The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (2 page)

When I got back Liz was snoring so I sneaked into the bathroom, shut and bolted the door. The sound of a gate being shut, footsteps, and walking on cold paving stones looking and looking for her. The tub was full so I added few drops of bath oil to the hot water. The smell of sage filled the small bathroom and reminded me of the long afternoons in Hima, when we used to drink sage tea and spin and weave. Instead of walking up the mountains looking for sage bushes, picking the soft green leaves, washing them then drying them, there they were: cut, squeezed and stored into little dark blue bottles for ma lady's convenience. With a lubricated razor, I shaved my legs and underarms carefully. Before your wedding night they spread a paste of boiled sugar and lemon between your legs and yank away the hair. My grandmother Shahla said, `When they finished with me I was covered with bruises, but as smooth and hairless as a nine-year-old girl. Your grandfather preferred it clean. I looked so pure and innocent, he said.' The painful and sticky sugaring belonged to the past, together with marriage, my black Bedouin madraqa robe, and silver money hats, all shelved there at the end of the horizon, overseas. Foam on the legs, then shave - puff- no hair. Nice and easy and washes away instantly like love in this new country, like love in the old country.

I got out of the bath and cleaned the tub with hot water, making sure that every black hair was sliding down the drain. Liz did not like to see any black hair around the house, but my hair was falling everywhere: in the sink, bath, washbasin, on the carpet, on bed linen, on the back of the armchair, which I used to sit in when Liz was out of the house. `You have been sitting in my chair. Look! Your dark hair is everywhere.' A thin olive-skinned fractured reflection, with big brown eyes, a crooked nose and long dark thick frizzy hair, looked back at me in the broken mirror. If I did not know me I would have said that I was Salina, whole and healthy. `I called you Salma because you are healthy, pure and clean.Your name means the woman with the soft hands and feet, so may you live in luxury for the rest of your life. Salina, my little chick, my heart, may God keep you safe and sound wherever you go, darling!' If I did not know me I would have said that I was Salina, but my back was bent and my head was held low I wrapped my trembling body with the warm towel and sniffed the air.

`Your breasts are like melons, cover them up!' my father haj Ibrahim said.

`Your tuft of wool is red,' my mother said, `you are impulsive.'

My brother Mahmoud kept an eye on me while brushing his horse; I started hunching my back to hide my breasts, which were the first thing Hamdan had noticed about me. When I first met him I was walking along the stream looking for bugloss which my mother brewed and drank to ease her backache. I touched the clear water with my fingers, then I saw Hamdan: a reflection of a dark face, white teeth and dark curly hair covered with a chequered red-and-white headdress. I fell in love instantly when I saw the reflection of his shoulders in the water. When I started watering the vegetable beds three times a day and fondling the horse my mother shouted, `Salma, you stupid child, are you in love?' I fixed the white scarf on my head, pulled my loose pantaloons up and nodded.

The film star, in her short tight skirt and long black leather boots which went up her thighs, was still holding her Prince Charming under the glass display of the bus stop by the White Hare, where they played hard rock music for skinheads all the time. Love in this country came wrapped in chocolate boxes, in bottles of champagne, in free drinks. It came in pubs, buses and discos, even on British Rail with the wings of its ever-flying red eagle. Savage love, like the one I used to have for Hamdan, was now a prisoner of silver screens. It rarely happened in real life.You saw it in old black-and-white films shown on Sunday afternoons, and you heard it in the trembling voices: `Oh! Don't go. Please don't leave me'The flickering screen, the sighs, the white handkerchief, the sobs, `I love you the length of the sea and sky, the height of the Sheikh Mountain and the width of the Sahara.'

