Authors: Selma Dabbagh
. . . she’s a dancer, doesn’t have any fat on her . . .
. . . I told him about the Viagra . . .
. . . her mother sang at the Sydney Opera . . .
. . . it’s a mini form of typhoid . . .
To get more of their lives, Iman followed strangers, fascinated by the directions that the mind’s interests took when no longer consumed by fear. But then her world caught up with her and she could not do it any more.
The news became so terrible: an onslaught on a West Bank town, rumours of a massacre, of mass graves, and yet the chatter did not ease up for a second, there was no pause. The humanitarian organisations were being refused entry. The dead were rotting in the streets.
. . . it was bliss, it really was. Sailing on Thursday? . . .
. . . no one’s going to go near you when you’re breastfeeding . . .
. . . she does it to wind me up, every morning . . .
Food could not get into the town and the water was dirty; medical professionals spoke of the spread of cholera and typhoid.
. . . if I were single and could still get it up . . .
. . . he has the same land but better money . . .
The UN monitors still were not allowed to enter. The numbers of dead flew between the tens to the thousands. Day after day the town was pounded by missiles, hit by tank shells, mowed down by bulldozers.
. . . are you taking your camera on holiday? . . .
. . . you are always in my heart . . .
. . . the most amazing curtains . . .
The chatterers that filled the streets became complicit with each missile that blasted the town, each sheet-wrapped body thrown into a mass grave, each child screaming outside a demolished home. As soon as Iman had the satellite wired up to bring sympathetic commentators to her, she no longer felt any desire to be out there, in streets delirious with inanities.
Rashid found Iman in the same position that he had left her five days before, curled into a ball of blanket watching the news. The coverage was in English now: ‘
The Israeli forces are engaged in a firefight with armed Palestinian militants . . .’
‘How? How, you son of a bitch, when we have rifles and you have F16 fighter jets, how do we
engage
them exactly?’
Iman was surrounded by screwed-up tissues. Rashid moved some cushions to sit next to her. The screen showed night footage, spitting lines of gunfire shot into buildings so continuously that it looked like the town was being pinned down with needles. Then the pile of a town burst into smoke and fire in three places. Iman jumped.
‘It feels worse to watch this being here. Seeing these people just walking around without a care.’
‘I know, Iman. I know,’ Rashid assured his sister, who was on the verge of tears, or had just come out of them. He couldn’t tell.
‘Like my pointless flatmate. Not a clue. Forget the Middle East, she doesn’t even care about the politics in her own country.’
Isn’t that how it’s meant to be? Not to care about politics?
Rashid thought, but decided against saying anything as the commentator had started again,
‘. . . the Israeli Prime Minister is sticking to his promise of tough retribution, saying only last month, “The Palestinians must be hit and it must be very painful. We must cause them losses, so that they feel the heavy price.”’
‘When did you last leave the house?’ Rashid asked.
‘I went to the shop for some bread.’
‘The shop doesn’t count. It’s just downstairs. When did you go anywhere other than the shop?’
‘A week or so ago,’ Iman replied vaguely.
‘Exactly when?’
‘That party you took me to.’
‘That was weeks ago.’ Rashid took the cushion that Iman was holding to her stomach and pulled the rug wrapped around her legs away before he got up to turn off the television. ‘I know it’s horrific but you can’t just stay here just watching this all the time. You’ve gone yellow. Have you even eaten?’ Iman nodded her head at a plate on the table with some crusts left on it. ‘I’m taking you out with me.’
‘Go out where? I can’t go out. Neither can you. It’s the demonstration this afternoon. Khalil’s coming down from Leeds, remember?’
‘Of course I remember. But this isn’t going to take long. We have to go – there’s a document at the Public Records Office. The file that Sabri is insisting that we get for him is back from their reviewers.’
‘The file that was locked away for years and years?’ Iman asked, sitting up.
‘Thirty years. Yes, that one.’
‘It’s about Mama. It’s to do with the photographs. She was in the Front. The file’s about her. She must have done something that interested the Brits.’
Rashid seemed to be refusing to get the significance of the photograph of their mother. Her excitement to show the picture to him had dispersed when he had blithely looked at her and said, ‘It just means that she was in a training camp or something for a while, that’s all.’
‘That’s all?’ she had replied. ‘It’s more than that. Why would she have changed her nose?’
‘Probably just broke it jumping over a ditch with that gun.’ But it was always fractious between Rashid and Mama and had been for as long as she could remember.
‘Sabri would have told us if it was about her,’ Rashid said, protective now. This was his news, his quest, his mission for a family member. ‘He just said it was for his research.’
‘No, Rashid,’ Iman replied, not sure how far she should push it, ‘What he said in his email was, “
Your Mama and I
are in agreement that the time has come for there to be greater knowledge of our
own circumstances
and the
roots of the divide
.” That’s what he said, and I showed you the photos I found at Baba’s. When he says “divide” he’s either talking about the divorce or the fact that she was in a different party to Baba. You saw for yourself that she even had her nose fixed. Look.’ Iman pulled out the photos that she had wedged between the pages of the paperback in her bag.
‘That in itself doesn’t prove anything.’ A woman as old as he was now smiled at Rashid from the pictures, triumphant. He doubted whether he would have got on with her even then. The gun she was holding had become so iconic that it made the photograph seem like some kind of spoof.
‘They could not tell you anything else about the file?’ Iman asked.
‘I am sure they could, but let’s just go and see it for ourselves. Get in the shower. Get dressed. You need to get out.’
‘What, now?’
