Ishmael's Oranges (20 page)

He saw her blue eyes shift towards the trees, like birds startled into flight. ‘I
will
tell them, but it has to be the right time,' she floundered, nonsensically defensive. ‘I need Tony to help me, and he's been away in Geneva all summer.' Then came the counter. ‘You haven't even told your sister. Or your mother.'

‘My mother hasn't seen me in more than ten years,' he said. ‘She doesn't care if I'm alive or dead. And my sister hasn't seen me in nearly as long. They're not part of my life
now.'

‘You told me about that letter your brother sent you. From Lebanon. She does want to see you, you said. She wrote to you. Why don't you go and see them? It might make
you
feel better.' A child's ploy, easy to see through but hard to deflect.

‘Why are we talking about my family and Lebanon? This is about
your
family in Sunderland, the people you don't want to know you're living with an Arab.'

‘For God's sake,
Sal.'

‘No, not for God's sake. For
our
sake, Jude. Isn't there something special here? Something worth the risk?'

‘Worth shouting from the rooftops,' she said, but her face was troubled.

‘So? What are you afraid of?' She shook her head, her hand coming up to touch his cheek.
Nothing
, the gesture said. But he felt a deep disquiet as he watched her hand fall from his face, retreating to pull at the two gold chains twisted around her
neck.

Finally, Salim arranged a coffee with Hassan. It was his last attempt to manipulate her innate sense of fairness, to play on her strongly knotted strings of guilt.

In truth he had been almost as reluctant to get Jude and Hassan together as Jude was to make that long-dreaded phone call to Sunderland. Hassan was an unvarnished Arab, proud to be so, rejecting the English niceties Salim had been so keen to learn. How would he appear to a sheltered Jewish girl whose idea of foreign exoticism was the Parisian Left
Bank?

They met at Hassan's house on a Sunday afternoon. Hassan's wife had cooked a greasy feast: cooked soft rolled cabbage leaves stuffed with meat and rice, chicken on a bed of oily potatoes, imitations of
manquish
pastries full of heavy English lamb, and a rich dessert of
kanafi
, buttered vermicelli swimming on top of a bed of sugared white cheese.

They sat on the old, brown twin sofas while Hassan smoked and Salim sipped his beer. Salim could see Jude looking around at the strangeness of the house. Like other Arabs, Hassan and Shireen preferred electricity to sunlight inside their living room. The curtains were partially drawn and the daylight gave way to the glare of cheap ceiling lights. A spicy, greasy smell came from the kitchen, mingling with the ashy haze of cigarettes. Bronze plates and wall hangings with
hadiths
from the Qur'an were placed around plastic flower arrangements. The desperate thought came
–
this is not her world.

Perhaps Hassan sensed his thoughts. Whether or not, he became increasingly irritable and irritating. First, he started berating Salim for not going back to the Middle East after graduating. ‘You have no gratitude,' he scoffed. ‘Tareq and Nadia put you through university, and you can't even give them five minutes. And what about Rafan? He says you never wrote back to him. Is that what brothers
do?'

‘Is it what brothers do to be silent for ten years?' Salim shot back, heat rising into his face. ‘After one letter you want me to go running to Lebanon. I'm too busy for this nonsense.'

Hassan poked his finger at Jude, a sneer on his face. He had been drinking, Salim saw. ‘This big man here, he never forgets an insult, believe me. He can't let anything go. You'll see. Not even with his own family. He's too proud for us. I hope he doesn't get too proud for his English family
too.'

‘Leave her be, Hassan,' Salim said, in Arabic. He could tell the effort of speaking in English all the time was affronting his brother, making him more provocative.

‘Why, then?' Hassan said, refusing to switch from English. ‘She comes to my house, she's a grown woman. Let her hear the truth, why
not?'

‘Sal wants to go back to see his family,' Jude said quickly. Her expression said, all too plainly,
how could this man and mine be brothers?
‘But he has a new job starting in a few weeks. When he's settled, maybe we'll go together?' The last words were framed as a question. He caught her eyes, and she smiled. Salim was startled. Did she think he was going to the Middle East with
her?

