She nodded, pleased to be released.
I was one big headache of confusion. I walked backwards and forwards the length of the room, my arms folded. So, who was I? I tried Arab and it seemed impossibly strange. Ali was Arab and Ali was not us. I had liked it that he was not us. I couldn’t imagine telling him I was half-Arab. We might be related! I tried ‘orphan.’ My parents are both dead. I’m an orphan. I don’t belong to anyone. What am I?
I must have asked the last question out loud because Geoffrey answered. He made me jump and my hand went to my heart. I had forgotten him completely. In this new confusion there was no role for an unlucky, out-of- place Englishman.
I said, “What?”
“I’ve worked it out,” he said, still not opening his eyes. “You’re a Goan Indian Portuguese Arab African of Catholic Moslem parentage.”
“You were listening?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t help it. Of course, the Arabs here are mixed up with all sorts of African blood, and European and Asian, so really it’s more complicated. You’re from everywhere.”
“Please stop, Geoffrey. I’m from nowhere.”
I THOUGHT I WOULD NOT SLEEP THAT NIGHT, BUT I
slept the deepest of sleeps and woke in possession of two messages to myself, from myself. The first was that I should not marry Ali. Perversely, now I knew I was part Arab, it seemed all wrong. The idea was to escape my beginnings, not to be snagged by another part of them. The second message told me that I loved my mother—the one in the next room, not the one who gave birth to me. I felt a rush of loyalty to my distracted Mummy who had brought me up and loved me so well that I had suspected nothing. I wanted to know nothing more about my real history. I didn’t want to be anywhere where I might accidentally learn about my real history. I wanted to be a migrant making her own history.
“Geoffrey,” I said next morning, over tea, “I’m going to the airport with you.”
“You’re going to see me off?”
“No, I’m flying to Dar too. It’s where I live, really. In any case you need a nurse.”
“What about your fiance?”
“I don’t think I’m going to marry him after all.”
Geoffrey looked into his tea for a long while. “Is it my fault? Because of what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“"You know ... the beach. Maybe I shouldn’t ... I mean I liked it. I liked it very much. I like you very much. You’re... lovely.”
“Thanks... No, don’t worry, it’s not because of you.” “Oh.”
I checked myself. What was the harm if he should feel a little responsible? “At least I don’t think so. Not as far as I know. I mean, I do like your company though. I like talking to you. I feel... larger somehow when I’m with you. That’s silly, isn’t it? And you saved my life, don’t forget that.”
“How? I thought you saved mine.”
“The passport.”
“Oh, yes. So maybe you should look after me. Maybe I need a nurse between Dar and London too.”
“You’re inviting me to fly to England with you?” “Maybe.”
“Maybe I’ll say yes, then.”
“Shall I tell the Dar office to buy another ticket?” “Maybe. Should I go and pack?”
I had stopped breathing. I was a hundred feet up on a tightrope without knowing how I got there or where next to put my foot.
He leaned towards me and took my hand. “Marcella, are we being serious?”
“I don’t know. Are we?”
He laughed, looked away, was skittish. “I don’t know either.” Then he kissed me on the mouth, his tongue travelling round the inside of my lips, surprising me, pleasing me, actually. “Yes, come. I think I love you,” he said.
“What?” I nearly laughed. It was so unlike him, this recklessness and passion, that I wondered about his loss of blood, the bang on his head. Then I thought of London. Not England, London. I recalled the dream I had, in which I watched myself at the brilliant party in an imagined London. This was it, my chance to go to the party. Just say the word. But did I love him? Well, I was grateful. I felt warm towards him. There had been that funny, complicated sex, and he might have been hit over the head because of me. And I was different in his company, maybe better. I might. I thought I might. Or that it might not matter.
“All right, then,” I said.
At Dar airport, we waited with the other passengers in a bare cement room with a few chairs—not enough —positioned around the walls. We had passed through the little curtained booth where the security officer had searched our bags and, as it turned out, stolen Geoffrey’s pocket calculator. In the middle of the room, like a museum exhibit, was an x-ray machine with a hand-written out of order note stuck to it with peeling tape. Geoffrey and I were quiet. We had spent the previous night at the Indian-run Empire Hotel where the management gave me possessive looks that said how much they disapproved of the immoral Indian girl with the European man, and how much they desired her for themselves. They would not have guessed that our stay was entirely chaste, Geoffrey too weak, or too something, to do more than sleep.
The door of the waiting room opened directly onto the tarmac, where our plane
