Authors: Shamim Sarif
“You will leave my children alone,” she said finally, her voice unnaturally high. “Please,” she added, suddenly conscious that she was talking back to a policeman.
“That’s up to you.”
They waited, watching Miriam, whose gaze went from the floor to the baby, until De Witt spoke again.
“Are they at your brother-in-law’s in Pretoria?”
Miriam said nothing.
“Just give me a yes or no. Is that where they are? You don’t have to say anything. Just nod.”
Miriam shook her head. “I don’t know where they are. How do you expect my children to know…they don’t even know who she is.”
“Then you won’t mind us asking them.”
The tone was nasty and heavily caustic, and it shook Miriam into the kind of alert wakefulness that she had not felt in days. She felt her uncertainty, her wavering fear dissipate and she decided then, without qualms, that she would not answer these men and that she would find another way to get rid of them before they got to her children.
“No,” she said firmly, looking the officer directly in the eyes for the first time. “I don’t mind.”
Swiftly, she walked out of the room and downstairs. She heard them follow a few seconds later. She held the baby close to her chest, and stood behind the counter. De Witt followed her there without any hesitation, walking straight to her, quickly, his face hard and set like a mask, and she backed away beneath his stare.
“Where are they?” he demanded, still advancing upon her.
“I don’t know.”
She moved backwards, clutching the child who was now beginning to cry and De Witt matched her steps, following her down the length of the counter.
She stopped, terrified, with a bump that startled her like a gunshot. A display cabinet stood heavily behind her and she was trapped between it and the policeman. He smiled tiredly and leaned forward, one muscular arm placed on either side of her head, his solid palms pressed flat against the cabinet. The baby cried, and she hugged the tiny body closer to her neck. His blue eyes were no more than two inches from her wide brown ones, and she turned her head away. She watched his forearms, forming a barrier on either side of her, saw the muscles taut beneath the tanned skin and the raised blond hairs that covered them. He spoke harshly and very quickly:
“Are they in Pretoria?”
“No.”
“Then where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are they?” he shouted
“I don’t know.”
“WHERE ARE THEY?” he yelled, and she felt droplets of his saliva spray onto her face.
Miriam said nothing. Her eyes were tightly shut and the baby was screaming. The policeman moved his reddened face even closer, so that when she breathed she was forced to inhale his own hot breath.
“Do you really want me to ask your kids?”
She opened her eyes, moving the baby up and down in a poor effort to soothe it, and watched his red, violent face and his cold eyes only inches away from hers. She imagined that face close to her daughter’s, but she felt no real sense of fear now, only a disgust and loathing for this boorish man before her. She looked directly into his blue eyes, noticing the thin red veins that crept out from his irises, and then she spoke:
“You’ll never find them.” Her tone was firm but quiet. “Just leave us alone now.”
The policeman’s eyes grew wider – he looked stunned. From the corner of her eye, and with some relief, Miriam saw his partner step forward and place a restraining hand on his shoulder. De Witt paused a moment, his arms still up against the wall, trapping Miriam and the baby, and then he stepped back and turned and walked out to the kitchen. His partner waited in silence. There was no sound for a few moments, and then came a crash of furniture that made Miriam jump. She paced up and down, rubbing the baby’s back, listening to the din that now issued in a continuous stream from her kitchen. Plates were being thrown – it sounded like every last one of them was being smashed – and she heard four loud thumps that she thought must be chairs being kicked over. A clatter of metal followed, and she knew her saucepans of freshly made food were now lying on the floor.
With as little warning as they had begun, the noises stopped. In the profound quiet that followed, a tap was turned on in the kitchen, and Miriam listened as she fought to control her sobs. She heard the water drumming on her iron sink, and when De Witt returned his face was damp, and his blond hair darker now that it was wet, and he looked calmer. Stewart had waited without speaking, or even moving, except for the chewing motion of his jaw, but he looked up now.
“You’ll never find them,” Miriam repeated, softly, and De Witt ignored her, although she knew he had heard by the tensing of the muscles in his neck.
