Dreamed green.
I dreamt it because it exists.
There is another way, not surrogate succession to the Uncle Yaqub’s vehicle workshop, not the dirty work waiting in some other, the next country — here, a possibility. A possibility: his favourite dream-word: ‘there are possibilities’ in whatever country will let him pass through its barriers of immigration.
Here. You could have it both. The mute desert and the life-chorus of green.
When they arrived back at his parents’ house he had already eaten with his mother. The mother enquired, through him, how his wife had enjoyed the trip.
I could never have imagined … Rice is so beautiful … wheat, maize — nothing to compare as a crop … growing …
Well we have left some for you to eat. He spoke, amusedly tolerant, in Arabic. His mother smiled royally at her, and lifted a permissive hand to the kitchen. Maryam had sped ahead to prepare a meal for her father, silvery husks falling from the soles of her worn sandals. Mother and son saw his wife pick up a few and examine them, lying in her palm.
In the privacy of the lean-to she was able to give him the kiss of her enthusiasm.
So you had a good time. Hot, ay. He tasted the salt of sweat on her lips.
Have you ever been there?
I’ve been there. I know Aboulkanim.
It seems a successful business … and producing food …
Maybe.
You know I understand now that you have to live with the desert to know what water is.
I told you before you came. Dry, nothing. In this place.
No, no … that’s not what I’m trying to … Water’s — water is change; and the desert doesn’t. So when you see the two together, the water field of rice growing, and it’s in the desert — there’s a span of life right there — like ours — and there’s an existence beyond any span. You know?
You are not believing. You always tell me. Not a Christian, since you left your school, not a Muslim like my family, so what is this now?
He felt he was listening to one of those arguments about the meaning of life started by the rambling of the old man with white hair tied in a ribbon at that table in the Café he thought of as the home she had left behind to be with him in this annex to his family.
Not heaven, nirvana — this place where we are, what there is here. A kind of proof. Do you get me — I can’t explain.
With the thumbnail of one hand he was taking the rind of garage dirt from under the nails of the other; his fastidiousness, more than anything he said, expressed to her, bringing an empathy of injury, the frustration and humiliation of his return to nothing more than the underbelly of the Uncle Yaqub’s vehicles. She lay down beside him and stroked the hand, a moment.
I’m told you can buy part of the oasis already under cultivation. I suppose from a landowner. Or is it from the government? And you can get permission to drill for a well, in the desert. Did you know?
With money you can buy anything from the government. The landowners who call themselves a government. Same thing. That is what is here, in this place of my people. That is one of the first things for you to understand — what’s true, about life in this place. There is no mystery about our life. Money — and the government will tell you the deal is done, Al-Hamdu lillah.
He was speaking in Arabic.
The price is so reasonable — I asked your father and that friend of his who came with us. I could hardly believe it. Something I could almost certainly raise — from back there, there’s a Trust meant for, well, when my father dies, but there are ways …
You want to buy a rice concession! You! What for?
She did not look at him but at the unpainted board ceiling, aware of his attention on her profile.
For us.
He lifted his spine and let his body thud back to the bed with a grunt like a laugh. Julie, we do not live here.
Making our own living doing something — interesting? Useful, different, growing food. Something neither of us has ever done.
Once it was an agency for actors in Cape Town, now rice in an oasis, another adventure to hear from her, from her rich girl’s ignorance, innocence.
For her part, she sensed it best to place before him something of hard-headed calculation.
That Mr Aboulkanim obviously makes money.
Not rice money.
He spoke now in fluent mix of English and Arabic, translating himself, leaping from phrase to phrase.
That is his — what do you say — his front, the beautiful rice fields. He makes money all right — plenty of it — and do you know how? Do you? He is a smuggler, he calls it import-export, he’s a go-between in arms sales for a crowd of cronies over the border, and that’s only what I can tell you about Mr Aboulkanim, there’s much more of the same I don’t know, that people who know admire him for because he’s successful. That’s success, here.
She sat up startled and confronted him. Your father works for him.
My father works for what makes him respectable. Your rice field. My father isn’t let into the Big Business, my father is the poor devil, may I be forgiven to speak like that, who fills in the right papers to sell rice, only rice, and gets a cash handout every few months. So he uses my father’s honest name.
And now she confronted herself. Why should I be so shocked at this story; how many lunch guests at Nigel Ackroyd Summers’ Sundays are involved in deals that are not revealed, and if known are not talked about along with the price of Futures — not arms deals; but why not? Perhaps even those, passing by remote control through the sale of diamonds in Angola.
If we had a concession it wouldn’t have anything to do with all that. Mr Aboulkanim. Just growing rice.
He rolled away from her, rose, and changed his shirt, took from the canvas bag his folder of papers.
I’ve got a meeting tonight with someone. We’ll see if he turns up.
He came to where she sat flushed with the heat of the day, dangling her legs from the iron bar of the bed, shook his head over her, giving her the smile, that treasure so often withheld.
She had not shown him the photograph, the slippery husks of rice sifting through her fingers. Until it faded it would be proof that the place exists; could have been attained.
Chapter 36
From the canvas bag standing ready, that carried his life from country to country, he had taken the letters sent by the woman in California.
He said nothing to her; she had been completely dismissive of her mother’s likelihood of knowing anyone whose signature could be of use, anywhere, in a situation remote as his. But more than that: his hopes had been raised so often — the thought of this brought that confusion of resentment and shame that was new to him, a result of coming back to this place. He could not face her philosophical encouragement, real or assumed, her patience, real, or a cover for the adventure soon to become another to entertain back round The Table; the beautiful suitcase she didn’t value stood there, ready for her.