The Lovers, page 3
She left her son overseas.
The men, one leaves and then another takes his place, and don’t believe for a second when they say they’re her friends. Women and men, they cannot be friends, and it is better for them to make friends from among their own sex.
She has never become rich but her money over the years has stayed the same even as the country has declined. For a brief period, they say she stays alone, she bides her time, the wind will turn and then she will be visited day and night again. I always remember her at fifteen or as she is in recent years: in a bathrobe, her hair in curlers, her feet propped up on the balcony. She wears slippers and she shows their soles to the world. Her son is grown and he has children of his own and he visits his mother daily, he brings her fruit, he brings her plates of food that his wife has cooked, and I heard the other day that maybe she no longer receives men because she’s done using them, that she has no need anymore for them, that her son is all grown and he is taller than the men around him who look up to him from within his shadow, that he can now support her as she ages, that if she wants she can retreat from the world, she can hide and watch television all day and paint her nails in the sun as a woman of leisure as all women hope to be but come now, the mind is tired and the fire burns low so let us turn to our own lives, their failures, their hopes, and how no matter the stakes, we bear the darkness willingly because God promises us in the morning it will be light again.
NOCTURNES
She is calling the one she loves.
There. It is out in the world.
She lets the phone ring.
She is armed with an excuse, a reason for the call. I need to check the homework for maths. Truth be told, people call her to check but he does not know that.
That first love, how they snuck around. The illicit catch-ups, their meetings carefully arranged: the notes passed, the plotting and planning as if they were complex strategists and the fate of the world was at stake.
She thinks of the girl she had been and her profound silliness and how she is sneaking around with him.
Amir visits her bed and then he leaves. Everyone knows it but none dare speak of it. To speak of it is to take it out of the night-time and air it in daylight, to legitimise it, to give it life, to say to the world I may well be serious about this one, to subject their young love to scrutiny, to comparisons, to turn it into a house of glass for the stones others throw with indifference or intent. She could not bear that, not at this early stage.
He asks her to marry him and she resists. She tells him he is joking, that he can’t be serious, and he repeats he means the words that he has said.
She thinks of marriage, she thinks of being bolted to the ground, of being stuck to the floor, and she tells herself that with him it will be different but isn’t that the line everyone the world over feeds to their self? He calls it her western cynicism, that with him there is no need for a mask, that he wants her in his life, that he will not let her go, that he does not care what anyone thinks.
That is how it always starts, she mutters and thinks of how hopeful she has been, rolling up her sleeves to greet each beginning with hope and how each time it had been cut down, of how many loves have died despite all her energy, her will and intent.
And what is there except a hope that this one will not go the way of the others and die a premature death?
It is a hope, nothing else. Upon it, the world turns, the axis of the globe, its tilt, and she wonders if she is willing to enter the ring again, to stake it all on a hope, a promise of something else but as he said to her: Tell me, is there anything else?
DUTY
The doubts are the worst.
Amal is telling her story—he hit me just then—and all Jamila can think is here we go again.
The doubts?
There are no bruises, Amal always has a smile on her face. If things are so bad, why hasn’t she left? Surely it’s not as she says. Come on, there is the door and no one is standing in her way.
But as a good friend, she listens, she nods often, she does not roll her eyes. As a good friend, she offers tea and biscuits, she offers tissues—here come the tears like clockwork—and she agrees that he is to blame for Amal’s pain.
It takes an hour to calm her, to farewell her, to breathe a sigh of relief, ignoring the fact that in a week they will be revisiting the same mess that is the soundtrack of Amal’s marriage. She is grateful it is someone else’s lot in life, that she can wash her hands of it and consider her social duty discharged, making a decision about how to do her hair and the clothes she wants to wear.
She has tossed and turned over this subject at night. How can I be a better friend? What else can I do to help her other than offer bandaids and painkillers after the beast has whipped her again?
It is not my place, she tells her reflection, she must sleep in the bed she has made, didn’t she choose to marry him when we all shook our heads?
What else can I do? she wonders, transferring a pin from her mouth into her hair, I offer her shelter every time, I listen to her, I give her advice, I remind her how to make her life bearable, but the horse has been led to water and I can offer nothing else.
She does the same thing after each one of Amal’s visits. She goes around with some treats and toys for the kids. She asks Amal if she’s okay and her friend nods emphatically yes, yes! She is always grateful for that yes, yes which absolves her, dismisses her and allows her to return home to think about what else remains on her list for the day. And it could continue like this—their arrangement—except he goes too far and Amal never shows up again.
DISCOURSE
Samir was in one of his moods. He was ready to talk. It had been a long night and once his tongue was loosened, Amir knew the night had more hours remaining in it than had been left behind.
