Iman went on, ‘I’m not going to move in with you. I can’t live in your house.’
‘Don’t be silly. You have nowhere else to go.’
‘See. That’s your response. Is that all you can think of saying to me? Is that the best you can do?’
‘Half of your things are in our garage. Remember. I told Ibrahim to give them to David.’
‘I will get my things, Salma. Don’t worry. I won’t burden you with my rubbish.’
‘It’s not a burden. Why are you talking like this? We’re sisters. We’ve always been. I want you to move in with us. Is that what you want me to say? Of course I do. Why should you even doubt it?’
‘I am over doubting it. To you, I would always be young—’
Salma interrupted her. ‘But you are younger than me. It’s a fact. I didn’t invent it.’
Iman sighed. ‘You always think you know better. And I’m tired of this. Of being told what to do. Constantly.’
‘Because you don’t know what you want. You’ve told me yourself, time and again, you’re not sure what you want.’
‘I want to be independent.’
‘But how practical is that, when you can’t support yourself, when you don’t have a job? Be reasonable. And it’s not as if I ever stopped you from being independent. I was furious when you quit your job at the supermarket.’
‘I don’t want you furious and I don’t want you pleased with me, Salma. I want to answer to myself, to make my own decisions.’
‘What decisions? You’re not making sense.’
‘I don’t have anything more to say, Salma.’
Salma, of course, did. But she did not want to say, I did this for you and I did that for you, be grateful. It was on the tip of her tongue. She did not want to say that for someone who doesn’t have anywhere to go after this holiday except my house, you sure are acting uppity. She did not want to dish up threatening stories of homelessness and being vulnerable to abuse. These thoughts must have slowed her down for she found herself level with Moni, while Iman was now ahead of them on the path.
Moni said, ‘Salma, I shouldn’t have come with you. I will do my best tomorrow, I promise you, but I don’t know why you insisted on this walk. It’s not for me.’ She was out of breath, but not too much.
‘It’s doing you good, Moni. You need to practise for tomorrow.’ Salma did not sound enthusiastic. Why had she insisted that they go out together when togetherness was not important to either Moni or Iman?
‘Maybe it is doing me good,’ said Moni. ‘But I can’t last much longer.’
‘You’re younger than me, you shouldn’t be so unfit.’ Irritability crept into her voice. Salma’s hopes of improving Moni were dwindling. Perhaps these aspirations had been presumptuous in the first place. Salma wished she were with Amir. But she was not. Here was her life as she had made it, as she had chosen it. From the very first time she had met David in Cairo and he had been happy to let her order for the two of them at restaurants, haggle on his behalf in shops, drive his car, save him from the city’s beggars and swindlers, she had fallen in love with action and autonomy. Freed from Amir’s need for her to be passive and secondary to him, she had surged ahead, enjoying the flex of her muscles, the importance of her voice, the power to achieve a difference. Now, years later, she was wondering if her achievements truly amounted to anything. And why had all these freedoms built up to no more than little pleasures?
You choose, David would say. The choice is yours. No one had ever spoken to her like that before, no one had ever asked her to choose. She had been thrilled at what he was offering. He listened to her opinion, which did not need to be the right opinion and the right opinion did not need to be his opinion. She had valued this so much. It had pumped her up and made her radiant, made her voice louder and her chin higher. Looking back now, it seemed such a frivolous victory, such a flimsy version of autonomy and self-importance.
Over the years, David and British society had given the children the same freedoms – they would not be subservient to her as she had been to her parents, they were independent and well rounded. Her daughter could throw away the chance to be a doctor, the doctor Salma wanted her to be because she couldn’t. At home, Salma was no longer a queen who reigned; when she barked orders, she was either ignored or humoured. The pressure was on her all the time to be a supportive, comforting mum. Unconditional love was what was expected. ‘There for them all the time’ and certainly not the boss.
Someone should have warned me, thought Salma, explained to me. But the explanation had always been there. Everything had a price. She had paid with her home country and medical degree. Her position in the world. And now to lose Iman too, who spoke her language, who looked up to her as no one in her household did. Salma moved away from Moni. She fought back the urge to break into a run. She was too young for resignation. A long, heavy midlife looped down ahead of her, complete with health scares and children leaving home, David losing his mother, a smaller car, holidays without the children. I can still get out, there is still time for a fresh start. Admit that I made a mistake, that it was all a mistake, that I am a ghost here, neither necessary nor effective.
Iman sloshed through wet leaves and little puddles. Every day and every minute, her impatience with Salma and Moni was growing. Tomorrow’s visit to Lady Evelyn’s grave she was looking forward to, but the thought of leaving the loch the day after was
