Women of Sand and Myrrh (26 page)

4

Maaz arrived carrying tourist brochures and a number of fashion magazines. I wasn’t interested in the magazines or the fashions, although I pretended to take them with some enthusiasm so that he’d feel useful. I begged my ears to let me hear what I wanted to hear from him, but I despaired and my ears grew numb with waiting.

I began to blame myself for not marrying him the day he’d come back to me, when he’d lost his equanimity and shouted that I was his wife. Here I was now listening to details about travel, hotels, cash, the sights to be seen. I found myself gripping the edge of the sofa, afraid to let slip a single word in case I said that the most distant place I wished to go to was well within the confines of the desert; but then instead of just listening as I’d promised myself that I would, I interrupted: ‘We don’t need to take planes and travel abroad. We can marry at your mother’s.’ ‘Aren’t you getting divorced first?’ he asked. ‘It’ll only be a short time before my divorce comes
through,’ I replied.

He put up his hand as if to wave a fly away from his face. ‘It’ll work out fine, God willing, Suzanne.’ Then he turned back to Ringo, all eager to hear about Sri Lanka.

Every time I began to think that there would be no harm in going abroad with him now, a light flashed in my head, warning me that he was planning to make the trip alone. I sat there, trying to put this notion out of my mind, and actually covered my mouth with my hand to stop myself saying anything: I didn’t want to give him even the slightest impression that I had any doubts about whether I was meant to accompany him.

I began to compare the preparation for our previous trip abroad with what was happening now. He hadn’t believed that I was really going to go with him. He’d paced around me with his ticket in his hand, wanting to make sure that the date of the flight was written on it, and his name, comparing his ticket with mine to see that we were travelling on the same day. This was because he’d bought his own ticket, but given me the money to buy mine myself since he’d begun to be scared about our relationship. It was Suha who’d made me understand that Maaz was genuinely afraid, when I recounted to her how he sneaked into our house, how he wore a different headcloth every day – white, striped, blue, red, brown – how sometimes he’d hide his eyes behind dark glasses, and sometimes he’d wear spectacles borrowed from a colleague at work even though they made him trip up; how he began to come empty-handed, without his confiscated goods; and how when he started to jump up and hide under the bed, imagining that he’d seen something move or heard a noise, I could no longer restrain myself from laughing uncontrollably. It had always seemed to me that he was putting it on, for I’d never before seen him at all concerned at: the prospect of being caught. Around the same period, I grew weary of him accusing me of not loving him each time he asked me to marry him and I refused, ostensibly because of
Fatima and David and my children and his children. So all in all I had welcomed the idea of a trip abroad with him, the more so because the hotel where he’d made reservations was like the luxury hotels I’d seen in advertisements, and this was a unique opportunity to visit Europe. I avoided looking at him when we were at the airport although he wasn’t looking in my direction; he was comforting his son who’d been hit in the face by the bag hanging from his shoulder in the crush of people saying goodbye to him, kissing him on the nose and forehead as if he were about to embark on a journey from which there was no return. He looked like a stranger to me, dressed in a suit and shoes which seemed to make it difficult for him to walk.

Although we sat side by side we didn’t move close to one another or speak until the aircraft had taken off and the noise of the engines was drowned by the passengers who broke into applause to express their joy at the freedom and the drink. Maaz began to order one glass after another, and to joke with the stewardess, and with the other passengers round about him. Then he stood up and began distributing dollars to them, insisting that they accept them, while some laughed at him and others joined in the game. I was embarrassed and sank down in my seat, pretending to be asleep. He talked and drank and guffawed all the way, and to my surprise when the plane landed, he took the names and addresses of several of his fellow passengers and promised to be in touch with them. I decided to myself that we wouldn’t go out much in order to avoid the embarrassing situations which arose all the time with him. But he wasn’t content, as I’d thought he would be, to draw the curtains and stay in our hotel room: I didn’t know that he and I had other means of communication besides our bodies.

