His look said, what you have seen is not reliable. It doesn’t need explanation. It doesn’t merit it. “Perhaps,” he said, with a half smile, “the girlfriend has herself delivered. Perhaps it’s some perversion they enjoy.”
“The maid has a name,” she said. She told him.
For a second he looked interested. He said, suddenly illuminating, “That’s a mission name. It must be. Do you remember, before we were married I had that housegirl called Matweshyego? And I couldn’t get my tongue round it, so I just called her ‘you.’ And then when she was leaving, she suddenly upped and said, ‘I have a mission name, sir. It is Rosie.’”
The recollection seemed to give him pleasure. Is he just an idiot, Frances thought, is he just an unfeeling brute, or am I failing to make myself clear? Something is wrong. I cannot give you chapter and verse, but something is horribly wrong. Those days with the blinds down, the noise, the footsteps, and everyone free to come and go, except the women trapped in Dunroamin, with the doors locked, in the dark. But what she said was, “Yes, it must be a mission name.”
“Poor lass. It sounds as if she’s been colonized before.”
“Andrew,” she asked, “what does fear smell like? In my crime books it always says that fear has a smell.”
“People put a lot of stuff in books, don’t they?” He considered, and said, “Books are irresponsible. They give people ideas.”
The food that the maid had brought was a fish, baked whole. A crust of red spices lay on its hard blackish scales and spines, and it looked up at her with a small, dead, prehistoric eye.
Frances should go to Andrew and apologize. She should go to him and say, I should not entertain such ludicrous and fantastic thoughts. And then they can get on with their lives.
Next morning, early, she went up to the roof again. The crate had gone. The balcony had been swept clean.
“I see Ramadhan’s begun,” Andrew said.
“I thought it was two months away.”
“Yes, but you know how back in the UK people complain that Christmas is getting earlier and earlier each year? It’s just the same with Ramadhan. It’s a time for an increase in holiness, you see. So all the
The religious police, in fact, are out in force. It is the time of year when the vigilantes take up young men in the shopping centers, and shear off their hair if they deem it too long. One year, women considered to be flaunting their jewelry were stopped in the street, and had it confiscated. Their husbands had to go to the police station to reclaim it—a process which possibly was not made pleasant for them.
Western women, too, must be more cautious than usual. The religious police have cans of spray paint, with which they spray revealing garments, or exposed flesh—forearms for instance.
“This nurse, from the Bugshan hospital,” Marion said, on the phone. “She was shopping at Sarawat. They sprayed her jeans with green paint.”
“I’d kill someone,” Frances said. She actually thinks it. If she were molested on the street, she would physically fight, she thinks, she could not contain her rage, she would spit and scratch and disable and mutilate, and be damned to the consequences, because if she did not the humiliation would kill her, it would eat away at her like a cancer until she died.
“Yes, she was furious,” Marion said. “Because these jeans, they were a new pair, first time on.”
Russel had got out of jail. “He’ll be home in a few days,” Marion said. “Do you know what he says?” Her voice had the accents of satiated malice. “He says that while he was locked up he lost half a stone. I said to him, well Russel, that won’t do you any harm.”
Daphne Parsons phoned. “Frances dear,” she said, “do be careful when you go out.”
I can no longer be careful, Frances thought. Therefore perhaps I had better not go out.
“The police are getting very strict about dress rules. There was a nurse, from the Baksh hospital, she was shopping at the Sahari Center. They sprayed her jeans with green paint.”
“I bet they were a new pair,” Frances said. “First time on.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” Daphne said.
There are times when the effort of avoiding something is greater than the effort of doing it. There are times when omission becomes a tyranny of effort, when the task of diverting the mind becomes physically exhausting. Frances was involved, now, in not- thinking, in not-speculating, and the effort made her clench her jaw, made her shoulders stiffen, and made the muscles rigid at the back of her neck.
The crate couldn’t fly down from the balcony. They can’t have brought up a crane. It must be inside the flat. It can’t go through the internal doors. It can’t go through the front door. So it must be in the living room above her head. Unless it has been taken apart again. And if it has, where are its contents?
Don’t think like this. There is no reason to. Andrew says she has been obsessed with the empty flat ever since they moved in. It indicates some lack of balance in her nature.
Whenever she thinks about the crate, whenever she thinks about its contents, a single image comes to her mind: she remembers the laundryman, high on the balcony at the corner of Ahmed Lari Street; the night laundryman, holding up a
In the toils of not-imagining, time drips by. It is like the early days on Ghazzah Street. But nevertheless time is passing. It is Tuesday, 21 Jamadi al-thani, 12 March in the real world: eleven o’clock in the morning. The doorbell rings. A little voice, pleasant but anxious, says: “Do please let me in, Mrs. Shore, before someone sees me.”
Her visitor was Shabana, Yasmin’s friend, whom she had met at Raji’s party. “You do remember me,” Shabana said. “I am so glad. I do hope I am not intruding on you.”
“I wasn’t doing anything. Coffee?”
“That would be nice.”
“A car came for Yasmin. I think she’s gone shopping.”
“Yes, I was hoping so. It is you I have come to see. And I would be so happy if you would not tell her I have
