Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

Rabi al-awal

1

“Wait till the rain comes,” Samira said. “Then you will see some shooting up. Even that old tree.”

At eleven in the morning, Samira’s sitting room had a twilit air; a heaviness in the atmosphere, a preponderance of fringes and beadings, gold tiebacks on the velvet curtains, and wallpaper of crimson flock. There was a scent of mothballs, spices, of lemon spray polish, and the ineradicable smell of onions. A lamp in the shape of a clipper ship glowed dully on the sideboard. At one end, sofas were grouped about a glass coffee table; at the other end, made insignificant by the dimensions of the room, stood a dining table and twelve chairs in the ornate and gilded style known unkindly as Louis Farouk.

The large window, fronted by its balcony, looked on to the street; but the brown tree blocked the view, and made the room dark. Neither Yasmin nor Samira minded spending their days under artificial light, and it was often midmorning before they would wind up the heavy slatted wooden blinds. And it was overcast today, the low sky seeming to press on the city’s half-finished buildings. A chill damp blast from the air-conditioner stirred the pendant crystals of Samira’s chandelier—which had been obtained, she said, as part of her marriage settlement, from Top Furniture of Palestine Road.

Frances shivered a little. “Oh, you are becoming one of us,” Yasmin said. “You feel the cold.”

Samira crossed the room and turned the air-conditioner to a lower setting. She asked, “Would you like a shawl?”

“Thank you, I’m fine,” Frances said, with a formal courteous nod, and, vying with her in politeness, Samira said,

“It’s no problem.”

“When will it rain?” Frances asked. “It hasn’t rained since I got here.”

“She misses her English weather,” Yasmin explained.

Samira looked doubtful. It seemed she would do everything she could to entertain her guest, but there were some things she could not guarantee. “Oh, soon,” she said. And then, compelled to honesty, she added, “There isn’t any fixed season for it.”

“But when it does rain,” Yasmin said, “I promise you it will rain hard.”

Frances sat on the edge of her armchair, her thin ankles wrapped tightly together, and even her voice sounding thin, constrained. It seemed impossible to relax; and the other two women looked wary, as if they thought a chance utterance might cause offense. Whereas really, Frances thought, it was much more likely that she would upset them. Every day she bridled at something, but she did not think of herself as the one offended. That was a step she had yet to take.

Samira went to the door, and spoke; and a moment later the maid hurried in, yellow face downcast, and handed Frances a shawl. “There, much better,” Samira said, leaning forward to arrange it around Frances’s shoulders. She gave her a brief, affectionate pat. Her child, Fat’ma, played on the floor with Selim. She was a sturdy infant, bigger than Selim though younger by some months; she wielded a plastic skittle which she used as a weapon, sometimes pounding the carpet, sometimes pounding the small curly-haired skull of Yasmin’s child. Selim’s cries of pain and protest were no more than squeaks, as if rigidly suppressed by a code of good manners. “He must grow up hardy,” Yasmin said. “He is a boy.”

“What’s your maid’s name?” Frances asked.

Samira told her. But she was no wiser. It sounded like “Sarsaparilla.” But that was not possible. In answer to her questioning look, Samira merely shrugged. “I did try to call her something simpler,” she said. “But she won’t answer to it.”

Sarsaparilla came in again, with a tray of coffee, and Samira stood up, took it from her, and put it on a sidetable, Frances tried to catch the maid’s eye; perhaps she might, just with a look, express her concern? But she failed. The girl slid out of the room, seeming to melt into the shadows of the heavy furniture, the gilt tassels, and out into the hallway with its bitter chemical tang of insecticides. “Nescafé freeze dried,” Samira said, with no little pride. “Not Arabic coffee. No sugar?” She made a face. “Frances, how can you?” She made another, more expressive face, for Yasmin’s consumption.

Samira was a sallow, stockily built young woman, with a cascade of coarse dark hair that had something of an animal quality about it—as if it led a separate life from its owner, but on a lower plane. As she arranged the cups, it swung over her shoulder, crackling with static. She wore blue jeans, tight-fitting, very new and stiff, and a scarlet sweatshirt with a designer’s monogram on the collar. On her left hand she wore a single carat solitaire diamond, in a surprisingly restrained setting; it blinked coldly in the gray light, like another eye.

“I was telling Frances,” Yasmin said, “that your maid has left some children behind in Indonesia. That is why she goes about crying the whole time.”

“She’s new, is she?” Frances asked.

Samira shrugged again. “Not so new. I am training her. Not easy, as she doesn’t speak any language. I just take her arm and I say, look you, do this. She is learning.”

“Well, she must speak some language,” Frances said.

“If she does nobody has found out what it is.”

“Does she come from Bandung?”

“No. Some country place.”

“She must have her own dialect.”

“Well, I don’t know, I think she must,” Samira said. “My friend has Indonesian maid, and she cannot speak to her.” She dropped three spoonfuls of brown sugar into her coffee, and stirred it thoughtfully. “I expect maybe she is lonely.”

“Oh well,” Yasmin said. “It is better if she doesn’t have any contacts. At least she won’t go bringing gangs of thieves to the house.”

“Are there gangs of thieves?” Frances said innocently. “I didn’t think there were any. It never mentions them in the newspapers.”

The two women exchanged a glance. It’s funny, Frances thought, how two people think they can exchange glances without the third person noticing. “It’s not a problem,” Samira said. She sounded prim. But then she added, hotly, “It is only in the West that they say, thieving Arabs. It is the Western media. Always they show us as thieving and ignorant and suffering from diseases.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean …” Frances blushed faintly. “Besides, they don’t, you know. Not nowadays.”

“They are fair to the East?” Yasmin said. “I don’t think so.”

“But I’m sure people don’t have those prejudices.”

“It is in the Saudi Gazette,” Samira insisted. “Every day people are taken up in Marks & Spencer. They try to explain, no, no, I am not a thief, I am intending to pay for it, I am only taking it to that counter over there.” Her face lit, as she enacted the scene; her coffee cup trembled a little in its saucer. “Perhaps they have never been in that country before. Perhaps their English is not so good. But no one listens to their pleas. They are thrown into jail. And then they are asked huge sums of money, far more than what is the value of that original article.”

“That can’t be right,” Frances said. She tried to keep her tone light. “They couldn’t arrest them, because you see, they’d have to be outside the shop—”

She stopped. Samira had set her jaw firmly. “Many people who own shops in London,” she said, “are Zionists.”

Frances nodded vaguely, not in assent, but because she was remembering what she had been told by the businessman on the plane. You have to cut the labels out of your underwear … too bloody secretive to have maps … nobody knows the half of what goes on. How long ago that seemed now; and yet this was only her third month on Ghazzah Street. Yasmin and Samira exchanged another glance, and this time, a slight smile.

“I have told Samira of your interest in the Sharia law. You must read the Holy Koran that I gave you. Then you will see how sensible it is.”

“I have been reading it,” Frances said.

“Of course, you do not get the full idea in translation.”

“You get enough.”

“And?” Samira said timidly. “Yes?”

It was as if she had written it personally. Do be careful, Frances said to herself. Take care. “It reminds me of the Bible.”

“Yes, quite so.” Yasmin leaned forward, took up the coffeepot, and replenished her cup, as if she were at home. “We have the Prophets, just the same, peace be upon them. We have Abraham. Moses. Adam and Eve. And Jesus.” She helped herself to sugar. “We have Jesus.”

“It wasn’t that so much,” Frances said. “It was more the bits about gouging out people’s eyes, and cutting off their hands and feet alternately, that sort of thing.” Her inner voice complained, this is not being careful.

“They give a—what’s the word?” said Samira, unexpectedly.

She looked up from where she was kneeling on the rug, prying her daughter’s fingers from Selim’s hair. The dark, frail little boy had his neck bent at a painful angle; he did not utter, and Yasmin regarded him, from her armchair, with a self-satisfied composure. “An anesthetic,” she supplied.

“Yes,” Samira said. “That’s it.”

“When they do an amputation,” Yasmin looked down at her own long hands, with their lacquered nails, “there is a doctor in attendance. It doesn’t go poisoned, they make sure of that. They don’t let them bleed so much. Really, Frances, it isn’t like you think.”

Frances felt a minute contraction in her throat, a tiny wash of nausea; as if something small had moved inside her, deep inside. They were quite new to her, these minute reactions between body and soul—the tension headaches, the tightness in the throat. Until now her body had been a quiet, efficient machine. She might say, “It makes me sick, such a thing,” but until she came to Ghazzah Street, it had not really been true. She leaned forward, hiding her face, and put her coffee cup on the table.

“Some more?” Samira said. She gave a single, guttural yell, like a battle cry. It fetched Sarsaparilla. The maid stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her bony chest. Frances kept her eyes on the floor. She examined the rug on which the children were playing. It was an antique rug, its chief color a gentle faded blue; it portrayed the Tree of Life, weighted with fruit.

“In America,” Yasmin said, when the tray had been taken away, “every criminal hopes to be saved on the defense of insanity. If they are shoplifting, they just say, ‘Oh, I don’t know what came over me.’ And if they have committed murder, they just say—”

“‘Oh, I don’t know what came over me,’” Samira put in helpfully. Yasmin nodded.

“They say, ‘When I did this I was temporarily not in my right mind, but I am okay now, so you may let me go.’”

“What do they say if—” Frances broke off.

“Yes? Go on?”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“Do go on,” Yasmin invited. “We are not offended.”

“But I’m afraid you are.”

“Oh no,” Samira said. “We really are not, Frances. We like your questions.”

“How can we explain to you,” Yasmin said, “if you don’t ask?”

“Well, I just wondered, what you thought—I just wondered what you thought people in America say, when they have committed adultery?”

Yasmin and Samira smiled at each other. “We don’t know,” Samira said.

Yasmin said, “Perhaps you are teasing us.”

