Only in London Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Chapter Two

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Chapter Three

  I

  II

  III

  Chapter Four

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Chapter Five

  I

  II

  III

  Chapter Six

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Chapter Seven

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Chapter Eight

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Chapter Nine

  I

  II

  III

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  ALSO BY HANAN AL-SHAYKH

  Copyright Page

  TO TAREK AND JUMAN MALOUF

  AND

  TO LONDON

  Acknowledgements

  My gratitude to Marsha Rowe for her help

  and to Eve Arnold and Carmen Callil

  for their invaluable support.

  My thanks to Leighton House, the British Library—

  particularly the Oriental and India Office Collections for

  letting me handle rare manuscripts—and to

  British Telecom for taking me up the BT tower.

  Prologue

  Amira’s shriek, ’Woe is me, woe is me, woe is me’, drowned out the chorus of ’God is most great, God is most great’ from the other passengers as the aircraft hurled itself up and down like a yo-yo. Her relentless lament, together with the turbulence, completely unsettled Lamis, the woman sitting next to her. My son, Lamis thought. How could I have left him? And then: My bag, my passport, while the aircraft straightened up and she tried to gather the fragments of herself together.

  A young Englishman stood to help an air hostess to her feet, but Amira’s racket made it impossible for the passengers to regain their composure and their senses continued to work overtime, picking up on any slight tremor, especially now that they had been made aware of what was so familiar that they usually forgot about it: they were roaming through the great unknown in a tin box with wings.

  Amira wailed and flapped her wrists at anyone who came to reassure her. Her fingers looked like little fishes with sparkling rings around their necks and brightly coloured tails, and her broad face resembled the bumper of an antique Oldsmobile, with its heavy make-up and big gold-rimmed spectacles, and her light brown, shoulder-length hair, teased to make it look fuller. Several times she stood up as if she were trying to escape, and her bottom stuck out like a small table, big enough to take an ashtray or a glass.

  Amira screamed and cried and ignored the soothing words, whether they came from Lamis or the Gulf man accompanied by his nephew, whom she had chatted up at Dubai Airport, and who was turning round from his seat near the front to tell her that God had heaven and earth in his hands, or the Englishman from across the aisle, or even the Captain, who had left his cockpit and was walking among the passengers reassuring them, like a nurseryman inspecting his trees.

  ’Don’t cry,’ Nicholas was saying, hoping that Amira would open her eyes and respond. ’Everything’s fine. The turbulence is over. It won’t happen again.’

  ’Woe is me! Woe is me! God preserve me!’ Amira wailed, thinking to herself: I repent, oh God, I repent. Please don’t punish me.

  As soon as the plane had taken off she had begun counting pounds and putting them into envelopes in wads of five hundred.

  ’It’s just a bit of turbulence, that’s all,’ Nicholas said.

  This only rekindled Amira’s hysteria, and her sobbing gathered momentum as she saw herself plummeting through the air once more.

  Nicholas looked at Lamis, who appeared so composed, and he raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together as if to acknowledge that he could do no more for Amira.

  Inwardly Lamis herself was shaking with terror. Her precious British passport: the flight attendant had already announced its loss several times.

  A few moments later Nicholas found it on the floor under the seat in front of him and handed it back to her. Lamis thanked him - the Englishman had given her back her life - and as she did so he looked back at her for longer than he meant to, thinking of the naked Devedasis he’d seen two days before in the stillness of the temple at Khajuraho, with their seductive bodies, full breasts, bracelets on their arms and ankles, rings in their ears, girdles around their waists and ties that hung down at the back - whether they were sitting, standing, looking straight ahead or to one side, with their hair flowing or their faces raised, they evoked desire.

  A flamboyantly dressed man clutching a wicker basket came wandering down the aisle, confident that he would find what he needed in Business Class. He leaned across and jogged Lamis’s arm. ’Excuse me, Mamselle. Please, have you got a sedative? My nerves...’

  Lamis reached into the zip pocket of her bag for her packet of sedatives, wondering how this man with the basket had guessed that she took them.

  ’Merci, merci. Heaven sent you to my rescue, Mamselle.’

  Amira, whose weeping fit had subsided, stopped reciting the Muslim creed to prove to God that she’d repented, and looked at them.

  Lamis offered Amira a sedative, but Amira shook the little fishes at her. ’No, no. God forbid! I wouldn’t want to be half asleep if something happened.’

  ’Mamselle, Mamselle. I want to tell you a secret. Please swear you’ll keep it to yourself. Swear you won’t tell on me ... I’ve got a little monkey in this basket.’

  Lamis looked at the wickerwork receptacle that the man was holding against his chest. It was so tiny. How could it hold a monkey? She didn’t want to get involved. What if he were arrested? Nevertheless, she forced herself to ask, ’What’s wrong? Has it escaped?’

  ’How could it? Its feet and hands are tied, and I keep the basket stuck to me like a leech. But I need to give the monkey a pill to make it sleep or it will chew its way out.’

  ’I gave you one.’