Maaz grew tired of staying in our room. He wanted to walk about, and go into the shops, and watch television. He wanted to remain constantly at the heart of the roar and clamour, just as on our first day he’d stood on the pavement,
holding my arm and trying to take in the noise and the cars and the people and the different way of life. He saw women and breathed, ‘Praise God.’ As well as staring at breasts and bottoms, he began to take in the trees and the water and to lie in the park watching the girls stretched out on the green grass, their dresses raised high, revealing white thighs which changed to a pinkish hue as they lay there. He even stopped and stared at armless mannequins in shop windows waiting to be fitted with new clothes, and said laughing and pointing to their breasts and bottoms, ‘Fantastic! My God!’ He was thunderstruck at the sight of men in tight trousers. ‘Where are you, Ringo?’ he asked, ‘You should be here. It would blow your mind.’ Then he went on, ‘I tell you, if that man walked along Nafoura Street, even a newly-married man would jump him.’ He wanted to run along behind the pigeons, and he paused for some time before a dog who was wearing a coat, shaking his head in wonder. He wanted to touch everything he saw in the department stores, pick the roses in the gardens, and wash his face in the pond where ducks were swimming. When we went to a striptease show he began to laugh and asked me why they had bits of spangly material the size of lentils covering their nipples. He exclaimed at the shapes and colours of the spectacle, then seemed to forget that the women were naked because they were putting on a show, and asked if they were mad, and began comparing them to the animals we’d seen in the morning. We’d been to the zoo, and he’d watched the apes and monkeys and played games with them, knocked on the glass of the reptile house, swearing at the snakes, and stood for a long time by the falcons, telling them about his own falcon, who’d been poisoned to death. Then he turned to me and asked me why I wasn’t smiling, and I replied that I was bored with the animals, and that going in and out of stores fingering the merchandise, or buying a Mickey Mouse telephone and a machine to make popcorn wasn’t my idea of fun. I wanted to say that I would have preferred to buy jewellery for me, or a
leather coat like the ones I’d seen in the windows, but I kept quiet. Deep down, I knew what was annoying me: I’d begun to notice how fat my legs were, how fat I was all over, and was sure that this was the reason why he didn’t say passionate things to me and want me like he did in the desert. The fact that I wasn’t enjoying myself showed on my face: round about us adults and children alike were urging one another to buy packets of seeds and so Maaz joined in and bought some himself and began trying to bite on them; I said nothing, but just sat there at the edge of the fountain, aware of a man and a boy laughing at him. When he realized that the seeds were for the pigeons, he laughed back at the two without a trace of embarrassment. I wouldn’t agree to take a photograph of him standing next to a beefeater resplendent in his uniform. I found I had not an atom of patience left in me, and that night when we got back to our hotel, I sighed and said I was fed up with the crowds and the noise. I didn’t know how much I missed the desert until I talked to David and my son that evening and their voices came to me serene and carefree down the telephone. I stood with my face to the window, seeing the car lights flashing by, and pictured the calm of the house in the desert. When the telephone rang there it seemed to ring slowly, the voice on the other end of the line was always calm, even Maaz’s loud voice. I realized that I’d grown used to the routine of my life there, far from the hurly-burly of humanity and its inventions. Even finding a taxi here seemed to be a serious business, and I began to see why I was in a bad mood and felt ill at ease, and it went beyond missing the monotony of the desert. I watched the women here, hurrying along with their bags of shopping, bent over with the weight of them, leaning to one side as they waited at bus stops. I saw a toy bear propped up in a window opposite the hotel and thought of the mother who’d be scrubbing the clothes or doing the ironing, and my mind wandered, comparing myself with her, then comparing my life in the States with my life in the desert. I was a different woman, unrelated
to the one who bit her nails every time she remembered something she’d forgotten to buy; I was a woman living in luxury and I could ask the driver to go and fetch me as trivial a thing as a box of matches, and Ringo to wash even my hairbrush. Food stuffs were delivered, clothes from the dry-cleaners, money from the bank. I no longer even had to sit down and write cheques to the newsagent, or cheques to pay for the electricity and the phone. I didn’t drive my son to school in the early morning, or wait in the afternoon with the other mothers, our lips turning blue with cold. The sun shone brightly all the time; even the cold weather in the desert was like springtime.

