He smiled and pushed past her. Not unkindly, but still she felt chastened. She watched him climb up the stairs to the pulpit. When he reached the top, he stood and surveyed the room, his eyes scanning the whole area but dispassionately, as if he couldn’t see her. She remembered what Salma had told her about the monks having their meals in this room while one of them would stand on the pulpit and recite the prayers. But he would not have been as young as that boy. Adam. She must think of him that way. That was his name.
She tried it out now. ‘Adam,’ she said out loud. ‘Come down.’ The mother who had been leaning forward over her children’s puzzle sat back in her chair and gave Moni a quick look. The teenagers around the pool table, who had found the heated conversation in Arabic a curiosity, did not take any notice.
Because he ignored her, she raised her voice. ‘Adam.’ He smiled down at her and started to walk down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, he reached out for her hand. This was happiness. They were friends again. ‘Do you want to play with a puzzle?’ She would sit with him like that other mother. Moni was good at puzzles too, not just board games. She would teach Adam all the tricks and shortcuts, what to watch out for. He shook his head.
‘You’re still not talking?’ She had almost forgotten that he didn’t speak. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had found him and that he was not cross with her. It was true that his name was Adam. He had answered when she called him. So, she had been the one at fault, not believing him that other time. She must make amends. ‘Are you thirsty? Would you like a drink of juice?’ He nodded, and smiled when she swung his hand and said, ‘Let’s go.’ It was a joy to treat him, to see him enjoying himself. Together they walked out of the refectory and headed towards the snack machine.
I am not a physiotherapist. Even that turned out to be unattainable. I’m a massage therapist. Anyone can become that. You just need O levels (the equivalent of the Thanawiya Aama) or a certificate in Anatomy, which all these university years amounted to. I do work in a hospital. That was not a lie. The pay is less than working in a private clinic – those alternative health ones that offer aromatherapy and reiki. And I would even do better if I was self-employed, but I’ve needed to say ‘today at the hospital’ or ‘they need me at the hospital’. Over the years, my parents forgot that I wasn’t a doctor.
‘You are a doctor,’ he said. ‘To me you always will be. Here your degree is just as valid as mine. You’re in the wrong country, that’s all.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yes.’
‘You make it sound as if I just stepped out of the picture for a few moments. As if I popped out for a break.’ Twenty years of marriage, four children, a job, a house, the Arabic Speaking Muslim Women’s Group . . .
‘If we were together now, I would convince you. I would, which is why these calls aren’t enough,’ he said. ‘We need to see each other, we need to be in the same place. Where are you?’
‘I won’t tell.’ She felt powerful. Distance gave her power. A sense of invincibility. ‘Besides, you don’t have a visa.’
‘Who says I don’t have a visa! I have a five-year visa that I can use multiple times.’
‘Bluffing.’ She was safe. What was he going to do? Drop everything and hop on a plane. No one in their right mind would do that. She could relax.
‘I remember your clothes.’
‘Oh yes, I remember your clothes too.’
They list:
A red T-shirt, the sleeves just a little too short. They showed off his biceps. On purpose? Not on purpose?
The denim jacket she wore almost continuously in second year.
The headscarf with silver threads that shed all over the place. Cheap.
The sunglasses he forgot at the café and when they went back to get them, they were not on the table and the waiter who had served them denied that they had left anything behind. Do sunglasses count as clothes?
The striped top that hung well below her lab coat and looked dowdy.
His lab coat – the one that was incredibly white, so bluish white that it made her sing the lyrics of the Ariel ad.
His tennis top with the lopsided collar. It always curled, it could never fall flat.
Her green dress, the one she wore when he was ill and she came to his house to give him the notes he’d missed. Because she sat in the kitchen watching his mother cook, the dress afterwards smelt of garlic and coriander.
The jumper that ended up smudged with tears, mascara and snot.
He insisted that it was always harder for those who stayed behind. He was the one forced to move in the same physical space, circling the spot newly vacant, now abandoned, gnawing on the absence. While she had forged ahead into a better world, out of reach, learning, adjusting, improving – she had no time to think of him and he could think of nothing else but her.
She accused him of exaggerating. She only half believed these professions of misery. They had been young, after all, resilient and immature. Instead she took his reproach as an attempt to draw her close, perhaps even win her back. Or else it was
