The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (20 page)

I stepped out of the house and breathed in the clean morning air. Although we were in the middle of the summer, it was still raining lightly. The persistent light drizzle took the edge off the heat and penetrated the soil all the way down to the roots of plants and trees. Through the large glass shop front I could see Sadiq spreading his prayer mat on the floor. He stood on the edge, placed his hands behind his ears and began the takbeer. The door of the shop was closed so I placed my ear against the letter box and listened. 'Allahu akbar, allahu akbar! With hardship goes ease. Lo!' Sadiq knelt down, prostrated then placed his forehead on the mat. My father stood up and placed his hands under his ribcage and began reciting. It was November and we had not seen a single drop of rain this year. He began the tasleem, turning his head to the left shoulder to greet the angel sitting there recording sins, then turned it to the right to greet the angel recording good deeds, then he waved to me. I walked towards his outstretched chipped hands. He held me up and then sat me down in his lap saying, `Good morning, my little chick.'

Sadiq suddenly opened the door and said, `Good morning, memsahib! Do you want me to teach you how to pray to Allah also?'

I waved a hello and crossed the street quickly.

Walking on the green pedestrian bridge I could see the thin clouds lit by the morning sun reflected in the river like large balls of flames. I saw the river split into two branches forming a small island. It was a peaceful space covered with green grass, wild flowers, and on its borders birch, chestnut, oak and rowan trees grew The white seagulls flew in and out of the water and the dark green trees glistening like a sea of gems as if the rain was not water but pure sparkling olive oil. `Too much past,' the English doctor had said, `and not enough future.' I held the railing of the bridge and looked up again in time to see a dark figure lurking among the trees, wounded, his honour compromised, his eyes emitting sparks of hatred, the ends of his red-and-white-chequered kufiyya stuck in the black round robe securing it over his head, his rifle aimed at me ready to fire. I took a deep breath, put my bag on the ground between my legs, held the iron rails tight and opened up my chest, ready to be killed. He put his rifle down then slung it on his shoulder, pulled the end of his headdress out signalling the end of hostility, and walked towards the balls of light. When I finally shut my eyes salt stung their rims. I filled my lungs with fresh morning air travelling down from the green hills, picked up my bag and resumed my walk to work.

During my lunch break I went to the public library to look for books or articles on Shakespeare's sister. Imitating my university tutor, I began `deconstructing' why libraries were intimidating: a) because the system of classification and borrowing was too complicated for me, and b) because the sight of so many books reminded me of my ignorance and backwardness. I felt so guilty when I entered the library because I had been wasting my time reading trivial magazines. In Cosmopolitan there was an article about women addicted to chocolate, which had chemicals similar to those produced when falling in love, but there wasn't a single word about women like me addicted to glossy magazines. Whenever my morale dropped a notch or two I would go to the newsagent and buy some chewing gum, a bar of chocolate and a glossy magazine. I would eat and read, chew and read until the packet was just pieces of silver paper scattered on the table and the magazine dog-eared and falling to pieces, its perfume sample pulled open and wiped clean.

A young girl with big eyes and a ready smile saw me hesitating and walked towards me. `Can I help you?'

I wanted to pretend that I knew it all and give her a haughty thank you, but I remembered my tutor, the spilt coffee and said, `Yes'

`Let me explain the classification system for you,' she said politely.

When I realized that we were heading towards a computer, I was about to run towards the entrance. The place was unfamiliar and the pain of having to learn yet another new thing hit me hard. I remembered the expensive visit to the dentist, who is not subsidised by the NHS any more, and his persistent needle drilling right into my heart.

She pointed at the flickering light-blue screen and said, `You can see the words "subject", "author" or "title". Just type the first letter and press enter. What are you looking for?'

`Shakespeare's sister,' I said.

`Aha!' she said. `It must be the article by Virginia Woolf.'

I smiled a knowing smile. I had never heard of her in my whole immigrant life.

`My advice to you is to look under feminist theory.'

I sat on the chair, straightened my back and touched the keyboard. I pressed `subject', `enter' and then typed with my index finger `feminst theory'.