‘You and he are going to Palestine together?' Hassan said, his eyes widening. ‘
Ya
Salim, what have you been telling this girl? Doesn't she watch the news?'

Salim felt like pebbles were rumbling under his feet, the beginning of the avalanche. ‘Stop it, Hassan.'

‘No,' said Hassan, his voice rising. ‘You want to do this thing together, this peace and love thing? In England, okay. In Palestine there's no peace, no love. If you go together, you won't get flowers, you'll get stones. How can Salim take a Jew back to his family? I'm sorry, but you're crazy, both of
you.'

He saw Jude go white, and set her half-tasted cup of Turkish coffee down on the glass table. Her mouth, usually so gentle, narrowed into a hard, thin
line.

‘Sal and I both belong there,' she said, her voice trembling with anger he'd rarely sensed in her. ‘We both have family there. Not everyone throws stones, only the people who want to fight more than they want anything else.'

‘You don't belong there,' Hassan said flatly. ‘The Zionists think God gave them my house, but it isn't written in the Qur'an or any other book I know. Salim said you weren't a Zionist but what does he know? I say, scratch a Jew and you get Ben-Gurion.'

Jude got to her feet. Salim saw that she was near tears and hating herself for it. He was on his feet too, saying, ‘Jude, come on, sit down,' grasping her with one hand and Hassan with another.

‘I think we should go home now,' she said, her voice cracking. Hassan threw his hands up in the air and said, in a more subdued voice, to Shireen, ‘Someone has to tell them,
yani
.'

Salim could have punched him, could have screamed retaliations at him, but it was too late. As he got Jude's coat and tried to make light of it with small talk, he knew a deeper damage had already been
done.

The journey from London's suburban south-east to its busy north-west was achingly long and slow. At Piccadilly Circus, Jude's patience ran out. She told Salim she was going back to her room in the student halls, and she would see him later. His protests were weak. They both wanted to be alone.

She walked through Soho as if she was dreaming, past dark avenues of sex shops and young faces with wildly coloured hair falling over thin shoulders. She pushed through a crowd of them as they laughed, breathing in clouds of smoke from the stub ends of their thin cigarettes and the fruity smell of beer splashing on her shoes. Different songs floated through the evening air in a faint dissonance, arms of sound grasping at her as she went by. It was late summer and the skies were still emptying like a glass of water, preparing for a pale and star-strewn darkness to set
in.

She was still trembling, from the scorn she'd heard in Hassan's voice and the hateful wave of anger she'd felt breaking over her. The scorching bitterness of the Turkish coffee lingered in her mouth, a strong, overpowering taste that mocked her weak palate. She remembered looking up at Hassan from the blackness of the cup and seeing the same colour in his
eyes.

She should not blame Salim for his brother, and yet in that moment she felt angry with him
–
angry he was an Arab, angry he'd pursued her in the first place, furious with herself for becoming so entwined with him that she could not imagine letting go.
Is this how our lives will be?
Resentment from all sides, no place to call home?

She turned onto Warwick Street and walked past the Our Lady of Assumption Chapel, where one of her Polish Catholic classmates used to go for
Mass.

It had amazed Judith when she learned that church doors are always unlocked. It spoke of a welcome she could not imagine in her own faith, a world of open arms where no one was an outsider. The heavy brown door of the chapel swung inwards at a touch, drawing Jude across a glowing threshold into the clasp of warmth and candlelight.

Inside, the room was filled with a cloying calm. Candles flickered in the half-light, and rosy-stained windows showed saints reaching out to figures robed in blue and gold. To Jude they looked strangely antiseptic; their impassive white faces gazed down on the penitents huddled in the red pews below.

