Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

‘Iain, I didn’t break her finger. I’m sure of it.’

‘I believe you and I’m sorry that you have to go through this. It might never come to a hearing though. I know the stress of waiting will be hard but don’t let this get to you. That last publication has put you in a strong position.’

At the mention of my paper on Shamil, I brightened up. Every seven years the university submitted its best work for the Research Assessment Exercise. My paper, ‘Royal Support for Jihad — Victorian Britain and the Russian Insurgents’, was my third to be published and I had another one ‘Jihad as Resistance’ pending publication in a journal that had previously included Iain’s work. They had asked for amendments and I was planning to work on the revisions over the holidays.

Iain went on, ‘I’ve heard good things about your talk last Monday. You’re doing well. I can tell you that for this cycle, you’re one of our few people with a strong hand.’

Despite the news about Gaynor and what had happened this morning, Iain’s last words gave me a sense of safety. ‘You’re one of the few with a strong hand’ played in the background of the afternoon. I could hear it even while I was teaching. It wrapped itself around me when I stood in the kitchen making coffee and chatting with Fiona Ingram. Fiona was the closest friend I had in the department, though her demanding husband and even more tiresome children barely left her room to socialise. We often had coffees together in the staff room or in our offices, like true workaholics. Whenever one of us was having a particularly difficult day, the other would mention the one or two lecturer friends in our separate circles who still couldn’t find a full-time job in academia. This morning Fiona was fretting that some students might not make it to the exams because of the snow-blocked roads. I wondered to myself whether Oz would be released on time.

Fiona had the same concern for all her students that I felt only for Oz. She was one of those well-meaning lecturers who could never get to grips with the irony that students were not why we were here. As a result her research was not up to scratch and now Iain would load her with more teaching hours. She did not mention my latest publication but I could tell that she knew about it. Envy gleamed through her mascara. It gave me more satisfaction than anything she could have said. It even cushioned the clunk of finding an email from Oz, which he had sent last night from his personal, not university, email address. His username was SwordOfShamil and the subject was ‘Weapons used for Jihad’.

Natasha, here’s what I’ve been working on. Thanks for agreeing to look at it. I listed my sources. Most of them were from the library but I downloaded the al-Qaeda training manual from the US Justice Department website and I didn’t even have to pay for it!

My email address, now added to the list of SwordOfShamil’s contacts, was bombarded with a stream of spam: Take the quiz: Muslims dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. True or False? Muslims killed 20 million Aborigines in Australia? True or False? Muslims started the First World War? The Second World War? Muslims killed 100 million Native Americans? True or False? Sick of the hypocrisy of the West? Angry that right now in Iraq and Afghanistan they’re killing your brothers and sisters? Then why aren’t you doing anything to stop it …

My flat was on the top floor and climbing up the stairs I realised how tired I was, in need of a bath, my own cooking, my own toiletries and clothes. The last two days were still bright in my mind. I wanted to go over them, to hear the conversations again. I wondered if I would be able to do so without Oz’s arrest burning out the details, rendering our time together as random and obsolete. I reached my landing at the very top floor and froze. It was as if my door was not my door. It was half-open and inside was chaos. A hole in the roof so that I was staring straight up into the dark attic, foot marks on the carpet, my television and DVD player gone, my iPod, even the microwave and the electric blanket. It was a robbery and they had broken in through the roof.

I banged on the door of my neighbour across the hall, but no one was in. I forced myself to walk through the damage, to fight back the tears. It made me queasy that someone had fingered my things, been through my possessions. It made me feel soiled. I called the police and, twice now in the same day, I was in their company, not the same armed officers but still their bulky presence, the hiss of their personal radios, the dark uniforms. How did the robbers get in the attic? How do you think they got on the roof to begin with? How come the neighbours didn’t notice? I wanted these answers but they were asking the questions. I started to feel nervous, the truth forcing itself out of my mouth as if it were made up on the spot. Too quickly, too easily; gently, politely they pushed me back into the old roles. On cue, my skin flared in their presence, it became more prominent than what I was saying; and I was now an impostor asking for attention, a troublesome guest taking up space. They had better things to do and worthier citizens to protect.

I rattled off my mobile number, knowing they would not be able to contact me through it, but unable to explain. Why tell them if they didn’t ask, that my phone was bagged and sealed in the possession of the counter-terrorism unit? I needed to focus. Situations like these required an extra effort, an assertiveness I usually brandished with acquired practice. But the day was catching up with me; I stammered and couldn’t meet their eyes. My mother’s accent crept into my voice, her fear of authority, her tendency to regard questions as interrogations. Growing up in the Soviet Union, state repression was as natural to her as the mountains; it was in every brush with bureaucracy, it was in the factories and offices and even the stairway of my grandparents’ block of flats. She would grip my shoulders as we stood in front of Tbilisi’s passport officials. She would lower her voice when she criticised anything or repeated gossip. My mother told me that a mental hospital could serve as a prison — one of her classmates, a dissident, had been punished with the vague diagnosis of ‘sluggish schizophrenia’. She explained to me that a career could come to an end if you held the wrong political views — early retirement, extended sick leaves and transfers to obscure posts were codes for falling out of favour. Looking around now at the mess of my belongings, my privacy exposed, I remembered my mother. Much more paranoid than me, she would have dealt with this better. ‘You are too trusting of authority,’ she used to say to me. But all my colleagues were trusting; my teachers and bosses were decent and fair. I missed my mother, she was my first home and now, until the roof was fixed, until the gas and water pipes were checked, I would be homeless.

‘You’re better off staying over with some friends,’ was the police verdict, a notebook being shut. ‘Call your insurers.’

The friend, from my PhD days, who would most likely offer me sympathy and help was over two hours away in Dumfries. It was the worst time of day to call Fiona. She would be putting the children to bed, exhausted from washing up after the evening meal. I packed a bag and checked into a hotel. I ordered room service but I was too hungry to wait. Instead I raided the mini bar, my body more responsive than usual after all those non-alcoholic evenings with Malak and Oz. The bottles felt small in my hand as if I were a giant, handling doll-sized utensils. The nuts were stale and the crisps not in my favourite flavour. From the next room I heard the sounds of television. I should put mine on too and catch the news. Instead what was obvious but felt like a brainwave had me moving to the telephone. I could get hold of Tony’s number through Directory Enquiries. He picked up immediately and the old-man tiredness in his voice lifted when he realised it was me.