Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

‘Yes, I do, and you are coming. What’s the problem with that? The demonstration doesn’t start until two. They’ll let us copy the file so we don’t need to be down there for long. There may not be anything in it.’

‘What’s the weather like?’

‘Who cares? It’s London; it will be different by the time you are ready to leave. Just get away from the news. Khalas . Bikafee. Finished. Enough. There is nothing you can do right now. Crying is not going to help. Come on. Move it.’

Rashid picked Iman up and carried her into the bathroom as though she was a bride he was about to dump over the threshold.

‘OK, OK,’ Iman almost laughed. ‘Leave me alone, I’m up. I need my clothes. Let go.’

There were books from Iman’s teaching course with uncracked spines lying on the table. The carpet had coffee and red wine spills on it; the ceiling was low and grey, but the walls had been painted recently and the view was not bad. Rashid opened the window to the blunder of lorries, clouds of birds and bursts of Bangla and rap from the cars. There was an anguished warmth outside. Spring was arriving in jolts. It was there for a couple of days and then it left without a trace. When it came, it made London all the more extreme. The sky, the grass, the parks became florid and this fest of colours throbbed with the jauntiness of bare flesh and loud laughter. The vigorous bounce of it was bewildering and then within hours it could be dark and rainy. Street lamps would flatten the faces of the office workers who hurried from their buildings to tubes and buses that stacked and squashed them up so that they could be transported home again, ill-looking people in need of a rest.

Rashid waited until he could hear the shower running before he turned the TV back on to listen to the rest of the news.

In the bathroom, Iman received a sign: a thin line of sticky pink in the gusset of her pants. She closed her eyes and sat on the toilet seat, rocking her knees a bit. It was going to be fine. She had done what she had intended to do and there had been no negative consequences. She was OK. It was OK. She had done it and got away with it. The shower was strong and the water made her hair jump with curls and stick its fingers up at Suzi and her Philippino girls with blow-driers and tongs.

Rashid waved a leaflet for a charity at Iman as she came out of the bathroom.

‘It’s not me; it’s her, Eve my flatmate. She does charities.’ Iman went back into her room wrapped in two towels. Rashid turned the sound of the TV up – it was news from home again. The journalists were nowhere near the town, they were all pumped up with the military on the outskirts, wearing the Occupier’s flak jackets and donning its vocabulary: ‘tactical strikes’, ‘guided missiles’, ‘armed militants’. Baf! Another missile. Baf! ‘…unconfirmed reports of mass killings… fierce resistance…’ He turned it off.

‘But I thought your flatmate doesn’t care about anything?’ he said when Iman reappeared from her room dressed in jeans and a winter coat.

‘Eva? She can manage charities. They make her feel good, but she doesn’t actually do or care about anything.’ Iman threw some things in her bag: keys, wallet, travel card, apple, and the poetry paperback that concealed the photograph of her mother.

‘Glad to see you’re still into your ancient Bedouin porn.’ Rashid smirked picking up the book of poetry. Iman kicked out at him.

‘Shut up, Rashid. It’s not porn,’ she said before she turned on him as though she was going to launch straight into the heart of the matter. ‘It’s all right for you.’

‘What’s all right for me?’

‘Nothing.’ She retreated. It was impossible. She was sulking now. ‘She just does charity; that’s what I was saying.’

‘Charity’s better than doing nothing.’

‘Charity just supports the existing system.’

‘You sound like Mama.’

‘Are those hers?’ Rashid pointed at a white coat and a stethoscope hanging on a hook together with a mangy scarf.

‘She’s a medical student.’

‘Can’t be that stupid then.’

‘Not stupid, just disinterested. It’s worse.’

Iman hugged at her brother’s arm all the way to the station and carried on hugging it until they found seats on the train. It was too hot for her coat. She took it off and hugged it too.

‘I am not convinced it was worth it.’ Iman spoke once they had sat through two tube stops in silence.

‘What wasn’t worth it?’

‘Colonialism. Two hundred-odd years in India, another hundred or so in Egypt, thousands of years in Asia and Africa. If you stack them all up on top of each other it’s feels like the whole history of civilised man, and for what? To create this place?’ Iman seemed to be talking to herself. ‘And people like Eva. What’s the point?’

‘What is your problem with Eva? Why do you keep going on about her?’

Iman stopped and pulled a face. ‘I made her cry this morning.’

‘Why did you do that? What’s she to you, Iman?’

‘She was trying to talk to me about what was going on in the news and she kept trying to do this supposedly objective BBC thing of being so intelligent and always looking at the other point of view, and she kept using their terms: “ terrorism” , “democracy” . I flipped.’

‘What did you say?’

‘It doesn’t matter, but I made her cry, all right? I hate these people who try to stay neutral in times of crisis.’ Iman was picking at a sticker on a railing and wasn’t looking at Rashid. ‘I told her that she didn’t understand anything. I told her about what happened to Taghreed and Raed, all the other bombings and how all her charity stuff was a waste of time and she had never really done anything to make a difference to anyone.’ Iman looked at the toes of her shoes. ‘I regret getting personal. I was just so angry. I know. It wasn’t really fair.’

They got up to change trains, squeezing past Saturday shoppers and women with pushchairs. The air was sticky. On the platform, Rashid found a dented drinks can and kicked it around for a while. He considered telling Iman to apologise to Eva, but he knew that that wasn’t something that she was likely to do, even though he could sense that she was urging him to tell her to do it.

‘You’re not worried about missing Khalil?’ Iman asked.

‘We’ll meet him at the demonstration.’

‘And Lisa?’ Iman had been waiting for her brother to mention Lisa and was pleased that he had not. Rashid found some dead skin on the side of his left middle finger and bit at it.

‘Don’t do that.’ Iman pulled his hand away.

‘She’s fine. Fine. She’s just been really busy organising speakers for today’s demonstration. Ziyyad Ayyoubi will be speaking. Do you remember that name? The fighter from the Patriotic Guard?’

‘He’s coming? Here?’ But of course he was; he had to be, she decided dramatically, he was here because of her. ‘He can’t be here. Why? Why did Lisa ask him of all people?’

‘It was a last-minute change of plan by the Authority; they switched him. But it seems he has a foreign passport of some kind so it’s easier for him to attend. What’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothing. Why does he have a foreign passport?’

‘How would I know?’

Two girls in matching outfits with soft stomachs and hard, moving jaws got onto the train.

‘Do you know he’s the son of Mona Zahlan and Khaled Ayyoubi?’ Iman whispered.

‘The couple who were shot in Beirut? No, I didn’t know that.’

The girls sitting in front of them were sharing earphones plugged into a phone. One of them had caught Rashid’s eye earlier and had wiggled her bottom a bit in her seat, crossed her legs this way and then the other way. For him.