Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

The water for the shower ran brown orange with rust before it cleared.

Akheeran. Finally.

How did one ascertain the cost of waxing half a leg and half a bikini? Was there even such a thing as half a bikini? Settling the bill at the beauty salon was not straightforward and Suzi was not one to accept being screwed over by anyone.

Iman had walked out. Walked out halfway through the treatments and was standing outside (no one stood outside), her face in the sun, her mouth and brows livid from the threading. It was unacceptable.

It had all seemed fine earlier that morning. The girl had worn the clothes that Suzi had left for her: a pale blue T-shirt that had gold loopy writing and some pink-trimmed jeans with a rabbit-fur feature on the belt.‘Thank you, Auntie,’ Iman had said when they had met that morning, covering her chest with her bare arms, seemingly uncomfortable with those parts of her body, ‘for the clothes.’

Exfoliation had been the first item on Suzi’s agenda and upon seeing Iman she had estimated that this would take some time. Her hair was dishevelled and curly (like an Israeli, Suzi had thought, that loose way their women wear it) and her eyebrows were sprouting hairs every which way. ‘Full wax, leg and bikini, thread, blow-dry, manicure, pedicure,’ Suzi had tapped off the items on her fingers to the slip of a girl in tight jeans and a T-shirt saying, Condo Heaven, who had scurried around the beauty salon at Suzi’s heels.

‘Of course, Madam,’ the girl had smiled at Suzi’s chest, at Iman, at Suzi’s bag, at the counter, until she ran into the kitchen where she screamed rabidly at the rest of her team of women chewing around a plastic table all of whom were dressed in broken plastic slippers, jeans and message T-shirts.

Suzi had been pleased when she had peered through the curtain and seen Iman lying flat on her back, stripped down to her T-shirt, with her knickers pulled up between her legs. Iman’s figure was not bad, she was fairly slim and her legs were decent. Suzi had been debating whether to take the time to get the girl’s highlights done when the glow of benevolence had come over her. It was similar to the sense of satisfaction she got when she dropped coins into the lap of a beggar, the magic of seeing an object expand in value dramatically through the simple act of transferring ownership.

But Iman had caught Suzi looking through the curtain and sat up on the bed. ‘What do you want?’ was all she had asked. But in such a way . The malice in that question. Suzi had tried to appease her. Jibril, Jibril , was all she had thought, to hell with the girl , but Jibril, Jibril . His anger. That was all Suzi could think of. But nothing she had said helped. Iman was already up, throwing off the two girls working on her leg and the one on her armpit. The salon’s floral skirt of cloth gathered together by an elastic cord was still around her waist; a strip of wax hung from her leg. Iman ripped it off viciously as she stood leaving lines of hair wax on her shin. Then she had pulled on her jeans and gone to stand outside.

Outside! No one stood outside.

Iman had not spoken in the car or at the mall. She had just hung around the shop entrances like one of the delinquent shabab who came over from neighbouring countries to gawp at women. She seemed completely disinterested, only waiting for Suzi to finish, when the trip had been for her. It was hopeless.

‘Now we shall lunch.’ Suzi escorted Iman along with steely camaraderie. Suzi’s large shopping bags were carried low, hiding her legs in a way that made it seem like she was gliding.

The café was in the mall’s atrium. The reflection of a glass dome held up by an exoskeleton of white piping created a goldfish bowl of sky and sunlight in the polished marble below their feet and the pipes’ shadows cut through everything under them. Suzi identified a table under a canopy to protect them from the air conditioning.

Iman found the mall overwhelming. The amount of glass for a start. Even a weeny little bomb, Iman thought, would lead to carnage in there. She saw large jagged panes of it dropping down on the croissant eaters, the lipsticked smokers, and the backs of adults bent over children.

Oh God, Iman thought again. What had she done? What had she nearly done? Walking with Suzi in the mall she kept finding herself stopping and being there again. Chasing the man (and in this vision her limbs flew out, the street gawped) or with that man, Ayyoubi, in the porch explaining to him why, why she had got to that point, why. But she hadn’t explained anything to him. What could he think of her?

‘How is your brother?’ Suzi asked to get Iman to look up. Iman was weaving the salt and pepper pots in between the flower vase, the disk showing that they were on table twelve, and the olive and chilli oil dispenser. In, round, and out again.

‘He’s in London,’ Iman started. ‘He needed to get out.’

‘Everyone needs to get out,’ Suzi said, dabbing at the oil on her lips. ‘Everyone.’ She waved at the waiter to come back. There seemed to be something wrong with her salad.

‘I don’t agree with that. We can’t just run away. It’s our land. Our people. We have a duty,’ Iman said.

‘Your duty is to yourself,’ Suzi replied. ‘That’s what I have learnt. He’ll stay in London, you think?’

‘He would not be able to; he’ll come back, but with his master’s and by then, if things have improved, you know, he might be able to get a job – But with duty, I don’t agree—’

‘And you? What are you going to do?’

‘I – I don’t know. I needed to leave for a while.’

‘I heard.’ Suzi spoke with distaste as she dabbed at her lips with a thick napkin. She had eaten the mozzarella in her salad, but now was not sure whether that sort of cheese complemented her blood type or not. It needed to be changed for goat’s cheese. Did the waiter understand that? Cheese made from the milk of a goat, not a sheep. If he didn’t understand she would explain it to the manager.

‘Rashid was doing some work with Khalil Helou at the Centre they set up in the camp—’

It was almost insulting for Suzi to hear Iman talk of refugee camps. The girl knew nothing about them. Suzi knew about camps. She could tell Iman all about them. At first, when she was a child in Beirut, the camp had been their womb; it was home to all of them and there was to be one birth and that birth was return. Return and only return. But there were others who didn’t want this to happen. Many powerful others and they were determined to stop it. And they did. They stopped it. No birth. No return. And then?

Suzi did not want to dwell on it. She wiped her lips and reapplied her make-up. They go on in Gaza about bombing this, closure that, but compared to what she’d seen? Nineteen eighty-two in the camps of Lebanon, screams of women being raped, stabbed, shot, bodies heaped the way sacks were piled when you wanted to prevent a flood, bodies crawling with flies, women with their fingers chopped off at the joints, bodies… Enough! Suzi snapped her mirror closed and explained goat’s cheese to the manager.

The newspaper headlines caught Iman’s attention: Strike Kills 4, Injures 25 as Islamic Parties Rise … Peace Process Not Dead Claims President of the… Internal Strife Claims 3 in recent outbreaks of fighting… The owner of the newspaper lowered his paper to find Iman staring at him.

‘Please,’ he said, offering the main section of the paper, ‘please, take it. I’ve finished with it.’ He smiled at Iman and Suzi decided that she should at the very least point out to Iman how much a blow-dry would complement the lines of her face even if she had refused to have one that morning. The man smiled at Iman and an awkwardness came over her. The girl was so gauche. Her arms kept crossing over her chest and she hunched herself up as though there was something to hide. Her hands kept holding at her upper arms as though it was her breasts that were bare not her arms . She moved with the jerkiness of a baby camel. At the end of the day there really was no woman in this girl. No woman at all. The man pushed the paper across the table before standing up and leaving the food court.