“No, not really.” Sarsaparilla was back: another tray of coffee. She leaned over Frances, to lower the tray to the table, and almost brushed against her. The skin of her neck was creased and faded, like the skin of a much older woman. Samira spoke to her, a single word. The maid straightened up. And then she smiled; thinly, painfully, as if she had been told, very suddenly, to make herself pleasant. Frances caught the smell of her body, a thin odor, sharp and strange.

“I’ve been reading the religious column in the newspaper,” she said, as Samira leaned forward to refill her cup. “Those questions and answers. Is it true that a man can divorce his wife by saying ‘I divorce you’ three times?”

“That is a common misunderstanding,” Yasmin said gently. “I thought it might be.”

“Really,” Samira said, “he only has to say it once.”

There was a pause. “Does this happen often?” Frances asked.

“Oh yes. But then very often they get remarried.”

“There is a waiting period,” Yasmin said. “You must have read about this, yes? They wait three months, to see if the wife is pregnant, then if she is not, the divorce is valid, unless they decide they want to be married again, you see. They can go through this once, twice, three times, but then after the husband has got her divorced a third time, he can’t marry her again.”

“Unless,” Samira said, “she has been married to someone else in between.”

“Married to someone else, then divorced from someone else?”

“Yes, of course. Sometimes a man may fix for her to marry one of his friends, just in name only, then he can get her back.”

Frances sat, digesting this. “There seems a great deal of—indecision,” she said. “Who gets the children?”

“Oh, the father,” Samira said.

“And what if he doesn’t want to marry her again, when the waiting period is over?”

“Then she must go back and live with her family.”

“And what if she wants to divorce him?”

“Well, that is possible,” Samira conceded.

“But,” Yasmin said with dignity, “that is not what we do.”

Frances put down her coffee cup. There are a million questions, she thought. She looked at her watch. “I’d better go,” she said. “Thank you so much, Samira.”

“But no! Why do you have to go?”

“Well, I must … write a letter.”

“Frances keeps a diary,” Yasmin said teasingly.

“How do you know?”

“I have seen you put it away in a hurry. So it can only be a diary. Unless perhaps you have love letters?”

“I don’t have love letters.”

“Perhaps you might,” Yasmin said. “There are many bachelors in Jeddah. Also many Englishmen and Americans without their wife.”

“And,” Samira observed, “you are quite pretty.”

“No, really.” Frances stood up. “A diary, yes, but that’s all.”

“Frances is in love with her husband,” Yasmin said. The two women laughed.

Samira took her to the door. Already a certain tension had left her face, the tension bred by talking to the outsider. She looked artless, very young. Once she had left, Frances knew, they would withdraw from the formal sitting room, and into the smaller room, strewn with floor cushions, where Samira preferred to spend her mornings. She would gladly have joined them there; but she was a Westerner, and must sit on chairs.

“Will you come down to my flat?” she asked.

“Yes, I will come.”

“Your shawl—”

“No, keep it. Really you must. It suits you.”

“Oh, I can’t.”

“It is my gift,” Samira said. She leaned forward and kissed Frances on the cheek.

Poor diary. If only it could have a change of scene! She is ashamed of its content, which she feels has become trivial and repetitious. She will write down her conversation with the women, knowing that upstairs, sprawled in comfort on the cushions, they are discussing her.

When she spent her first day alone in the flat, time moved in a slow, dreamlike way; now it moves at a normal speed. And yet she cannot think how she passes it. Reading; patrolling with the cockroach spray; cooking food for the freezer. Sometimes she walks to Marion’s compound. The mornings have cooled slightly, and they sit outside the house. Marion sips Diet Pepsi; insects from miles around come specially to drown in her glass. Often the smell from the drains drives them indoors. And yet she is grateful for the outing. The compound has a small pool, fiercely chlorinated, and a few stunted trees. Perhaps, she thinks, when a house there comes free … But Marion says the compound families are always quarreling.

Her letters home have already ceased to read like frontier dispatches, and now they are full of householder’s complaints, and polite general inquiries: have you seen your sister lately, how is the cat? It is difficult to describe to people the kind of life they are living. And she does not describe their surroundings anymore. She has almost ceased to notice them. If it were not for the empty flat, perhaps Frances would have stopped asking questions already. Curiosity is a transient phenomenon here. It is not that you learn everything; but you soon learn whatever you will be allowed to known. This is a private society, which does not publish its flaws, or disclose its reasoning, which replies to pressing inquirers with a floodtide of disinformation, and then reverts to its preferred silence. One door closes, and—while you are gathering your platitudes—another door slams shut.

2

Frances Shore’s Diary: 9 Rabi al-awal

A few days ago I met Carla Zussman at the Sarawat supermarket. I last saw her in the audience at an amateur production of The Crucible, given in the Moth Hall, Gaborone. Hi there, Frances, she said. I asked, surprised to see me? Not really, she said. Still married? Yes, I said, and to the same man. You? Oh yes, she said, I’m here with Rickie, we’re still a going concern.

So I persuaded Marion that we ought to take the bus and visit Carla. The buses are segregated, of course. Most of the bus is for men, but there is a small compartment at the back for women. There is a standard fare of one riyal, and a box to put it in, and this is why the women travel at the back, they can be trusted to pay up, whereas the men won’t pay unless they’re under the eye of the driver. We only had about ten minutes to wait, but we got very hot, even though the segregated bus shelter did shield us from the full glare of the sun. Bus shelters are a big advance here, they have only just got them, and they write about them in the newspapers as if they were moonshots or something. Although we were very respectably dressed, people still stared at us, and shouted from cars, so we were glad when the bus came.

We went along fairly confidently, being the only female passengers. I told Marion, just look out for the American Embassy compound, we can’t miss it. As soon as we saw the Stars and Stripes fluttering between the construction sites, we leapt up and pressed the bell, but it didn’t work. The front compartment was nearly empty too, so I banged on the glass panel, trying to attract the driver’s attention, and shouted Hinna! Hinna! I was afraid to get involved in anything more complicated. But he didn’t hear me. Two Yemenis in the front compartment turned round and looked at us. I pointed to the driver, but all they did was stare. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d grinned, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d laughed at us, because everybody laughs at them. I thought, somebody might as well have some pleasure out of this excursion. But they just went on staring. They didn’t seem to have any initiative.

A few minutes later, Top Furniture went past, where Samira got her chandelier, and then we were on the Corniche. I persuaded Marion to get out, on the grounds that we knew where we were, and if we stayed on the bus any longer this might not be the case. There was hardly anyone around, just us, a few seagulls, and those strange nonhuman shapes, metal and stone objects on which the Mayor has spent so much—but it’s his town. We sat down on one of the sculptures. It was white marble, and the sea was a hard blue, and I felt so good at being out of the house that I could have stayed there forever. Marion got fretful, and the sun was burning. I would have liked to run down over the smooth brown rocks and into the waves. What a good thing I am not that sort of person. Another bus came along, and we got on it.

We thought, with luck, that we might find ourselves back near the Embassy, but we were not lucky that day, and Marion was getting more and more upset. The terminus is the place to be, I said, and then we can start again; but it would be too late to go to Carla’s, the best we could do would be to get .ourselves home. Think of it as an adventure, I said to Marion, but she said Russel wouldn’t see it that way. Don’t tell him, I said unfeelingly, and she looked at me in terror. I remembered the days, not very long ago, when I told Andrew everything too.

The bus got snarled up in the downtown traffic, and we ended up at the Queen’s Building, near the souk. Shall we go and look around? I said; there are two of us after all. Marion said, a mother and daughter were raped in the souk, mind you they were wearing shorts, they were asking for it. They were Australians, she added. As if that made some sort of difference.

I lost my temper with her. I said, how can you repeat this sort of gossip? Who were these women? When did it happen? Who told you about it? I said, life is difficult enough in this town without believing everything you hear.

I imagined Carla waiting for us, with iced coffee, and something like banana bread, chocolate chip cookies perhaps, and maybe ringing up Dunroamin to see what had happened. I felt almost tearful. I wanted to prove to Marion that it was all right, that we could go out on our own without something terrible happening to us, and now just because we missed our bus stop all these fantasies about Australians were running around in her head. Even though I had lost my temper, I felt sorry for her, standing there in the street. It was past midday, and I could see her suffering, covered in a clammy sweat, and her ankles swelling before my eyes. I have to keep away from women like Marion. They may be company, but they’re no good for me in the long run.

But then a day later, Marion turned up at Dunroamin. “I had to come and talk to someone,” she said. She revolved slowly in the living room, viewing the many chairs, a vacant and confused expression on her face. As soon as she had selected a chair, she began to cry, and mop up her tears with tissues which she tore angrily from a box on the coffee table.

“I’m so unhappy,” she said, “he’s just so mean, Fran, he’s so mean. He says we’re staying in Jeddah to see the next Five-Year Plan out, if they let him. That’ll be 1990! I’ll be forty! Can you imagine being forty in this place?”

Frances could not imagine being forty in any place at all. But she sat down to listen. “I thought you liked it here?”

A medley of complaints burst out of Marion. She began to talk about sexual harassment, about the bottom-pinchers in the supermarkets, about the men who gave her trouble on the streets because of her blond hair. As she talked, her eyes began to shine, and a look of thrilled fear grew on her face. She must have learned that look in Africa; terrorists, rabies, armed robbers, are the subjects for morning sherry parties. “And besides,” she said, “he says that when we finish here we’re not going home to the UK. He says we’re emigrating to Australia. He says Britain’s finished. I don’t think it’s finished, do you, Frances?”

By the time Marion had got through her grievances a half hour had gone by. Her little voice was a victim’s voice, but her fingers, like a murderer’s, shredded and twisted and tore. “I don’t know what I’d do without Jeff,” she said. “He helps me out such a lot. He runs the girls to Brownies. He unblocked the lavatory for me last week. You know Russel, he won’t do anything like that.”

