Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

A few of the men swayed from side to side. Most had their eyes closed. The rhythm of the chant was brisk; it rose, quickened and came to a faltering stop. Then the sheikh led with another phrase. I did not join in but I closed my eyes. My mind wandered to how unfit I was, inflexible. I should care more about my weight, my health in general. I had always been overweight and sedentary. My mother was a child gymnast and when she was older she enjoyed sports and cared about fitness. I ate to spite her, to distinguish myself, and then it became a habit. Peace and blessings on the Prophet Muhammad. I could walk out now if I wanted to. Out to the bitter cold. My breathing was slowing down. Perhaps I could try yoga. It could be my New Year’s resolution.

I felt heavy on the ground. Like I weighed a ton and I was taking up too much space. This enlargement was subtle and painless. It did not embarrass me. And I could see now that there was too much distance between myself and the outskirts of myself, between my core and the edges. Too much distance to travel on my own. Not much fuel either, no elan. Where did I learn this word from? It was not Russian, but in Russian the same concept existed. With due respect, I would disagree with what I had just heard, though this forum hardly encouraged discussion. Hey Sheikh-Architect, over here, let me tell you that without my mind I do not exist. It is the only part of me I am proud of. It is me.

A curry was served at the end of the zikr, followed by tea. Malak moved closer to me. Paper cups, mint leaves in the boiling water. Moroccan tea, someone said.

I couldn’t help with picking up the empty plates, scrunching up the plastic sheet that had served as a tablecloth. I stood apart, waiting and watching. Malak looked as if a load had been lifted from her shoulders. The darkness under her eyes was gone. I was the one sluggish, drugged.

She was smiling when she led me out of the room. My legs were sore and stiff, I almost stumbled down the stairs. She held my arm and spoke to me gently. ‘We’ll take a taxi. I’ll drop you off. Your hotel is on my way.’ She was staying with friends in Hampstead.

I dozed in the taxi. The streets were wet with rain, the taxi sped through the night. Malak was humming a refrain from the zikr, something that had a tune, words I couldn’t understand. She was petite but she was spiritually strong.

The feeling of heaviness and enlargement followed me to the hotel. I fell into the darkest layers of sleep. It must be because I had inhaled too deeply from the opium of the people. When I woke up in the morning for a split second I did not know where I was. My mobile was ringing. It was Grusha from Sudan, but instead of news about my visa which she had promised to expedite, she spoke softly. ‘I am at the hospital with your father. Here, he wants to speak to you.’

I sat up in bed. ‘Papa,’ I said, ‘I will be with you in a few days’ time.’ I had not spoken to him for nine years. ‘How are you feeling now?’ I stood up and pulled open the curtains. A remnant of yesterday’s heaviness was still in my arms.

‘Natasha,’ he grunted and then a couple of sentences in Arabic.

‘In Russian,’ I said. ‘I’ve forgotten my Arabic.’

He needed time to make the adjustment. I could hear Grusha in the background helping him. He spoke slowly. ‘You have no business staying on in Britain without your mother. Leave that foreign man and come home.’

I was amused at Tony being the ‘foreign man’ and my father forgetting that I had grown up.

‘Papa, I don’t live with Tony. I have my own flat. I have a full-time job and two cars. I’m thirty-five years old.’

‘I made a mistake,’ he said, as if I hadn’t been listening. ‘I should not have let you go. I should have kept you here with me. And now I want to set it right. I want my daughter back with me where she belongs. Come over here and I will look after you.’ He was upset. Ill, in pain and getting himself more upset. ‘People make mistakes. I made a mistake. You don’t know how I felt. Your mother blackened my name, she turned me into a laughing stock. That’s why I let you go. It was wrong and that’s why we need to set this right.’

I felt sorry for him. I said, ‘I will come to Khartoum and spend time with you. I am hoping to come in the next few days. But I will have to return. My work is here.’

‘Resign. There are jobs here.’

‘I can’t do that. I’m settled here.’

This made him more agitated. His voice was louder. ‘I’m telling you it’s a mistake. The biggest mistake. You see because you were her daughter. I couldn’t stand even looking at you. That was when I made the wrong decision. Take her, I said. She can go to hell, I said. That is the mistake that needs to be put right. Don’t tell me you have to go back. I am your father and I am ordering you …’

Anger surged through me. I did not trust myself to speak. Instead, I threw the telephone across the room. It skidded onto the carpet and the back broke off. All that hard work, all that sucking up, jumping through hoops then proving myself again, all that I had achieved and he called it a mistake.

I picked up my mum’s laptop and opened it onto my Staff Profile page at the university. The best photo of myself and next to it who I was. Dr Natasha Wilson, lecturer in history. Next to the photo was my office phone number and my email address. Click to see my profile, click to see my research interests and the research grants I had been awarded. Click to see the modules I taught and a list of my publications.

My body was buzzing. Patches of red floated before my eyes. To calm myself, I should work on the revisions to my paper now. Never mind breakfast, never mind that I could hear Housekeeping up and down the corridor and they would be wanting to clean my room next. I opened the document and began to write.

When in January 1854 Britain and France allied themselves with the Ottomans in the Crimea, Shamil’s prospects were strengthened. He had been actively rousing the Muslim minorities in Georgia and Circassia to join the jihad. An Allied advance into the Caucasus would have driven the Russians out of Georgia and the eastern Caucasus. Instead the Allies concentrated on the Black Sea and when Russia lost Sevastopol it turned to the Caucasus and concentrated all its military might on the Muslim insurgents. For only a brief period a large-scale and arguably successful Muslim-led uprising against imperial Russia was a credible possibility.

In the library of the District Commission, Jamaleldin sat flipping through an encyclopaedia. A painting of a crab held his attention. This particular crab was found in cold waters and due to its size and taste was suitable for eating. It was not an attractive animal, asymmetrical and spiky with too much resemblance to a scorpion. Crabs walked sideways and backwards. This irritated Jamaleldin. No living thing should walk backwards. It was unnatural and gloomy.

Ever since the meeting with Younis and Mikhail, he had felt himself weakening. It was not because his father’s men had repelled him — they should have after the distance he had covered, what he had learnt and become. Instead the highlanders promised to drag him down to their level. Threatened him with love and the gravity his father exerted. Without his Russian army uniform, without the tsar’s language on his tongue, was he any different from them? They would pull him in and then take him for granted. He would slip and become uncouth like them, leaping over boulders, sitting on the ground to eat, wrapping his head in a turban. He would become wild like them and they were wild not because he remembered them as such but because Russia and Europe said they were. The mountain spirit was in him, it had always been in him but it had been latent all these years, held down by newness and duty. All it needed was a stir and it would thicken. Like a crab, he was edging backwards to them.