Hilary Mantel - Eight Months on Ghazzah Street

Within a day or two the unblocking of the hallway brought Yasmin to the door, gesturing gracefully behind her; I am from Flat 2, I hope you will come and have a cup of tea with me. Frances followed her across the hall. She felt dull and badly dressed in her limp cotton skirt. Yasmin’s glossy hair hung to her waist, and a gauzy veil floated about her shoulders. One slender arm from wrist to elbow was sheathed in gold bangles.

She closed the door of Flat 2, swept off the veil and handed it to her maid, who stood inside the doorway. ‘Put on the kettle,’ she said to the woman. The maid scuttled away; a short, dark, low-browed woman, with a faintly pugilistic air.

‘She is from Sri Lanka,’ Yasmin said. ‘She is not much use, but thank goodness I have got her. Raji calls so many people for dinner every night that I have no time for the baby.’

‘People don’t seem to have much domestic help here. It surprises me.’

‘In the grander households, of course, you will find it. But the Saudis are discouraging it now. They don’t like the foreign influence. Of course, it is a good point, these young girls come to the Kingdom as housemaids, and then they cause trouble.’

‘Do they?’ Frances sat down, where she was bidden. ‘What sort of trouble?’

‘They get unhappy,’ Yasmin said. ‘Because they have left children behind them at home. Also the Saudi men, you know, they find that these girls are not very moral.’ The maid came in; put down the tea-tray. Yasmin dismissed her with a nod. ‘Then the poor things are trying to commit suicide. You would like some of this Crawford’s shortbread?’

‘Thank you,’ Frances said. She took a piece. Yasmin gave her another composed smile; poured tea. ‘How?’ Frances said. ‘How do they commit suicide?’

‘They throw themselves from the balconies. Silly girls. But this one, I have got a reference for her. She is all right, I think.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘It is Shams.’

Frances repeated it, tentatively. ‘I can’t quite get hold of it.’

‘Shams,’ Yasmin said. ‘As in Champs Elysees.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Means sunny.’ She tittered. ‘I do not find her a little ray of sunshine about my house. But Raji was six months waiting for the work permit for her. He doesn’t like to ask the Minister for favours. You are used to a servant, Frances?’

‘I’m used to help. But it doesn’t bother me, either way.’

Yasmin sighed. ‘It is a problem,’ she said.

In Yasmin’s apartment, there was flowered wallpaper and patterned rugs, and little gilt tables with glass tops, and an enormous sideboard, crowned by family photographs. Yasmin with her new-born baby; earlier, Yasmin beneath a wedding veil of gold lace, her mouth painted emphatically red, and her delicate hand on the dark-suited arm of her plump husband. He looks older by some years; a handsome man, though, with a full expressive face, liquid eyes. Yasmin’s own age is not easy to determine; she sits swinging one slippered foot, a long-nosed, spindly young woman, with a flawless ivory skin, a festinate way of speaking, and large eyes which are lustrous and intractable, like the eyes of a jibbing horse.

‘So your husband’s building is coming along?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t been to see it yet.’

‘Your husband is shy, I think. He runs away.’

‘Really?’

Yasmin smiled. ‘Samira would like to meet you.’

‘The lady up above?’

‘You will be surprised. She speaks good English.’

‘I should like to meet some Saudi women.’

‘She is very young. Nineteen. Some more tea?’

‘Thank you.’

‘You will see Selim, my son, when he wakes up just now. You are thinking of starting your family soon?’

This question. Oh dear. ‘I’ve always worked,’ Frances said.

‘Jeddah is a good place for families.’

‘Is it?’

‘You have not been here long enough to see the advantages. You are still missing England, I expect. Your parents.’ Yasmin’s tone was encouraging. She proffered the biscuits again. ‘Do take another one, Frances. You are so slim. You have seen this film, Death of a Princess? ’

She did rush straight at things, Frances thought. Suicidal housemaids, decapitation. She put her shortbread down on her plate. ‘I heard about it. But I didn’t see it. I wasn’t in England at the time.’

Relief showed on Yasmin’s face. Is she the custodian of Saudi culture then? ‘I remember the fuss it caused,’ Frances said. ‘Princess Misha, wasn’t that her name? She was married, and she took off with another man. They caught her and she was executed.’

‘This film has caused a lot of trouble between Saudi Arabia and Britain,’ Yasmin said. ‘They do not understand why it should be shown.’

‘Oh,’ Frances said, ‘we are interested in other parts of the world. Foreign customs.’

Their eyes met. ‘In any case, it is false,’ Yasmin said firmly.

‘False?’

‘Oh yes. These things do not happen. Princess Misha, this girl, she was extremely spoiled, always wanting her own way.’

‘So you think she deserved what she got?’

‘You must try to understand a little the Saudi viewpoint.’ She seemed to distance it from her own, by implication; and yet she seemed on edge. Her husband’s position, Frances thought. ‘She tried to go out of the country disguised as a man.’

‘Did she really?’

‘They caught her at the airport.’

‘Obviously you see these things differently.’

‘I am not a Saudi, of course. I am only giving…the Eastern viewpoint.’

‘To me it seems incredible, to kill a woman for something like that.’

‘But they did not, Frances. She is not dead. Her family have her in one of their houses.’

This is quite stupid, Frances thought. ‘But she was executed, Yasmin. Her death was reported.’

Yasmin smiled knowingly, as if to say, how simple you are. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but it is nonsense. The execution was made up by the filming people.’

Frances was silent. Then she said, ‘Why should they do that?’

‘It is their mentality,’ Yasmin said. ‘It is the mentality of the West, to discredit the Eastern people.’

It was now that Shams came in, with the baby in her arms; a little boy like a doll, half asleep, his head drooping on the servant’s shoulder and his curved eyelashes resting on his cheeks. Frances stood up. She felt she was blushing, burning inwardly. Have I been rude to her? But what a topic! Why plunge straight into it like that?

Gratefully, she turned her flustered attention to the baby. ‘He’s beautiful, Yasmin.’ The beetle-browed housemaid put the child in her arms. ‘How old is he?’

‘So you think he is cute?’ Yasmin asked. She fluttered; her face yearned. The baby nuzzled his head into Frances’s shoulder. She is so anxious, Frances thought, that I don’t get the wrong impression. She knows we have prejudices. She wants me to hear her version, that’s all.

‘He walks a little,’ Yasmin said. ‘So active! Do you think he is forward?’

‘Very forward.’

‘Ah, what a lovely picture you make,’ Yasmin said fondly. She spoke as if she had known her neighbour for half a lifetime. ‘No, Selim, naughty.’ She untangled the baby’s fingers from Frances’s hair. ‘He is fascinated, your hair is so light, he just wants to grasp it.’

It was a leave-taking scene now. Yasmin touched Frances’s elbow timidly. ‘You will come again? Any morning.’

‘Yes, of course. Or come to me.’

‘If there is anything you need…or anything Raji can do for you. He knows this town so well.’

Yasmin took her to the door. Before she opened it she plucked the wisp of a veil from the hallstand and flicked it over her head. ‘I will watch you across the hallway,’ she said. Frances looked up into the stairwell. Those two closed doors at the top. She took her key out of the pocket of her skirt. Yasmin watched her until the door of Flat I clicked shut behind her; then gently drew herself inside, and closed her own door.