“Oh no … not that sort of hurry.”
“I thought you meant …” Yasmin broke off, and sighed. “You see, because of living in England, I know how some young girls act. But not you, I felt sure.”
“I was in Africa when I got married. I just meant, it was informal.”
“A pity for you. It is a big day in a young girl’s life.”
“I daresay. I wasn’t a young girl exactly.”
“You had … men friends? Before?”
“One or two.”
Yasmin wished to know more. She took a cucumber and a sharp knife and began to dice it very finely on to a wooden board. “When I was in St. John’s Wood …” she said.
“Yes?”
“They were going to pass a law that all young girls in England must not go out at night, except with their fiances.”
“Oh, but Yasmin, they couldn’t. We could never have such a law.” Frances shifted Selim’s weight to her other hip. “You look hot,” she said crossly, “shall I get you a drink out of the fridge?”
“I will have Fanta,” Yasmin said. “Yes, because you see, most girls in the UK have lost their virginity by the age of twelve.”
“That’s rubbish. Who told you that?”
“You only have to read the newspapers. Naturally Parliament is concerned.”
“But you must have got it wrong. We don’t have those sort of laws. We don’t have laws to make people moral. We don’t think that’s what law is for.”
“You should try to make people more moral,” Yasmin said. She pushed back a long strand of her black hair, and leaned over the pans again. “The West is so decadent, and such behavior makes people unhappy. In the long run. I am telling you.”
“England’s not like that. Not really.”
“But I have seen it.”
“Then it must be a funny place, St. John’s Wood, that’s all I can say.”
Yasmin never raised her voice, never insisted; just plowed her lonely furrow. Almost every day she would unveil some new, astonishing viewpoint. Shams was on her knees in the hall, working on the carpets with a brush and pan, on red hand-knotted rugs whose seamless geometry recalled the unfathomable nature and eternal vigilance of Allah himself. The kitchen filled with steam.
When she was back in Flat 1 Frances found she could not follow Yasmin’s recipes. “Oh, you just take a handful of this,” Yasmin would say, “and take some of that—”
“How much?”
“Oh, just what you think you need …”
And to Frances’s objections, and queries, she would say, “It comes with practice. All English food,” she would say, “is boiled. That is why it has no taste.” She would tap her spoon against the side of the pan, and exhale with theatrical weariness, and hold out her hands so that Frances could pass her a towel to wipe them; the artistry was over, Shams would clear up the mess. “I will send you some of this, later,” she would say. “Shams will bring you a dish of it across.”
Frances got Andrew to take her uptown, to the lending library run by the British community. “I want to borrow some cookery books,” she said, “and get it all straight in my mind. Listen, Andrew, why doesn’t Yasmin distinguish … why doesn’t Yasmin distinguish … between private morality and public order?”
“Because Islam doesn’t,” he said, his voice toneless, his eyes on the moving traffic. “This country is governed by the Sharia law, which is Allah’s own sentiments as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. In Islam there are no private vices.”
“So there is no difference between sins and crimes.”
“Not that I can see.”
“So if you commit a crime—”
“You appear before a religious court. This is a theocracy. God rules, OKAY? Frances, shut up now, I’m driving.”
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD AND AVOID DISTRACTION, a notice warned. The city passed: Shesh Mahal Restaurant, Electric Laundry, Wheels Balanced Here; a sculpture, twenty-five feet high, made of blue metal tubes like organ pipes. Small children swarmed loose in the speeding cars, scrambling over the seats, pulling at the drivers’
“Bit of a dodgy concept,” Andrew said. “Allah has appointed a term to every life.”
“Who tells you this stuff?”
“Oh, guys at work.”
It was sunset; oily colors mingled in the sky. An airplane hung low over Prince Abdullah Street, unmoving, its roar drowned out by the usual noises of the city. On their left was a private villa built to resemble one of the minor Loire chateaux. On their right was a big expatriate housing compound, where the apartments looked like packing cases,