Wanting to bring some joy to Maaz’s heart, I said to him that I preferred the desert to this place and to America. He rotated his hand and pointed to his head, indicating his view of my mental state, although he did say afterwards that he missed the desert too.

I stretched out on the bed, happy to hear the chink of the ice in the glass as Maaz poured Scotch over it. We’d come back to our room because I’d succeeded in exciting his interest while we were out shopping. Before that he’d insisted on giving a gold pen to a salesgirl who’d been nice to him and laughed at his jokes, and I hadn’t intervened until he’d put his hand to his stomach and said that he was hungry, and began asking if there was a good restaurant with rice on the menu nearby, as if he was about to invite her to eat with us.

The first time we made love, I couldn’t get into a rhythm with him because I could hear voices in the corridor and I was distracted by the noise of the lift. It didn’t bother me, and I stopped trying because I knew there was always a second time. But suddenly I thought that perhaps there wasn’t going to be a second time and as he lay on top of me limp and relaxed, I fidgeted and gripped the small of his back with both hands. Then I moved, not caring that he was stiff and unresponsive, and took his hand and put it on me and raised myself up so that I was clinging to him and he couldn’t
escape. Although I felt his body resisting me and refusing to submit to me, I kept moving, the sweat pouring off me. To my surprise Maaz jumped up off the bed before I had grown still, in a manner which made me forget my pleasure of a moment before. ‘In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful!’ he cried out. I closed my eyes. ‘Damn your race!’ he shouted again. ‘You’re a devil! God preserve me!’ I didn’t take any notice. He always behaved in an exaggerated way after he’d made love to me. Sometimes he banged his head against the wall and sometimes he covered my body with kisses, beginning with my painted toe nails, and sighing that I’d always be in his heart, that he wished he could have my name tattooed on him. I wanted to sleep, and I wondered if he’d had a lot to drink that night. When I woke up at noon he was already dressed. I spoke to him and he answered curtly so I asked what was wrong, but he didn’t reply. As I got out of bed, I deliberately showed my thighs as usual, and I didn’t hitch up the straps of my nightdress which had slipped down over my shoulders. But he lowered his eyes and certain now that something was wrong I asked him what was the matter with him. He seemed to regret me not pressing him and after a bit he asked why it was that God created foreign women out of the same clay as men, or at any rate not out of the same clay as normal women. I didn’t understand what he was getting at – much of what he said I didn’t comment on. Then I washed my hair and sat drying it with the hair dryer, at which he said he was off to have a haircut at the hotel barber’s.

