The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (21 page)

After finishing my late shift at the hotel I walked to the high street as if drawn by a steel rod to the kebab van parked by the tower. I sat on the bench inhaling the smell of falafel rissoles bubbling away in the hot frying oil and listening to North African Arabic.

`Nadi? Belhaq miziana, but that one is as ugly as your grandmother, vraiment, haraq w mahhabel,' an old man said.

`Wha'?' the young man replied. `Ma namsh. I don't understand the Arabic.'

`I saidYasin has no papers and no brains,' the older man said.

`He is a "ten-pee" then,' the young man said.

`Yes, you slot the ten-pee coin in a public phone, call immigration, finish him off,' the older man said.

They threw a fresh batch of falafels in the frying pan. The aroma of crushed chickpeas, garlic and parsley balls hitting the hot oil wafted to my nose again.

Khairiyya parked the car by the uneven pavement, switched the engine off and got out. From what she told me I assumed that we were in the main road of one of the villages of Levant. She walked to the small grocery shop with a few wooden boxes full of fruit and vegetables laid out neatly on the tiled platform. I grabbed the handle, turned it, lowering the window, then stuck my head out and sniffed and sniffed, filling my heart with the smell of freedom. The warm and gentle air full of the aroma of rich food being fried felt like precious Indian silk against my face. I deserved to be dead, but I was not only alive, I was free.

She headed towards the large cauldron balanced over a brass kerosene cooker on the wooden table and said something to the man with a white cap busy stirring the contents of the vessel with a large spoon. He fished out some crisp brown balls and tucked them in the pockets of slit pitta bread. With his right hand he pressed the bread against the table, squashing the brown balls, dripped a ladle full of white sauce inside the sandwiches, added some lettuce and tomato slices, wrapped them with a piece of thin white paper then placed them gently in a brown bag. Khairiyya gave him some money, picked up the brown bag and walked back. `Here you are - a falafel sandwich!' she said and handed me one of the wraps.

I tore the soft tissue off and bit into my first falafel. The crisp balls broke under my teeth filling my mouth with the flavour of garlic, cumin and crushed coriander. `What is it?' I asked.

`It is made of chickpeas, fava beans, parsley and onions with some tahini sauce,' she said and bit into the white bread.

The taste of falafel and the aroma of rich spicy food filled the car and the dusty wide road.

My scalp twitched as if someone had blown cold air against the back of my neck so I looked back at the mirage at the end of the dusty road and saw my grandmother Shahla in her black Bedouin madraqa crossing the road in a cloud of dust carrying a leather bag full of milk. I breathed out and shook my head.

'Mkhabil gultilah,' said the old man in the kebab van parked on the side of the main street.

`Wha'?' said the young man.

`The top floor of his head is empty,' said the old man.

`Nobody want buy falafel. Only chips, chips,' said a third man, who might be Yasin, and sniffed.

`They are English, what do you expect?' said the young man.

`Look at the young sir,' said the old man.

`Stop fucking pointing at me. I am Algerian me,' said the young man.

`You? Algerian? And my goat blond," saidYasin.

They laughed.

`Yes, I cannot speak the Arabic, but I am Algerian,' the young man said.

The smell of crushed cumin, black pepper and coriander filled the busy high street. Sitting on the bench in the dark I could not be seen, but I could hear the sound of police sirens, a man throwing up in the rubbish bin and a group of young men singing, `ENGLAND ENGLAND MIGHTY MIGHTY ENGLAND.' A woman shouted, `Get off me, you drunk git!'

I had a last sniff, vowed never to come back here again, and walked home.

The ringing of the payphone in the hall woke me up so I rushed down the stairs and picked up the receiver before Liz could hear it. Max was shouting, `Where the hell are you? The department store are asking for all the trousers back.'

I lost my tongue. How on earth was I supposed to finish fifty trousers in one day? It was not a straightforward job. They had turn-ups too. When I finally composed myself I said, `There was an accident. I cut my right arm and had it stitched. Give me just today. I'll come to work on Monday.'

`You mean two days' leave' Max had included Saturday, which I normally took off.

`Right, two days then,' I said.

