Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

I put the Californians in my desk drawer. They looked care-free, even with their mutilations. Andrew will now start to think about the building day and night, and if there is anything else to be thought about, that will have to be done by me.

“I have to ask you something,” Frances said to Andrew. “About the empty flat. Though I realize you may be bored with the topic.”

“I haven’t found out anything new, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was just thinking that an awful lot of people seem to know something about it. All the khawwadjihs have heard the rumor, even though they have different versions of it. And so, what they’re doing, this couple, isn’t it very risky?”

“Of course it is,” Andrew said. “Presumably it’s a risk they’re prepared to take. You can’t keep things quiet in this town.”

“Can’t you? You see, he needn’t use Dunroamin. Why does he? You said yourself that there were hundreds of villas empty in Jeddah, that there were whole apartment blocks to let.”

“I suppose that if you drove up to what is meant to be an empty block, or an empty house, and went into it, and if you did that a few times, people might notice and get suspicious.”

“That’s true. So if he comes here, it would look as if he were visiting somebody.”

“Yes. Quite legit.”

“But what if our neighbors see him? Or see the woman? Are they in on it? Do they know?”

“Yasmin and Samira don’t hang about on the stairs, do they, waiting to accost strangers?”

“But Raji? And Abdul Nasr?”

“Maybe they’re in on it. This man is a VIP. They wouldn’t cross him, would they?”

“But what about us?” Frances said. “How can they rely on our discretion?”

“They probably think I’m too attached to my paycheck to rock the boat.”

“And the landlord—does he know?”

“I don’t suppose there’s a special adulterer’s rent book.”

“But listen, Andrew, there is something wrong here—because if the khawwadjihs know about it, if they talk about it and speculate and make jokes, then the Saudis must know about it, too, mustn’t they? So are you saying that there’s a benign conspiracy, that everybody knows, but they turn a blind eye?”

“I don’t know.” He was exasperated; she had known he would be, before too long. “I don’t see how you expect me to enter into the thought processes of a Saudi princeling having a bit on the side. What is it, Fran, have you finished your detective story? Do you want to go up to the library tonight?”

“Yes, we could do. I’m getting bored with them though. I’m never really happy with the motives. The books don’t go into motives enough. It’s all stuff about the footprints in the garden, and the caliber of the murder weapon, but you never find out what really interests you.”

“Maybe,” Andrew said tentatively, “you shouldn’t be so interested in the empty flat.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing hasn’t been made up.”

“By whom?”

“Oh, by some bored expat trying to brighten his life. After all, it’s just the sort of thing we like to believe about the Saudis, that they’re hypocrites, and that they do all this hole-in-corner stuff.”

“That would be boring for you, though. If none of it were true. I wonder if this chap up above has any idea how much time we spend discussing him?”

“I can’t imagine.” She tried to imagine. She tried to picture the man, whom she knows that one day she must meet on the stairs—if the rumor is true at all. But she could only see a stiff white thobe, unoccupied, in two dimensions, like the one the laundryman held up to the streetlights and headlights of Al-Suror Street; she could only see a ghutra framing nothing, an emptiness where the face should be. His image wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t turn the key in the lock, it wouldn’t climb the stairs; if I can’t imagine it, she said, it can’t happen. Surely nothing in Dunroamin can happen without my knowledge. “Just suppose—” she said. But Andrew had lost interest in the conversation. She had taxed his patience; he had the building to think about, the great world outside the wall.

“I think,” he said, “that you’re on your own too much.”

She said, “I like my own company.”

The weather had cooled down; not much, but enough. In the dead time between Christmas and New Year, Frances thought she might sunbathe on the roof. There were higher buildings around, but no one ever looked out of them; and she could hear cousin Clare’s voice, speaking to her from the summer ahead, saying, Why Frances, you’re just as pale as when you went out there.

Hands flat on the warm parapet, she looked out over the city. Over on Medina Road an endless stream of traffic went by. There was distant snarling of engines, bestial but subdued, as if a hidden circus were in town. There was the usual dust haze, pierced by the bones of half-finished buildings, the scaffolding, derricks and cranes. In recent weeks there had been changes; earth-moving equipment had been trundling about the vacant lot on the other side of Ghazzah Street, and a deep ditch had been gouged by the side of the road; as she watched, a single dog, crouching, fled across the waste ground.

Frances crossed the roof to the back of the building, and looked down into the narrow streets behind Dunroamin. This was why, she remembered, she had liked the roof at first; this privileged and private view. It could have been another city; it was a domestic, small-scale scene, of back alleys and backyards, of side doors and washing lines. A colored servant, her head wrapped in a scarlet cloth, turned a sharp angle of the next block; she had a bundle in her hand, something wrapped in newspaper, and she moved silently, with her flapping sandals, her dusty gray heels, toward the dustbin. The scholars have implored that the faithful should be careful how they wrap their rubbish; that they should not put their vegetable peelings into the Saudi Gazette, and throw them into the trash; that they should not tear up squares of Al-Riyadh, and hang them in a privy. For that newsprint may contain the sacred name of Allah.