Minaret: A Novel (17 page)

Wash rnv sins with ice. Where did these words come from? A memory of the smell of antiseptic, the splash of water, the funeral parlour. The prayer Wafaa taught me to say for my mother. She had refused to take any money for doing the washing. I should have phoned her afterwards to thank her again.

I asked Aunty Eva, `Did my father really do all things he was accused of doing?'

The defensive way she tucked in her chin showed she disapproved of the question. She said slowly, 'It's not so black and white. There are grey areas in business and one day being in the grey area is safe and the next day it's taken against you.' She made a spitting sound of disgust. The world is treacherous. He had a military trial; they passed a harsh sentence. It needn't have been like that.'

But did he or didn't he embezzle?' I struggled with the word, almost whimpering.

Her eyes said I was being disloyal. Your father didn't harm anyone. He didn't ruin anyone, he didn't kill anyone.'

My tears made her soften. `Do you know what your mother said to me about him? She said, He gave me back my dignity. He made me able to hold my head up high in front of people." She was a divorcee when he married her ...'

'What! I didn't know.'

She didn't want you to know. She was ashamed of it. Her first husband had walked out on her and disappeared. He went to Australia, he went to America - no one knew. She had to get a divorce through the courts. In those days it was a scandal and she was sensitive, it hurt her. No suitors wanted her after that; she was in her twenties and getting no proposals. People said your father proposed because he was ambitious. They said he was after her money and her family name. Is it true, is it not true?' She shrugged. `The important thing is that he made your mother happy. Remember that.'

e shook hands. I thought we would laugh but we didn't, not like yesterday on the phone. He had answered, not one of his flatmates, and I had teased him saying, `Do you recognize my voice?' When he immediately said my name, we laughed. But now, meeting face to face, we were awkward, self-conscious. To avoid arriving too early, I had showed up too late and that annoyed him. Also `in front of Marble Arch tube station' wasn't specific enough. I had gone from Speaker's Corner and walked up and down in front of McDonald's. Anwar stood in the same spot, looking at his watch, waiting.

He looked different, broader, maybe because he was wearing a thick blue jacket. I had never seen him wearing a jacket before. It looked cheap as if he had bought it from C&A. I said, `Let's go for a walk in the park.' He said, `It's too cold, let's sit somewhere and have coffee.' His left leg was stiff when he walked; he limped a little. `Did you injure it?' I asked but he just looked away as if he hadn't heard me. We wandered around, looking for somewhere suitable. This place was too crowded, that looked like a restaurant and we didn't want to eat. Things were much simpler in Khartoum University. I said that and he smiled.

Finally, we found a coffee shop, an empty table. I took off my coat. He looked at my sweater and jeans, took out his cigarettes. `You're not allowed to smoke in here.' I pointed towards the sign. He flushed and shook his head, put the packet back in his pocket. Had he always been that touchy?

`When did you come from Khartoum?' I asked him.

December.'

`You've been here all this time and you didn't get in touch?'

He smiled and looked a bit more relaxed. `I went to Manchester when I first came - I have a cousin there. Then I came here and it took some time to settle. I thought I would meet you in the street one day. I used to look out for you. I thought I would he in the underground station going down the escalator and then I would see you on the other side, on the escalator going up.'

I laughed. `We wouldn't have met then. You would have gone to catch your train and I would have walked out of the station.'

`I thought about that. I would have called out to you and told you to wait for me at the top ...'

`Shouting in the middle of the station - what a scandal!'

He laughed. `People would just think, "Look at the stupid foreigner.- He looked away. 'I'm realizing I can make my way here pretending I'm stupid - they kind of expect it - but anyway,' he looked back at me, `I did hope we would meet by chance.'

`London isn't that small.'

It isn't. It's a big city.'

`What do you think of it?'

He made a face as if to say, `Wow.'

I tried to see London as he would see it, not like my second home.

`The West is very impressive.' He sounded reluctant or as if he was thinking out loud, working something out. `Everything is organized. Everyone has a part to play. There's a system in place. A very structured system. I like the underground. If you want to go anywhere, you just ask what is the nearest underground station and then you can get there.'

`I do too, I always have. I like the map, how all the lines have different colours.'

He took out an underground map from the pocket of his jacket. As if suddenly remembering, he took off his jacket and hung it at the back of his chair. He was wearing a cotton, short-sleeved shirt. No wonder he was too cold to walk in the park. He folded out the map in front of me. There were marks on it in pencil. The paper looked worn out, smudged. Something moved in me, an awareness of him. I shifted my chair closer to the table, held one end of the map in my hand.

`See,' he said, `that's nay station, Gloucester Road. It's on the blue line; it's called Piccadilly. It's also on the green line - called the District Line. The Piccadilly Line is deep under the ground, the District Line is higher, like an ordinary train.'

Because he was telling me things I already knew, I felt soothed, comfortable.

`I got lost one day,' he was saying, `and I was under there coming and going, riding this train and that train. Then when I got out at the right station, I didn't have to pay extra, not a pence! And I had been up and down that line for hours ...'

Our coffees came, each saucer with two packets of sugar. Anwar put away the map, tore open his packets of sugar. `They don't put sugar in anything,' he complained, `they give you everything tasteless.' In Khartoum University we used to buy the tea sweet from the canteen. I gave him my packets of sugar. He refused at first but I insisted and we argued. At last he accepted that I no longer put sugar in my coffee.

