The Gulf Between Us Read online

  I went over to the counter to order the coffees, while Andrew politely chose a table as far from the couple as possible and flicked through the Hawar Daily News.

  ‘They’re going to make it illegal to buy alcohol in national dress,’ he said, closing the paper as I came over.

  ‘Will that change anything?’

  ‘I can’t see how… Presumably Hawaris will send their house boys and the Saudis’ll change into tracksuits at the border. You’d think the parliament could find something better to do.’ He nodded down at his coffee. ‘I had another house‐maid slavery case this morning. Father Joseph gets three a month.’

  He pushed aside the newspaper; James Hartley stared out of the front page into the middle distance.

  ‘I spoke to his producer last night at the embassy. Al Maraj,’ he said, nodding at the photograph.

  ‘Oh, I’m very sorry.’

  ‘I thought he was a friend of yours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said he’d met you twice.’

  ‘Once he spoke to me entirely in Arabic. The second he hardly spoke at all, just looked grumpy. He’s rather pleased with himself, if you ask me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Andrew was taken aback, ‘I thought he was rather interesting. He wants to try to get some sort of local film industry started – to set up a fund with his studio and emirati investors to back local directors.’

  ‘You obviously made more headway with him than I did.’ I stirred my latte. ‘Maybe he’s one of those Arab men who hasn’t got much time for women?’

  ‘He’s not as immediately charming as James Hartley, obviously,’ Andrew said mischievously, ‘but that seems unlikely: he’s lived a long time in New York…’

  ‘Must just be me then.’

  He smiled. ‘How are things – you know, with Matthew and all that?’

  I looked up at him in surprise. ‘You know about Matt?’

  ‘You don’t mind? My mentioning it? I thought… well, Will rang and told me.’

  ‘He rang you from the Maldives?’

  ‘No, before they left. From the airport.’

  So the Franklins had merited a call from Hawar International Airport, and so had Andrew. And I hadn’t.

  ‘I think he felt a bit guilty for overreacting,’ Andrew said – although, if this were true, it would have been all the more reason for Will to phone. If there was some sort of apology being offered here, I didn’t want it second‐hand through the vicar. ‘It must have been a shock, Matthew coming out like that,’ he went on and I was afraid that he was moving into professional mode, complete with a specially concerned voice.

  ‘Mmn. But, you know,’ I said breezily, ‘it’s fine.’

  ‘It’s not the whole of him, of course.’

  Something about this struck me as not quite right. ‘You don’t disapprove?’ I asked. I knew the Church was always arguing about gays.

  ‘Me? Goodness! Not at all.’ He picked up the sugar packet and tore tiny nicks in the top.

  It occurred to me that even if Andrew didn’t disapprove, Will’s recent entanglement with Christianity might have given him the idea that homosexuality was a sin. While this didn’t seem terribly plausible – it was 2002 and Will had a degree in history – I couldn’t think of a better reason for the huffy behaviour. ‘But the Church…?’

  ‘Ah, well, yes,’ Andrew said, as if this was a whole different matter. ‘The Church is in a mess about it, frankly. It’s like women priests all over again, but worse. Because of course there are more women.’

  I wasn’t sure I was following, entirely, but Andrew evidently had something important to say on this subject and he intended to finish. ‘The Church officially now accepts that people may not be able to help being homosexual – it’s not in itself a sin – but they’re not supposed to do anything about it. This leads,’ he tore too roughly at the top of the sugar packet and the contents spilled on the table, ‘to an obsession with what people do in their bedrooms.’ He swept the sugar into a pile with the side of his hand. ‘So, if I had a gay couple, who were living together, come to church – which probably isn’t going to happen in Hawar, but still… what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘ignore it?’

  ‘Overlook it because politeness is more important than sin?’

  I think this was perhaps meant to be a trick question, although as it happens I do think politeness is pretty important, and I have quite an obscure sense of sin.

  ‘The trouble is, these prejudices are deep‐rooted in our history. Half the thirty‐six crimes punishable by death in Mosaic law involve sex.’

  Did he talk like this to Will? Did Will talk like this to him? Matt was right, they were weird.

  ‘Anyway,’ he sighed, ‘we’re hoping the new archbishop will sort it out.’ He tipped the last of the sugar into an ashtray and looked at me properly for the first time. ‘So, how about that map?’

  In the car, I pushed my abaya back under the passenger seat where it had been lying since September 11th, unused and almost forgotten, except on days like today when Sam kicked it out on his way to school. Even though I’d never felt I needed it, I still wasn’t quite ready to return it to the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. There had been a different kind of restlessness in the villages in recent months: people stared at you with franker hostility, as if they thought you’d taken something from them, as if you might be on the other side. The atmosphere was more febrile than I could remember. It wasn’t a clash of civilizations, like some people said, but there was an unease with each other’s foreignness, more of a souk mentality than ever before: this street for spices, this one for cloth; this village for shi’ias, this one for sunnis; this area for locals, this for expats.

