The Pickup (16 page)

We'll be gone before then.

He was fixed in determination as on something palpable, as he stripped himself of jeans and T-shirt. The designer jeans were oil- and dirt-stained now, there were no trade unions with rules for the protection of workers, the kind of business the Uncle owned so profitably did not supply overalls. His determination was an awesome possession she had never seen, never needed to be called forth either in the life of her father's suburb or the sheltered alternatives of her friends. Never known in herself—well, perhaps when she stood in the cottage before him with two flight tickets instead of one.

She picked up the jeans and shirt, and the simple gesture, could have been that of his mother or sisters, sent him over to her. His naked feet covered hers, his naked legs clasped her, and he smothered her head against his breast as if to stay something beginning in her.

N
o-one can say how long it could take. When you grease a palm (or whatever that business is called here) you have to risk whether the recipient-behind-the-recipient can do what he assures—no problem! no problem!—or won't be seen again, and neither will the dollars.

Life in the meantime.

Life. An unremarked insidious way in which both anticipation and impatience are suspended along with the official refusals and the repeated re-applications to be made. An entry into the state lived by the family, the street that ends in desert, the men sitting at coffee stalls. Everyone is waiting for something that may come sometime—a return from the oil fields, the settlement of an ancient debt, a coup whose generals will not stuff their own pockets—or never.

Julie was teaching English not only to Maryam and the quiet young neighbourhood girls and awkward boys who sidled into the lean-to whispering and making place for one another cross-legged on the floor. Maryam must have mentioned this little gathering to the lady of the house where she was employed; the woman invited the foreign wife to come to tea and be good enough to talk English with other ladies wanting to
learn to speak the language. What on earth qualified her to teach! On the other hand, what else did she have? What use were her supposed skills, here; who needed promotion hype? She was like one who has to settle for the underbelly of a car. The books in the elegant suitcase were bedside bibles constantly turned to, by now, read and re-read; she agreed—but in exchange for lessons in
their
language. Why sit among his people as a deaf-mute? Always the foreigner where she ate from the communal dish, a closeness that The Table at the distant EL-AY Café aimed to emulate far from any biological family. Never able better to reach her lover (husband!—she found it difficult to think of herself as a wife) through some sort of contact with the mother to whom was reserved, she knew long before meeting her in the imposing flesh, a place within him out of reach by anyone else. The Table friends were always cash-strapped, even if she had felt like re-entering the cul-de-sac she once occupied with them, not fair to expect an outlay on purchase and despatch; she wrote to her mother, why shouldn't she be asked to order through one of those wonderful Internet book warehouses in California a translation of the Koran, hardback. And send it by courier; the village post office was a counter shared with chewing gum and cigarettes in a shop.

Her mother, of all people, yes. Speaking from within the family where she now found herself, he had made it clear she was remiss in not keeping a daughter's contact with a mother. So there had been an exchange of letters.
My crazy girl, I can imagine your papa's horror … you're like me, I'm afraid, you just can't restrict yourself to tidy emotions! But don't forget, darling, if it doesn't work you can always get out.
She had been amused to read the letter to him but skipped the last sentence. A few days later he asked whether she had answered the letter yet.

No of course not. It's not going to be a weekly duty, like when I was at boarding school.

Her mother can get some references. From her friends, her husband. He's an American, isn't he. It's necessary for our visas.

Canada, Australia—America too? Every possibility was being worked at through his contacts. The only country where she might have any of use was England; but he already had against him a record of illegal entry there.

The letters of recommendation she requested—at his dictation, he knew so well the form to take—so far had not come from California. But the book by door-to-door service prepaid at high cost did arrive—somehow—with the driver of the bus from the capital; whoever was supposed to take charge of the package there happened to know the man's route. She hesitated to ask Ibrahim what the verses were that he had told her his mother knew by heart; Maryam would tell her. There was some difficulty in making her request understood, perhaps not because of language problems but of the girl thinking she must be misunderstanding: what would Ibrahim's wife want to know these things for?

The Chapter of The Merciful, the Chapter of Mary, the Chapter of The Prophets.

He was out with men with whom he grew up, some friends said to be able to lead him to the hands open behind officials' backs. There were no hours restricting his quest, no chances of pursuit too unlikely. She was alone with the goose-neck lamp he had bought, saying that at least she could read by the light of some amenity she was used to, while they were in this place.
Suras,
the footnotes said they were called. She read aloud to herself as if to hear in the natural emphases of delivery which had been the passages come upon—for life— in these choices out of so much advice and exhortation, inspiration, consolation people find in religious texts. She read at random; the verses did not come in the order in which Maryam had happened to name them.

And remember Job
: when he cried to his Lord, Truly evil
hath touched me: but thou art the most merciful of those who show mercy.

So we heard him, and lightened the burden of his woe; and we gave him back his family.

Turned away from the encircling light of the lamp.

She was beside the majestic figure statue-draped in black at the feast, the first meal. Her lover, the son, cast out by Nigel Ackroyd Summers' world, given back to his family by that silent figure whose authority came from the thrall of his love. How had the girl-child known the verse she was learning to read was: for her. Known by heart.

And make mention in the Book of Mary
, when she went apart from her family, eastward

And took a veil to shroud herself from them: and we sent our spirit to her, and he took before her the form of a perfect man.

She said: ‘I fly for refuge from thee to the God of Mercy! If thou fearest him, begone from me.'

He said: ‘I am only a messenger of the Lord, that I may bestow upon thee a holy son.'

She said: ‘How shall I have a son, when man hath never touched me and I am not unchaste.'

