"How about your work?"
"I saw my programme director yesterday. She"s quite happy."
"Look. Concentrate on your mother. And your work. The rest will come."
"I know."
"And call me soon."
"Of course I will."
I sit on the edge of my bed. I do not believe in the sudden and miraculous opening of sealed doors, but I have always tried to keep an open mind. After a moment I carry on dressing. I look at myself in the mirror with more interest than I have done for a long time. I look like one of my school-friends" mothers. Pa.s.sable, I decide. Nothing like what I used to be, but pa.s.sable. When the buzzer rings and Tahiyya calls out, "Tareq Bey says he"s waiting for you in the car", I dim the lights, pick up my handbag and go.
Over our drinks in the sky-high bar of the Rameses Hilton we look down at the necklaces of lights twined about the banks of the Nile, the bridges, the squares of Khedive Ismail"s Cairo. There is Qasr el-Nil Bridge, and beyond it the gracious lines of the British emba.s.sy and beyond that the fortress of the American emba.s.sy in the heart of Garden City.
"You know, I was wrong that day," Tareq says. "You have changed."
"Hardly surprising." I smile.
"You have grown even more beautiful."
When I make a face, he says: "No, seriously. You were always beautiful. But now there"s something more. Something very special about you."
"Yes," I say. "The past."
"We should have got married," he says.
"Sure," I say. "Then you would have been saying these pretty things to someone else right now."
"Since when are you so cynical?"
"Me? You"re the one who"s thinking of doing business with the Israelis."
"Forget about the Israelis," he says, "I"m talking personal."
"The personal is the political," I quote.
"OK then," he says. Tell me. What are you doing about all those things you say you care so much about?"
"What"s in my hands I"ll do," I say. "I shall go live in Tawasi and look after the land myself -"
"You believe that will help Egypt?" He looks incredulous. "Looking after a bit of land and keeping a few fallaheen happy?"
"I"ll activate the health unit -"
"Now you"ll say you"ll teach them to do their own weaving -"
"And I"ll get the school going."
"Have you found teachers?" "No."
"Why not?"
"Because n.o.body will give lists of names to the government. And your friend Muhyi Bey knew that very well."
"So what will you do?"
"I don"t know. Man the school myself "You"ll go sit there every evening?"
"If I have to."
"Nonsense! You can"t do that. I"ll send you a couple of young men from my farm."
"What?"
"I"ll send you a couple of men. I"ll guarantee them to the Governor."
"Would you really do that?"
"I"ve just said I will."
"Egyptians?"
"Come on, ya Amal -"
"I"m sorry. It"s just - why? Why would you do that?"
"Because I don"t want you sitting there. Because you want the school opened. Because it"s right that it should be opened."
"We can"t pay them proper salaries."
"It"s all right. I"ll look after that."
Is he taking over my life? It is so long since anyone has told me what I can or cannot do. So long since anyone has intervened in my life. But he is considering doing business with Israel. And he is married. But he is also my friend, isn"t he?
"Tareq," I say, "you said ideologies are dead. Is there any idea that you believe in?"
"Justice," he says, without a moment"s hesitation. "I believe in justice."
I cannot quarrel with that. I do not say, What about justice for the Palestinians? I"ll save that for another time. I think of telling him about Isabel and her orange blossom. I think of telling him about my marriage and its end. I look out at the river and the lights below us and I say: "Isn"t it just heartbreakingly beautiful?"
"There"s nothing like it in the world," he says.
"You"d think it deserved a better deal," I say.
He tips the car-park attendant five pounds.
"That"s just to make you happy," he says and grins at me.
In the low-slung Mercedes, looking straight ahead, he asks, "Shall I kidnap you?"
"No, please," I say, "I"m expecting my brother."
18 August 1997 Tahiyya and I are working in the guestroom. We have removed the dustsheets from the furniture. I am taking the books out of the bookcase and dusting them while she polishes the mirror above the dressing table with old newspaper and water. We have the radio on and the news is coming through of the Southern Lebanon Army Militias turning their artillery on Saida. The count so far is six killed and thirty wounded. All of them civilians. Tahiyya is tutting "Ya Sattar ya Rabb" and asking, is this destruction never going to stop? I am thinking of a time back in "63 when my father was still alive and we had gone to Lebanon for a week, and visited cousins and visited also Saida and Tyre and climbed into the ruins of the old Crusader castles and looked out at the sea, shimmering away into the distance, leading to Africa on the left, to Europe on the right, and straight ahead into the broad blue of the Atlantic.
It was around six when the telephone rang - eleven in the morning in New York.
"I"ve just seen your brother off at the airport," Isabel said. And then she told me about yesterday.
Jasmine had been lucid, coherent, but in another time and another language: she would only speak French.
"Mama is so sad," Jasmine says. "And Papa keeps reminding her England is her home after all and telling her it is only for a while, but she will not go without him -" It"s 1940. Paris is about to fall to the n.a.z.is and Nur is desperate for Jean-Marie to leave. She fears that once she and the sixteen-year-old Jasmine are safely in England, her husband might stay and take his chances. She will not let that happen.
"Then she started going on about getting her out safely," Isabel said. "And it was really spooky when I realised she was talking about me "I"ve been ill, very ill," Jasmine says. "That"s why I"ve been in here so long. I don"t know how Jonathan is managing. I truly don"t. He can"t do a thing for himself. Such a sweet man! And he dotes on the baby already. I have to make sure I get her out safely -"
"How do you know it"s a girl?" Isabel asks.