Miriam recognised the low throb of the bus before they did but she made no sign, only prayed for some miracle to keep her children away from the shop, but the moment they caught the diesel shudder of the engine, the two men raised their heads in unison, like coyotes scenting a corpse. De Witt even managed a smile.
“Home from school!” he said, cheerfully. “How nice.”
“I won’t let you talk to them,” said Miriam, her voice raising.
“Don’t panic, lady. You don’t have anything to do with it. We’re going to take them with us and talk to them at the station.”
“You can’t take them…
”
Stewart turned to her.
“We can,” he informed her. “They may be holding valuable information about someone who is wilfully breaking the law.”
“No!” she ran forward, still holding the baby, but a firm hand grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back with no more effort than if it had been swatting a fly. The men walked out to the porch where they stood waiting for the children. They came tumbling off the bus as they always did, running up towards the shop, but they saw the policemen as they reached the porch steps and they stopped, looking up at them expectantly.
“Hello,” Stewart said to them.
“Where’s my mummy?” demanded Alisha, regarding them with much suspicion.
“No manners. Just like her bloody mother,” muttered De Witt, under his breath. He turned and called to Miriam over his shoulder. She came out, and beckoned to her children to come in. They ran up the porch steps, but could not find a way past the huge legs of the policemen that blocked the doorway to the shop.
“Let them in please,” Miriam said.
There was no reply, except that each man took hold of one child, De Witt grabbing Sam and swinging him up over his shoulder.
“Ever been to a police station, young man?” he asked. Miriam watched her son, saw the mixture of fear and uncertainty in his eyes, saw the man’s smiling white teeth in her son’s face. In the meantime, Stewart was pushing her daughter towards the car.
“Mummy,” Alisha cried, tears in her voice. “Mummy, come with us. Where are we going, Mummy?”
Robert appeared at last and took the baby and Miriam started down the steps but De Witt pushed her back.
“We’ll bring them back later, or tomorrow. Whenever we get time.”
Sam was also crying now, and she heard the slam of a car door. Her daughter stared tearfully out at her, shouting for her mother to come and help her.
“Stop it,” Miriam said. “Stop it, please! I’ll tell you where they are, I’ll tell you everything, just bring them back. Please, bring them back.”
De Witt almost threw Sam into the back of the car.
“Shut up!” he screamed. “You want me to whip you?” His hand went threateningly to his belt. The crying stopped.
Stewart was looking at Miriam.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, holding his glance. “Please. Give me back my children. Please.”
Stewart turned and spoke to his partner. She could not hear the low undertones of his voice, but she heard De Witt’s reply.
“She’s lying, the bitch! Anyway, we’ll teach her a lesson. Come on.”
Now Stewart’s voice raised. “How much more time do you want to waste? Let’s hear what she has to say.” He opened the car door, and motioned the children out, but held them firmly before him.
“Don’t move,” he said, looking at Miriam. “So where are they?” he asked.
Miriam could not speak.
He grasped Alisha’s arm harder.
“They’re in Pretoria,” she called out.
“You know if you are lying to us, I’ll beat you and your children and the baby?” De Witt said evenly.
“Yes, I know.”
“Where? At a hotel?”
Miriam shook her head and felt tears escaping from her eyes. “At my brother-in-law’s. In Boom Street.”
He watched her closely. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said, her eyes fixed on her children. Stewart examined Miriam closely for a few moments more then turned and nodded to De Witt.
“Dammit, I should have known…
”
shouted De Witt.
“How would we know?” asked Stewart, frowning. “That bitch of all people should have been telling the truth.”
Miriam listened, confused, waiting, waiting for them to release the children.
De Witt kicked the porch post with his boot, leaving a splintered crack in the wood. He glowered at his partner, but Stewart was looking at Miriam.
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.” He touched his cap, the epitome of good manners now, and then he stood aside, allowing the children to escape. They ran into her arms where she held them briefly before pulling them into the shop. Robert stood holding the baby, and they all stood together in silence.
“See if they’ve gone,” she said. The boy went to the window and peered out. The car had all but disappeared, leaving a faint stir of dust behind it.
“They are gone, Madam,” he said.