  ’I know. You gave me two. I’m not crazy even though I might look it, but the monkey won’t swallow the pill unless it’s hidden inside something else, like grapes or chocolate.’

  ’No, sorry. I haven’t got anything. Ask the stewardess.’

  ’How can I ask her? Everybody’s so busy! She won’t answer me.’

  When Lamis showed no interest in saving him he turned to Amira. ’Please, Madame, make a fuss like before, and ask them for food. A piece of cheese or chocolate.’ He leaned down until his face was almost touching hers. ’There’s a monkey in this basket. I’ve got to send it to sleep before it disgraces me and they put me in jail. I have to give it a tablet inside some food it likes.’

  Amira needed no encouragement, and she began to wail again, and flap her wrists. ’God preserve me! God preserve me! My blood pressure’s going down. I feel dizzy. Please bring me a piece of bread, a bit of chocolate ...’

  The stewardess brought both and Amira felt uneasy because she’d promised herself that she would become an honest woman. Yet wasn’t helping people a good deed? She gave the food to the man with the basket as soon as the stewardess disappeared. He thanked her and tried to kiss her hand before he vanished.

  ’Praise God for our safety,’ the Arab passengers repeated to one another when the Captain announced that the descent to Heathrow would begin in fifteen minute
s. For once the overworked phrase really meant something. The Gulf man stretched round from his seat and called back to Amira, ’Praise God. You should always trust in Him.’

  When she heard the word ’Heathrow’ Lamis thought of Edward Heath and Hampstead Heath, of grassy slopes, wooden benches and street lights, of Jill Rowe, her son’s old nursery-school teacher, and of her son asking if he were learning ’Row, row, row your boat’ because the rhyme contained his teacher’s name.

  Everything was green. Even the streams and rivers were a shade of green. The Arab passengers craned their necks and exclaimed in wonder, and Nicholas too caught his breath. He’d forgotten how much he missed the presence of green, and how it made him feel at one with the world. The doctors in the Gulf had actually been known to prescribe a summer in England for their patients. In Oman every patch of green was looked on as a miracle and the media would present pictures of blossoming plants as if they were announcing new oil wells. Nicholas reached out a finger, like Adam, towards London, the finger of God, and Oman receded and became a distant planet - it was as if he’d never been drawn to its terraced mountainsides.

  The man with the basket re-entered the cabin and, ignoring the objections of the air hostess, went up to Lamis and Amira.

  ’I’m going to die,’ he told them dramatically.

  Lamis felt pity for the man.

  ’Would you like another sedative?’

  ’No, no. The monkey’s sound asleep. I’m the problem now. I’m dying of fright. They’ll find the monkey and arrest me. Shall I drown the monkey in the toilet, or tell the stewardess I’ve found a stray?’

  ’Don’t be afraid, I’m here, and there’s no X-ray,’ said Amira. ’Let the plane land first. Go back to your place now, and trust me. Trust the Lord, I mean.’

  ’Just tell me something, Madame. Do you know a restaurant called Tabbouleh?’

  ’In Edgware Road? Yes, a stone’s throw from where I live.’

  As she’d promised, Amira stayed with the man after they left the aircraft. She hurried him along until they both caught up with Lamis, obliging Lamis to walk beside her and the man with the basket - whose name was Samir - while he pushed the trolley carrying both the women’s cases and the monkey’s basket.

  To distract Samir further, Amira said, ’Look! Everyone’s admiring your clothes!’

  Samir looked down at the Versace shirt he was wearing under a big heavy overcoat, and at his long brightly coloured scarf and his cowboy boots, and grinned.

  Amira looked at Samir whose long face, long nose and long sideburns were haloed by frizzy hair that he had obviously tried to straighten. ’Are you sure you’re not Klinger in Mash?’ she teased.

  Samir laughed. ’That actor does look like me. You’re right, Madame. His ancestors were Lebanese.’

  The cab driver was waiting, carrying a board on which her name was scrawled, ’Amira Fayiz’, but as soon as Amira saw the parked minibus she wanted to shout at him for bringing such an unattractive vehicle. Instead she looked around for the Gulf man and his nephew. When she couldn’t see them anywhere she thought that God must be helping her to repent, and offered Lamis and Samir a lift. Lamis felt cushioned and relieved: she’d been dreading travelling into London alone. Then Amira spotted the young Englishman who, with all his heart and soul, had tried to calm her down in the plane, and called him over.

  Chapter One

  I

  Lamis turned the key in the lock and the sound made her jump and look round fearfully, but she was alone with her case labelled LHR. She stepped over the threshold and the place had that neglected smell. When she saw that the cases and boxes, which were supposed to have been shipped to her in Dubai after she settled in, were piled up in the hall just as she had left them, she burst into tears and felt trapped.

  ’Never mind. Have a good cry. It’ll do you good,’ she said to herself.

  So she cried a little more and then stopped suddenly, as if she’d fulfilled some obligation. She collapsed on the floor, intending to kiss it as she’d thought of doing when she landed at Heathrow, like an exile returning home, but she was overcome by a fit of coughing. The moquette was tickling her nose and the dust getting into her throat. She stood up and walked round the flat.

