Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

He followed her back to the kitchen. “What do you think about Yasmin?” she said. “Can she really not know that he drinks?”

“She must know.”

“Why pretend then? Why raise the topic?”

“That woman’s conning you.”

She looked up at him, paring knife poised over slices of lemon. So Andrew didn’t like Yasmin. But that seemed ridiculous. Yasmin was just a fact of her life, and touched only peripherally on Andrew’s. Why should he like or dislike her?

“I don’t really know what I mean,” he said, unhelpfully. “But I’ve always had this feeling about her, that she’s not what she seems.”

The guests were late. “It shortens the agony,” Andrew said.

It was half past eight when the Zussmans arrived. “Roadblock,” Rickie grunted, without preamble. He ran a hand through his shorn brown hair; he was a silent, observant, professorial man, with metal-rimmed glasses, a bleak, bony face; he dressed for dinner in bush-shirt and jeans. Carla wore her usual no-nonsense cotton kaftan, with a string of wooden beads as a concession to festivity. She was a tiny woman, with a strongly Jewish face; though if she had been Jewish, of course, she would not have been admitted to the Kingdom. I must ask her sometime, Frances thought.

“Do you have any beer?” Rickie said.

“We haven’t got round to making beer yet.”

“Give you my recipe.” He accepted a glass of wine, and proffered something, diffidently. Andrew unwrapped, from the sports pages of the Saudi Gazette, a flat plain bottle. “Half of Scotch,” Rickie said. “That all right for you?”

Andrew was overwhelmed. “It should improve the evening.”

“Put it away,” Rickie said. “Carla and I can get this stuff anytime. We get it through the Embassy. Anyway, we drink bourbon. Keep it for you and Frannie.”

“Okay. Won’t waste it on Eric.” Andrew hurried off with it.

“Where was the roadblock?” Frances asked.

“Palestine Road.”

“What were they looking for?”

“Who can tell? Maybe just trouble.”

“And what did you do with the Scotch?”

“I put it,” Carla said, “down the neck of my kaftan. They’d never dare.”

Jeff Pollard came next. “Bloody boot search,” he said, in lieu of apology. “Been to change my films.” He dumped his briefcase, with the videocassettes inside, by the front door. Film exchange was a shady business, dubiously legal, and gave the most innocent viewer a plain-paper-wrapper air. Jeff wore a tie, ancient and unsavory. He looked uncomfortable.

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” Frances said. “To dress up.”

Then the Parsons; graciously resigned, Daphne saying, “They weren’t interested in the khawwadjihs. They waved us through.” Then the Smallbones, who had only come around the corner, with Marion walking in the gutter, because the pavements were unsuitable for her high heels. Marion was wearing her abaya. She shrugged it off to reveal a strappy, backless dress, and a flamboyant pattern of scarlet mosquito bites sprayed across her tender pale shoulders. The party had begun.

Andrew had said once, when he was in a morose mood, that you should always expect the worst, so that if in the event you got something better, you’d be surprised. But why is it that if you expect the worst, and get the worst, you’re still surprised? Frances wondered about it, idly. She noticed, in the dribble of garlic butter in which her prawns lay, a suspicious, unpleasant fleck of something black. Eric Parsons was talking about his iniquitous tax position, and Russel encouraged him, with grunts and nods. “Of course I’m attracted to the Australian way of life,” Russel said. “I’m thinking about Perth. But I suppose it’s the same old story as everywhere else. The Communists have taken over.”

Rickie Zussman broke his silence, for the first time since the meal began. “I don’t know much about Western Australia,” he said. “But I feel that must be a very mistaken notion.”

Frances began to collect the plates; Marion half rose from her chair, Frances said “No, no,” but Marion followed her to the kitchen. “Just stack up everything there,” Frances said. She turned her attention to the lemon sauce for the veal. Another floating speck; she tried to skim it off. Examined the carrots. Not good.

“What is it?” Marion asked, peering into the serving dishes.

“I’m afraid,” Frances said, “the fucking Saudiflon is coming off the pans.”

Marion picked up a spoon and began to stab and scrape at the vegetables, her tongue between her teeth.

“You can’t do that,” Frances said. “We’ll be here all night.”

“Slosh some more butter on. They’ll never know.”

“That’ll just make it float about on top.”

“Well, never mind,” Marion said. “I’ll bring the salad, shall I? I don’t suppose Saudiflon tastes of anything. With luck they’ll just think it’s black pepper.”

When they got back to the dining room Russel was smoking already. He offered a cigarette to Daphne. “I don’t mind women smoking,” he explained, “but I don’t like to see it in my wife.”

Marion sat down, without looking at him, and kicked off her shoes under the table. “I’ll find you an ashtray,” Frances said.