Miriam moved straight through the shop and back out onto the porch.
“Where are you going, Madam?” asked Robert, alarmed. She was moving now as she hadn’t moved in days, quickly and with purpose. She ran down the porch steps, stopping only to call to him to give the children something to eat and to lock the doors. She ran, stumbling in her slippers, through the grass, ignoring the pathway because that was a longer route to the Weston farm and the nearest telephone, and as she went she felt the tears falling and her heart crashing in her chest, and she hoped that Rehmat would not hate her for what she had done.
“Y
OU SENT US ON A WILD GOOSE CHASE
,” said Officer De Witt. There was an air of permanence about his stance, feet apart and firm, his arms crossed, and he made sure to carefully enunciate each word that he spoke. Farah swallowed hard. As her husband had discovered very soon after he had married her, she was a woman capable of responding to anyone’s bad mood with one of her own that was ten times worse, but she instinctively understood that she had met her match with the policeman who stood before her. He was tall and blond and good-looking, or so she had once thought - but there was nothing pleasant or flirtatious in his face or tone now.
Farah turned away.
“What did she tell you?” she asked.
“The truth,” he replied, with irony. “I trust her more than I trust you. She may be a
plas-jappe
, living out there in the sticks, but that kind doesn’t even
know
how to lie. She
told
me that bitch was here. All along she was here.”
“She
told
you?”
“
Ja
.”
Farah was surprised at Miriam. She had expected her to be more honourable for Rehmat’s sake - she was the type. Her surprise evaporated, however, under the pressure of the problem she was now facing. She had no idea where Rehmat was at this moment, and now she was in trouble with the very people she had been trying to assist. She considered her options and, in accordance with her usual custom, decided that aggression might help her more than submissive compliance.
“She was here,” she said, turning defiantly to the two men. “So what? What did you want me to do? Tell you right there and then, when you came the first time?”
“That’s exactly what you were supposed to do,” De Witt said. “You called us here, remember?”
“In front of my husband? He was standing right next to me. He would have killed me. Was I supposed to tell you while she could hear me? Hiding upstairs? It’s your fault, you should have looked harder. What kind of state police don’t even search the house properly?”
In the next moment she was aware of nothing but a searing pain as her arm was gripped and twisted. De Witt held her look until her eyes dropped to the ground.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been out shopping all afternoon.” She indicated the sacks of groceries that lay scattered on the floor. “She wasn’t here when I got back.”
“And if the
plas-jappe
warned her, she won’t be back at all.” De Witt dropped her arm and pushed her away. He looked at his partner.
“Check upstairs,” he said.
Amina Harjan was in the small, plainly furnished room she kept behind the café. She was lying on her bed, positioned directly before the orange glow cast by the setting sun, and she was sleeping. It was her habit to take a nap on afternoons when business was quiet in the café, and more so on the weekend, when she kept the place open for business well into the night and long after Jacob had finished for the day. That was why Jacob politely asked the breathless woman who ran wildly into the café to come back a little later if she must see Miss Harjan, as Miss Harjan could not be disturbed. He had not known quite what to do though, when the woman had watched him as though his speech were incomprehensible to her and had then run past him towards Amina’s room.
The hasty knock on the door roused Amina, but she thought she must be dreaming still when she saw Rehmat’s face leaning over her as she lay there in her bed.
“Can you help me?” Rehmat asked, her face drawn and pale.
Amina rubbed hand over her eyes, and pushed back her mass of curly hair. She smiled at Rehmat, appearing to find nothing incongruous in the situation.
“What is it you need?”
“They know where I am, and they are coming after me.”
Amina’s smile disappeared as she watched Rehmat’s eyes fill with tears. “The police?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“They could arrive at any moment. They’re bound to search the whole area and people must have seen me…
”
“Don’t say a word,” said Amina. “And don’t cry.”
Rehmat hardly saw the girl leave her bed, but she felt herself moving, propelled by a guiding hand on her arm, and moments later she heard a door click behind her and she was plunged into darkness.
