Women of Sand and Myrrh (25 page)

I thought of Fatima’s smile and her thinness, and banished the thought from my mind: I was older than Fatima, and the
second wife was always the younger one. I dropped the cover on the ground and sat at the typewriter, banging out all my thoughts on the subject of arrangements regarding the children and divorcing David. I had this habit of writing everything down in order to arrange my thoughts, and consequently my feelings. Sometimes I had more than ten lists on the go at a time: lists of what food to buy, of people I had to write to, of people I should visit, of what I ought to say to Maaz, of the gold jewellery I owned, and of the gold I thought I should acquire.

I sat there just as I had done before we left Texas to come here, when I was getting ready to let the house, and finding boarding-schools for our three daughters. The difference between me then and me now was a difference in the way I felt. The world beyond the desert seemed far away. I seemed to be a different Suzanne now, and I found myself speaking my name: ‘Suzanne. Susan.’ Then in a louder voice: ‘Suzanne. Suzanne,’ until I heard Ringo asking if I was calling him. I was calling myself, asking if I was the same Suzanne or Susan who’d sat in Texas, a woman in a house like any other house, or an ant in a garden like any other garden.

Here, because I sat at a typewriter, people looked at: me with surprise and admiration on their faces. I passed through the minds of everybody in the houses round about, just as they passed through mine, and those people who went by my door, if they didn’t long to come in, at least they thought about me. This knowledge stole all through me and made me feel calm and secure.

I’d been an ordinary American housewife in the past, washing my children’s nappies and enjoying folding them up neatly, switching off the lights in their rooms every evening with a feeling of real happiness because they’d eaten and washed and gone to sleep. I would pick their clothes up off the floor and be delighted when I saw dirt on them because it saved me the trouble of deciding whether to wash them or not; seeing the family eating sandwiches without asking
where the cooked food was pleased me too as I calculated to myself that they could eat the roast which I’d prepared for that evening the next night. I sat in front of the television from the early morning following the soaps. I read romances and detective novels and drank Pepsi continually. I couldn’t find any real reason why my relationship with David was lukewarm; we never quarrelled and I was sure that it was what happened to married couples, even after a passionate love at the start. Even though I was relatively young, I can’t have been in touch with any lively circles of people. I never gave a thought to other countries or even to neighbouring states, until I talked to Barbara. Barbara was the owner of a gallery, which I’d never entered in my life although it was near my home. She caught my attention because she dressed like the magazines and television commercials in cotton and silk, clothes by designers whose names I’d heard of and thought were for a special sort of woman, like Jackie Kennedy and foreign princesses. I don’t remember ever seeing her in polyester trousers or with her hair tied up out of the way; her hair was always clean and newly done, the gold bangles jangled on her wrist and the chains and necklaces round her neck. Barbara stopped me, just as she stopped everyone else she saw and asked them to visit her. I knew that her interest in me was instrumental, since it was inconceivable that my mundane personality could have attracted her; I was a potential customer and she wanted me to see her gallery. But I was wrong, for after a short time things which I’d never seen in my life before like engraved wood, copper and brass, paintings on silk, appeared less interesting to me than her conversation. She talked a lot about her life in India where she’d been a teacher, and her two train journeys round the subcontinent, on one of which she’d surprised a gang trying to smuggle stolen jewels in her luggage and got to know her husband who was one of the passengers who’d jumped up to help her. At this, I stared at her necklace, so she took it off and dropped it into my hands, telling me that it was made of
precious stones. I felt embarrassed by my red hands and my nails next to her long painted ones. She went on to explain how she’d won over the Indian jewel merchant and begun buying a single stone from him every now and then. At: last she asked, ‘What about you?’ and fell silent. I smiled at her and reached for an ashtray, cheaper than most of the other things, and refrained from telling her that my life had been uneventful except for a burglary at our house some years before.

I remembered the strange feeling that came over me when I took that brass ashtray out of its bag and put it on the table at home. For the first time I was unable to sit indolently, my mind undisturbed by anything but the most obvious domestic duties; I began to think about Barbara and her way of life and her liveliness, and was curious to see her again. This feeling led me to another feeling which I can’t describe but it was as if I’d lost something, or as if I was watching an isolated episode from a television series.

