stacked one on top of the other. YOU ARE FAST, said a sign, BUT DANGER IS FASTER. Another sculpture; a human fist.
At the British Community Library there were several excellent cookery books. They enrolled, and were given tickets. It all seemed so normal; there was a lady volunteer behind the desk, who wore a nice white blouse with a tie neck, and behaved as if she were in Tunbridge Wells. There was a notice-board, giving details of forthcoming concerts, and offering cars and hi-fi sets for sale. “So many people are going home,” the nice lady said, “you’ve come in at the end of things really. We’ve done seven years, it’s passed in a flash. Well, yes, I’d say I’ve got a lot out of it really, I don’t think it’s right to moan all the time. We’ve learned scuba diving, it’s great fun, there are clubs if you’re interested.” And “Poor you,” she said, “stuck in a block of flats without any European neighbors, no, I really don’t envy you.”
It took them the best part of an hour to get home through the traffic. “Do we need any shopping?” Andrew asked. “Everywhere’s open till ten o’clock.”
“No. I’m sick of shopping. Yasmin is sending us some food tonight. Would you like to be here for seven years?”
“No. But think of the money they must have stashed away.”
“Do you think they’ve suffered for it?”
“Not really. It depends what you want out of life. I can’t think of anywhere better … for scuba diving.”
They pulled up in front of the flats. “Well, there you are,” Andrew said. “Dunroamin.”
“Yes, what a good name for it. Perhaps we could get one of those pokerwork signs made, and hang it on the gate.”
They went inside. “I’ve got work,” Andrew said. He wandered off. Frances sat down at the desk in the living room where she wrote her diary. She read the information sheet the library woman had given her, with its regulations and list of opening times. There was only one indication that life in Saudi had its tiny upsets. “
The doorbell rang; there was Shams on the threshold, her face stretched in the grim ghost of a smile, an oval stainless steel platter resting across her forearms. Legs and wings of chicken protruded from a great bed of rice. “Thank you, Shams.”
Shams stepped back a pace. From beneath her arm, like a conjuror, she produced a length of black cloth. “From Madam,” she said. “For the souk. Tomorrow.”
Balancing the dish on one arm, Frances put out her other hand, hesitantly. “A veil? She’s telling me I need a veil?”
“For the head only,” Shams said, in her gloomy mutter. “Leave open the face.”
“Damn right,” Frances said. She thrust the cloth back at Shams. Shams backed off another pace, and put her hands behind her back. The ghost of a smile had quite vanished. She rested her eyes on the dusty hall floor; thinking, perhaps, I shall have to clean this soon.
Frances closed the door on her. She carried the dish into the kitchen. Then she made for the bathroom, the cloth trailing from her hand. One edge of it had soaked up some of the fiery sauce which smothered the chicken. She turned on the bathroom light. On the floor, a party of ants, like pallbearers, were carrying a dead upturned cockroach. The cockroach influx had not been temporary; it was part of Jeddah life, she was told, a squalid corrective to luxury. She stepped over the funeral procession, which was making for the back of the bidet. Looking at herself in the mirror, she held up the material and draped it over her head. Outlined in black, she looked pale and tired. She pulled the folds down over her face. Now, together with the smell of pine disinfectant, she inhaled a faint odor of mothball. The outlines of the bathroom furniture were fuzzy; only the cold tiles under her hands told her that the world was solid and sharp.
She reached for the door handle, fumbled down the hall. “Hi, Andrew. I’m a headless monster.”
Andrew had plans spread out all over the desk and the big table. He looked up. “Where did you get that?”
“Yasmin sent it with the curry. She sent Shams to do the dirty work. She thinks I need it for the souk. She’s propagandizing me. Trying to make me into a good Eastern wife.”
“Take it off. I don’t like it.”
She spoke from beneath the layers. “This morning she told me that the Saudis didn’t mind seeing women’s legs, it’s their arms they mind. She said, since she is a Muslim, but she’s not a Saudi, she doesn’t feel she need cover her face, just her head, and her arms, and her legs. I can’t work it out, can you?”
“Please take it off. It’s sinister.”
She swept the veil off, and stood smiling at him. “You’ve got something on your forehead,” he said, “something red, what is it?”
It was very quiet in the flat; just the hum and rattle of the air-conditioners. She went back into the bathroom to wash away the red sauce. Perhaps Jeddah life is making me slightly deranged, she thought. It was strange how sound carried down the well at the center of the building, echoing around the plumbing and the sanitary fittings of Dunroamin. Quite distinctly, she could hear, from the floor above, the sound of a woman sobbing.
Tuesday. Mrs. Parsons’s driver parked in Ghazzah Street and blew his horn for Frances to come down. She picked up her bag from a chair in the hall, took the house keys in her hand. Andrew had locked her in again. You’re always asleep when I leave, he said, or half asleep, what else can I do? She turned the key to let herself out of the apartment—it was stiff, a poor fit—and found she had turned it the wrong way, and double-locked the door. She fumbled, felt her face flush, dropped the keys. How incompetent I am becoming, she thought, about even quite ordinary things.
She found the front-door key again, and again fitted it into the lock; she felt an irrational urge to hammer on the door, shout to whomever was listening, in the outside world, to come and spring her, get her out. The door opened. She stepped into the hall, closed the door, locked it behind her; double-locked it again, without meaning to. A long blast of the horn came from the street: Daphne and her driver, wondering where she was.
She looked over her shoulder, up the stairs. So far she had not even had a glimpse of Samira; though she had heard her, perhaps, last night. She glanced across at the closed front door of Flat 2. Was Yasmin standing behind it, her luminous long-tailed eye applied to the spyhole? I shall get you one of those spyholes, Andrew had said, and