Officer De Witt left Farah with a narrow glance and strode into the kitchen. He squinted against the light of the setting sun that spread in through the high windows and skylight. The room was small and held few potential hiding places. He opened a few cupboards half-heartedly and then turned and glimpsed the narrow passage that led to Jehan’s room. Farah called after him as he walked along it.
“Don’t wake her,” she said, but he was already gone, and she finished her sentence muttering discontentedly to herself. Despite her enduring rancour towards Rehmat, she was now beginning to regret involving the police. She should have thought of another way to vent her hatred. She heard Jehan laugh, a sudden, demonic sound that elicited an oath of surprise from the policeman, and she knew that her usual two hours of peace, the freedom she obtained from her crazy sister-in-law while she slept, had been curtailed for that afternoon. She heard doors slamming upstairs and in a few moments, Stewart had come back down. De Witt emerged from Jehan’s room, his sparse blond eyebrows raised in silent query.
“Nothing,” Stewart said. “Some nice clothes, though. Labels are French.”
De Witt looked at Farah. “We’ll find her, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
“You should be, because when we’re finished with her, you’ll be the next into the jailhouse for helping her.”
“I never wanted to help her,” she said bitterly.
“Then help us.”
“But I don’t know where she went. Why don’t you try her husband’s hotel?”
“He checked out days ago. He keeps moving around. He’s not stupid.” said Stewart.
They watched each other. The sun was setting quickly, casting the lower half of the room into shadow. Officer De Witt slammed his fist hard onto the counter and Farah jumped. The sound vibrated in the small room but Stewart waited calmly, and without a sound, his jaw moving continuously beneath his beard.
“Where…is…she?”
Farah opened her mouth to speak, but all they heard was a scream from Jehan’s room, a long controlled sound that slowly lengthened and rose in pitch like an orchestrated bar of music, building to a crescendo and exploding finally into a long, hearty peal of manic laughter.
“Quickly, quickly, QUICKLY!!!!” Jehan screamed. “THEY ARE COMING SAID MIRIAM, THEY ARE COMING. MIRIAM SAID SO, MIRIAM SAID SO.”
The three people in the kitchen stared at the wall to Jehan’s room as though the plaster itself were forming the sounds.
“THEY ARE COMING!!!” Jehan yelled. “WHERE SHALL I GO? HELP ME, JEHAN, WHERE SHALL I GO, WHERE SHALL I GO?”
There was a silence. De Witt moved to go to the room, but Farah shook her head and he remained still. Jehan’s speech had lowered in volume and was now a stream of indistinct muttering. They strained to listen.
“I can’t believe it. How did they know? They are coming, Miriam said so, Miriam said so. Miriam phoned. WHERE SHALL I GO, JEHAN, WHERE SHALL I GO.” The recommencement of the shouting startled them all, and the voice had a desperate choke in it as though in exact imitation of the words it was repeating.
“TO THE HARJAN GIRL. THE HARJAN GIRL, THE HARJAN GIRL.” Jehan laughed delightedly. She had evidently found a series of lilting syllables that pleased her, because she continued to recite them in a sing-song voice. “THE HARJAN GIRL, THE HARJAN GIRL, THE HARJAN GIRL,” she sang blithely. “The Harjan girl, the Harjan girl. Miriam said so,” she added, suddenly, soberly. “They are coming. Miriam said so.”
“The Harjan girl?” asked De Witt, frowning. His partner nodded.
“The Bazaar café,” he said. “You remember. Amina Harjan and Jacob Williams.”
Both men looked at Farah. Her smile was slight, but her eyes held an excited look of triumph.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked them.
“Nothing,” said De Witt and they walked out of the house.
It took a few moments for the policemen’s presence to be noticed by all the occupants of the café - and there were many, early on this Saturday evening - but one by one, the people at each table noticed the uniformed men standing inside the door, and they stopped chewing, waiting silently, eyes averted, to see what might happen. De Witt looked around the room, but nobody met his eyes. Jacob remained behind the counter, busying his hands with whatever work presented itself, his face impassive and clear of expression. There had been a time when the police had come here regularly to speak to Amina. They had even searched her room and the café a couple of times before, once looking for a black woman that Amina was rumoured to have been involved with, but they found nothing. Jacob was an honest man, but one who could hide his emotions well, and easily. It gave him a relaxed air, as though nothing that might occur in his vicinity, be it a hysterical woman or a pair of impatient police officers, would ever shake his composed exterior. The policemen’s arrival had caused a knot in his stomach, but he continued his work as though removing the water spots from his glasses were the only concern on his mind.
