing, how had I gone that far? Did Omar wake up to see prison walls and prison sheets and did he wonder for a second what he was doing?

  Anwar said, You can't still he feeling guilty, you're enjoying yourself too much.' He laughed and said, if your conscience was troubling you, you wouldn't be so eager now.' So I kept my thoughts to myself. They churned in my head, my active, uneducated mind; my kind of loneliness. You have become quiet,' he said, 'you have become drearily.' I dreamed of nothing, no happy dreams and no sad dreams. I lay in my bed awake, listening to the sounds of the street; the windows wide open because of the heat. I remembered things I had left behind in Khartoum: a pair of beige sandals, a poster of Bonet' NI, my schoolbooks and photos. Where were these things now - in whose hands had they fallen? Our house was looted. It was looted for the television sets, the video recorders, the silver, freezers, cars, hi-fi system and cameras. Even the air conditioners were stripped from the walls, the fans unhooked from the ceilings. It was looted because my father was a symbol, even more than the President had been, of an order that was being usurped. His letter opener made of ivory; my mother's china and crystal glasses - did they smash in the chaos or were they delicately taken away? I would never know. I should forget, let go. Yet I could still feel a tattered Enid Blyton book in my hand, smell the chlorine clinging to my swimsuit, a copy of Cosmopolitan borrowed front Randa and never returned.

 
I phoned her up in Edinburgh to apologize for the magazine. She laughed. `I can't believe it! It's been five years - how can you remember it?'

  `There's a novel too - I never got round to returning it,' I said. One by Danielle Steele.'

  `Ach, I don't read her any more. I've moved on.' There was a laugh in her voice. It made me feel like I was old and pedantic.

  I could lie in bed all day. A phone call to Aunty Eva to say I was not feeling well, then hack to bed to stare at the ceiling, and I would look at my watch and, strangely enough, an hour had passed just like that, two hours, three. I liked it when I had my period and Anwar kept away from me. The guilt lost its edge then. I liked it that he was not too keen on us meeting in my flat. The aura of my parents weighed on me. Aunty Eva did a clear out and gave me piles of magazines. I cut out the pictures of princesses in exile: daughters of the Shah, daughters of the late King of Egypt, the descendants of the Ottoman Sultan. They were all floating in Europe knowing they were royal, but it didn't matter, it didn't matter any more. Muslim countries had rejected the grandeur of kings and wanted revolutions instead. After his fall, the daughter of the Emperor Haile Selassie was imprisoned for years in a small room. `Well, I know for sure whose side I'm on,' Anwar would say, `the side of the people.' He would be happy if Britain became a republic and I would be sad. Uncle Nabeel bought the new biography of Prince Charles and when he finished with it, I read it from cover to cover. `You waste your time,' Anwar said but the books he gave me to read always disturbed me.

  Out of the blue, Wafaa phoned me. But it was not really out of the blue. She had been phoning once every two or three months, saying the usual things, come with me to the mosque, cone to a Ladies' Eid Party, so have you started to pray like you promised you would? This time her voice seemed to come from another planet. `So, Najwa, have you started to pray?' I nearly laughed out loud. I was further away than she thought; I was out of it now. She had no idea. If my heart had been soft, I would have burst into tears and asked her how to repent. But my heart was not soft. I saw Wafaa through Anwar's eyes; a backward fundamentalist, someone to look down on. My voice was cold when I answered her questions, yes, no, sorry I'm busy, got to go. Unless she was completely thick skinned, she would never phone nee again. Yes, I wanted to pray in the same way that I wanted to sprout wings and fly. There was no point in yearning, was there? No point in stretching out. In my own way, in my own style, I was sliding. First my brother, and now it was my turn to come down in the world.

  Part Four

  2003-4

  Twenty-four

  am shy when speaking in front of a large gathering. There must he more than a hundred ladies at this Lid party. They chat and laugh and their children squeal and run about. Presumably, when I start reading the prayer, they will quieten down. Mal tugs at my dress. Her mother had refused to let me take the day off and now she refuses to let any of my friends hold her. She stays close by nay side, suspicious, unused to being in a crowded place. Around us the mood is silky, tousled, non-linear; there is tinkling laughter, colours, that mixture of sensitivity and waywardness which the absence of men highlights. My voice sounds strange in the microphone. Still the children run around, a baby is wailing. I only agreed to do this because Um Waleed nagged me. She said it was only right that different sisters should get a chance to participate. 'It's only a short prayer,' she insisted. `You're so well liked, everyone will enjoy seeing you as part of the programme.' I remind myself that I must not mumble. It gets easier as I go along. `My Lord, we have believed in Your Messenger Muhammad without seeing him, please don't deprive us of seeing him in the Hereafter.' Everyone murmurs, `Peace be upon him.' I hold up the paper closer to any face, my sight is not what it used to be and I am too vain to wear glasses. `My Lord, You are the One who created us, You are the One who guides us, You are the One who feeds us and when we fall III You are the One who cures us. My Lord forgive us our sins . . .' My voice breaks, the words blur. Yet I am not sad, this is a happy occasion and I am happy that I belong here, that I am no longer outside, no longer defiant. One more line to go. `My Lord give us from your Mercy and blessing so that we can love what You love and so that we can love all those actions and words that bring us closer to You.'

