Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (14 page)

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Authors: Hilary Mantel

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“Then she must go back and live with her family.”
“And what if she wants to divorce him?”
“Well, that is possible,” Samira conceded.
“But,” Yasmin said with dignity, “that is not what we do.”
Frances put down her coffee cup. There are a million questions,
she thought. She looked at her watch. “I’d better go,” she said. “Thank you so much, Samira.”
“But no! Why do you have to go?”
“Well, I must … write a letter.”
“Frances keeps a diary,” Yasmin said teasingly.
“How do you know?”
“I have seen you put it away in a hurry. So it can only be a diary. Unless perhaps you have love letters?”
“I don’t have love letters.”
“Perhaps you might,” Yasmin said. “There are many bachelors in Jeddah. Also many Englishmen and Americans without their wife.”
“And,” Samira observed, “you are quite pretty.”
“No, really.” Frances stood up. “A diary, yes, but that’s all.”
“Frances is in love with her husband,” Yasmin said. The two women laughed.
Samira took her to the door. Already a certain tension had left her face, the tension bred by talking to the outsider. She looked artless, very young. Once she had left, Frances knew, they would withdraw from the formal sitting room, and into the smaller room, strewn with floor cushions, where Samira preferred to spend her mornings. She would gladly have joined them there; but she was a Westerner, and must sit on chairs.
“Will you come down to my flat?” she asked.
“Yes, I will come.”
“Your shawl—”
“No, keep it. Really you must. It suits you.”
“Oh, I can’t.”
“It is my gift,” Samira said. She leaned forward and kissed Frances on the cheek.
 
