The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (26 page)

`You did, did you?' she asked, her older self returning.

`The wedding was beautiful,' I enticed her.

Streaks of blood whirled in the glass full of cleanser when she took her dentures out. She stuck them in her mouth then bit, tied her hair, ran her fingers over her puffy face, eased herself out of the white frilled duvet covered with yellow and red stains and looked at the bowl of porridge. I placed the tray in her lap. She began to eat.

I sat on the edge of her king-size bed and ate my porridge.

`How was the wedding?' she asked.

`It was splendid. The weather was great. The sun shone on them to the end,' I said.

`Did they show you the howdah and the seven saris on the Shubbeah?' she asked and had a sip of tea.

`What is a Shubbeah?' I asked.

`You display the bridalwear and underwear on it. What about the bridegroom? Did they put him on a silver footstool and rub his face and arms with her butter?' she asked.

She grabbed the bundle of letters held together with an elastic band and said, `Is Daddy still hiding in the library?'

I placed the tray on the bedside cabinet, wiped her face with the kitchen towel and said, `You should have some rest now'

`Don't tell me what to do,' she said, broken.

Noura's nose was bleeding after a forced feeding. It was my fifth day on hunger strike after I gave birth. There was nothing left to live for so I began hitting myself hard on the face, stomach, legs. When I was exhausted I would lie on the filthy floor and refuse to touch the bread and soup brought and put under my nose every lunchtime, until Noura staggered back to the room after a forced feeding. Naima and another warden dragged her through the iron door then threw her on the mattress. Your face and arms were bruised, blood mixed with snot was dripping from your nose, a white liquid was stuck to your lips and your eyes were shut.

Poking at me with her stick, the way I used to poke my lazy donkey, Naima said, `What about this one? Is she still on hunger strike?'

`Noo,' whispered Noura.

When they locked the door, Noura opened her eyes, smiled at me and wheezed,'Please eat' Her voice was both broken and strong, but there was something frightening about it as if she had come face to face with the travellers' ghoul. I stood up, untied my bundle, read my mother's letter again and looked at the window. She wanted to come to see me, but my father and brother must have forbidden her from crossing the threshold of the house. I bit into the dry piece of bread. In the dim moonlight coming through the barred window you were able to see me chewing at the now wet and salty bread. A faint smile was drawn on your face when you turned your head towards the wall.

I watched the English sun setting behind the hills, leaving a glowing light behind, which floated on the water, fingered the tops of trees and shone on the hair of people walking their dogs. They would smile and whisper their greetings. It was a peaceful space covered with green grass, wild flowers, and on its borders birch, chestnut, oak and rowan trees grew I sat on the grass overlooking the steep slopes the water was rushing over and I tried to blow a simple tune, which would be in harmony with the sound of water, the gentle breeze fondling my hair, the barking of distant dogs, the sound of cicadas hiding in the long grass. That tune would be the English Sally, standing erect, head high, back straight, waving a white handkerchief to the sun. Then a shepherd's piece saying goodbye to the day, kissing the sun and crying over its departure, there was so much stamping of feet, yanking of hair and rending of garments. That was the Arab Salina sitting on the ground, swaying her upper half and sprinkling ashes over her head. Then a last tune, a tree neither of the East nor of the West, olive oil in a glass lamp, doves cooing, white upon dark, dark upon white, light upon light just where the sky meets the dark outlines of the trees, lambs and hills at the end of the horizon.

I kept thinking about the next tutorial with John. To go or not to go. To fake a sickness, break an arm or simply say I have a family emergency to attend to. I was trying to compile a BBC2 Newsnight vocabulary: `on the other hand', `therefore', `despite the fact that the hostage-taking is universal it is mainly an Arab problem'. I looked up the words in the dictionary, wrote them down several times to memorize them then jotted down my speech, `I think it is time for me to say goodbye and go to another tutor. However, you have been very good, helpful, although you are a northerner. On the other hand I can bring a sick note and you can continue supervising my project. But if you have no respect for me I cannot work with you so sad and broken also. And I don't know where the hostages are. Hope I am clear.'

