A mother is a home, a hearth, a getting together. A wife is company and pleasurable details; expenditure and social contacts. Soraya’s father, Idris Abuzeid, the younger brother of Mahmoud, quickly reverted to being a bachelor again. He was the
agricultural expert, more comfortable in the countryside than in town. He was also responsible for the financial accounts of the family, a behind-the-scenes position that suited his reserved, untalkative personality. Unlike his flamboyant, visionary brother, Idris counted the pennies, knowing they would become pounds, which he valued not because of what they could purchase – he was austere by nature – but because the piling up, the stacking, the solidity of wealth, was in itself satisfying. He never allowed a tenant to get away with a late payment or a debtor to default. He disliked the English, not because they had invaded his country, but because of the effort required to understand their different language and customs. At the same time, he was in no hurry for them to leave, for he admired them, most of the time, not for the modernity they were establishing but for the business opportunities they brought with them. Prudent, some would say miserly, Idris calculated the cost of remarrying and decided to remain a widower. Sore? A little, like any man in his situation. Often lonely, too, but a good wife was expensive and, though he was a difficult, heavy-handed father, he did not want to saddle his daughters with half-brothers and half-sisters.
The result was a dry and hollow home, a house Soraya did not particularly like to spend time in. She became a nomad. At every family occasion: wedding, birth, illness or funeral she would pack up and move to where the company was. No Abuzeid family gathering was complete without her. She spent so much time at Halima’s teeming, noisy house that her children grew jealous.
Her eldest son once pushed Soraya and said, ‘You are not my sister. Get out of our house!’
Soraya did not cry. She pushed him back, strong in the knowledge that Halima would always take her side. Motherless child – but loved even more for it. A princess with glowing skin and beautiful features; that smile and liveliness which made her popular at school; the bubbling generosity that made her give time, energy and gifts to others. But no, she was not silly like
Fatma, who let them snatch her out of school and into the arms of the no-good Nassir, to be banished to Medani.
How I would have escaped marrying Nassir, had I been Fatma
, Soraya wrote in her diary, a present from her friend Nancy. She wrote in English, so that if anyone opened it they would not understand.
One. I would have insisted on finishing school and persuaded Sister Josephine to come home and speak to Father long before the engagement was made public and it was too late for him to back out.
Two. I would have refused to leave Father, Halima and the whole of Umdurman. I would have turned down Nassir on account of his work being so far away.
Three. I would have spoken to Nassir himself and told him I did not want him and challenged him that a gentleman would not marry a girl against her will. But is he a gentleman?
Four. I would have threatened to commit suicide.
Writing that last sentence conjured up anger and a deep sense of injustice. Number one and number two were her best option. Sister Josephine before, not after, an engagement announcement. But would she, on her own, have thought of Sister Josephine?
Sister Josephine, now in her late forties, lean and energetic, was formidable in her white habit, white clothes and black flat shoes. Wisps of auburn hair sometimes drifted from her habit, blowing away the rumour that all nuns were bald. When she had unexpectedly visited their house, Halima did not know where to seat her. A European woman requesting to meet their father? Should she be seated in the women’s quarters or in the men’s salon? Halima decided to treat her like an honorary man and that was the right thing to do, as everyone confirmed later.
Sister Josephine did not smile at Idris, but she had a soft spot for Muslim girls with rich fathers. Fatma and Soraya were easy to teach, and the generous donations made by the Abuzeid family to the school were essential for the nuns to pursue their mission of providing free education to the poorest of the Catholic community. On learning that Fatma had been pulled out of school to get married, Sister Josephine had taken the Bishop’s
Ford Anglia and crossed the bridge to Umdurman. Despite the dramatic nature of that visit – she rarely left the convent and school grounds, and it was not easy to get the Bishop’s car at such short notice – she was unable to save her student. Yet her strident, pleading voice, her protest, her confidence that she was right (which increased Fatma’s misery) left a deep mark on Halima, Soraya and the other young girls in the neighbourhood. Halima, who had never been to school at all, vowed that her daughters would continue. Even Idris, ruffled and flattered by this visit, reluctantly and solemnly promised that Fatma would be the last girl in the Abuzeid family to drop out of school and get married. Soraya could safely, and with relish, complete her school education. She could, every day except Friday and Sunday, wear her beloved uniform, which suited her so well. She could write and make her handwriting beautiful, and she could look down to look at her book, and up to look at the board.
