Gravel Heart(64)

*

The three months of their permits went by and my mother and sisters did not return. I had received one letter from my mother soon after their safe arrival, giving me their post-office box number. She told me that my sisters were now in school and were content, as she was, with their new house and neighbours. My father was well and sent his blessing, and asked that I should come and be with them as soon as I felt able to. There were so many people they knew there, you’d be surprised, so you would be among friends and in safety. The letter was written by my younger sister Halima (whose name meant calm and forbearing, my father had told me years ago) because my mother could not write. It ended with her sending her love and saying how much she missed me: Your mother Mahfudha. Below that was a P.S.: So do we, signed by Sufia and Halima. I put the letter away in the wardrobe with the jewellery. Once the three months were past, their travel permits lapsed and they were no longer citizens. A new tense calm descended on me. I was now really on my own.

As my days grew calm and my life slipped by quietly, Saida came back more into it and the thought of her began to make me anxious again. Now when I caught sight of her she seemed more stunning than ever, but I could not just keep looking longingly at her. I had to do something, I had to be bold. I had to take fate in hand and make it mine. Luck played its part. I saw her standing in a queue at the Post Office and joined it, and casually fell into conversation with her. That took some doing, the audacity of it. After that I stopped to talk with her whenever I saw her, unless she was in a crowd of school friends. She asked me about my sister Sufia, who had attended the same school, and I said that the only news was that they had arrived safely and were now settled. I asked Saida about school, and she told me about an incident people were talking about when a man went to the school to accuse one of the male teachers of cheating on his wife, who happened to be the other man’s sister.

‘Can you imagine how embarrassing it was? He came right into the classroom,’ Saida said, her jaw dropping as she re-enacted her surprise. ‘The teacher just stood there looking shocked while the poor man ranted about dishonour and shame, and made ugly threats. He made such a fool of himself.’

‘Everyone knows that teacher has a reputation,’ I said.

‘Exactly, his sister should’ve known better,’ Saida said and I nodded, although I imagined that such knowledge always came too late.

One afternoon I saw her walking on her own and I dismounted my bicycle and walked with her for ten minutes until she reached her destination where we stopped to talk and grin at each other, ignoring the knowing looks people gave us as they passed. She could not have failed to see my devotion to her, but I thought I had to wait until she gave me more encouragement, a definite sign. Other people knew about us now and passed word between us. A sister of a friend said something to someone else, who passed it on until it reached me: she thinks you’re really nice, or vice versa that sort of thing. I still did not know if that was enough encouragement.

Saida was beautiful, she was famed for it. People pointed her out in the streets, and youths sometimes walked behind her, smirking their adoration. In those years, the rules of sexual decorum people had lived by for generations were set aside. The new owners of the government and its offices did so contemptuously, pursuing women they desired without fear of causing offence, or perhaps they did so with such indiscretion deliberately to cause offence, in the way that men look to humiliate their defeated rivals by treating their mothers and sisters and wives with disrespect. They boasted of their conquests and pillage among themselves, giving themselves farmyard names and guffawing at their outrageousness. For the women it was sometimes impossible to say no, because of the insistence of the men or because of the threat to their loved ones or the needs of the family, and because they understood their obligations. Some people thought it a curse when their daughters grew up prettier than expected. It was a time when a beautiful daughter was cause for anxiety. But not all the young women were coerced. For some of them, it was as if after turmoil and deprivation, they who had been under surveillance all their lives now relished this unanticipated liberty and participated in it without heed for what might lie ahead. Something went out of our lives in this abandon, some quality of reflection and tenderness and fellow feeling.

Saida would have been a target of predatory approaches both because of her beauty and her age. The approaches would have been gentle and indirect to begin with, and like most young women of her age she would have spurned them for the moment, would have refused the lift in a gleaming government car and ignored the invitation to have a coffee at a hotel. But she was now in the final year of school, preparing to graduate and to look for work or opportunities for further study, something that could be done more easily with the help of an influential father or lover. It was now that the approaches to young women like her became insistent, and cars parked outside at the end of school, waiting to pick up the lucky ones. By this time Saida was very aware of my admiration, and I guessed she preferred my lop-sided smile to anyone else’s but she did not know exactly what to do about it either.

Her school friends decided to have a party to celebrate their graduation. They asked for permission to use the school hall, so that parents would know that it was likely to be supervised in some fashion. Their parents and guardians allowed them to proceed with their plans if brothers and sisters were also invited, and the party was held in the afternoon so that everything took place in broad daylight. All these measures were intended to diminish the possibility of shame and disaster. A record player would be acquired from somewhere and people would bring their own or their parents’ records. They were also allowed to invite a few friends who were not members of the school – that is, boys. The next time she met me, Saida asked me to come as her guest.