Speak to me with silence, I had said, and a voice in my heart had picked up its rhythm: “be still, be still, be still”.
This was wordless prayer again, I knew that, but it brought no gift of tears, the kind the old mystic women relished. I pushed at a garden door to bring my own gift, my own jar of nard. But, looking down, there was blood in the cups of my hands, blood I’d spilled in a back room probably not a hundred miles south of here. I was kneeling now, dropping tears on the boy’s lifeless feet, drying the blood from around the white-faced Troll’s head with my hair.
But I knew I couldn’t bring them with me, up here, to lay on a catafalque, dignified in my memory. I couldn’t bring them, for they are dead and I had put them in another place. Be still, be still, be still, the insistent beat. The swan turned the sky above me. I was asleep now, I knew that, but I hadn’t abandoned this house, Yusef’s boy’s room, and I could stare with open eyes at the ceiling sky and it sparkled the reflection of my swan lake.
I’d watched the sky like this as a child, I remembered. Not long after my mother died, my father had set to work in the garden and made me help him, clearing the foliage of a spring that had run unchecked while Mum was ill. I think he wanted to keep me busy, distracted. But I was listless in my grief, half-heartedly pulling at dry shoots, swinging meagre armfuls that fell across the lawn between me and the wheelbarrow.
Dad wasn’t reproachful – there was a moratorium on parental discipline at that strangely liberated time. And when he had filled the barrow he told me to sit on its chaotic contents as he wheeled it to where autumn’s bonfire was building. I fell back as he wheeled it, spreading my arms to clutch at the spilling weeds.
I watched the sky then, its lighted white winking at me through the branches of suburban border trees. At the foot of the garden he left me there, peacefully comfortable as I was now, while I traced his movements in sound, the abrasive plunge of a spade in loose earth in the vegetable patch, or the clack of shears restraining the privet’s incursion.
Still I watched the sky, the arc of clouds turning in the orb of a single opened eye. And I knew – be still, be still, be still – that all would be well with us, whatever happened when I left my barrow, however much it seemed so very far from well.
As I lay in Yusef’s spare bed, I recalled that garden now and the dry and rotting smells of sap and nettle and string. The stars were winking at me from the same sky now. No, I didn’t need to bring Hamal or the Troll or any of the lives I’d abused, or taken, snuffed, despatched. They were already here and all was well.
Yusef returned in the middle of the afternoon the following day. The girl had been in, bringing fresh coffee and food, smiling as if she was servicing a hotel chalet. I was waiting for nothing now. I was an anchoress and I could have lived in a hole in the wall in that refugee camp, this girl and other passers-by handing me their victuals on metal plates, through a hole.
He seemed satisfied, drank some tea, ate some cake, smoked and turned the radio up. Had I been comfortable and received all I needed? I had. More than he could know. We’ll talk later, he had said, and lit me another cigarette. To the girl, he asked if anyone else had come to the house. No, she affirmed, with a detached shrug. Only Uncle, I pointed out, and he smiled like that wasn’t what he meant.
Yusef cooked beautifully that night, stirring a large pan of yakneh, pearl barley and goat, as it gave off swinging clouds of steam like a tiny industrial plant. A cold box of beers came from somewhere, though we didn’t drink much. Lovely as everything was, Yusef had an agenda and this supper was a prelude, not an end in itself. I waited. What could possibly be the rush, after all? Yusef had cooked and it was good. This was now. Be still.
We ate sitting on the squeaky-leather sofa, off the low table. After the stew came pears and mangos, great fibrous slithery lumps that we nuzzled and snogged off the inverted skin. Then it was done and Yusef cleared, brought a little percolator of coffee, no wine.
He lit up and I refused. Yusef was smoking hard, too much, I thought. Get me, worried about someone’s health. Then he leaned forward, forearms on his knees, cigarette wedged between fingers, his thumbs and forefingers pressed together as a priest protects her fingers for the sacrament at communion.
“Natalie, listen to me, I want to tell you something, something very important. I think you’re in very great danger. Even more danger if you stay here with me, actually.”
I smiled like I kept being told that. He looked at me for the first time since the start of this little speech.
“You understand what I’m saying?”
I frowned and turned my head slightly.
“Natalie, I’ve been to see some friends. Important friends. Friends who know a lot of what goes on.”
I lowered my forehead in a “go on” sort of way. He was being very earnest and I wanted to show serious attention. He was also very sweet and I wanted to grab him.
“Natalie, when you were taken away, when you were locked up . . . My friends are very important, Natalie. They know everything. Natalie, there was no operation at that time.”
“Operation?”
“No Arab operation.”
“No Arab operation,” I repeated, like I was eliciting a