Although biology and chemistry were her favourite subjects, Soraya loved reading romantic novels in which the heroine was beautiful and high-spirited. She relished drama and action. Halima thought it insular to shut off the world and read.
‘It’s as if you are telling people you don’t want to chat to them,’ she said.
Idris shouted at her the day he saw her bent over his newspaper. He snatched it out of her hands, because newspapers were written for men. Her late mother had never read the newspaper; she was illiterate. Halima, who could read a little, never did and Fatma’s favourite subject at school had been maths. But for Soraya, words on a page were seductive, free, inviting everyone, without distinction. She could not help it when she found words written down, taking them in, following them as if they were moving and she was in a trance, tagging along. A book was something to hide, the thick enchantment of it, the shame, almost. When everyone was asleep, she would creep indoors, into stifling, badly lit rooms, with cockroaches clicking, to open a book at a page she had marked and step into its pulsating pool of words.
Books were scarce and precious. Nur lent her books, English novels he bought from Alexandria and Cairo. He would talk about a book for so long that she would know the whole story before even starting to read it. She had never read an English novel that he hadn’t previously read. He was her introduction, and it delighted her that he always remembered her. True, she could not read Shakespeare like him, for he went to the prestigious Victoria College in Alexandria, and in Sisters’ School the Italian nuns did not teach Shakespeare, yet he would narrate to her all the plays, his enthusiasm infectious and appealing. Arabic novels were not much easier to get hold of. The colourful covers with heavy-featured, buxom women were enough provocation for the nuns, so that a great deal of stealth was needed to pass a novel from one girl to another. Soraya relished the times she visited Uncle Mahmoud’s second wife, Nabilah, because of the shelf of books in her living room.
An Egyptian city lady, Nabilah was everything that Soraya considered modern. Nabilah’s elegant clothes were modelled on the latest European fashions, and the way she held herself was like a cinema star, with her sweeping hair and formal manners. Soraya cherished childhood memories of Nabilah and Mahmoud’s wedding in Cairo, the first and only white wedding she had ever attended. Whenever she visited Nabilah, she would pour over the wedding album or stare at the framed wedding photographs hanging on the wall. When the time came for her and Nur to get married, they would have the first white wedding evening Umdurman had ever seen. This was her dream, and it came alive and thickened in Nabilah’s rooms, which were filled with flowers and ornaments, a gramophone and, even more delicious, books and magazines.
Once, Soraya had entered Nabilah’s sitting room to find her walking straight and slow, with a big book balanced on the top of the head. Startled by Soraya’s presence, the book fell with a thud on the floor and Nabilah refused to explain why she had been doing such an odd thing, even though Soraya asked her. Another
time, she had walked in to find her reading to her daughter, both their heads bowed over a children’s book. A surge of jealousy filled Soraya, flushing through her like fever. It was a sight she had never seen before, remarkably foreign and modern, something she wanted there and then with a deep, sick hunger.
The motherless child wanted Nabilah to befriend her and patronise her like everyone else did. Instead, that second wife, that other woman, was aloof and unwelcoming. Soraya, to some extent proud and sensitive, could be thick-skinned when it suited her.
‘Can I take this novel?’ she would ask, already drawing it to her chest.
Nabilah would pause and a blush would touch her cheeks, but before she could reply, Soraya would be heading to the door, pretending that permission had been granted. She would clutch the precious, lovely work and dart through the door.
A month ago, during chemistry, which Sister Josephine taught, Soraya’s eyes had looked at the board and seen a blur of white chalk. Straining made her eyes water, and by the end of the lesson she was sniffing into a handkerchief.
‘Maybe you need spectacles,’ Sister Josephine said casually, even though only two girls in the whole school wore spectacles and they were both ugly. ‘Ask your father to take you to the doctor for an examination.’
