The Pickup Part 12

Like I was back there, under somebody's car.

You wouldn't be doing any of that kind of work yourself, the way you are, helping out, now*

Telling the others to do it, yelling at them like my Uncle has to. Sticking my head under the bonnet to see if they're doing it right, waiting for my Uncle to die. Are you crazy.

At night she felt him turning in bed, rubbing his feet one against the other in affront, in turmoil. And was afraid to comfort him in case she said the wrong thing, or made a ges-The Pickup 194.

ture that could be interpreted as referring to some rejected aspect of a conflict within him. He had made the decision, why was he still tormenting himself? When she made a decision that was the end of it; of leaving The Suburbs, leaving the dolls house and charades at the EL-AY Cafe: while they were waiting she was at peace, at her place in the desert. Yet she herself was not sure of her reactions to what had suddenly been thrust before him, never thought of, never. Something he had cast himself about the unwelcoming world to put far away as possible from his life. When he stood there, at bay: did she think he had already said no, the refusal had surged and burst, his heart was sending it through the vessels of his blood. Did she expect anything else?

Brooding in a bed in the dark has a kind of telepathy created by the contact of bodies when words have not been exchanged. Whether she might be asleep or awake*he spoke.

You thought I would take it.

A faceless voice. I don't know what I thought. Yes or no.

Because there's so much I don't know*about you. I've found that out. Since we've been home here. You must understand, I've never lived in a family before, just made subst.i.tutes out of other people, ties, I suppose*though I didn't realize that, either, then. There are ... things ... between people here, that are important, no, necessary to them ... I don't mean the way you are to me ... that doesn't fit in with anybody, anything else, and that's all right, but ... You could have reasons for 'yes' I couldn't know about because they're ...

unconnected with me, with you and me, d'you see?

So she's talking of my mother. He does not discuss his mother with her; he will not.

She certainly did not know there would be another family gathering the week after his decision was made known. She was aware he must have told his mother of it before he told her*but that might have been because he believed she, his wife, surely must have known, from the moment the announcement was made by the Uncle, his decision was a fore-gone conclusion. Only in the dark had he come to the possibility of her betrayal*You thought I would take it.

The decision had been conveyed to the Uncle by his mother. It appeared that such a decision could not properly be made by a young man on his own. He had ignored the due process of discussion within the family of whatever reasons there could possibly be for a rebuff*an insult, considering the Uncle's position in the family in the whole community*

of this nature.

The story of the amazing action of a young man from a poor family like their own, who had taken himself off to foreign countries and made nothing of himself there, come home with only a foreign wife to show for it, had gone from house to house and cafe to market stall, wafted up to homes of the few wealthy and important people*the wife who employed a member of the family inquisitively extracted inside information from her maid, the young man's sister, Maryam.

The BMW outside the house again. There was no question of tea and sweetmeats, or the couple preferring to occupy the lean-to. He said, we have to be there, and they were seated, a little apart from the rest of the family, when the Uncle entered and everyone rose. His greetings were less mayoral, but proper.

It had come to the Uncle's ears that his dear sister's son and the son of his respected brother-in-law was getting mixed up in politics. Everyone agrees that a young man must have friends to meet and talk to, a little pleasure men enjoy away from the house and the women. His self-confidence allowed him to make a joke even in this situation, but n.o.body t.i.t-tered: the men, knowing their indulgences, of which he hinted, smoking a bit of kif and taking alcohol in a disguised bar, the women wise in not enquiring where the men went at night, and all were subdued, as if sharing some sibling guilt for the brother's misdemeanours that went beyond these.

Well*kif and whisky and even the occasional woman*the Uncle had been young himself; he did not need to say what, for his manhood, he a.s.sumed was understood. But Ibrahim*

his sister's son like a son to him*it is known, it has now become known to him, and with sorrow, mixes with a certain crowd. This comes as a shock to his dear parents, and it is for them that a senior member of the family speaks now. This young man the whole family loves is spending his time with a type of malcontents who blame everything in their lives on others*on the authorities, on the government. Everything they do not have the ability to do for themselves, work hard as the older generation, his generation (a hand flat against his own breast), was willing to do, sacrifice, for the honour of the family, raise themselves up*all this is the fault of the government. Government owes them everything. The Lord has given them what a man needs to live a good life in the Faith, their families have educated them, they can marry and bring up children in security, there are no foreigners from Europe flying flags over our land any longer*what more do they want? They want to bring down the government, aoodhit billah. That's the evil they want. They have in their heads the ideas that set brother against brother. They want to smash everything, and they don't know*don't they see what is happening in those countries that have done this?*a country ends up with nothing, everything lost. The young men already have so much that we, their parents, never had. And why not? We are glad of it. From outside, from progress. Isn't it enough to have your car and cellphone and TV. What else is really worth having out there in the world of false G.o.ds?

