Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

Rabi al-thani

Frances Shore’s Diary: 1 Rabi al-thani

Sometimes I wake up saying, I hope nobody crosses me today.

Sometimes the air seems too thick to breathe.

Since the dinner party life has just gone on. I cook, and we shop. We sleep late at weekends, watch a film. When I am in a good mood I think of the money mounting up in the bank. Now the shops are full of “seasonal trees.” The Embassies are holding carol services, which they call “Family Welfare Meetings.” The word “Christmas” is not to be mentioned, but nobody can impede the progress of goodwill to all men.

Andrew accuses me of lacking tact. He says that it seems to him that I ask too many questions, and don’t I remember that when we came to Dunroamin we were told to be careful? He says I shouldn’t be allowed out into the hall without a UN peacekeeping force.

My neighbors say women are not veiled because they are despised, but because they are revered. It is out of self-respect that they cover their faces and bodies, and out of respect for them that men do not look. At first this is plausible—but it bothers me. Something is wrong. I know what it is. I just don’t believe it.

Everything is fine, for about two weeks at a time. But then some word, some event, some trivial incident, will trigger off a screaming rage. I don’t scream, of course, but sometimes I cry a little, in private, knowing that if I could cry properly, yell and bawl and shed tears, I wouldn’t wake up in the mornings with such a leaden weight inside my head. I would like to tear the roof off, and let some light into the flat. I would like to run down the street, hitting people. Run amok. I would like to stride up to the next veiled woman I see and tear the black cloth from her face, and rip it up before her eyes.

I know that would be wrong. But I would like to do it.

Andrew says the leaden feeling is sinus trouble. He says you get it from living with air-conditioning.

CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM

FROM: Director, Turadup, William and Schaper, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

TO: All expatriate staff

DATE: 2 Rabi al-thani / 24 December

We have received extremely strong hints, from our valued and most reliable contacts, that the police will be out in force over the “Festive Season,” that Breathalyzer equipment has been issued, and that random roadblocks and on-the-spot checks are to be expected. Everything indicates a blitz aimed at putting a damper on expatriate festivities therefore PLEASE remember that in the event of your being picked up under the influence there is very little that Turadup can do for you.

May I wish you all the compliments of the Season, and a happy and prosperous New Year

When Frances went across the hall, and rang Yasmin’s doorbell, a huge yellow sari opened the door; and Raji’s mother looked down at her, in silence. She did not speak any English, or if she did, she didn’t speak it now; and she folded her arms across her matron’s bosom, seeming to squash it into overlapping layers and yellow folds. Her face was jowly, her eyes direct; her body was slow, deliberate, pachydermatous; soon she might bellow. There was a fringe of hair on her upper lip; and her arms were bare to the elbow, as if for combat.

“I’ll call later,” Frances said.

But later there was a banging at the door, and Yasmin hurtled in, her pointed nose reddened at the tip, a square of lace handkerchief scrunched in her hand. “Oh, she will kill me, she will kill me,” she said. “She has called thirty people for dinner tomorrow night. She finds fault with everything, everything. She says Selim is stunted.”

“He looks all right to me,” Frances said.

“She says I am not feeding him. She is holding his nose and forcing things down his throat. Tell me, Frances, please find out from one of your friends—there must be some drug I can give him, to make him grow?”

“That doesn’t sound a good idea.”

“She watches me every minute. And Shams is sulking because she is turned out of her room.”

“Where’s she sleeping then?”

“Well of course, on the dining room floor.”

“But your guests don’t go till three, these mornings.”

Yasmin shrugged, crossly. “It is me who is suffering, not Shams, I can tell you. Everything in my life is wrong for that woman. Everything I do.”

“How long’s she staying?”

“How can I know? Raji says, it is my mother, as long as she likes. Really, Frances, she is blind to him. Blind to his faults—”

“Let’s hope the singing doesn’t keep her awake at night.”

Yasmin looked at her, directly, then brought her palms together, secreting the handkerchief between them. She dropped her eyes. “I am interrupting you,” she said. “I had forgotten it was Christmas Eve.”

“Send Shams across tomorrow night, and I’ll give her some pudding for you.”

At the door, Yasmin said quietly, her eyes on the floor, “Frances, I do not see why I should have to live with shame.”

“But they didn’t, did they?” Jeff Pollard said. “They couldn’t, could they? Spoil our Christmas.”

