By seven I had drunk my tea and turned on the laptop computer that Nadir had given me. It was gorgeous, magnificent. I wasn’t sure whether I would have found it so beautiful had I seen it displayed for sale in some shop. ‘It’s beautiful because it’s a gift,’ I said to myself, ‘and beautiful in its own right, irrespective of other considerations.’ It was small, light, and elegant, its cover, the borders around the screen and the keyboard all of a fine silver colour. The keyboard was black, imprinted with Arabic and Roman letters in white. Its case was elegant as well, with one space for the machine, another for papers, and a third for storing the cords, adapter, and accessories, as well as two pockets: a square one for the compact discs that came with the computer, and another rectangular one for the mouse.
I was fixing another cup of tea when Nadeem woke up, kissed me, and shyly held out his hand, in which was something wrapped in coloured paper. ‘Happy birthday, Nada,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ I replied.
‘The gift doesn’t measure up to the occasion.’
I opened it, kissed it, and kissed him.
We sat down to have tea together.
I was about to say, ‘The laptop Nadir brought me is a treasure,’ and then I thought better of it.
‘By the way, Nada,’ said Nadeem, ‘tell Mama that you commissioned Nadir to buy you that computer.’
‘But I didn’t commission him!’
‘I know. But it seems she’s upset. Yesterday while we were fixing tea she let slip a comment that gave her away.’
‘What did she say?’
‘It doesn’t matter what she said, but apparently she knows what that kind of equipment costs, and maybe she was comparing that to the price of the watch.’
‘And why are you passing this on to me?’ (The sharpness of the one-time child-rearer had resurfaced.)
‘I’m not passing anything on to you. I just wanted to prevent the possibility of any misunderstanding or hurt feelings. Tell her you gave him money for the computer, that it turned out not to be enough, and he made up his mind to cover the rest of the cost. That is, a compromise between a gift and something you asked him to get for you. She’ll calm down if you tell her that.’
‘I won’t do it!’
Then I added with finality, ‘I hope Nadir won’t hear about any of this nonsense!’
He was quiet. Then he said, ‘Nadir suggested I go to Dubai.’
‘Did you get a job offer?’
‘No, but he says he’d be able to get me a job with a decent salary. What do you think?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know. But if things go on like this I’m going to take him up on it.’
It’s strange how we react. I took out my anger on Nadeem, not Hamdiya. I was furious with him for telling me what his mother had said — or rather, what was worse, passing along his own version of what she had said. From the time they were small, I refused to listen if Nadir said, ‘Nadeem did such-and-such,’ or if Nadeem said, ‘Nadir said such-and-such.’ I would give them a good scolding, and sometimes even punish the informer. Nadeem wasn’t being an informer. He was trying, pointlessly, to avert hurt feelings. Did he avert them or create them? Nadir was to be with us just one day; there was nothing for it but for me to drop the whole subject as if I hadn’t heard anything of it. But how?
Over lunch, Nadir said to me, ‘You look pale, Nada.’
‘I overate last night, and slept only two hours. Besides, we’ve started the countdown — you’re leaving tomorrow.’
‘Let’s think of today, not tomorrow. Nadeem and I are going to make you a birthday cake, whether it gets eaten or not — it’s the thought that counts.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Hamdiya put in.
I said, ‘I’m inviting you all to lunch at a restaurant — there’s no need for a cake. Thank you, Hamdiya.’
Chapter twenty-three
Blue lorries
Something new was happening that struck me as odd, and I couldn’t let it go. I was following the blue lorries — I would encounter them by chance on the road, and pursue them. I said nothing about this to anyone, as my behaviour might provoke ridicule or at least laughter, or doubts as to my mental health. I would catch sight of them two or three cars ahead of me, or notice that they were behind me when they were reflected in the car’s rear-view mirror, or one of the side mirrors. I would find myself spontaneously turning the wheel to the right or left, speeding up or slowing down, jockeying for a place next to them. Most of the time I would be prevented by the heavy traffic in the streets and squares, or a light would turn red suddenly, forcing me to stop, or else a green light would oblige me to move forward inopportunely, or a couple of cars might pass me and I would fail to catch up with them. Sometimes there was a fork in the road, and my day’s agenda (if I was on my way to work or to an appointment I couldn’t miss) wouldn’t permit me to follow them, since I might end up where I hadn’t meant to go, deep in the byways from which it would take me more time than I had to extricate myself.
They were big vehicles, of a hue that was nothing like either sky-blue or sea-blue, but the raw blue of cheap paint to which dust had clung until it became part of it. Perhaps the surface had been repainted over and over, without being cleaned or sanded first, so that the last layer of colour went on muddy and uneven. The driver and the one or two men beside him were all from the rank and file of the police force. Behind them would be the big iron box, with a door at the rear and a set of steps between that and the street. The door would be locked with a large deadbolt and sometimes a padlock in addition to that. In rare cases a couple of boys would be standing there — boys from the countryside in uniforms that were filthy, albeit official — as auxiliary security guards. On either side of the box, in the upper third portion, were four small openings close together, presumably windows, with iron bars or instead of bars some thick metal grillwork that would restrict the airflow for whoever was inside the box and limit the visibility of those behind these openings, keeping them that much more tightly in bonds.
They were called ‘transport lorries’, for they were used to convey those who had been arrested from one place to another — from the police department, for example, or from the public prosecutor’s office to the courtroom and from there to prison.
When I followed one of these vehicles my first concern was to find out whether there were people in the box, and whether they were pressing their faces to the metal grillwork seeking a breath of air or a beam of light or some hope in the sight of a face or a tree or a school door opening suddenly for a group of children.
Having got close enough, I liked to stop my car altogether, so that the necessity of watching the road would not prevent me from staring at those windows secured with grillwork, where I might see a face, or intercept a glance or a smile. Then the urgent honk of a car horn would compel me to avert my gaze, to discover that I was on the point of colliding with the car ahead of me, or that my car was rolling backward and about to hit the one behind me.
I rarely succeeded in overtaking a transport lorry. The two or three times I was lucky, I imagined that I saw a face behind the opening, and I looked intently at it. It seemed to me that it stared at me as well. I would smile. After that, I would have no chance, because of the need to concentrate on the road, to see any response to my smile; then the vehicle would move off, and I would continue on my way.
It didn’t occur to me, when I thought about this new mania that had beset me, that it was a premonition, and that my heart was anticipating what was to happen. I thought my new mania was some residue of the past, that perhaps unconsciously I was remembering my father, and following paths he might have travelled.