Ishmael's Oranges (17 page)

The bare-chested man in front of him was kissing his girlfriend when Jude came back, his face pushing wetly into hers. His wandering arm knocked into Jude as she pressed her body back into the line; his girlfriend stumbled as the couple lost their balance. ‘Watch out, man,' he protested, and the girl rounded on Jude and Salim, her lips still shiny with saliva, hair tousled under a red bandana. ‘Hey, step off,' she said, her voice loud enough to turn heads all around them. ‘What's the fucking rush?'

Jude said, ‘I'm sorry,' as she flushed, eyes dropping under the sudden scrutiny of the crowd. Salim was astonished. ‘Don't apologize to them,' he told her. ‘It was their fault.'

‘Yeah, right? Your girlfriend rammed us,
man.'

‘You were rolling around like animals. She was just standing here.'

The girl laughed, tossing her hair back. ‘Get him, eh? Animals. What an arsehole.' She stuck her tongue out at them, pink and round as a painted
nail.

‘Check it out, babe.' The bare-chested man had oily hair falling across his eyes, and a sneer over his goatee. ‘Paki and Square don't like
us.'

Salim felt the warmth of Jude's shoulder pressing against the burn of the insult inside his chest. ‘Excuse me,' he said, trying for disdain, but the BBC English felt suddenly clumsy on his tongue. ‘She's better than a hundred of you idiots.'

‘Whatever. Fuck off, Mustapha.'

‘You fuck off.' Jude had swung around and her face was red, the words bursting out without warning like steam from a pressure cooker. ‘How dare you use that name? How
dare
you? You're not cool, you're horrible, and you don't know anything about us.' She was standing between Salim and the couple, and for the first time he noticed the heaviness of her northern vowels. ‘Go on, fuck off!' she shouted, as the bare-chested man took a step back, his sneer becoming an incredulous smile. Then she turned and ran out, Salim following in her wake, leaving the throng behind.

As the fresh night air hit them, she turned back to him, red spots on her cheeks fading back into white. He saw the apology surge to her lips again, and he said, ‘Don't. Don't say it.' He reached out to her and she froze at the gesture, her arms hugging the trembling rise and fall of her chest. ‘Jude. You were amazing. A real fighter. Like a lion.' Standing there under the white brilliance of the streetlamps she could have been a knight, one of the Christian kings from the Frères' tales he'd loved, from the games they'd mocked him for playing. ‘Jude the Lionheart,' he said without thinking. He saw her eyes soften, heard her laughter, and it came bubbling up inside him too as the sound released his heart.

They walked down Seven Sisters Road to Finsbury Park, leaving the roar of the road behind in the dark green and the silence of grass. Winter had left the park trees bare; Jude saw their empty arms reaching up to the blackness, their new buds just points of shadow on the boughs. London's night walkers passed them by
–
some of them arm in arm, others with dogs, their faces neither old nor young but a universal blank in the half-light. It was the opposite of loneliness, Jude thought, as if they were all peaceful planets travelling on their own course, feeling the comforting tug of each other's presence.

Salim's arm was around her shoulders; he leaned on her as if she were his protector, as she'd leaned on Rebecca and maybe even Dora. His arm pressed her down but strength seemed to flow through it into her. Something had vanished between them, some fundamental human separateness. She was no longer just Jude; her body was filling up with a stranger that only Salim recognized.

A light filtered through the trees ahead, carrying reedy singing with it. Someone had made a campfire of dry twigs and a group of people had gathered around it, shadows flickering over their faces. Stopping just outside the circle, she began to recognize the song
–
and from the vibration of Salim's chest she saw that he, too, was singing the words under his breath.
If you should ever leave me, though life would still go on believe me, the world could show nothing to me, so what good would living do me?
He broke off to look down at her and said, ‘Now this is more your kind of music, isn't
it?'

