Ishmael's Oranges (30 page)

As night fell, she stood hesitant outside her bedroom door. It opened at the faintest touch of her fingers, and she stepped warily inside.

He was sitting on the bed in a clean t-shirt and shorts. In his hand he held the picture that lived on their mantelpiece, that fading image of his old house and the baby boy in front of it. His shoulder blades jutted out as he hunched over, the teenager showing through the man. In the middle of her anger, she felt her heart ache for
him.

‘You didn't get the job?' She sat down beside him, a finger's width
away.

Without raising his head, he passed her the picture. She took it automatically, running her fingers over the baby's sweet, upturned face, yellowing now in its frame.

‘They were right when I was a boy.' His voice was hoarse. ‘Mazen, I mean, about my father and me. He said we were stupid, just
fellahin
with a little money and big ideas. I used to think he was wrong. But then my father was tricked by Abu Mazen, and now these Americans have shown me I'm just as stupid.'

‘What's happened, Sal?' He wouldn't look at her. ‘I thought it went so well.'

‘What's happened is I've failed,' he told her. ‘You and the kids. Everyone.'

‘That's not true.' She reached for the right words. ‘It doesn't matter to
us.'

‘It matters.' He looked up and laughed. ‘I've come all this way for nothing.'

The picture frame felt heavy in her hands
–
a leaden weight of memory pushing him back to a past they couldn't share.

‘I'm something, aren't I?' Her fingers dug into the glass. ‘Your children are something. We might be the only people like us in the world. Shouldn't we be proud of that?'

‘Proud.' She saw the black head shake. ‘The twins can watch your tanks crushing my people on the news and wonder who to cheer
on.'

Jude froze. ‘They're not my tanks, Sal. And now
we're
your people. Your family.'

They sat in silence for a moment, and she wondered if he'd even heard her. Then he said, ‘You saw how it was, that day on the beach. An Arab with pretensions. Maybe it's all I'll ever be.' She remembered Peggy smiling over Kathleen's shoulder, the closing oak door, and her stomach clenched.

‘Let's just go back to England,' she pleaded. ‘You'd find a good job there. For God's sake, Salim, you don't have to prove anything to anyone.'

He snatched the picture back from her hand. ‘What do you know about having to prove yourself? You want me to go crawling back to England for some other white man to fuck me over? Or to work in Hassan's garage? You know, if it wasn't for your people, for the Jews, I would already be somebody.' His voice was trembling. ‘A landowner in my own right. Not this.' He hit his own chest, the flat of his hand slamming
down.

She got to her feet, her own tears coming in an angry rush. ‘Look at me, Sal. Please, look at me. It's Jude. Your wife. Am I the enemy?'

As his head turned towards her, she could see a boy's longing in his face. It was every inch as sad and lost as Marc's, clinging onto his dead
tree.

‘Maybe I'm just sick of being the
fellah
who everyone pushes around,' he said. He turned away from her to lie on his side. ‘Now let me sleep, please.'

Jude felt the brush of air as the bedroom door shut, and the warm brown carpet beneath her feet. It was an easy house to be quiet in, each footfall cushioned and the air conditioners ironing out the noises. But whenever Salim went into his room, silence seemed to lie heavier on the house, an oppressive presence impossible to escape.

Stepping quickly into their dressing room, she closed the door lightly and turned on the small light by the mirror. Her fingers reached behind a painting of the Kuwait Towers Sophie had made at nursery and pulled out a small key. It unlocked the bottom drawer near her feet, the one with all her jewellery and a small, brown box right at the back. It rattled as she dragged it out into the light.

Silver glinted as the lid came off. The shape of it was so familiar in her hands: the menorah that she used to light at Hanukkah, Rebecca's gift to her, carried on her long journey out of the ashes of Kishinev. She almost laughed at the thought of her Arab husband lying next door.
Who would have thought that road could lead here?