She edged into one of the rows and sat on the worn cushion. What would Jack and Dora say if they could see her now, their precious daughter and only blood sitting before a statue of the Virgin Mary? Dora had always reserved a special disdain for Christ's mother; she insisted that Jesus was a product of young Mary's sleepwalking in a Roman military encampment and an unintended encounter with a foot soldier. ‘She used to walk in her sleep all the time,' she'd told Jude during a dismissal of her friend Kath's religious beliefs. ‘She was known for
it.'

This Mary did indeed look sleepy, her eyes half-closed and a sad curl to her lips, nearer to a wince than a smile. The cowls over her head made Jude think of a woman in mourning, of hidden sorrows.

Jude felt those unshed tears come back to her eyes again
–
the traitor tears that always seemed to come when she wanted to scream instead of weep. Now she did not try to stop them flowing down her cheeks.
Tell me what to do
.

She pushed the thought up towards the ageless Mary in her blue shawl, her skin so white and clear, her hands reaching out to Jude with comfort. Around her the murmur of sorrow and thanksgiving filled the air. It grew around her like waves on the shore at sunset, after the storms of the day have passed.

She asked him to meet her at Virginia's the next morning.

When she arrived he was already sitting there, his face downcast. Her heart went out to him, but she steeled herself.

‘How are you?' he said as she sat
down.

She nodded quickly, and said, ‘I'm okay.'
What a stupid answer
. But he was too distracted to notice.

‘I'm sorry for yesterday,' he said, a slight hint of belligerence in his voice. ‘You know it wasn't my fault. There's just no point in arguing with Hassan. You should have left it alone.'

She fingered Rebecca's chain for courage.

‘But that's just it, Sal,' she said, taking his hand. ‘They won't leave us alone. Our families will never accept us like this. I thought yours might, but I don't think so any more.'

He bit his lip, and threw his hands
up.

‘Jude, you have to understand Hassan. He's an idiot, a peasant. Please, please don't do anything because of him. We can fix all of that, in time.'

‘It's not just Hassan,' she said firmly. ‘It's all of them. My family hears
Arab
and all they see is angry people killing Jews. And yours think I'm just another Israeli. I can only think of one way to prove them wrong.'

He looked dubious. ‘How?'

‘Do what Hassan says we can't,' she answered. ‘Take me home with you. To Israel. Palestine
–
you know what I mean. It's the best way to show we don't stand with one side or the other. We can stay with my uncle on his kibbutz and see how things work there. Then we can stay in Nazareth, with your sister. I want to see Jaffa and the place you grew
up.'

‘We?' He looked at her in such blank disbelief that she felt her certainties shudder. She'd been up half the night thinking about it, turning their lives around like a broken picture, trying to make the pieces
fit.

‘We have to show them,' she pleaded. ‘That Hassan and my uncles are all wrong.'
He has to understand
. ‘I've had Israel rammed down my throat all my life. My parents wanted me to go, Max
–
everyone. But I
never
wanted to. It was meaningless to me. Until now. When you talked about your home, it changed how I felt. I want to see this place through your eyes. And if we can convince our families over
there
, no one
here
could argue
–
and all of this hiding would be done forever.'

She felt him pull his hand away from hers, the table suddenly cold beneath her fingers. ‘How could you even think this, Jude?' The words came out like a slap. ‘I was driven out of my home. I never went back. Now you tell me that the first time I should go back, I should go with a Jew? To stay with Zionists? Are you
mad?'

She was frozen to the spot, her palms cold with sweat. ‘Not with a Jew,' she said, her voice quiet. ‘With
me.'

He pointed to the chain around her neck. ‘You can't hide that thing there. You don't even try. Here, together, maybe something's possible. If we go back there, it's just you and a Palestinian traitor.' He pushed his chair back from the table.

‘Is that what you care about?' she said. ‘What these people you've always laughed at think of
you?'

‘They're my people,' he said, his black eyes furious. ‘
You
care more about your family's approval, about this Jewish thing, than you do about me. You want to take me to your uncle's kibbutz, to prove I'm a tame Arab. I see. Hassan was right. We don't understand each other at
all.'