The librarian was watching me. `You have misspelled feminist. Add an 'T' I'

I did, pressed `enter' and a long list of books and articles suddenly appeared on screen. I was lost in the desert without the official tracer by my side. `What shall I do now?' I asked.

`Choose one introductory book such as Mary Eagleton's Feminist Literary Theory!'

`This one?' I asked and clicked on it.

`Write down all the details and come with me please!'

She took me to a large hall lined with shelves decked with books. It reminded me of Minister Mahoney's library, where we celebrated my release from immigration prison and where we used to drink tea and discuss the weather. `Books, Salina, are our only consolation. How can we forgive and forget without books?' he said.

`Here you are,' she said.

`Thank you very, very much,' I said to the smiling librarian, hugged my first borrowed books and rushed back to work.

It was raining heavily in Branscombe when I decided I should leave. It was my turn this time to insist on leaving. It had been almost a year since I moved in with Minister Mahoney. `A guest must not burden his host for more than three days' My English had improved partly because I liked the sound of it and partly because of my devotion for my Quaker host. I used to have a shower, wear a clean dress, tie my hair and wait patiently in the reading room for my evening lesson. I would look at Minister Mahoney's face and wonder why he had never got married. He must have been in his early fifties. The golden light of the fire was gleaming on his flushed face, peaceloving eyes, approving nod and his thin, long fingers. The Cambridge Grammar was open on conditionals. My mother had said to me many times that if you plant `if' `I wish' would grow. I said, `Minister, I am not in the mood for studying tonight.'

`Are you OK?' he said concerned.

`Can you see tired I am tonight?'

`Yes I can see how tired you are tonight,' he corrected me.

`Nothing but we must war, we must war on radio. I cannot sleep.'

`The Friends are opposed to the war and are committed to peace,' he said.

I cleared my voice and said, `If I could help you, I would. If I could stay in this house, I would. I must leave. My stay has finished your hospitality.'

`Aren't you happy here?' he asked.

`Yes, you are so kind. Like ... father to me,' I said, choosing my words carefully in order not to upset this honey man.

He looked away and said, `Can you manage on your own?'

`You told me Exeter the best southern city for jobs. I try,' I said.

`If you try you might fail'

`Yes, but also might succeed.'

`But if you fail you must try better to fail better.' He smiled and left the room.

In the evening all was quiet and still apart from Liz knocking about in the sitting room. I tidied up my bed, wiped the wobbly table, pushed it close to the window and put a piece of cardboard under one of the legs to balance it. I put the table lamp on it and switched it on. Gwen gave me the complete works of Yeats as a birthday gift. I read a few poems then put the book down. I fingered the rough jacket, folded it back, inserted it between the yellow pages like a bookmark. I placed my hand over the book and pressed hard, hoping that the words would cut loose, scatter, then find a way to my head. I wanted to understand all the words, see why the human child suffers, find a cure for weeping.

He must have been a bat, a night person, a scholar who liked the darkness and the quiet. They used to use lanterns then. I opened the feminist book as if it were fragile, made of fine glass, and looked through the index: Virginia Woolf. I began reading about having a room of one's own and enough money to be able to work. My mother had nothing of her own, her brother took her share of the farm; when her husband died Shahla was thrown out of her house so she came to live with us; and all I had was a daughter of my own, who cried and cried for me. My mind drifted to the bleak mountains with the few dusty shrubs, a field of black iris, some olive trees, to a world full of weeping, so I pulled it back to the black-and-white words on the page. Halfway through I saw a reference to Shakespeare's sister. The language used was too difficult for me so I began looking up words in the dictionary: `escapade', `substantial', `guffawed', `morbid'. I didn't know that `offspring', which I came across while flicking through the pages, meant children.

While trying to put the pieces of the jigsaw together, I heard a sudden slash. It must be Liz. I rushed downstairs and found her standing in the sitting room, riding whip in hand, with three empty wine bottles rolling noisily on the floor. She was wearing her riding breeches and boots, a red scarf knotted around her neck and her straight grey hair tied in a ponytail. Her frenzied eyes looked past me through the window The crash was the sound of her riding whip hitting the bottles and carpeted floor. `Liz. What do you think you're doing? Give me the whip!' I said and walked towards her to ease the whip out of her hand, but I was too slow so she caught the muscles of my forearm. I held the leather handle with one hand and the shaft with the other, pulled to the left, to the right then pushed and pushed until Liz let go of the whip and fell down. By now my arm was bleeding so I rushed to the bathroom, bandaged it, then ordered a taxi. While on the landing waiting for the taxi I heard Liz's laughter, then she said, as if talking to one of her Indian maids, `Slaves must never breathe English air.'

