Sixteen

ith his key, Tamer opens the door of the flat. I help Mai out of her pushchair and kneel to take off her jacket. There are lights in the corridor - Lamya is already home. She comes out of her room. I know she is animated in the evenings, but today her eyes are flashing and she is almost breathless when she speaks to me. `Where's my pearl necklace? I left it in the morning with the rest of my jewellery, where is it?'

I stand up. She is not asking, she is accusing. `I don't know.' My voice is flat because things have suddenly darkened, because I can lose this job in a stroke, just like that. `I didn't take it.' Even to my own ears I don't sound convincing enough.

`Did I accuse you of taking it?' Her voice is harsh, but she is nervous, lacking confidence. `Why are saying you didn't take it?'

It is a trick question and I will fail. I stand still with my hands in my pockets. Mai struggles with her shoes. I bend down and help her take them off. She runs and hugs her mother's legs but, not finding a response, wanders off to the sitting room. Tamer is next to me. He says, `Lamya, have you looked for it? Are you sure you've looked for it?' His voice is loud as if to match hers but he sounds calm, as if this is an everyday event. He takes off his coat, bends down to untie his trainers.

`Yes of course I've looked for it.' She is exasperated with him, regards his presence as a nuisance. She turns hack to Inc. `Well speak, where is it?'

`Lamya,' Tamer says. He is reproaching her. We will look for it again. I'm sure you mislaid it somewhere.'

She glares at me, her arms folded. She is wearing the beige trousers I ironed yesterday, a top and a sweater in the same reddish shade of orange. She looks as if she wants to pounce on me and do a body search for her necklace. Perhaps she would have done that, if Tamer wasn't here. She would have rummaged in my pockets, slapped me if I resisted, made me take off my bra ... I start to pray; the words tumble in my head. Allah, please get me out of this mess. Stop this from happening. I know You are punishing me because I tried this necklace on in the morning, in front of the mirror. I put it round my neck and I will never do that again, ever. I will never try on her scarves; I will never weigh myself on her bathroom scales. But I didn't take the necklace. I would never dream of taking her things. I just tried the necklace on and put it hack. I'm sure I pert it hack because I heard Mai calling me and I immediately unclasped it ...

`Najwa ...' Tamer is talking to me. He is saving that we should look for the necklace. `I'm sure we'll find it,' he says. He looks down at my feet. I look down and see that I am still wearing my shoes. I should take my shoes off and move from the hall to the bedroom to start searching.

Mai comes out of the sitting room. She is holding the pearl necklace in her hand. Tamer laughs. `There's your missing necklace, Lamya!'

She takes one look at her daughter and slaps her hard. The poor child staggers back, the necklace flies from her hand. Tamer is on the floor, he takes her in his arms. She is screaming from the shock as much as from the pain, her face almost purple; saliva dripping from her wide-open mouth. `This is mean of you, Lamya,' he says. `Why did you do that?'

Unable to bear it any longer, I turn around, open the door of the flat and run down the stairs.

It is raining and all the cars have their headlights on. I pause in front of the corner of the building waiting for the downpour to ease. I want to get away; I want to forget the past few moments. It had been nice in the park and then to come back ... What if Mai hadn't appeared with the necklace? I must have left it on the dressing table instead of hanging it on the tree where Lamya hangs all her necklaces. Mai must have picked it up and taken it into the sitting room, perhaps hidden it in one of her toys. This is the kind of miracle that makes me queasy. I know about stealing. Years ago, Omar stealing my own pearl necklace, Omar shouting at Mama to give him more money, shaking her shoulders. He went as far as shaking her shoulders, trying to frighten her. What if Mai hadn't appeared with the necklace? My stomach heaves. I can lose this job easily. Rely on Allah, I tell myself. He is looking after you in this job or in another job. Why are you becoming attached to this family anyway? There is vague talk in the mosque that they want to set up a creche. That would be a better place, a steadier income. I start to walk to the bus stop, the zebra crossing, turn the corner.

I hear footsteps behind me, someone running, Tamer saying my name. I stop and turn round. `You're coming tomorrow aren't you, you haven't taken offence?' He is a little out of breath. He's not wearing his coat.

No, I haven't taken offence.' We move to the side of the pavement. Looking down there is a footpath and a canal running under the street. It runs north to the zoo, south until close to Edgware Road.

`Good,' he says. `I ... we were a bit worried after you Icft.'

'I'm sorry. I should have excused myself first.' The rails eases a little but still the windscreen wipers on the cars flick, people hold up their umbrellas.

`Look, Lamya is wrong. She shouldn't have ...'

I try to interrupt him. I don't want him to apologize for his sister but he continues, `I don't approve of her. She hardly prays. She doesn't wear hijab. It's wrong. She has such had friends. They go and see rude films together. They smoke and even drink wine - it's disgusting. I tell her but she doesn't listen to me. Her husband should tell her but he's just as had. It's all to do with pride, the way she talked to you just now. She shouldn't ...'

`Don't worry,' I manage to interrupt him. I try and smile. it was just something had that happened and we should forget about it.'

`Right.' His hair is damp from the rain. He looks tired and I must look worse. He looks down at the pavement. `I'm relieved that, insha' Allah, you're coming tomorrow.'

`I'll make you that peanut salad I promised you.'

He smiles, more like his usual self. `Thank you.'

'I should thank you for . . .' My voice trails off. For standing up for me, for standing next to me.

'I knew you'd never take anything. I knew.' He is confident. Like Mai, he trusts me in a childish way. As if I need reminding that he is so young.

You don't know me well,' I say, `there's a lot about me you don't know.'