Frances said, “I can’t stand Jeff.”

“Can’t you?” Marion said wonderingly. “Why ever not?”

Frances said, “He’s such a fascist, that’s why.” She was ashamed of herself, but it was a way of bringing the conversation to an end.

She pitied Marion. Her thick pallid skin never colored and never burned; between her large arms and legs, almost as an afterthought, was a thick-waisted child’s body. Her clothes, even when designed to be voluminous, seemed ridiculously small and tight; she was prone to allergies and rashes, to swollen lips, swollen eyelids, conjunctivitis. Her husband was a bully, and her two daughters were petulant, demanding children, who had learned their mother’s habit of sniffling when thwarted. Frances felt, and was ashamed of herself for feeling, that compared to Marion she was quite glamorous; and that she was witty, and lucky, and sane. But perhaps, she thought, Marion feels just the same about me.

Marion stood up, and a cascade of shredded Kleenex slid to the carpet. Her eyes were pinkish and her nose shone. “But I’ve got it off my chest,” she said. They went out together to the gate. Marion glanced up at the building; Samira had her blinds down, and so of course did Flat 4. “You know what goes on up there, don’t you?” she asked, managing a miserable smile.

“Yes.”

“See much of your neighbors?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Don’t tell anybody, will you?” Marion took a crumpled tissue out of her pocket and mopped her eyes again. “Don’t tell anybody what I’ve been saying about Russel. They don’t like to know that people are unhappy. It could jeopardize his job.”

“Who doesn’t like to know?”

“The Saudis,” she said. “They like people to be, you know, just like robots.”

“Come to dinner,” Frances said. “Will you? Wednesday week? Can you manage that?”

“I think so,” Marion said, sniffing.

Frances went indoors, out of the splashy yellow sunshine and into the cool and the dark. She thought, I wish I had a kinder heart.

When Andrew came home he was carrying two large plates covered by paper napkins. He said, “Rickie Zussman stopped by the office.”

“I seem to hear his accents.”

“True,” Andrew said. “I mean he dropped in. He called on me. I suppose I am getting a bit American. I’ve spent the morning talking to one of the Corps of Engineers people. You know, they run the missile base. Unofficially.”

“I thought you had nothing to do with the missile base.” Frances lifted a corner of one of the napkins. “Oh, it’s Carla’s banana bread.”

“And her pumpkin pie. No, I don’t have anything to do with it really. I’m just being nosy.”

“I suppose she spent a day baking, and then when we didn’t turn up she didn’t know how to get rid of it. They’re both on diets.”

“All the khawwadjihs are on diets,” Andrew complained. “It must be next in popularity to snorkeling. Why do they do it? Some of them are quite scrawny.”

“It’s guilt,” Frances said. She remembered Yasmin’s sly question: you know of guilt? “They feel bad because they’re making so much money. They want to punish themselves a bit.”

“Do you think that’s it?”

“Yes, it’s like those people who go on fasts and give their lunch money to Oxfam. Religion without God.”

She took the plates from Andrew and carried them into the kitchen. He followed. “I wonder if Carla would mind,” she said, removing the napkins, “if I gave this stuff to Yasmin and Samira. Samira sent me some stuffed vine leaves yesterday. I’m in debt.”

“It would be a cross-cultural experience for them,” Andrew said. “Are we always going to carry on this food exchange?”

“Oh, it’s a harmless hobby. Food’s the only thing we can talk about without running into a lot of misunderstandings. By the way—”

“Put the kettle on, will you?” Andrew said.

“I was thinking about the empty flat. Is it supposed to be one woman the chap’s seeing, or several?”

“Only one, I think.”

“Oh, this disgusting water,” Frances said. “It’s furring the kettle up. What I wondered is, why don’t they just both get divorced. Divorce is easy here. So I’m told.”

“I don’t know.” Andrew is baffled by how simple life sometimes seems to his wife. “There could be all sorts of reasons. There might be family connections at stake.” Or what emotional complexities in the background, he thought: a devoted cuckold, a vulnerable wife. Might the Saudis have those emotions: or another set entirely? Frances seems to believe that nothing in the Kingdom can be taken for granted; that human nature, if indeed it exists anywhere, is not something that can be relied on here.

“They’d have to be very persuasive connections,” she said, “for a couple to run this sort of risk. Come to that—” she reached down the teapot—“only one of them would have to get divorced, the woman, because the man can have four wives, can’t he?”

“They don’t do that much nowadays. None of the Saudis I know at the Ministry has more than one wife. They leave that to the Bedu. They try to be modern.”

“Up to a point.”

“And besides, it’s too expensive, getting married. The girls want a new house built for them, and all the furniture.”

“Yes, I know. They want chandeliers.”

“So now it’s just like the rest of the world, what do you call it—serial polygamy.”

The water was boiling. “Perhaps the woman upstairs has a possessive husband,” Frances said. “Perhaps she doesn’t think he’d play the game and say ‘I divorce you.’” She made the tea, picked up the tray, and headed for the living room. “Before we have the dinner party,” she said, “we really must rearrange these chairs.”

Yasmin, after their conversation in Samira’s flat, had been anxious to correct any wrong impression that Frances might have received. “It seems to me,” Frances had said recklessly, “that everybody could be good, if you could get a more or less instant divorce each time you saw someone you liked the look of—and then after a week or two you could get married again. On that principle, no one need ever commit adultery.”

She had thought, if I just give Yasmin a little push, I’ll find out whether or not she’s in the secret. But Yasmin seemed nettled. “The Saudis do this,” she said. “We wouldn’t do this. In Pakistan a divorce is much rarer,”

“But the Saudis have lots. Why’s that?”

Yasmin dropped her eyes. “Because they are very passionate.”

“In the West we take marriage more seriously. We think if you don’t like it you have to try to put it right. We promise it’s for life.” She stopped, realizing how remote this was from her real experience; half Andrew’s colleagues were on their second or third wife. “Well, that’s the theory,” she said.

Yasmin had sighed. She said, “A realistic religion is best, isn’t it?”

Just now, Andrew was not interested in talking about the empty flat. He flung himself into his chosen armchair and said, “My model’s not come yet. My model of the building, I mean. I’m worried about it. It’s left L.A. Jeff thinks the customs men might be holding it up. Searching it for drugs, or something.”

“Oh, surely not.”

“If it gets damaged I’ll kill somebody.” Suddenly he was full of venom. “Jeff’s an idiot,” he said.

Andrew hugged his mug of tea, and lapsed into thought. He is losing faith in Turadup’s bosses, in their technical competence. Not that they bother with him much. His building, the multimillion-riyal building, seems unimportant to them compared to the underground silo at the missile base. Whenever he wants something, Parsons and Pollard are having a high-level meeting; or say they are. People he doesn’t know arrive at the airport, and occupy office space, and monopolize the telex machine; they break Turadup’s photocopier, and expect him to mend it, as if he were a maintenance mechanic. Once he found that one of these strangers had taken over his Portakabin, and pushed all his drawings aside. “You’re not working on the silo, I gather?” this chap had asked him, and he had said, “No, the building, I’m working on the building, and you are in my space.” He had been violently rude. Parsons, in his mild way, had upbraided him.

And anyway, he thought, sipping his tea, ignoring his wife: isn’t the whole project misconceived? Building an underground silo on limestone? It’s permeable, it cracks, it’s continually flooding. They should have put the missiles inland, on granite. The site’s in the wrong place. It should be up on the escarpment, not down by the sea. But then, officially there are no missiles. There are no Americans. How can you point out the flaws in a project that doesn’t exist?

And mixed up with his larger doubts (after all, Saudi defense strategy is not his affair) are the little things that niggle away. If he goes to the Ministry—the Ministry that wants the building so much—nobody seems prepared to deal with him. The fact is, they seem not to know who he is. Four or five men loll around in the Deputy Minister’s anteroom, drink coffee, and read the newspapers. They give him a blank stare, and return to their conversation.

When Jeff Pollard recruited him in Gaborone, he said that he would be a valued member of a team; but he doesn’t feel like one. Parsons and Pollard don’t know how to make someone feel valued. Havana-sucking half-wits, he thinks. Captain Hook and Smee had more notion of personnel management. Far more.

“Awful tea,” Frances said. “Want another cup?”

He shook his head. “I’m supposed to be getting this consultant out from London,” he said. “Though when he’s coming I don’t know. Perhaps we can have him over to dinner when he does get here, keep him away from Parsons and Pollard. He’s an expert on air-conditioning. His name’s Fairfax.”

“Really?” Frances looked up. “Who does he work for?”

He told her. “I feel as if I know him,” she said. “I came over on the plane with some of his colleagues. They talked shop the whole time. Poor Fairfax, I think they had a down on him, they weren’t very complimentary.”

“Well, I hope he’s some use. I spoke to him on the phone. He was going on about the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. Says they’re doing it up and it’s going to have the biggest central air-conditioning system in the world.”

“I suppose the Believers have to be kept cool.”

“I said to him, well, you can’t go to Medina. Only Muslims can go to Mecca and Medina. He said, I really need the order, how can I convert? And then he started laughing like a maniac.”

“I’m sure that when he comes here he’ll sober up.”

“Probably. You know what Rickie Zussman was telling me? He’d been to this management seminar, and they’d had a lecture from some Indian psychiatrist, a chap from Hyderabad. He was making a tour of the Middle East to research into the effects of stress on immigrant workers.”

“Strange,” Frances said, “how Indians are immigrant workers, but we’re professional expatriates.”