 
Poor diary. If only it could have a change of scene! She is ashamed of its content, which she feels has become trivial and repetitious. She will write down her conversation with the women, knowing
that upstairs, sprawled in comfort on the cushions, they are discussing her.
When she spent her first day alone in the flat, time moved in a slow, dreamlike way; now it moves at a normal speed. And yet she cannot think how she passes it. Reading; patrolling with the cockroach spray; cooking food for the freezer. Sometimes she walks to Marion’s compound. The mornings have cooled slightly, and they sit outside the house. Marion sips Diet Pepsi; insects from miles around come specially to drown in her glass. Often the smell from the drains drives them indoors. And yet she is grateful for the outing. The compound has a small pool, fiercely chlorinated, and a few stunted trees. Perhaps, she thinks, when a house there comes free … But Marion says the compound families are always quarreling.
Her letters home have already ceased to read like frontier dispatches, and now they are full of householder’s complaints, and polite general inquiries: have you seen your sister lately, how is the cat? It is difficult to describe to people the kind of life they are living. And she does not describe their surroundings anymore. She has almost ceased to notice them. If it were not for the empty flat, perhaps Frances would have stopped asking questions already. Curiosity is a transient phenomenon here. It is not that you learn everything; but you soon learn whatever you will be allowed to known. This is a private society, which does not publish its flaws, or disclose its reasoning, which replies to pressing inquirers with a floodtide of disinformation, and then reverts to its preferred silence. One door closes, and—while you are gathering your platitudes—another door slams shut.
Frances Shore’s Diary: 9 Rabi al-awal
A few days ago I met Carla Zussman at the Sarawat supermarket. I last saw her in the audience at an amateur production of The
Crucible,
given in the Moth Hall, Gaborone. Hi there, Frances
,
she said. I asked, surprised to see me? Not really, she said. Still married? Yes, I said, and to the same man. You? Oh yes, she said, I’m here with Rickie, we’re still a going concern.
So I persuaded Marion that we ought to take the bus and visit Carla. The buses are segregated, of course. Most of the bus is for men, but there is a small compartment at the back for women. There is a standard fare of one riyal, and a box to put it in, and this is why the women travel at the back, they can be trusted to pay up, whereas the men won’t pay unless they’re under the eye of the driver. We only had about ten minutes to wait, but we got very hot, even though the segregated bus shelter did shield us from the full glare of the sun. Bus shelters are a big advance here, they have only just got them, and they write about them in the newspapers as if they were moonshots or something. Although we were very respectably dressed, people still stared at us, and shouted from cars, so we were glad when the bus came.
We went along fairly confidently, being the only female passengers. I told Marion, just look out for the American Embassy compound, we can’t miss it. As soon as we saw the Stars and Stripes fluttering between the construction sites, we leapt up and pressed the bell, but it didn’t work. The front compartment was nearly empty too, so I banged on the glass panel, trying to attract the driver’s attention, and shouted
Hinna! Hinna!
I was afraid to get involved in anything more complicated. But he didn’t hear me. Two Yemenis in the front compartment turned round and looked at us. I pointed to the driver, but all they did was stare. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d grinned, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d laughed at us, because everybody laughs at them. I thought, somebody might as well have some pleasure out of this excursion. But they just went on staring. They didn’t seem to have any initiative.
A few minutes later, Top Furniture went past, where Samira got her chandelier, and then we were on the Corniche. I persuaded Marion to get out, on the grounds that we knew where we were, and if we stayed on the bus any longer this might not be the case.
There was hardly anyone around, just us, a few seagulls, and those strange nonhuman shapes, metal and stone objects on which the Mayor has spent so much—but it’s his town. We sat down on one of the sculptures. It was white marble, and the sea was a hard blue, and I felt so good at being out of the house that I could have stayed there forever. Marion got fretful, and the sun was burning. I would have liked to run down over the smooth brown rocks and into the waves. What a good thing I am not that sort of person. Another bus came along, and we got on it.
We thought, with luck, that we might find ourselves back near the Embassy, but we were not lucky that day, and Marion was getting more and more upset. The terminus is the place to be, I said, and then we can start again; but it would be too late to go to Carla’s, the best we could do would be to get .ourselves home. Think of it as an adventure, I said to Marion, but she said Russel wouldn’t see it that way. Don’t tell him, I said unfeelingly, and she looked at me in terror. I remembered the days, not very long ago, when I told Andrew everything too.
The bus got snarled up in the downtown traffic, and we ended up at the Queen’s Building, near the souk. Shall we go and look around? I said; there are two of us after all. Marion said, a mother and daughter were raped in the souk, mind you they were wearing shorts, they were asking for it. They were Australians, she added. As if that made some sort of difference.
I lost my temper with her. I said, how can you repeat this sort of gossip? Who were these women? When did it happen? Who told you about it? I said, life is difficult enough in this town without believing everything you hear.
I imagined Carla waiting for us, with iced coffee, and something like banana bread, chocolate chip cookies perhaps, and maybe ringing up Dunroamin to see what had happened. I felt almost tearful. I wanted to prove to Marion that it was all right, that we could go out on our own without something terrible happening to us, and now just because we missed our bus stop all these fantasies about Australians were running around in her head. Even though
I had lost my temper, I felt sorry for her, standing there in the street. It was past midday, and I could see her suffering, covered in a clammy sweat, and her ankles swelling before my eyes. I have to keep away from women like Marion. They may be company, but they’re no good for me in the long run.
But then a day later, Marion turned up at Dunroamin. “I had to come and talk to someone,” she said. She revolved slowly in the living room, viewing the many chairs, a vacant and confused expression on her face. As soon as she had selected a chair, she began to cry, and mop up her tears with tissues which she tore angrily from a box on the coffee table.
“I’m so unhappy,” she said, “he’s just so mean, Fran, he’s so mean. He says we’re staying in Jeddah to see the next Five-Year Plan out, if they let him. That’ll be 1990! I’ll be forty! Can you imagine being forty in this place?”
Frances could not imagine being forty in any place at all. But she sat down to listen. “I thought you liked it here?”
A medley of complaints burst out of Marion. She began to talk about sexual harassment, about the bottom-pinchers in the supermarkets, about the men who gave her trouble on the streets because of her blond hair. As she talked, her eyes began to shine, and a look of thrilled fear grew on her face. She must have learned that look in Africa; terrorists, rabies, armed robbers, are the subjects for morning sherry parties. “And besides,” she said, “he says that when we finish here we’re not going home to the UK. He says we’re emigrating to Australia. He says Britain’s finished. I don’t think it’s finished, do you, Frances?”
By the time Marion had got through her grievances a half hour had gone by. Her little voice was a victim’s voice, but her fingers, like a murderer’s, shredded and twisted and tore. “I don’t know what I’d do without Jeff,” she said. “He helps me out such a lot. He runs the girls to Brownies. He unblocked the lavatory for me last week. You know Russel, he won’t do anything like that.”
Frances said, “I can’t stand Jeff.”
“Can’t you?” Marion said wonderingly. “Why ever not?”
Frances said, “He’s such a fascist, that’s why.” She was ashamed of herself, but it was a way of bringing the conversation to an end.
She pitied Marion. Her thick pallid skin never colored and never burned; between her large arms and legs, almost as an afterthought, was a thick-waisted child’s body. Her clothes, even when designed to be voluminous, seemed ridiculously small and tight; she was prone to allergies and rashes, to swollen lips, swollen eyelids, conjunctivitis. Her husband was a bully, and her two daughters were petulant, demanding children, who had learned their mother’s habit of sniffling when thwarted. Frances felt, and was ashamed of herself for feeling, that compared to Marion she was quite glamorous; and that she was witty, and lucky, and sane. But perhaps, she thought, Marion feels just the same about me.
Marion stood up, and a cascade of shredded Kleenex slid to the carpet. Her eyes were pinkish and her nose shone. “But I’ve got it off my chest,” she said. They went out together to the gate. Marion glanced up at the building; Samira had her blinds down, and so of course did Flat 4. “You know what goes on up there, don’t you?” she asked, managing a miserable smile.
“Yes.”
“See much of your neighbors?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Don’t tell anybody, will you?” Marion took a crumpled tissue out of her pocket and mopped her eyes again. “Don’t tell anybody what I’ve been saying about Russel. They don’t like to know that people are unhappy. It could jeopardize his job.”
“Who doesn’t like to know?”
“The Saudis,” she said. “They like people to be, you know, just like robots.”
“Come to dinner,” Frances said. “Will you? Wednesday week? Can you manage that?”
“I think so,” Marion said, sniffing.
Frances went indoors, out of the splashy yellow sunshine and into the cool and the dark. She thought, I wish I had a kinder heart.
 