`Hello, Max,' I said.

He pushed up his bifocals, pointed at the photo and asked, `Look at this. The Princess in a bikini! How on earth are we going to see her as royalty?'

He wanted a discussion and I obliged. `She is woman. Human like us,' I said.

`Like you? Like me? Don't be ridiculous! She is royalty. Blue blood. Allegiance to God then to them.'

`I see,' I said trying to assuage him.

`Naked, stark bleeding naked,' he said.

`She has her swimming suit on.'

`Do you call those stripes of Lycra a swimming suit?'

`Nosy photographers," I said, `she wanted to have quiet holiday, that's all.'

Our discussions always ended the same way, either with `Sal, you have a long way to go,' or `Sally, you have a lot to learn,' so this time it was: `Sal, you don't know anything about us, the British, do you? How we feel when we see our princess naked in a newspaper.,

I always give him the pleasure of giving in to his logic. I guess not.'

'I don't blame you, being foreign and all,' he said and lit a cigarette.

John looked at me in my long wide shorts, my old T-shirt and rucksack full of an uneaten lunch as if I had just landed from Mars. I sat down as ordered. He looked professional and acted as if I'd never vomited on the legs of his trousers and shoes, as if he'd never stroked my hair before I went to sleep, as if he'd never brought me a bright pink pill. He talked to me as if I were an ant crawling on his academic floor. The problem with my Newsnight English was that I could not pronounce most of the words. I tried to twist my tongue around `supremacy', but couldn't, so I sat there as if dumb and deaf listening to John telling me how `ignorant, simplistic and subjective' the writing was, as if the essay had written itself. I swallowed hard in order to stop myself spitting out some of my newly acquired English vocabulary. If I were not ignorant I wouldn't be in his office listening to him tear my first essay apart; however, I didn't know much about academia or the hostage crisis. He went on and on. Looking at his slipping half-moon glasses, his balding head, his blue blood-shot eyes, his peppered goatee, his bent back, his white spindly arms covered with fine dark hair, his white T-shirt, I said, `I have to go now'

I snatched the essay he was waving at me and walked out.

`Do you still want a degree?' he shouted at my back before I slammed the door.

In the shower of abuse I just had, I noticed that he kept mentioning project Pallas. I went to one of the porters who pretended that he was sorting the mail when he saw me heading towards him. `Hi!' I said.

`Hello, madam,' he said from behind the sliding glass window

`Pardon me, sir,' I said, `what is project Pallas?'

`This way, miss,' he said and led me down a dark corridor then opened a big door leading to a large welllit room full of flickering computer screens.

`Is that it?' I asked.

`That's it, madam.'

`That's it?'

`Yes, madam.You learn how to use a computer.'

We were not very busy that afternoon. Max was chatting up female customers and I was trying a spaghetti stitch on the `new ultra-high-speed cylinder interlock sewing machine'. Suddenly he called me using my Arab name in its full length, his tongue stumbling over it, `Saimaa!'

I almost fell off my chair. He kept me in the background and never called me to the front of the shop while he had customers around. `Yes, Max,' I said.

He ran his hand over his gelled hair to make sure it was stuck around his head, cleared his voice and said, as if he was delivering a speech in the Houses of Parliament, `To reward you for years of good service I have decided to give you the ten per cent rise you asked for.'

I couldn't believe my ears, but I was at the same time resentful that he made the announcement in front of Mrs Smith of the Royal Mail of all people. The whole town would hear the news by tomorrow morning: `He is ever so kind, Max is, giving a rise to his black apprentice.'

I knew what Max expected of me so I said, `Max, you've been always kind to me. Thank you very, very much.'