  If the Americans invaded Iraq – and I suspected Al Maraj was right that they would – this suspiciousness would probably grow. It wouldn’t be anything like 1991, when most Hawaris had viewed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait as an act of aggression against the rest of the Gulf. Any American‐led invasion would be the act of aggression. Even the emir had come down off the fence sufficiently to say publicly that he hoped there would be no interference in Iraq (though there had certainly been no attempt to scale down the American base here). As for us, the American, British, probably even French individuals living here, the upshot would be that we’d be seen by the locals as some kind of neo‐colonial fifth column, regardless of what we thought of the actions of our governments. I tucked the abaya back under the seat, out of scuffing and scurfing reach of Sam’s trainers, thinking that if I did need it, it would be covered in whatever lived under there – fragments of apple and banana, old sweets and dusty wrappers. I wouldn’t look like a Hawari woman at all.

  ‘You’ve got endless messages on the machine inviting you to dinner,’ Matt announced, when I got home. ‘Antonia and David Horwood, the Davenports, Shaikh Isa bin Mohammed and Ali and Robin Verbeck. It must be because I’ve come out.’

  I put the kettle on. ‘Should we talk about it?’

  ‘I’m not sure there’s much to say, but OK.’ He hooked his leg over the kitchen bench and looked up at me obligingly.

  ‘Like,’ I fumbled for what it was I needed to understand, ‘were there other gay people at school?’

  ‘No. Not openly.’

  ‘You weren’t bullied?’

  ‘Not at the International School. A bit at primary. You knew I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t that interested in football. And I was in love with a boy called Adrian Price.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mum! My first love and you’ve forgotten him already! Dark hair, pale skin.’

  All the things you miss, even when you think you’re concentrating. Matt had been bullied and, even though I’d worked at the school and been there all the time, I hadn’t noticed.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ he admitted. ‘I’m not completely stupid. And then it happened again when I was about ten, which is when I decided that if the feelings were natural, which they obvious
ly were, they had to be OK.’

  ‘I wish you’d said.’

  ‘You would have thought it wasn’t possible to know. You’d have said something like, “Oh, well, that’s fine darling, but don’t make up your mind, eh? You might feel differently in five years’ time.” So we’d have been in exactly the same place now.’

  I didn’t think so. ‘How old were you when you told your friends?’

  ‘Thirteen. I told Jodie and Chloe, first… Then I became quite camp at school, in the hope, I think, that people would work it out for themselves.’

  ‘And Will didn’t?’

  ‘I was a bit beneath his notice at school. You know how wrapped up he was in all his stuff… Look, I know you’re thinking I should’ve told you sooner. The trouble is, there’s never a right time. Once I hadn’t said at eight, it was always going to be too late.’

  I hated to think of him longing for something he wasn’t allowed to speak of, bewildered by shame.

  ‘So, if there wasn’t anyone at school…’

  ‘Mum, this is a bit tricky…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are some things I need to keep private.’

  ‘But how do you… how do people… There aren’t any gay bars here, are there?’

  ‘There are other things. Coffee shops. Private parties.’

  I stared at him, thinking that he must have lied to me about where he’d been. Private parties?

  ‘There’s a high level of tolerance among Hawaris, in fact, as long as it’s discreet. If you tried to have a gay identity, your family’d probably cart you off to a psychiatrist. That’s if they didn’t throw you down the stairs. D’you remember that incident on the Nile last year? The Queen Boat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mum, you must! Lots of people were arrested.’

  I had absolutely no recollection of anything to do with a Queen Boat. Things that happened to gay people hadn’t seemed that important last year.

  ‘It was a party boat for gay men in Egypt,’ Matt explained. ‘There was a raid. A lot of people are still in prison, awaiting trial. It was all political.’

  I frowned, not understanding.

  ‘Islamists,’ Matt said patiently. ‘They’re a threat, so governments try to look Islamic. To, like, undermine them.’

  I was still trying to remember, to work out why I hadn’t cared about this. It sounded terrible.

  ‘People used to get worked up about women,’ Matt said, I think echoing something Andrew had been saying earlier (though I couldn’t be sure, because his conversation had seemed to be with himself as much as me), ‘but only the Taliban seem to do that now. If you want to whip up outrage, even in Egypt, you have to go for gays.’

  ‘So if a Hawari thinks he’s gay, he has to pretend he’s not?’

  ‘Yes. Sex is manageable, on the whole. It’s love that’s the problem. But it’s not really surprising when you think about it – it’s like, at the magazine, there’s a sense of what’s appropriate to publish, that thing about avoiding fitna. Which can be good – no one really wants social upset – but can also lead to complete denial… And you know what they’re like here: family means more than anything. It’s inconceivable you could lead a responsible life other than by getting married and having children.’

  It occurred to me that I’d let Matt down in the last few days by seeing everything about him through the prism of his sexuality. I’d been prepared to dismiss all the things I love about him, and that other people admire – like his intuitiveness and interest in other people – as a function of his being gay, as if his appealing qualities could now be explained away by his being more feminine than other boys, by a distorted brain and nervous system, endocrine upset. His charm, sense of humour, his capacity for empathy were all (in this way of looking at things) undermined and invalidated by the weirdness of his being homosexual, his attractiveness only a side‐effect of something unfortunate. The logical conclusion of this way of thinking was that he would have been better off being insensitive, inarticulate, and straight.

