Leila Aboulela - The Translator

Waleed did not speak much when he was eating. Grunts of agreement with his aunt and, ‘Pour me water, Sammar.’ He looked tired, she thought, not just the normal tiredness from fasting. He might have quarrelled with his wife and that was why he had not gone with her to her parents. Instead he was here with them today and Mahasen was being tactful, not asking questions, glad to see him. Mahasen could be surprisingly tactful when it suited her. Waleed’s presence livened her up. If it had been only her and Sammar, she would have been silent and withdrawn.

When they finished eating, Sammar carried the dishes to the kitchen and made tea. She put mint leaves in the pot, topped the sugar bowl with sugar. She put the candle on the tray to make her way back outside, walked from the kitchen to the hall to the sitting room, holding the tray with one hand and opening the door to the porch with another, closing it behind her so that stray cats would not creep in. On the porch there was the grey light of the moon on the pots of cactus plants and dark bougainvillea. She could blow out the candle now, walk down the steps of the porch to the voices of her aunt and Waleed.

The peace of sitting with them and not talking, not even listening while they talked. Waleed expansive now after the meal and with a glass of tea in his hand, making Mahasen smile. This good feeling was because of Ramadan, because of eating and drinking after fasting all day when the sun was too hot and it was thirst more than hunger, and not wanting to speak to anyone, economising words, saying what was only necessary, what was only enough to get by. A whole month free like that and looking up at the round moon, knowing that the month was half way through, two weeks and the focus would be gone. The closeness to the depth would be gone.

Tonight, like last night and every night until the end of Ramadan, she would wake up hours before dawn, pray once and again, read the Qur’an. This was the time of night when prayers were answered, this was the time of year…

‘Sammar, isn’t Nahla’s fiancé working for Abu Dhabi’s electricity company?’ asked her aunt.

‘Qatar, not Abu Dhabi. He’s in Doha now.’

‘So he managed to get a good job after all.’ There was admiration in Waleed’s voice, envy under control.

‘Yes, after fuss and quarrels and they had to postpone the wedding twice,’ said Mahasen. ‘That girl was supposed to get married months ago and now she’s still sitting.’

‘Working for Qatar’s national electricity company is a very good job,’ said Waleed. ‘How did he get it?’

‘Someone who knew someone,’ said Sammar.

‘Of course someone knew someone,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘but who?’

‘I don’t know. I could find out for you.’

‘I was just asking,’ he said dismissively and finished his glass of tea.

‘They’re not going to get married until December,’ said Sammar addressing her aunt. ‘Nahla told me yesterday. They have the visa to sort out and she has re-sits. She wants to graduate before she goes there.’

‘That’s better for her. Qatar is good, she can get a good job there.’ Mahasen said vehemently. She wanted everyone to get wonderful jobs, make good money, rise up in the world.

‘I have a friend in Qatar,’ said Sammar, ‘a Pakistani woman I knew in Aberdeen. Her husband works in oil and he got transferred there. She likes it very much.’ Yasmin was in Doha now, with her daughter and Nazim. Yasmin was not even in the same country as Rae anymore. Sammar could no longer write and ask her for news of him. When the option had been open to her, she hadn’t, but now it still counted as a loss and she thought, ‘I have no link with him now, in terms of people. Who do I know who knows him? Diane? Fareed? Neither of them can I ever have the courage to write to.’

But there were other links, a dream, an awareness that would suddenly come and stay with her. One day in the garden with the children, her feet bare and wearing another of Hanan’s unwanted dresses, she had stood admiring the mud of the flower beds, under the jasmine bushes, the way it was smooth and dimpled. She had pressed her toe into the mud, made a little depression, and then she had knelt down and touched the mud with her fingers. It was like dough or plasticine and yet her fingers stayed clean when she looked at them. Clean, heavy mud. He was like that, heavy inside, not like other people. It was there with him when he came into a room and when he paused in the middle of saying something, paused before he answered a question she had asked.

