Eight Months on Ghazzah Street. Hilary Mantel
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the street had conquered her.
Later that day she asked Andrew, ‘Would you describe me as a timid person?’
‘Quite the reverse.’
‘Good,’ she said. She had not told him about her trip out. She was not sure why she had not told him. She had not done anything wrong, so why was she keeping it from him? They had been married for almost five years, and in that time they had never had any secrets at all.
The following evening Raji rang the doorbell. ‘I’m off downtown,’ he said. ‘What’s it to be?’
Raji: silver wing tips of hair, a wide white boyish grin; a dark expensive Western suit, gold rings; comfortably plump, gently mocking. ‘Well, Miss Frances? What is your desire right now? Box of Medina dates? Some nice sticky baklava? Large gin and tonic?’
‘We’ve already made one major foray tonight,’ Frances said. ‘We’ve been to Safeway for the greengrocery.’
‘Ah, a Safeway Superstore is streets ahead for iceberg lettuces. Say those who know.’
‘It’s such a major occupation, shopping.’
‘We have to keep the womenfolk happy.’ Raji spied Andrew, appearing behind her. ‘Hello, old boy,’ he said, his tone much more serious.
‘How’s tricks, Raji?’
Raji shook his head, smiling, and made a plummeting motion with one hand. ‘Oil is down,’ he said. ‘So our Minister’s temper not the best. We will be getting a cut in our funding for the department if this goes on, those fellows at the Ministry of Finance are so tight. They are having one mighty royal sheep-grab in Riyadh tonight, so that the Princes can talk it all over. That is how I come to be on the loose.’ He turned to Frances. ‘You’ve met Samira, from upstairs?’
‘Not yet. Yasmin promised—’
‘Me neither. I’ve seen her flitting shape, mark you. Yasmin chats with her every day, but I’ve never seen her face, you know, which I find somewhat bizarre. Abdul Nasr keeps her locked up, the old devil.’
‘That’s not unusual, is it?’
‘No, but that is one very religious man.’ Raji slapped his palms together. ‘Nothing, then, for you good people?’ Producing his car keys, he made for the front door. ‘I’ll get Yasmin to call you for dinner one night,’ he said over his shoulder.
Abdul Nasr was a young devil, in fact. Frances saw him striding down the stairs a couple of mornings later, about ten o’clock, when she was on her way out with a bag of rubbish. He was a lean young man, with a delicate bronze skin and a heavy black moustache. He nodded to her; did not look her in the face.
‘Eyes like coals,’ she said later to Andrew. ‘Now I’ve seen them. I thought they were a fiction.’
FRANCES SHORE’S DIARY: 28 Muharram
Wrote a batch of letters home today, Clare, my mother, Andrew’s lot. He never writes to them, they wouldn’t know if he was dead or alive. Strange to think that by the real calendar it’s nearly November and that people in England are boosting up their heating bills and settling into their winter dourness. It seems no cooler here, though it should be. Whenever you mention the heat the old residents say, ‘There’s worse to come.’ They enjoy telling you that.
When I look back on this diary it seems to be all about money. At least, it’s always there between the lines. Some of the writers in the newspapers take the line that Saudi Arabia has been spoiled by its wealth, that before the oil there was a golden age when everyone lived in tents and was simple and religious and kind to old people. I am suspicious of this, but certainly greed is not attractive in anybody, is it? I’m waiting to see what our humble wealth will do to me, and if I shall grow nastier and harsher in character, bank draft by bank draft. Andrew is quite right when he says that we must stay here and stick it out and make some money. We’ve spent our lives on living, not accumulating, and now it’s time to start trying to do both, and to grow up, and be far-sighted, and not spend time agonizing over ideals we might once have possessed. In other words, we must try to have the same concerns as other people.
1
The man on the plane – Fairfax’s colleague – had been quite wrong. There was a map of Jeddah. Andrew brought it home. ‘Now I can begin to make sense of it,’ Frances said.
She spread out the map on the dining-room table. Five minutes later she looked up, disappointed. ‘It’s useless. It’s too old. The shape of the coastline is different now. This road appears to end in the sea. And look where they’ve put Jeddah Shops. They’re five blocks out.’ She traced the length of Medina Road. ‘How old would you say these flats are?’
‘Five years.’
‘On this map we’re a vacant lot.’
‘Sorry,’ Andrew said. ‘Only trying to help. Thought bad maps were better than no maps.’
‘That’s not so.’ She picked up her pen and wrote on the map ‘CARTOGRAPHY BY KAFKA’. ‘We don’t exist,’ she said.
Pollard called her on the new telephone. ‘Daphne Parsons will come for you with a driver on Tuesday morning,’ he said, ‘and take you to the souk.’
‘Oh, will she?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
‘Well…thank you for arranging that for me.’ Though I could hardly claim, she thought, that I was doing something else. Everyone knows what my life is like; I’m at their disposal.
‘That’s okay,’ Pollard said. ‘Any time. Tumble-drier all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Happy with it?’
‘Yes.’
There was a pause. He said, ‘Is there anything else you want?’
‘Yes, let me see…how about some flock wallpaper for the bathroom? And a half-tester bed?’
‘Joking, are you?’ Pollard said. She got rid of him. Only later she realized, with a kind of sick shame that she knew was unwarranted, that he might have been making her a sexual proposition.
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