Leila Aboulela - The Translator

In the Winter Gardens, Sammar started to laugh. ‘I always laugh,’ she said, ‘when people fall down, I can’t help myself.’ And Rae laughed and said, ‘Not a very refined sense of humour.’

She said, ‘No, not very,’ and went on. ‘His father had to take him to Germany for an operation — the doctors had to put metal pins in his calf. The day they came back, the house was full of people and all the lights were on. From Germany, they brought with them boxes and boxes of lovely chocolates. Mahasen saved them for the important guests and everyone else got Mackintosh toffees, a tin that was past its sell-by date. They sold them like that, imported at the Duty Free Shop, the chocolates ashy-grey, the toffees stuck to their wrapping.

‘Tarig came back different, like he was suddenly older, even though he had been away only for a month. His leg was in plaster and he had crutches which Hanan and I took turns to hop with around the house. I wrote my name in Arabic and in English on the white plaster.’

It had been easy to talk when they were young. Things changed when they outgrew sparklers and bikes. Or even, she sometimes thought, things changed from the time he broke his leg. If Hanan was with them they could talk, the three of them, about films they had seen or who Tarig had met in the petrol queue. But if Hanan left them alone, to make Tang or answer the telephone there would be an awkward silence between them. Silly talk, while they heard her stir the orange powder in the glasses, bang the ice tray in the kitchen sink. ‘How are you?’ ‘I’m fine, how are you?’ When his sister came back they would look guilty as if they had done something wrong.

Shyness pestered them for years. It was scratchy like wool. It made them want Hanan to be with them so they could talk and wanted her away from them so they could be alone. Tarig sent her notes at school with his best friend’s sister, overriding Hanan, although she was in the same class. The treachery dazzled more than the words he wrote. Flimsy papers that weighed in her hand like rocks. She tore them and scattered the tiny pieces in different places, afraid that someone would find them. She liked to talk to him on the phone, it was safe on the phone. On the phone, they swapped recurrent nightmares and happy dreams. He said, ‘I want to tell you something but I’m too shy.’

She imagined that what she wanted from life was simple, nothing grand, just to continue and live in the same place, be another Mahasen when she grew up. Have babies, get fat, sit with one leg crossed over the other and complain to life-long friends about the horrific rise in prices, the hours Tarig had to spend at the clinic. But continuity, it seemed, was in itself ambitious. Tarig was plucked from this world without warning, without being ill, like a little facial hair is pulled out by tweezers.

‘You must tell me about this,’ she said to Rae, holding up her folder. ‘Are all the rumours about you true?’

‘What rumours?’

‘You and the terrorists or is it all top secret?’

He laughed and put his finger on the blue folder. ‘You tell me first what you thought of it.’

‘It’s sad,’ she said.

‘Sad?’

‘There is something pathetic about the spelling mistakes, the stains on the paper, in spite of the bravado. There are truths but they are detached, not tied to reality…’

‘They are all like that.’

‘You get a sense of people overwhelmed,’ she went on, ‘overwhelmed by thinking that nothing should be what it is now.’

‘They are shooting themselves in the foot. There is no recourse in the Sharia for what they’re doing, however much they try and justify themselves.’

‘When are you going to meet them?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get the job, they took someone else, someone with more palatable views, no doubt.’

‘I am sorry about that.’ She wished she had not joked about it before.

‘I am sorry too. A winter in Egypt seemed to me like a good idea.’ He looked at the windows. Beyond the Winter Gardens, Sammar saw a world dim with inevitable rain, metallic blue, dull green. Lawns empty of people, covered with dead leaves.

‘But really it would have been good for the department. We have to prove ourselves useful to industry or the government to keep the funding coming in.’

She looked at the slabs on the ground, hexagonals by lines of pebbles. Tidy, rubbish free. Was it Tarig who always shaped designs in the dust with his feet? Or was it she? Shifted twigs, dented bottle tops, kicked around a pebble that stood out from among the rest because of its striking shape, its different colour. And to avoid Tarig’s eyes, she had pulled little oblong leaves from their stems, tied the stems in knot after knot. Rolled the petals of jasmines between her fingers till they became pulp.

‘I was thinking of you.’ Rae said. ‘This is why I wanted you to translate this. They need a translator. I would be happy to recommend you. It would be a short contract, no more than a month. Then maybe from Cairo you could go home to Khartoum for a visit. How far is it from Cairo?’

‘Two and a half hours by plane.’ She looked at him warily, there was now a distance between them, a new coolness. ‘You imagine that I can interview terrorists?’ Her voice sounded a little sarcastic, grudging.

‘The place will be swarming with security. You needn’t worry about that. Anyway, a lot of them would not have taken part in terrorist activities. And you’re translating, not interviewing, someone else will be asking the questions. I think you’ll do fine.

‘These anti-terrorist programmes,’ he said, ‘I see them as part of a hype to cover up the real problems of unemployment and inefficient government. I’ve spoken to members of these extremist groups before and you will see that if you speak to them, they have no realistic policies, no clear idea of how to implement what they vaguely call “Islamic economics”, or an “Islamic” state. They are protest movements, and they do have plenty to protest about. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the mediocrity of the ruling party which has no mass support and which are in the main client states to the West. These groups appeal to people’s anger, anger against class divisions, but do people really believe them to be a viable alternative? I don’t think so.

‘I’ll get off my soap-box now,’ he said and laughed. His laugh turned into a cough. ‘I’m sorry to go on about this. Consider it though. I think it would be a good chance for you to go home, see your family.’

‘I’m afraid.’

But he did not understand. ‘It’s natural to be afraid of a new job.’

When she did not answer, he said, ‘There are other rooms in these gardens, do you want to see them?’

They walked away from the cacti through greenery, among tropical plants with large leaves, pink flowers. Miniature waterfalls and streams where little girls teased the swimming fish. And all around them the sound of the birds and running water. Water rushing in the pipes that ran along the ceiling to keep the air humid or was it already pouring with rain outside?

In the farthest corner, in a stagnant pond, near the toilets and the fire exit, a comical mechanised frog rose and fell. It broke the surface of the scum and rose, jaws wide open, to spit out the water it existed in. Down again it sank, heaved, only to obey and rise again. The boy with the jacket around his waist was there, kneeling by the side of the pond. He had a friend with him and they appeared to be greatly amused by the frog. The boy pulled a piece of gum out of his mouth, long and silvery, he made a loop of it and put the other end into his mouth. It dangled long, nearly touching the ground where he knelt. The actions that make mothers scold, ‘Put that gum back in your mouth. Don’t play with it.’ She had said to Mahasen, ‘I want to get married again, I need a focus in my life,’ and her aunt’s reply was, Your son is your focus. But she had left him behind, come here and her focus became the hospital room, watching from the window people doing what she couldn’t do. Four years’ convalescing. If she went home now, she would bring Amir back with her, if he would agree to come. She would not escape from him again.