My black Bedouin madraqa, embroidered with threads so colourful they would make your eyes water, was tucked away, like my past, in the suitcase on top of the wardrobe. The Indian corner shop sold ethnic clothes, fabrics, jewellery and rugs.The red elephant above the main door carried a howdah on its back. Through the show window two Indian goddesses made of carved wood with hands all over the place were always looking at the passers-by. The embroidered silk was so colourful, bright and uplifting it took you all the way to the Taj Mahal. The shop was full of English women in their flowery dresses and missionary sandals, fingering the cascading Indian fabrics. `When in India, sitting under frilled parasols, they used to watch their men in white playing cricket on the lawn, while Indian waiters ran around serving cold sherbet.' My Pakistani friend Parvin blew her fringe off her face and added, `What is left of the Empire are those little islands of nostalgia.'

One afternoon while I was still in the backpackers' hostel lying in an ex-army bed I heard the forceful knock of the porter on the door. I looked around me: the curtains were drawn and my shoes, trousers, shirt and underwear were scattered on the dirty floor. I was a hedgehog hiding in dark tunnels exhaling and inhaling the stale air.

Using his master key, the porter opened the door and let in a short, thin, dark young woman. I covered my body and half of my face with the grey sheets.

When she looked at me she could only see the slit of my eyes and a white veil so she turned to him. `Where does she come from?'

`Somewhere in the Middle East. Fucking A-rabic! She rode a camel all the way from Arabia to this dump in Exeter,' he said and laughed.

`I am not going to share the room with an Arab,' she spat.

I pretended that I was asleep and that I could not hear a word.

`This is the only decent hostel in Exeter. It's the only empty bed we have, Miss P-a-r-a-f-f-i-n,' he said carefully.

`Parvin,' she screamed.

`Yes, miss,' he said.

`She is also covered with sores. It could be contagious!'

`It is not serious. It's the only bed we have, miss.'

`All right! All right!' She put her rucksack on the floor and sat on it, looked around then said, `What a dump!'

I looked at her straight hair and long fringe and turned in my bed. The smell of hurt and broken promises filled the brightly lit room.

She was emerald, turquoise encased in silver, Indian silk cascading down from rolls, a pearl in her bed, pomegranate, fresh coffee beans ground in an ornate sandalwood pestle and mortar, honey and spicy ghee wrapped in freshly baked bread, pure perfume sealed in blue jars, rough diamonds, a dew-covered plain in the vast flat open green valley, a sea teal at the edges and azure in the centre, my grandmother's Ottoman gold coins strung together by a black cord, my mother's wedding silver money hat, a full moon hidden behind translucent clouds.

That evening I had a shower, covered my scabs with cream, washed my dirty clothes and cleaned the room, while Parvin was lying in bed watching me. I tried to make the room look cheerful, but with two ex-army beds, a chest of drawers, an old wardrobe and a dirty grey carpet it was impossible.When I pushed the window open Parvin turned around and went to sleep. I switched on the bedside lamp and began inspecting local papers for jobs. A sales girl required. Presentable with good command of English ... I looked up `presentable' and `command' in the dictionary. I was neither presentable nor able to speak English well. Nothing that would suit a woman like me with no looks, no education, no experience and no letters of recommendation. I was also ill, very ill. I took my reed pipe out and began blowing until the soft hoarse sound filled the room, the city, and travelled overseas all the way to my mother's ears. Parvin looked up then went back to sleep.

I found myself standing in front of the shop that sells baby clothes, something I am not allowed to do under any circumstances. The doctor said, `You have to cut your ties with the past, you are here now so try to get on with it.' I pulled my foot back, put the other foot behind it and made myself walk away, but not before I had a glimpse of a white satin and chiffon dress.A line of pearls was stitched carefully above each frill. It looked like a luminous white cloud, like dawn; the pearls shone like tears of joy. It was a promise of a reunion, a return. That white dress was home.