Another time, opening the fridge to get her aunt a glass of water. The sudden chill when she opened the fridge door on a day that was too hot; the blue cold, frost and it was Aberdeen where he was, his jacket and walking in grey against the direction of the wind. White seagulls and a pale sea, until her aunt behind her shouted, ‘What are you doing standing like an idiot with the door of the fridge wide open. Everything will melt.’

It was like that at first, the moment in the garden and the moment in front of the fridge, vivid, sudden. But the more she prayed for him, the more these moments came until they were there all the time, not only thoughts, not only memories but an awareness that stayed.

Waleed talked to her aunt and the moon was still unchallenged by the lights of the city below. Here was a gift for her, clearer than water, clearer than the sky…

Rae saying, ‘I dreamt of you, the same dream. I am climbing stairs, steep stone steps, stairways that are damp and narrow. At the top I open a door and you are there.’

‘Am I happy to see you?’

‘You are… very much. You give me a glass of milk to drink.’

‘Milk, how childish of me!’

‘But when I drink it something happens. It can only happen in a dream… Pearls come out of my mouth, they fall in my hand. I hold them out and show them to you.’

December. A cool wind blowing, carrying dust, and everyone’s skin was chapped. She thought, ‘I love this time of year,’ and looked out of the car window at the trees that lined Nile Avenue: thick trunks and behind them the gushing Blue Nile. She looked, she took off her sunglasses and looked until her heart hurt.

Nahla was driving. They had gone to the video shop and then Nahla had picked up her wedding cards from the printers. The cards were on Sammar’s lap, stiff white envelopes in packets.

‘Why are you quiet today?’ asked Nahla.

‘Just looking around. Do you think you will miss Khartoum when you go to Qatar?’ At the end of December Nahla was going to get married and go away, move to Doha where Yasmin was, with her daughter and Nazim. If she ever could afford it, Sammar would go and visit them both.

‘I don’t know,’ said Nahla. ‘Not at first, maybe later. Now we just want to get away, we’ve been delayed so much.’

‘Insha’ Allah everything will go alright this time.’

‘Sometimes I’m afraid,’ said Nahla, changing gears, ‘sometimes I think someone’s going to die either from my family or his. Some senile uncle or grandmother or aunt is going to drop dead any minute and ruin everything.’

Sammar laughed. ‘Just say insha’ Allah something like that won’t happen.’ There was a boat on the river, its sails beige and brown, there were farmers on the opposite bank, bent over with hoes. The sun hit the moving water and made its surface light, but underneath it was blue after blue.

Last December in another place, there was no sun. Christmas, and Rae was in Edinburgh with his ex-wife’s parents, presents wrapped up for Mhairi. Did he still do the same things? Drive around Scotland listening to Bob Marley, Ambush in the night, all guns aiming at me… Did he mark students’ essays, watch CNN and VH-1, read lots of books. Sometimes say, ‘I’m an old-fashioned socialist,’ sometimes say, ‘… behind the Western propaganda of Islamic fundamentalism’. A year in his world might be shorter than in hers, not so many changes. Here new laws were passed, prices went up, the old died easy and children grew and changed. Did he still use the same Ventolin inhaler? Did he teach his students that the difference between Western liberalism and Islam was that the centre of one was freedom and the other justice? She didn’t know what he was doing, this moment, this day but it didn’t matter, he was near like in the dream. A dream of night on the porch, no moonlight and she was a child playing, square tiles, hopscotch. Many people were on the porch, adults standing talking in the dark and he was one of them. She saw him and it did not surprise her that he was here in this continent, in this country, on her aunt’s porch. She was content to play, her hands on the wooden rails, skipping down the steps, the lines of the tiles. She lost sight of him and forgot him like children forget, her mind on the steps until he put his hand on her shoulder and when she looked up, he smiled and said, ‘Did you think I wouldn’t find you in the dark?’ She did not say anything, she became perfect and smooth like water from the garden hose.