“He said all the Indians who work here are shot to pieces mentally. Totally paranoid. They come here and they’re suddenly cut off from their families, they’ve got language problems, and they start to think everybody’s out to get them. Our Indians are like that, at Turadup. They think all the other Indians are after their jobs. They think people are talking about them behind their backs. And they’re always going up to Eric Parsons and asking him complicated questions about the labor law. They think he wants to cheat on the terms of their contract, do them out of their baggage allowances or something. They’re obsessed with their baggage allowances.”

“I expect Europeans are the same, when they’ve been here for a while.”

“Yes, sure. This psychiatrist says so. He says there are phases. When you get here and everything’s so strange, you feel isolated and got at—that’s Phase One. But then you learn how to manage daily life, and for a while the place begins to seem normal, and you’ll even defend the way things are done here, you’ll start explaining to newcomers that it’s all right really—that’s Phase Two. You coast along, and then comes Phase Three, the second wave of paranoia. And this time around, it never goes.”

“So what do you do?”

“You leave, before you crack up.”

“But some of your lot at Turadup—they’ve been here a few years. They may not be up to much, but you can’t say they’ve cracked up.”

“Oh, not in any obvious way. I don’t mean they attack people, or scream and hammer the walls. They’re just cracked up in small ways. You just listen to their conversation.” Andrew stared into the depth of his empty mug, as if he were reading the tea leaves. “Parsons,” he said. “You know that big flash car of his? It’s got a tinted windscreen. It’s tinted at the top, so you’ve got this arc of blue sky.”

“That’s not insane, Andrew. It’s just tacky.”

“It seems insane to me,” Andrew said. “Nine days out of ten the sky is as blue as you could want. Unnaturally blue. But the real sky isn’t good enough for these madmen.”

Frances was thoughtful. “I wonder what phase we are in?”

“Getting into the second one, I suppose. Because we seem to be coping, don’t we? There are days when I really feel the place is normal.”

Speak for yourself, Frances thinks. Dunroamin begins to feel a more and more problematical world. When she goes out into the hallway she is watchful; she listens; she casts a glance over her shoulder and up the stairs. If she hears a door open, her heart leaps. There is a feeling that something is going on, just outside her range of vision. If the time and the place came together, she would grasp it; she would know what it was.

“Perhaps the process can be accelerated,” she said to Andrew. “Perhaps I’ve already reached the third stage.”

“Oh no,” Andrew said seriously. “No, I wouldn’t worry, Frances. This psychiatrist was talking about guest workers, expatriate labor. I don’t think it applies to women at home.”

Letters home. Frances writes to her cousin Clare, and gives the letter to Andrew: “Can you post this?”

Andrew’s heart sinks. “I’ll be late then,” he says.

The post offices of Jeddah are breezeblock cubes, sited on vacant lots; they are difficult of access, and have eccentric opening hours. The people who man them seem to be chosen for their piety, because post offices are almost always closed for prayer. When at last the staff take down the gates from the main door, and throw the office open, a long and cosmopolitan queue forms at once, and snakes outside the cube and into the dust by the roadside. The clerks deal with this queue at their own speed; they take time out to read the newspapers, Okaz and Al-Madinah and the Saudi Gazette: often perching cross-legged on the counters while they do so.

In the year 1403, a great innovation appeared in the Kingdom: post boxes. Mostly these too were situated on vacant lots, but a few were near the habitations of men, and friends could exchange news of them, and draw each other maps. At first it seemed that everyone would be saved a great deal of time and aggravation. But of course, to post letters in the post boxes, one needed stamps, so it was necessary to go to the post office anyway.

What happened next was a shortage of stamps. On the pavement outside the main post office, which in those days was situated near the Happy Family supermarket, a sort of sub-post-office system grew up; enterprising men sat on blankets, and sold stamps at blackmarket prices.

A little while after this, the main post office closed down. Overnight, it stood deserted, and for days no one knew where to find its successor. Post office boxes went missing, and clerks were out and about all over the city, looking for them.

O, Bride of the Red Sea! You give your suitors a hard time.

The post boxes, too, were a failure. They were seen every day to be stuffed with letters and small packages, with overflowing mail to Madras, to Salt Lake City, to Kuala Lumpur and to Leamington Spa; but was it fresh mail, or the same mail every day? A rumor got about that the boxes were never emptied; and the Europeans, at least, started their search for post offices again.

It was, of course, only a rumor. The Arab News says that the Kingdom has excellent postal services.

3

A week passed; and they were, as Yasmin put it, called for dinner. Yasmin had been cooking for three days; but when she opened the door to them she had banished the sweat and grease, the smell of spices that crept into her clothes and hair, and stood, smiling guardedly, in an embroidered shalwar kameez; she wore ruby studs in her ears, her lashes were heavily mascaraed, and her ivory skin seemed polished. “Come in,” she said. “Let me introduce you to our friends.”

She led them around the room. “This is Shabana. This is her husband Mohammad, this is Mohammad’s friend Farooq.” The men wore dark business suits; the women were dressed as Yasmin was, or else in their evening-party saris; one or two wore long velvet skirts, and high-necked blouses with frills. They smiled politely, and asked the routine questions: and how do you like Jeddah? And with the arrival of the Shores, the whole party, which had been conducted in Urdu, switched smoothly into English.

It was difficult. Shams, her eyes downcast, circulated with a tray: a choice of Pepsi, 7-Up, or a fizzy orange drink of a peculiar sickly sweetness. Shabana’s dimpled paw hovered over the tray, her diamond rings glittering. She was a little doll of a woman, with faint dark down on her upper lip; her mouth was plump and cushioned, her manner confiding. “And have you been to the carpet souk?” she asked. “Are you wanting to collect some carpets?”

Raji appeared at Frances’s side, and took her arm. “If she wants carpets I will show her the best buys,” he said. “Tell me, Frances, where do you want to go?”

Raji, that night, was ebullient, bouncing around from guest to guest. “What I’d like to see,” Frances said, “is this Tomb of Eve I’ve read about.”

“Ah,” Shabana said. “I see you are becoming interested in some bits of Islam.”

“Yasmin has been explaining things to me. Is it really the tomb of Eve?”

“They say so. After Adam and Eve got reconciled with God, Eve died and was buried—”

“Downtown,” Raji said, smiling, “behind a big wall. Near the Foreign Ministry, I think, isn’t it?”

“Haven’t you seen it?”

“I don’t think it is widely publicized,” Raji said. “It is not what the Saudis would make a tourist attraction. You must know, Frances, that here they are Sunni Muslims.” He sounded detached, almost cynical. “They don’t go for shrines and tombs and processions. They call these things superstition.”

“It is the Shia who go after such things,” Shabana said.

“You must ask Samira,” Raji said. “Frances has a Saudi friend,” he explained. “She will tell you that the Shia are so extreme. They are flagellants. Suicidals. Martyrs.” He touched his forehead delicately. “They are all martyrs, you understand me, in the head.”

Shabana said, “You must read the Holy Koran. Of course, in translation—”

“Yes, I know,” Frances said. “I understand that without Arabic you can’t really appreciate it. But you can look about you, and see its effects in the outside world.”

Raji laughed. “You are often amusing yourself at our expense, Frances. You think I cannot tell when you are sarcastic. You do not think much of us, and who is to blame you.” An arm around her waist, he patted her, like a fond uncle. “Come now, let’s not be so solemn. You ought not to bother about such things as tombs. You must take your husband down to the gold souk, and make him buy you something nice.”

“Ah, have you heard?” Shabana turned aside and touched her husband’s sleeve. “Mohammad, will you tell about the latest goings-on at Jeddah International Market? Do please tell Raji.”

Mohammad obliged, clearing his throat, pushing too large spectacles back on his nose. “The police are banning mirrors in the jewelers’ shops. Or so they say. The Saudi women are down there provoking the shop assistants, getting them to fasten necklaces on them, while they look in the mirror.”

“That’s right,” Shabana said, almost in a whisper. “And they stretch out their hands, with their nails painted red, and let the men try bracelets on them.”

“Young women will find some way to flirt,” Raji said indulgently. “It is the way of the world.”

Mohammad darted a look at Frances. “Quite a hotbed, they say, the Jeddah International Market. The story goes that the girls walk around looking in the shop windows, with a piece of paper hidden in their hand, and their telephone number on it. Well, you know how the young men hang around there. They just slip it to someone, and then they phone up.”

Shabana tittered. “They have a relationship on the telephone.”

“It’s rather sad,” Frances said. “Don’t you think?”

“Where’s your sense of humor?” Raji demanded. “We also enjoy laughing at the Saudis from time to time, you know. Oh, they know we do it. But then we are,” he said smoothly, “only the hired help.”

“We are the hired help too,” Frances said. “I was wondering, do you see much of Abdul Nasr? Our neighbor,” she explained to Shabana.

“I don’t know him well,” Raji said. “I don’t have contact with him in my work. Of course, his family are not Saudi, you know. I think he was born here, but they come from Iran. So, he will never really get on.”

Yasmin approached, to urge them toward the table. “Everything is ready, do please come and eat. You are talking of our neighbor?”

“We can hardly be on social terms,” Raji said. “If we called them to dinner Samira would have to sit behind her veil. Thank God we don’t all have to keep their rules, or there would be no parties like this one.”

“It seems a pity,” Frances said to Yasmin. “When you two are such friends.”

Yasmin caught her eye. “I don’t know why you think it is a pity,” she said quietly. “Whatever would Raji and Samira find to talk about?” Then she smiled, and turned back to her guests.

The fruits of Yasmin’s three days of labor were laid out as a buffet on the long table with its stiff white cloth. The party ate standing up, in a concentrated, voracious silence. Frances picked at the food, which was too spicy for her stomach, and turned it over with her fork. Andrew complimented Yasmin. He was enjoying himself. He could eat anything; it was one of his social assets. Raji alone talked between mouthfuls, holding forth on this and that. It seemed a pose, almost; look at me, he was saying, I am a worldly, charming man. If there had been a slight tension in the room—caused, Frances thought, by the European presence—it was now dissipating. But she looked across the table and saw Yasmin watching Raji, with an expression that was narrow and appraising. It was the face of a nun in a lingerie department: baffled, almost hungry, and yet full of a growing appreciation that things are worse than one had thought.