"What? Of course it"s a girl. Isabel. Jonathan adores her already. Only there"s too much pressure. You understand? Too much."
"Yes." Isabel nods at her mother"s bedside. "I understand."
Outside the sun was burning down on the Manhattan streets, but in the room, the curtains were drawn and the air-conditioning hummed gently.
"If I can get her out she"ll be safe. She"ll be a bit early. But she"ll be safe. They"ve got good doctors here. The best doctors in the world are right here in London. Isn"t that right, Nurse? Yes, I know I mustn"t talk so much. Bad. Bad for the baby."
Isabel looks up at the nurse, who has come in quietly and now lifts Jasmine"s arm, holding the frail wrist gently while she looks at her stopwatch. Isabel wonders whether the nurse speaks French.
"It"s OK, Mrs Cabot," the nurse says in English. "You"re doing great."
Does she speak French? Or does it not matter any more what her mother says?
"I can"t feel her kicking any more, Nurse. She"s gone very quiet."
"You"ll be fine, Mrs Cabot, just fine. Try to relax now."
"She was kicking and moving about all the time. And now she"s gone quiet. Perhaps she"s sleeping; getting ready for her journey."
Jasmine closes her eyes. When she opens them again it is 1944 and she has just met Jonathan Cabot, the bright young diplomat attached to Eisenhower in London.
"I am not blaming you or criticising you," she protests to Nur. "I am saying simply that I like his frankness. It is all simple with him. He says what he means. He knows what he wants. He is full of hope and energy. I love Papa dearly but I would not choose to marry him -"
The nurse asks if Isabel wants to talk to the doctor about sedating Jasmine.
"He has one room, one big room in an attic with large windows tilted to the sky. And he has a gramophone. And the floor is bare and good for dancing. Our apartment, it is so heavy: the big drapes, the chandeliers forever being dusted and polished, the huge, gloomy paintings. Nothing is less than a hundred years old. Perhaps I love him for the bareness of his loft -"
Isabel says to let Jasmine be. The once black, glossy hair is a spiky halo of white, the movement - now redundant - of the trembling hand to push it back from the temple reminds Isabel of an elderly ballerina showing how things should be done.
"I never stopped loving him. No, not for a day. Even when I was in his arms I did not stop loving Jonathan. It was different. Something drew me to him. His youth. His hair and eyes were dark, like mine. Layers of trouble I sensed behind those eyes - but I had to let him go. I knew it would not do. I had to let him go, though it was like tearing out part of my heart all over again "Are you sure now?" The nurse asks again.
"Valentine," Jasmine sobs, "Val, Valentine - " She curls over on her side, holding her pillow close, ducking her head to wipe her streaming eyes, her mouth, her nose against it.
When it was over, Isabel called my brother: "Can I see you?"
"You know I"m leaving tomorrow," he said. "I still have a lot of things to do."
"How long will you be away?"
"A week, maybe ten days."
"I - my mother died."
"Oh, Isabel. Isabel, I"m so sorry. I"ll come right over."
"No. I don"t want to go to the apartment."
"Where are you?"
"I"m - I"m in a public -"
"OK. Stop a cab and come over. OK? Now."
So she went over and when he saw her at his door he took her in his arms: a beautiful, forlorn, parentless child. He poured her a drink. He rubbed her cold hands and breathed on them. He took her in his arms again. I imagine she held on to him and wept and he kissed her tear-drenched face and then her mouth and she held on to him as though for life itself.
My brother took Isabel into his bed and made love to her and when, later, she fell asleep, he drew the covers over her. And when he had finished his packing he went and lay by her side and she awakened and turned to him again. And it was as the sun was rising that she started to talk to him about her mother.
20 August 1997 Now I know where my brother is and why. He must be in Ramallah where - the radio tells me - the Palestinian Authority are holding a "Conference of National Unity".
"And about time too" I can hear him say.
I am not easy. My brother hates seeing the Resistance turn into the Authority.
"The first thing they do," he said, "the first thing is set up the security services. Eleven security services. So what are they doing? They"re going to do the Israelis" dirty work for them?"
My brother speaks his mind, and he speaks it where it will be heard - and dangerous.
I arrange a cloud of pink sweet peas in a shallow bowl in his room and promise myself he will be here while they still bloom. I blow on their petals and make sure each one has room to breathe while I listen to the radio report Washington"s criticism of the conference for giving a platform to the Islamists, and a tune repeats itself insistently in my head: Weinha Ramallah? Weinha Ramallah?
Tell me, oh traveller, where is Ramallah?
In the newspaper, today"s batch of photographs from the Territories are pretty much the same as every day: young men lined up against shuttered shops in a cobbled street, old men standing by, watching, as their olive groves are torn up, women wailing as bulldozers smash through their houses - any one of these women could have been my mother. A particular photograph arrests my attention: a child of three or so rides high on men"s shoulders at his father"s funeral. He carries a machine gun and wears a headband inscribed "We shall return". His expression is tranquil. Is it right that a child"s path should be so firmly set so early? I have tried not to weigh down my sons with our history. Now I try to be glad that they are free.
Weinha Ramallah? Weinha Ramallah?
We used to sing this when I was a student. We were in 1968 and Ramallah had just been lost to us.