All he wants to say: it is mixing with this group who are dangerous, a danger to themselves, to us, to our government*they must be the sad reason for a young man giving up an opportunity that would bring advancement, comforts, everything anyone could want for a good life, eventually a high place in the community and honour to the family. This opportunity that was offered comes out of sorrow, but was a way of making something joyful result from pain, ma sha allah, some good to come to the family out of*he placed his hand on his breast, softly, now*a tragedy. Inna lillah.

There was silence in which everyone in the room was alone. The children felt it and gazed about at the grown-ups in awe. Tears were running down the composed face of the mother as some revered statues are said to shed tears on certain auspicious dates, while their features remain cast in stone or bronze.

The Uncle, her brother, had spoken seated beside her; but her son, the nephew, stood up.

*No-one in this village, in this place, has anything to do with why I cannot accept the offer you have honoured me with, Uncle Yaqub. I do not have any interest in the government. It is not going to govern me. I am going to America.*

The Uncle spoke measuredly and clearly*to her ears*in contrast with the quick speech of the young people in the family whom she found difficult to follow, probably because they spoke colloquially while she was studying the language out of primers, and those who had volunteered in the friendly exchange of languages over tea also thought it respectful of theirs to teach her only its conventional formula-tions.

Afterwards, Ibrahim gave her full account of what the Uncle had said. So she was able to piece together the words and phrases she had understood in the Uncle's own voice and to correct for herself, with that echo, the paraphrase and lack of emphasis in what she was being told in the medium of Ibrahim's English. She needed an explanation to the reference to sorrow, a tragedy, at the end, that had produced such a strong effect on everyone, she had felt it herself?

Didn't she remember that the only son was dead? Ah yes*the heir apparent*she did, how was it?

A terrible thing. He burned in his car, an accident. And no-one says it, but it was when he had taken alcohol. Drunk.

So she understood; the reference was used to wind up with 199 Nadine Gordimer something to shame the one who was refusing bestowal of a privilege to which he wasn't really ent.i.tled anyway Like the other women of the house, she hadn't known, hadn't expected to be told every time her man was out at night, where he went and what he did; this att.i.tude came naturally to her.

from the mores of The Table at the EL-AY Cafe*everyone free to come and go, particularly in the code of intimacy, no-one should police another; even in the ultimate intimacy called love, monitoring was left behind with the rejected values of The Suburbs. The reference*his own*to America, which she had understood as he p.r.o.nounced it evenly in his mother tongue, had brought an immediate urge of protective-ness towards him, she had wanted to get up, go to him, shield him from the pathetic humiliation he was exposing himself to before the eyes of the family, when everyone knew, everyone, how since his return, deported from one country, he was always making applications for immigration visas to other countries and coming back from the queues in the capital with a piece of paper; refusal. He was going to Canada, Australia, New Zealand. The neat file in the canvas bag was full of such doc.u.ments.

To save him embarra.s.sment, she did not refer to the pretext he had given for his refusal: she knew the real reasons.

The grease-stiff overalls and the stink of fuel from which he had emerged in the garage round the block near the EL-AY Cafe. And perhaps he felt it was*what?*distasteful, bad luck, somehow not what should be, to fill the empty s.p.a.ce of someone's sorrow, occupy the place of a young man he must have known, a family sibling, as a child. He could not tell them that; he brought up a pretext n.o.body could believe in.

It was not the end of it, for him, of course. His father had the right and obligation of long homilies addressed to the son, the The Pickup 200.

family kept out, the house subdued to the death-watch-beetle tlok-tlok of the ornamental clock (also a gift from the Uncle).