  She had imagined herself storming into her son’s school, calling his name, Khalid, looking in every classroom until she found him, then hugging him, asking him to forgive her, but the urge to do so subsided for the moment. When her son was little - she started crying again at the thought of him - his cars stuck on the carpet, and he’d had to play with them in the kitchen.

  She went into the kitchen and then into the bedroom where she lay down and stretched out, feeling her ribs, like a cautious peasant checking for abrasions on a cow he wanted to buy, overlooking the flaws under its skin. She was angry with herself for lying down, disappointed she didn’t feel the surge of energy she’d anticipated when she set foot on English soil. Why was it that when you longed for something and got it, you wanted something different?

  A month before, straight after her divorce, she had left London for Dubai, where her parents and her married sister lived. Encouraged by her sister, she planned to set up her own business there, making artificial trees to decorate homes and offices. She had bought vast amounts of dried flowers, branches and all the necessary equipment from the New Covent Garden flower market in Vauxhall and shipped it ahead to Dubai, but she was only there two days when she found herself wishing she were back in London. Her life had turned into a kind of nightmare in which she was pushed in different directions and that tangled her up like the threads of lace in the fingers of an unskilled seamstress.

  Dubai customs were suspicious of her clearly labelled packages; they opened them and found five dried poppies, including opium poppies, with seeds. For the sake of those dried poppy pods, like pomegranates, only smaller and prettier and plumper, her British passport was confiscated and her case referred to the Dubai criminal investigation department.

  For days she trailed after her brother-in-law like a sheep following the shepherd in search of pasture even when she felt he was leading her towards a mirage. She was led out of one office into a bare room where she was photographed holding a tray spread with the five stalks of dried poppies. From there they sought out wealthy, well-connected people who might be able to help them, and followed up leads, through corridors and waiting rooms in government ministries, constantly being reassured by officials saying, ’We used to boil poppies to make a sleeping draught to give babies, you know, but that was before the change in the law’ - all to no avail. Lamis watched Dubai change in front of her eyes, from the place where the official stamped her passport as casually as if it were a restaurant bill - which, as an Iraqi refugee, was something she’d never experienced before - to a place where she was being rolled around from official to official like a ball on a snooker table for a whole month, until someone, on a whim, finally dropped the case. That decision gave her back her freedom but left her petrified. The country’s legal system was a nest of spiders weaving a web among its dog-eared papers. She discovered later that those in charge of her case were only puppets and time-wasters who received people in their offices and sent them away with lying promises, and not one of the legal representatives they met had bothered to take up her case with a department superior or any relevant authority.

  She considered calling Khalid at his boarding school and making a cup of tea. She thought fleetingly of her friend Belquis, but decided to wait until eleven before contacting her - then she’d ask Belquis to help her go back to her husband and son. She had decided this in the minibus when she saw the houses and semi-deserted hotels with their depressing net curtains, like stage flats with nothing behind them, and she had felt suddenly terrified of being back in London alone.

  Her eyes focused on the BT tower through the bedroom window. The familiarity of the flat was preventing her from facing reality. She shouldn’t have stayed here, even though her ex-husband insisted she could use
the flat for as long as she wanted, adding that he would pay all the bills as usual. ’It’s just because he wants you to come back to him,’ her sister said. ’He won’t lose hope while you don’t have anyone else.’

  Lamis had lived with her husband in this furnished flat during the early years of their marriage. When they moved out into their new one, her husband kept the flat as an investment. From then on it remained empty, except when they used it as an overflow for guests visiting London. In the beginning Lamis only returned once a month to let in the cleaning woman; later she had started to visit the flat from time to time in order to be alone, to read or listen to music in total freedom, without feeling guilty.

  The familiar objects aroused feelings of loss and regret. It should be a Beverley Sister who feels this way, not me, thought Lamis.

  She looked around at the slippery pistachio divan, at the stain left by the singer’s head on the pistachio-coloured bedstead and at the couch covered in rose-patterned damask where the singer must have sat with her two sisters practising the horse song, the Queen Mother’s favourite; in the adjoining bathroom she must have belted out, ’How much is that doggy in the window?’

  Lamis’s mother-in-law had been so proud of the fact that one of the Beverley Sisters had been the previous tenant, even though the group was unknown in the Arab world.

  The way the singer had her cupboards built to accommodate the various lengths of her clothes and the different heights of her hats had impressed Lamis. She felt a secret admiration for this woman who imposed her will on things. Lamis did not dare even to think about what she wanted, still less how it might be expressed. She always let her husband decide for her, and her mother-in-law decided for him. When they first moved into the flat, her mother-in-law had the cupboards redivided, and her husband took the lion’s share while Lamis portioned her clothes out among several cupboards in another room and the little passage leading to the guests’ bathroom. At the time Lamis thought she was in the lap of luxury: in Beirut before she married she’d only had space for the couple of dresses she owned. She found herself humming: