she had snapped at him, I’m not a child; if someone comes to the door I shall answer it, what do you think this is, Manhattan?
Now her sandals slapped against the hard marble floor. She wrenched open the heavy front door. It swung behind her on its stiff hinge, firmly ushering her out. Then the paving-stones, two paces, rank air, the gate in the wall; she drew back the metal bolts, swung it open, clattered it shut behind her. She chose another key. Wrong one. Another. Wrong one. She could feel the driver’s eyes on her back, and a blush spreading upward from her throat. When would she learn these keys? Locking in Yasmin, and Samira, and their children and maids; Parsons had told her to do it, told her she must remember, or her neighbors would be annoyed. Finally she dropped the bunch of keys into her handbag. Mrs. Parsons was waiting in the backseat of her car, and she smiled as she leaned over and flicked the door handle for Frances to get in beside her.
“Always in the back when you’re with a driver,” she said. “Give the door a good slam, dear. I was just going to come after you. Weren’t you ready?”
“Yes,” Frances said, “I’ve been ready for an hour. But there are a lot of doors to lock and unlock.”
“Funny old block,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Very Saudi.” She leaned forward and said distinctly, “Hasan, we want Queen’s Building, you understand me, Queen’s Building.”
“Yes, madam,” Hasan said.
“Because we don’t want some other souk,” Mrs. Parsons said, “we want the main souk.” Her pale eyes slid to Frances. “So how are you finding it?” she inquired.
Frances hesitated. Already she felt uncomfortable, her dress sticking to her under the arms. It would cool down toward Christmas, people said. She reached into her bag, checking that the keys were still there, not dropped in the gutter or down the car seat. She considered Mrs. Parsons’s question. “It’s … stultifying,” she said at last.
Mrs. Parsons made no answer to this; or no immediate answer. Frances felt she knew her already, from a former phase of life: a sagging, soft-fleshed woman, with flushed weathered skin, a Home Counties voice. She wore a flowing kaftan with a batik pattern, and her freckled arms were encircled by heavy antique bracelets of traditional design; around her neck on a long chain she wore another beaten silver ornament, which bore an unfortunate resemblance to a gym-mistress’s whistle. Her manner was benignly poisonous.
“I hope I’m properly dressed,” Frances said.
“You ought to get some kaftans really. Especially for the souk, you know, and for when you’re out without your husband. The shop people won’t serve you, if they don’t think you’re properly covered up.” Mrs. Parsons looked her over. “You don’t want to be pestered, do you? You’ve got that fairish hair, you see, fair hair’s always an attraction to them.”
“I thought I’d be all right if I covered my arms.”
“Well, of course, there aren’t any hard and fast rules.” Mrs. Parsons passed a hand over her own bare forearm. “It isn’t arms they mind, I understand, it’s legs. Or if you want to just go out in your ordinary clothes, what you should do is get an
“Yes, but I’m not going to do that,” Frances said. She was silent for a moment. She had seen European women with the black wraps shrugged on for half-concealment; they trailed and flapped, and slid off the shoulders, like a student’s or a barrister’s gown; as they stood at the supermarket checkouts the women twitched at them whenever they had a hand free. These women looked absurd, she thought, as if they had stopped off for some groceries on their way to a degree ceremony. “They’re just dressing up,” she said. “It’s an affectation.”
“Oh, well,” Mrs. Parsons said. “They’re only trying to keep out of trouble.”
“It’s selling out.”
“You’ll have to talk it over with your neighbors. Have you met your neighbors yet?”
“We’ve met the Pakistani couple, on the ground floor.”
“Yes, I thought old Raji’s wife would be asking you over for a cup of tea.” She gave a little knowing laugh. “Raji knows all the expats. Doesn’t mix though. Oh no. Can’t, in his position.”
“What exactly is his position?”
“He’s very close to Amir, Eric tells me. That’s the Minister, Amir. Does all his wheeling and dealing on the stock market. He’s always jetting off to London or Tokyo. They have private fortunes, you know, these people, that they keep outside the Kingdom.” Again the laugh, without humor. “Knows a lot, does old Raji. Met the Arab girl?”
“No.”
“I don’t know her,” Mrs. Parsons said, as if that settled the matter. “I don’t know her at all.”
They had left behind the narrow streets around Dunroamin; the driver put his foot down. They shot through a red light. “Third one this morning,” Mrs. Parsons muttered. “Can’t you slow down, Hasan?”
Frances looked out of the window. The sheer face of a twenty-story bank building rose on their right. A National Guardsman in camouflage gear lounged in the gateway of a white-walled palace. He held a rifle; the wind, blowing in from the desert, whipped his red and white
“I didn’t think one could.”
“Oh, there are ways around it. There are sometimes office jobs. Secretarial work.”
“I’m not a secretary.”
“No, well, you seem a smart enough little girl, you’d pick it up. You can answer the telephone, I suppose?”
They screeched to a halt. Hasan had stabbed his foot on the brake; they were flung forward against the front seat. Mrs. Parsons’s bracelets clashed together loudly. “Damn these women,” she said.
Ahead of them, a collection of black-veiled shapes had drifted into the road. They hovered for a moment, in the middle of the great highway, looking with their blind muffled faces into the car; then slowly, they began to bob