His mother, rising from prayers that he must feel were for him, summoned him aside and their mingled voices were so low it sounded merely as if prayer were continuing. But if the supreme authority of the Uncle could have no influence on their son, no-one, nothing else would.

What pa.s.sed between mother and son must have been an apocalypse for both, a kind of rebirth tearing her body, a fearful thrusting re-emergence for him. His wife who had never known, never would know, such emotions*Nigel Ackroyd Summers, and the mother someone imagined in California*felt the force of his with humility and offered all she had in recognition: love-making. In her body he was himself, be belonged to n.o.body, she was the country to which he had emigrated.

In some accommodation reached with the Uncle by family council, the prodigal nephew was continuing to help out at the vehicle repair workshop as if nothing had happened, to have use of the car, and to go off to the capital during working hours on affairs of his own. He also still pursued family matters since it was felt his education made him the one best qualified to, and one day actually was able to bring news of the brother, Khadija's husband, Zayd*at the agency there was a letter, a bank draft. Whatever explanations for the long silence were, the withdrawn Khadija did not say whether or not she accepted them. Khadija used a strong perfume, it was the a.s.sertion of her presence in the house, constant pungent reminder that she was deserted by a son of this family-; when Ibrahim's wife was impulsively bold enough to approach her and say how glad she was that this sister-in-law's husband was safe and well, the woman gave a proud wry smile*and then, suddenly, she who never touched anyone but her own children, embraced Julie. Perhaps it was because Julie spent 1Q4 Nadine Gordimer much time with one of the children. Leila had fallen in love with her, as small girls will with some adult who offers activities different from those of a parent; as Julie had fallen in love with Gulliver-Archie. Her kind of Uncle.

Almost a year since they arrived at his home.

She was fully occupied now. Strange; she had never worked like this before, without reservations of self, always had been merely trying out this and that, always conscious that she could move on, any time, to something else, not expecting satisfaction, looking on at herself, half-amusedly, as an ant scurrying G.o.d knows where. In addition to the ladies conversational circle, the lessons for other adults who sought her out, and the play-learning she discovered she could devise (probably started with Leila) for small children, as well as the cla.s.ses she taught in the primary school, she had been drawn in to coach English to older boys who hoped to go to high school in the capital some day; she had been able to per-suade*flatter*the local school princ.i.p.al to let girls join the cla.s.ses although it was more than unlikely their families would allow them to leave home.

She performed such unskilled tasks as she could be expected to be able to do, among her sisters-in-law, in the preparation of family meals. The mother directed everything, she was obeyed as the guardian of all culinary knowledge and dietary edicts, the ingredients she chose and the methods of 203 Nadine Gordimer preparation she decreed were followed. The ingredients of the food were simple but they were combined and transformed into something subtly delicious, the so-named pilaffs and other 'ethnic' dishes fiercely spiced in the alternative cuisine favoured at The Table turned out to have had nothing to do with these. Amazing what you could produce on two paraffin burners. Apparently the mother noted her interest; perhaps a sign of other recognition from the heights of her black-robed dignity, began to call Ibrahim's wife over and show her, with a gesture authorizing her to try for herself the procedures by which preparation of food, as it should be, were to be performed. The mother smiled*Ibrahim's smile*when she saw how this privilege of her cuisine and lessons were enjoyed.

Occasionally she p.r.o.nounced (like a ventriloquist's projection) a few words in English; the exchange with his wife's halting Arabic might in time even extend to conversation lessons in the kitchen? Amina and Maryam laughed encouragement to her over pots and knives when she spoke to them in their language. In the evenings they were beginning to discuss plans for Maryam's wedding, not so distant, and Maryam liked her to be there with them, translating for her and looking to her for approval, from the outside world, of the style of the event previewed. In projection of the days of celebration both set aside that Julie would not be there, any more, then.

Canada. Australia; wherever this brother, who persisted in pressing for entry, again and again, no matter how many times rejected, would take her away.

Leila had her by the hand.

After the child came home from school and had eaten, neither her mother nor her playmates expected to see her.

The child slipped into the lean-to to find if Julie, too, were back home; looked for her where she might be reading under The Pickup the awning if it were not too hot. When Julie went to the house of Maryam's employer for the conversational teas.