The two officers approached him, Stewart walking ahead now.
“Jacob,” he said, nodding.
Jacob nodded back.
“We’re looking for someone. A woman.”
Jacob came out from behind the counter, a box of matches in his hand, and walked slowly to one of the paraffin lamps that hung at intervals around the walls of the dining area. He struck a match and held it patiently to the wick, watching as the paraffin drew up the lamp and cast a warm glow on the table beneath. He shook out the match and moved slowly to the next lamp.
“What woman?” he said, his tone politely interested.
Stewart followed him, and watched the next lamp being lit as he spoke. “An Indian woman. Well-dressed, probably. Have you seen her?”
Another match was struck, hissing briefly into the gloom.
“Indians is all we get in here. Why don’t you have a look around?” Jacob said. De Witt rolled his eyes at his partner, but they carefully looked over every table anyway. There were no women at all. The café looked inviting now, with the tongues of lamplight licking into the corners and reflecting off the rough polish of the wooden floors and tables.
“Where’s Amina?” asked Stewart. The final lamp flared into life, and Jacob returned to his place behind the counter. A low hum of talk began to spread around the room, as people began to eat again. Jacob’s methodical lamp-lighting, his apparent lack of concern at the police officers, his measured movements, had reassured them in some way.
“Miss Harjan is asleep.”
De Witt looked impatiently at his watch. “A little early, isn’t it?”
“She’ll be getting up to work soon,” Jacob replied. “She works late on Saturday nights. Why don’t you have a seat and wait for her?” He saw the irritation on their faces and he added quickly, “Or I can go and wake her.”
“She lives here?” De Witt asked his partner.
“She has a room out the back.” Stewart looked at Jacob. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll just go and speak to her.”
Jacob said nothing, knowing that it would be okay if they wanted it to be so, and he watched helplessly as the men strode past him, through the kitchen and out to Amina’s room.
T
here was no delay between the rap on Amina’s door, and the entry of the policemen. The room was fully dark now, and in the shadows all they could make out was a long body lying in the bed. They waited in silence, and watched Amina’s deep, rhythmical breathing. Otherwise she lay perfectly still. Stewart walked around the bed so that he could see her face, and the sound of his boots woke the girl with a start.
“Jacob?” she said, confused.
“Officers Stewart and De Witt.”
Amina sat up at once. She reached for the matches that lay on her bedside table, struck one and applied it to a candle. Then she looked up at the two men revealed to her in the warm light, her eyes still adjusting from the earlier darkness.
“Yes?” she asked politely, as though preparing to take a breakfast order.
“We know she’s here,” stated De Witt, with a tone of authority.
Amina looked perplexed. She knew Officer Stewart well – he was as reasonable a policeman as you could get in this place, but she was wary of the other, De Witt, and his gun.
“Who?” she asked him.
“Rehmat Winston.”
“Who?”
De Witt sat down on her bed, and Amina raised her eyebrows at the presumption, and looked at Stewart queryingly. He made no response, just stood impassively, waiting.
“Rehmat Winston,” De Witt repeated. “14 Boom Street. You know her. She came in here asking you to hide her.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Amina. “I think I would have noticed.”
“We know she’s here.”
“Well, you know more than me, then.”
De Witt leaned in to her. She smelt the acrid odour of sweat and dust on his shirt.
“Don’t be smart,” he told her. He got up suddenly and walked around the room. There was no door other than the one that they had used to enter, and no window other than the one that was beside the door. The only furniture in the room besides the bed and the table - which held a wash bowl, a jug and some soap, as well as the candle and two books - was a big wooden closet built into the side wall. Officer Stewart knelt to look beneath the bed, although he knew very well that it was too low to conceal a person. Then he stood up wearily and waited while De Witt went to the closet. Amina remained sitting up in her bed, cross-legged now, watching the two men. She looked bored and vaguely irritated. Yawning slightly, but audibly enough, she watched De Witt tug at the closet handle.