He looks straight at me with neither curiosity nor disinterest. As if he is saying, `If you tell me or if you don't tell me, I won't change towards you.'

The next day is different. When I ring the hell, it is Tamer not Larnya who opens the door for me. He is in his pyjamas, looks like he had just got out of bed. `I have a cold.' He clears his throat. `I didn't go to university.' Lamya had gone out earlier, Mai is still asleep. He goes hack to bed and I start to tackle the kitchen. I try not to clatter so as not to disturb him. It is my fault that he is ill - he ran after me in the rain without his coat.

I am relieved that Lamya is already out and I do not have to face her after yesterday. It strikes me that even now, knowing I am innocent, she will never treat me as her equal. I had hoped to come close to her or at least get her to chat with me like her mother did. Now I know that she will never do that. She will always see my hijab, my dependence on the salary she gives me, my skin colour, which is a shade darker than hers. She will see these things and these things only; she will never look beyond them. It disappoints me because, in spite of what Tamer said, I admire her for the I'M) she is doing, her dedication to her studies, her grooming and taste in clothes.

When Mai wakes up, I change her and give her breakfast. While she watches TV, I cook. I make lentil soup and the peanut salad I promised Tamer. He wakes up at noon, looking better and says he's hungry. I set the kitchen table for him, heat up pitta bread. He slurps the soup while I iron, blows his nose into a tissue. `Maybe I have SARS,' he jokes. The day is different.

He starts to talk about his high school in Oman. 'It was an international school,' he says, 'following an American system.' The students chose their subjects. They didn't have to wear uniforms. 'My teachers were nice,' he says, 'nicer than the ones I have now.' He eats with a good appetite, tearing large pieces of bread, scooping out the peanut sauce that is chunky with onions and green peppers. It amuses me that he can eat well even when he is ill.

'My history teacher in school,' he says, 'she was disappointed that I didn't go on to study Middle East History or Islamic Studies. She knew I liked them. But the policy of the school is to respect the family's decision. In my case that meant studying Business.' He stands up, rummages in one of the top cupboards for a fizzy Vitamin C tablet and plonks it in a glass of water. 'Here there're all these antiAmerican feelings. It bugs me. My American teachers were really nice.'

I fold Lamya's nightdress and start ironing her purple skirt. You have to trust your instincts when people are talking. People say things they don't mean.'

'What hugs me,' he says, 'is that unless you're political, people think you're not a strong Muslim.' He gulps down the rest of his Vitamin C. 'Are you interested in politics

I shake my head and tell him why I am afraid of politics, why I am afraid of coups and revolutions. I start to speak about my father, things I have never said to anyone else. They surprise me by coming out fresh, measured - maybe because it all happened many years ago.

'You know a lot,' he says, offering admiration instead of pity.

There was a time when I had craved pity, needed it but never got it. And there are nights when I want nothing else but someone to stroke my hair and feel sorry for me. Looking at him now, his nose swollen with flu, I think he could pity me, one day, at the right time, in the right place, he could give me the pity I've always wanted. And because I am struck by this thought, because it suspends me, I say, One of the Muslim scholars or maybe even the Khalifa Omar, I'm not sure, said that the Rum, the Europeans, are better than us in that when they fall down in battle they quickly get up, dust themselves and fight again. I try to forget the past, to move on but I'm not good at it. I'm not European.' We smile at each other. I've finished the ironing but the iron is too hot to put away. I fold the board hack into the drawer and slide it shut.

He says, 'I have to go pray, I haven't prayed yet,' and he leaves the kitchen, blowing his nose. I wash the dishes and think of what he said to me. You know a lot.' If someone else had said that, I would have contradicted them saying, 'Oh no, I am neither educated nor well read. Look at me in a dead-end job.' But I had accepted the compliment from him, perhaps because he is younger than me.

Once, a few years hack, Shahinaz had unsuccessfully introduced me to one of her uncles, a man in his early fifties, divorced, looking for a wife. I remember how constrained I had felt with him, his probing questions, the way he looked at me, wanting to figure me out, to determine my type, to `suss me out' as Tamer would put it. If Shahinaz's uncle had said to me, You know a lot,' I would have suspected him of sarcasm, checked his eyes for a sneering look. I am glad he went away. I am glad he did not pursue me and instead married someone else.

Throughout the afternoon, Tamer hogs the television and annoys Mai who wants to watch her cartoons. He sets up his PlayStation and sits on the floor playing one football game after the other. I take her to the park and we do the usual things, feed the ducks, while away time in the playground. A little boy pinches her in the sandpit and she screams and screams. I get her as far away from him as possible, wipe her face, soothe her with a bag of crisps. I push her along by the pond and she calls out to the swans and the dogs out for a walk. I enjoy knowing that Tamer will he there when we get back. On the way, I walk past the flat to the bakery in the High Street and buy him a piece of cheesecake.

We drink tea together and watch The Pou'erpuf f Girls with Mai. The room is at its best, with the long windows bringing in the fading light. Tamer eats the cheesecake without offering to share it, without asking if I had paid for it with my own money or the housekeeping money Lamya leaves me. It pleases me that he is informal. It makes me feel relaxed.

He says, `When I was at school, I hated missing a single day. I hated being ill. Now I don't care.'

I say it would he wrong for him not to take his studies seriously. His parents are paying a lot of money to get him educated in London. He avoids my eyes and concentrates on the cartoon. After finishing his tea, he says, `I enjoyed being at home today. It was nice.'

I savour the moment before the sound of the key in the door, before Lamya comes home and I have to stand up. A maid should not be sitting on the sofa drinking tea; she should sit on the floor or bustle about in the kitchen. She should not take such delight in her employer's brother. I wish I were younger, even just a few years younger.