Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

Who cares? thought Rashid annoyed by this Ziyyad Ayyoubi. It’s not him. It’s his parents. Why should being orphaned make you a better person? A braver person? A more worthy person? More likely to just fuck you up. He could see it impressed his sister though. He wasn’t going to get into that one with her. She could be so predictably like Sabri. Like his mother. They were a family. He was the outsider.

‘I feel we haven’t caught up on anything since you came. I’ve hardly seen you. How’s your course? You still haven’t told me about it,’ Rashid asked.

‘Expensive.’

‘Worth it?’

‘Not in the least. I told Baba that he was crazy to send me here but he was insistent that I don’t go back to Gaza.’ Iman made another face. ‘He was also determined that I didn’t stay in the Gulf.’

‘What exactly was the fallout about with him? What happened?’

‘Nothing happened. I didn’t make a fuss or anything. I am just not really Suzi’s type and I started making excuses not to go to coffee mornings and ladies’ lunches and then she stopped inviting me.’

‘Was that it?’

‘Nearly, but the final blow was a date that Suzi had lined up for me with this Palestinian American guy. Rashid, you should have seen him…’

‘Ugly was he?’

‘No, I mean you had to hear him. He was just…’ Iman waved her hands about. ‘I got this long lecture about how we deserve the fate we have got, how Arabs are immature and don’t think logically, all these quotes from UN reports about our underdevelopment and cultural backwardness.’ Iman waved at the air. ‘Oh, yes, and how we just have to believe in the Peace Process as it is the Best that We are Ever Going to Get. All this from a guy wearing a tweed jacket in fifty-degree heat who has never even been to Palestine.’

‘You didn’t get personal, did you?’

‘No, not personal but just… you know, I went through the history of the Arabs, the effects of colonialism, the need for resistance. You know, standard stuff. It would have been fine, but he went back and told his mother, who told Suzi, who told Baba that I was a militant communist who held dangerous beliefs.’

Rashid started to laugh. ‘Was he in the CIA, too?’

‘Could’ve been. I don’t know. I thought it was funny but Baba went crazy. Started screaming about his reputation and my reputation and who the hell was I involved with in Gaza anyway? Basically that was that; there was no place for me in the Gulf. I thought he would calm down and get over it. And he did calm down but he didn’t change his mind. He went off and found out about this teaching course, applied for a visa and here I am. Never seen the man as determined about anything.’ She shrugged. ‘Great that you’re here though.’

‘It’s good to have you here. Not that I seem to be able to get to see you. What happened to you at Steffi’s party? You just disappeared.’

‘I was tired, I got a lift home.’

‘Who with?’

‘This English man.’

‘We’re in London. There are lots of English people here. Does this one have a name?’

‘Charles.’

‘Charles Denham?’ Rashid asked, remembering the name from the thick crested card. ‘The civil servant? The stiff guy? You were talking to him for ages. You liked him?’

‘He’s not stiff; you’re just saying that because he’s English. Typical stereotyping on your part. He’s OK. Look, this is our stop, isn’t it? Come on.’

The voice on the intercom had sounded harassed and urgent, ‘I can’t hear you. Sorry, I can’t hear you. Can you just come up?’

Khalil had pushed himself into a hallway walled with bicycles and plastered with takeaway flyers and made his way up a muddy, once pastel carpeted staircase to the top floor flat where a shabbily dressed girl with marble skin and weak eyebrows stood against the doorway. She looked exhausted.

‘I’m Khalil, a friend of Iman and Rashid’s.’ Khalil was out of breath by the time he reached the top.

‘Oh, you just missed her. Iman, unusually for Iman, has just gone out. I don’t know where she is.’ The girl was about Khalil’s height, and wore bent glasses. ‘You’re unlucky because she hasn’t so much as left the house for the last week or so.’ The girl had a slight twitch in her nose and seemed to be suffering from a cold. She looked at Khalil’s bags, a small canvas rucksack and a sizeable sports bag. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘Leeds. But I’ve known Iman and Rashid all my life. We live in Gaza together.’ Khalil felt a need to explain himself, to be clear in his English. ‘I can’t understand why they aren’t here. I only came down to see them and because of the demonstration. They were the ones insisting that I attend it.’

‘You better come in and wait,’ Eva said, opening the door wide, ‘or leave your bags at least?’

Khalil removed his shoes and placed them outside. They both looked at his feet in his electrician’s socks.

‘I don’t really know what she gets up to,’ Eva continued. ‘Sometimes she’s gone all night. Other days she’s just holed up in front of the news for days on end, particularly this week.’

Khalil was still holding the door open. This girl seemed to be on her own in the flat. If he were back home he would leave the door open, to show the neighbours that there was nothing going on. He waited for a while, to gauge her possible reaction before he shut it tentatively behind him. His embarrassment at their isolation together did not seem to be felt by her. She offered him the TV remote.

‘You want to see what’s going on?’

Khalil took in a large Gauguin print in a clip frame and a wrinkled apple in a fruit bowl.

‘I was just doing coffee,’ she said, indicating the kitchen, ‘if you’d like?’

‘Yes,’ Khalil was unsure about what to do. He could study while he waited he supposed.

‘You’re Iman’s flatmate?’ It didn’t feel right to ignore the girl when she was making him coffee.

The room was vibrating with traffic noise: revs, car stereos, brakes, accelerations, the scream of sirens. Eva dulled it by pulling down the sash window, leaving them with the sound of the neighbour’s music through the wall.

‘In a way, but I don’t think Iman would have chosen me as a flatmate,’ she said with a fake-sounding hah! ‘It’s more of a flat-share arrangement by the university. We didn’t know each other before we moved in.’

Eva swatted at some fruit flies buzzing over the apple, momentarily disturbing their orbits. She sat on the edge of her chair as though she was Khalil’s guest and was not quite sure what to do with herself.

‘Why wouldn’t she have chosen you?’ Khalil had thought about going through the notes from the workshop he had just attended and had pulled them out, but then he changed his mind and shoved them back into his bag.

‘She doesn’t approve of my politics, or rather my apparent lack of them.’ Eva gestured with her hand and snorted slightly.

‘Oh, really?’ Khalil smiled at the idea of Iman flipping out, ‘Don’t worry about Iman. She’s a bit hard on people. She’s probably just upset about what’s going on.’

‘You think so?’ Eva picked a piece of skin off her lips and bit at it.

‘Completely. I’ve known her since we were kids. She does sometimes give the wrong people a piece of her mind at the wrong time.’

‘Oh, really? I thought it was just me.’ Her eyes disappeared as the steam from the coffee covered her glasses. She took them off and rubbed her eyes. ‘Does she know you’re coming?’

‘Her brother Rashid definitely knew. We set it up weeks ago. There’s this huge demonstration starting at two. But I can’t seem to get hold of either of them this morning.’