Talcum powder and fresh clothes. ‘I’m not wearing this,’ Dalia folded her arms across her chest with all the authority of her mother.
‘Why not, it’s lovely. This is a lovely rabbit.’
‘It’s ugly.’
‘Amir, do you think it’s ugly?’
‘No.’
‘See, Amir thinks it’s lovely and Mama when she wakes up will think it’s lovely and Grandma Mahasen…’
‘I want to wear the red one.’
‘The red one is in the washing; it’s dirty.’
‘I want the red one.’
‘You can’t wear the red shirt. Wear the rabbit one and I’ll take you out with me and Amir this evening.’
‘Where are you going?’
Sammar pulled the rabbit T-shirt over Dalia’s head. There was no resistance. The child pushed her arms through the sleeves and looked at Sammar expectantly.
‘We’re going to Uncle Waleed’s house.’
Dalia frowned. She could not remember who Uncle Waleed was.
‘My brother,’ said Sammar. ‘Remember, they have a balcony with birds in a cage.’ She smoothed Dalia’s eyebrows, ruffled by water and the neck of the T-shirt. ‘Let’s get out of this heat,’ she said and pulled the bathroom door open, glad to get out of the stuffiness into the coolness of the hall.
The hall led to the sitting room, where the television and the big air cooler was. There was two beds along the wall and three old armchairs. There were stools for the children to sit on and a low circular coffee table made of light wood, which wobbled and swayed but still served as a dinner table, and for the homework Amir and Dalia did every afternoon. The house had another sitting room, the sallown as everyone called it. It was for formal guests, a lifeless room, not for everyday use. Sammar had received some of her friends there when they had come to welcome her back. She had sat with them conscious of a wedding photograph of her and Tarig, she as a bride looking ignorant and young. ‘Don’t you think it is better to take down that photograph from the sallown?’ she had asked her aunt and was answered with a look of suspicion, a quick no. And Mahasen must have complained to Hanan, for the next day Hanan said, ‘My mother still can’t get over it. Sammar, please, for Allah’s sake, don’t annoy her. He was her only son.’
Her only son. It was like that from the day she had brought Tarig home, carried in an airplane, in a box. Her only son. The words on everyone’s lips, said in disbelief, Mahasen’s son died, Mahasen’s son died. Her only son. He left an orphan. Poor orphan. My heart is breaking over this orphan boy. My heart is breaking over Mahasen, her only son. It was like that from the day Sammar brought Tarig home from Aberdeen and she the one who was carrying failure, her life ripped, totally changed, losing aim, losing focus, while Mahasen and Hanan went on as before and Amir could not miss the father he could not remember.
In the sitting room, her aunt was awake but the baby was still asleep on the bed between the wall and Mahasen’s back. In spite of the grief that had aged her aunt’s face, there was still an elegance about her, something refined in the way she sat and the way she talked. She was watching a video with the children. A cat chased a mouse on the screen, forever frustrated, forever unfulfilled. Sammar greeted her aunt and sat on one of the stools to comb Dalia’s hair. If she didn’t comb it and braid it now while it was wet, it would frizz up and be impossible to untangle. The wide-toothed comb was slippery in her hands. ‘Aw,’ said Dalia, her concentration still on the screen.
‘Sorry, pretty one. I’m nearly finished. Do you want two braids or one?’
‘Two.’
Mahasen said, ‘Two suits her better. Tighten them, last time you made them too loose and they didn’t last.’
Sammar nodded, parted Dalia’s hair in the middle and started to braid it. She could feel her aunt watching her. If she turned away now from Dalia’s hair and looked up at her aunt, she would meet her eyes, see the expression on them. Something like disappointment or disapproval, a kind of contempt. Many times when she met her aunt’s eyes she found that contempt when once, years ago, there was approval and love. ‘I love your mother more than I love you,’ she used to tease Tarig years ago. Another time, before the lines of defeat on Mahasen’s face, her faded eyes.
Sammar concentrated on Dalia’s hair and did not look up at her aunt. Even though the air cooler was blowing she still felt hot. She lifted her arm and with the sleeve of her blouse wiped the sweat that fell over her forehead.
‘Why are you so dishevelled today?’ Her aunt’s voice different than the chatter and music of the cartoon show.
‘I was with the children in the garden. They played with the pool. Nahla came over.’ Politeness required that she looked up. She lowered her eyes again.
‘Insha’ Allah they’re not going to have the wedding party in the house. Loud music and crowding the whole street.’
‘No, she told me they’re booking the Syrian club.’ She was going to add that Nahla was hoping Mahasen would attend, but decided against it.
‘I have no appetite for weddings or parties,’ her aunt said as if she could read her mind, ‘from the day they buried the deceased, I have no appetite for such things. Hanan goes, reluctantly, but it’s her duty to go. It’s expected of her.’
‘Yes,’ said Sammar. She did not like her aunt saying ‘the deceased’, never referring to Tarig by his name. It made him sound as if he was old when in reality he was young, forever young. Nor did she believe that Hanan went to parties ‘reluctantly’. But she kept silent as she finished Dalia’s hair and did not contradict her aunt, did not look up. Over the hum of the air cooler, over the music of the cartoon show, she heard from a distance the sunset azan. She had missed it in Aberdeen, felt its absence, sometimes fancied she heard it in the rumble of the central-heating pipes, in a sound coming from a neighbouring flat. It now came as a relief, the reminder that there was something bigger than all this, above everything. Allah akbar. Allah akbar…
She went to make wudu and had to tidy the bathroom first because the children had splashed the walls with water, thrown towels and wet clothes on the floor. In the bedroom she put on the ceiling fan and picked up the prayer mat that lay folded on her aunt’s bed. Sammar’s clothes and belongings were in a separate room which had locked cupboards and crates of Miranda, sacks of sugar and rice, but she slept in this room with her aunt and Amir. Electricity was too expensive to keep more than one air cooler going throughout the night. That was why they had to share the room, share the one air cooler. Sometimes there were power cuts during the night and the sudden silence of the air cooler would wake Sammar up. She would turn its switch to Off, because sometimes the surge of the power coming back was too strong and likely to damage the motor. Sometimes she fell asleep again in the remaining coolness of the room but minutes later the heat would wake her up. She would open all the windows but sometimes not even a breeze would enter the stifling room. Amir would toss and push the cover away from him, her aunt would sit up and lean against the wall, sighing curses at the government, the electricity company, life itself. And Sammar would get up and go outside, pace up and down the star-lit porch, unsteady from lack of sleep, stunned by the laden sky. In the past everyone had slept outdoors on the roof, wide-open space, a freshness even on the hottest nights. But Hanan had built her flat on the roof. ‘No one, Sammar,’ she said, ‘sleeps outdoors anymore.’ Because of mosquitoes bred by open drains and fumes of diesel rising during power cuts from bright houses that could afford generators.