Leila Aboulela - The Translator

‘What were you going to tell me before?’ she said.

‘When?’

‘When you told me to stay?’

‘Yes, I was going to tell you about Fareed. I started to but I didn’t go on. I’ve known him for years now, we’ve written some papers together. Every once in a while, he would suddenly have this outburst. Why haven’t I accepted Islam, how can I study it, know it and still not see that it is the truth, and wasn’t I afraid when the time comes, when I die and I will be asked, wasn’t I afraid that I would not have an excuse, I would not be able to plead ignorance? Anyway, he goes through all this with me every once in a while.’

Sammar winced at hearing her own thoughts crudely put by someone else. She looked at Rae, questioningly, wary, why was he telling her all this?

‘Well, I was just wondering,’ he looked away, ‘I was wondering why you don’t say things like that?’

She struggled to find an answer. She could say so many things. Things that would be truthful and yet not truthful at the same time. She said, ‘Yasmin once told me that it annoys you when Muslims expect you to convert just because you know so much about Islam.’

‘And you are afraid of annoying me?’

‘Yes.’

He said, ‘The arrogance annoys me,’ then he was silent like someone who had more to say but was choosing not to speak.

‘Is Fareed very arrogant then?’

‘No. No, I would not describe him as arrogant. The reason he goes on is that I view the Qur’an as a sacred text, as the word of God. It would be impossible in the kind of work I’m doing, in the issues I’m addressing for me to do otherwise but accept Muslims’ own vision of the Qur’an, what they say about it. To Fareed, though, this is tantamount to accepting Islam, and so he can’t understand it when I say I am not a Muslim.’

Sammar couldn’t understand it either. Hesitantly she said, ‘I think I agree with your friend.’

‘Why?’

She wanted to say, because unless you become a Muslim we will not be able to get married, we will not be together and I will be miserable and alone. But she said. ‘It would be good for you, it will make you stronger.’

He was quiet and she thought, ‘I have hurt him now. I have said the wrong thing.’

A visitor arrived for the elderly man in the next bed, his wife. She nodded at Rae, straightened the blanket that covered her sleeping husband, sat down and after taking out her glasses from her bag started reading a book. Someone had switched on the television that was perched up on the wall at the far end of the ward. Horse-racing, the sound of galloping hoofs, the voice of the commentator.

‘Some of these horses have Arab names,’ Rae said.

They spoke about the names of horses, Sammar watching his face, making sure that she had not hurt him by what she had said.

She had been given the chance to say something intelligent about Islam and she had lost it. She could have said things about truth, or eternal relevance or about distinguishing faith from cultural traditions. Instead, she had said something personal, ‘it will make you stronger’, words that carried criticism. She despised herself.

‘I have to go now. It looks like you are going to have dinner.’ The young nurse was pushing a trolley down the aisle, handing out trays. The ward was filling up with the smell of cooked vegetables. Sammar stood up. ‘I’m sorry I made you tired, I stayed too long…’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you of all people could never make me tired.’

She smiled but she was still a little anxious, ‘I can say the wrong things.’

‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry about that…’

In a rush she said, ‘I feel so bad that when we were speaking on the telephone, I didn’t guess that you were so ill. I thought it was just flu. I should have known.’

‘But I myself didn’t know. I thought it was just a chest infection. I get them frequently. I must admit I got a scare this time. Breathing in and the air just wouldn’t get through. I thought that’s it, my card’s been called.’

‘You were wrong.’ She forgot that a few minutes ago she had despised herself.

Downstairs, in the hospital foyer there were mirrors along one wall. Her eyes were a little pink, but their lids were as if rimmed by kohl and there was colour on her lips and cheekbones as if she was wearing make-up. She carried in her handbag a small bottle, sold by a man in Edinburgh who told his customers that the perfume had come all the way from Heaven, via Paris.

What’s this about you visiting Rae in hospital?’ Yasmin sat on the only armchair in the room watching Sammar ironing.

‘How did you know?’

‘Who doesn’t know! He’s been telling everyone.’

He was back at work now, but only coming in for the lectures. ‘Then I go home and collapse into bed,’ he had told Sammar.

She said to Yasmin, ‘Did he tell you himself, what did he say?’

‘He said you were very courageous.’

‘Me, courageous!’ She smiled and sprayed water on the skirt she was ironing. Courageous.

Yesterday, while with him, the department’s secretaries had surrounded her, gushed, ‘How sweet of you, Sammar, to go and visit him,’ and she, overwhelmed, had stepped back closer to him, away from their smell of talcum powder and Gold Blend. He looked pleased with himself. When they turned away, he whispered to Sammar, ‘Coup d’état.’

‘So speak, what is going on?’ Yasmin said.

‘You know that masha’ Allah you look bigger than five months, are you sure you counted right?’ Yasmin sitting, looked like something large and round had fallen from the sky on to her lap.

She ignored her and went on ‘You are the last person in the world I expected this from. What do you imagine you’re doing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you going to marry someone who’s not a Muslim?’

‘Of course not, that would be against the sharia.’

‘So what’s the point then of running off to see him in hospital?’

Sammar managed a smile at the running off to see him, ‘I’m being optimistic’

‘Did he tell you he was going to convert?’

‘No,’ she said lightly. He had not even told her that he wanted to marry her. ‘I think he could, why not?’

‘Why not? Because someone like him is probably an agnostic if not an atheist. The whole of the department are atheists. These people are so left wing, “religion is the opium of the people” and all that.’

Sammar did not know what agnostic meant. She concentrated on the pleats of the skirt, manoeuvring the iron. She wished Yasmin would talk about something else. And he was to blame for this. She couldn’t understand why he was telling everyone that she had been to see him at hospital. At times he seemed to her reserved and secretive, at other times open like this.

Now she would have liked to ask Yasmin about his ex-wife, what colour were her eyes? Instead Yasmin was intent on giving her a lecture of some sort.

‘I’ve seen the kind of Scottish men who marry Muslim girls.’ Yasmin went on, ‘The typical scenario: he’s with an oil company sent to Malaysia or Singapore; she’s this cute little thing in a miniskirt who’s out with him every night. Come marriage time, it’s by the way I’m a Muslim and my parents will not let you marry me until you convert. And how do I convert, my darling, I love you, I can’t live without you? Oh, it’s just a few words you have to say. Just say the shahadah, it’s just a few words: I bear witness there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. End of story. They get married, and she might as the years go by pray and fast or she might not, but it has nothing to do with him. Everything in his life is just the same as it was before.’