Leila (the first time with her mother's permission requested) came along. She sat silently, nibbled cake silently. Ibrahim's wife loves children, the ladies enthused; she had never had anything to do with children, not since the Gulliver games, childhood itself*that had been left behind with The Suburbs. There was another construction*perception of herself formed in*by*this village that was his home. There had been a number in her life: she could sum up*the well-brought-up girl with her panda who would marry a well-brought-up polo player from her father's club; the public relations gal with personality plus, set to make a career: the acolyte of the remnant hippie community, rehash resurrected from the era they had been a generation too young to belong to; experiences, all; none definitive of herself, by herself. So far. Only the day she stood in the doll's house and showed him two airline tickets.

Leila by the hand. So small a folding of little bones and flesh-pads it might be just some talisman in her palm. Leila came like this with her to the desert. n.o.body missed the child. n.o.body knew where they had gone, went as the day cooled; when they returned to the house everyone a.s.sumed, as the child hadn't been seen about, the two had been playing games again in the lean-to: Leila loved the games with coloured pegs and counters Julie had had sent from a shop in London, along with an order of books*she wanted Ibrahim to rig up a shelf for her, could he?

Pack them, you will take them with us.

She and the child walked to the end of the street. Not speaking; Leila sang very softly to herself. Their footsteps had a rhythm and counter-rhythm because Julie's steps were longer and the child took two to her one. Then there was the sand. m.u.f.fling; it sank in, between their toes; they left no trail, it ended in the street, the village dropped behind. They sat together, hand in hand*the desert was too far and wide for the child*as the sun, also, left them and such shadows as they caused in the vastness blurred away. Sometimes the stray dog appeared; what was it he found in the desert, as the woman's flock of goats found pasture; but this was not the place of questions to be asked of oneself or answered.

Sometimes the child leaned her head and might have dropped asleep; children have an exhausting life, you only remember that when you teach in school. Sometimes hand in hand they moved a short way into the desert from the stump of masonry, a smooth dragging gait imposed by depth of sand, and sat down, cross-legged both of them, in the sand. It sifted up, sidled round their backsides, her fleshy one and the child's neat bones. Go farther and even that undulating scarf of sound, the muezzins call from the mosque, is taken in, out of hearing. But she doesn't go farther, with the child.

It is in the very early morning that she goes out into the desert alone; although*she couldn't explain and does not want to delve, in the dialogue all beings have within themselves*even with the child she is alone in the sense of not accompanied by what was always with her, part of herself, back wherever the past was. The books she had ordered and that had come, once again, in the care of the bus driver from the capital, made her giggle or abandon half-read*that woman Hester Stanhope, and the man Lawrence, English charades in the desert, imperialism in fancy dress with the ultimate con-descension of bestowing the honour of wanting to be like the people of the desert. Another game, another repertoire like that in the theatre company- of the EL-AY Cafe, but with serious consequences, apparently, for the countries where the man had been. Nothing to do with her; she wrapped herself in black robes only when it was necessary for protection against the wind.

On their lean-to bed he slept, mysteriously calm in that familiar other lone region, and if he had awakened while she was gone, did not ask, when she was in the room again, where she had been.

Reading, while it was still cool under the awning. Out to buy fritters. His conscious mood was distracted and concentrated: distracted from her, from their doubled existence, and concentrated on whatever new tactics he was in the process of engaging with authority. What they might be, she did not ask either; she was somehow afraid that what she'd been told again and again by Maryam, by the ladies at the conversational teas, would be read in her face: all said matter-of-factly it sometimes took several years before permission to enter another country might at last be achieved. This was the commonplace experience of relatives and friends.

She walked through night-cooled sands into the desert.

No fear of getting lost; she could always return herself from the desert, turn her back and verify the signal finger-beckon of the minaret; the houses flocked together behind her. The goats with the Bedouin woman appeared before her in the desert as if conjured up. She would walk what seemed a long way towards her and her goats but the measure of distance in this element and s.p.a.ce was unaccustomed; the figures of woman and animals retreated although they had appeared to be only slowly veering, changing direction. There was one morning when they were discovered close; close enough to be advanced to. The woman turned out to be hardly more than a child*perhaps twelve years old. For a few moments the desert opened, the two saw each other, the woman under her bushveld hat, the girl-child a pair of keen eyes from a small figure swathed against the sun.

