He showed us the 'Medusa medallions' carved in marble and inset high between the leap and dive of the limestone arches. They were boys with healthy cheeks full as moons, encircled with lush curls, their foreheads flexed, eyes anxiously inspecting the distance, lips gently open. 'They are also known as the "Sea-monsters",' Ustath Rashid said, 'always facing the sea, always expecting the worst.'
Kareem continued staring up at the Medusa medallions long after the group had wandered off to the next object.
'What's the point?' he said.
'To scare away the enemy,' I said.
'And how do you expect them to do that?'
'I don't know,' I said and walked away.
'Children are useless in a war,' he said following me.
We caught up with Ustath Rashid in what were the baths, tiled rectangular cubes carved into the ground and under domed roofs. Flaked frescoes of men stabbing spears into the necks of lions and cheetahs, others on boats in a river full of yawning fish, lined the walls and ceilings. Ustath Rashid stopped in front of a painting of a naked woman.
'This is a Maenad, a follower of the cult of Dionysus, the god that alleviates inhibitions and inspires creativity.'
Her eyes were as strange as a bird's, her lips full and melancholy, the area around her nipples glowed pink, and her stomach stretched down to hips that widened out softly. She was dancing, one hand above her head, the other out by her waist. I could hear Ustath Rashid's voice going further, footsteps following him. I came closer to her, traced my finger round the dark swirl of her bellybutton. I turned my finger round the pink centre of her nipple. Then my eyes fell on her dark lips. I kissed them, hearing my own breath against the cool dry stone. Something like guilt or fear made me withdraw. I felt a swirl of excitement in my belly. Her eyes seemed to be looking at me. I quickly kissed her again and ran to catch up with the others.
We picnicked there, and when everyone was lying under trees resting, Kareem and I went exploring. We spotted two of Ustath Rashid's students hugging below a chestnut tree. We watched him slip his hand beneath her jumper. She moaned a strange moan. Later the man got in a fist fight with another student. We weren't sure if it was over the girl. When one punched the other in the face it didn't sound like it did in the films; instead of a bang it was more like a wet kiss. Ustath Rashid put himself between them and got his spectacles knocked off. Everyone fell silent then. He smiled strangely while he searched for his spectacles. They all watched him. Kareem spotted them in the dirt and picked them up. He placed them in his father's hand. Ustath Rashid fixed them over his ears and smiled again, facing the ground, as if it was he who had lost his temper and was now embarrassed.
Just when everybody was preparing to leave, Kareem took me to see the amphitheatre. We took turns running down to the stage to hear our voices amplified against the rising steps shaped in a crescent moon. By this time
thick clouds were drifting into the sky, black and bruised. The sea was growing louder, crashing against the shore, then the rain fell.
On the way back most of the bus was asleep. I watched Kareem nuzzle into his father's side.
At times I used to wish that Baba was more like Ustath Rashid. The two men were good friends, if unalike. Baba was much more aloof. The times I felt closest to him were when he was unaware of my presence: watching him spread his library of neckties on the bed, for example, humming an unfamiliar tune. Even the way he swam seemed distant: floating on his back, his toes pointing to the sky, his eyes shut, unconcerned where the waters might take him. At home he was often busy with a book or the endless number of newspapers that appeared at our door every morning. I would sometimes curl up beside him, but his powers of concentration were amazing and he would hardly notice me. I would study his face as he read. Even the English mints he bought on his trips abroad, and which he kept in a small silver box, seemed mysterious: they were the size of small aspirin pills, but as soon as I put one in my mouth it set it on fire. He would sometimes say something in Italian at the newspaper. That always made Mama laugh. 'Your father is swearing at the paper,' she would say.
Although he travelled more than Ustath Rashid he never took me with him. I begged him several times and once I felt so sick with sadness that I screamed, kicked his shins and pummelled his thighs, and, when Mama restrained me, I cried and called him 'Ugly!' He drove off just the same. I never again asked him to take me with him or cried in front of him when he came to leave. At other times I secretly wished that Moosa, Baba's closest friend, was my father instead. Moosa was much younger, closer to Mama's age, and as tall as a tree. He often carried me on his shoulders to pick the high fruit, sweetened by the sun, on the crowns of the plum and orange trees in our garden.
Once Baba returned from one of his business trips with a huge open truck full of trees that had come by sea from Sweden. It was strange to have them sleep outside our house. They were dark and moist and smelled like human skin. Mama and I spread the atlas on the kitchen table to see where exactly Sweden was and by which sea route Baba's trees had come. Another time the truck was full of cows, black and dark brown from Scotland. We -Baba, Mama, Moosa and I – fed them without letting them off the truck, stuffing the feed through the fence, their round big black glassy eyes following us in silence. Mama sang to them the way she sang to herself when she was in the bathroom, or when she was hanging clothes on the clothesline in the garden, softly like a little girl unaware of herself. Baba walked around the truck several times, making sure each cow got its share. The cows were silent the whole time, chewing gloomily.
I spent the whole of that day unable to leave them alone, turning around the truck, looking up at their pink titties, climbing to stare into their peculiar eyes. After nap time the boys came out and began teasing them too. Masoud wiggled his bum at them and mooed, causing his brother Ali to laugh so hard a vein on either side of his tiny neck bulged out. Osama wanted to hear them moo so he threw a couple of stones at them and the cows huddled together, their sudden movement causing the truck to rock slightly. This seemed to awaken a new fear in Ali; he ran to his front door, stood frowning at his fingers. 'Come, don't be such a baby,' his brother Masoud said. Ali ran inside his house and didn't come out for the rest of the day. When I threatened Osama I would tell Baba, he sighed and dropped the stones in his hands.
By nightfall the cows began to moo.
'Maybe they are frightened,' I suggested.
Moosa said it was the heat that bothered them. 'Where they are from the sun has no heat and barely any light,' he said.
'So you want to convince us you've been to Scotland?' Mama told him.
'No. I saw it in a film. I felt a chill just watching it.'
Baba couldn't say how cold Scotland was because he bought the cows off a man in Malta, which was only across the sea.
The following morning, after Baba had driven off with them, Um Masoud came to our door to complain. She was Masoud and Ali's mother and lived in the house across the street from ours. Like her two sons, Um Masoud was fat. Her buttocks were the size of giant watermelons. Although I never tried it, of course, I was certain I could balance a glass of water on one of them. Holding her youngest, Ali, by one hand and waving the other beside her ear, she said, 'I can still hear their mooing and suspect I will for a long time to come. Ali couldn't even sleep.' Ali was only six and, standing beside his huge mother, he looked like a dwarf. I stuck my tongue out at him. He frowned and looked away. 'He woke up several times screaming. And this is to say nothing of the stink they left behind in our street.'