 
When Andrew came home he was carrying two large plates covered by paper napkins. He said, “Rickie Zussman stopped by the office.”
“I seem to hear his accents.”
“True,” Andrew said. “I mean he dropped in. He called on me. I suppose I am getting a bit American. I’ve spent the morning talking to one of the Corps of Engineers people. You know, they run the missile base. Unofficially.”
“I thought you had nothing to do with the missile base.” Frances lifted a corner of one of the napkins. “Oh, it’s Carla’s banana bread.”
“And her pumpkin pie. No, I don’t have anything to do with it really. I’m just being nosy.”
“I suppose she spent a day baking, and then when we didn’t turn up she didn’t know how to get rid of it. They’re both on diets.”
“All the
khawwadjihs
are on diets,” Andrew complained. “It must be next in popularity to snorkeling. Why do they do it? Some of them are quite scrawny.”
“It’s guilt,” Frances said. She remembered Yasmin’s sly question: you know of guilt? “They feel bad because they’re making so much money. They want to punish themselves a bit.”
“Do you think that’s it?”
“Yes, it’s like those people who go on fasts and give their lunch money to Oxfam. Religion without God.”
She took the plates from Andrew and carried them into the kitchen. He followed. “I wonder if Carla would mind,” she said, removing the napkins, “if I gave this stuff to Yasmin and Samira. Samira sent me some stuffed vine leaves yesterday. I’m in debt.”
“It would be a cross-cultural experience for them,” Andrew said. “Are we always going to carry on this food exchange?”
“Oh, it’s a harmless hobby. Food’s the only thing we can talk about without running into a lot of misunderstandings. By the way—”
“Put the kettle on, will you?” Andrew said.
“I was thinking about the empty flat. Is it supposed to be one woman the chap’s seeing, or several?”
“Only one, I think.”
“Oh, this disgusting water,” Frances said. “It’s furring the kettle up. What I wondered is, why don’t they just both get divorced. Divorce is easy here. So I’m told.”
“I don’t know.” Andrew is baffled by how simple life sometimes seems to his wife. “There could be all sorts of reasons. There might be family connections at stake.” Or what emotional complexities in the background, he thought: a devoted cuckold, a vulnerable wife. Might the Saudis have those emotions: or another set entirely? Frances seems to believe that nothing in the Kingdom can be taken for granted; that human nature, if indeed it exists anywhere, is not something that can be relied on here.
“They’d have to be very persuasive connections,” she said, “for a couple to run this sort of risk. Come to that—” she reached down the teapot—“only one of them would have to get divorced, the woman, because the man can have four wives, can’t he?”
“They don’t do that much nowadays. None of the Saudis I know at the Ministry has more than one wife. They leave that to the Bedu. They try to be modern.”
“Up to a point.”
“And besides, it’s too expensive, getting married. The girls want a new house built for them, and all the furniture.”
“Yes, I know. They want chandeliers.”
“So now it’s just like the rest of the world, what do you call it—serial polygamy.”
The water was boiling. “Perhaps the woman upstairs has a possessive husband,” Frances said. “Perhaps she doesn’t think he’d play the game and say
‘I divorce you.’
” She made the tea, picked up the tray, and headed for the living room. “Before we have the dinner party,” she said, “we really must rearrange these chairs.”
Yasmin, after their conversation in Samira’s flat, had been anxious to correct any wrong impression that Frances might have received. “It seems to me,” Frances had said recklessly, “that everybody
could be good, if you could get a more or less instant divorce each time you saw someone you liked the look of—and then after a week or two you could get married again. On that principle, no one need ever commit adultery.”
She had thought, if I just give Yasmin a little push, I’ll find out whether or not she’s in the secret. But Yasmin seemed nettled. “The Saudis do this,” she said. “We wouldn’t do this. In Pakistan a divorce is much rarer,”
“But the Saudis have lots. Why’s that?”
Yasmin dropped her eyes. “Because they are very passionate.”
“In the West we take marriage more seriously. We think if you don’t like it you have to try to put it right. We promise it’s for life.” She stopped, realizing how remote this was from her real experience; half Andrew’s colleagues were on their second or third wife. “Well, that’s the theory,” she said.

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