“That’s true. They don’t think of Sarsaparilla as a person. She’s just labor.”
Andrew took her wrist. “Frances,” he said, “don’t get involved.”
Andrew was not in a good mood. The check had come through at last, but Eric didn’t know when he would be able to pay them again. Previously it had been such a consolation to unfile the bank statements, and see how the deposit account was building up. Andrew had been receiving brochures from a firm of London estate agents. They should buy a flat, he said, something to give them a base; something small, central, easy to let. “We ought to have somewhere, you know. At our age. We can’t keep drifting, can we, just crating things up and sending them from one country to the next, everything serviceable and disposable, no books, nothing of our own—living with other people’s furniture?”
“It’s not that bad, Andrew. We have our Saudiflon pans.”
“I’m going to organize it this summer,” he said. “If they pay me, of course.”
“When are you expecting this man Fairfax?”
“Oh, quite soon. Next month maybe.”
Frances, taking out the rubbish, met the landlord on the stairs.
“You said one week,” she accused him. “You’ve been here two already.”
The landlord seemed harassed. He didn’t have time to chat. “Please to stay indoors, out of noxious fumes,” he said crossly.
“When can I put my blinds up?”
“Wait a few days. If you put them up too early they will be stuck, and much good work will be undone.”
Frances said nothing. He made a little shooing motion at her. She leaned one hand against the wall, leisurely, insolent. He shrugged his shoulders and left by the front door. Frances looked after him. “Hate the tiles,” she said softly. “Saudi taste.”
Outside Yasmin’s door, propped against the wall, was a wooden crate, in sections; it was stamped with the logo of the Hejaz Removals and Storage Co. “Is this yours?” she asked Yasmin. “Or does it belong to the landlord?”
“Mine,” Yasmin said. “It is in your way?”
“No, not at all. I’m just being nosy. You’re not moving, are you?”
“No. It is just for some things of Raji’s.”
“Only I was sizing it up—when that crate’s assembled you won’t be able to get it through the internal doors.”
“Then he must pack it in the hall.”
“I just thought I’d warn you. How’s mother-in-law?”
Yasmin drew her inside, dropped her voice. She seemed, as she so often did, on the point of tears. “Her visit is so ill-timed,” she said.
“I suppose it is.”
“For Selim, I mean—this important stage in his development. Frances, have you asked your friends—are you sure there is not some drug I can give him to make him grow? It is not good for the child’s psychology—she is holding his nose now, forcing him with orange juice.”
“Can’t you talk to Raji? Can’t he do anything?”
“Oh, he thinks she is always in the right. He is interfering with how I run the household. That is not what a man should do. Frances,” Yasmin moved closer, and touched her arm confidingly, “we have had some dispute. Because I want to wear the veil. Completely, you understand, like the Saudi women do. Because I feel it is right. But Raji says, ‘We are modern.’ He has forbidden me. And I am so unhappy.”
Frances looked at her in disbelief. “Have I got this right? You want to wear the veil?”
“Many Moslem women are doing this. In Pakistan. In Iran, which you know of. In Egypt even. Once they thought it was a great thing to get rid of the veil, but now they are not so sure. They see how men exploit them. They want to have their dignity back.”
“I’m the wrong person to talk to,” Frances said.
“I know you are. But to whom else can I talk? You are my friend.”
“What about Samira?”
“Oh, Samira—she has no deep thoughts. Getting jewelery is what she thinks about. Showing off her clothes, going to weddings. You are not like that. You are more like me.”
She savored the compliment. It was difficult to meet her neighbor’s eyes. “Sometimes,” Yasmin said, “it is my dearest wish to go away from these flats. I wish I could rewrite the past, but you cannot do that, can you?”
All this in whispers; a dark corner of the hallway, heads close together. Mother-in-law’s voice rises from the bedroom, wheedling, insisting, threatening. “What is it that you would like to change?”
Yasmin lifted her head, and in her luminous eyes there was an animal pain. She seemed about to speak, and to say—but then her expression clouded, she bit her lip, looked away. “Perhaps it is you who should move away,” she said. “There is a herb, it is called
Six months on Ghazzah Street, and spring was coming: bigger cockroaches, the smell of sewage. Hot weather would bring the strategies, the longueurs, of expatriate life: driver’s hand jumping from hot metal, the drawn, shiny faces of the women, the apathy, the dust, the wilting of the intellect. All this is familiar; they have adapted without problems. But Andrew does not feel at ease. He feels that something more is required of them.
