Eighteen

ur new flat was not near an underground station. I got off at Edgware Road and walked the rest of the way. `Our' new flat. I still thought of us as a family. I would buy an Arabic magazine before realizing that it was Mama who had read it, I would put on Top Of The Pops on Thursday evening and realize halfway through that it was Omar who cared which song was number one.

I walked past an ice-cream van, a building covered in scaffolding, workmen sitting out in the sun. A whistle and a laugh as one of them shouted out something I didn't catch, though I understood the tone. I flushed, aware that all the weight I had gained had settled on my hips. But still it was a compliment, and my hair was long on my shoulders like Diana Ross's. I looked up to see a face so much like Anwar's that I stopped and stared. The same complexion, a different grin. Anwar laughing when I told him about the President telling me off for answering the phone in English, Anwar lighting a cigarette saying, `Our country is beautiful. Why do you go to Europe and not want to see your own country instead?' The builder stood up on the scaffolding. Would he come down to talk to me? Would we become friends just because he looked like Anwar and thought I was pretty? I would have a builder for a boyfriend - how could I imagine such a comedown? But I could. I could imagine it because something inside me was luxurious and lazy, something inside me, confronted with a certain voice, a certain smile, could easily soften and give in. I forced myself to look away from him and walk on. It was awkward to walk fast, not only because of my skirt but also because of the high heels of my sandals.

The flat held no memories. By the time we moved here, Omar's whereabouts were so erratic that he rarely spent a night in it. Several times he got confused and headed towards our old flat in Lancaster Gate. I looked into his room. It was impersonal, like a storeroom. His things, the few things he hadn't sold - posters, clothes. He had sold his ghetto blaster, Walkman, Swiss watch and best shoes. That was the beginning, how it started, then he turned to our things and bullying Mama. She didn't live here long, though she was the one who bought the flat. I remember going around with her, looking at flats, deciding which one to buy. We were together like sisters.

I checked my post. Bills. A thick envelope from the Humana Wellington, pages and pages of the itemized bill. Every meal Mama and I had eaten, every long-distance call, every urine sample, a haircut, dry-cleaning, laundry and the total was a staggering amount. Uncle Saleh could not have been thinking of such a bill when he was telling me to only live off the interest in my bank account.

I put on the only Sudanese tape I had, one by Hanan Al-Neel. I saw you sitting in the middle of greenery, the moon straight up above you ... Anwar made me get that tape. `Why do you only listen to Western music?' he had said. It had earned me his approval and Omar's contempt. For my brother, anything Western was unmistakably and unquestionably better than anything Sudanese. I saw you sitting ... My class at the University of Khartoum would have graduated by now. They would be looking for jobs, the girls marrying one by one, getting pregnant, and looking different. I could imagine myself with them; picture an alternative life to the one I was living in London. I could picture our house, busy and tingling because I was getting married. My mother and father were arguing over whom to invite to the wedding. `If we don't invite her,' Mama was saying, `she'll be offended and we'll never hear the end of it.' My skin glowed from the scrubbing and dilka it was getting every day. My muscles ached from the new dance routines I was learning. The telephone didn't stop ringing, my friends came over, we giggled nonstop. The bridegroom looked like Anwar but he wasn't Anwar, he couldn't be. He was someone my parents approved of, someone who wasn't a communist, someone whose father didn't work as a technician on the railways. The tape came to an end. I didn't turn it over.

I lay in bed reading Slimming. No, I didn't know that a spoonful of ketchup was twenty-two calories. Which diet would suit me? The one where you had a big breakfast and light evening meal or the other way round? I fell asleep and dreamt I was young and ill, lying in my parents' room in Khartoum. Mama was looking after me. I could feel the cool crisp sheets around me, the privilege of being in their bed. She gave me a spoonful of medicine. Delicious syrup that burned my throat. Omar was jealous because he wasn't given any. Omar was sulking. He looked down at me, `Nana,' he said, `can I borrow your colours?' `Leave her alone,' Mama said, `can't you see she's ill?' She put a cool hand on my forehead. I smiled and closed my eyes. I could hear my father, upset because I was ill. He was annoyed with my mother, `put her on a course of antibiotics,' he said, `don't leave her like this!' and Mama's reply defensive, explaining. I rolled over, sure that they loved me. I mattered enough for them to quarrel over me. `put her on a course of antibiotics.' I woke up with my father's voice and for one tiny stupid second, I couldn't remember why he wasn't with me ... It was like looking at a gash on my arm and not remembering how I got it. The telephone rang. I made my way to it. The flat was dark with sunset.

It was Randa, phoning from Edinburgh, saying, At last I managed to call you. You're the one who always seems to be phoning me.' She sounded like she was carrying out a duty.

I hardly had any news to tell her. I could not tell her about Omar. I led her to believe that he was here with me, that he was thinking of doing his A levels again.

Is he still taking drugs?' she asked. She had known about the hashish in Khartoum and suspected harder stuff when they were in Atlantic College together. She got along well with him. I remember them dancing together at the club.

