Outside the main room of the house, there is a sort of patio, reached by sliding doors. I saw Andrew look at them with some suspicion, but it does not seem necessary to take any kind of security measure. We have put some folding chairs on the patio, and we could sit there, if the heat relented. Unobserved, quite private, we could sit and wait for the weeks to pass. Then it would be time to take our suitcases out. Then it would be time to ask for our exit visas. And then, if they are granted, it would be time to drive to the airport.
But all that seems very far ahead; the past seems very far behind. I have arranged the furniture; I have hung our clothes in the closets. I don’t seem to make much impact on the dirt, but perhaps I am using the wrong cleaning materials. Perhaps one evening we should go to a supermarket to get some more. Yet I feel reluctant to move off the compound. The hours go by here, each one the same. No one comes. The present moment draws itself out forever. The harsh light never changes, until suddenly night falls.
There is a cane chair out on the patio, and I wonder, if I brought it in and put it in a corner of the kitchen, would it make the room look better? I draw back the sliding doors and step out, into the heat and light of the morning. There are a few trees up here, sustained by hard salty borehole water; their branches, no thicker than twigs, are bent by the currents of air that blow straight from the desert. Squinting into the sun, I can see the black spine of a stony hill, topped by a string of barbed wire. The sky is clear. It must be over 100° today The glare bounces back at me from the walls of the carport. I seem to flicker, I am whited-out. I pick up the chair, bounce it gently on the concrete to shake out the dust. I turn with it, and catch my reflection in the glass doors. My face is black, deeply shadowed, with empty eyes, and a pale ragged aureole encircles my head. I have become the negative of myself.
I go back into the house and put down the chair. I look out through the glass, on to the landscape, the distant prospect of traveling cars. Window one, the freeway; window two, the freeway. I turn away, cross the room to find a different view. Window three, the freeway; window four, the freeway.
NOTE
Saudi Arabia employs the Hijra calendar, which starts from the year A.D. 622, when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina. It is a lunar calendar, and the Hijra year is eleven days shorter than the Gregorian year. The months (with many variations in transliteration) are as follows: Muharram, Safar, Rabi al-awal, Rabi al-thani, Jamadi al-awal, Jamadi al-thani, Rajab, Shaban, Ramadhan, Shawal, Dhu-al-qudah, Dhu-al-hijjah. By a recent Royal Decree, a 365- day year has been instituted for fiscal purposes, and 22 December 1986 became 1 Capricorn. The recalculations involved make the fiscal year some forty years behind the Hijra year. So, not the least surprising aspect of life in the Kingdom is that time can appear to run backward.
ALSO BY HILARY MANTEL
EIGHT MONTHS ON GHAZZAH STREET. Copyright © 1988 by Hilary Mantel.
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First published in the United Kingdom by Viking
First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company, LLC
First Picador Edition: September 2003
Designed by Paula R. Szafranski
eISBN 9781429900614
First eBook Edition : June 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data
Mantel, Hilary.
Eight months on Ghazzah Street: a novel / by Hilary Mantel.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-42289-X
I. Title.
PR6063.A438E35 1997
823'.914—dc21
96-49819 CIP