‘I don’t want to wear spectacles, Sister.’
‘Your eyesight will get worse and worse and then you will not be able to read at all!’
This alarmed Soraya. She brooded on the matter, squinted and tested her vision on faraway objects. She developed a fear of blindness. ‘
Ask your father to take you to the doctor for an examination
.’ But her father did not talk to her; most of the time he did not look at her, and to ask him for something, anything was preposterous. She asked Halima instead, but Halima trivialised the issue.
‘Spectacles will make you look ugly. It’s all that reading that’s bad for your eyes.’
Soraya nagged like only she knew how to nag, confident that Halima would give in as she always did, and so Halima asked Idris for permission but he said no. No going to a doctor for an eyesight examination, no girl of mine will wear spectacles like a man.
‘So hush about it . . .’ Halima patted Soraya’s back when she cried ‘. . . or else he will rise up against school itself and keep you at home. Hush now.’
The stars above were blurred and milky, but not Nur’s face. He sat next to her on the steps of the veranda, so that she was in the middle, with Fatma on her right. It was nice to sit like that, surrounded and held by people she loved, the two who were away most of the time. She knew what it felt like to miss them, had bright, clear memories of the childhood they shared and was confident that one day they would return to Umdurman. Eventually, Nur would finish his studies and return to join the family business. Eventually, Uncle Mahmoud would give up on Nassir’s agricultural efforts and recall him to Umdurman.
‘I have so much to tell you about the poetry reading last night,’ said Nur. ‘It was so crowded that they ran out of chairs and made us younger ones sit on the grass!’
‘You are wandering off while your father is ill,’ scolded Fatma, ‘and I am the one being criticised for arriving late from Medani.’
‘Aunty Waheeba gave her a few words,’ Soraya explained to Nur.
Fatma mimicked her mother-in-law’s voice, ‘Did you and your man come from Medani on foot?’
Nur laughed. ‘She is occupied these days with all the people coming and going. It would have been worse if she had all the time for you!’
Fatma made a face at him and then became serious. ‘How is Uncle Mahmoud this evening?’
‘He’s fine, almost his normal self. I am expecting him any minute to tell me that I should not delay my travel any longer
and that I should set off for school. The autumn term has already started.’
Soraya tried to keep the disappointment to herself. Of course she wanted her uncle to get better, but it meant Nur would leave. It was nice that he had been delayed and it was exciting, too, that Fatma had come unplanned. Normal, day-to-day life could sometimes be boring and empty. She preferred the warmth of people around her, their voices and chatter.
‘Tell us about the poetry reading.’
She smiled at Nur. How many times had he told her about discussion forums, poetry recitals and political lectures? He was her link to the outside world, that world that was not for girls.
‘Abdallah Muhammad Zein read his new poem. It is the strongest of his work and the most melodious. I copied it down and memorised it last night. I couldn’t sleep because his words were in my head. It’s the time we’re living in; everyone talking about self-determination and independence and then a poet says it in another way. Listen.
I am Umdurman
.’
‘Who is Umdurman?’ laughed Fatma.
‘Shush and listen.’ Soraya understood who Umdurman was.
‘
I am Umdurman. I am the pearl that adorns my land. I am the one who nurtured you, and for you, my son, will ransom myself. I am Umdurman, the Nile watered me and sought my side. I am the one on the western bank and Gordon’s head was my dowry. I am Umdurman, I am this nation. I am your tongue and your oasis
…’
The three of them were stirred by the patriotic sentiments that the poem aroused. Even though the ties of the family to Egypt were strong and, politically, Uncle Mahmoud supported the union with Egypt, the younger generation carried a strong sense of their Sudanese belonging. Their glittering future was here, here in this southern land where the potential was as huge and as mysterious as the darkness of its nights.
‘It’s a beautiful poem,’ Soraya said.
She wanted to cry because Nur had heard the words from the poet’s mouth and she hadn’t, and because exciting, transforming
things would happen and she would only hear about them and not be part of them, she who wanted to be at the centre of everything.