“So what happened before any women doctors were trained? There must have been a time.”
“Oh yes,” Samira said. “It is not so long ago that we got schools for girls, and even then many people didn’t agree with it, there were riots, you know, lots of shooting. As for the lady doctors, I am mystified. I think we must have got them from Egypt.”
“And so what if you don’t want to be a doctor, or work at the bank?”
“Home is best. You see, Frances, you women in the West, you think you are very free, but Islam has given us all the women’s rights. They are guaranteed to us. We can have our own money. In the home we are the rulers. Men must provide for us, that is their duty.”
“But if you are divorced?”
“Then our fathers and brothers must look after us. They give us their protection. You women in the West are just exploited by men. They drive you out to work in offices and factories, and then when you come home you must cook for them and look after the children.”
“You think we should be happy to let men support us?”
“Yes, because that is their responsibility, and ours is to bring up the next generation. Frances,” she said seriously, “you really must have some children. You will please Andrew. You cannot use contraception all your life.”
“Yes,” Frances said. “I’m thinking about it.” The child, at her feet, was twisting off the doll’s head. What had the
“We have a saying,” Samira smiled. “‘We will hang our certificates in the kitchen.’”
She bent down, and pulled the doll from her daughter’s grasp. She straightened its tortured limbs, and sat holding it by one leg, looking into its plastic face of pink and white. “Tell me,” she said dreamily, “have you ever met Princess Diana?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t. I don’t exactly move in those circles.”
“You don’t know anyone in your royal family?”
“Ours is not as big as yours. They keep to themselves.”
“A pity. I would like to meet her. She is very beautiful, I think. Very fair.”
Diana looks out of all the magazines, peeping from under her fringe; blackish sapphires, like lacquered beetles, cling to her ears, and her coy expression is looped and scored with Arabic script. She is a heroine, a glamorous royal bride. Her decolletage, because it is a royal one, is somehow less indecent than others; the censor’s felt-tip spares it.
“You know, with this one,” Samira gestured toward her child, “I wanted to call her Diana. But Abdul Nasr does not agree. He says it is foreign custom.” Samira was suddenly indignant; her indignation broke down her English. “Just when I wanted to have birthday party, he says that’s foreign custom too. This time, if it is another girl … though I hope,” she added hastily, “it will be a boy … I must get my choice over the name. I said to him, why not? My sister has got Diana, my cousin has got it, all these babies … he says, this sounds uncanny to my ears.”
“So you settled for Fat’ma?”
“Well, it is just a starter name. It is just what you call the baby while you are thinking what to call her. So I said to him, for me it can stay at Fat’ma, what do I care?” She looked down at her daughter, with her corkscrew curls, her flat nose and round eyes. Her face was disgusted. She laughed a little. “White nigger, isn’t it? Must be from his family. Not mine.”
“Perhaps you should have a holiday in England,” Frances said. You could buy Fat’ma some dungarees, she thought, then she wouldn’t look like a boxer in drag. “Perhaps you might see Princess Diana.”
“Oh, but Frances, I have been in England. Did you not know? I have been there for six months.”
“I see. So that’s how you learned such good English.”
“No, not really. That was at the university. Also, of course, the Berlitz tapes. When I am in England I don’t really have much chance to learn.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, mainly of course I have to stay inside with my brother-in-law’s wife. One day we went to London. Harrods.”
“You weren’t in London?”
“No, in Brighton. That is where my brother-in-law lives. He stays out of London because London is dangerous.”
“It corrupts him?” Frances suggested.
“No, not that. Dangerous for his life.” She stopped, and blushed. “You know what it is,” she said hurriedly. All her transparency had darkened; she was thinking furiously. “Well, you know, Frances, that where there are some Arabs together your police think they are bombing, or something. Really they are only going to their own clubs, reading the newspapers, so on. Discussing their home countries.”
“I don’t think the police would shoot him, if they didn’t like his social life.”
Though perhaps it is not only the police that worry him, Frances thought. Have we a political militant in the family? A terrorist? Surely not. We are just at cross-purposes.
“Anyway, he will be home soon, thank God,” Samira said piously. She tossed her denim legs over the arm of the chair, and looked as if she wanted a change of subject. It seemed dark, suddenly, inside the circle of chairs. But it was midday, a blazing sun outside, and perhaps Eric Parsons would be driving somewhere, across the city’s harsh grid plan, with this same sun a diffuse yellow flare in the artificial sky of his windscreen. And Andrew would be bending over a site plan, or stumping through the mud, the noonday heat on the exposed nape of his neck. Frances leaned across Samira, with a murmured apology, and switched on a small
