Leila Aboulela - The Translator

Airport shops. Sweets for Amir. Something Scottish for Hanan.

Hunger, acute hunger. A long queue at the cafeteria. Vegetable lasagna, very good, a lot of gooey cheese, white sauce. Chocolate cake. Cappuccino.

Going to the toilet. Her face in the mirror, not pleasing, but there was no surprise in that. Wash her hands. I don’t like the smell of this soap. Press a knob and warm air rushes out. Modern technology.

She sat on a green seat reading the information on the screen, Arrivals, Departures, reading it again and again. Feeling the sun outside the window wane. Time to pray and the sadness that there was nowhere to pray in the airport. If she stood up and prayed in the corner, people would have a fit. A story once told by Yasmin: Turks in London praying in Terminal 1 and someone called the police.

Sammar prayed where she was, sitting down, not moving.

In a few hours she would leave. Get away. Get away. Get out of here.

The clock on the wall. Twenty-four hours ago, she did not even know that Rae’s uncle had died. Twenty-four hours ago. Enough to break the mind. Don’t think. Just look around, open your eyes wide.

Time to board. The early darkness of winter. Outside the double-glazing of the terminal, freezing gusts of air… walking up the metal steps to the airplane. Smiling stewardesses, too much make-up, handing her the evening paper. Navy seats, the characteristic smell of airplanes, the fumble with overhead lockers.

Fasten seat-belts. British Airways’ policy of no smoking on its domestic flights.

On the front page of the paper, a picture of the hijacked airplane on the tarmac at Cyprus. Today’s date written on the paper. Today Thursday. Tomorrow was the day she was meant to leave. Just tomorrow. There was really no drama in this flight. No one will notice that she had gone. She had wasted her money on an airline ticket, wasted the train ticket she had for tomorrow. But he had said get away, get out of here.

Take-off, the roar of take-off, the running, running leap into the air. The airplane rose up over the city. In the twilight, the world below was splashed with snow. Sammar looked out of the window and saw miniature houses, cars and trees; the pale frothy sea. Small, compact city that belittled her hope.

She wore sunglasses now. They darkened the blue of the sky, the building that had sprung up in the once empty square in front of her aunt’s house. A cooperative which in working hours filled the road with noise and parked cars. Her glasses tinted the garden blue, its patches of dry yellow, the Disney characters on the children’s paddling pool. She had straightened up the sides of the pool and put it in the shade, filled it with water that gushed from the hosepipe hot. Two hours before sunset and the sun was a spot of blue heat, still too piercing for eyes that had seen fog and snow. Sammar sat on the porch near the old cactus plants in their clay pots, bougainvillea in dimpled mud. Children’s voices and laughter. The sight of them. They were in their underwear: Amir’s pants sagging with water, Dalia’s white, clinging and transparent, and the twins, Hassan and Hussein, in striped red and green. They had soaked the grass around the pool and it was now mud and slush, flat in the shade of the eucalyptus tree.

Behind Sammar the house was sleeping, hummed by fans and air coolers. Siesta before sunset and the time for praying and tea, going out or visitors parking their cars on the pavement outside. Her aunt’s house was a busy house, a lot of coming and going, snapping open the tops of Miranda bottles, boiling water for tea, special trays for guests, an elegant sugar bowl. Hanan lived on the top floor with her husband and four children. Sammar had known Dalia, who was the same age as Amir, but she had seen the two-year-old twins only in photographs. And of course the baby was new, asleep now with Mahasen downstairs. Sammar sat on the porch and there was no breeze, no moisture in the air, all was heat, dryness, desert dust. Her bones were content with that, supple again, young. They had forgotten how they used to be clenched. Her skin too had darkened from the sun, cleared and forgotten wool and gloves. She waited for everything else to forget: the inside of her and her eyes. Her eyes had let her down, they were not as strong as they had been in the past, not as strong as the eyes of those who had not travelled north. She must shield them with blue lenses and wait for them to forget like her bones had forgotten and her skin. She wanted to pick up life here again. People smile when I come into a room and this tree is for me, this scrawny garden, this sun. These children are all mine, the one I carried inside me and the ones I did not.

No one will tell me get out of here, get away, get away from me.

‘Sammar, Sammar’: it was the neighbour’s daughter calling from across the wall. Sammar walked across the porch, down the steps towards the car-port. There was a tap and a sink on the floor with a raised cement edge. Standing on it she could talk to Nahla who was standing on the arms of a chair. Two days ago, in this same position, Nahla had lost her balance and fallen. She was undeterred though and now shook hands with Sammar and kissed her over the wall.

‘If you fall again, you’ll break and be in bandages at the wedding.’ Nahla was getting married next month. She was beautiful, with dimples and dark-coloured veils that never slipped off her hair, rectangular gauze falling at each side of her face, balancing somehow without the aid of a pin or a broach.

‘I’m not going to fall off. Last time I had these stupid sandals on and they made me slip’.

‘What are you wearing now?’

‘I’m barefooted. Bring the children and come over.’

‘I can’t. They’re swimming.’

‘Where?’

‘I got them this paddling pool when I came. Aunt Mahasen wanted me to get roller blades for Amir but I got the pool instead. I’ve been here a month and only got round to filling it up for them today. Come and see them. They look nice.’

In a few minutes Nahla was admiring the paddling pool. She took off her sandals, lifted her skirt and waded in, adding to the children’s excitement. Amir leaned on the side and the water started spilling out.

‘Stop it, Amir. You’re getting rid of all the water.’ Nahla took hold of his arm and pulled him but he wriggled free, his ribs showing and his knees covered with scars from cuts and mosquito bites.

Sammar got the hose to add to the water in the pool. She sprayed Amir and Dalia and they squealed and ran out of the pool across the garden, the ribbon in Dalia’s hair wet and falling over her shoulders. Hassan got water on his face and he started to splutter and gasp, his hair wet curls covering his brow.

‘I’m sorry, my love.’ Sammar put the hose down and wiped his bewildered face. He wasn’t crying and soon went back to his game of filling a cup with water and pouring it over the side of the pool.

‘Sammar, come in, the water’s nice. I don’t feel so hot now.’

‘No, I’m too old.’ She smiled and turned to spray the dust off the jasmine bushes that lined the border of the garden.