“Open this up,” he said.
She didn’t hear his words because suddenly her heart was pounding so hard that the blood pulsing through her ears blocked out all external sound, but she knew what he wanted. She swung her bare legs from the bed - she was wearing only a man’s cotton shirt - and reached for her trousers. Slipping them on, she slid a key from beneath the bed and went to unlock the closet. She moved about methodically, her face showing no trace of concern, when in fact she felt she might pass out at any moment from the strain of trying to slow the adrenaline that poured through her veins. She turned the key with a strong twist of her wrist and flung open the door. De Witt stared at her.
“What is all this stuff?” he asked, frowning.
“Extra stock. From the shop. That’s why I lock it,” she said. “You know these
kaffirs
,” she added with heavy irony. “They would steal anything.” It was the kind of thing they would ordinarily like to hear, that they could chat about sympathetically, but they caught her tone and knew she was mocking them.
The closet space was shallow but tall, and was stacked top to bottom with tins of jam, bags of flour, beans, lentils and other dry goods. In one corner hung six shirts, three pairs of trousers and a coat. The policemen stepped back, and with a sudden jab of his leg, De Witt kicked the door shut.
“WHERE IS THE BITCH?” he shouted and Amina turned away from him. She tried to reach the front door, but Stewart stood massively in her way.
“Just tell us,” he said.
“I don’t even know who you’re talking about.” She attempted a smile. “You know as well as I do that I’ve had some women in here, but this time even I don’t know what…”
De Witt’s stinging hand across her neck stopped her from finishing her sentence.
“Stinking queer,” he spat.
A second blow to her body hit her with a force that sent her crashing onto the bed. She lay there with her arms up in front of her, stunned, waiting. Nothing else came. Stewart had grabbed hold of his partner and was pushing him towards the door, the meaning of his shouts lost in the incoherent rage of his speech.
“Leave her,” Stewart was telling him. “Wait in the car. Go on. Go.”
They heard De Witt stumbling away from the room, around the outside of the café, and in a moment Stewart returned. He stood at the entrance to Amina’s room.
“Hey,” he said to her. She was sitting up now. Her neck was sore but she would not touch it while he watched her. She looked down at her hands, deliberately studying the pale outline of the veins, and waited for him to speak.
“Didn’t I do you a favour one time?” he said.
She looked at him.
“Yours is the only place in town where your
kaffir
workers eat alongside Indians and Coloureds, and you get away with it. You’re on my beat,” he continued. “And I don’t see the point of making an issue of it, so I let it go. I let it go that last time, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“I could have closed you down any time.”
“Yes.”
“I still can.”
“Yes.”
“So don’t you think you owe me one?”
She paused and her eyes looked away to the dark window, considering.
“I suppose so,” she said finally.
“So,” he said, and his tone implied that they both understood the contract just formed between them. “Is she here?”
Amina looked at him, her eyes clear and open and serious.
“No,” she said.
“Do you know where she is?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I really don’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded, satisfied at last.
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry for my colleague, eh?”
Amina waved a dismissive hand. “Forget it,” she told him, even though she knew she wouldn’t. “Thanks for helping me out. Maybe next time I can do the same for you.”
“
Ja
,” Stewart said. “Maybe next time.”
Amina lay quietly on her bed for another thirty minutes after they had left, thinking hard, watching the quivering shapes thrown against the walls of her room by the guttering candle. She hated to be laid low by pure physical force, and though she knew that it was De Witt’s own weakness that made him hit out, her rationalisations could not reduce her disgust at his behaviour. After she judged that enough time had gone by, she sat up and checked her watch. Then she went to the window.
