“Let’s,” she said.
Duniya was at the wheel, murmuring something to herself as if taking a memory test. The car she and Bosaaso were in was parked in an open space, where many other learners were being given their driving instruction, and now they were facing an aged wall, at the rear of Genio Civile. Bosaaso had suggested she concentrate, but that was not what she was doing. She was asking herself why she was learning to drive when she had no car, and no hope of getting one. Was this going to be another nail hammered into the coffin of her dependence on him? Or was theirs simply another clichéd relationship, so to speak, in which women were the providers of food, shelter, peace at home and good company in exchange for the man’s offer of upward mobility, security and cash?
Some people sweat when they are nervous. Others get upset stomachs. Some freeze. Others fidget. Duniya was tense all right, so her ears filled with the compressed air of her inner anxiety, and she couldn’t hear a thing. Otherwise she was very calm and one wouldn’t have suspected her of being under any strain.
“Concentrate!” Bosaaso repeated.
“That’s precisely what I am doing, if you please,” she said.
He started from the beginning, naming the important parts of the car, one by one. It was as if he were giving each part he named a fresh lease on life, touching them where possible. He wanted her to know them by their names, he wanted her to remember their function, before moving the vehicle an inch. Now he touched the controls as he pointed them out, as he showed her how the gears operated. Presently he explained how the clutch functioned, and then he pressed the pedals; finally the brake and the accelerator.
Ideas were elbowing each other out, fighting for space in her head, a positive thought out-doing a negative one, or vice versa. She discovered to her surprise that Zawadi was making her presence felt. To rid her mind of Zawadi, Duniya said: “Did you know that my brother Abshir’s nickname used to be Scelaro?”
“Because he learnt things fast?”
She nodded.
After a short pause he said half-censoriously, “Concentrate!”
Duniya recited the names of the vehicle’s parts as he touched them. He was impressed. She did all this with tremendous speed and precision. Then she changed the gears while not moving, and went through the motions of driving through traffic, clutching the steering-wheel, one foot pressing the accelerator, the other alert, and close to both the brake and the clutch.
“How do you put it in reverse?” she asked.
He hesitated and was about to say, “Later,” but he changed his mind and showed her, the car not yet in motion. She repeated all he had told her, including his instructions about how to reverse. After a very heavy pause, she asked, “Are you ready?”
“I am, if you are,” he said, smiling.
“Your safety-belt, please,” she said.
They moved very slowly and after an appropriate lapse she shifted gears, apparently comfortable, with the ease and confidence of someone who had driven for years. Her lips were moving all the time. Was she praying? Or was she rehearsing the sequence of moves she would perform? The truth was surprisingly different, for Duniya kept saying to herself, If Zawadi can, so can I; if lots of stupid men can drive, so can I. All the same, the rest of her body was still like a statue at the centre of a spirited storm.
She stopped the vehicle without being told to. Neither said anything, they listened to the engine idle. Again, without being instructed, she switched off the engine, only to start it again instantly, and to drive further and further away from the circle their car tyres had made. As she slowed down, Bosaaso could discern signs of fatigue on her face.
Maybe it was easy to impress Bosaaso: he was a man in love. She stole a furtive glance in his direction and she thought she had caught his evasive look in the sieve of his gaze. Did he consider her to be foolhardy in taking all this head-on, without fear or worry? Why, Bosaaso had appeared preoccupied at the very moment when she had been most daring. What kind of a man was he? Cautious? Or was he likely to panic?
The car stalled now that she had lost her concentration. Some people cannot help smiling when a car, in which they are being driven by a learner, buck-jumps. Although unaware of it, Bosaaso smiled. To her, the smile was like a stab, and it hurt her. So she started running the engine faster, and then drove round and round until he was visibly worried, frightened. Then she cut off the engine.
Scarcely had he prepared to say something than she turned the key in the ignition and was off, this time reversing. The car buck-jumped. But she didn’t despair. She tried it again, repeating the same process. The rear of the vehicle wouldn’t obey her commands, swerving snakelike, going out of control, never straight as she had wanted it. Because Bosaaso didn’t speak, anxiety welled up inside her, certain that he thought she was being foolish. Finally, she stopped the car.
A long silence.
She remembered when she was four or five, remembered riding Zubair’s Arab stallion. She had taken a fright, for the beautiful horse’s flanks had been too wide-backed. Abshir, her brother, had been with her and she had held on to him, certain that no harm would come her way.
Bosaaso wondered aloud if she would like to practice more.
“Sure,” she said, accepting his offer.
When the car was moving, Duniya recalled a story Zubair, her first husband, had told her about a horse that had gone mad and wouldn’t stop running. The horse grew wings of madness and flew in an easterly direction, towards the sun, as though intending to reach its source. People said that jinns were in the saddle of such horses. Now what if the car refused to stop? What if one of Zubair’s wife’s relatives who are half-jinn and half-human were to take command of the steering-wheel? Not wanting to risk her life and his, she tested the brakes and was relieved to learn that they were in working order.
“Is anything the matter?” Bosaaso asked.
Duniya’s lips gave a tremor of self-blame, and she looked away and at her lap with the apprehensiveness of somebody who didn’t know how to apologize. Bosaaso didn’t want to find out what had upset her and was pleased to swap seats with her when she suggested they do so. He held his curiosity in check, and came round to the driver’s side of the ear, touching her as she shifted over to the passenger’s seat. Bosaaso put the vehicle into motion without saying a word.
When they were driving past Aw-Cumar’s store, where Duniya’s family had an account, she asked him to drop her off and to go ahead and wait for her at home. She gave him the key to let himself in, suggesting that he make himself comfortable if either Mataan or Nasiiba were not at home.
He promised her he would.
Aw-Cumar’s shop was a small six-by-ten cubicle, criss-crossed with wooden counters running from one end of the wall to the other, with a fold-away counter serving both as table and barrier. Beans, com, salt were visibly laid out in flat-bottomed boxes. The counter was as high as Duniya’s navel. There wasn’t anyone in the store today and she wondered where Aw-Cumar might be.
Then she heard his praying whispers, a sequence of sounds familiar to Muslims all the world over, consisting mainly of a stream of allit-eratives in the letter S, as part of the Bismillaahis without which prayers are considered sacreligious. Oblivious to what she was doing, she leaned against a ramshackle structure into whose wooden frame Aw-Cumar had hammered nails, so as to discourage idle-talkers from supporting their elbows on it while they held forth, wasting his time. Duniya made a pained sound when the nails pricked her, and hoped she didn’t irritate Aw-Cumar.
She discovered a moment later that she did not. He emerged from below the counter, issuing a salvo of Koranic blessings. When he rose to his full height, he was a mere five feet tall. Duniya didn’t respond immediately, letting the cluster of prayer-consonants clash and explode in the finale of a Semitic cacophony, conscious of the smile framing his friendly face. Islamic etiquette demanded that a woman not come into bodily contact with a man currently in communication with his Creator, women being impure. She held her ground and waited.