It was the festive day now, 3 Rabi al-thani. Marion sat slumped at the other end of the table. “I miss the Queen,” she said.

Carla looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Her speech. She makes a speech.” Marion sighed heavily. “Somebody ought to watch those kids in the pool.”

Somebody. But not me. Marion rubbed her forehead with a dazed, sweaty, gravy-stained hand. “There’s a huge lot of everything left.”

“Give it to the gatekeeper,” Russel said, lolling back in his chair. “He can have his pals round.”

“Will he want cold sprouts?” Frances asked.

“He wants anything.”

“Onions and rice, that’s what he eats,” Marion said. “He’s saving up to go back to India.”

It was four in the afternoon. The children had opened their presents, and were outside trying to drown each other. Christmas was the same everywhere, Marion thought. But hot, it was so hot here, and the drink was so poisonous and giddying. And she had worked so hard, what with this year’s mysterious tinsel shortage, and the dearth of good potatoes for roasting. Dust lay already on the spines of the plastic tree; before I pack it away, she thought vaguely, I could just put it under the shower.

“At Ramadhan,” Jeff said, “they make life a misery for us. They make sure we take account of their festivals.”

Frances said, hopelessly, “It’s their country.”

“I can’t understand you,” Jeff said. He propped his elbow on the table, and fingered his Credit Suisse token; a purple streamer half detached itself from the ceiling, and swung gently over his head. “I can’t make you out. First you attack these people, then you defend them.”

“Look, I don’t have any theories. I just go issue by issue. I just speak as I find.”

“As long,” Jeff said, “as you don’t take them seriously. As long as you remember that, basically, you’re dealing with nignogs.”

Frances rose from her place, dabbing her mouth with her napkin and taking off her paper hat. “Excuse me,” she said. She was not going to make a scene, but she meant to keep her promise. She dropped her napkin on her chair and looked across the table at Marion. Marion looked back at her, stupidly. Frances walked out of the room. She stood in the hall, trying not to listen to the conversation, and wondering if Marion would follow her. No one came; neither Marion to join her protest, nor Jeff to apologize, nor even her husband, to persuade her back to the table and give her a chance to state her objections.

After a few minutes, she realized that no one was ever going to come. They didn’t know she had walked out in protest. They just thought she had gone to the lavatory. She went back in and sat down at the table, and put her paper hat back on.

Half an hour later, when the women were clearing up, the Parsons arrived. They were doing a round of the Turadup parties; they were anxious to assuage the uncaring impression of Eric’s very necessary circular. So that he himself could drink, Eric had requisitioned Hasan for the day. “Hello there, everybody, compliments of the season,” Eric called, walking in through the open door; his footprints left dust upon the carpet. Hasan sat outside, his car door wedged open, his sandaled feet in the dust; speaking a pidgin Arabic with the gatekeeper, and flicking his fingers at passing flies.

“Well?” Russel demanded. “Been stopped, have you?”

“There was a roadblock on King Khalid Street.”

“Oh yes, Hasan get Breathalyzed?”

“Actually they were just asking for papers. Just took a look at us and waved us through.”

Russel grunted. “Looking for somebody then, aren’t they? Not interested in booze. I don’t know why you’re getting your knickers in a twist, Eric. Jesus, when I think back … those Wine Festivals we used to have, competitions, you know … had them at somebody’s house, Andrew, everything done properly, evening dress … the Ambassador used to come. I remember the Arnotts showing up at one, when the Saudis let them out on bail.” “Yes,” Eric Parsons said, a little more sharply than usual. “But those days are over.”

Daphne spread herself on the sofa, gracious in her silk suit; she dissected a mince pie with a pastry fork, peering closely at every morsel she ate. “Did you make these, Frances dear?” she inquired. To Marion, walking around with stacks of dirty plates, she said, “Don’t you have a dishwasher?”

The Shores walked home. It was the best time to be out: a sky of gold and dusty pink, blossoming lights in the evening streets, and the crackle of the mosque’s loudspeakers, the muezzin’s amplified wail. At weekends, cars jostle nose to tail on the Corniche, half the city turns out to see the sunset; which sometimes occurs with astonishing speed. Inland dark falls more quickly still, the sun dropping behind concrete towers. Night closes in on the city, as if night were its natural milieu.

“Do you remember the garden?” Frances said. Andrew walked along the pavement’s high edge, as if to demonstrate that he was sober; she walked in the road, a foot below him, keeping close to his side. “Do you remember, when we were shopping one night, I pointed it out to you?”

“Can’t say I do. Where was that then?”

She thought about it. “I’m not sure. I’d lost my bearings.”

“That’s not like you.”

“It was a while ago.” They turned into Al-Suror Street. White figures, sharp in the gloom, hurried toward the mosque. “But you must remember, there was a gate, and a light inside, and you could see a lawn. I’ve been wishing we could go past it again.”

“What for?”

“I’d just like to see it.”

He was prepared to gratify her; take her at once, if she liked. But “Could be difficult to find,” he said. “Haven’t we passed it since?”

“We don’t seem to have.”

“Perhaps we were going round a diversion, or something. Road works. Or maybe they’ve just changed the one-way system. They’re always doing that.”

Inside the gate of the Ministry of Pilgrimages’ office, a nightwatchman squatted in a kind of lean-to; lamplight splashed across his dhoti, and showed his downcast face, his hands hanging loose between his knees. Cats squalled, invisible, behind a wall.

“Don’t you remember at all?” she asked.

He put a hand gently on her shoulder for a second as he stepped off the curb. “Why does it matter?”

“Oh, I’ve been thinking about that lawn. About what it might be like to have real grass, instead of Astroturf. When they plant flowers here they look like wax. The trees all seem to be dying. You really didn’t see it? You don’t remember me mentioning it?”

“’Fraid not.” They were at Dunroamin now, outside the metal door in the wall; Andrew fumbled with his keys in the half-light. “Seen any more rats lately?” he asked.

“No. I’ve heard them.”

“Damn.” Andrew dropped his keys on the step. He bent to retrieve them. She looked back over her shoulder, down the empty street. But it was not empty, because outside the computer-supplies shop, with its locked metal shutters, a man in a thobe stood in the shadow of the wall; he was looking away from her, his head turned toward the Medina Road, and in his hand, butt downward toward the pavement, he held a rifle.

“Andrew—”

Her voice died in her throat. She put out a hand, and softly touched his bent back. He straightened up, the keys jangling, and pushed one into the lock. There was a scrape of metal. “Must oil this,” he said. “No use waiting for Raji to do it, might filthy up his best suit.” He pushed open the door, and stepped inside, behind the wall. She glanced back down the street. The man was still there, motionless. “Come on,” Andrew said. She tore her eyes away, and stepped inside; he locked the gate behind her.

Next morning at eleven the doorbell rang. She expected Shams, with some of the leftovers from the dinner for thirty, but instead it was a male visitor—a scented little man, with a bristling, freshly trimmed beard, a thobe, and a briefcase. Under his thobe he had a tight little paunch, which seemed less a part of him than a prized possession; as his eyes passed over her, he patted it with his free hand. “Hello, madam,” he said, and grinned broadly. “I am the landlord. I come to introduce myself.”

“How do you do?” Frances said.

“Can I come in and look at my property?”

“Yes, if you like.”

He stepped in, put down his briefcase, and brought his hands together, with a little double clap. “You have any complaints?” He spoke as if this were not possible; not even imaginable.

“There are rats,” Frances said.

“Outside?” said the landlord swiftly.

“Certainly, outside,” she admitted.

“But I am concern only with inside.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I may tour around?”

“Go ahead.” She sat down at the desk, to resume writing her diary; then got up as he left the room and wandered between the armchairs, restless, her arms folded protectively across her breasts.

When the landlord had toured around he came back to the sitting room, with an expression of satisfaction. “I compliment you,” he said. “You keep it very nice. I am a lover of the British. What part you are from?”

“Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire.” The landlord glowed, and kissed his bunched fingertips. “I am knowing your Yorkshire. I am knowing that country so well. Windsor Castle, Tottenham Hotspur. William Wordsworth, the Bard of Avon. Your famous Langan’s Brasserie.” His eyes slid over her again. “Madam, how many children you have got?”

“I have four,” she said. “All boys.”

“I congratulate you,” the landlord said, in simple pleasure. “And yet you seem to be a girl of twenty-one, madam.” He took occasion to sidle up to her, and pat her waist. She moved away. “You will be seeing more of me,” he promised.

“Don’t forget your briefcase,” Frances said.

“That lady across, does she wear the veil?”

“Yes and no. She covers her head.”

“Ah,” said the landlord, with a pious look. “Then I will not bother her. She will not open the door.”

Bother me, won’t you, you fat little greasepot, Frances thought. She let him out and locked the door behind him. She hoped that he would hear the turn of the key.

Frances Shore’s Diary: 8 Rabi al-thani

Yet another letter in the newspaper today, debating whether women are the source of evil and sin.

Yasmin says that the Bedu have hunting rifles, and sometimes bring them to town. I didn’t tell her why I was asking.

Andrew’s model arrived at last. It was detained by the customs men, and he and Jeff had to go up to the airport and collect it, taking Hasan with them in case anyone had to be bribed. They brought it back here, to my surprise, and put it down on the dining room table. It was a perfect white palace sealed in a Perspex box, like a spoiled child’s toy. They looked like death. Jeff said, I shall have to go and borrow Russel’s electric drill. I said, why, what are you going to do to it, isn’t it right? Andrew said, The Ministry would go mad if they saw this.

And when I looked closely, I saw that the model makers had peopled it, and that on its snaky glass escalators, and on its emerald plastic lawn, there were miniature women—pin-thin Californian executive women, in sharp suits, and flossy Californian secretary women, with miniskirts, and tight sundresses showing off their glossy plastic shoulders and their half-bare plastic breasts.

Andrew stamped around saying, have we got a wire coat-hanger, have we got tweezers?

When Jeff brought back the drill they made a little hole in the back, and tied the tweezers to the coathanger, and pushed them through the hole. Then one by one, they got a grip on the plastic women, by their heads, and dragged them out, swearing, saying have they no bloody idea in Los Angeles? Well, there’s my morning gone, Jeff said. I collected the little women in the palm of my hand. They were perfect, each one with the same doll’s features, and crushed skull.

Jeff went back to the office then, but Andrew knelt down and looked at his model for a long time, his hands flat on the table and his chin resting on his hands, pretending to gaze up from street level. I said, to encourage him, it will be all right now, you can fill up the hole with glue. He said, the money is running out.

I was amazed. I thought that in the Kingdom I would never hear those words. It can’t be running out.

He said, we are running out of money to pay the subcontractors, because the Saudi government has not paid us.

Why not?

Because oil has fallen, they’re cutting back. It’s hitting everybody, all the government departments. They’re all fighting each other for cash.

But they must have vast reserves—

Of course, but Turadup KSA hasn’t got vast reserves. I may not get paid for another month.

But you will get paid?

Eventually. We are waiting for some money to be remitted from Riyadh.

He looked worried. Depressed. Said, I don’t think somehow I will ever see the building finished. It is, he said, just like the rest of the world, you dream about something but they won’t let you do it. I think I was dreaming about this building before I saw the architect’s plan, before I’d ever heard of Turadup. But to them it’s just another capital project.

I saw him gathering his wits, for months of silent effort. We’ll just have to wait, he said, sit it out, but I really think, I really do think, that they’ve cheated me. The promises were false.

I put the Californians in my desk drawer. They looked care-free, even with their mutilations. Andrew will now start to think about the building day and night, and if there is anything else to be thought about, that will have to be done by me.

“I have to ask you something,” Frances said to Andrew. “About the empty flat. Though I realize you may be bored with the topic.”

“I haven’t found out anything new, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was just thinking that an awful lot of people seem to know something about it. All the khawwadjihs have heard the rumor, even though they have different versions of it. And so, what they’re doing, this couple, isn’t it very risky?”

“Of course it is,” Andrew said. “Presumably it’s a risk they’re prepared to take. You can’t keep things quiet in this town.”

“Can’t you? You see, he needn’t use Dunroamin. Why does he? You said yourself that there were hundreds of villas empty in Jeddah, that there were whole apartment blocks to let.”

“I suppose that if you drove up to what is meant to be an empty block, or an empty house, and went into it, and if you did that a few times, people might notice and get suspicious.”

“That’s true. So if he comes here, it would look as if he were visiting somebody.”

“Yes. Quite legit.”

“But what if our neighbors see him? Or see the woman? Are they in on it? Do they know?”

“Yasmin and Samira don’t hang about on the stairs, do they, waiting to accost strangers?”

“But Raji? And Abdul Nasr?”

“Maybe they’re in on it. This man is a VIP. They wouldn’t cross him, would they?”

“But what about us?” Frances said. “How can they rely on our discretion?”

“They probably think I’m too attached to my paycheck to rock the boat.”

“And the landlord—does he know?”

“I don’t suppose there’s a special adulterer’s rent book.”

“But listen, Andrew, there is something wrong here—because if the khawwadjihs know about it, if they talk about it and speculate and make jokes, then the Saudis must know about it, too, mustn’t they? So are you saying that there’s a benign conspiracy, that everybody knows, but they turn a blind eye?”

“I don’t know.” He was exasperated; she had known he would be, before too long. “I don’t see how you expect me to enter into the thought processes of a Saudi princeling having a bit on the side. What is it, Fran, have you finished your detective story? Do you want to go up to the library tonight?”

“Yes, we could do. I’m getting bored with them though. I’m never really happy with the motives. The books don’t go into motives enough. It’s all stuff about the footprints in the garden, and the caliber of the murder weapon, but you never find out what really interests you.”

“Maybe,” Andrew said tentatively, “you shouldn’t be so interested in the empty flat.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing hasn’t been made up.”

“By whom?”

“Oh, by some bored expat trying to brighten his life. After all, it’s just the sort of thing we like to believe about the Saudis, that they’re hypocrites, and that they do all this hole-in-corner stuff.”

“That would be boring for you, though. If none of it were true. I wonder if this chap up above has any idea how much time we spend discussing him?”

“I can’t imagine.” She tried to imagine. She tried to picture the man, whom she knows that one day she must meet on the stairs—if the rumor is true at all. But she could only see a stiff white thobe, unoccupied, in two dimensions, like the one the laundryman held up to the streetlights and headlights of Al-Suror Street; she could only see a ghutra framing nothing, an emptiness where the face should be. His image wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t turn the key in the lock, it wouldn’t climb the stairs; if I can’t imagine it, she said, it can’t happen. Surely nothing in Dunroamin can happen without my knowledge. “Just suppose—” she said. But Andrew had lost interest in the conversation. She had taxed his patience; he had the building to think about, the great world outside the wall.

“I think,” he said, “that you’re on your own too much.”

She said, “I like my own company.”

The weather had cooled down; not much, but enough. In the dead time between Christmas and New Year, Frances thought she might sunbathe on the roof. There were higher buildings around, but no one ever looked out of them; and she could hear cousin Clare’s voice, speaking to her from the summer ahead, saying, Why Frances, you’re just as pale as when you went out there.

Hands flat on the warm parapet, she looked out over the city. Over on Medina Road an endless stream of traffic went by. There was distant snarling of engines, bestial but subdued, as if a hidden circus were in town. There was the usual dust haze, pierced by the bones of half-finished buildings, the scaffolding, derricks and cranes. In recent weeks there had been changes; earth-moving equipment had been trundling about the vacant lot on the other side of Ghazzah Street, and a deep ditch had been gouged by the side of the road; as she watched, a single dog, crouching, fled across the waste ground.

Frances crossed the roof to the back of the building, and looked down into the narrow streets behind Dunroamin. This was why, she remembered, she had liked the roof at first; this privileged and private view. It could have been another city; it was a domestic, small-scale scene, of back alleys and backyards, of side doors and washing lines. A colored servant, her head wrapped in a scarlet cloth, turned a sharp angle of the next block; she had a bundle in her hand, something wrapped in newspaper, and she moved silently, with her flapping sandals, her dusty gray heels, toward the dustbin. The scholars have implored that the faithful should be careful how they wrap their rubbish; that they should not put their vegetable peelings into the Saudi Gazette, and throw them into the trash; that they should not tear up squares of Al-Riyadh, and hang them in a privy. For that newsprint may contain the sacred name of Allah.

Frances unfolded her canvas chair, sat down, rubbed sun cream on her legs, opened her book. A fly circled her head; she flapped a hand at it. The traffic noise nagged at her. It was hotter than she thought, and windy; grit blew across the page. After five minutes, the print danced before her eyes. She stood up, and a pain lanced through her skull. She refolded her chair, tucked her book under her arm; went back down the stairs, stumbling a little, into cool silence.

In Flat 1 she lay on the sofa, her book splayed open on her ribcage; she held ice cubes, wrapped in one of Andrew’s handkerchiefs, against her forehead. I shall go to the roof in the morning or the evening, she thought, for five minutes’ spying, since that is my pleasure and my pleasures are now few; but to be on the roof in the heat of the day is a punishment, and I should have known better. Eyes closed, she imagined trees; the bark of silver birches, the dense black-green of pines, the scum of algae on English ponds. In July we will go home, she thought, for leave; into the needle-thin rain of the English summer, into dank unpromising Yorkshire mornings, and trees that are yellowing by September.

It was New Year’s Eve. They were up at their usual time; Andrew took a shower, ate breakfast and left soon after seven to go to the site. These early starts gave her a sense of purpose, which she knew from experience would soon dissipate; there was no point, in the whole day, on which she could focus her energy. At eight o’clock she was already climbing the stairs to the roof; as if what was most necessary was to convince herself, by seeing the daylight, that another day had begun.

She opened the door at the top of the stairs, and came out into the early sunshine, shading her eyes. In the far corner of the roof she saw a thin veiled figure, wrapped in an abaya. Her pulse skipped. “Yasmin?” she said. She approached, and saw the black shoulders stiffen with shock; then Yasmin turned, and pulled back the veil, her eyes wide, her expression guilty; she put a hand to her throat, a pantomime of consternation and fear.

Frances stopped a few paces from her. “Did you think I was your mother-in-law?”

“I didn’t expect anybody.” Although it was so early, Yasmin had made up her eyes, outlined their long shape in kohl, brushed in her lashes. But then, was she ever without her face? Was she ever without her careful, prejudged moods? Their friend Samira spent her idle mornings in front of the TV set, watching Egyptian soap operas; the camera dwelled on the faces of suffering women, their painted faces larger than life, their emotions theatrical, rehearsed. Did Yasmin watch them too? Already her features were melting into the artful. “I did not know you came up here, Frances.”

“I come for the fresh air.” Already by eight-thirty a miasma rose from the pavements of Ghazzah Street; fried chicken, sewage, a cocktail of sweat and diesel fumes.

“I too. Just to get away.”

“And how is your mother-in-law?”

Yasmin made a graceful gesture. Everything she did, now, seemed staged; Frances had new eyes. “Oh, you know …”

“I expect,” Frances said, “that she is still asleep.” You are lying, she thought. You weren’t taking the air. You were expecting somebody. Lover boy? So much falls into place. “They have some conflicts.” Raji’s worldly grin, his easy and flourishing career. Why Dunroamin? Because the lady has not far to go. Only a flight of stairs.

Inside she cried and protested: not you, oh not you oh not you.

There was a party that night. Frances slipped into her best white dress. She was losing weight, she noticed. She never thought of eating during the day, not until Andrew came home. She stood in the bathroom before the mirror, brushing her hair and fluffing it out, noticing that the little sun that it saw had streaked it, that it was a strawlike, irrecoverable mess. She took trouble over her makeup, but it seemed to lie on the surface of her skin, as if refusing its part in the charade.

In the car she was silent. “Are you all right?” Andrew asked.

“I saw Yasmin on the roof this morning,” she said.

“I thought you had the roof to yourself.”

“So did I.”

He didn’t say, she noticed, what on earth was Yasmin doing up there. He didn’t express the least surprise. And already she was doubting herself. I cannot trust myself to make deductions, she thought; you cannot deduce anything from a flash of fear, sudden intuitions can be sudden errors. Something is wrong, but perhaps it is no particular thing; perhaps it is just the current of my life that has got diverted, that has washed me up in some shallows where I am alone with myself. Neon signs go by: FUN N’FOOD GARDEN RESTAURANT, ELECTRIC LAUNDRY, SUPERMARKET SINGAPORE.

The party was held outdoors, and the ladies dabbed cologne on their legs, to keep the mosquitoes away. The hostess circulated with polystyrene cups of fruit punch, and the usual Jeddah party food on oval stainless steel trays. Frances carried her cup to the light. Scraps of apple and banana floated on the surface of the liquid, each with their beading of gray bubbles. The drink smelled stale, nauseating. She clutched Andrew’s arm, wanting him to talk to her. “I have to go and circulate,” he said.

Something seemed lacking tonight, on the Jeddah party scene; it was a quiet, almost sober gathering. They were all partied to death; they had seen the same people, at one house or another, half a dozen times over the Christmas period, and now their store of small talk was running low, and no one was in the mood for party games, and conviviality must be ground out of them. The men stood in a knot, and spoke of the falling oil price. The women left the garden and huddled together in the kitchen, talking of teething, and microwave ovens, and displaying to each other the bits of gold they had got for presents. Frances hung about on the fringe of the group; turned shoulders seemed to exclude her. I try, don’t I? she asked herself angrily. Always she tried to make polite conversation, to take an interest; but they seemed to know that her mind was elsewhere.

The conversation became more general at last, as the fruit punch and the siddiqui took its hold; the usual holiday chat. “Did you hear about that girl from New Zealand who was sentenced to ninety lashes?” someone said. “Twenty was for having drunk alcohol, and seventy was for being in a car with a man who wasn’t her husband.”

“At the Smiths’ party last year,” Marion said, “we had this game. The men were all blindfolded, and the women stood on chairs, and the men had to come along and feel their legs and try to guess who was who. It was a laugh. You wouldn’t play that, Frances, would you?”

Frances said, “I’d rather die.”

“Frances is such a misery,” Marion said, sotto voce. “She’s not a bit broadminded. She bothers with those Saudi women in her flats.”

At eleven forty-five, party hats and streamers were distributed. There was a resurgence of merriment; everyone met up in the garden, breaking out of their huddles and cliques for a final assault on the festive spirit. They put on their hats, unfurled their streamers; a loose circle formed, and several people said that they could never remember the words of “Auld Lang Syne.” People asked what the time was; the minutes seemed to prolong themselves. Watches were consulted; women hauled at their husbands’ shirtsleeves, and peered at the dials by the light of the colored bulbs their host had strung on an outside wall. Conversation faltered and died, and the guests shifted from foot to foot, weariness crossing their faces; they did not seem to be waiting for midnight, but for a bus that was never going to come. Finally, at eleven fifty-seven, the New Year was declared, to trills of forced laughter, and the thin notes of penny whistles. They kissed each other, and stomped to and fro, singing raggedly. Clawing up the streamers from the ground, carrying dutifully into the kitchen plates of half-eaten food, they trooped inside, to dance to the Beach Boys and early Rolling Stones. By one o’clock the party was breaking up.

The Shores were among the first to leave. They drove home in a tired, companionable silence; as soon as they stepped out of their car, the traces of the holiday were wiped from their life; Frances scrubbed off her makeup. She went into the kitchen, and took out some damp towels from the washing machine.

“I hope you haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions,” Andrew said, standing in the doorway.

“Why? Don’t you want anything to change?”

“I want to keep us on an even keel.”

“Why pick on me?” she asked, shaking the towels out. “What about your own resolutions?”

“With most people it wouldn’t matter. They can make them in safety because they know they won’t be kept. You can count on their futility.” He paused. “But you’re not like that.”

“What will happen to us next year?”

“I want to see the building through. You know that.”

“Nothing gives,” she said. She threw the towels onto a chair. A flood of words poured from her. “There’s no life in the land, it’s just people, highways, endless straight roads and rubbish and dust, there’s nothing to release you, there’s nothing to set you free inside. You feel as if you’re starving. No wonder they have such a bloody awful religion. No wonder that when they got rich and went to Europe all they could think of to do was to drink and take drugs and gamble, how would they know how to live their lives? They bought up beautiful houses and gutted them and filled them with nightclubs and Louis Farouk, they tore up gardens and made swimming pools, all they want is white-skinned prostitutes and cocaine.”

“Oh, come on,” Andrew said. “That’s not entirely true.”

“It is entirely true,” she said, more quietly. “But not the entire truth.”

“You say Jeff’s a racist, but you’re really just as bad.”

“I’m not a racist, Andrew, I’m a xenophobe. See—I’ve been going through the dictionary to find out what’s wrong with me. There’s England and France, and after that it’s madness.”

He said, “Do you want to go home?”

“No,” she said. “It’s too late for that.”

Andrew made love to her that night. As he entered her she felt as if she had plunged, suddenly and without hope, into a long dark tunnel; as if inch by inch, her body rigid, she fought toward her climax, while the walls of the tunnel fell in softly behind her, leaving her just one direction but no glimmer of an end. She felt herself sinking out of sight, her whole spirit toiling underground, darkness enfolding darkness; she was wiped out, she had forgotten her name. Andrew grunted, and lay on top of her with his whole weight. Suddenly she became conscious of the smell of soap on his skin, of a prickle of cramp in her legs; of the rattle and hum of the air-conditioner. She was back inside her own body. No subterranean toil for Andrew; it was as easy as crossing the road. Or, since this was Jeddah, easier.

When he released her she turned her face at once into the pillow. She would sleep. She would sleep soon. She would sleep in the next second. The rifleman, lurking on the sidewalk, was the last thing on her mind.