She smiled but the other responded only by the eyes acknowledgment of a presence.

The encounter without word or gesture became a kind of daily greeting; recognition. After which she would sit on. in the sands, and forget the Bedouin girl and the goats; or, sometimes summoned in an old habit of focus, would follow their eclipse like slowed film footage in which the closing of a flower at night may be followed.

The dog lost its fear of her. It swung its tail if she were sitting on the stump of masonry but did not accompany her if she went farther than a few yards into the desert; it came to the stump as part of the dregs of the village, to forage the rubbish tossed against the traces of someone who had tested the limits of habitation and been overcome.

At last, she was in the capital. Where, when they first arrived, she had wanted to 'see everything', as if 'everything' were to be known there; before they had occupied the grand marital bed and moved to the lean-to, before love-making on the vocal springs of the iron bedstead, before they had stayed through Ramadan and the season of wind, before she began to exchange the sound of one language for another, discover you could do something other than write advertising copy or arrange pop singers' itineraries.

I never got round to going with you.

Half a question.

But he was the one who had decided that. When the suggestion had come from her: What will you do there, standing in offices. And she had stayed behind and*he saw it*occupied herself in the meantime for which he was not responsible. He had done and was doing everything possible to get them out of this place. And every time something, someone, brought to his mind the offer of his Uncle, the trap that was set to snap on him by the family, his mother the beloved*his body swelled with the blood of accusation and rage, a distress that gave him an erection, and that with a confusion of shame and desire, using her, could only be a.s.suaged in wild love-making which she took for something else, so little did she know, in her kind of existence, emotions of the kind of survival you have to fight for, in this place.

Photographs and doc.u.ments were sufficient as a general practice for him to submit on behalf of an individual such as her, a wife with credentials enough to make her an acceptable immigrant anywhere. Desirable even; one with connections that mean money. But at a certain stage he didn't explain*so much bureaucracy, in whose ways he is expert*consulates must see the applicant's wife in person, verifying the photographs and asking questions already replied to over and over in doc.u.mentation.

The visa sections of consulates and the offices of honorary consuls*the country is not considered important enough, by-some countries, to have a more formal diplomatic mission*

are a scene and dialogue repeated in each. The script does not change, she learnt now at first hand, after having known it only recounted by him when she would ask for news; the premises may be equipped to impress or intimidate with chairs in a waiting area, informative brochures, framed texts from national poets and politicians in some, at others only queues proceeding under gruff orders, but all have large portraits of the head of state, President or Royal, gazing down at the young men who replicate her own standing beside her, and women hung about with babies and children who look at her, and then away, as if it can't be that she is there among them. At one of the consulates an official of some other Oriental origin, posted by a country- of the West as perhaps likely to deal best with fellow Orientals, questions her with the regard of distaste: the way this glance compares her with the husband she has chosen shows that the choice, the world being the way it is, is inexplicable. Flanked by swags of the Stars and Stripes flag and a bronze eagle on a standard, a friendly black American official draws back from her papers with a laugh*You really from Africa?*

It was right to have spared her the tedium of all this. She had waited at the dentist's or the doctor's, but never before had she shuffled along in a queue in hope to gain a right*

that had been the history of blacks in her country, but she's white, Nigel Ackroyd Summers' daughter, yes. And even when she took herself off to live in the doll's house, the only queue she might stand in with the mates from The Table was to gain entry to a cinema. That's it, for her; in the press of supplicant-applicants, she slid her hand behind her to take the hand of hers, among them. He whispered to her ear (his smile in the tone), That fellow, he thinks you should be black.

She saw how impossible it was to tell, from the manner of the petty official you didn't get past to anyone more influential, whether your application had a chance or not; whether your credentials, your reasons for leaving your country, your justification for expecting to be received by the one you were applying to enter, were the ones likely to be received favourably*at least considered before the rubber stamp fell against you.

The doors of consulates closed on the queues, before noon prayers. When the morning was over there was the city she had wanted to explore, getting off the plane as if it had been one of those destinations of holiday antic.i.p.ation. But what they both were in need of now was something to quench thirst and satisfy hunger. They walked and walked, the thickets of vehicles and collision with bodies, the ricochet of shouts, calls, vehemence of voices echoed from shop-fronts, buildings, strung through by the cries from mosques, close by and distant, like undersea calls of mythical creatures. In this a.s.sault that is a city, the confrontation she had faced when she got out of her car in another city, there are, of course.

what are called amenities to enjoy that don't exist in a village.