He said: ‘So shall it be, The Lord hath said: “Easy is this with me; and we will make him a sign to mankind, and a mercy from us. For it is a thing decreed.”'

And she conceived him, and retired with him to a far-off place.

Boarding-school scripture stuff.

And when one who was dubbed a Jesus-freak among the café habitués got herself pregnant and said she didn't know how that happened, it had been the banter of the day … now which of you randy guys played Angel Gabriel …

What the story might mean to the one who still could recite it by heart; well you'd have to have a son of your own to understand.

The light fell again on the pages; turning, skimming; a pause:

The God of Mercy hath taught
the Koran

Hath created man,

Hath taught him articulate speech.

The Sun and the Moon have each their times,

And the plants and the trees bend in adoration,

And the Heaven, He hath reared it on high …

… He hath let loose the two seas which meet each other:

Yet between them is a barrier which they overpass not.

Everyone knows, in texts like these, what is meant: for her. She left this book open on the last two lines.

She lay on the iron bed and waited for him, gone about the imperatives of his world, as he had awaited her, gone about hers, nights in the cottage.

F
or a while Australia looked promising.

What'll we do there?

Plenty. A country with opportunities, all kinds. Developing. It will be good, for you, you know, very much like your home place.

She shook her head, laughing. I've left that home place.

Julie went along with him to someone who had connections with someone else who knew the Canberra representative in the capital, to give particulars of her own background that might count favourably; wife a citizen of a fellow Commonwealth country, legal and fiscal provenance impeccable, standard of education high.

What about those people, the man at your father's place, that time, who was going to Australia. He was the one who was even taking his black driver with him, you remember the talk.

I've no idea where they are.

There was the summon of his black eyes.

Your father knows.

She raked her hair up the back of her head through
splayed fingers; he stood before her as he had when he emerged from under a car in a garage: here I am.

I can't ask my father.

His silences distressed her more than any argument between them would have, they were retreats into thoughts that barred her; he who had been refused so often had unconsciously taken on for himself the response of refusal.

She went to him where he was suddenly rummaging in the canvas bag—he had never completely unpacked, not allowed her to do it for him, it was there ready for departure from this place, his home, standing week after week, month after month, in the lean-to room. She bent over him, her arms going around his waist and her cheek against his bare back. To her, the essence of him, the odour of his skin, overcame his silence and received her. She wanted to say, I will do anything for you, but how could this be formulated when she had shown there was something she could not?

It wouldn't do anything for us except humiliate us. He'd say no, he wouldn't even think of embarrassing his colleague, his corporate mate, accepted in a country in
high standing …
expecting him to recommend some immigrant he's seen once at a lunch party and who was the husband of a daughter whose father had told her she must go to hell in her own chosen way—those were my father's lovely farewell words to me!

I wrote the name of the place they were going to. Somewhere in here, it is. Perth, it was Perth. I think so… a bit of paper …

The bit of paper was not found. Without the reference from Perth the processes of application continued, the periods of waiting while documents went back and forth.

Entry to Australia was not granted.

Julie was confusedly angry. Apparently with the Australians; with herself for not having been able to ‘do anything' for him that—in fact, in contradiction—would have been unlikely to have made any difference.

He kept contingency plans for the next country, concurrently with every application that failed. They have enough trying to keep out others from the East, they don't need people like me. That's all. That's it.

I
n the meantime.

Waiting generates a pace of its own; routine, that is supposed to belong to permanence, forms out of the fact that in the meantime there is nothing else to be done. Ibrahim takes the old car the Uncle has lent—given—them and goes to the Uncle's vehicle workshop in the morning, Julie has classes in English at Maryam's employer's house and at a school— word-of-mouth makes more claims on an apparent skill or gift she didn't know she had. In the family house Maryam has gathered her sister Amina, who has just given birth, and Khadija, wife of the son missing at the oil fields; they and others come unobtrusively to join the exchange, picking up Julie's language, Julie picking up theirs, under a torn awning at the back of the house that stretches to an oleander whose pink flowers are thick with dust, like a woman who uses too much powder. There is no palm tree. The shade is thin and the shifting of light across the faces, Julie's and theirs, is a play upon what each does not know, in unfamiliarity, and is
beginning to have revealed, in glances of intuition about the other. Maryam has become almost fluent, or Julie has become quicker at understanding what the girl is getting at in the locutions and inevitable substitutions of one English word for another. Maryam insists that Khadija is the one who can impart their language to Julie far better than she can, Khadija comes from the capital, she finished school ‘all the way'. It is not just the young girl's inarticulacy in the foreign language that is the reason for this advocacy; everyone in the family knows, even Ibrahim's wife has seen, that Khadija is in a state of frustration which swings from being found weeping in a corner (the one reserved for the mother's prayer mat, at that) to angry imprecations against her husband, a son of the house. Ibrahim calls her, privately to his wife, that crazy woman. She shouts at my brother for being dead, perhaps he is dead, God knows. Maryam's delicate way of wanting to help her sister-in-law is to attempt to distract her by recognizing her superiority and flattering her into the obligation to use it to help someone else: their new sister-in-law, Ibrahim's wife. —I tell Khadija, she is lonely without our language.—

Julie repeated this to him.

Isn't that original? Maryam's such an unusual girl, it even comes out in her broken English. She's right about Khadija, though. Khadija never looks at me, you know she's somehow haughty, but she's listening and then she corrects me, I'm really learning pronunciation from her. Talk to me. You'll see.
We
must use your language together …