She closed her eyes, but, try as she might, she could not see her grandmother's hands. Tears came into her eyes.
Bubby. I'm so lonely
. She had not been able to put a name to the cold feeling inside her, as cold as the moment she'd walked into Rebecca's room and watched her life seeping
away.

And then other memories came
–
of countless Sabbaths when the Gold family would light their solitary little candlesticks and sing the Friday night prayers. Dora had offered the Sabbath candlesticks to her as a parting gift, but Jude had politely declined.

She remembered how she used to let the candles dazzle her in the dark rooms, the rich smell of the wax and the high wail of her mother's voice. It was a sound that seemed to come from across oceans and miles, a great tidal surge of millions of other voices sweeping over the earth. How often had she been thinking of school, or Kath, or Peggy, and wanting to be somewhere else, or someone
else?

Taking two half-melted candles from the bottom of the box, she pushed them into the two furthest holes of the menorah.
They would tell me that it's not done, that it's forbidden. But they are far away and I'm here, alone, in the dark
. Striking a match from the box, she lit the flames and saw her face reflected in the mirror.

It was a stranger's face she saw; the young woman had gone, and the old one inside was beginning to flower. Shadows dug into her cheeks, but the flickering light made her eyes burn, an inner flame she did not recognize. Leaning over the candles, she put her hands to her face and very quietly started to
sing.

In the twins' twelfth autumn, Jude was on her way back from the Kuwait International School when she heard about the bombs.

‘Hush,' she said, over the twins' chatter in the back seat. She reached over to turn up the radio.
Was it bombs I heard today?
It had sounded like thunder, a deep thud and the rattle of windows. A wind had picked up afterwards and she'd seen dark clouds in the sky.
Sandstorm.
That was her first instinct. She'd long learned to dread them. Every window in the house was taped shut, every crack and crevice covered. But when the storms came, the howling desert would test their defences with insidious fingers. It would always find a way
in.

But today it was bombs, not sand. Six bombs, the announcer said, hitting the French and American embassies, an oil refinery and other places. More would have died, but the bombers had not learned their trade well. The war between Iran and Iraq had finally come to Kuwait, the little country placed so precariously between them. Salim's friend Adnan had described it as two giants wrestling over an oily dwarf.

‘What's that, Mum?' Sophie asked. ‘What's happened?'

‘Nothing, pet,' Jude said. ‘They're just talking about the war.' She saw Sophie's eyes narrow at her mother's transparency.

Jude's hands gripped the wheel. Ever since Israel's invasion of Lebanon that summer, war had cast a shadow over all their old routines. Everything felt precarious
–
from conversation at the dinner table to the drive home past Kuwait's army posts, bristling with suspicious
eyes.

For years she'd brought the twins home from the International School after her classes. The primary school finished early so they'd wait for her on the playground trampoline. It was there she'd first learned that Marc was a spectacular and daring sky dancer. He had something extraordinary, something gravity-defying in his legs. He leapt as if the sky could be breached by will alone, arms stretched above his head, hair like a white halo. Now he was the star of Kuwait's annual school theatrical, run by a group of ancient headmasters with aristocratic vowels and imperial pasts.

‘It's not fair,' Sophie had complained earlier in the car, for the hundredth time. ‘He makes me wait on the side all the time. It's boring enough being there, if I'm not allowed to have a
go.'

In the rearview mirror, Jude saw Marc make a face at his twin, and Sophie lash out with one elegant brown arm saying, ‘Stop it, idiot.'

‘No fighting in the car,' Jude said, without much heat. They goaded each other for amusement, but she knew their love was as solid as the days they used to sleep clenched tight in each other's
arms.

‘Okay, Mum, we can wait till we get home to fight.' Marc's voice was still a boy's
–
high and quick, to match his slender white body, as perfect as a chrysalis. But it would not be long before the man in him awoke, and Jude sometimes wondered what would emerge from the shell.

They pulled up into the drive and Sophie said, ‘Oh, Daddy's home early.' His white Chevrolet was in the drive, and the front door was
open.

