The Gulf Between Us Page 31

  ‘Well, you know him best. But as I say, he doesn’t seem to realize the gravity of what he’s done.’

  ‘Perhaps if I could speak to him…’ I tried again.

  ‘He keeps justifying himself, rather than accepting he has injured the Hawari people. You, I am sure, wouldn’t like it if I insulted your queen?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed politely, though frankly he could have said what he liked about the Queen if he let Sam go.

  ‘You see my problem, Mrs Lester? We can’t be sure that Sam isn’t mixed up in some kind of organized subversion.’

  He was acting on the orders of the prime minister. He couldn’t really think Sam was anything except an overenthusiastic sixteen‐year‐old who was against the war. Most Hawaris were against the war, too. He was playing with me and he’d been delegated to do it, so eventually they could pretend they had a reason to ask us to leave.

  ‘I’m sure if I could see him,’ I persisted, ‘I could persuade him to tell you whatever you need to know.’

  ‘We need to know the truth, Mrs Lester,’ he replied severely. ‘Not what you think we want to hear. You will be aware that there is a war against terror. We have to be careful.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting Sam’s a terrorist! It was a cartoon! It was meant to be a joke.’

  ‘No one in Hawar finds it particularly funny. In fact, your son doesn’t find it funny. He keeps explaining it, justifying it. You will know already that young people all over the world are getting caught up in dangerous shadowy organizations. When we have suspicions, we have to think of our security. We have to take action.’

  ‘I can promise you Sam isn’t a terrorist. And he’s not involved with Mohammed Alireza.’

  Alireza wasn’t a terrorist either and I felt bad for implying that he was. He was a perfectly respectable opposition leader who happened to have a political creed that was based on Islamic principles. And he was shi’a, so all this stuff about ‘dangerous shadowy organizations’, which was presumably meant to frighten me with images of Al Qaeda, was nonsense, because they were sunni. So now I was colluding in spreading inflammatory Al Qaeda innuendo.

  ‘I am very sorry, but we will have to keep him in for questioning a little longer. Then we will make a decision. But you must understand, in our country, he has already committed a serious offence. And our security is under threat, as you know. We had two bombs here last year. The terrorists came from a village very close to you. If there is any suspicion…’

  ‘That’s crazy! You’re not suggesting now that Sam’s involved with those guys at Ghafir?’

  The superintendent looked displeased. I was getting too heated. It was unseemly.

  ‘I suggest you go home and wait. If you leave your number with the sergeant, we can call you when we have any news.’

  ‘Can I see him first?’

  ‘I am afraid not at the moment.’

  ‘How long are you entitled to keep him?’

  ‘In this country we are not allowed to detain suspects for more than three days without charge, except where there is suspicion of terrorism, when it is three weeks.’

  I looked at him disbelievingly. I was tempted to ask him to release Sam and promise that we’d be on the next plane out and never come back, but I thought of Al Maraj and kept quiet.

  ‘I am sorry your son has caused you so much trouble,’ he said as I stood up to leave, ‘but thank you for coming in.’

  Sixteen

  I walked slowly across the parade ground of the Interior Ministry compound, leaving Sam behind. What was it like for him in there? Would he be in an office, like the assistant superintendent’s, or in a cell? With other people, or alone? Were they interrogating him? Had they given him something to eat? He was always starving after school, and it made him irritable. No wonder he wasn’t cooperating. Would they keep him overnight? Were they allowed to do that, given that he was a juvenile? Why hadn’t I pointed that out when Abdulrahman had gone all legalistic on me? Then I thought they were probably allowed to do what they wanted.

  I headed out through the arches and onto the highway, where the rush‐hour traffic whipped past, the sun cannoning off metal and windscreens. I walked down the side street where I’d parked the car, past small detached houses built in the early years of the oil boom, with metal‐framed windows and concrete block walls, rendered and painted the dirty‐sand colour of Hawari dust. It was a beautiful day: the air fresh, faint smells of coffee and cardamom in the air, a butterfly in a pomegranate tree in someone’s front garden. I thought how fond I was of all this. It had got into my blood, this scruffy town with its big, anxious ambitions. I belonged here as much as I belonged anywhere, even though that might not be recognized by the locals, legally or in any other way. I would miss it when I left.