`How come?,

'I'm on a diet.'

`Why?,

`For the usual reason most people go on diets.'

'But you don't need it.'

I smiled. 'How do you know?'

He laughed because I was flirting, `You haven't changed. I thought you would have changed.'

But I had changed. My whole life had changed. There was just me now. No Mama, no Baba, no Omar - just me, fumbling about in London.

I told him about Uncle Nabeel and Aunty Eva. `Well, I'm impressed,' he said, `you're not such a snob after all. How much does she pay you?'

I told him and he said, `That's not too bad. Convert it into Sudanese currency and it sounds pretty good.'

His reaction was totally different from Randa's. `They're cheating you,' she had hissed down the line from Edinburgh. `Students get paid more in a weekend waitressing than you're getting working a whole week.'

Encouraged by Anwar's reaction I said, `They're generous in other ways too. If I go out shopping with Aunty Eva to help her carry her bags, she treats me for lunch in nice restaurants.'

He took a sip of his coffee and smiled. I continued, `At Christmas, Uncle Nabeel gave me a twenty-pound note.'

He laughed. `So you're now celebrating Christmas. You've become a true citizen of London.'

I laughed with him. `I don't know what I'm becoming.'

`How come you're avoiding the Sudanese?'

`Who told you that?'

`I've been asking everyone about you. What's Omar doing?'

I had prepared for this. I focused my mind on Randa, looked Anwar straight in the eyes and said, `He's studying in Edinburgh.'

`What's he studying?'

`Business. Like he was doing in Khartoum.'

`I've got friends in Edinburgh University ...I

`He's not in the university,' I said quickly, `he's in a polytechnic. He didn't get good grades when he sat for his IB.'

'I see.'

It was a relief that he believed me. Aunty Eva was the difficult one. When she asked me about Omar, which she did every now and then, her questions were nosy, her insistence to know almost cruel. She would look at me, her eyes sharp as if saying, `Don't try to fool me, young lady, I'm too wordly to swallow these lies you're peddling.'

`What about you?' Anwar said. `Why didn't you continue your studies?'

`I guess I'm not really the studying type. I used to memorize, memorize without understanding. That's how I managed to get into Khartoum University.'

He raised his eyebrows. `Didn't your Baba pull a few strings?'

`Of course not. The Admissions Office is so strict. They only take students who have the proper grades.'

`You don't say ...' He was sarcastic like when he had said `your Baba'. There was no need.

`Why are you being disloyal to your university?'

`I'm just being realistic.'

`They only take qualified students. There's no cheating.'

`I find this hard to believe.'

`But I'm sure. Why don't you believe me?'

`Because I know better.' He was irritated but it was too late to stop.

`You don't. In this case you don't. I'm sure of what I'm saying because my father did try his best to get my cousin Samir into Khartoum University. Samir didn't have good grades and they just wouldn't take him.'

`Well, at least you're honestly admitting that bribery and pulling strings was second nature to your father.'

He sighed as if he regretted going too far. It crossed my mind that I should get up and leave. But I kept sitting, just staring at my coffee, not knowing what to say. He had won the argument even though I was right, even though I was saying the truth.

He touched my hand. `I'm sorry, Najwa.'

I didn't reply. `Look at me,' he said.

I liked him holding my hand. I didn't want him to let go. We should not talk about my father, ever.

`Najwa ...'

I should make an effort so that things would be nice between us again. `Tell me your news.' My voice sounded bright, sensible. `You didn't tell me your news.'

He let go of my hand. `When I graduated, I sat for the examination at the Foreign Office and I got selected.'

`That's great!'

`It was, yes. But then when this new government took over, I got kicked out. Everyone who was left wing was fired.'

I wanted to say something sympathetic. But worse had happened to my father when Anwar's government came to power. Musical chairs. I took a sip of my coffee. It was strict and bitter without sugar.

You said in your letter you were writing for an English newspaper?'

`Yes, I did that in my free time. They shut it down - no free press. I enjoyed writing. My English is mediocre ...'

'Oh no, it's very good. I remember reading your final year project.'

He looked pleased, flattered. But I'm trying to improve my English. I read the papers here. If there is a word I don't understand, I look it up in the dictionary.' I could imagine him doing that. He would learn fast because he was clever and focused.

He went on. `I plan to write an article about the current situation in Sudan and submit it to a British newspaper. I'll let you look at it once I've written it.'

`1'd like that.'

He smiled. You can correct my English.' He wasn't being sarcastic. He wasn't teasing me about the private schools I had gone to.

had not known there was an Ethiopian restaurant in Notting Hill Gate. I sat on a small stool, eating spicy chicken off a table that was only a few feet high. I ate with a fork while Anwar ate with his hands. He made fun of me, brought up in a house where only the servants ate with their hands, but there was a fondness in his voice, he did not mean to hurt me. The food was delicious. I said to him, `We had an Ethiopian maid who used to make zighni as hot as this, but she put boiled eggs in it. Her name was Donna Summer.' His smiled his `I'm not interested but tell me anyway' smile and I launched into an explanation of why our maid was called Donna Summer. I wondered if sitting on these low stools hurt his leg but he seemed relaxed, at ease. I liked to see him like that.