When he didn’t come back after an hour I felt uneasy. I went out and bought several nightdresses and some novels. For the first time I felt confident and pleased with myself as I chose what I wanted and paid for it, and even as I walked along the street. After some time I returned to the hotel, but I didn’t find him there. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I marched off into the city as if I was on a military exercise, and didn’t stop until I came to a bridge. I was experiencing a
sensation which was new to me: for the first time I was alone, and there was no place for me in the whole world if I didn’t go back to the hotel now. Deliberately I thought about David, and realized that he meant nothing to me, for he didn’t act as a safety net and he definitely wasn’t a friend. When I’d had an awful tearing pain in my guts one day, he’d carried on sleeping, oblivious to my cries of pain. It hadn’t surprised me: he dealt with his illnesses alone. And my children? My children were my children, wherever I was and wherever they were. Nobody could take that away, but all the same I felt lonely. I thought of Maaz and felt less lonely; perhaps there was a place in the world for me after all. He must have lost his way, and I started back to the hotel once more. When he didn’t open the door, I told myself that he must have come in really drunk. I went back down to the desk to ask for a key and was handed it along with a telephone message: ‘Jimmy says hello.’ When I opened the door he wasn’t in the room and, perplexed, I tried to think where he might have gone. I couldn’t believe that he would be alone because he wasn’t confident of his English without me – the only person, it appeared, who could understand him. I went out to look for him in the hotel restaurant and café, in the sauna and the swimming-pool, and then returned to our room. My eye fell on the message again: ‘Jimmy says hello.’ An hour passed. I was sure he must be lost. I turned on the television and flicked it from one channel to another in case there was any news of him. Then I phoned the desk to ask if they’d heard or seen anything of him. I occupied myself picking his clothes up off the floor, then it was as if I tried to clutch on to him and ease the pull I felt towards him by gripping the clothes in my hands. The shirt was silk, likewise the socks, yet he’d dropped them on the floor just as he used to his white robe. When he was buying them it hadn’t occurred to him to convert the price to desert currency. Every time I hesitated over something, he would buy it, although I knew he wasn’t as wealthy as all that. Since I’d first visited
Fatima I’d been amazed at their generosity and their lack of greed for material things. Before that, I’d imagined that his presents to my family were because of me. I remembered one day when Ringo had pains in his stomach and Maaz heard David and me deliberating whether we’d be the ones who’d have to pay the doctor’s fee: he’d put his hand in the pocket of his robe and given Ringo all the money he had on him, laughing and saying, ‘I hope they find a snake inside you.’ Then there were the fountain pens he handed out here, even to the waiter in the restaurant, and the tips he insisted on paying, even to the shop assistant in the jeweller’s. Maaz went about catching people’s attention with his laughing face and the atmosphere of easy familiarity which he transmitted to everyone we met. People weren’t attracted to him because of his tips or his presents, but for his simplicity and charm. I’d begun to feel important when I was with him, and to have a sense of security which wasn’t only the result of the affection which he lavished on me. I found myself learning from him, and grew accustomed to never hurrying to keep an appointment. If the train had gone, there was sure to be another. If it meant the end of the trip, there was no need to get in a state. It didn’t matter, there was plenty to do here; we could even be quite happy strolling around the station. I put his clothes on the chair, and the Mickey Mouse telephone which he’d bought for his family back in its wrapping, and smiled. I began to think of him in a different way, almost jealous of his quick perceptions and secure tradition, his grasp of what was happening round about him as if it was already there in his memory and he just had to dredge it up. I clasped his clothes to me again, to feel close to him. When another hour went by, I felt a heat encircle my head. I opened the door and stood looking up and down the long empty corridor for a few moments, then went back in. I contacted the casualty departments of the local hospitals and when the woman at the desk stopped answering, I called the police, who asked me to wait a few hours and call back. I leaned back on the sofa, my fears
for him growing with every sound I heard, although I couldn’t hear much beyond my own breathing. I wondered whom I should contact, and dismissed the idea of getting in touch with his embassy. The fear of our relationship being discovered was as great as my fears for him. I went over to his suitcase and took out his passport and turned over the pages. They were all blank, except for the one with the stamps of his country and the country where we were now. Then I opened my handbag and made sure that my passport and the airline tickets with our names on them were still there. I wondered if he’d told anybody that I was going away with him, and I’d just decided to ask to be put through to David, when I heard a movement at the door and the sound of Maaz’s voice and someone else’s. He must have been lost. But when I opened the door I knew that the woman standing there with him hadn’t been showing him the way, and that he hadn’t been lost at all. I stood there calmly, despite the sensation of heat enveloping my head once more. But what he said made the volcano inside me erupt. He’d forgotten her name and he pointed to her: ‘This is a nice woman who likes Arabs. Susan, honestly, I’ve been away and come back again like a homing pigeon.’ The woman was standing in the face of the volcano moments before it spewed out its lava, and she only increased the ferocity of its explosion as she spoke, bending over towards him. The smell of Scotch filled the place. I screamed at them, pushed them out of the room as if they were two pieces of dough, and slammed the door violently. What had finally made me snap was the woman’s tone of voice, which made her sound as if she were talking affectionately to a little boy. He was like a bird whose mother had fed him from her beak constantly, and then when the time had come for him to spread his wings he’d learnt from a stranger and flown off with her. Besides feeling angry, I was depressed as I seemed to see the nice things I’d been thinking before he arrived torn to shreds by millions of hostile fangs; I was frightened that the tenderness and concern which he’d bestowed on me alone
were figments of my imagination, and when I heard shuffling and laughter, as if the two on the other side of the door were joined by fate, I flung the door open, pulled Maaz in by his arm and pushed the shouting woman away.