The Pickup (21 page)

The decision had been conveyed to the Uncle by his mother. It appeared that such a decision could not properly be made by a young man on his own. He had ignored the due process of discussion within the family of whatever reasons there could possibly be for a rebuff—an insult, considering the Uncle's position in the family, in the whole community— of this nature.

The story of the amazing action of a young man from a poor family like their own, who had taken himself off to foreign countries and made nothing of himself there, come home with only a foreign wife to show for it, had gone from house to house and café to market stall, wafted up to homes of the few wealthy and important people—the wife who employed a member of the family inquisitively extracted inside information from her maid, the young man's sister, Maryam.

The BMW outside the house again. There was no question of tea and sweetmeats, or the couple preferring to occupy the lean-to. He said, we have to be there, and they were seated, a little apart from the rest of the family, when the Uncle entered and everyone rose. His greetings were less mayoral, but proper.

It had come to the Uncle's ears that his dear sister's son and the son of his respected brother-in-law was getting mixed up in politics. Everyone agrees that a young man must have friends to meet and talk to, a little pleasure men enjoy away from the house and the women. His self-confidence allowed him to make a joke even in this situation, but nobody tittered; the men, knowing their indulgences, of which he hinted, smoking a bit of kif and taking alcohol in a disguised bar, the women wise in not enquiring where the men went at
night, and all were subdued, as if sharing some sibling guilt for the brother's misdemeanours that went beyond these. Well—kif and whisky and even the occasional woman—the Uncle had been young himself; he did not need to say what, for his manhood, he assumed was understood. But Ibrahim— his sister's son like a son to him—it is known, it has now become known to him, and with sorrow, mixes with a certain crowd. This comes as a shock to his dear parents, and it is for them that a senior member of the family speaks now. This young man the whole family loves is spending his time with a type of malcontents who blame everything in their lives on others—on the authorities, on the government. Everything they do not have the ability to do for themselves, work hard as the older generation, his generation (a hand flat against his own breast), was willing to do, sacrifice, for the honour of the family, raise themselves up—all this is the fault of the government. Government owes them everything. The Lord has given them what a man needs to live a good life in the Faith, their families have educated them, they can marry and bring up children in security, there are no foreigners from Europe flying flags over our land any longer—what more do they want? They want to bring down the government,
aoodhu billah.
That's the evil they want. They have in their heads the ideas that set brother against brother. They want to smash everything, and they don't know—don't they see what is happening in those countries that have done this?—a country ends up with nothing, everything lost. The young men already have so much that we, their parents, never had. And why not? We are glad of it. From outside, from progress. Isn't it enough to have your car and cellphone and TV. What else is really worth having out there in the world of false gods?

All he wants to say: it is mixing with this group who are dangerous, a danger to themselves, to us, to our government—they must be the sad reason for a young man giving
up an opportunity that would bring advancement, comforts, everything anyone could want for a good life, eventually a high place in the community and honour to the family. This opportunity that was offered comes out of sorrow, but was a way of making something joyful result from pain,
ma sha allah,
some good to come to the family out of—he placed his hand on his breast, softly, now—a tragedy.
Inna lillah.

There was silence in which everyone in the room was alone. The children felt it and gazed about at the grown-ups in awe. Tears were running down the composed face of the mother as some revered statues are said to shed tears on certain auspicious dates, while their features remain cast in stone or bronze.

The Uncle, her brother, had spoken seated beside her; but her son, the nephew, stood up.

—No-one in this village, in this place, has anything to do with why I cannot accept the offer you have honoured me with, Uncle Yaqub. I do not have any interest in the government. It is not going to govern me. I am going to America.—

T
he Uncle spoke measuredly and clearly—to her ears—in contrast with the quick speech of the young people in the family whom she found difficult to follow, probably because they spoke colloquially while she was studying the language out of primers, and those who had volunteered in the friendly exchange of languages over tea also thought it respectful of theirs to teach her only its conventional formulations.

Afterwards, Ibrahim gave her full account of what the Uncle had said. So she was able to piece together the words and phrases she had understood in the Uncle's own voice and to correct for herself, with that echo, the paraphrase and lack of emphasis in what she was being told in the medium of Ibrahim's English. She needed an explanation to the reference to sorrow, a tragedy, at the end, that had produced such a strong effect on everyone, she had felt it herself?

Didn't she remember that the only son was dead? Ah yes—the heir apparent—she did, how was it?

A terrible thing. He burned in his car, an accident. And no-one says it, but it was when he had taken alcohol. Drunk.

So she understood; the reference was used to wind up with
something to shame the one who was refusing bestowal of a privilege to which he wasn't really entitled anyway. Like the other women of the house, she hadn't known, hadn't expected to be told every time her man was out at night, where he went and what he did; this attitude came naturally to her, from the mores of The Table at the EL-AY Café—everyone free to come and go, particularly in the code of intimacy, no-one should police another; even in the ultimate intimacy called love, monitoring was left behind with the rejected values of The Suburbs. The reference—his own—to America, which she had understood as he pronounced it evenly in his mother tongue, had brought an immediate urge of protectiveness towards him, she had wanted to get up, go to him, shield him from the pathetic humiliation he was exposing himself to before the eyes of the family, when everyone knew, everyone, how since his return, deported from one country, he was always making applications for immigration visas to other countries and coming back from the queues in the capital with a piece of paper; refusal. He was going to Canada, Australia, New Zealand. The neat file in the canvas bag was full of such documents.