Samira came down. She rang the doorbell, and when Frances answered it—she had been busy in the kitchen—her neighbor was huddled into the doorframe, as if trying to efface her black shape into the texture of the wood. Inside the door, she unwound her head, revealing her perfect maquillage; her eyeshadow in three complementary shades, her shaped and frosted cheekbones, her precisely outlined and glossed-in lips. All this, Frances thought, for other women: and never, never for any men. Except your relations, of course. She held out an arm, and Samira’s black silk abaya floated onto it; Frances laid it over the back of a chair. Samira wore her jeans again, and a silk shirt with a sequined butterfly embroidered across her large bosom. She had brought her little girl; the child had been dressed for an outing, in a frilly white dress with a sash which made her appear as wide as she was high. Her dark round face was truculent; she had a doll in one hand, hanging by its blond hair, and with the other hand she clutched and patted at her mother’s unyielding denim thighs.

“Oh, that woman of mine!” Samira said. She seated herself, and threw her head back so that her long electric hair crackled over Turadup’s tasteful oatmeal cushions. “That ignorant woman! I have brought the kid down so that she can get on with the sweeping.”

“Does she still cry so much?”

“All the time. Do you know, Frances, before we brought Islam to those people they lived in the jungle and ate pigs.” And now they are not grateful, her tone implied. “They colored their body with pictures, what do you call it, tattoos. Sometimes they ate each other.”

“Some coffee?”

“Yes, but don’t set up that machine, just make it quickly in the cup, it’s all right.” Her exasperation, temporarily quelled, broke out again. “He says—Abdul says—I should be glad that she doesn’t speak Arabic. He says I don’t want her corrupting our children with foreign ways. By the by, I am expecting again.”

“Are you?” Frances said. “Congratulations. Are foreign ways always corrupting?”

“You can’t complain if we think so,” Samira said, with a sigh. “After all, we have seen so much of the youth going to Europe and getting into bad ways with women and nightclubs. The newspapers are always ready to give them bad publicity.”

“Have you been to Europe, yourself?”

“Yes, of course. We often go. Paris. Rome. Only,” she said fretfully, “Abdul never tells me his plans. He just says, come on, we are traveling.”

Frances brought the coffee. Another illuminating morning, she thought. She felt she was receiving a sentimental education; but that there was more to learn. The child, with tiny strong fingers like pincers, was pulling out her doll’s hair. Samira reached for the sugar bowl. Her mood of complaint had deepened.

“Abdul is never at home,” she said. “He goes out in the evening on men’s parties.”

“Did you know Abdul, before you were married?”

“No, it was arranged, of course.”

“So you didn’t know what to expect?”

“Well, if he is a little kind … It is not good to have too many expectations.”

“Yes, people say that.” Frances raised her cup to her lips. “But I didn’t know expectations were wrong. I never thought of it that way.”

“Afterward, after your marriage, then you get to know each other. We don’t have many conflicts. Do you have many?”

“Oh, a few.”

“Because we don’t talk all that much, you know. His life, my life—they are different. But that’s natural, isn’t it? Men and women, it has to be.”

“I don’t know. You could get an education. Get a job. If you lived somewhere else, that is. In another country.”

“Oh, but,” Samira said. “But. I have been to the Women’s University, Frances.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I have studied French. English poetry, the works of Robert Burns. Anthropology—that is people’s customs, you know. And biology.”

“Biology?”

“Helps one to run the home better. So you know how to take care of the children’s health. And of course, Frances, we have women who work. There is the staff at the ladies’ banks. And at some of the Ministries, they have women. They arrange it for them. They have a separate lift, and a floor by themselves.”

“But they must need to talk to the men sometimes. Consult them.”

“They can phone them up. And they have computers. They can send them a disk.”

“But what would happen … I mean, what would be so awful … if they did meet up?” “Why, it would be like the West,” Samira said. “There would be harassment. People would be all the time having love affair.”

How difficult it is, Frances thought, to fit it all together. Shabana told her that Adam and Eve were reconciled to God. The Arab News, which writes on these matters every Friday, says there is no original sin. People are naturally good, and they have free will, and Allah does not ask very much of them, certainly nothing unreasonable. The rules take account of human weaknesses; they are easy to keep. But the penal code does not reflect this optimism. Nor does the general tenor of society. It seems to expect depravity, the unreflective behavior of animals; man and woman together, five minutes, clothes off, carnal knowledge; rape, mayhem, murder. Oh come, she says to herself: don’t exaggerate. Drink your coffee. Be a good hostess and keep the conversation light. And she notices how Samira’s careful orthodoxy cracks sometimes, as if by nature she were a wishful, rebellious girl; as if, by deduction, she had discoered there was something wrong in her life. Now she put down her coffee cup. “Did you ever have an affair at your office?”

“Certainly not,” Frances said. “It never crossed my mind.” She thought, no one ever asked me.

Samira looked skeptical, and perhaps disappointed. “Also,” she went on, “we need women to work as doctors. Many girls are attracted to this, thank God. Because some Saudi men would kill any male doctor who looked at their wife.”

“So what happened before any women doctors were trained? There must have been a time.”

“Oh yes,” Samira said. “It is not so long ago that we got schools for girls, and even then many people didn’t agree with it, there were riots, you know, lots of shooting. As for the lady doctors, I am mystified. I think we must have got them from Egypt.”

“And so what if you don’t want to be a doctor, or work at the bank?”

“Home is best. You see, Frances, you women in the West, you think you are very free, but Islam has given us all the women’s rights. They are guaranteed to us. We can have our own money. In the home we are the rulers. Men must provide for us, that is their duty.”

“But if you are divorced?”

“Then our fathers and brothers must look after us. They give us their protection. You women in the West are just exploited by men. They drive you out to work in offices and factories, and then when you come home you must cook for them and look after the children.”

“You think we should be happy to let men support us?”

“Yes, because that is their responsibility, and ours is to bring up the next generation. Frances,” she said seriously, “you really must have some children. You will please Andrew. You cannot use contraception all your life.”

“Yes,” Frances said. “I’m thinking about it.” The child, at her feet, was twisting off the doll’s head. What had the Arab News said, only last week? Every woman is a born mother. “And so what will you do with your education?” she asked. “Your university education?”

“We have a saying,” Samira smiled. “‘We will hang our certificates in the kitchen.’”

She bent down, and pulled the doll from her daughter’s grasp. She straightened its tortured limbs, and sat holding it by one leg, looking into its plastic face of pink and white. “Tell me,” she said dreamily, “have you ever met Princess Diana?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t. I don’t exactly move in those circles.”

“You don’t know anyone in your royal family?”

“Ours is not as big as yours. They keep to themselves.”

“A pity. I would like to meet her. She is very beautiful, I think. Very fair.”

Diana looks out of all the magazines, peeping from under her fringe; blackish sapphires, like lacquered beetles, cling to her ears, and her coy expression is looped and scored with Arabic script. She is a heroine, a glamorous royal bride. Her décolletage, because it is a royal one, is somehow less indecent than others; the censor’s felt-tip spares it.

“You know, with this one,” Samira gestured toward her child, “I wanted to call her Diana. But Abdul Nasr does not agree. He says it is foreign custom.” Samira was suddenly indignant; her indignation broke down her English. “Just when I wanted to have birthday party, he says that’s foreign custom too. This time, if it is another girl … though I hope,” she added hastily, “it will be a boy … I must get my choice over the name. I said to him, why not? My sister has got Diana, my cousin has got it, all these babies … he says, this sounds uncanny to my ears.”

“So you settled for Fat’ma?”

“Well, it is just a starter name. It is just what you call the baby while you are thinking what to call her. So I said to him, for me it can stay at Fat’ma, what do I care?” She looked down at her daughter, with her corkscrew curls, her flat nose and round eyes. Her face was disgusted. She laughed a little. “White nigger, isn’t it? Must be from his family. Not mine.”

“Perhaps you should have a holiday in England,” Frances said. You could buy Fat’ma some dungarees, she thought, then she wouldn’t look like a boxer in drag. “Perhaps you might see Princess Diana.”

“Oh, but Frances, I have been in England. Did you not know? I have been there for six months.”

“I see. So that’s how you learned such good English.”

“No, not really. That was at the university. Also, of course, the Berlitz tapes. When I am in England I don’t really have much chance to learn.”

“Why was that?”

“Well, mainly of course I have to stay inside with my brother-in-law’s wife. One day we went to London. Harrods.”

“You weren’t in London?”

“No, in Brighton. That is where my brother-in-law lives. He stays out of London because London is dangerous.”

“It corrupts him?” Frances suggested.

“No, not that. Dangerous for his life.” She stopped, and blushed. “You know what it is,” she said hurriedly. All her transparency had darkened; she was thinking furiously. “Well, you know, Frances, that where there are some Arabs together your police think they are bombing, or something. Really they are only going to their own clubs, reading the newspapers, so on. Discussing their home countries.”

“I don’t think the police would shoot him, if they didn’t like his social life.”

Though perhaps it is not only the police that worry him, Frances thought. Have we a political militant in the family? A terrorist? Surely not. We are just at cross-purposes.

“Anyway, he will be home soon, thank God,” Samira said piously. She tossed her denim legs over the arm of the chair, and looked as if she wanted a change of subject. It seemed dark, suddenly, inside the circle of chairs. But it was midday, a blazing sun outside, and perhaps Eric Parsons would be driving somewhere, across the city’s harsh grid plan, with this same sun a diffuse yellow flare in the artificial sky of his windscreen. And Andrew would be bending over a site plan, or stumping through the mud, the noonday heat on the exposed nape of his neck. Frances leaned across Samira, with a murmured apology, and switched on a small lamp with a pink shade. It cast a soft circle of light up on to the girl’s face; her expression said, have I been simpleminded? Frances had already decided what to report to Andrew. Certificates in kitchens, yes. Terrorists in Brighton, no. You’ve got nothing to do, he would say; you sit around the house confabulating, making plots, and making your dull life brighter.