`That looks bad,' said the taxi driver and handed me an old newspaper to cover the back seat. By the time I got to Casualty blood had seeped through the bandage and was oozing out. I was welcomed by neon lights and tired nurses. While examining the winding cut the nurse said, `An incisive wound, I see.We must report it to the police.'

`No,' I said, `there is no need to. I making salad and lost control of the knife.'

`It is a suicide attempt that went wrong then.'

`No. It was accident. If it suicide I wouldn't be here.'

She pulled her short hair behind her ears, looked at her fob watch, pushed up her silver-framed glasses and smiled. She must be used to hearing people's lies by now

After filling in a form she asked me to wait in a narrow corridor full of chairs. The walls were painted lime green and the chairs and carpet were grey. Looking around me I realized that my condition was not as urgent as others. A young man had a big piece of cotton covering his right eye; another's face was bruised and bleeding.

`This is a neat cut,' said the young exhausted doctor, `how on earth did you manage to do that?'

I `I was chopping carrots you see ...

`Look, we must report this to the police.'

'Please not,' I pleaded, `I just lost control of the knife and it was really sharp.'

I could see that two emotions were fighting each other around his eyes, his sense of duty, which required reporting the incident to the police, and his exhaustion, which stopped him from challenging my story. He gave in to his fatigue.

When he unwrapped the bandage he said, `You need stitches.' The wound ran from my elbow to my wrist, neat and winding like a snake. I gave in to local anaesthetic and travelled out of the decaying hospital, out of Exeter, towards Southampton, took the ship back to Lebanon then travelled by car to Hima, where my father with his wrinkled dark face, my mother with her beady patient eyes and Layla with her curly dark hair and her white dress were all waiting for me behind the barbed wire. We embraced and kissed and then I peeled one of the oranges they brought me and pushed it in my mouth. Orange juice and salty tears dripped down my face and became mixed together, then hit the ground one bitter-sweet salty liquid. My mother ran her chipped fingers through my hair and my father hemmed, coughed then said, `How are you, daughter?'Then he hugged me, filling my senses with the smell of musk, fertile soil and coffee with ground cardamom pods.

The doctor was surprised to see my eyes fill up with tears. `Surely it is not that painful," he said.

I wiped my eyes with my left hand and blew my nose. For a second the professional mask slipped off the doctor's face so instantly he pushed it back into place. `Do you have relatives here?'

`Yes,' I lied, `my parents and daughter.'

`You must come back to get the stitches checked and the bandages changed the day after tomorrow The antibiotics: three tablets a day and ... and take it easy.'

When I finally waved down a taxi the sun was about to rise and the orange electric lights were going off one by one, leaving the streets covered with the grey light of the morning. `Eighteen stitches, but don't worry, they will leave no mark.' The driver drank some coffee while speeding through the empty streets. I pulled my purse out with my left hand and gave him the money. `Thank you, miss,' he said and drove off. Miss in Hima was reserved for virgins, Mrs for married women or widows, but there was no title for those who had sex out of wedlock for they simply got shot.

Gwen would be asleep and I didn't want to disturb her so I had to open the door of Swan Cottage and tiptoe to the sitting room. Liz was lying face down on the carpet of the hall. I wouldn't be able to take her to bed so I turned her head sideways, made sure she was breathing then covered her with a blanket. How could I allow them to report the incident to the police against this old drunk woman? Why create problems for her? Why create problems for me, Salina not Sal or Sally, an outlander, who must not confront the natives? You begin to climb the stairs without leaning on the railing; you throw yourself in bed after you lock your bedroom door; you switch off your table lamp and think about Shakespeare's sister; you adjust your mirror and drive on exploring this new land; you sleep between the cold sheets not knowing where to put your arm, how to adjust its position so you would not feel the pulsating pain, so you would close your eyes and drift away.