He surprised me by saying, `I hope you'll feel better soon. With no family and all.'

`Thank you, Max. See you Monday,' I said and put the receiver down.

Weakened by the nausea and the vomiting I saw tiny spots of lights swimming around when I suddenly got out of the ex-army bed. In the hostel, which was so inhospitable they switched off the heating after nine in the morning, I stood in the middle of the cold room looking for answers, a foothold, for something to grab, for an anchor. I rummaged in Parvin's rucksack looking for her plastic bag full of cassettes. I picked one that had `When Doves Cry' written on it in purple ink. I plugged in the cassette player and slid the tape in the pocket then pressed the `play' button. I held the pen in my hand ready to write down the lyrics. A taut sharp voice sang of courtyards, violets in bloom and doves crying. This was followed by a barrage of squeaks that sounded like a drawing of breath followed by sobs. I looked up the words I did not understand in the dictionary and read and reread the lyrics until I memorized them. Then I rewound the tape and played the song again. I stood up and held the back of the chair to steady myself and began dancing to the music, stepping in then stepping out the way they do on television. Then I began jumping then landing on the tip of my toes then relaxing my toes until the bottom of my feet touched the cold carpet then jumping again in the air higher and higher until my hair flew off my shoulders. Parvin walked in on me.

`What the hell do you think you're doing?!'

`Why do we scream at each other?' I asked her.

`I am not screaming,' she said.

`Maybe you are just like my mother,' I sang.

She put her briefcase on the table, kicked off her shoes and sat down on the edge of her bed. She placed her bowed head between her hands.

I stopped singing and dancing and sat next to her and said, `I tired. I ill. I look for flowers in bloom.'

She held both of my hands and said, `If only you weren't losing so much weight.'

`Conditional sentence. I see. Express wish,' I said like a schoolteacher.

When I turned round, I realized that Liz was standing right behind me.

`Good morning.' She smiled.

`Good morning,' I said and was about to rush back to my room.

`What happened to your arm?' she asked.

I looked at Liz's dishevelled hair, swollen eyes, her hand pressed to her forehead, her pointed nose and said, `Nothing' Standing there in the hall she looked tired, washed out.

`What is wrong with your arm, Sal?'

`Nothing, a minor accident,' I said. She genuinely couldn't remember last night.

`This late-night job you're doing is dangerous," she said.

I knew what Liz was thinking: a lower-class immigrant slut, hustling down on the quay, must have been stabbed by her pimp. All of that was written on her hangovered face. `I must go now,' I said.

She parroted my accent. `I moost go noo,' she said and smiled.

It did not sound like me, it sounded like a programme on television about masters and servants, some sort of a northern accent. Come to think of it, it sounded like Dr John Robson. I rushed up the stairs and shut my bedroom door.

With three days' break I would be able to finish my essay on Shakespeare's sister. I began writing, Why was I asked to write about Shakespeare's sister not Shakespeare although so much has been said and written about him? He must have had friends and women to help him. Nobody talks about the women. I remembered the stories ofAbu-Zaid El-Hilali, the hero whose adventures were memorized by both the young and the old. Nobody ever mentions his wife, daughter or mother. I spent the whole morning writing the seven pages the tutor asked for, using some of the stories I was told as a child as examples. Between sipping cold coffee, peering out of the window at the crisp clear morning and writing, I finished the essay.The conclusion was about my own experience as an alien in their land. They, and I, think I don't live here, but I do, just like all the women who were ignored in these tales. Comparing my essay to the book it sounded like a gossip column in the Sunday Sport. That was it. I cannot write like them. If I were able to I wouldn't be stitching hems.

I dozed off to be woken up around lunchtime with the forceful knock of Liz. She must have sobered up. She opened the door and had a pine tray, covered with an embroidered white cover, a bowl of soup, slices of brown bread and a cup of tea. She stood above my head smiling benevolently like an angel. I said thank you and attacked the food. Gratitude. The smell of lavender filled the bedroom. She must have had a bath. `Are you going somewhere?'

`Yes, must dash. I am going to see my doctor.'

The way she said it gave you the impression that she was off to see her own private doctor in Harley Street where the stars go, but I knew that she was, just like me, registered with the local NHS practitioner.

