Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. Hilary Mantel
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it?’
‘You have not been here long enough to see the advantages. You are still missing England, I expect. Your parents.’ Yasmin’s tone was encouraging. She proffered the biscuits again. ‘Do take another one, Frances. You are so slim. You have seen this film, Death of a Princess?’
She did rush straight at things, Frances thought. Suicidal housemaids, decapitation. She put her shortbread down on her plate. ‘I heard about it. But I didn’t see it. I wasn’t in England at the time.’
Relief showed on Yasmin’s face. Is she the custodian of Saudi culture then? ‘I remember the fuss it caused,’ Frances said. ‘Princess Misha, wasn’t that her name? She was married, and she took off with another man. They caught her and she was executed.’
‘This film has caused a lot of trouble between Saudi Arabia and Britain,’ Yasmin said. ‘They do not understand why it should be shown.’
‘Oh,’ Frances said, ‘we are interested in other parts of the world. Foreign customs.’
Their eyes met. ‘In any case, it is false,’ Yasmin said firmly.
‘False?’
‘Oh yes. These things do not happen. Princess Misha, this girl, she was extremely spoiled, always wanting her own way.’
‘So you think she deserved what she got?’
‘You must try to understand a little the Saudi viewpoint.’ She seemed to distance it from her own, by implication; and yet she seemed on edge. Her husband’s position, Frances thought. ‘She tried to go out of the country disguised as a man.’
‘Did she really?’
‘They caught her at the airport.’
‘Obviously you see these things differently.’
‘I am not a Saudi, of course. I am only giving…the Eastern viewpoint.’
‘To me it seems incredible, to kill a woman for something like that.’
‘But they did not, Frances. She is not dead. Her family have her in one of their houses.’
This is quite stupid, Frances thought. ‘But she was executed, Yasmin. Her death was reported.’
Yasmin smiled knowingly, as if to say, how simple you are. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but it is nonsense. The execution was made up by the filming people.’
Frances was silent. Then she said, ‘Why should they do that?’
‘It is their mentality,’ Yasmin said. ‘It is the mentality of the West, to discredit the Eastern people.’
It was now that Shams came in, with the baby in her arms; a little boy like a doll, half asleep, his head drooping on the servant’s shoulder and his curved eyelashes resting on his cheeks. Frances stood up. She felt she was blushing, burning inwardly. Have I been rude to her? But what a topic! Why plunge straight into it like that?
Gratefully, she turned her flustered attention to the baby. ‘He’s beautiful, Yasmin.’ The beetle-browed housemaid put the child in her arms. ‘How old is he?’
‘So you think he is cute?’ Yasmin asked. She fluttered; her face yearned. The baby nuzzled his head into Frances’s shoulder. She is so anxious, Frances thought, that I don’t get the wrong impression. She knows we have prejudices. She wants me to hear her version, that’s all.
‘He walks a little,’ Yasmin said. ‘So active! Do you think he is forward?’
‘Very forward.’
‘Ah, what a lovely picture you make,’ Yasmin said fondly. She spoke as if she had known her neighbour for half a lifetime. ‘No, Selim, naughty.’ She untangled the baby’s fingers from Frances’s hair. ‘He is fascinated, your hair is so light, he just wants to grasp it.’
It was a leave-taking scene now. Yasmin touched Frances’s elbow timidly. ‘You will come again? Any morning.’
‘Yes, of course. Or come to me.’
‘If there is anything you need…or anything Raji can do for you. He knows this town so well.’
Yasmin took her to the door. Before she opened it she plucked the wisp of a veil from the hallstand and flicked it over her head. ‘I will watch you across the hallway,’ she said. Frances looked up into the stairwell. Those two closed doors at the top. She took her key out of the pocket of her skirt. Yasmin watched her until the door of Flat I clicked shut behind her; then gently drew herself inside, and closed her own door.
‘No introductory moves,’ Frances said. ‘Just, when are you going to start your family, and then – wham – Death of a Princess. How the West gets us wrong. I don’t think I was super-tactful.’
‘No,’ Andrew said, ‘I don’t suppose you were.’
‘Did you bring the Saudi Gazette home?’
‘Yes, here it is.’
He had been kept late at the site, and she had been alone all afternoon. She followed him into the bedroom, the newspaper in her hand. He took off his shirt and dropped it on to the floor. She could see the muscles, knotted, at the back of his neck. He had just driven through the evening traffic; ‘They are mad,’ he breathed as he drove along, ‘they are mad.’ But he could see the day coming soon when he would be able to hold a normal conversation as he inched and swerved along. The drivers sit at traffic lights, reading magazines, their fists poised over their horns; when the lights change they bang down their fists together, the horns blare, and at the slightest sign of a delay, another lane will form; the cars roar forward, cutting each other out. Each intersection bears an accident that has just occurred.
‘I have to take a shower,’ Andrew said.
‘I hope I didn’t offend her. Yasmin.’
‘I shouldn’t worry.’
‘Only she seemed so much on the defensive. As if I were bound to be building up some bad impressions.’
‘You are, aren’t you? You’re not exactly seeing the country at its best.’
‘No, but what do I do about it?’
‘Frances, stop following me!’ He turned on her, naked. ‘I told you, I have to go and have a shower.’
She went back into the bedroom and threw herself on the bed. Her throat ached with resentment. Talk to me, please, when you come home. I can’t live like this; this is not a natural sort of life. She heard the rushing and bubbling of water from next door; her eyes slid around to Andrew’s shirt, lying on the floor.
She sighed, and rolled over; opened the newspaper, propping it against the pillows. The correspondence column was what she mostly liked. She located it, folding the paper over. Here’s a letter from one Abdul Karim of Riyadh: The Kingdom’s social and cultural heritage does not allow women to mix with men either in life activities or in work. The right place for a woman is to look after her husband and children, prepare food, and manage the housework. But foreigners were coming into the Kingdom, Karim alleged, and saying there was more to life than this. When you work in another country, you should study its traditions and characteristics before you get in it.
She folded up the paper and turned on her back again, letting Abdul Karim slide to the floor. I knew the facts, she thought, but I didn’t know what impact they would make on me. I knew there were restrictions, but I didn’t know what it would feel like to live under them. And now here is Yasmin, an intelligent woman, telling me that things are different here and I must swallow my objections.
Andrew was back. Holding a bath towel, he sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t have shouted. Just another bloody day. The Turadup people who are working at the missile base won’t talk to