If a McDonald's is to be included in the category, they pa.s.sed one. Then there was a restaurant that also looked as it might have done in any city, closed off from the frenzies of the streets, potted plant either side of a handsome carved door.

He was in a good mood, Ibrahim, perhaps it was a comfort to have a companion for once, on his routine quest.

How do I know this place? Uncle Yaqub one day brought me here.

They laughed: to prepare the favoured nephew for the kind of life he was to be offered. The laughter was as near as she and Ibrahim had ever got to referring to that offer again.

The restaurant was air-conditioned, the temperature of some other country; the food succulent and served gracefully by young men. She remarked on this service with apprecia-tion; silently following the waiters' glide about tables, he saw in them likely rivals, brothers, yes, in the queue for visas. No wine, here, of course. Sorry for that.

I don't care. Everything's delicious*but even though it's so elaborate, it isn't any better than your mother makes at home.

They paid in dollars left over from the fee due at a consulate. The alley-way bazaars they pa.s.sed, the street stalls*

these were selling much the same sort of thing as in the village market, only more of it, and the shops displayed among tinselled robes, gold-framed mirrors and curlicued furniture familiar from the house of the Uncle and of Maryam's employer, the even more familiar international choice of Nike boots, cellphones, TV consoles, hi-fi and video equipment. The mosques*but did she really want to see government buildings and mosques? It's only the walls, anyway, you know they won't let you go inside. Then they came to a cinema complex that was a fair example of such a concept anywhere. They had not seen a him since The Table had trooped together from the EL-AY Cafe to a Brazilian film fes-tival at an art house. Of the film posters' giant gaze outside this complex, most faces were unknown to her and although the names of actors were familiar to him, did not attract him.

They saw a James Bond film, subt.i.tled, his choice. If they did not hold hands as she had done with other lovers (he retained some of the s.e.xual decorum of the village) she kept her hand on his thigh while they sat comfortably together in the dust-mote dark. If the mosque and the church have been left behind somewhere in life, the cinema can be a place of medi-tation. As in a place of worship, the one prostrate, forehead to the floor, the one on the knees, neither knows in what the person beside him or her is lost.

Next time he went to the capital there was no need for her to go along with him*he said. On his return in the early afternoon he did not come to his mother's house but to the vehicle workshop, took off the tie and jacket every applicant, poor devils like himself, queueing at a consulate wore as proof of respectability, and pulled himself into the stiff mould of greasy jeans that hung on the wall; the Uncle must have his money's worth from his ungrateful nephew, disgrace to the family. When he came home to the lean-to she was lying on the floor*he often found her reading there, studying her Arabic, stretched on her belly for coolness; now she was cleaning sand from between her toes. She looked up and saw: no news. That night she began to caress him, down the silky hair of his chest to his groin, but he did not rouse to her hand, he was tense in some other state of concentration. She had the odd vision of his mother when at prayer.

She lay angry, resentful at the officialdom, the require-ments and provisos and quibbles of smug petty functionaries who had the power to induce these states of tension in him.

And what for? What was it all for? The Uncle, the family, had said of that world that shut him out, didn't even want him reduced to a grease-monkey*yes, they had said it. and at the time she had had to stifle a derisive splutter of laughter*Isn't it enough to have a cellphone and TV? Wasn't that more than enough of it? What else is really worth having out there in the world of false G.o.ds?

She was given the day Maryam's idea.

What Maryam called her 'wish'; the father was to make one of his infrequent visits to the oasis where he had his connection with a relative who grew rice. Maryam asked that she and Julie might go with him.

Would there be no objection from the father? Perhaps he would prefer not to present the foreign daughter-in-law.

No, no, Maryam had told him Ibrahim's wife wished to see something of the country before Ibrahim left again, took her away Only ... she, Maryam, would have to get permission from her employer to absent herself from her daily work. Her face pleated in embarra.s.sment of presumption at the request: *You ask her, she'll give me the day.* So at the next conversational tea Julie told the lady of the house that she had the opportunity of a little outing (an English colloquialism for the gathering to remember) and wanted Maryam to keep her company. Permission was granted immediately.

