She lumbered through the forest without any fear of cold or getting lost. She felt a fullness in her belly and, absentmindedly, emptied her bowels, just like that, no need to hide or squat or wash. All that fuss. Other animals sniffed her and were satisfied that she was genuine. Insects buried themselves in her coat. As time passed, she drifted seamlessly from waking into sleeping; there was no need to plan or make a strategy. A scent and a sound caught her attention. It was a human body squashed into a ball, rolling and unable to straighten up. The face was familiar and seemed to recognise her too. Iman felt as if she hadn’t seen this person for a very long time. Was it someone from back home, a relative, a friend? No, it was Moni, reduced and distorted. Iman came close to her and their eyes met. ‘Where is Salma?’ Moni said. Iman heard her voice as if it were gushing through water, the words garbled and echoed. Salma. Yes, Iman remembered Salma. Salma with a child hitched up on her hips, one hand supporting him, the other hand stirring soup in a saucepan. Salma stepping out of her car and looking up as Iman gazed down from her window.
Moni was speaking about Salma. She would help us as she had always helped us before. She would know what to do.
What would Salma think if she saw Iman now? A snake might not remember the year before, the month before. That desire to know, to check, to measure against, was human. Iman had moved from one container into the other. Her soul was in an animal’s body after years of being in a human. The outside form could change but not the inner. Her human shape itself had been a costume, like the princess ball gown she had found in the cupboard, like the warrior trousers. It had not been about the hijab covering her femininity after all, but it was about her femininity covering her human soul. There would always be Iman, the soul, heading out and returning. Her soul was the origin from which there was no escape.
Chapter Fourteen
Salma had seen his red T-shirt through tears. Tears she was hiding from Iman. It stunned her that Iman would insist that she was not going to move in with her once they left the loch. She had known that Iman was gestating a rebellion, weaving daydreams of independence that could never materialise. And this had given Salma comfort. Soon enough Iman would come to her senses. She would move into Salma’s house, sharing a bedroom with Salma’s eldest daughter. Salma would take her to a lawyer to claim as many rights as she could possibly get from Ibrahim. They would spend hours discussing Iman’s future, the kind of job she could do, whether Moni’s idea of the three of them running their own clinic was feasible, whether Iman was eligible for benefits or an educational grant or an apprenticeship scheme. All the sensible proper things that needed to be done. And, by extension, Salma too would practise what she preached and become sensible and proper. She would stop the messaging and phoning, the dreams of packing up and leaving. She would shrug off the holiday fantasies and get on with being a good wife and mother. She would stifle all Egypt, the Beloved nostalgia and buckle down. But instead, Iman was abandoning her, and Amir had come all the way for her. All that he said on the phone had not been empty promises and threats.
So, she ran after his red T-shirt through the forest. His was not a well-beaten trail, clear of trees and rocks. Instead there were branches sticking out to jab at her side, there were stones that threatened to twist her ankle and trip her. But she must not lose sight of him. It was him, for sure. After coming all this way for her sake, he was playing hard to get. He wanted her to be the one chasing him. He wanted her to say sorry. She was sorry, and she was happy too that he had come. No, not happy, but so excited that she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t figure out where she was heading. She called out his name, but he didn’t slow down. She could not see him clearly, not as clearly as she wanted to. The distance between them should narrow, but it didn’t. The forest was larger than she would have thought. Here were the first leaves of autumn, leaves as bright as tangerines. She crossed other trails, red, green and purple. Those she had earlier disregarded as too easy or too difficult for the three of them to attempt. The blue trail was far behind her. So was the cottage and the monastery. She was getting out of breath, which meant she must have run for a long time, covered a good distance. She jogged every day; she was fit and had told him so. And he played tennis, he didn’t jog. So surely this chase could not go on for ever.
The trees were thinning around her. This would be the edge of the forest, now, closer to the village. She found herself facing a house or at least a building. A period house that looked like it was no longer a home, one of those places too expensive to maintain, part of an estate which perhaps had also, in the past, included the forest or at least some of it. All of this was conjecture. There was no sign or information. A wooden gate had been left open. It