Mrs Smith was folding her frilled green umbrella and unfolding it, totally enjoying the spectacle. Max had been trying to have her as his `bit on the side' for months now

I filled my eyes with thank your and looked up at Max's face. By now he knew that I was a sentimental fool, and that I took things to heart. The only sign of receiving my gratitude was the rub of the nose which I have come to know very well.

I inhaled more starch-leaden steam, held the wooden handle of the heavy iron and ran it like brisk wind over the blue jacket on the table.

Max's motto was `cash in, cash out' so at the end of every month he handed me a bundle of creased banknotes. He left me my salary on his new sewing machine so I took the envelope that had my name on it and saw the British National Party leaflet on the floor next to his chair. I swallowed hard and pretended not to have seen it. I thanked Max and rushed out of the shop to breathe. Don't be stupid, I said to myself, ink on paper cannot harm you. It was not Max's fault. Maybe Max's brother-in-law had given it to him. He believed that all foreigners must be loaded in ships and dumped `like the bananas they are' on the shores of Africa.

When I went back home that evening, Liz was in remission. In her riding boots and breeches she walked like a general around the sitting room, the neck of her polo jumper folded down, her hair tied back with a leather band, a bamboo stick in her hand. Since the incident the whip had been carefully hidden between my winter jumpers in the wardrobe. I could see how beautiful she must have been in her youth.White rings circled the blueness of her eyes, a spider of fine blood veins spread on her cheeks and nose, her belly bulged out of the tight cream trousers and her breasts hung flat under her blue jumper. I was holding the Queen Anne silver-plated sandwich tray that I had just bought for Parvin as a wedding present. When she saw me peeping through the slightly open door she snapped her fingers and called, 'Bint, get me my dinner! Yes, I am talking to you. Don't pretend that you cannot hear me.' I didn't know what to do: to enter the sitting room and pretend that I was Elizabeth's Indian servant, or tell her where to go. She must be missing her horses, whose photos fill the walls of the landing; she must be missing Peshawar or wherever she used to live before the war; she must be missing Hita her lover, her father or even Charles her late husband, but I couldn't help her. If I pretended to be her Indian servant, she would sink even deeper into her drunken world. It would be easier for both of us if I did that, but I couldn't, I shouldn't. I left her giving orders to imaginary hints and wallahs and went upstairs to my room to wrap Parvin's present.

Although Parvin had called him a racist, sexist pig Max gave me a job when no one would. If I had not approached him that morning I would have gone without food. I stood outside Lord's Tailors shifting my weight from one leg to another and rubbing my hands. I spent months rehearsing going up the stairs, knocking on the door, and saying that I had experience in an institution in my country and that I had just moved to Exeter and was looking for a job. I tried to memorize all the sentences I needed in English for the manager to think that my English was good. I wiped my face with the embroidered handkerchief Minister Mahoney had given me for Christmas and walked up the stairs. My knees were too weak to support me so I held on to the banisters.The glass door looked misty. I pushed it open and walked in. The same man who chucked me and Parvin out was sewing, talking on the phone and having the odd suck on his cigarette at the same time. He stopped when he saw me standing there shifting my weight from one leg to another. He ran his hand over his head and said,'Sit down. 'I sat down looking at the sewing machines. How could I tell him I had experience when the only machine I worked was a manual Singer? When he put the receiver down, he looked at me.

`Good morning, very sorry, did not find job,' I said.

`Good morning,' he said. `You're the white dress lady?'

`You remember?' I said.

`You made that dress?' He gesticulated while projecting the words slowly.

`Yes,' I said, my hands stuck between my knees.

`Do you know how to stitch?'

`All them,' I said.

He threw a pair of grey trousers at me and asked me to stitch the hem. I wiped my hands, concentrated on the ironing lines, and began stitching. I did the cock's feet, which was not normally used for hems, just to show him that I had experience. He would glance at my shaking hands and shake his head. It took me five minutes to do one leg. He had a look at the even line, the criss-crossed threads holding the hem tight into place, then pointing his fore and middle fingers in the air like a V sign he said, `How about two pounds fifty an hour?'