He started with ‘The King and the Slave’, a story they had all heard before.
‘Once upon a time long ago, there was a king who had thousands of slaves. The slaves were blue and green, red, pink and white. They were every colour that existed under the sun. The king had slaves to arrange his pillows, slaves to tie his shoes, slaves to polish his mobile phone, slaves to spin silk so that, if the fancy took him, he could order silk socks in every colour while he drank champagne and complained about his weight.
‘His slaves conspired in the only way slaves can, turning foolish fantasies, thinking one day, one day when men, let us be clear, they had as great a chance at freedom as another man has of spending a night between my wife’s legs. They could plot as much as they liked, they could dare to look at the palace’s walls but tell me, how did they mean to survive outside when they did not even own the scraps they slept in at night? They had never been outside and they knew zero about the world and some of them believed there was no other world, that the entire world was what was contained within the palace walls. And in a sense they were right because the palace was the world in miniature, with all its suffering and stupidity, its fighting and fantasies, and if they needed to study the world, they need only look around them.
‘But there was a slave who dreamed of freedom. Of course there was such a slave or else our story has nowhere to go. We shall call him Zaki and this name suits him more than the one his parents could provide.
‘As a young man, he thought about the world outside, he studied the paintings and photographs in the palace for clues by which to understand the world he had never seen in his life. Ah, it is easy for me and you to make our plans but what if your life is reduced like Zaki’s, how would you even begin to imagine an escape? Your parents tell stories of slavery as their parents told them—in this fashion all the way back—so that no other life ever existed, and no other future exists except more of the same.
‘He looked in books, at the pictures, he was alert to what the messengers brought in their news, he watched the merchants who brought goods to the gates and often he was one of the slaves sent to retrieve the crates but they were never allowed when the gates were open because our king is wise and knew better than to permit the enslaved a glimpse outside. Our king is wise—of course he is—because if he was the stupidest man, he would have been educated till his head was as stuffed as his belly, even then if he showed signs of ineptitude, his advisers would save his royal grace so he’d be counted the wisest of men, the best, the greatest, the grandest and the other words attached to royalty from their birth.
‘Let us consider Zaki’s options. If he made a run for it, he would be gunned down. He could attempt to sneak out but believe me, there were no holes in the walls he had studied his entire life. He could smuggle himself out like a parcel in a cart of weapons and he supposed that was his best chance. And that is what he did. He lay down in the cart, he did not dare breathe, he had no plans beyond his escape. The cart moved, he had no way of guessing how far he had travelled. He was in so much darkness because of the covering, it may as well have been the darkness of a night.
‘The cart stopped and the covering removed and tonight I am in a good mood, I sit with my friends, so our slave jumps up like this’—Samir demonstrates, almost knocking the card table with his feet—‘and he gets away and he is free just like you and me till the end of his days.
‘But we are realists and despite our good diet of optimism and dreams and God on our side, the chances of Zaki finding his freedom are so tiny they may as well not exist. Say they catch him and they drag him back to the palace by his hair and his feet, his leg is chopped at the knee so he cannot repeat the offence. Say he makes his dash for freedom and he escapes but his only life is begging on the streets. You know, this is the likeliest outcome for Zaki and so while he is a free man he will be forever denied the pittance we use to keep poverty at bay, those morsels we have in our reach. Say he escapes and he finds fortune, maybe he finds a gold coin and that is his start but the elephants will fly and my name would not be Samir and I would chop the ends of my moustache and put on a woman’s clothes so that everyone knows how wrong I’ve been, but I won’t be wrong: Zaki probably dies and his chances of surviving—a proper free man—are so miserable he may as well resign himself to his lot in life.’
One of them throws a peanut at Samir. Another tells him to focus on his cards because he had lost another hand, but later I took his story, it kept me up at night, and I imagined Zaki in his bid for freedom, and I dreamed he finally escaped, he sat in the sun, he played cards with his friends, he had kids and a wife, and in the morning I wake in tears, unsure if it was because of my dream or if it was Samir’s words that continued to play on my mind.
FACTS
‘I am going to see Abu Khalil about some work.’
‘There are other ways to sell your soul and they won’t cost you so much.’
‘The future is on my mind. There is a change I want in my life and I need more money than I currently have.’
‘Is this about her?’
‘No, not just that,’ I lied. He knew the truth anyway.
‘Work harder in the job you have.’
‘I can only make so much that way.’
‘I want to tell you money doesn’t matter but of course it does and anyhow, if you’re thinking like this, no matter how much money you have it will never be enough.’
