Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

lamp with a pink shade. It cast a soft circle of light up on to the girl’s face; her expression said, have I been simpleminded? Frances had already decided what to report to Andrew. Certificates in kitchens, yes. Terrorists in Brighton, no. You’ve got nothing to do, he would say; you sit around the house confabulating, making plots, and making your dull life brighter.

“But he is not so bad,” Samira said. “I mean my husband. Perhaps this time he will let me have my way on the name. After all, we do not have many conflicts really. Not like Yasmin and her husband.”

“Do they have many?”

Samira laughed. “I hear her side of the story. She says he likes to enjoy himself too much, and this worries her. But I think when he wants her she is always praying.”

She wouldn’t enlarge on it; swept up her child and her abaya, dressed herself for the journey up the stairs. “Come and visit me soon,” she said. “I want to know more about your life. Yasmin tells me you have married your husband very suddenly, when you are traveling in Africa. I think that’s very romantic. I want to know about it.” She secured the child’s wrist. They clung together, a diminishing female chain: mother, daughter, doll. At the door, Samira put out a hand from her wrappings, and touched Frances’s cheek. “Dear Frances,” she said. “I am going to bring you a lipstick.”

Frances watched her go, and then, on an impulse, picked up her keys, closed her apartment door, and followed Samira up the stairs. Samira didn’t hear her; she scuttled ahead, keeping close to the wall. She looked as if she had no right to be out. You could put a Western woman under all those layers, Frances thought, but she’d never achieve that apologetic gait. She’d never fool anyone; the way the Saudi woman walks is quite unique.

As Frances rounded the bend in the stairs she heard Samira’s front door click shut. She stopped for a moment between the two closed doors, then mounted the half-flight, and unbolted the door that led onto the roof. At once the noon light leaped into the gap, and she stepped into a whiteout, a featureless, silent glare. She craved just a moment’s daylight, just a breath of air; but there was no wind, and a dizzying heat. And this, she thought, is winter. The walls and roofs of the apartment blocks around her shimmered, like towers of water. She saw the black outline of the waist-high wall which bounded the roof, and the abandoned clotheslines scored against the air; stretched taut between their poles, they seemed to quiver and throb with some private energy, like telegraph wires.

Frances Shore’s Diary: 19 Rabi al- awal

Damn right Raji likes to have a good time. Last night at about ten o’clock, when we were bringing in YET ANOTHER load of shopping for the dinner party (dear God I wish I had never started this)—we met Raji in the hall. He came up behind us, and propped himself against the wall, and began to talk about the stock market, holding himself upright with one hand. He thinks he has to make this conversation with Andrew. He thinks Andrew is interested in stocks and bonds. Raji was drunk.

He reeled across the hall and rang his own doorbell. We got ourselves inside. A few minutes later, when we were putting the shopping away, we heard his engine revving and his tires squealing, and he was off again.

He must have been at the Minister’s, Andrew said. That’s where they do the serious drinking in this town. I suppose if he’s stopped by the police, he’s got influence.

But what will Yasmin say, I wondered.

Yasmin rang the doorbell next day, at about twelve-thirty. She had brought a bowl of clear chicken soup, from which wafted a thin peppery aroma. It was a pretext. Usually she sent Shams with the food.

“Here,” she said. “You ought to eat at midday, Frances. I know you are busy with your cooking so I brought you this.”

Yasmin’s face looked bruised, bluish, as if she had not slept. “I can’t stay,” she said. “Raji says he ran into you last night?”

“That’s right,” Frances said.

Yasmin shifted her weight, from one slippered foot to the other. “He had been at His Highness’s house. The Minister.”

“Yes. We thought so.”

There was a pause.

“He was kept so late, working. I think he was very tired when you saw him.”

“That must have been it,” Frances said.

Yasmin nodded. She withdrew, into the shadows of the hallway.

“He was not singing a little?” she asked tentatively.

“Not that we heard.”

“Oh good, good. I see you soon now. Don’t work too hard.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Frances said. “Lots of men sing when they’re tired.”

She went back to cutting up the vegetables. How bored I am, she said to herself. Matchstick carrots, bitter thoughts: it’s wonderful how travel narrows the mind.

Andrew said, “Get one ahead?” He put down the glass he was polishing, and reached into the fridge for a carafe of white wine.

Holding her glass, Frances went to survey her table, laid for nine.

“I suppose you always get spare men in Jeddah,” Andrew said.

“I wouldn’t call Pollard a spare man. I’d call him surplus.” She held her glass up to the light. “At least it’s clear. It’s a bit sweet. I expect they’ll drink it.”

“I think Eric and Daphne are homebrew snobs.”

“Don’t make me nervous. I’m afraid it will poison someone.”

“They’ve all been here a long time. They’ve built up resistance.”