The father borrowed his son Ibrahim's car. Rather, it was the son who insisted on this. Julie, you can't go driving The Pickup 214.

around in his old wreck, it breaks down everywhere. Time my Uncle gave a new one my mother can be safe in, anyway.

Would be, not can.

The teacher ran a hand over his hair, with the correction:, he complained she helped everyone improve their English except him, to whom it was important.

You are crazy, in this heat, the desert.

I know. I know.

Maryam did not like to tell her to cover her head for this expedition, but brought along an enveloping scarf for her as a gentle instruction rather than an indication that she should have decided to wear something adequate of her own. A man accompanied the father in the front seat, and the two young women sat at the back. *It's all right for you?* Maryam whispered concern for comfort to be provided on her little expedition.

The two men talked all the way without pause, their language so voluble that a beginner, though making progress, caught nothing but the obeisance in sha allah and others she understood.

The road ventured out into the desert, the road parted the desert with the thin accompaniment, on either side, of lone outbreaks of small stores, repair yards of undefinable nature in their clutter of disparate wreckage, coffee stalls where men from nowhere sat and a few goats cropped among detritus of torn plastic and cigarette packs; but it was not the desert she came to herself; was received by. In pa.s.sing stretches it was stony; the outcrop bones of dwellings, bones of animals and humans it had submerged, bared to the surface, like the stump of masonry where she sat on the house it had overcome. The desert withdrew from the interruption of the road; even when the road became hardly more than parallel grooves ground by the pa.s.sage of vehicles in the sand that flowed over its surface. The experience of the desert she had antic.i.p.ated from Maryam's expedition was refused her.

In the name of G.o.d If G.o.d wills it Perhaps it was the coc.o.o.n of noise which enclosed Marv-am and her; the loud to-and-fro talk between the men. bound by winding plaints of car radio music that had the same cadence as their language, and the engine groan of the Uncle s hand-me-down car. Hot, yes. if there had once been air-conditioning in the car, it didn't work. But Maryam had a local inhabitant's ability to rest back in the palpable heat, and she had learnt from her not to resist but to do the same.

They did not come upon the destination suddenly. At the sides of their track there glinted what might be a fragment of tin catching the glare, a shard of broken gla.s.s shining. But then there was continuity in the shine: water, shallow threads of water. And something like weeds, though not the tough flourishing wayfarer weeds in countries where there is rain.

There were palms. At last. A group of camels rested on legs articulated beneath them, their heads rising like periscopes.

They must have been hobbled; one struggled to stand with a lower front leg roped back at the knee to its upper half. She had forgotten how she had visualized postcard palm trees, back there. Now they came to a village only a little more formal and extensive, with its mosque, than spa.r.s.e roadside occupation. The visitors were received in a palm courtyard where offices, like the image of another world (back there) entered through a television screen, had two young men seated at computers, a young woman, wearing the chador but with pursed thighs revealed by a gauzy skirt, used the intercom to announce an arrival in the seductive corporate voice.

The fathers collateral connection came from an inner office slowly, as if the visit were something unavoidable rather than welcome. He was a foreshortened man, the compression of whose aspect created the impression of concentrated ability. The father looked loose-limbed and flabby-bellied, before him; a wordless vis-a-vis of their relative positions in a common fate. She saw that Maryam was sensitive to this graphic statement, distressed, on behalf of her father, to be reminded of what everyone knew but was not confronted with like this: he was dependent on what was hardly more than the charity of this man, for whatever his minor function in the mans affairs might be.

Maryam caught up and held breath while greetings were exchanged. Mr Muhammad Aboulkanim showed no surprise or curiosity when the European woman wearing a headscarf was presented to him, a wife the son Ibrahim must have picked up somewhere in emigration; the wife saw that this was to make clear to the father that this patron had done for him all he could be expected to, no question of his having any interest in the affairs of his distant relative's family*if that were some idea of bringing the woman along. But the father was accustomed to dealing in a certain dignity with rebuffs from this man as from his wife's brother, Uncle Yaqub. He asked whether, once business was over, they could show Ibrahim's wife how rice grows 'in our dry country'.