  A car screeched up the street and stopped beside me.

  ‘How did it go?’ Al Maraj asked, getting out.

  ‘Terribly. As you see, I don’t have Sam – he’s still in there – and they didn’t tell me anything. Except that he was being difficult.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘No, I tried but they wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘Home, I suppose. My car’s over there.’ I frowned. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I’m a fixer.’

  I smiled, in spite of everything.

  ‘Don’t go home,’ Nezar said. ‘Come and wait at my house. It’s nearer the police fort and you won’t be on your own because Dymphna’s there. You can get Matt to come round too.’

  I protested, but he was insistent. I didn’t have much energy left for arguing and I longed for once to rely on someone else. So I got in the car and Nezar drove through the city to the Al Dhafra district behind the souk, twisting down backstreets where men sat on benches drinking tea and children wandered barefoot through the dust. Finally he pulled up alongside a high wall, where a carved wooden door was set into gypsum‐covered stone. He unlocked it and led me into the courtyard of an old Hawari house, with a central wing in front flanked by long arms at either side, creating a paved courtyard, in the centre of which a fountain splashed lazily into a bowl tiled in vivid Persian blue. The upper storey was overhanging, creating shaded walkways on the three built‐up sides. There was a frangipane tree in the eastern corner, and a windtower in the west. It was stunning.

  Dymphna came hurrying out of the open doorway ahead of us. ‘Annie,’ she said, smiling warmly, taking my hands between hers. She looked anxiously at Al Maraj. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Hmmn,’ he answered non‐committally. ‘Can you organize some tea?’ He turned to me. ‘I need to go and see someone.’

  ‘D’you think you can help?’ I asked stupidly, because he wasn’t going for fun.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said seriously. I clamped my lips together and nodded. I’d have preferred to go with him, but I knew it wouldn’t be helpful, so I didn’t ask.

  He turned and left and I watched him go. Then Dymphna led the way into the majlis, which was sparely furnished with several white sofas and an enormous Persian carpet on the flagstone floor. ‘Is there anything you need, Annie?’ she smiled. ‘Anyone you want to call?’

  I told her there was, but that it was fine, I had my mobile, and she disappeared to get tea and fresh lime juice. I sank on to one of the sofas and rang Matt. ‘Sam’s been arrested,’ I said when I got through.

  ‘I thought you said the interview was OK in the end?’

  I explained about the cartoon.

  ‘Shit, how did he think he could get away with that? Doesn’t he understand anything?’

  ‘I wasn’t paying him enough attention,’ I said miserably. He’d had this whole other life, and I’d been so caught up with stupid James Hartley that I hadn’t bothered to find out what it was. What did I think he and Faisal had been doing? Geography coursework? Building spaceships out of matches?

  ‘Mum, it’s not your fault. Where are you?’

  ‘At Nezar’s house on Khalidi
yah Street.’

  ‘Oh, that’s his house.’ He’d noticed it, even if I hadn’t. ‘I’ll come now.’

  Dymphna brought sweetened Arabic tea in little glass cups, and sparkling water with fresh lime juice and little biscuits.

  ‘If anyone can help, Nezar can,’ she said, perching on the arm of the sofa opposite.

  ‘I feel embarrassed about how much he’s done for us. And I’ve been so useless. I must have seemed very ungrateful and hostile.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she laughed, ‘James told us you thought he was some kind of gofer on the film.’ I blushed at the mention of James and sipped my lime juice, staring at the stone flagged floor. ‘Nezar didn’t mind,’ she added. ‘He still kept going on about you. Really!’ She laughed at my expression. ‘How lovely you were, and funny, how much he admired you.’

