Selma Dabbagh - Out of It

Iman guessed a name and got it right. She smiled at it. She felt more comfortable now in this safe little hole underneath the centre of London’s government, this flowery little bunker, unchanged for over a century or two, filled with the regalia of the past. There was comfort in victory, in the silence that it brought. The knowledge that the bed you slept in would always be yours in the morning. She could see Charles’ confidence coming back with his subject matter. He furrowed his brow and small freckles found each other and merged into a tanned splat on his forehead. He had a habit of pushing his glasses up his nose as a sign of concentration. He did this now although he had already taken them off.

‘So, what I would like to put to you is, what would you do? Hmph? I have been, you may have noticed, skirting around, flirting with this issue all night, but tell me, what would you do in that role?’ He spelt out to her the mandate, the proposal, the limitations, the freedom, and the possibilities.

Iman found the muscle in her tongue and spoke of ideas that had knocked against her head in her room, had been interrupted for ‘points of organisation’ at her women’s meetings, would be taken as givens by Khalil and Sabri. Things that they all thought, that everyone knew.

‘I see. I see. Excellent. Excellent. Well, let’s see what we can do.’

Had she had one glass or two sitting there? Whatever it had been, even if it had been more, they had both gone into her brain and seemed to have both fouled it up and bedazzled it at the same time. The desire to giggle at her host and the pictures which surrounded him flooded through her. She fought an urge to stick her toe up his trouser leg to test for a reaction. A rush of opportunities all presented themselves to Iman at the same time. She thought of the things that had made her laugh, the bawdy Jahalia poem found by the Israeli border guards about the man’s key wilting in its lock (how could she even try to translate that?), the men that Suzi had tried to set her up with and even (in a really warped way, that she had not thought possible), the sheer weirdness of that day when Seif El Din was murdered and Abu Omar arrested, that man Ziyyad Ayyoubi outside the house. It was quite a story to be told. She was about to start recounting it all, in all its hilarity and horror, when she was overwhelmed by a feeling of fatigue and loneliness. She could not see the point of any of it. He would not, he could not understand. She didn’t know what she was doing. She had forgotten what the point was any more. She didn’t even know where she was.

‘You look a bit bushed.’ He leant over enough so that he could stroke her cheek. He could not help it. Her hair against the sofa’s pink roses and curling leaves made such a contrast. He would not get the sofas upholstered like his ex had gone on about; he didn’t need solid colours. They were beautiful sofas. Exquisite. ‘Shall I get you a taxi? Or I could make a bed up for you, I have this old camp bed that I can pull out and sleep on. You could have mine?’

‘No, no, I’m OK, really.’

Iman stood up clumsily as though heavily pregnant and walked over to the bookshelves. He followed her and took her hand as he gave a commentary on the titles. ‘A lot of it was here when I moved in.’ He pulled out a red leather-bound copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and she flicked through its pages, marvelling at how there was much much more curiosity back then than now. He moved behind her and kissed her near her ear. She stayed still and waited for kisses until they compelled her to respond and it was all so much easier than she had thought.

The bed had been narrow and soft, a child’s bed, pushed next to a wall and sunken in the middle. He had been courteous and she had refused to be shy. It had not hurt as she had been told that it would, nor had she bled, but his skin was foreign and on it his sweat had the smell of wet potato peel.

As the march entered the square, Khalil was standing, as agreed, by the fourth lion in front of the burger place. He blended in better here, Iman thought, seeing him up there in his black jacket, than he did back home. Behind him, banners waved and in front of him a row of speakers sat on fold-up chairs on a platform. Lisa was to their side, writing on a clipboard, a phone squeezed between her shoulder and her ear. An elderly politician, his legs crossed, smoked a pipe.

Ziyyad Ayyoubi had been on the stage when they came into the square. There had been some applause when he had finished a point and then he had started another one before he looked down, and she knew it was ridiculous to think this, as it was hardly possible, but she thought that he had seen her. He had stopped mid-sentence. The audience waited, but instead of continuing he had stepped off the stage. The audience held on, murmuring and speculating loudly until a poet in an anorak stepped forwards, silver hair lifted around his head in a static cloud.

Iman could not see Ayyoubi once he had left the stage and she found herself looking for him until she realised that Rashid, who had been at her side when they entered the square, had also disappeared. She pushed through the crowd towards Khalil thinking it was the route that Rashid would have taken.

‘I thought he went ahead to find you,’ Iman said to Khalil when she found him.

‘Is he avoiding me or something? I told him I would be here today.’

‘I expect he just went to get something to eat. He’s like that when he gets urges, he just shoots off; whatever it is, food, sleep, needing a smoke, he doesn’t tell you or ask you, you just turn round and he’s gone. You know Rashid. We went to the Public—’

‘I know. You were out. I went to your flat.’

A choir in red T-shirts were now on the stage.

‘What happened to your hair?’ Iman asked.

‘My father insisted on me cutting it. No, in fact he bribed me into it, true to form. I needed a pass to get to see Jamal in detention and he wouldn’t help me out with getting one unless I cut my hair off. I know, it’s outrageous, but you know my father.’

The red choir threw their shoulders back and formed a line of ‘O’s with their mouths on stage.

‘You came with my flatmate?’ Iman raised the tone of her voice to something a bit jokey, a bit mocking, which Khalil declined to pick up on. He answered her question seriously.

‘Eva? Yes, I sent her off to talk to one of the speakers from the Medical Union of Healthworkers and one of the other medical charities.’

‘Oh, good, good. Great idea.’

The crowd, muddy coloured and anonymous from afar, appeared diverse and Technicolor up close. People spread around the fountain and along the stairs. They stood in the roads; tourists photographed them from the top of buses; faces leant against windows to watch them pass. Some of the groups around her carried placards: Socialist Jews Against War and Occupation, Muslims for Palestine, Welsh Singers for Peace . Khalil acted as though he was entranced by the round-mouthed singers with their low-slung breasts ( Aaah! Peace! Aaah! ).

‘Did you see Ayyoubi?’ Khalil asked.

‘We arrived just as he left the stage.’ Iman checked Khalil’s face to see if somewhere behind the diplomatic manner of his father he was mentioning Ayyoubi specifically to test her. She could not see anything like that.

‘Strange. He stood up there staring at the sky giving a very impressive talk and then in mid-stream he just stops and goes. Gone…’ Khalil continued to look around him. ‘Where is Rashid? I was really looking forward… Is there any point in waiting for him?’

‘He’ll turn up. How’s Leeds? How’s the course?’

‘It’s not bad. It’s nothing that I need to know, but they want to vet me for their own processes. I don’t have much choice if I want to apply for a grant. Most of the funding for our type of work has gone. They’re more interested in peace initiatives, “building rather than critiquing” in their words. Where is Rashid? I’ve missed the bastard.’