I visited Barbara again the moment David told me that he’d been offered a job in an Arab country in the desert. It seemed that at last my chance had come to tell her with pride that our life too was interesting. She gave me great encouragement to go there and said that we’d live like characters in
A Thousand and One Nights.
I smiled in polite acquiescence, although I’d never heard of the book, then she began to tell me about the riches, the palaces, the jewel-studded fabrics, while I looked at the gold she had and thought happily how I would surely be able to buy similar things in the Arab country since David’s salary would be double what he earned here. She said that Omar Sharif came from the same country, also the Empress Soraya. I was at a loss to know whom to believe: my father told us to watch out for fleas and lice, and my aunt warned us against scorpion stings and said they loved blondes’ blood.

The feeling that had come over me when I was looking at the brass ashtray, an article that had no connection at all with
the rest of the furniture in the house, came over me again the night we landed at the desert airport, and I was sure that something which would be quite unfamiliar to me was about to happen. The black eyes stared at me often, and I stared at the white cloths on the men’s heads. My son pointed at them and asked if they were the shepherds who’d come to see Jesus in the manger. I laughed. When I laughed, the black eyes smiled. The man who stamped my passport looked at my photo then at my face then back to the photo. He passed a finger over his lips and sighed, and I realized that the bold eyes were admiring and pleading at the same time.

When David came home, I’d organized on paper and in my mind what was to be done. I told him that Maaz and I were going to get married. With great deliberation, and continuing to spread butter on his toast, he asked, ‘When?’ This reaction should have put me at ease but I burned with anger. He went on crunching his toast and I didn’t answer that we’d have to be divorced first. Perhaps he’d forgotten that we were still married. I felt a strong desire to tear the toast out of his hands and rub it into his face. ‘You seem pleased,’ I said, and then I began to scream at him, accusing him of being without feeling, self-centred, weak. In a loud voice I remarked that I wondered how he’d been able to land this job of his. Then I answered my own question with sarcasm, still talking loudly: ‘You must have deceived the evil spirits themselves.’ ‘I’m pleased,’ he answered, ‘because it’s what you want, a divorce from me, because you’re unhappy with me, and naturally I want your happiness.’

‘The children stay with me,’ I shouted, ‘and Maaz will be their father, and you won’t see them at all.’ ‘As you wish,’ he replied amid the crackling of toast in his mouth. ‘You’re mad!’ I cried. ‘Do you think I’m going to pay for them? You’re their father, and you can be responsible for them.’

This time his only response was a sigh, a shake of the head, as if to say, ‘Give me strength.’ I stood up, pushing the plate and the bread and butter and honey away from him to the
other end of the table but trying to make my voice sound normal, as if it were unconnected with my actions: ‘Jimmy will stay with me, and the three girls will stay where they are and we can share them in the holdiays.’ ‘Fine,’ he replied, and I went on provocatively, ‘Of course I’ll convert to Islam and bring up Jimmy as a Muslim.’

‘As you wish,’ came the answer.

I pictured Jimmy trying to read the Qur’an in a Muslim school, and the teacher scolding him for his ignorance, and I shouted, ‘You’re the same as you always were and you’ll never change: cold and selfish, interested in nobody but yourself; you don’t care what happens to your children.’

It was obvious that I’d tried his patience as far as he was prepared to allow me, for he began as he usually did on such occasions to tell me that I was mad, talking in his normal voice as if debating a point with me.

I responded by saying he was the one who’d reduced me to this state, and I meant what I said. I accused him of being cold, of feeling pleasure only when he was flying his model areoplanes, and suggested that he preferred sex with other men, and was having a relationship with Ringo. When he remained with his head bowed over the table, I screamed at him that he must have taken money from Ahmad, otherwise why would he have left me alone that first night with all the men, and here he was now giving his blessing to my relationship with Maaz.

At this point he could no longer control his agitation, perhaps because Ringo was in the kitchen. He got up, but instead of coming towards me he made for the door and went out.

I opened it and shouted after him, ‘I’ll be in touch with our lawyer.’ ‘I was in touch with him several weeks back,’ he replied. ‘He’s doing the paper work for the divorce.’