Liz was confused when I moved in with her. Was I a lodger, a confidante or a servant? Her state of mind altered according to the amount of alcohol she had consumed. She regulated my access to the kitchen to half an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening and she would get upset if I washed the wooden cutlery and crockery. `I have coated them with olive oil and I would like it to stay to protect the wood, thank you very much. Look what you've done!' What she did not know was that as soon as I arrived in her dirty house I wanted to boil some water, put it in a bucket, add some washing-up liquid and walk around scrubbing clean every glass, every piece of china, every utensil. I also wanted to wash the floor, the walls, the ceiling and above all the toilet seat, which had some dry excrement stuck to the wood. I was a goddamn Muslim and had to be pure and clean. My bum was not supposed to have any contact with urine, which was najas: impure, so I either pulled the toilet seat up and squatted, but made sure not to have any contact with the toilet, which was a great balancing act, or washed my lower part in the tub with freezing water because hot water was only available between seven and eight in the morning on weekdays. So most days I would walk to work, my private parts frozen, looking for the warm mist of human breath.

Sadiq, the owner of Omar Khayyam off-licence across the road, was dark, thin and tall, with supple fingers. Before he started talking he would jerk his chin sideways as if looking for words, then say, `Excellent also.' He prayed five times a day. Whenever I walked past his shop his mat would be spread on the floor and he would be standing, hands on tummy, eyes closed, muttering verses from the Qur'an. My father haj Ibrahim did not pray regularly. The mat was out whenever a goat was stolen or we were having a long spell of drought. One evening while I was sitting in his lap, stroking his beard, he told me that last winter they had no rain whatsoever, not a single drop, so they asked all the men of the village to gather together in a field to do the Rain Prayer. They all knelt in unison before their maker and pleaded with Him to send in the rain. Before they finished the skies opened and the rain pelted down. That afternoon, cold and soaking wet, they marched through the village repeating, `There is no God but Allah, and no prophet but Muhammad.' When he finished talking he looked at me with his dark eyes, ran his flaky hand over my head then kissed my forehead. `You are lucky to be born Muslim,' he said, `because your final abode is paradise.You will sit there in a cloud of perfume drinking milk and honey.'

He smelt of Musk Gazelle, which he used to keep in a and oiled legs and realized that I was free at last. Gone were the days when I used to chase the hens around in wide pantaloons and loose flowery dresses in the bright colours of my village: red to be noticed, black for anger, green for spring and bright orange for the hot sun. If this small glass bottle were full of snake venom I would drink it in one go. I dabbed some perfume behind my ears and on my wrists, took a deep breath, tossed my no longer braided and veiled hair on my shoulders, pulled my tummy in, straightened my posture and walked out of Swan Cottage, which was the name Liz had chosen for her semi-detached house. I filled my chest with the clean morning air, inflating my ribs until my back muscles were taut and raw. I could see shreds of blue sky between the luminous white clouds that stretched out in different shapes: the mane of a horse, a small foot, a tiny, wrinkled hand like a tender vine leaf that has just burst open.

The cathedral in the distance looked dark and small. The feeble English sun was trying hard to melt away the clouds. I walked past the student residences, past the large white houses with neat gardens and barking dogs, past HM Prison. I looked at the high walls, the coiled barbed wire, the small barred windows, and realized that this time I was on the wrong side of the black iron gate despite my dark deeds and my shameful past. I was free, walking on the pavement like an innocent person. My face was black as if covered with soot, my hands were black and I had smeared the foreheads of my family with tar. A thick, dark, sticky liquid dripped from the iron railing I was holding all the way to the walkway. I shook my head trying to chase away the foul smell and looked towards the Exe. almond, apple and pomegranate trees had flowered at the same time. I sniffed the back of my hand. She was weaving her long shiny black hair into a braid, her large luminous brown eyes fixed on the iron bars of the small high window `We were given this free by the old man who runs the brothel, to massage our customers with. Satisfied customers used to call our barn "the house of perfume"; dissatisfied ones used to call it "the house of poison".' She bit her generous outward-tilting lower lip, rubbed her pointed nose, ran her forefingers on her perfect arched eyebrows and said, `I used to like the density of it, the fact that it might suffocate you, it might kill you at any moment' She held my hand, sniffed the perfume and said, `All I want now is to be able to forgive.'