Dear Noura,

Greetings from Exeter. I am not feeling very well. My landlady, who is alcoholic, took me for one of the ponies she used to own and hit me with her riding whip. The wound was coiled around my arm like a snake. With no one to make me soup apart from the landlady I feel sorry for myself. I wish you were here to run your hand on my head. I wish many things. Layla has passed her A-levels and will go to university soon. She will come home weekends and we will drive to Dartmouth and spend the day swimming in the sea. I see you smiling. Yes I learnt swimming in the city baths, where you queue for days, pay thirteen pounds and then are given a swimming course. The instructor is in her fifties now, but looks so young. She said swimming keeps your skin taut. That is why we age so fast in Hima because we have no water to drink let alone swim in.

Noura, I hope that you, Rami and Rima are in good health. How is Rami's diabetes? I keep an eye on new remedies for it here. They are experimenting on the pancreas of a pig, but you might not want pig cells implanted inside your Muslim child.

You never know fate might bring us together again.

I licked the addressless envelope and stuck it together.

If you looked carefully you would find hundreds of letters thrown in dustbins or being blown here and there by the wind, either alongside the post office or in the streets and alleyways of the old country, their black ink smudged or wiped away. The yellow paper, litter, empty plastic bags, dry leaves would be dispersed then gathered, then dispersed again until they found a sheltered corner to rot in. The old white Greek houses shone against the azure sea broken only by the mane of frothy white waves. I would save up and travel to Greece, the nearest I could get to my home without being shot. Standing on a high cliff by the sea I would shout thousands of salaams across the Mediterranean.

I watched a chat show about men who go out with younger women. `Husband snatchers!' a woman in the audience shouted. Talk about sisterhood, I thought. Noura used to tell me about the husbands she used to render her services to. I used to say, `Here in this country, you cannot be serious?'

She would laugh, one of those laughs her customers paid so much for, and pat my cheek. `Chick, you are so naive.'

Then the warden would come and say to Noura, `Leave this girl alone. Your obscene laugh gives me the jitters. I seek refuge in Allah. This is not a whorehouse.'

`Oh! Yeah! How come you always call us whores?'

Naima's patience was running out.

'By the way, I gave a blow job to your husband,' said Noura.

Naima slapped her with all her might.

Noura ducked to the ground and started crying, tears of pain and humiliation.

Naima shut the door and spat, `Scum, that's what you are.

Madam Lamaa, who was convinced that she was scum, got up in time to hear Naima's last words. She placed her hands on her ears and began sobbing.

Gwen came to see me on Saturday. I phoned her and told her that I had not abandoned her, but I was not feeling very well. She came despite her dislike for Liz, and brought me a second-hand copy of a novel I had been looking for. She sat on the edge of the bed and asked, `Who did this to you?' pointing at the bandaged arm.

I waved to her to move closer and whispered, `Liz was drunk and hit me with her riding whip.:

Gwen tucked the ends of her short grey hair behind her ears, then sighed, `How awful! The woman has gone mad.'

`I lied to the doctor and told him I cut my hand chopping salad.'

`Did he believe you?'

'No, but he was too tired and overworked to care.'

`You must move out.'

`I cannot.'

`I am so sorry, Salina" she said then hugged me tight.

It was the nearness I had been waiting for for days so I began crying.

`What's wrong with you now?' she said in her headmistress voice.

`Nothing, I just want to be with my family,' I said like a child.

`But you know that you cannot be with your family - that is if you still have one back there.' Gwen regretted saying this as soon as she did so.

I pulled the neck of my nightie up and said, `It doesn't matter ... any more.'

`No, it doesn't,' she said and ran her fingers over the duvet cover. `Look what I brought you. Your favourite haloumi cheese,' she said, pulling a slab of white cheese wrapped in plastic out of her cloth bag. The smell of mint and brine filled the room.

`Where did you get it? It's hard to find.'

`The delicatessen in town ordered it for me,' she said.

I looked at Gwen's neat grey hair, her flushed red face, golden glasses,V-neck pink blouse and smiled.

`That's better,' she said.