“But he is not so bad,” Samira said. “I mean my husband. Perhaps this time he will let me have my way on the name. After all, we do not have many conflicts really. Not like Yasmin and her husband.”

“Do they have many?”

Samira laughed. “I hear her side of the story. She says he likes to enjoy himself too much, and this worries her. But I think when he wants her she is always praying.”

She wouldn’t enlarge on it; swept up her child and her abaya, dressed herself for the journey up the stairs. “Come and visit me soon,” she said. “I want to know more about your life. Yasmin tells me you have married your husband very suddenly, when you are traveling in Africa. I think that’s very romantic. I want to know about it.” She secured the child’s wrist. They clung together, a diminishing female chain: mother, daughter, doll. At the door, Samira put out a hand from her wrappings, and touched Frances’s cheek. “Dear Frances,” she said. “I am going to bring you a lipstick.”

Frances watched her go, and then, on an impulse, picked up her keys, closed her apartment door, and followed Samira up the stairs. Samira didn’t hear her; she scuttled ahead, keeping close to the wall. She looked as if she had no right to be out. You could put a Western woman under all those layers, Frances thought, but she’d never achieve that apologetic gait. She’d never fool anyone; the way the Saudi woman walks is quite unique.

As Frances rounded the bend in the stairs she heard Samira’s front door click shut. She stopped for a moment between the two closed doors, then mounted the half-flight, and unbolted the door that led onto the roof. At once the noon light leaped into the gap, and she stepped into a whiteout, a featureless, silent glare. She craved just a moment’s daylight, just a breath of air; but there was no wind, and a dizzying heat. And this, she thought, is winter. The walls and roofs of the apartment blocks around her shimmered, like towers of water. She saw the black outline of the waist-high wall which bounded the roof, and the abandoned clotheslines scored against the air; stretched taut between their poles, they seemed to quiver and throb with some private energy, like telegraph wires.

Frances Shore’s Diary: 19 Rabi al-awal

Damn right Raji likes to have a good time. Last night at about ten o’clock, when we were bringing in YET ANOTHER load of shopping for the dinner party (dear God I wish I had never started this)—we met Raji in the hall. He came up behind us, and propped himself against the wall, and began to talk about the stock market, holding himself upright with one hand. He thinks he has to make this conversation with Andrew. He thinks Andrew is interested in stocks and bonds. Raji was drunk.

He reeled across the hall and rang his own doorbell. We got ourselves inside. A few minutes later, when we were putting the shopping away, we heard his engine revving and his tires squealing, and he was off again.

He must have been at the Minister’s, Andrew said. That’s where they do the serious drinking in this town. I suppose if he’s stopped by the police, he’s got influence.

But what will Yasmin say, I wondered.

Yasmin rang the doorbell next day, at about twelve-thirty. She had brought a bowl of clear chicken soup, from which wafted a thin peppery aroma. It was a pretext. Usually she sent Shams with the food.

“Here,” she said. “You ought to eat at midday, Frances. I know you are busy with your cooking so I brought you this.”

Yasmin’s face looked bruised, bluish, as if she had not slept. “I can’t stay,” she said. “Raji says he ran into you last night?”

“That’s right,” Frances said.

Yasmin shifted her weight, from one slippered foot to the other. “He had been at His Highness’s house. The Minister.”

“Yes. We thought so.”

There was a pause.

“He was kept so late, working. I think he was very tired when you saw him.”

“That must have been it,” Frances said.

Yasmin nodded. She withdrew, into the shadows of the hallway.

“He was not singing a little?” she asked tentatively.

“Not that we heard.”

“Oh good, good. I see you soon now. Don’t work too hard.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Frances said. “Lots of men sing when they’re tired.”

She went back to cutting up the vegetables. How bored I am, she said to herself. Matchstick carrots, bitter thoughts: it’s wonderful how travel narrows the mind.

Andrew said, “Get one ahead?” He put down the glass he was polishing, and reached into the fridge for a carafe of white wine.

Holding her glass, Frances went to survey her table, laid for nine.

“I suppose you always get spare men in Jeddah,” Andrew said.

“I wouldn’t call Pollard a spare man. I’d call him surplus.” She held her glass up to the light. “At least it’s clear. It’s a bit sweet. I expect they’ll drink it.”

“I think Eric and Daphne are homebrew snobs.”

“Don’t make me nervous. I’m afraid it will poison someone.”

“They’ve all been here a long time. They’ve built up resistance.”

He followed her back to the kitchen. “What do you think about Yasmin?” she said. “Can she really not know that he drinks?”

“She must know.”

“Why pretend then? Why raise the topic?”

“That woman’s conning you.”

She looked up at him, paring knife poised over slices of lemon. So Andrew didn’t like Yasmin. But that seemed ridiculous. Yasmin was just a fact of her life, and touched only peripherally on Andrew’s. Why should he like or dislike her?

“I don’t really know what I mean,” he said, unhelpfully. “But I’ve always had this feeling about her, that she’s not what she seems.”

The guests were late. “It shortens the agony,” Andrew said.

It was half past eight when the Zussmans arrived. “Roadblock,” Rickie grunted, without preamble. He ran a hand through his shorn brown hair; he was a silent, observant, professorial man, with metal-rimmed glasses, a bleak, bony face; he dressed for dinner in bush-shirt and jeans. Carla wore her usual no-nonsense cotton kaftan, with a string of wooden beads as a concession to festivity. She was a tiny woman, with a strongly Jewish face; though if she had been Jewish, of course, she would not have been admitted to the Kingdom. I must ask her sometime, Frances thought.

“Do you have any beer?” Rickie said.

“We haven’t got round to making beer yet.”

“Give you my recipe.” He accepted a glass of wine, and proffered something, diffidently. Andrew unwrapped, from the sports pages of the Saudi Gazette, a flat plain bottle. “Half of Scotch,” Rickie said. “That all right for you?”

Andrew was overwhelmed. “It should improve the evening.”

“Put it away,” Rickie said. “Carla and I can get this stuff anytime. We get it through the Embassy. Anyway, we drink bourbon. Keep it for you and Frannie.”

“Okay. Won’t waste it on Eric.” Andrew hurried off with it.

“Where was the roadblock?” Frances asked.

“Palestine Road.”

“What were they looking for?”

“Who can tell? Maybe just trouble.”

“And what did you do with the Scotch?”

“I put it,” Carla said, “down the neck of my kaftan. They’d never dare.”

Jeff Pollard came next. “Bloody boot search,” he said, in lieu of apology. “Been to change my films.” He dumped his briefcase, with the videocassettes inside, by the front door. Film exchange was a shady business, dubiously legal, and gave the most innocent viewer a plain-paper-wrapper air. Jeff wore a tie, ancient and unsavory. He looked uncomfortable.

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” Frances said. “To dress up.”

Then the Parsons; graciously resigned, Daphne saying, “They weren’t interested in the khawwadjihs. They waved us through.” Then the Smallbones, who had only come around the corner, with Marion walking in the gutter, because the pavements were unsuitable for her high heels. Marion was wearing her abaya. She shrugged it off to reveal a strappy, backless dress, and a flamboyant pattern of scarlet mosquito bites sprayed across her tender pale shoulders. The party had begun.

Andrew had said once, when he was in a morose mood, that you should always expect the worst, so that if in the event you got something better, you’d be surprised. But why is it that if you expect the worst, and get the worst, you’re still surprised? Frances wondered about it, idly. She noticed, in the dribble of garlic butter in which her prawns lay, a suspicious, unpleasant fleck of something black. Eric Parsons was talking about his iniquitous tax position, and Russel encouraged him, with grunts and nods. “Of course I’m attracted to the Australian way of life,” Russel said. “I’m thinking about Perth. But I suppose it’s the same old story as everywhere else. The Communists have taken over.”

Rickie Zussman broke his silence, for the first time since the meal began. “I don’t know much about Western Australia,” he said. “But I feel that must be a very mistaken notion.”

Frances began to collect the plates; Marion half rose from her chair, Frances said “No, no,” but Marion followed her to the kitchen. “Just stack up everything there,” Frances said. She turned her attention to the lemon sauce for the veal. Another floating speck; she tried to skim it off. Examined the carrots. Not good.

“What is it?” Marion asked, peering into the serving dishes.

“I’m afraid,” Frances said, “the fucking Saudiflon is coming off the pans.”

Marion picked up a spoon and began to stab and scrape at the vegetables, her tongue between her teeth.

“You can’t do that,” Frances said. “We’ll be here all night.”

“Slosh some more butter on. They’ll never know.”

“That’ll just make it float about on top.”

“Well, never mind,” Marion said. “I’ll bring the salad, shall I? I don’t suppose Saudiflon tastes of anything. With luck they’ll just think it’s black pepper.”

When they got back to the dining room Russel was smoking already. He offered a cigarette to Daphne. “I don’t mind women smoking,” he explained, “but I don’t like to see it in my wife.”

Marion sat down, without looking at him, and kicked off her shoes under the table. “I’ll find you an ashtray,” Frances said.

She disliked, in particular, the way the flesh welled over Russel’s collar. She thought, you think you’re such a philanthropist, don’t you, to marry her and give her a couple of children; Mr. Big-Heart. Carla Zussman, from the other end of the table, gave her a tight, compressed smile.

“Ah, Frances,” Eric Parsons said. “If you’ve finished flitting about … I’ve heard of a job prospect. An old friend of mine is leaving the Kingdom, and his wife used to do a bit of filing for this firm … I’ve got her telephone number here.”

