The castle was above Iman, its walls casting a shadow over the rocks and the sand. She wandered about the cove aimlessly, humming and singing, bending down to pick up rocks and examine them in her palms. At this close range, the sea was a moving world; the water cold and grand. Iman felt small in front of it. Not weak but limited. What did she know? She knew that every creature came from water, she knew that rivers poured into seas but never, in turn, became salty. She knew that fishes spoke. In their own language, they praised and glorified their Creator, they gave thanks and their hummed prayers were a blessing to the world.
Pearls, corals, rubies, emeralds. She picked up small stones, balanced them on the back of her hand and they became jewels. Traces of moss and glints of red caught the sun. Some of the rocks were as large as ostrich eggs, the discarded jewellery of a giantess, strewn in delicate colours. The lightest amethyst, cloudy grey, duck-egg blue. Above her, tourists and visitors walked up the steps to enter the castle. Their voices drifted down to her, as did the shuffle of their shoes. She felt a surge of goodwill towards them.
There was a cave beneath the castle and she had to scramble over a pile of rocks to reach it. The outer walls were covered in grass, but the interior was barren. She stared into the secret darkness, the moist, bulbous walls, growth ridged and uneven. A path worn by erosion where the seawater flowed up into the cave and down out again. It was like being inside a body’s cavity. But how would she know? The air was cool in the cave, the smell marine-dank. She hummed the same song that she had sung in the car. Yearning, the lyrics of the song said. Yearning to live alone on an island and give up on the world, let it go, let it drop. But that would be lonely. A waste of her beauty. She felt the walls closing in around her, turned and made her way down the rocks to the flat part of the cove.
She put her hand in her pocket and found a date that had dried up and shrivelled. She popped it into her mouth and chewed for a long time, savouring what remained of its sweetness, before she swallowed. She bent down and buried the date stone in the sand. ‘I am planting a date tree,’ she said out loud. Maybe it will grow, maybe by Allah’s will it can grow in this cold climate and be a little miracle. She smiled at her foolishness, her childlike arrogance. But it gave her great satisfaction to plant that palm tree. A palm tree that would hang forlornly in the snow, buffeted by gales and waves, clinging to the weakest form of life and yet, against the odds, still bearing fruit.
It was not difficult for Iman to imagine new life emerging from what was fragile and doomed. The way a grandmother could give birth to her grandson’s aunt. Iman’s mother had one child after the other every eighteen months. Sometimes every two years. All in all there were twelve of them – boys and girls. Scattered now all over the place by the war and the ambition to live. Iman felt sorry for her mother, but her pity was tempered with anger. Anger at her and anger for her. If having all these children was an investment for old age, then it was an investment that had backfired. Iman was unable to bring her mother to live in Britain. She was often unable to send her money. One mother could look after twelve children and decades later these twelve adults would fidget and struggle to look after that one mother.
Moni continued to sit on the bench even though she was feeling much better. Her breathing steadied and she no longer perspired. Her vision, too, was free of the black floating jellyfish that had troubled her before. The path dipped down ahead and then rose again between two massive cliffs. Almost hidden behind the rocks was the castle and she could only see the highest point of the ruins, grey and white. The castle seemed protected and out of reach to her, but she acknowledged its beauty, accepted that this was as much of a glimpse as she was entitled to. She took out her phone and clicked open her Qur’an app. Every day she read a section of the Qur’an, or at least tried to. Sometimes, subject to Adam’s needs, she could only read one or two pages. On bad days, she could read none. Now when she finished one page and started the next, it occurred to her that she was free to read as many pages as she wanted. His voice would not call her. His needs would not interrupt. The more she read, the more she zoned out. Her ability to concentrate had deteriorated of late. Her mind flitted from here to there. Images of Adam, his eyes, his hands; she could hear his grunts and unformed words, smell him, but he did not interrupt the flow of her reading. Silly thoughts wound their way through her head even though her tongue was reciting sacred words. She knew that this wasn’t good enough. She knew that she should be reading
