It was a clinic, his clinic. She recognised it from the photos he had sent her. He was showing off, that’s what it was, bringing her to where he could be in an advantageous position, where he could remind her that he was the successful doctor and she was not. Who was the smarter one now, the one with the higher grades, the neater notes, the one the teachers praised? In his clinic, she must be humble. She must know her place. After all, she was a mere massage therapist and he was a surgeon with a scalpel.
There was much to admire in the clinic. It was big, clean and well equipped. Minor surgery was performed here, as well as medical consultations. There were no patients now, but that was because the clinic closed in the middle of the afternoon. In the evening, after Amir had his siesta, it reopened, and he worked late into the night. He would happily schedule a patient in for midnight and not get back home until two a.m. All this he had told her on the phone. She had coaxed the mundane details of his life out of him. What he considered dull, she considered nourishment. What he saw as matter-of-fact, she saw enhanced and plumped up with nostalgia. She let herself slow down, allowed herself to linger and indulge her curiosity. She looked at the rows of chairs, she noticed the calendar on the wall. She smiled at the stack of magazines in the corner, the water cooler next to them. A receptionist or even two worked here, nurses who were young and pliable. Did he flirt with them or lead them on? Envy made her skin damp, her cheeks flushed. And there he was when she turned, at last, wearing his red T-shirt, just as she had imagined him, just as she had thought he would be. All there, skin, height, smell and smile. The bulk of him. Not only the voice but flesh and blood.
She walked into his arms and that was the end of it. The end of the chase and the waiting, the speculation and the games. She would never be the same again.
Afterwards, when he left, she lay flat on her back on the operating table. She looked up and counted the circular lights beaming down at her. One, two, three, four, five, six. She closed her eyes and she could still see a blurred equivalent of them, also six. She tried to move her arms, but she couldn’t. She tried to move her legs. She turned her head to see where all her strength had gone. There was a pail and it was full of muscle tissue.
She screamed until her voice was larger than the pain, bigger than her anger. It flooded her, and she passed out. Even then she could see the surgical scars and the stiches all along her arms and thighs.
‘Salma, Salma.’ She thought it was one of her friends come to rescue her. They owed her this at least.
But the face looking down at her was neither Iman’s nor Moni’s. ‘Mum,’ said Salma. It was Norma as Salma had never seen her. The loose sixties dress, the beehive hairstyle, the warm red in her hair.
Norma looked down at her. ‘You poor thing,’ she said. She dressed Salma and then she pushed the bed. She pushed it through the clinic and down the street, she pushed it across a whole city. Salma dozed and cried, she rambled about how she had come to him with desire and he had greeted her with a surgical scalpel. When she remembered who was helping her now, she said, thank you, thank you.
‘You help me too,’ said Norma. ‘You’ve always been kind.’
Salma couldn’t remember what she had ever done for Norma. Nothing special, nothing to be proud of. A free massage once in a while, taking an interest in her aches and pains. Nothing more. Perhaps that’s what counted at the end, the actions one considered small and casual, not the big ones carried on the peg of self-righteousness.
Back through the university campus, back through the corridor of Amir’s flat, back inside the museum, past the Ancient Egyptian coffin and the stuffed animals. Out again to the fresh air. When they reached the edge of the forest, Norma lifted Salma and laid her gently on the ground. ‘That’s as far as I can go,’ she said. ‘You have to find your own way now.’
It took Salma time to figure out how she could move. She could not crawl. There was only one way. Using her elbows, she could drag her body after her. Slowly, slowly. She made her way into the forest, trying to get back to where she had come from, back to the blue trail. She started to call out, ‘Iman, Moni.’
They heard her and came to where she was. The three of them recognisable to each other: Iman, Salma, Moni. They exclaimed and swapped stories – at least Moni and Salma did, Iman grunted and yowled. They wept with sorrow, not sure whether it was for themselves or each other, for it appalled Iman to see her bold friend flat as a doormat, it pained Salma to see Moni, once tall and regal, reduced to a Swiss ball. And Moni could not get over the shock of what Iman had become – without dignity, inhuman and unable to speak.
‘He took my strength instead of my virtue,’ Salma said. ‘That’s what happened. He dug inside and took my muscles.’
For a long time, the three of them purred and comforted each other. They murmured laments and whined in rhythm. They were freed from pride and convention, freed from the need to put on a