‘One of my favourites,' she told him. The old Jude would have given a reason, but now she felt too full for explanations. The guitar player was harmonizing with two other newcomers; it was sweet
–
as good as the Beach Boys ever were, and the fire transported her out of London to somewhere warm and kind. He was still leaning into her, and she felt herself strengthening with his weight, as if finally pushing roots deep into the ground. The words of the chorus came into her mouth, reminding her of a phrase Rebecca loved to use
–
her grandmother's answer to all of life's mysteries. And she whispered it to herself along with all the other voices,
God only knows, God only knows
, clasping Salim's hand as the sleeping wood breathed around
them.

Hassan came back from Nazareth in May. The skies had cleared; warmth was trickling back into England over the wide Atlantic
–
a faint ghost of the heat filling the orchards of the southern Mediterranean.

Salim dreaded this early touch of summer
–
it meant final exams, the end of study and the start of difficult choices men must make if they want to
eat.

But it was easy to drown his anxiety in Jude. They spent the spring walking along the marble-grey Thames under the blossoming trees of the south bank, the stories pouring out of them. They did not call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. They still were not lovers, no more than a kiss. They were innocents on a boat floating down a river, dipping their toes into unknown currents and gazing up together at the limitless
sky.

At first she talked about Paris and Flaubert and Voltaire and he talked about the harvest season and the desert dances of the Nabi Ruben festivals. But then came the other stories: the tale of Kath and Peggy at the door and Elia and Mazen in Clock Tower Square, of the slam of the gates in Jaffa and the knives above the cellar in Kishinev, the empty room in Nazareth and the sirens in the street in Ryhope Road. Salim had never known anything like it
–
this sharing of souls, this unburdening of griefs and shames. He knew the Christians received absolution from God or their priests; once Hassan had dared him to sneak into a confession box
–
it was lined in red and smelt of sweat and humid wood.
Let them keep their forgiving God
. Jude was human and imperfect, but she understood him without judgement. And that was better than any kind of divine justice.

Eventually, Salim dragged himself down to see his brother. Hassan had become one of history's simple soldiers, achieving exactly what he'd always promised, no more and no less. Now nearing thirty, he ran a profitable car repair shop in one of the capital's outer suburbs. He'd married a big-breasted Palestinian girl who had immediately started producing children. Two were already in nursery, speaking more Arabic than English, and another one was on the way. Their house smelt of rosewater, allspice and salted nuts. They fasted at Ramadan, although Hassan refused to stop smoking, and sometimes talked about going to the local mosque. Their friends were all cut from the same cloth. But Shireen made an exception for her contingent of long-nailed, blonde girlfriends from the nearby salon
–
women Salim had heard Hassan complaining about and seen him flirting
with.

He was grateful when Hassan asked to meet at his garage. It was where his brother was at his most cheerful, and least likely to give Salim a hard time. The smell of oil and grease was pleasantly relaxing after the relentless hardness of the lecture hall desk and the sharpness of ink on his fingers.

‘Abu Saeed!' He called Hassan's honorific out over the groan of the faulty engines. Hassan had, most predictably, named his eldest boy after his own father.

‘Abu Mushkila,' a voice shouted back. Salim grinned despite himself. Hassan's way to protest that Salim had not yet married at twenty-six was to call him
father of trouble
. Hassan always milked every available ounce of humour out of his own jokes, often far beyond the cow running
dry.

‘Come over here, old man,' Hassan shouted again, from his office behind the mass of cars, doors open and engine parts spread indecently over the ground. Salim stepped gingerly over them, wishing he'd changed the good shirt he wore to see Jude that morning. Hassan came out of the office door to meet him, and slapped him on the back with oily hands. ‘What the hell have you been doing for the last week? I expected you every
day.'

‘Studying,' said Salim, pretending to look at the red Beetle being dismantled over Hassan's right shoulder. ‘I came as soon as I could, big brother.'

‘You study too much. Anyone would think you were bloody Einstein. You'll end up with big brains and no balls like he
did.'

‘Where do you get these ideas?' Salim pushed his brother's shoulder with a smile. ‘It's my final year, I have to study. One day when I'm a rich accountant living in Mayfair I'll send my Jaguar to you to fix, don't worry.'