Jude's heart sank. Since Salim had turned down the job at Odell, he'd taken four other jobs, each with less enticing prospects than the last. She never asked why, because in her heart she knew the truth of it: he felt perennially undervalued, he fought with management and his wounded spirit was quick to suspect slights.

Strangely, as Salim's world shrank, Jude's own career had started to blossom. At the end of her three-month trial at the school, the headmaster told her she had a gift for storytelling. Slowly, over the last six years, the shelves of the house had filled up with books sent by Tony from England or salvaged from the market and houses of others. Teaching had become a home of a different kind; she loved the smell of the classroom and the round eyes of her pupils as she walked them through worlds they would never see, lives stranger than their
own.

Salim always said he was proud of her. But more and more these days, those words tasted of envy. And now
–
if Salim was back before the end of the working day, it could mean only one thing: another resignation, another few weeks frustrated at home, before another job pulled him into an ever-narrowing circle of possibilities.

She got out of the family car, her once white arms flecked from the relentless Arabian sun. Salim was in the doorway and she tried to smile at him.
I've become so wary. Once I would have run and thrown my arms around his neck
. Now it was Sophie who took that
role.

Then she noticed another figure beside him
–
shorter, but the same lean shape and sliced cheekbones raking up to almond eyes. The strange man grinned, and rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. ‘My sister,' he called out, walking casually down the steps into the dusty front garden. ‘So sorry to drop in on you like this, without an invitation.'

His accent sounded American, with a trace of something thicker, almost like French. He reached her, and she saw his eyes were a deep green, slanted like Salim's but guileless as a child's. He smiled, and it chilled her to the
bone.

Her husband stood sheepishly behind him, like a taller shadow. ‘My love, this is Rafan,' he said. ‘My younger brother.' From the awkward tone, she knew Salim had no part in this sudden appearance
–
that he was probably as surprised as she
was.

‘Hello,' she said, holding out her hand. ‘I'm so glad to meet you at last.' He clasped her hand in both of his, as if they'd been meeting every year. ‘Of course,' he said. ‘It's such a shame we never got the chance until now. But we'll make up for it, don't worry.' He raised his hands in a gesture of greeting to the twins, who hovered mystified on the edge of the conversation.

As they went into the house, Jude felt her heart jump like a rabbit bolting across the downs. Salim had rarely spoken of his brother. Jude knew that he lived in Lebanon, and never asked more. He was part of that other world
–
the one that Salim left behind to marry
her.

They sat at dinner, the twins polite and quiet, waiting for the stranger to speak. Rafan tucked into his meal, all smiles and compliments. Salim pushed his food around the plate.
He knows why Rafan is here, and doesn't want to say
. Some secret conversation on the way back from the airport had put that guilty, angry look on Salim's drawn
face.

It was Marc who finally broke the silence. ‘Did you know that Uncle Rafan was visiting, Dad?' Marc had stopped calling his father
Daddy
many years ago. In fact, she could hardly remember if he'd ever done
it.

Rafan waved a fork of lamb at
Marc.

‘I surprised your father, little man. It's very bad manners. But he's such a good brother, that he doesn't mind. Of course, in England it's not so polite to drop in like this. In Arab families, though, it's different. Our homes are always open to each other, did you know that?' Marc raised his eyebrows. ‘Particularly if a brother or sister really needs help.'

‘Do you need help?' Sophie asked.

‘A little bit, beauty. You know I live in Beirut, right? You know where that is?' The twins nodded. ‘Well, there are many other Palestinians who live there. They don't have houses like this one. They live in camps, all piled together, and very poor and dirty. I'm sure your father has told
you.'

‘Mr Shakir told us,' Sophie said. ‘He's our Arabic teacher.' Rafan laughed and nudged Salim in the ribs. ‘You got them a teacher for their own language, big brother,' he said to Salim in Arabic. Jude's own learning had sped far ahead of her children's. She could understand much more than Salim ever had cause to
know.