and down for very many weeks?” she inquired.
“Finish next week,” the landlord said. “I promise you.”
“
Later that day the men began work. They wedged open the gate in the wall, and carried vats of white paint to various points about Dunroamin. They took great brushes, and sloshed about, accidentally painting the ground, and sometimes their feet. They broke off for noon prayers, and then brought ladders, and came at the upper story; they splashed paint on to Samira’s balcony, and splattered the leaves of the tree.
Frances watched from her window. Once she went out into the street, and watched from across the road, by the ditch. The landlord, bustling in and out, darted a look of horror at her short skirt and bare legs. He hesitated, and seemed about to cross the road and remonstrate with her; but she folded her arms, and gave him a hard look, and went back inside in her own good time.
The men carried some wooden boxes up the stairs; then they carried some wooden boxes down. Tools of their trade, perhaps; no doubt it was all part of the renovation work, of what Yasmin called The Beautification of Jeddah.
Early in the afternoon the landlord knocked at the door again.
“Hello, madam. We are going to varnish your blinds with shiny varnish. So when we are up to that, you must wind them down. You must keep them down for three days, to let the varnish dry.”
“But I’ll be in the dark,” Frances complained. “I won’t be able to see out.”
“But it is for the good of my building!” the landlord said. He gave her what he took to be an appealing glance. “Please give me the cooperation.”
“Okay,” Frances said. “But I’m not putting them down until you’re ready to start work. So just give me the nod, will you?”
The landlord looked at her dubiously; uncertainly, he nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”
Frances understood that she must carry messages. It was her job to warn the other women of Dunroamin to stay indoors, because there were strange men at large. The landlord did her the courtesy of telling her what was happening, so that the far more important privacy of Muslim ladies would not be violated.
She rang Yasmin’s doorbell. An eye appeared at the spyhole, and blinked, and vanished; it was Shams who opened the door. Yasmin emerged from one of the bedrooms; she looked cowed and miserable.
“Oh, Frances,” she said. “I am missing talking to you.” Frances touched her shoulder. It was the most she could manage. If you want my sympathy, she thought, you must tell me what really ails you. To comfort you would be to embrace a time bomb, and listen to the tick.
“We’re being Beautified,” she said.
“Are we?” Yasmin managed a smile. But when she heard the extent of the work, she looked horrified. “Selim,” she said, “his chest is so delicate. The fumes, and the dust, and the noise … oh dear.”
“There will be people going up and down stairs. For a week.” Frances paused. She hoped it was a meaningful pause. “You must take care.”
Yasmin nodded. Her eyes slid away. “We must all take care,” she said.
Next day Frances went up to see Samira. The workmen stared at her rudely as she stepped over their planks and scaffolding. They were doing their best, she thought, to make sure that she felt in their way; they were doing their best to make it clear that she shouldn’t be out. They were preparing to line the stairwell with patterned tiles; these, she supposed, must have been in the wooden boxes. The tiles were small, with a whirling pattern of black, white, and red. Samira had taken a peep outside her front door. She sighed. “I know what you will say, Frances. You will say, oh, Saudi taste!”
“Not at all,” Frances said politely. “Though it’s going to take them ages, and I think I preferred the plain white paint.”
When she came out of Samira’s apartment, the men had stopped work. They must have gone to eat; it was quiet again, and fine plaster dust hung in the air. Across the landing the Egyptian stood at the door of the empty flat, fist raised as if to tap on it. She hurried across to him and touched his elbow. He sprang away from the contact. “No one home,” she said. She smiled, and shook her head at him. “No one lives there.”
The man glared at her; he put his hand to the spot she had touched, and held it, as if her fingers had burned him. “No one home.” But still he glared.
Surely he understood a little English? Everyone did, especially Egyptians. She knew the Arabic for “a house.” But not for “an empty house.” Not for “an illicit love nest.” Not for “push off if you know what’s good for you.”
She cast a glance back at the closed door of Samira’s apartment. Samira wouldn’t come out to explain to him; and Sarsaparilla couldn’t explain. Anyway, he understood her. She felt sure of that. It was just that she had upset him in some way. The glare, now, was positively threatening. “Okay,” she said, in a pleasant firm tone. “You knock all you like, sunshine. And if the man comes out and twists your balls off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She went downstairs. A few tiles had been stuck on near the front door, and others on the top landing. When they met in the middle, the effect would be hellish. I mustn’t come out here when I’ve been on the Jeddah gin, she thought. She stopped, in the dim light, to consider the pattern. Small faces: each tile with its splash of scarlet, its swirl of black. She felt as if she were being watched, by bloodied eyes; by the victims of some Koranic punishment. And soon the men would start work again and the watchers would multiply.