  I stared at her. I was so far from admirable it was difficult to know where to begin. Sam: he’d do. The whole point of being sixteen is to get into trouble. But I’d shunted him away, parked him off in a corner of my brain, thought because he wasn’t making much noise I could ignore him.

  If Nezar could admire me after all the mistakes I’d made, he must be besotted with lust. This didn’t seem to me a great basis for a relationship, because what happened if the lust/madness wore off and he started to see me clearly? On the other hand, not being besotted with lust wasn’t a great basis for a relationship either.

  Matthew arrived, and I went out into the courtyard to meet him.

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘No. Nezar’s gone off to talk to someone. I don’t know who, but he didn’t seem very confident, and if the prime minister’s made up his mind…’ We paced the courtyard together. ‘I took my eye off Sam,’ I said sadly. ‘I thought he and Faisal were making websites for bands.’

  ‘They were. And it’s not your fault. Has Faisal been arrested?’

  ‘No, it’s us they were after. I hate this place.’

  ‘Hawar? No, you don’t.’

  ‘Who comes here? People who are more interested in making money than anything else, and who don’t care what it takes.’ I sat down on the edge of the fountain. ‘I don’t know why I stayed after dad died. I’ve made mistake after mistake.’

  ‘That’s rubbish.’

  ‘No. Look how wrong I was about Nezar. I resented him because he disapproved of me seeing James, but he was absolutely right, because James was selfish and trivial…’

  ‘He didn’t like you seeing James because he fancied you himself.’

  ‘And I thought he was homophobic when actually he was worrying about your relationship with Shaikh Rashid…’

  ‘Mum, not everything is your fault. Are we going to sit on this fountain till they get back?’ I’d been wrong about him, too, thinking he was a sweet gangly innocent who needed protecting – a bit gay, as the children in the British Primary playground were always being told not to say – when, in the ways that mattered, his sexuality had made him tougher.

  Dymphna came out to offer us pastries, fruit and nuts, but I couldn’t eat anything. She offered to show us round the house and Matt accepted, but only on condition that I went too. So we trailed up staircases and through the various rooms and I can’t say I noticed much, but Matt exclaimed enough for both of us. Eventually, we came out on to the roof of the east wing, in front of a long narrow swimming pool hidden from the prevailing winds by a barasti screen. The three of us stood looking over the parapet. The sun was low in the sky, kicking off the panelled glass sides of the Hawar Telecoms building, falling in bright wedges on the low flat roofs. The aerials, solar panels and satellite dishes of Qalhat were spread out in front of us. In the distance, beyond the towers of the diplomatic area, you could glimpse the sea.

  Dymphna was explaining that the house had been restored by a firm of French architects who specialized in sustainable buildings and traditional building techniques and that it could be cooled for all but the hottest three months in the old ways, by wind and water.

  ‘It’s very good of Nezar to help like this,’ Matt said, at the bottom of the spiral staircase. The pair of them were getting on like best friends.

  She grinned. ‘Oh, I think he’d do anything for Annie.’

  ‘Well, he should stop after this,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Matt said. ‘Maybe we could get him to sort out Will and Andrew. Go for the treble.’

  I frowned at him, but Dymphna was too polite to ask what he meant. I hadn’t even started to think about what it would mean for Will if our family were deported. Would they ban him from coming into the country as well? It would make his job impossible. It was a relief he wasn’t here, or he’d have been shouting at us again, and this time he’d have a point.

  ‘Of course, it’s OK for me,’ Matt said as we sat on the edge of the fountain, ‘I’m leaving anyway. But where will you go?’

  I shrugged. Sam and I seemed to face an empty future, a void in which we’d have to start everything from scratch. Nothing would be familiar, obvious, easy. I couldn’t get the tenants out of the cottage and, even if I could, Sam wouldn’t want to live in the middle of Devon… oh God, I’d been through all this already, it was pointless. Thinking about the future didn’t make it any less of a blank, any easier for me to orientate myself. Even if Nezar found me funny and admirable and all those things Dymphna said, I didn’t see how I could have a relationship with him if I was homeless and jobless and desperate. It was bad enough that he’d helped us so much already. I didn’t want a relationship to which I brought only trouble and dependency; it wouldn’t work.

