Gravel Heart(60)
I was then nearly eighteen, in my last year at school, resisting my mother’s pleas for me to leave and join my father in Dubai. I had my home, I did not want to wander the world like a beggar without a country. That was what I said to my mother again and again: I will stay here and wait for life to return. And in a way I knew to be absurd, I did not want to leave because of Saida. This was a secret I kept to myself and mocked myself for, but I could not deny its reality. It caused me pain to think of her. It caused me pain to think how she would mock me if she knew. It caused me to whisper to myself that I had fallen in love with her. Does that sound ridiculous to you, hearing your white-haired father saying something like that about your mother? I missed her every day but had to restrain myself from searching the streets for her, for fear of being discovered and made fun of for my childish love. So I learnt to make the ache I felt for her a part of my life, an obsession I could live with at a tolerable intensity. I did not know what else to do.
When I finished school, my mother Mahfudha’s pleas for me to depart for Dubai became plaintive. She did not want to leave me behind. What would my father say – that she had abandoned their only son? And who would look after me if I fell ill? Who would cook for me? Had I thought of that? I would have to eat a filthy stew in a café every day and that was bound to make me sick in the end. She was right about the filthy stew in a café but she did not know that I would come to like it. Where would I turn to if I needed help? I would learn bad ways. Anything could happen to me in this dangerous world. What did I think I would find in this place? You can imagine the rest of it. I hated it when she spoke to me like that. Her voice changed pitch, her eyes looked pained and she made me feel selfish and cruel. When I tried to explain myself she raised her voice even louder, shaming me with her pleas and, in the end, her tears. Sometimes I thought she raised her voice on purpose, so that our neighbour Bi Maryam would hear her and add her voice to my mother’s, so that the whole world would know that I refused to leave.
My sisters, both younger than me, also pleaded with me to go. They wanted their beloved brother to come with them, it would not be the same without me. They would lose me if I stayed behind. I listened to them and shed tears with them and felt chastened, but I refused to leave. I tried to explain but did not know how to make them understand that I did not want to lose my freedom to be where I belonged, where I knew how to live. I would not have known that that was what I was clinging to by staying, and so would not have known the words to use. And even if I had known the words, my tongue was too thick to shape them so they would come out right. I would not have been able to say that I did not want to live under my father’s tyranny again, because my mother and my sisters would have found that hurtful. Nor could I say that I did not want to lose Saida before I had even spoken to her and discovered if she had any feelings for me.
When it was clear that I would not change my mind and agree to leave with them, my mother became angry with me and refused to speak directly to me for two days, and my sisters sulked and only spoke to me in wounded and sarcastic tones. But it could not last like that, and in the end we all became resigned to the way things had turned out and made peace with each other. I helped with their passports, queuing up day after day at the Immigration Office until I was granted an interview. The officer asked me questions addressed to my mother and sisters, and I answered for them as I was allowed to because I was a man. They were issued with temporary permits that would be valid for three months and could only be used to travel to Dubai and back. If they did not return while the permits were valid, they would not be able to travel at all and would have voluntarily forfeited their citizenship. I found it difficult to understand the point of this meanness, and it confirmed me even more in my decision to stay. I did not want to become a homeless wanderer in the world.
When the tickets came, my mother distributed what she could not take with her among her neighbours and acquaintances. The tickets were delivered by hand, passed from person to person from Dubai until they arrived at our house. Why? So that the authorities would not learn of our plans. There was so much vindictiveness in those days that you could just picture some official tearing those tickets up for no reason, or, if he had enough wit and know-how, selling them to someone else. My father also sent some money for me and that could only be sent by hand to trusted hand, otherwise it would never have arrived. My mother gave what was left of her dowry jewellery to me as a memento and for safe-keeping, four gold bracelets and a chain, because she was afraid the khabithi immigration officials would steal them from her when they searched her before boarding. It was illegal to take anything but the skin on your back and a few rags when travelling out of the country, just in case you were spiriting away the nation’s wealth. You can imagine the immigration officers performed that part of their duties with great thoroughness. Then, on the scheduled day, we all took the taxi to the airport, and I stayed there and watched until the plane disappeared, knowing that my mother and sisters were not coming back, not ever, and thinking that perhaps I would never see them again.
*
In the silence around us I could hear the night settling down. It must have been around ten, and the distant traffic noises had ceased, and the café TVs and radios had been turned off and most people except the tourists would be on their way home. Baba was quiet with his own thoughts for a while and then he looked enquiringly at me.
‘Is it getting late for you? Did you want to get back to the flat? We can continue tomorrow,’ he said. ‘The mosquitoes are bothering you, aren’t they?’