  I could begin to see now how unfair this was. He was thoughtful and intuitive, and it didn’t matter why. Those qualities weren’t his homosexuality. They were Matthew and, while it may have been the case that his emotional maturity probably owed quite a lot to his having had so much more to think about than most kids, if he hadn’t had, or found, the warm, ready intelligence, he couldn’t have come to terms with his difference. If he hadn’t been morally courageous, he couldn’t have been so determined to get through, negotiate the straight world from his peculiar starting place. It seemed to me that he had achieved something impressive here, accepting emotions the world denied existed for young boys and that his parents probably wouldn’t have chosen for him, asserting himself with dignity and modesty. That was something to celebrate, not dismiss, and it was integral to who he was. I was starting to see – and this feeling was to grow as the days passed and the fact of his sexuality no longer jolted me – that the least I could do was to follow his lead and stick up for him.

  Matt’s homosexuality did not have to prevent people, including me, from seeing anything about him except that he was gay. It was my job to make sure that he was not obliterated by his sexuality, segregated either in actuality or in people’s heads. (But also that his being gay was not ignored, because, obviously, that would be obliterating him in a different way. It was a bloody minefield. Still, at least I could see a role for myself now, which was an improvement on feeling useless because I hadn’t even noticed.)

  The flyscreen creaked and Cheryl appeared in the kitchen, in blue check Capri pants and an orange vest. ‘Hey, guys, mind if I join you?’

  ‘Nothing personal, Cheryl, but I was just off for a swim.’ Matt slid off the bench.

  ‘Weren’t you going riding?’

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Did Sam say if he’d be in for supper?’

  ‘Haven’t seen him.’

  The only rule, really, was that they were supposed to tell me where they were and if they wouldn’t be in for meals. I didn’t like not knowing what Sam was doing, especially now that I was so aware that their real life was subterranean: glugging fluids, boiling hormones. Perhaps he was gay too? Did it run in families? Most of the time I had no idea what he was thinking. It could be gay things.

  Still, I thought, pouring Cheryl a cup of tea, he spent all his time with Faisal and Faisal definitely had a girlfriend. He’d had her on my sofa, in fact. I’d come home early from a meeting at school and caught them in a state of semi‐naked, post‐coital collapse. When I’d objected about this to Sam – we were not a brothel, how was I supposed to face Faisal next time, not to mention his parents, sitting on the sofa was now much less appealing, etc. – Sam had protested that they had nowhere else to go and it was my fault for coming home when I’d said I was going to be out.

  ‘Have you invited James Hartley round yet?’ Cheryl demanded, ‘only you know what’ll happen: he’ll get sucked into spending all his time with the Al Majids and Hawari merchants and a few posh Brits…’

  ‘I’m not sure how much time they’ll have for socializing.’

  ‘You really should have a party. We have to get a trip out to Al Janabiyya compound on to his schedule. He must want to see the countryside?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Well, you know,’ she said defensively, ‘vegetables grow round here. You see them by the roadside. Those leaves.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Well, it’s the only place in the emirate things do grow naturally… And, frankly, what else is there to see here?’

  Matt walked past in swimming shorts, trailing his towel. Cheryl followed him with her eyes all the way to the door, then, once he’d shut it behind him, murmured, ‘God, he’s got handsome!’

  This was clearly the perfect moment to begin my new regime of being an out mother. ‘He’s gay.’

  ‘No!’ she turned and stared at me. ‘You’re joking!’

  I shook my head.
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br />   ‘When – how… my God! – when did you find out?’

  ‘A few days ago.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not just a phase?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh my God! Poor Annie…! Look, I don’t really want to say this, but… d’you think – maybe – it comes from not having a dad?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I shrugged, though I was irritated by her need to blame someone. Me, in fact. Why? To persuade herself it couldn’t happen to her?

  Whoever thought up the dominant mother theory of homosexuality was really very clever, because it implies that a) that it’s dangerous for women to be assertive in case of getting a gay son, and b) that a gay son is a faulty product and that if he were a fridge, say, you’d return him.

  ‘He says he was aware of it before Dave died.’

  I didn’t see how it could possibly be as simple a matter as absent fathers, otherwise a large proportion of boys in history – certainly whenever there had been a war – would have been gay.

  Not that I’m suggesting Matt mightn’t have benefited from having a man around. I might, so he might too. People probably wouldn’t have been as rude to me, for a start. And I’d have had someone to talk to, ideally someone who was unfailingly on my side. If you lived with a person for years, I thought, there might be some hope of their intuiting all the muddle and particularity of your thoughts, grasping something of your multifaceted, contradictory emotional life, getting a bit closer to the authentic you. Because, quite a lot of the time, I find, people completely misunderstand what you’re trying to say. Still, I’d learnt enough to know that for any of this to happen it had to be the right man. And it turned out that this really complicated things.

  ‘I might not mention it to Tel, just yet, if you don’t mind,’ Cheryl said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Not that he’s prejudiced or anything, but you know what he’s like, all red‐blooded New Zealand male!’ Her husband Tel imported meat. ‘And he’d worry about Kyle…’