Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

Frances unfolded her canvas chair, sat down, rubbed sun cream on her legs, opened her book. A fly circled her head; she flapped a hand at it. The traffic noise nagged at her. It was hotter than she thought, and windy; grit blew across the page. After five minutes, the print danced before her eyes. She stood up, and a pain lanced through her skull. She refolded her chair, tucked her book under her arm; went back down the stairs, stumbling a little, into cool silence.

In Flat 1 she lay on the sofa, her book splayed open on her ribcage; she held ice cubes, wrapped in one of Andrew’s handkerchiefs, against her forehead. I shall go to the roof in the morning or the evening, she thought, for five minutes’ spying, since that is my pleasure and my pleasures are now few; but to be on the roof in the heat of the day is a punishment, and I should have known better. Eyes closed, she imagined trees; the bark of silver birches, the dense black-green of pines, the scum of algae on English ponds. In July we will go home, she thought, for leave; into the needle-thin rain of the English summer, into dank unpromising Yorkshire mornings, and trees that are yellowing by September.

It was New Year’s Eve. They were up at their usual time; Andrew took a shower, ate breakfast and left soon after seven to go to the site. These early starts gave her a sense of purpose, which she knew from experience would soon dissipate; there was no point, in the whole day, on which she could focus her energy. At eight o’clock she was already climbing the stairs to the roof; as if what was most necessary was to convince herself, by seeing the daylight, that another day had begun.

She opened the door at the top of the stairs, and came out into the early sunshine, shading her eyes. In the far corner of the roof she saw a thin veiled figure, wrapped in an abaya. Her pulse skipped. “Yasmin?” she said. She approached, and saw the black shoulders stiffen with shock; then Yasmin turned, and pulled back the veil, her eyes wide, her expression guilty; she put a hand to her throat, a pantomime of consternation and fear.

Frances stopped a few paces from her. “Did you think I was your mother-in-law?”

“I didn’t expect anybody.” Although it was so early, Yasmin had made up her eyes, outlined their long shape in kohl, brushed in her lashes. But then, was she ever without her face? Was she ever without her careful, prejudged moods? Their friend Samira spent her idle mornings in front of the TV set, watching Egyptian soap operas; the camera dwelled on the faces of suffering women, their painted faces larger than life, their emotions theatrical, rehearsed. Did Yasmin watch them too? Already her features were melting into the artful. “I did not know you came up here, Frances.”

“I come for the fresh air.” Already by eight-thirty a miasma rose from the pavements of Ghazzah Street; fried chicken, sewage, a cocktail of sweat and diesel fumes.

“I too. Just to get away.”

“And how is your mother-in-law?”

Yasmin made a graceful gesture. Everything she did, now, seemed staged; Frances had new eyes. “Oh, you know …”

“I expect,” Frances said, “that she is still asleep.” You are lying, she thought. You weren’t taking the air. You were expecting somebody. Lover boy? So much falls into place. “They have some conflicts.” Raji’s worldly grin, his easy and flourishing career. Why Dunroamin? Because the lady has not far to go. Only a flight of stairs.

Inside she cried and protested: not you, oh not you oh not you.

There was a party that night. Frances slipped into her best white dress. She was losing weight, she noticed. She never thought of eating during the day, not until Andrew came home. She stood in the bathroom before the mirror, brushing her hair and fluffing it out, noticing that the little sun that it saw had streaked it, that it was a strawlike, irrecoverable mess. She took trouble over her makeup, but it seemed to lie on the surface of her skin, as if refusing its part in the charade.

In the car she was silent. “Are you all right?” Andrew asked.

“I saw Yasmin on the roof this morning,” she said.

“I thought you had the roof to yourself.”

“So did I.”

He didn’t say, she noticed, what on earth was Yasmin doing up there. He didn’t express the least surprise. And already she was doubting herself. I cannot trust myself to make deductions, she thought; you cannot deduce anything from a flash of fear, sudden intuitions can be sudden errors. Something is wrong, but perhaps it is no particular thing; perhaps it is just the current of my life that has got diverted, that has washed me up in some shallows where I am alone with myself. Neon signs go by: FUN N’FOOD GARDEN RESTAURANT, ELECTRIC LAUNDRY, SUPERMARKET SINGAPORE.

The party was held outdoors, and the ladies dabbed cologne on their legs, to keep the mosquitoes away. The hostess circulated with polystyrene cups of fruit punch, and the usual Jeddah party food on oval stainless steel trays. Frances carried her cup to the light. Scraps of apple and banana floated on the surface of the liquid, each with their beading of gray bubbles. The drink smelled stale, nauseating. She clutched Andrew’s arm, wanting him to talk to her. “I have to go and circulate,” he said.

Something seemed lacking tonight, on the Jeddah party scene; it was a quiet, almost sober gathering. They were all partied to death; they had seen the same people, at one house or another, half a dozen times over the Christmas period, and now their store of small talk was running low, and no one was in the mood for party games, and conviviality must be ground out of them. The men stood in a knot, and spoke of the falling oil price. The women left the garden and huddled together in the kitchen, talking of teething, and microwave ovens, and displaying to each other the bits of gold they had got for presents. Frances hung about on the fringe of the group; turned shoulders seemed to exclude her. I try, don’t I? she asked herself angrily. Always she tried to make polite conversation, to take an interest; but they seemed to know that her mind was elsewhere.

The conversation became more general at last, as the fruit punch and the siddiqui took its hold; the usual holiday chat. “Did you hear about that girl from New Zealand who was sentenced to ninety lashes?” someone said. “Twenty was for having drunk alcohol, and seventy was for being in a car with a man who wasn’t her husband.”

“At the Smiths’ party last year,” Marion said, “we had this game. The men were all blindfolded, and the women stood on chairs, and the men had to come along and feel their legs and try to guess who was who. It was a laugh. You wouldn’t play that, Frances, would you?”

Frances said, “I’d rather die.”

“Frances is such a misery,” Marion said, sotto voce. “She’s not a bit broadminded. She bothers with those Saudi women in her flats.”