Iman had established a reliable three-pointed routine, with her bedroom, the television and the kitchen delineating her movements. Occasionally, she ate or went to the bathroom. Her flatmate moving around interrupted her patterns slightly and sometimes she had been forced to go outside to shop for food. But she had just gone to the shop and now had enough food for at least another three days. She had not planned to venture out again apart from going to the demonstration, which was different anyway. What was the point in going out and hearing people worrying about redecorating living rooms and broken-down boilers in ski chalets? Her triangle of life was about as comfortable as it got. It was all she needed.
‘You want to go out right
now
?’ Iman asked again.
‘Yes, I do, and you are coming. What’s the problem with that? The demonstration doesn’t start until two. They’ll let us copy the file so we don’t need to be down there for long. There may not be anything in it.’
‘What’s the weather like?’
‘Who cares? It’s London; it will be different by the time you are ready to leave. Just get away from the news.
Khalas
.
Bikafee.
Finished. Enough. There is nothing you can do right now. Crying is not going to help. Come on. Move it.’
Rashid picked Iman up and carried her into the bathroom as though she was a bride he was about to dump over the threshold.
‘OK, OK,’ Iman almost laughed. ‘Leave me alone, I’m up. I need my clothes. Let go.’
There were books from Iman’s teaching course with uncracked spines lying on the table. The carpet had coffee and red wine spills on it; the ceiling was low and grey, but the walls had been painted recently and the view was not bad. Rashid opened the window to the blunder of lorries, clouds of birds and bursts of Bangla and rap from the cars. There was an anguished warmth outside. Spring was arriving in jolts. It was there for a couple of days and then it left without a trace. When it came, it made London all the more extreme. The sky, the grass, the parks became florid and this fest of colours throbbed with the jauntiness of bare flesh and loud laughter. The vigorous bounce of it was bewildering and then within hours it could be dark and rainy. Street lamps would flatten the faces of the office workers who hurried from their buildings to tubes and buses that stacked and squashed them up so that they could be transported home again, ill-looking people in need of a rest.
Rashid waited until he could hear the shower running before he turned the TV back on to listen to the rest of the news.
In the bathroom, Iman received a sign: a thin line of sticky pink in the gusset of her pants. She closed her eyes and sat on the toilet seat, rocking her knees a bit. It was going to be fine. She had done what she had intended to do and there had been no negative consequences. She was OK. It was OK. She had done it and got away with it. The shower was strong and the water made her hair jump with curls and stick its fingers up at Suzi and her Philippino girls with blow-driers and tongs.
Rashid waved a leaflet for a charity at Iman as she came out of the bathroom.
‘It’s not me; it’s her, Eve my flatmate. She does charities.’ Iman went back into her room wrapped in two towels. Rashid turned the sound of the TV up – it was news from home again. The journalists were nowhere near the town, they were all pumped up with the military on the outskirts, wearing the Occupier’s flak jackets and donning its vocabulary: ‘tactical strikes’, ‘guided missiles’, ‘armed militants’.
Baf!
Another missile.
Baf! ‘. . . unconfirmed reports of mass killings . . . fierce resistance . . .’
He turned it off.
‘But I thought your flatmate doesn’t care about anything?’ he said when Iman reappeared from her room dressed in jeans and a winter coat.
‘Eva? She can manage charities. They make her feel good, but she doesn’t actually do or care about anything.’ Iman threw some things in her bag: keys, wallet, travel card, apple, and the poetry paperback that concealed the photograph of her mother.
‘Glad to see you’re still into your ancient Bedouin porn.’ Rashid smirked picking up the book of poetry. Iman kicked out at him.
‘Shut up, Rashid. It’s not porn,’ she said before she turned on him as though she was going to launch straight into the heart of the matter. ‘It’s all right for you.’
‘What’s all right for me?’
‘Nothing.’ She retreated. It was impossible. She was sulking now. ‘She just does charity; that’s what I was saying.’
‘Charity’s better than doing nothing.’
‘Charity just supports the existing system.’
‘You sound like Mama.’
‘Are those hers?’ Rashid pointed at a white coat and a stethoscope hanging on a hook together with a mangy scarf.
‘She’s a medical student.’
‘Can’t be that stupid then.’
‘Not stupid, just disinterested. It’s worse.’
Iman hugged at her brother’s arm all the way to the station and carried on hugging it until they found seats on the train. It was too hot for her coat. She took it off and hugged it too.
‘I am not convinced it was worth it.’ Iman spoke once they had sat through two tube stops in silence.
‘What wasn’t worth it?’
‘Colonialism. Two hundred-odd years in India, another hundred or so in Egypt, thousands of years in Asia and Africa. If you stack them all up on top of each other it’s feels like the whole history of civilised man, and for what? To create this place?’ Iman seemed to be talking to herself. ‘And people like Eva. What’s the point?’
‘What is your problem with Eva? Why do you keep going on about her?’
Iman stopped and pulled a face. ‘I made her cry this morning.’
‘Why did you do that? What’s she to you, Iman?’
‘She was trying to talk to me about what was going on in the news and she kept trying to do this supposedly objective BBC thing of being so intelligent and always looking at the other point of view, and she kept using their terms: “
terrorism”
,
“democracy”
. I flipped.’
‘What did you say?’
‘It doesn’t matter, but I made her cry, all right? I hate these people who try to stay neutral in times of crisis.’ Iman was picking at a sticker on a railing and wasn’t looking at Rashid. ‘I told her that she didn’t understand anything. I told her about what happened to Taghreed and Raed, all the other bombings and how all her charity stuff was a waste of time and she had never really done anything to make a difference to anyone.’ Iman looked at the toes of her shoes. ‘I regret getting personal. I was just so angry. I know. It wasn’t really fair.’