‘It’s not like that. I know the situation. I tell myself that if she was after money, she would go for someone else. I console myself with this but . . .’
‘If she’s going to leave, no amount of money is going to make her stay.’
‘I know that.’
‘But do you understand that you are powerless, that this is out of your hands? Have you resigned yourself to the facts?’
‘And what are the facts?’
‘She will always be richer, she will always belong to another world that is different to the one that is your home. If you can make a life together like this, so be it but if you cannot, you won’t be the first to fail.’
I wished he’d add some sweetness to his words.
He looked at me. We were face to face. ‘You are my friend and you have always been like a brother to me. The thing you want is the thing I once wished I had. If it weren’t for her, we would not be having this conversation in the first place. You would not be telling me you are going to sell your soul to be in the service of the fattest rat there is in this town. I know the lure of money. We want more to fill our eyes but if you do this, you will lose your sleep, you will lose your peace and you will lose any chance at a life with the one you wish to keep at your side. She will not recognise you. You will not be worth looking at twice. As you make your calculations, do not forget to include this in your tally as well. You remain poor, you keep your hands clean or you gather your riches and forever there will be emptiness in your life.’
He offered me a cigarette and I took it and I did the same with the next ten after as he first did when we were twelve. When he said my hands were shaking, I said it was the combination of coffee and cigarettes. He smiled and left it at that.
FIGHTING
Lubna said to her, It is all right, I will go into the store alone. With that, she marched in without checking if Jamila was coming in or staying outside.
She trailed after Lubna who was already arguing with the owner of the store. The dress was laid between them, a territorial dispute, and she could hear both their voices rising: Lubna yelling that the dress was not of the quality promised, look here at the stitching, the looseness of the threads . . . and the owner shaking his head and saying you have done this before, trying to return a dress you have already worn.
She stayed where she was, smoking a cigarette in the doorway, trying to blow the smoke outside. She listened to their voices and each time she thought they were reaching an agreement, they gridlocked and the argument continued on.
Lubna had in fact worn the dress. She had worn it last night to the wedding and when she’d been asked how she could afford such a dress (They can’t afford to eat was whispered), she merely smiled and said she had her ways.
Lubna explained the situation on the way into town. Really, I have only borrowed the dress. It is as good as when I bought it yesterday. Put it next to a new one and, trust me, you can’t tell the difference between the two.
Hence the trip, hence the argument, hence Jamila wondering if this argument would ever end. She considered walking in and offering quietly to buy it, but later when she’d tell him about her day, about the dress and how she’d bought it, he’d shake his head and say, This is one more instance when you think your money will solve the problems of the world.
It wasn’t like that. It was a simple solution. Everyone would be happy. Everyone could walk away, assuming that is what Lubna wanted in the first place. Everyone can walk away if they have money, everyone can make the choices I make if they had the money I have. She imagines telling him this and to prove her imaginary point, she almost walks in and pays for the dress but instead she walks away because she can. As for Lubna, even if she could walk away, she would not, but that was not Jamila’s problem anyway.
LIES
She lied. They all lied. She consoled herself with this.
She was less guilty because other people were guiltier. Guilt was not decided in isolation. Guilt was relative and so she lied and so did they but she lied less than them.
She told him she was on a break. A break from work, a break from life. The break stretched from the expected month and she had been here almost a year and she made no plans yet to leave.
She did not want to leave him. She did not want to bring him with her. She worried that if she returned to her life, she returned to her pain and it would break the both of them, and so she sheltered here on a permanent holiday, keeping her head down so no one would ask after her plans. She had this sense—stupid, she knew—that someone was going to call up and ask her to explain herself. What are your plans, when do you plan to leave, why aren’t you working?
She would protest, she would defend, she would lie some more, she went through these days expecting always to be exposed. The truth would be laid bare. She stayed because she had nothing else she wanted to do. She stayed and she thought her life could pass like this, and was that such a terrible way to live?
He made no demands of her except to say he wanted her for life. Do not say that to me. And he said it again and she was silent, silent, then she pretended to sleep. She did not fool him though because he whispered it again in her ear. She ignored him. She tried out a vision: a future of them together—the regular trappings—the way she tried on a dress.
I want you with me forever.
Who knows about forever when I can barely see the day ahead?
Forever and I mean it.
You don’t know that. How does one even plan for the rest of their life?
He sighed then and retreated to his side. He cloaked himself with silence as she had done so many times.
I need time.
He said nothing.
I don’t know what I want.
Still he said nothing.
She left it and he fell asleep and she knew she lied to him and that she lied to herself. She knew what she wanted but her fear was greater and she was weighed with guilt and she hid behind a lie, a tired defence that had protected her so many times.
