Leila Aboulela - The Kindness of Enemies

He asked me about McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. He had heard about them from his friends who travelled to Dubai or Cairo or KL. Sudan was under US sanctions and Mekki had never travelled abroad. ‘When you come and visit me, I’ll take you to all of these places,’ I promised and thought that my colleagues at the university would be amused at how American fast food could be a reason to visit Scotland.

Sometimes I irked him by being predictably adult. ‘Stop kicking the table.’ ‘No you can’t have another ice-cream.’ ‘Have you done your homework?’ Sometimes he unnerved me with his blunt questions. ‘How come you’re not married?’ ‘When are you leaving?’ or ‘Why does my mother hate you?’ These questions were tempered by his own frankness and gratuitous, though rare, confessions. A story of Safia’s quarrel with the gardener, how he once got caught cheating in the Arabic exam, how he lent money to his best friend, never got it back and they were now no longer friends. I liked it best when he spoke about our father. It brought about a slight fizz of envy for what seemed to have been their regular uncomplicated life.

Once, though, he spoke of him in reference to myself and the past. ‘He was angry for not keeping you in Khartoum.’ The structure of the sentence sounded as if he was repeating something his mother had said.

‘I was the one who wanted to leave. He shouldn’t have blamed himself.’ I would have said this to him in hospital if I had got here in time. Perhaps it would have made him feel better. He should not have felt guilty on my behalf. ‘I was sure I wanted to be with my mother. It would have been almost impossible for him to make me stay.’

‘Why?’ Mekki slurped the last of a chocolate milkshake.

‘Why what?’ I was thawed because almost everyone around me looked like me. I blended and the feeling was like warm, used bedsheets, lulling, almost boring.

‘Why didn’t you want to stay?’

‘I was afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

I breathed in. ‘Of never seeing my mother again.’ I was not sure if this was completely true, if this was the whole story. I remember her bribing me with the promise of a better school in Britain, brighter toys, bookshops. Sharpened pencils, a calculator, a microscope all to myself. I listened to her and believed her because of the alphabet letters on the wall of Tony’s house.

A movement caught Mekki’s eye and he turned around. Someone had tossed a heavy bag on a chair and it overturned. I was getting upset by his questions; a pressure was building in my chest. For the first time ever, I felt relieved that it was time to pay the bill and take him home. Then in the car, just as I was about to park, he said, ‘Teach me Russian. Starting from next time.’ What I had said earlier must have made an impression on him — the fact that my father and I always spoke together in Russian.

Yasha stayed away from the cafés and restaurants. His modus operandi was the takeaway, conforming to the Arab cliché that the obese were embarrassed to eat in public. I did not challenge him over this. Besides, my outings with Mekki sufficed. During the day when Grusha and Yasha were at work and I did not have access to a car, I worked on my papers. A number of times, I went by public transport to all the tourist locations — the museum, the camel market, the Mahdi’s tomb. These trips left me hot and strangely disappointed. Instead of enjoying what I judged to be well-kept secrets, jewels that the world had overlooked, I felt it unfair that the country remained behind an iron curtain, excluded from the interest of the global traveller.

‘Our government has a bad reputation,’ Yasha said. ‘All the world’s goodwill has now gone to the new South Sudan.’ He was working hard to protect the interests of the Southern Sudanese who had been living in the North all their lives. Overnight, they had been stripped of their Sudanese nationality and sent packing to the South. Those who could not afford the journey were stranded in limbo.

I liked listening to him rant about his work. This usually started as soon as he arrived home. I would be helping Grusha in the kitchen and he would walk in and stand near the fridge, his bulk filling up most of the space. It was a good thing that the maid left early, otherwise the four of us crowding the kitchen would have been impossible. Yasha would lean on the fridge, which made Grusha jittery as a kitchen chair had recently come crashing down under his weight and the fridge was more precious. He would start narrating his stories of the day — a new client he was defending, a case that got thrown out of court, a petition he was preparing. After dinner Grusha would go out to the veranda to have a cigarette while the two of us lingered at the table. Yasha would be saying something like, ‘It’s the principle that is at stake here,’ while I could see her chunky bare feet propped up on the patio’s low table, the glow of the cigarette in the dark. She reminded me of my mother.

He was positive about my appearance in court the next week, assuring me I had nothing to worry about. He sat with one hand over the chair next to him. The other one, which he had been eating with, hovered over the table unwashed. ‘Have you ever thought of moving back? Giving it a chance here?’

‘No I haven’t,’ I said. The stage was set for a romance. Every romantic attachment I had ever had ended, like my parents’ marriage, with rancour and bitterness. Only Yasha remained a friend.

After almost a month of trying, I finally heard from Malak. It turned out that she was not much of a writer; her emails, few and far between, were a couple of dashed lines or links (where I was merely copied among various recipients) to such things as headshot photographers she was recommending or obituaries of actors who had recently passed away. This time was a response to me telling her about Safia’s accusation.

Yes you are a Muslim — fight for it.

Don’t worry about Oz.

A day later I heard from him. He had changed his user name. Instead of SwordOfShamil, it was now Osama.Raja.

Hi Natasha,

I’m sorry I behaved poorly that day you came over. I wasn’t up to talking much and to tell you the truth, it was because what happened psyched me out. The cell felt as small as a cupboard and for the first two days there was always someone watching me and writing down what I did. Not that I could do much. I was afraid all the time. Even to stand up and pray, let alone ask which direction was the south-east. I couldn’t sleep and then after a few days of this, I started dreaming even though I wasn’t asleep. My mind played tricks on me. It was weird and disorienting. Then they started asking me questions and as I kept answering I felt that I was lying, even though I wasn’t. I kept thinking I must give them the right answer not the wrong answers when the simple truth was that I hadn’t done anything wrong. Now Malak keeps saying that ‘anything’ means anything suspicious, whatever got me into this trouble in the first place. She’s mad at me.

I didn’t go back to uni when the term started. I’m looking at moving — even changing my degree. Once I get started on filling application forms, I’ll put your name down as one of my referees if that’s okay with you?

Thanks for coming over that day. It made me remember that I liked your classes and your papers about Shamil. I’ve been reading them again. I started to think of myself as a student not a criminal.

Apparently I made the news. See …

I clicked on the link and found myself in a far-right website under the heading The Stain of Al-Qaeda has Reached Scotland. Even though he was not charged.