After she prayed she went out to the garden. It was different without the children and she did not need her sunglasses now. She could have all the colours that she had missed in Aberdeen; yellow and brown, and everything else vivid. Flat land and a peaceful emptiness, space, no grey, no wind, no lines of granite. The sun had rimmed the houses down the road and left behind layers of pink and orange. In the east there was the confident blue of night, a flimsy moon, one, two, now three stars. Still the birds rushed to the trees, screeching, rustling the leaves, noisier than the children had been earlier on. On the other side of the road, the nightwatchman of the cooperative was serving his friends tea. They sat on the pavement on a large palm-fibre mat; prayer beads and laughter. Coals glowed, a kettle of water boiled and let off steam in the twilight. Her homesickness was cured, her eyes cooled by what she saw, the colours and how the sky was so much bigger than the world below, transparent. She heard the sound of a bell as the single, silly light of a bicycle lamp jerked down the pitted road. A cat cried out like a baby and everything without the wind had a smell; sand and jasmine bushes, torn eucalyptus leaves.
17
Her brother Waleed lived with his wife in a second-floor flat in one of the newer apartment blocks. They were newly married and both worked for the same architecture office. Sammar parked Hanan’s car under the dim yellow glow of a street lamp. The driving lessons she had taken in Aberdeen had come in useful after all, though at first the change to driving on the right was difficult. Amir and Dalia opened the car door and jumped out. ‘If we were in Scotland,’ she said to them as they crossed the road, ‘you would have had to sit in the back and wear seat-belts.’ What she said made no sense to them. They had never seen anyone wear a seat-belt; they could not imagine a place far away called Scotland.
The road they walked across was pitted with potholes, strewn with rubble from the new buildings. Bricks and scattering of cement were everywhere, the playthings of children who lived on the streets. There was a small canteen next to the building and some of the children were crowded near the entrance. They were in torn stained clothes, bare feet covered with dust up to their ankles. They wanted lollipops and gum, and were laughing and jostling each other, their teeth bright white in the poorly lit street. And though Sammar had come back from rain and a rich city of the First World, the meagerness of this place was familiar. Shabbiness as if the sun had burned away the lushness of life and left no room for luxuries or lies.
As soon as Waleed opened the door for them, the power failed. There was much confusion in the sudden dark with Amir jumping about in a state of great excitement, laughing and calling Dalia names because she was afraid. There was a fumble for candles and a torch, attempts to soothe Dalia, a joke about Sammar cutting off the electricity, bringing in the darkness with her.
Waleed led them through the flat and out to sit on the balcony. This pleased the children who started to pester the pigeons asleep inside a large crate caged with mesh. They stuck their fingers through the holes in the mesh, trying to reach the pigeons. All the neighbouring houses and roads were in darkness, proof of a major power cut and not a fault in the building. Only far away shone the lights of the airport, yellow and red. In the canteen below, someone lit a hurricane lamp and a shout in the street was answered by laughter. There was enough light from the moon and the stars for Sammar to see her brother clearly, the jellabia he was wearing, the large gap between his teeth when he smiled. He said that his wife had gone to her German lesson.
‘Why is she learning German?’ asked Sammar, her mind on the stars, that they were innumerable, some further away than others. How could this be the same sky as the one in Aberdeen?
‘Do you think I know?’ he said. ‘She wants to learn German, what can I say, don’t learn German?’
‘I thought she was doing computing in Souk Two.’ Everyone could look up at this sky, no admission fee, no money. In Scotland there were shops for everything, selling everything and no one could buy a sky like that.
‘She was, but there weren’t enough computers to go round and she didn’t get much chance on the machines. She got the notes and she can use the one we have here…’
‘Actually I want to use your computer today,’ Sammar said, ‘I need to write a letter, two really. But now there’s no electricity.’ She turned to Amir and Dalia, ‘Stop it you two, leave the birds alone.’ Amir banged the mesh with his palms. One of the pigeons stirred but did not wake up.
‘Insha’ Allah it will come back. Yesterday it was out at this time and back after fifteen minutes.’
‘That would be good.’ She wondered why she did not care so much about the power cut, why she was not annoyed with this obstacle. Usually she liked getting things over with once she had reached a decision. Perhaps it was because of the sky and the breeze, dewy and clear. Or the feeling all around of surrender. The stars had mocked the lights of the earth and won.
‘What were you doing before we came?’ she asked.
‘Watching a video.’ He scratched his head and yawned.
‘Remember in the past we used to go to the cinema a lot.’
‘No one goes to the cinema now.’ By ‘no one’ he meant his circle of friends and family.
‘It’s a shame.’
‘Things change. You want to go away and come back and find everything the same?’
She shrugged in the dark. There was always a tone in his voice that seemed to her harsh. But she knew he didn’t mean it. She was the one who had become too sensitive. She was the one who had been away for too long.
‘I want to get away from here,’ he suddenly said. ‘I’m fed up. I’m truly fed up.’
‘Of what?’ her voice was light as if she wanted to dilute his resentment.
‘Not going forward. Things just aren’t moving ahead.’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘The Gulf or Saudi Arabia. The Gulf preferably.’
‘Go.’
He laughed, ‘Don’t be stupid. Everyone wants to go there and make themselves a bit of money; it’s not so easy.’ He was genuinely amused, shaking his head, looking into her eyes, ‘You have no idea, do you? You’re blank.’
She started to laugh too and looked up at the stars, ‘I’m blank.’
Dalia came and leaned close to her, whispered in her ears, ‘I want to pee.’
The bathroom was hot and airless. In the mirror over the sink, Sammar saw her face by candlelight. How long would it be before she started to look as she should look, a dried-out widow, a faded figure in the background?
‘I’ve finished,’ Dalia said. Sammar had to yank the toilet handle three times before it finally flushed. Dalia’s anxious face settled into a smile and Sammar noticed that the cistern did not fill up again with water. ‘It must be that when the electricity cuts, the pump that lifts the water up to this floor stops working. Let’s try the taps.’
Dalia twisted the tap. A few drops spluttered out noisily and then there was nothing.
‘They’ve got a pail…’ said Sammar. There was a pail full of water in the bathtub and a metal pitcher. She filled the pitcher with water and Dalia washed her hands in the sink, the white bar of soap large and awkward in her hand.
They walked back carefully through the darkness, Sammar carrying the candle, to the coolness of the balcony. In their absence Waleed had brought a tray of Pepsi bottles and glasses with ice, plates of peanuts and dates.