Hassan bellowed with laughter. ‘Okay, so I'll wait for your bloody Jag. Now, let's have a beer and I'll tell you about the disaster in Nazareth.'

They cracked open a beer from the office fridge and Salim listened with half an ear as Hassan complained about everything from the Nazarene imam to the relatives. The only person who stirred his emotions in any way was Nadia.
It's not fair. We never gave you anything in life, and we left you with all the shit
. He wondered what Nadia would make of Jude. How could she not like her? They were two gentle souls set in different shades.

Sharing a beer with Hassan always reminded Salim of his first day in London, on that mouldering brown sofa. He'd worked so hard since that day to fulfil his promise. Those first years he'd laboured like a
fellah
, Hassan's garage by day and school at night, to qualify for university. He'd a head for numbers and a way with Englishmen that impressed them while reminding them they were the master race. When his passport application came through at last, he remembered walking home with it in a daze of triumph, the hard black book weighing in his pocket like a loaded
gun.

‘So what's up with you,
ya habibi
?' Hassan was bored with Nazareth, and now wanted details of Salim's love life. ‘Still seeing that crazy woman, that Margaret?'

‘Not any more.' Salim wondered how to bring it up with his brother. ‘She found someone who didn't mind getting his eyes scratched out every other day.' Hassan laughed.

‘Too bad I'm married,' he hooted. ‘I could do with my eyes scratching sometimes. And my arse too, if she's not busy!'

‘Well, she's all yours,' Salim said. ‘I met someone else.'

‘Yes? Who,
who?'

‘It's nothing.' Salim suddenly felt his palms getting sweaty. ‘She's at university too. She studies literature. She reads Russian and French poems.'

‘
W'Allah?
' Really? Hassan thought this was hilarious. ‘With her clothes off or with them on? Please tell me with her clothes
off.'

‘It's not like that. She's a decent girl.'

Hassan nudged Salim in the ribs. ‘Oh, my poor brother's too in love to use his dick. What's he going to
do?'

‘I'm not in love.' Salim pushed himself off Hassan's dusty desk. ‘It's just… something. She's a
Yehuda
, actually.'

Hassan's eyes widened. ‘Wow, Abu Mushkila. You know how to cause a stir, eh? Thank God Baba is dead. He'd have your balls on a plate.'

Suddenly Salim was sick of Hassan. ‘Your mouth is as foul as your office, you know that? Clean this place up, for God's sake.' He spoke in English, and Hassan snorted.

‘Oh Mister Salim,' he replied in the same tongue. ‘So sorry for offending you, sir. You think you're too clean for my workshop then fuck off. You weren't too good for it when you had nowhere else to
go.'

‘Okay, I'm sorry.' Salim felt the loving despair that was the hallmark of his relationship with Hassan. They called each other one blood, but their veins were strangers
–
Abu Hassan's dark red against their mother's royal blue. They reached out for each other but were foiled by a wall of confusion and mistranslation.

‘I'm trying to tell you that this one is different,' he said. ‘She's not a Zionist. She understands us. She understands
me
.'

Hassan looked at him dubiously. ‘You've always been looking for someone to understand you, Salim. But you don't even understand yourself. Don't shake your head, just listen to me. I have no problem with Jews. I had a Jewish girl too, a couple of times. But, please, screw them, don't love them. No matter what you think, they can't understand an Arab. It's not in their nature.'

‘You don't know
her.'

Hassan hauled himself to his feet and got another beer out of the fridge.

‘You know what's happening in Palestine now? The Jews want Syria and the Sinai too. They've been sending soldiers across the border. But Nasser is standing up to the fucking Knesset. He'll close the Red Sea to them and cut the Israelis off from the oceans. No more trade for the Jews, eh? Then all hell is going to break loose, by God. This time the Catastrophe will come to
them
.'

Salim remembered how Hassan had clung to the radio after they left Jaffa, and how long and truly he believed in the great myth of Arab liberation by Arabs. But for all Hassan's bluster about Palestine, he would never trade his cosy garage to live there. Salim was the only one who still dreamed about orange blossoms and the
sea.