  I put the microphone down on the table and scoop Mai up in my arms. On the way to my seat I greet those of my friends I hadn't seen earlier, the few I hadn't met yesterday at the Eid prayer. We are pleased to see each other without our hijabs and all dressed up for the party, delighted by the rare sight of each other's hair, the skin on our necks, the way make-up brightens a face. We look at each and smile in surprise. It is not only the party clothes; some of us are transformed without our hijabs. For a split second I cannot connect the tight trouser suit, the geometrically cut blonde hair, the perfectly applied make-up with the young woman who is usually covered in sombre black, pushing her hyperactive toddler in a pushchair. Today she is as glamorous as a guest on a television talk show. She smiles at me and now I know another side of her, that she is chic and sharp. Even her nails are painted today. It is time for Um Waleed to talk. She talks about how Ramadan was special and now it is over. Throughout Ramadan, Allah had been decorating Paradise for those who were fasting. `Imagine,' she says, moving her hands, `it's just as if you are expecting guests and you get everything nice and ready for them.' Without her hijab, in a tight crimson party dress, her hair tinted, her face brimming with make-up, she looks so Arab, so unsubtle that I think this is how she is, her secret self. She is not by nature a puritan, not by nature reserved or austere. It is only faith that makes her a Qur'an teacher with hardly any pay, pleading with us to learn, to change. It is not her personality that makes her cover her soft ample body in a huge abava. The alarmed look in her eyes is not really alarm - it is her own excitement over life.

  She speaks about Eid and how the angels are handing out gifts to us. Then she tells us to try and keep up all the high standards of Ramadan, not to slack off like we usually do. The extra prayers, the extra charity, the daily reading of the Qur'an, not back-biting, not gossiping, not envying, not lying - we should make the intention of keeping them up throughout the year. 'And don't forget the voluntary fast of six days of Shawaal. If you can't do six, do five, four. Even fasting one day is better than nothing.' Her words will stay with me - they always do. Strange that she is not my friend, I can't confide in her and when we are alone the conversation hardly flows. Our natures are not harmonious; we orbit different paths. One day she will move on and forget me yet, when she speaks about Allah, when she says, He is talking to us, aren't we lucky? We can open the Qur'an and He is talking directly to us,' there is a breakthrough in my understanding, a learning fresh as lightning. When she says, 'Ya hahibi, ya Rasul Allah', I feel I love the Prophet as much as she does.

  In the lull between Um Waleed's talk and the next item on the programme, there are more hellos, memories of sisters who were with us in past Eld parties but who have now moved away. There are more children in new clothes to kiss and admire, the surprise - I almost squeal - of seeing a friend for the first time without her hijab. This one is all peaches and cream, this one is like a model, this one is mumsy with or without her hijab, this one in her smart jacket looks like she wants to chair a board meeting. This one with the glasses and unruly hair looks like a student and she is one, but this one looks like a belly dancer and she is definitely not. She is the staid wife of a lucky doctor with four daughters kept well under control. This one looks like a tomboy. I can imagine her, when she was young, playing football with her brothers; now she's a nursery teacher. This one looks Indian, as if the hijab had made me forget she was Indian and now she is reminding me - in the sari with her flowing hair and jewellery, she is relaxed, traditional. And the one who looks like a model confesses to me in a whisper, don't tell anyone else, Najwa, please, but she was actually Miss Djibouti long ago, before coming to Britain, before having children and covering her hair with a scarf.

  I am told: You look like a gypsy,' and I laug
h. It must be my earrings and curly hair, the skirt of my dress. Or perhaps I look intriguing, with secrets I don't want to share. This is not a fancy-dress party. But it is as if the hijab is a uniform, the official, outdoor version of us. Without it, our nature is exposed.

  Children sing as part of the programme. There is a short play, awkward and badly produced but it still pulls a few laughs. Then Shahinaz dances. She has been practising for weeks - she wanted to get it right, to make it perfect. I hold Mai up so that she can see better. `Look at Aunty, doesn't she look like a princess?' A drumbeat and I watch her feet, her ankle bracelet, the way she moves her hands. None of us can take our eyes off her. Only baby Ahmed is oblivious, chubby and gorgeous in a new sailor suit complete with a hat. When his grandmother brings him over and they sit next to me, I take him from her and hug him. I kiss his smooth cheeks and dimpled hands. Not all babies inspire in me the feelings he does. I whisper in his ears, Are you going to be as good at dancing as your mummy, are you?' He laughs and I look up at Shahinaz, delicate and skilled - it is as if we are watching a proper performance, a film. I catch her eldest daughter watching her, fascinated, as if she is finding it hard to believe that this moving vision is her mum.

  In comparison, when we Arabs dance it is all laughter and chaos, nothing ordered, nothing practised. But even Shahinaz finds it hard to copy us, though I know that she has often practised at home. I am warm from the dancing. It makes me laugh but it distresses Mai to see me different. I hold her in my lap until it is time to eat.

  While we balance paper plates and children, Shahinaz tells me that she has applied as a mature student to do a degree in social work. I congratulate her and she talks about next year, how her mother-in-law will look after the children, how busy she'll be. You haven't been to my house this Eid,' she says and invites me to go home with her for the rest of the day.