Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

Malak, sipping her green tea, said, ‘I should wake up Ossie so that you’re not delayed. It would be better for him to get a lift from you in case the buses are still disrupted. And it would be good for you to have company in case your tyres get stuck in the snow.’ Her face was still puffy with sleep, gentle without make-up.

I assured her that I was not in a great hurry. I stood up to make myself another mug of coffee and to wash my cereal bowl in the sink. In the first orange rays from the rising sun I saw the car approaching. So for sure the roads were clear enough. No more doubts, no more procrastinations. I could leave, I should leave. The car came closer, but later I realised there must have been another car, one that was already parked out of sight of the house. My telephone buzzed. It was a message from Tony. Need to talk to you. Bad news from Khartoum.

I looked up and through the window saw two policemen. Before I could tell Malak, they rang the bell. She went to answer it and then everything happened very fast.

One of them speaks and says the other name instead of Oz. His voice is loud, says they have a warrant for his arrest. Malak asks why and the answer starts with ‘t’, ends with a suffix and she draws in her breath. I am glued to the kitchen floor, mobile phone in my hand, open at Tony’s message. They are everywhere now, lots of them, not two, with their shoes clomping, but Malak doesn’t say take your shoes off. They leap up the stairs, I catch a blur of dark uniform. Footsteps above me. Malak is calling Oz. This makes them angry. They think she is warning him off and two of them run, banging the bedroom door open. I hear him say, ‘What the fuck!’ I hear a scuffle but then Malak’s voice, telling him to be calm, to best do as he’s told. I walk to the landing but one of them is holding the sword in his hand, the sitting room is in disarray, one of them comes up to me, his large face looms close. He carries two laptops — mine and Oz’s. The white one is mine, I say but he takes my mobile too. His voice is loud but he just wants my name and my address. I tell him why I am here, but still my laptop gets carried into their car. They clamber down the stairs, Oz in handcuffs, Malak following. Oz is wearing his coat over his pyjamas. His lips are dry and his eyes, his body, the tilt of his head, are rigid with anger; anger a crust pressing down fear. Before they prod him out of the house, he looks at me and I have nothing to say.

Because the front door had been open all the time the police were here, the house was freezing. Blasts of air swept through; there was sludge on the carpet. I closed the door, I locked it too. I started to tidy up. I was shivering and my fingers were numb. Malak sat on the bottom step hugging her knees. ‘It’s a mistake,’ she repeated. ‘They’ve mixed him up with someone else, I’m sure.’

I reassured her as best I could. I picked up her shawl, which had fallen on the ground, and tucked it round her shoulders. I could not bear the chaos surrounding us, the way the house had been violated. I started to tidy up, putting everything back in its place. I pulled the vacuum cleaner from the store cupboard. I mopped up the shoe stains on the kitchen floor. I wanted everything to look and smell and feel like it had before they came.

I walked past Malak, who seemed to be glued to the stairs, and carried the vacuum cleaner up. Oz’s room was in complete disarray. Every drawer had been turned out, every poster pulled down from the wall, files and books scattered, clothes on the floor. I folded his clothes and put them back in the cupboard and drawers. Unable to stick the posters back on the wall, I rolled them up — one black and white image of the Kaaba during a freak deluge, pilgrims swimming around the cube instead of walking, two Spider-man posters, one of X-Men Die by the Sword 5. As I worked, the room lit up with the morning sun; it felt warmer than anywhere else. It had really happened, they had taken him away and the magnitude of the charge against him was pitch-dark and shameful. What have you done, you stupid, stupid boy? I could no longer move, I slumped on the bed, willing myself to calm down, to be rational. What have you done …

I stretched out on the bed, the sun coming straight at me through the window. I could smell him on the pillow, I could see him putting the kettle on in the kitchen and I could hear him call his mother by her name and I tried to push away the fear, to ignore his last look. I must forget their clomping shoes, their big faces and the invasion that had happened. Soon, I would wipe away all traces of them, vacuum the fluff that had fallen from their uniforms and the shedding of their skins, open the windows and flush out the smell of them. I closed my eyes from the bright sun, I saw blotches of colours, my fingers pressed down on the duvet. There was no sound from downstairs, the peace of shock. My body started to feel heavy, my stomach relaxed enough to start digesting my breakfast, my bladder to start filling up. I dozed and I was standing on one of the peaks of the Caucasus, balancing on the edge of a ledge. From the top of my head all the way down in one straight swoop, I split in two, half-human and half-reptile. In the logic of dreams it made sense that my left side was human because that was where my heart was. In the logic of dreams I was not embarrassed that I was naked, nor that a part of me was inhuman. With my left hand I ran my fingers over a pattern of scales on my right shoulder, ridges of shell, leathery grooves. In the logic of dreams what perplexed me the most was that I had split vertically rather than horizontally. It was natural to be like a centaur or a sphinx; it was usual to have a full human head. But I had failed; I had morphed into something completely different. A man was coming behind me and I was reluctant to turn around. Below me was a sheer drop into rocks and burning forests. I lost my balance and jerked awake.

I sat up and remembered Tony’s message. I fished in my pocket for my mobile and realised that it was going to be a real nuisance not to have it. I could not remember Tony’s number off the top of my head. This was the result of years just pressing a button, instead of dialling. Of course there were other ways of getting hold of it and most likely I had scribbled it down in an old Filofax. But I wanted to hear that news from Khartoum. And how exactly had it reached Tony? Maybe Grusha, my mother’s friend, had called him. The news would be about my father — who else? I put the vacuum cleaner on and tried to remember Tony’s home number, the number I used to call Mum on all these years. 01224 was the code but the number itself was muddled.

When I went downstairs, Malak was locked in the same spot, her knees bunched up, her face expressionless. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded strange. An accent had crept in. Shock did that to people, it hurtled them back to their mother tongue. ‘They took the sword,’ she said.

‘They took every CD you have. They took my mobile phone and my laptop.’

‘I am sorry, Natasha. I hope you will get your things back soon.’

Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to speak to her like I had never spoken to anyone before. Instead I said, ‘I have to go.’

‘Can’t you stay a little longer?’ she whispered. She looked pathetic huddled in her shawl. She stood up and for the smallest fraction of a second, lost her balance and then regained it again. That wobble added years to her age, a slip-up as if she had been acting all the time, playing the role of a London actor, a glamorous woman of the world and now this was her real self. One of those who don’t matter, who shuffle down the street, reeking of failure if not trouble, suspect and unwanted. One of those people I never wanted to be seen with. She said, ‘Let’s make a pot of tea, shall we?’