To save him embarrassment, she did not refer to the pretext he had given for his refusal; she knew the real reasons. The grease-stiff overalls and the stink of fuel from which he had emerged in the garage round the block near the EL-AY Café. And perhaps he felt it was—what?—distasteful, bad luck, somehow not what should be, to fill the empty space of someone's sorrow, occupy the place of a young man he must have known, a family sibling, as a child. He could not tell them that; he brought up a pretext nobody could believe in.

It was not the end of it, for him, of course. His father had the right and obligation of long homilies addressed to the son, the
family kept out, the house subdued to the death-watch-beetle tlok-tlok of the ornamental clock (also a gift from the Uncle). His mother, rising from prayers that he must feel were for him, summoned him aside and their mingled voices were so low it sounded merely as if prayer were continuing. But if the supreme authority of the Uncle could have no influence on their son, no-one, nothing else would.

What passed between mother and son must have been an apocalypse for both, a kind of rebirth tearing her body, a fearful thrusting re-emergence for him. His wife who had never known, never would know, such emotions—Nigel Ackroyd Summers, and the mother someone imagined in California—felt the force of his with humility and offered all she had in recognition: love-making. In her body he was himself, he belonged to nobody, she was the country to which he had emigrated.

In some accommodation reached with the Uncle by family council, the prodigal nephew was continuing to help out at the vehicle repair workshop as if nothing had happened, to have use of the car, and to go off to the capital during working hours on affairs of his own. He also still pursued family matters since it was felt his education made him the one best qualified to, and one day actually was able to bring news of the brother, Khadija's husband, Zayd—at the agency there was a letter, a bank draft. Whatever explanations for the long silence were, the withdrawn Khadija did not say whether or not she accepted them. Khadija used a strong perfume, it was the assertion of her presence in the house, constant pungent reminder that she was deserted by a son of this family; when Ibrahim's wife was impulsively bold enough to approach her and say how glad she was that this sister-in-law's husband was safe and well, the woman gave a proud wry smile—and then, suddenly, she who never touched anyone but her own children, embraced Julie. Perhaps it was because Julie spent
much time with one of the children. Leila had fallen in love with her, as small girls will with some adult who offers activities different from those of a parent; as Julie had fallen in love with Gulliver-Archie. Her kind of Uncle.

A
lmost a year since they arrived at his home. She was fully occupied now. Strange; she had never worked like this before, without reservations of self, always had been merely trying out this and that, always conscious that she could move on, any time, to something else, not expecting satisfaction, looking on at herself, half-amusedly, as an ant scurrying god knows where. In addition to the ladies' conversational circle, the lessons for other adults who sought her out, and the play-learning she discovered she could devise (probably started with Leila) for small children, as well as the classes she taught in the primary school, she had been drawn in to coach English to older boys who hoped to go to high school in the capital some day; she had been able to persuade—flatter—the local school principal to let girls join the classes although it was more than unlikely their families would allow them to leave home.

She performed such unskilled tasks as she could be expected to be able to do, among her sisters-in-law, in the preparation of family meals. The mother directed everything, she was obeyed as the guardian of all culinary knowledge and dietary edicts, the ingredients she chose and the methods of
preparation she decreed were followed. The ingredients of the food were simple but they were combined and transformed into something subtly delicious, the so-named pilaffs and other ‘ethnic' dishes fiercely spiced in the alternative cuisine favoured at The Table turned out to have had nothing to do with these. Amazing what you could produce on two paraffin burners. Apparently the mother noted her interest; perhaps a sign of other recognition from the heights of her black-robed dignity, began to call Ibrahim's wife over and show her, with a gesture authorizing her to try for herself the procedures by which preparation of food, as it should be, were to be performed. The mother smiled—Ibrahim's smile—when she saw how this privilege of her cuisine and lessons were enjoyed. Occasionally she pronounced (like a ventriloquist's projection) a few words in English; the exchange with his wife's halting Arabic might in time even extend to conversation lessons in the kitchen? Amina and Maryam laughed encouragement to her over pots and knives when she spoke to them in their language. In the evenings they were beginning to discuss plans for Maryam's wedding, not so distant, and Maryam liked her to be there with them, translating for her and looking to her for approval, from the outside world, of the style of the event previewed. In projection of the days of celebration both set aside that Julie would not be there, any more, then. Canada, Australia; wherever this brother, who persisted in pressing for entry, again and again, no matter how many times rejected, would take her away.

Leila had her by the hand.

After the child came home from school and had eaten, neither her mother nor her playmates expected to see her. The child slipped into the lean-to to find if Julie, too, were back home; looked for her where she might be reading under
the awning if it were not too hot. When Julie went to the house of Maryam's employer for the conversational teas, Leila (the first time with her mother's permission requested) came along. She sat silently, nibbled cake silently. Ibrahim's wife loves children, the ladies enthused; she had never had anything to do with children, not since the Gulliver games, childhood itself—that had been left behind with The Suburbs. There was another construction—perception of herself formed in—by—this village that was his home. There had been a number in her life; she could sum up—the well-brought-up girl with her panda who would marry a well-brought-up polo player from her father's club; the public relations gal with personality plus, set to make a career; the acolyte of the remnant hippie community, rehash resurrected from the era they had been a generation too young to belong to; experiences, all; none definitive of herself, by herself. So far. Only the day she stood in the doll's house and showed him two airline tickets.

Leila by the hand. So small a folding of little bones and flesh-pads it might be just some talisman in her palm. Leila came like this with her to the desert. Nobody missed the child. Nobody knew where they had gone, went as the day cooled; when they returned to the house everyone assumed, as the child hadn't been seen about, the two had been playing games again in the lean-to; Leila loved the games with coloured pegs and counters Julie had had sent from a shop in London, along with an order of books—she wanted Ibrahim to rig up a shelf for her, could he?