  Over the walls, the evening sounds of the souk swelled, subsided and finally petered out. Shopkeepers carried their bales of fabric off the streets, hauled their sacks of spices into their shops, took their trays of garish toys inside. I heard the rattle of metal screens pulled down over shopfronts, the closing and locking of doors, the coughing engines of pick‐up trucks, the crunch of tyres over debris. People shouted goodnight to one another and drifted away, until the only sound left in the courtyard was the rustling of the acacia tree hanging over the wall. The sky thickened to black; stars prickled all over. A sliver of moon appeared over the tree, shining on its desiccated bark, its twigs, its whispering leaves.

  Dymphna saw I was shivering, and brought me a shawl from the house. I couldn’t help noticing that she kept looking at her watch, as if she couldn’t believe how long Al Maraj had been. It was getting late. Did Sam know we were still trying to get him out? How would he cope with a night in a cell? And what would that mean: who would he be with? My images of prison were gleaned mainly from films and newspaper reports: beatings, bullying, abuse. And that was just the other prisoners. There had always been grim rumours about the prisons in Hawar, that there was no air conditioning, that the conditions were filthy. Some of those stories dated back to before the Al Majid cared what Amnesty International was saying about their human rights record, which wasn’t the case any more, but the truth was I had absolutely no idea what it would be like in a cell in the bowels of the Ministry of the Interior.

  Eventually, at around nine o’clock, a car stopped in the street outside. A key scraped in the lock and the carved wooden door opened. Sam stumbled through. He was dishevelled and dirty.

  ‘Sorry,’ he muttered as I hugged him.

  I looked past him and met Al Maraj’s eyes and was powerless, suddenly, against a tidal slosh of desire. And even though I’d felt something similar for James, that had always seemed slightly unhinged, as if I were indulging some kind of romantic parallel universe fantasy, an affair that could only exist under very specific conditions (as it turned out, in the grounds of the Al A’ali House). The whole period with James had felt, even at the time, like a made‐up game with a pretend friend, something infantile about it. This was different. It already seemed to exist beyond time and place: I would be stuck with it, wherever I went. It did not seem like a delusion and it wasn’t childish. It made perfect sense, because I was already certain that Al Maraj
was capable of revealing to me the best of myself.

  That was what I thought. All I managed to say was ‘Thank you.’ Then I turned to Sam: ‘Are you OK? Did they treat you properly?’

  ‘I’m fine, basically. They didn’t do anything, just asked me a few questions then left me in a cell.’

  I pushed him away and looked at him. ‘What were you thinking? You knew they were only looking for an excuse!’

  ‘It seemed important.’

  ‘To do what? Overthrow the monarchy? Stop the war?’

  ‘To tell the truth.’

  I looked helplessly at Nezar but he was pretending to be interested in something in the fountain.

  ‘You think they’re hypocritical, so we have to be too?’ Sam said; clearly, he hadn’t been that shattered by his experience. I could see why the police had found him annoying. If he’d said this sort of thing to them, it was amazing Nezar had managed to get him out.

  Al Maraj interrupted. ‘This is an interesting discussion, but perhaps now might be a good time simply to enjoy being with each other?’ Sam and I both looked at him. He smiled. ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

  He offered his driver to take us back, then collect my car from Hafeet and deliver it back to the compound. I protested that I didn’t want to cause him any more trouble, he’d already done far too much for us, but he overruled my objections and a handsome Pakistani driver had already appeared.

  ‘Was it difficult to get him out?’ I asked Nezar quietly, as we walked towards the gate.

  ‘Extremely. I’m afraid I had to make rather a large commitment on your behalf.’

  ‘So we do have to leave?’

  ‘No, but you might think this is even tougher. Look, I’ll come and talk to you about it tomorrow.’

  He kissed me briefly on the lips and touched me on the back and I looked up at him and thought nothing was going to be the same, ever again.