16
The thrust of Osama's palm-heels still echoed in my chest. I was sure I would bruise, that two blue shadows would reveal themselves above each nipple. I had also grazed my elbow on the hard pavement. Fear, but more self-pity, reverberated through me like an electric current as I lay on my bed. I curled into a ball on my side and recalled how the rest of the boys, clustered with concern around Adnan, had glared at me. Kareem was the only one not surprised; he had already decided, or so it seemed, on the kind of person I was. Masoud seemed shocked, but also relishing the excitement as he fussed around Adnan's injured ankle. His young brother, Ali, did what he had always done when overwhelmed by a situation, he cried, looking repeatedly at his older brother for guidance. Adnan was solemnly attending to his wound like expected bad news that had finally arrived, neither encouraging nor objecting to Osama's attack on me. Perhaps he didn't even notice it. But Kareem, if anything, seemed relieved that day, as if something doubted had now been confirmed. Perhaps doubt is worse than grief, certainty more precious than love.
By rushing to my rescue Sharief had split the sea, created an undertow that would pull me even further away from Kareem. We drift through allegiances, those we are born into and those we are claimed by, always estranging ourselves. I recalled how, pulling me off the pavement by the hand, Sharief had sighed, 'Slooma' – the sugary variation of my name used only by my family, and which I now seldom hear – whispering it almost, claiming me. And I recalled also how minutes later he had closed the ambulance door behind the horizontal figure of Adnan, his gun bulging through the split of his jacket, accepting Osama's anger, agreeing that I wasn't innocent, that Adnan was the ultimate victim and I the ruthless, or at best careless, child, puncturing the skin that can't stitch itself.
The spot on my elbow, which these days is hard and coiled like the skin around an elephant's eye, was the colour of beetroot, burning but already sealed.
As I lay on my bed I tried hard to remember names. I could only think of Ustath Rashid, Nasser and Moosa. I was sure this wasn't enough; still, hope tickled my chest. I couldn't wait to run to Sharief. I lifted the mattress, took the book and ran out, silently mouthing, Rashid, Nasser, Moosa, both hands clasped tight round the book, squeezing it as if it were a fish trying to get away. But Sharief wasn't there. The boys too were gone. A circle of tyre marks was drawn in the dirt. Concerned for Adnan, he must have raced after the ambulance, maybe even gave it an escort, I thought. I stood there feeling hollow. Rashid Nasser Moosa. The names still in my head, bubbling on my tongue, strangely unfamiliar, as if I were hearing them for the first time.
Concern. I think that was what I craved. A warm and steady and unchangeable concern. In a time of blood and tears, in a Libya full of bruise-checkered and urine-stained men, urgent with want and longing for relief, I was the ridiculous child craving concern. And although I didn't think of it then in these terms, my self-pity had soured into self-loathing.
I put the book beneath the mattress in my room and curled again on my side. I listened to the crickets that were now carving the air outside my window. The deep azure sky was weakening, grey entering it. I heard Mama walk into the room, but I pretended to be asleep. My bed was narrow, made for one person, but she found a place beside me and buried her face in my neck. She had always seemed captive, captive in her own home, continually failing to prepare herself for anything else. Her breathing became unsteady. I felt her tears on my skin, her breath smelled warm and salty, sharp with medicine.
'What am I to do?' she said. 'What am I to do what am I to do what am I to do what am I…'
'Mama,' I interrupted. Her voice was like sand rising, it scared me.
'What if they can't or won't help us?' she suddenly said.
'Who?'
'This Jafer and Um Masoud,' she snapped angrily. I felt blameworthy. 'I don't want to live if I must live like this.'
'When I am big I'll take you to Scotland. I promise, on my life.'
Then my mind went back to the time when she was imprisoned; every fantasy about the future revived that original dream: the rescuing of the girl she once was.
'Mama, tell me what happened after Uncle Khaled saw you in the Coffee House.' This was the first time I had asked Mama to talk about the past. Normally, when she was ill, I remained as silent as the wall, hypnotized and horrified.
She said nothing.
Is she thinking how to start, I wondered, or is she pretending she doesn't know what I am talking about?
She took a deep breath and began whispering into my neck. I felt a great relief wash over me. I could have listened to her for ever. I wanted to turn around and hug her, but I was afraid if I moved everything would change. 'Your Auntie Nora was the one who told me,' she started. 'She eavesdropped on the High Council's first hearing,' she said and giggled that strange giggle that was somewhere between laughter and crying. I smiled, thankful to have her back on familiar ground. 'It was our curse to have seven brothers. They were all gathered with your grandfather. Khaled was at the centre, of course. The poet is finally listened to, finally given full attention by the "hypocrites". That's what he used to call them because they used to mock him, couldn't understand his sensitivity, his complex ideas, the gifted poet.' She was definitely ill. But it didn't matter somehow. It was good to have her there, holding me and telling stories again. Even her medicine breath was tolerable, more than tolerable, it reminded me of the past, it was part of us now, part of the stories. Because if the past had a smell it was this, sharp, hard and piercing.
The section of the sky visible through my window was darkening. Thin veils of cloud drifted in and were brushed orange and crimson by the setting sun taking its last deep breath before sinking into the sea. The merciful breeze that came in the early evening was gently turning around us. My limbs relaxed, and I wished, silently, deeply, that nothing would come to disturb us, that the telephone and the doorbell would remain silent. I even hoped Baba would delay his arrival. We were both captive, our house and the past our prison, but it was familiar, not full of shadowy urges and cold alienation. I remembered the boys, the ambulance, Sharief, and squeezed Mama's arm more tightly, darkly content with the world I was given, thankful to be hers, happy she was a mother because, as Sheikh Mustafa had confirmed, all mothers will enter Heaven. I was surprised how easily his words spilled out of my mouth: ' "God has promised every mother Paradise because the suffering endured by women surpasses all kinds of human suffering."
'Once, when I was near your age,' she said. 'I stood talking to the next-door neighbours' boy. He had said something and I laughed. Your grandfather saw us. I still recall the lash of the hemp rope chasing me down the street, the people on the street, their eyes savagely curious, my own uncontrollable and hideous yelps, the rope making the sound of hiccups behind me, and your grandfather's mysterious silence and strained smile that he always had on his face at such times. I ran into our house screaming. When your aunt and grandmother saw him they screamed, begged him to stop. He said nothing, chased me into the courtyard. I was closed in, trapped. His hand fell with the weight of a sandbag on my cheek.'
Mama's description of my grandfather's smile reminded me of Ustath Rashid's smile when he was breaking up the fight between his two students in Lepcis, and Baba's smile when Nasser called on Eid.
'Later, when Khaled told your grandfather that he had seen me in the Italian Coffee House sitting in mixed company, they locked me in my room for thirty days and rushed to find me a groom. Khaled had sentenced the flower, the young, stupid, naive fourteen-year-old girl, to life imprisonment.