“I don’t want to do filing,” Frances said, summoning a reserve of pleasantness. I must do better than this, she thought; after all, I invited them here.

“Oh, but it’s an opportunity,” Daphne Parsons said. She tilted her head charmingly, and gave Frances her best poison-madonna smile; with her knife, she delicately scraped at the fragment of veal on her plate.

“It’s not what I call an opportunity,” Frances said.

“You’re not worried about the police, are you?”

“Not really, but then if you are going to do something illegal, it ought to be something a bit more exciting.”

“But what do you do all day? You don’t see anyone, do you?”

“I see my neighbors.”

“Oh, you bother with Raji’s wife.” Russel stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer she had found for him. “Shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t try to put some sort of a deal your way, Andrew. Raji’s a crook.”

Jeff said, with his mouth full, “They’re all crooks.” He reached for the carafe, and Andrew shifted in his chair, watchful host, ready to replenish it when there was a gap in the conversation. “But then I’m a cynic,” Jeff said.

“Are you?” Frances asked him. “Are you proud of that?”

“Yes … why not?”

“I think being a cynic only means you’ve had a lot of disappointments in your life. That’s nothing to be proud of.”

There was a short pause. “Very philosophical,” Russel said. “Frances is a clever girl. She thinks she’s above office work, Daphne.”

“I do, really,” Frances said.

“It’s the best offer you’ll get, I’m afraid,” Daphne said airily. “You’ll get awfully bored, as the months go by.”

“Yes, I know you mean for the best, but I’m just not cut out to be a filing clerk.”

Carla Zussman put down her fork. “Honey,” she said firmly, “if you don’t want the job, you don’t take it.”

The doorbell rang. Saved, Frances thought. “I’ll get it.” There’s a limit to how rude you can be at your own dinner party, she thought; more’s the pity.

Yasmin was giving a dinner party too, though for her it was more routine; Frances had made extra bowls of salad, and had taken one across the hall, and one upstairs to Samira. Sarsaparilla had opened the door, and a tear had run slowly down her cheek and dropped into the vinaigrette.

Now Yasmin had returned some dessert, a pale and creamy dish strewn with chopped nuts. Frances tasted it. Andrew came into the kitchen behind her. “Are you going to give it to them? It looks a bit unappetizing.”

“It’s nice.” She offered him some, on the tip of a spoon, but he backed off.

“Try and be nice yourself,” he said. “What’re those black spots that are in everything?”

“It came off the pans.”

“Oh, no … Did it? Why didn’t you notice?”

“Because I’m incompetent,” she said calmly. She bent down to take a jug of cream from the fridge. “I’d never make a filing clerk.”

As she returned to the dining room she hugged herself, mentally, whispering consoling words. They’ve drunk their wine, haven’t they, they’ve eaten their veal, or most of it. They haven’t said, is this by any chance Saudiflon? They can’t have seen it. Or politeness wouldn’t constrain them. Politeness? Pollard? Russel Smallbone? They haven’t really noticed the food, that’s what it is. They’re too busy boasting, about the vacations they’re planning for next summer, about how their unit trusts have gone up. She resumed her seat. Only the Zussmans were not boasting. They had transferred their salad from their bowls to their plates, and they were cutting the lettuce up small, and eating every scrap, eating every leaf, with a concentrated energy; as if they had been told that some starving child in Africa would be glad of it. Rickie reached again for the salad bowl, the hairs on his arm—he had rolled up his sleeves—a pale fuzzy crest in the candlelight.

“Have you heard what’s going on at the Philippines Embassy?” Daphne said. “It seems the place is full of maids who’ve run away from Saudi households. And the Embassy staff won’t repatriate them until they come up with bribes. Apparently there are hundreds of them, camping out in the grounds.”

“How do you know?” Andrew said, interested. “Has somebody seen them?”

“Well, I have it on good authority,” Mrs. Parsons said. “I was told by a committee member, at the British Wives.”

“Hundreds seems a lot,” Carla said. “Still, you never know in this town.”

“And the Filipino nurses,” Marion said. “Did you hear about the nurses, Fran?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“I thought everybody knew.”

“She wouldn’t hear it from her neighbors, would she?” Russel said. “Have some sense, Marion.”

“There were two of them, and they were out with some Lebanese men. And the police stopped them, and wanted to see their documents. Well, of course, they weren’t married, were they?”

“Get the story right, Marion,” Russel said. “You may as well get it right, if you’re going to tell it at all. These two couples were walking around Jeddah International Market. The police picked them up and put them in the back of a van.”

“I heard they let the men go,” Eric Parsons said. “It was just the girls they took.”

“Well, you’re right, you’re right, but what actually happened, according to my source, was that they picked the two Lebanese up, but then they dumped them out somewhere—”

“Near the souk,” Daphne said.

“And then,” Russel resumed, “the two girls were found dead next day, in the car park on the roof of Sarawat supermarket. They’d been raped, of course.”

A short pause. Frances scanned the table. The Zussmans had stopped eating at last. A particularly large speck of Saudiflon lay, like an exclamation mark, in the center of Daphne’s plate.

“That’s funny,” Andrew said. “I didn’t think there was a car park on the roof at Sarawat.”

“I heard,” Carla said, “that it happened at Sarawat in Riyadh.”

“Oh well, I don’t know,” Russel said. “But I did definitely hear that they’ve got the five policemen involved.”

“Yes, I heard that,” Daphne said. “And one of them was executed yesterday.”

“What about the mother and daughter in the souk?” Frances said. “Those Australians. The rape. Did they execute anyone for that?”

“Let them go, as far as I heard,” Jeff said. “The police wouldn’t proceed. Women walking around the souk in shorts, they were asking for it, weren’t they?”

“Well, right,” Russel said. “Why can’t they be careful? Marion’s always careful. I mean you have to have rules, don’t you? Otherwise you’d get women going down to the souk in bikinis.”

“I don’t see why you would,” Frances said. “You don’t have dress rules in England, but you don’t get people walking down Regent Street in bikinis.”

“It doesn’t matter what they were wearing,” Carla Zussman said. “They weren’t asking for anything.” Andrew leaned toward her with the wine, and she covered her glass with her hand. “Thanks, enough. I have to say, though, I’ve heard so many versions of that story, I don’t know what to believe.”

“It scares me,” Marion said.

“Look,” Russel told her, “you keep the rules, and you won’t come to any harm in the Kingdom. Respect yourself, and you’ll be respected, that’s my view. You girls can say what you like, with your women’s lib nonsense, but as a family man I regard this place as a much better proposition for my wife and children than ever Africa was. You don’t hear of armed robbery here, do you? No, because they know what they’d get.”

“Of course you don’t hear of armed robbery,” Frances said. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“You hear,” Carla said, “what they want you to hear. You think what they want you to think. Don’t you know that yet, Russel?”

“Look,” Andrew said, “more wine, anybody? Frances, I think we’re ready for the pudding.”

They met up in the kitchen. “I want some Perrier for Carla,” Andrew said. “Listen, Frances, just cool it, will you? You shouldn’t take Russel apart like that.”

“Carla was right.” She scraped vegetables into the bin. “How can you know what goes on?” Bethinking herself, she took a can of insecticide from under the sink and sprayed the floor around the bin. “You can’t travel around inside the Kingdom. You can’t go and see. You can’t even go to the Philippines Embassy, I suppose, and count these hundreds of maids who are camping out.”

“You take a certain amount on trust,” Andrew said.

She rinsed her hands, and dried them. “Here, carry this. I’ll bring this pudding of Yasmin’s. Somebody might want it.”

Andrew brought to the table a glazed tart of small, out-of-season strawberries, and a jug of thick yellow cream. “Oh, how lovely,” Marion said, and yearning crossed her face. “But I mustn’t.”

“Marion has to watch her figure,” Russel explained.

“Don’t we all!” said Daphne gaily. “No, Frances dear, not for me. But it does look rather delicious, I must say.”

“Any black specs?” Jeff said, peering.

“Perhaps you’d like some of this?” Frances indicated Yasmin’s dessert.

“What is it?” Rickie Zussman asked.

“I don’t know, but I had a spoonful in the kitchen, it’s nice. My neighbor sent it.”

“No thank you,” Rickie said. “Carla and I never eat desserts,” he added politely. “But I’m sure it tastes fine.”

Jeff picked up the serving spoon and dabbled it into the dish. A shred of coconut and a fleck of green pistachio floated to the surface, with the delicate scent of rosewater. “Looks as if it’s been regurgitated. Wouldn’t touch Paki food at the best of times. Think I’ll give it a miss.”

“Me too,” Russel said. “You can give me some of the strawberry thing, if you will, my love. My goodness, Andrew, you do well for yourself. Married a good cook, eh?”

“As well as a philosopher.” Frances stood up. “Excuse me.” As she turned away she caught her hip painfully on the corner of the table. Eric’s wine spilled. “I’ll bring back a cloth,” she said, averting her face.

“That’s all right,” Eric said absently, dabbing up the liquid with his white linen napkin. The red wine, which they had made with cherry juice, was dark and strong, and they had got through a number of bottles already.

In the kitchen, Frances heard Carla running down the hall toward her; heard the slap of Carla’s feet, in her flat leather sandals. She turned to meet her, her face flushed, angry and defensive tears springing into her eyes.

“It’s a failure,” she said. “An utter mess.” She searched her pocket for a handkerchief, and Carla tore off a strip of kitchen roll and gave it to her. She blew her nose.

Carla’s sparrow arms went around her neck. “Nothing’s a failure. What do you mean, failure? Your life doesn’t ride on a Jeddah dinner party. Listen, they’re here because you’re obliged to them. That’s all. You feed them and your obligation ends. If they want to squabble and tell scare stories, let them.”

“Oh, go back, Carla, would you?” Frances scrubbed the tears from her face, leaving it blotchy. “Just keep the conversation going. If Pollard says anything else about my neighbor, just push a glass in his face, would you?”

“Yeah,” Carla said. Her quiff of tough dark hair seemed to bristle, like a terrier’s. “I’ll scar him for life,” she said.

Frances made the coffee. When she took in the tray Russel had vacated his chair, and taken hers; he had got a piece of paper from somewhere, and was demonstrating to Jeff, by means of figures, that smart investors were moving into nickel. Having no choice, she sat down by Daphne, and began to set out the cups. Daphne leaned toward her. “I hope you’re not making a mistake about that job.”

“I don’t think so. Coffee, everybody?”

“Carla and I usually drink herb tea,” Rickie offered.

“Pour the coffee,” Carla said.

“Okay,” Rickie said amiably. “It was just information, you know, not a suggestion.”

“I’ll pass these cups down, shall I?” Daphne resumed her confidential tone. “Tell me, Frances, how long have you been married?”

“Five years.”

“That’s nice.”

Frances felt a passion of enmity for the woman, a torrent of choked-off phrases, leaving a nasty taste in her mouth. Five years was nice, was it? What would fifteen years have been? Nicer still, or not nice at all? What would five months have been?

“So perhaps you’re thinking of starting your family?”

“Not really.”

“You shouldn’t leave it too late, you know.”

She felt Mrs. Parsons looking her up and down: thinking, no doubt, perhaps she has a little problem. Maybe her natural tact, which she was always referring to, would forbid her to say more.

“I think you’ve forgotten the sugar, Frances dear.”

“Does anyone take sugar?”

“I do,” Russel said.

Andrew began to get up. “I’ll get it,” Frances said.

In the kitchen, she took the opportunity to rinse a few glasses. Soon be over, she told herself. A pity that it’s taken a fortnight out of my life.

When she returned the topic of conversation had shifted. “I see they’ve put a tank trap outside the American Embassy,” Jeff was saying.

“Perennially popular target, I should suppose,” Eric Parsons said.

“Who for?” She slid the sugar bowl down to Russel.

“Anybody, really. There are a lot of people who don’t like the U.S. influence here. Even people within the royal family.”

“The newspapers are always denouncing us,” Carla said. “But it’s only for show. They need our guns.”

“It keeps the fundamentalists happy,” Rickie said. “All the—what do you call it. Rhetoric.”

“I wouldn’t say it kept them happy,” Carla said. “Not happy exactly. But you see, Frances, the Saudis are trying to keep the lid on things in this part of the world. They’re rich, thank you. What do they want with the Islamic revolution? Though they have to pay lip service.”

“So the Saudis give their money,” Rickie said. “And other Arabs give their blood.”

“My neighbor told me—my Saudi neighbor, I mean—that when girls’ schools were first opened, there were riots.”

“There were riots when TV was introduced,” Jeff said. “The King’s nephew was the ringleader. The security forces shot him dead.”

“They have a little go, every few years,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Some of them, they want the place to be like Iran.”

“They cut their thobes short, and grow their beards long,” Carla said. “And then it’s jihad, it’s holy war. Martyrs. If you die in battle you go straight to heaven.”

“I didn’t think that happened. Not here.”

“The place nearly fell apart in seventy-nine,” Parsons said. “You must remember when those madmen took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca. God knows how many were killed. It was a full-scale military operation, winkling them out. They didn’t want football, they said. They didn’t want video games. They didn’t want working women.”

“They didn’t want the House of Saud,” Rickie said.

“That was it, really. They wanted to overthrow the royal family. The same week, the Shia were rioting in the Eastern Province. Looting, burning buses. Funny thing was, at the time none of us knew what was going on. Total news blackout. But they were pretty close to the edge, if you ask me.”

“There are,” Rickie said, “two distinct military bodies, the army and the National Guard. So if one decides to do its own thing, maybe the King can rely on the other. They’re under the command of two different princes, of course.”

“The King doesn’t trust his relatives?”

“Recent history,” Carla said, “gives him no reason to.”

“I don’t think I really knew this.”

“Nobody knows till they come here,” Daphne said.

Carla looked up. “I should suppose the State Department knows. And the British Foreign Office. It’s not that these things are secret. It’s that we don’t talk about them.”

“Why don’t we?” Frances said. “You mean really, it’s not stable here, it’s not safe? There are far worse things happening than people being raped in the souk?”

There was a silence. The guests looked down at their plates, as if slightly ashamed of themselves; as if they had egged someone on to tell a piece of scandal, and knew they had gone too far.

“Well, we know it won’t last forever, don’t we?” Eric Parsons said at last; in his sane, reasonable, soothing tone, which Andrew had already learned to distrust. “We’re just here to do our jobs, make our pile, and get out. All we hope is that it will last our time.”

“I’ll get some more coffee.” As she passed her husband, Frances rested her hand for a moment on his shoulder. She felt slightly queasy. As she left the room Jeff’s voice floated after her.

“Of course, you know what the Al Saud do with their dissidents, don’t you? Take them up in planes over the Empty Quarter, handcuff them, and drop them out without a parachute.”

“Yes, I heard that,” Carla was saying. “But the handcuffs seem superfluous.”

This time it was Marion who followed her. She was clearly bored with the politics; she looked sleepy, and fractious, as if she were one of her own children. “Lovely dinner, Fran,” she said. She stood by the sink, cooling her bare feet on the lino tiles, and picking at the strawberry tart, of which more than half remained.

“Here.” Frances cut her a slice. “Eat it while he’s not looking.”

“He does go on,” Marion said. “About my weight. Have you got any cream left?” She licked her fingers. “By the way, I meant to ask you, what are we going to do about Christmas?”

“Oh, not Christmas,” Frances groaned. “What happens at Christmas? Are we allowed to have it?”

“The men get a day off. Unofficial, of course. We could get together at our compound and have Christmas dinner. You can come in the morning and help me cook. Carla and Rickie might like to come. It’s always so sad at Christmas, when people haven’t got children.”

“I’m sure we’ll feel better for sharing yours.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean you, Fran.” Marion’s mouth was full of strawberries. “I expect you’ll have some, won’t you? When you get round to it. Only Carla, she’s so libby, know what I mean? It’s probably cos she’s not very attractive.”

“You ought to put something on those bites,” Frances said.

“Oh, do they show?” Marion sucked her spoon. She wasn’t going to bother; she felt glamorous, anyway, and that was half the battle.

“So is it all right then? Will you come?”

“Will Jeff be there?”

“Oh, I always have Jeff, at Christmas.”

“Well, just promise me, will you, that if he starts talking about dirty Ay-rabs, and Pakis, and all that, you’ll get up with me and walk out. Because I can’t stand it.”

“He is a bit of a racialist,” Marion said fondly.

“Promise?”

“Okay,” Marion said vaguely. “I’ll take that coffee through, shall I?”

Andrew had managed to move them all from the table to the armchairs, which Frances had arranged earlier into a rough circle. The candles had burned out. Jeff obtained from Andrew a private bottle of red wine, which he put on the floor by his chair. “Not bad stuff this,” he said. “You’ve got the knack.” Rickie Zussman occupied the end of a sofa, his face abstracted and his eyes on the far wall; his wife’s hand rested loosely in his own. Neither of the Americans took further part in the conversation, but Eric and Jeff bored on for a while, about immigrants in the UK. “Let’s face it,” Jeff said. “They’ve got different customs. They’ve got different values. They’ve got a different way of life.”

“Incidentally,” Russel said, “do you ever catch a glimpse of the people in the empty flat?”

“The dark lady,” Daphne said.

Jeff chortled. “Who knows what’s under the veil?”

“No, we’ve never seen anybody,” Andrew said. “Frances thought she heard footsteps once. But she wasn’t sure.”

“The Deputy Minister’s nephew, isn’t it?” Marion said.

“Brother, I thought.” Andrew turned to Parsons. “Eric, didn’t you tell me his brother.”

“Did I? Must be then.”

“I thought it was the nephew,” Jeff said. “Greasy character. Looks the type. You’d know him if you saw him, Andrew, he hangs around the Ministry.”

Andrew smiled. “Don’t think I would, you know, Jeff old boy. All these colored chappies in white frocks look the same to me, don’t you know? Tea towels on their heads. Filthy foreign food. Eat goats, you know. Dreadful types. All right with that bottle down there, are you? Get you another?”

Surely they would go home soon. Frances closed her eyes. She saw skeletons, neat, bleached, reticulated, on the vast desert floor. Andrew touched her. She jumped. “I wasn’t asleep,” she said.

“You were.”

It was two o’clock when everyone left. Andrew waved a hand at them as he opened the gate, meaning hush, keep the noise down. The roads were empty, the night air was mild. They stood for a moment in the shadow of the wall, their arms around each other, then reentered Dunroamin, locking the doors behind them. Inside, a procession of cockroaches was wending its way along the hall toward the kitchen bin. Andrew went for the spray. “I’ll sweep them up in the morning,” he said; and then, violently, brought down his foot on the largest of them, squashing it into the tiles.

“Oh, Christ,” Frances said. The mess was horrifying; quite disproportionate. Blood, debris, detached legs. A slaughterhouse.

“The others will eat it,” Andrew said.

“I’ll have to rinse all the plates off. There’re ants, as well.”

Andrew took her shoulder, pulled her toward him, ran a hand over her breast. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Come to bed.”

“You can’t do it,” she said. “You’re too drunk.”

“I can try. Or do you hate all men tonight, is that it? I don’t think I’d blame you.”

Over his shoulder she saw the pans piled up in the sink, the tray of sticky glasses, the saucer overflowing with Russel’s cigarette butts, and the stained napkins in a heap on the drain board. She laid her head against his chest. “No,” she said. “You’re all right.”