`No, I don't think he is.' Unless they had drugs in prison.

`That's good then.'

`Yes, that's good.' I changed the subject. `Did I tell you that Uncle Nabeel said I could start training at his office?'

We talked about work. She started to tell me her news - the long hours she had to spend in hospital, the exams coming up soon. I had to keep my mind from wandering, to sound interested when I asked, `What do you want to specialize in?'

Skin,' she said.

I knew there was a medical term for `skin' but she hadn't used it because she thought I wouldn't understand it. `Why don't you become a gynaecologist? It would be nice to deliver all these cute babies.'

`It's nothing like that, Najwa. Gyna is one of the toughest specializations.' She had never talked down to me back in Khartoum but now she was in a prestigious university and I had a disgraced father.

We talked about her social life. Yes, there were some Sudanese in Edinburgh University - quite a number of families - bored wives, she said, with screaming children. They invited her for dinner; she always declined. `Why?' I asked.

`So many of them are Islamists. You know the type, the wife in hijab having one baby after the other.'

`Aren't there women students too?'

`Yes, unfortunately. The sight of them wearing hijab on campus irritates me.'

I remembered the girls in Khartoum University wearing hijab and those who covered their hair with white tobes. They never irritated me, did they? I tried to think back and I saw the rows of students praying, the boys in front and the girls at the back. At sunset I would sit and watch them praying. They held me still with their slow movements, the recitation of the Qur'an. I envied them something I didn't have but I didn't know what it was. I didn't have a name for it. Whenever I heard the azan in Khartoum, whenever I heard the Qur'an recited I would feel a bleakness in me and a depth and space would open up, hollow and numb. I usually didn't notice it, wasn't aware that it existed. Then the Qur'an heard by chance on the radio of a taxi would tap at this inner sluggishness, nudge it like when my feet went to sleep and I touched them. They felt fat and for them to get back to normal, for me to be able to move my toes again, they would have to first crunch with pins and needles.

It was like that at the funeral parlour when the four women came from the mosque to wash my mother. They all wore hijab and long dark coats, their faces plain without makeup. `Do you want to attend the washing?' they asked. I shook my head and waited outside the door, heard the splash of water. `Which shampoo do you want us to use?' One of them poked her head out of the door, releasing the strong smell of antiseptic. Her name was Wafaa; she was Egyptian. `Which was your mother's regular shampoo?' Her hands, which held the bottles of shampoo, were covered in light, clear gloves, she wore a thin plastic apron. Afterwards, when she told me that I should pray for my mother, I felt that same bleakness in me. I became aware of that hollow place. Perhaps that was where the longing for God was supposed to come from and I didn't really have it. Wafaa taught me a specific prayer - asking Allah to wash my mother's sins with water and ice. I forgot the exact wording but the image of ice remained and the feeling she imparted that my mother needed me still. Everyone else seemed to think that my mother didn't need me anymore, that I was free.

When they put on their coats and were about to leave, Wafaa gave me her phone number. `We have classes at the mosque. We get together once a week.' The others nodded. Wafaa smiled and said, `We enjoy ourselves, come and join us.' Another lady said shyly, `We would like to see you again.' She was the youngest of them, she had henna on her fingernails, sparkling eyes. I liked her yet felt she was remote, different from me. I took Wafaa's phone number and dropped it in my hag. Couldn't they see that I was not the religious type?

On the telephone, Randa asked if I had any news of Khartoum. `Do you remember Amir?' I said, starting to tease her. She had liked him at one time. I could never understand why - he never spoke. Perhaps she thought his silence enigmatic while I assumed he had nothing to say.

She laughed. `Of course I remember Amir - what's his news?'

`Uncle Saleh told me that he graduated from Khartoum University and got a job in Saudi Arabia.'

`Saudi Arabia! Well, he'll make good money there.'

`Yes.' The words were easy in my mouth, like I was going through a familiar routine. `He'll become the perfect bridegroom.'

She laughed. `Oh no, don't start. I'd forgotten that old crush.'

I smiled, pleased that we were talking naturally. `Do you have any news of the guys from the club?'

`Yes. Remember Sundari?' There was still a smile in her voice. `I heard she's hack in Khartoum with her daughter.'

Of course I remembered Sundari, the fuss of the scandal. She and her American marine got married and went to live in the States.

`How old is her daughter now?' I asked Randa.

`She must be four now. Apparently, she's gorgeous and everyone in Khartoum loves her.'

I smiled, imagining the little girl pretty like her mother, chunky like her father. A memory of him doing push-ups in the garden of the club, while Sundari watched, her silky hair touching the grass. I said, `I'm sorry I missed seeing them.'

`Well, her husband wasn't with them - I forget his name. And that got people asking questions. It turned out that they're divorced and she's come hack to live with her parents.'

Tears sprang to my eyes, `Oh no, how sad, that's really sad!'

`Najwa, you hardly knew her. You needn't get so upset.'

It is upsetting!'

`Stop it. You're overreacting.'

But I was sobbing now, spasms as if I were vomiting. I couldn't stop.