Only then was I forced to confront my fears: two days went by without Maaz contacting me. On the third day I thought I could feel the beads of sweat seeping through the
faint hairs on my upper lip. I wiped them away with my hand, and leapt up to dial his number. Fatima answered with a laugh, and said, ‘Maaz’s at work.’ I dialled his office number, and a colleague of his drawled, ‘Darling. Honey,’ when he heard my voice. I shouted back, ‘Can you get Maaz, please,’ but he knew that I was Suzanne. The whole town must have known about my affair with Maaz. Then I heard Maaz saying in his usual way, ‘Darling. Honey. Ooh darling, I miss you.’ I wasn’t reassured. These were the words he always used, even in the days when he’d stopped coming to see me. ‘When will you come today?’ I asked him, talking fast. He asked me if Ringo was at home, which surprised me, because he didn’t usually bother. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ I replied tersely. I heard him talking to his colleague and interrupted irritably, ‘Hallo, Maaz.’ ‘Darling,’ came the reply, ‘I’ve got some brochures for Sri Lanka.’ As if I hadn’t heard properly, I repeated, ‘Brochures for who?’ ‘Sri Lanka,’ he said quickly. ‘Tell that son of a gun Ringo to wait there till I come.’ I held my tongue, not wanting to argue with him or question him. I was anxious that no animosity should develop since he’d come back to me.

I hovered about, thinking that I couldn’t wait for Maaz without doing something to take my mind off my feelings of hatred for David, which were growing with every breath I took. I thought about taking down the Afghan rug from the wall, and gathering together everything which I’d bought or Maaz had given me. I picked up the stuffed lizard with a snake in its mouth, and put it beside the brass coffee pots, and the skin of some animal I didn’t know. I couldn’t think where to begin, and what to do with all this stuff, or where we would get married, and where we would live. I threw myself down on the sofa in a state of collapse and instead of thinking about myself and Maaz I began thinking about David, and clenched my teeth as if I were about to enter the ring with him.

Fifteen years I’d been with him. Fifteen years and I didn’t
know him, even though I knew the number of hairs on his shoulders. After a few years of marriage his interest in me had begun to grow less bit by bit. If I’d read about this in the problem pages of women’s magazines I wouldn’t have believed it. It was a feeling that led to madness, and after a while to recklessness and then to frustration. Gradually he cut down on the time he spent talking to me, then on how often he slept with me. I assumed he must have another woman. I tried to catch him out, and I kept an eye on his mail, stood waiting at a discreet distance opposite the building of the company he worked for, and eavesdropped on his telephone conversations. I discovered nothing, except that he was no longer interested in me. If ever I tried to put my arms round him when we were watching television, he pushed me away saying that he’d rather wait till the sports programme had ended; it seemed that he was genuinely fanatical about sport on TV, and that it absorbed all his attention. In bed I would approach him and he would move me off, saying that he didn’t like me to be the one to start. When I waited for him to make the first move, he turned on his side away from me, wishing me good night. But I didn’t know the full extent of his indifference to me until that morning when I’d found myself naked in Ahmad’s garden.

I remember that when Ahmad brought me home in his car and dropped me in front of the house and disappeared, I stood for a few minutes at the door, not daring to knock. When I knew that I couldn’t bring myself to knock, I gave the door a push to prove to myself that I was capable of some action, and to my amazement it wasn’t locked. I took off my shoes and picked them up, and went into Jimmy’s room, then into our room. David was fast asleep. I crept quietly into bed and held my breath, waiting. In spite of my fear I couldn’t help thinking about how much I’d seemed to mean to the men I’d spent the evening with, especially Ahmad, and how I didn’t mean anything to David. In his looks, his ways of behaving and the amount of respect he showed me, he didn’t
compare with Ahmad. For the first time I criticized David’s heavy body and large stomach to myself.

The next morning David got up and said good morning to me in a normal tone. Then he asked me if I’d got on all right with the Sri Lankan servant. I nodded my head and remained silent for a while, not knowing what to say. In the end I asked him if he’d enjoyed himself last night. ‘Nice people,’ he replied, tying up his shoelaces. ‘Shall I send the car round for you?’ I didn’t answer. I was astonished at his behaviour, and didn’t get out of bed for some hours.