The lights of the kitchen were opposite, and she could see the outlines of her staff, cooking and washing up. She could also make out the back of Jacob’s head as he moved through the kitchen, and she looked again at her watch, and knew he must be wanting to get home. The long days they worked on the weekends tired him. She touched her neck, still red from the officer’s hand, then went and sat on her bed and reached down beneath it for the key. She weighed the cold iron in her palm for a moment, and then she went to the front door and slowly opened it.
Outside, she made a brisk, wide circuit of the land around her room, and the café, peering carefully into the darkness, straining her ears to hear above the scraping of the crickets that at night invaded even this built upon area of land. When she was satisfied that the policemen in fact had left, she returned to her room and went directly to the closet, unlocking it and throwing open the doors.
One by one she picked up the bags and tins, swinging each one over to the recess between the closet and the wall, transferring the sugar and flour and lentils back to the place where they were always kept. She worked as she had done the first time, in a steady rhythm, and she soon felt warm, for the bags were heavy, and she paused to undo the top button of her shirt. When she had almost emptied the closet, she straightened up and ran her hand down the edge of the back panel of the wardrobe until her fingers found and pushed into a tiny hollow. With some considerable effort, she pulled her weight against it until the panel slid open.
Rehmat squinted up at her, crouched low in the tiny space, her arms wrapped defensively about her. Amina leaned against the side of the closet and looked down at her with a wry smile, resting her forehead wearily on one arm.
“They’ve gone,” said Amina.
Rehmat let out a shaky sigh and looked mutely at Amina, the suggestion of tears touching the edges of her eyes. Without another word, Amina held out a hand to help her, and she grasped the long fingers tightly for she had long ago ceased to feel any sensation in her cramped legs, and needed all Amina’s support just to stand up. Amina supported her as far as the bed where Rehmat sat waiting while the blood began a slow and painful course again through her legs. She rubbed at her calves and the backs of her knees.
“I’m sorry I did this to you,” she said. “I heard them when they shouted.” She looked more closely at Amina, at the fading red spot on her neck, and gasped.
“Did they hit you?” she asked, appalled.
“No,” she replied. Amina paced up and down a few times. “They weren’t bad. Just frustrated.” She stopped and looked at Rehmat for a long moment, incongruously, as though she were a piece of sculpture, there to be examined and perhaps admired, taking in the details of her eyes and nose and mouth. Disconcerted, Rehmat looked away, and asked her quickly if she hadn’t been scared by the policemen.
“Oh no,” said Amina. “I’ve had plenty of practice.”
“With the police?” asked Rehmat, surprised.
Amina laughed. “Yes, I suppose, but I meant I’ve had plenty of practice with the closet.” Her eyes were smiling and Rehmat smiled too, a little cautiously, uncertain of how to respond. Amina took in her confusion and changed her tone, to one that was more business-like.
“I’ll have to get back to work soon,” Amina said.
“Of course - I’m sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”
“No trouble. What will you do now? Where is your husband?”
“I don’t know. On a flight to Paris or London, I hope. I phoned him as soon as Miriam phoned me to warn me about the police, and he didn’t want to leave me alone, but I persuaded him to go straight to the airport and try to get out. I hope he did. We were both supposed to leave tomorrow morning. Only one more day.”
At her washstand Amina poured some water into the bowl, and began washing her face. She turned to Rehmat as she rubbed the soap into a lather between her hands.
“How did you know to come here?”
“Jehan gave me the idea. The Harjan girl, she kept saying. She’s been repeating it on and off for a few days. She must have heard someone talking about you.”
Amina said nothing, and Rehmat continued. “When the warning call came…
”
“From Miriam?” Amina said.
“Yes. The police had been to Delhof.”
Amina washed her face, her expression impassive. Then she reached for her towel and watched Rehmat as she dried herself.
“So how did they know you were here?”
“The police?”
Amina nodded. “I mean, we’re not related. I have a slight reputation for being in trouble with them but still…Why did they come straight here?
“They must have gone to the house first.”
“So somebody there must have sent them here,” stated Amina simply, and Rehmat frowned.
“No,” she said. “It’s not possible. When I left, only Jehan was home, and she wouldn’t even have opened the door.”
“Where was Farah?”
“At the shops. I was expecting her back any time…
”