Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

The only spare was in Khalil’s flat. He had no choice but to go there with Rashid and risk Rashid meeting his mother. Since moving to Gaza, Khalil had only once asked Rashid back to his family’s flat and he had made sure that his mother was in Paris and his father in DC, when he had done so. Khalil could not bear anyone talking about his parents, let alone meeting them. Khalil tried to put as much physical distance between his family and himself as he put political distance.

‘Sure,’ said Rashid, trying to ease Khalil’s anxiety, ‘no problem.’

The Sea View development where Khalil’s family lived was a row of eggshell-coloured apartment blocks along the beachfront. Khalil knew a lot about the financing structure for the construction of Sea View and he had once, when stoned, divulged what he knew to Rashid and then regretted having done so as most of it had implicated his father.

The pale Sea View buildings hovered on the shore as though they were contemplating slipping away into the sea and dissolving palidly into its watery mass. They were calm, clean buildings with elevators that worked and doormats that were guarded by plant pots that shone with the spit and polish of imported labour.

If he had allowed himself to be, Rashid would have been insulted by Khalil’s determination to keep him away from his family. It wasn’t as though Rashid didn’t know them. The two families had been close in Beirut, in Tunis, and briefly in Scandinavia, but as the Outside Leadership made peace with their enemy, they had made enemies of each other. The families had split apart at the same time that Rashid’s parents had.

As Khalil’s mother ran to kiss Rashid, her mercurial, silky outfit billowed around her. Her orange-streaked hair was noodle-like, her eyebrows accentuated by a bluish pencil and her front teeth had caught on a lipstick, as though she had taken a quick snap at it.

It was after greeting Rashid that she noticed the state of Khalil. ‘Look at you! What happened to your shirt? You are filthy. You smell terrible. What is this smell?’

‘It’s gas. I went to the south, Mama.’

‘You went to the south? Are you mad? One of these days you’ll get yourself killed. You go right now and take a shower. But wait, before you go, stay here. Stand here. You two boys, I haven’t seen you together for so long…’

She brought both boys into the sitting room and got them to stand next to each other and appraised them, compared them, while blowing smoke into the air above her face with the mannerisms of a twitchy dressmaker.

There was something so brittle about her. It was as though she had snapped and was jangling around inside. Here was a woman who had been brought up according to the best of French educational systems, who had been groomed assiduously to find a husband from the best of families, to cook, entertain, and to pack suitcases in ways that emulated the preferences of the European aristocracy. All this she had done to perfection. She had hosted and preened, spent and saved, complimented and listened while furthering the path of her husband’s career. But no one had taught her how to deal with her husband’s infidelities, to cope with the humiliation of their multiplicity, their diversity, and the publicity that surrounded them. For everyone knew about them, from the Spanish waitress in the restaurant bathroom, to the Indonesian maid molested in the kitchen in front of her. She never got used to them; each one had floored her, each one had struck her down afresh.

‘Just so high, up to here!’ She had started upon seeing Rashid, as they feared that she would. Rashid had not seen her for possibly as much as a decade and Khalil had not been able to stop her grabbing at his friend.

A little devil you were as a boy, we used to say to your mother. No more boys for you Jehan, this one is more work than five!

And so handsome. How did you get so handsome? Better-looking than both your parents.

A scholarship! You’re getting out! Khalil, you didn’t tell me! Why didn’t you tell me? This is wonderful. Wonderful. Here, we shall drink to it!

She propped Rashid up on a cane bar stool against Khalil’s protestations. ‘Mama, we’re going to the Centre. He can’t go into a refugee camp smelling of alcohol.’

The bar was backed with mirrors and adorned with whisky bottles, china windmills and miniature crystal pigs. A clay model of a man smoking a pipe sat in the centre of this display.

‘No. I insist. This is a great day for Rashid, a great day. Go Khalil. You go have your shower. Change your clothes. We’ll have a drink. Catch up on old times.’ She was busy mixing two multi-layered cocktails, calling to the maid for ice, for lemon slices. ‘See how pretty!’ she said. ‘A cause for celebration, Rashid. Mubrook . Congratulations. What are you studying? Such a clever boy and so good-looking.’

Two drinks for the two of them and then another two.

Your father! The stories I have about that man. There was the one time that we were all together in Paris…

No, that was after the assassinations in Rome before we left Beirut—

Your mother is not really one for – how shall I say? – relaxing, enjoying herself…

The years in Stockholm were the best for us.

Tell me, your uncle – is he still with that woman?

All of this was merely a warm-up for what she really wanted to say, which she did as soon as Rashid had drunk the first drink, urgently, holding Rashid’s arm.

‘You must help me with Khalil. You must persuade him to do what you do, to get out of this place, get a scholarship like you. He’s a bright boy. I don’t know what he’s thinking. This Centre? In a camp? Things are not like they were; he could get into such trouble and for nothing. For nothing .’

‘The Centre’s doing very important work. A lot of people – my girlfriend, her organisation in London – they use our data to lobby the British Government. For them it’s vital.’

‘Yes, yes, but you saw what happened last night and I heard another strike just now. What is the point, really? Do you think these people care? No. You tell Khalil. You tell him that it is time to get out. You tell him to come to London with you. You have a girlfriend there? That’s lovely. See? He can get a girlfriend too. You can go out. Have some fun. I don’t know what he wants with staying here. I really don’t.’

‘Shall we go?’ Khalil picked up his bag from the table by the window where the maid had placed it. But the drinks had hardened his mother’s resolve and she held on tight to her son’s arm.

‘You should follow your friend. Get out of here.’ Through the open veranda doors the view down the coast was clear to where the smoke streamed upwards and then dissipated over the sea.

‘Yes, Mama.’

Her face peered up at him. The sea breeze caught in the light damask curtains and they inflated into air pockets behind them.

‘I don’t know what you want. This politics ,’ her face contorted, ‘it will make you like your father .’

Khalil stood very still, the curtain pushing up around his back like a satin pillow for a jewel. His mother had sunk low and she knew it.

Rashid chose to leave them for a while. He waited in the bathroom for some time, his fingers tracing along the labels of the sedatives, tranquilisers and mood stabilisers lined up inside the bathroom cabinet until he felt it was safe to come out.

Sabri and Lana had run against each other for the Student Council in the year that they had met. Lana’s platform, as an Independent, was one of opposition. She opposed Sabri’s party, the Outside Leadership, on the basis of its corruption and condemned the Islamic alternative on the basis of its social conservatism. No one had anticipated her success. She had attained over five per cent more votes than Sabri and all other Outside Leadership representatives, fifteen per cent more than the Islamic alternative. Sabri’s friends had stopped laughing at her shoes and started examining her flyers instead.