The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 5

Have you got Perfection?

Memories — do I need to explain what went before, to explain myself? Perhaps. There is a word Reina sometimes used — pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage: a journey made for exalted reasons.

A holy act.

And then again, Google search: Pilgrimage is

out of date

a waste of time and money

still important

Have you got Perfection, she asked, and where was this?

Dubai, a few days before Reina died. A hotel on an artificial island; the Burj al Arab Jumeirah. When I walked in, a man offered me a chilled hand towel, a woman offered me dates in a golden plate, the receptionist asked if I’d be wanting one of the hotel’s Bentleys. £650 bought you the cheapest room for a night, but for so little, your private butler might be a touch rude, and you didn’t get access to the VIP lounge. Is this where it begins? I think it is.

“Have you got Perfection?” Leena asked, and behind her, Reina sighed. “The CEO is coming to Dubai. We’ve got a thriving investment market here; you wouldn’t think companies like that needed investment, but something like Perfection, it’s going to go global, it’s going to go mega, I know, it’s changed my life! I’m going to get treatments!”

Five women on couches in the spa, the sea blue as the morning sky, the midday sky white as the midnight moon, filling the windows all around. Drinks in multicoloured layers brought in by Bangladeshi women with bright smiles, bowed heads. Of the five of us being served, only two were from Dubai, a princess something-something-of-somewhere with flawless English and her cousin Reina, who perhaps wasn’t a princess but it was hard to tell, who blogged about social reform and women’s rights and was, according to Leena:

“Wonderful, isn’t she just wonderful, but I do wish she was a little more… well, you know…”

A gesture, taking in the silent figure of Reina, who unlike the rest of us is wearing a swimsuit, not a bikini, and lies on her couch with laptop open, brows tight against the top of her nose.

“Treatments destroy your soul,” replied Reina quietly from her laptop, not looking up. “Treatments destroy who you are.”

“Darling,” exclaimed Leena, “some of us see that as a good thing.”

Now Reina’s gaze snapped up, met her cousin’s, held, turned away. “I just want to be myself,” she murmured.

“But is that good enough?” Leena mused, “Or is it just selfish?’ I went to sit by Reina’s side, asked what she was working on while the others relaxed around her.

“This is my jihad,” replied Reina, not looking up from her laptop. “This is my pilgrimage.”

Jihad: to struggle. To strive in the way of God.

I’ve always liked knowledge. It makes me feel like I’m real, part of something after all.

“Yesterday the police arrested a fourteen-year-old girl accused of sex outside marriage with an ice-cream vendor,” Reina mused, speaking to the computer, having learned long ago that no one else would listen to her. “He raped her, and will be deported. She is going to prison for adultery. I cannot accept that the rights of women are culturally relative.”

“You see!” exclaimed Leena, rolling on her couch so that the Filipino woman applying her platinum-metal body tattoo could reach the back of her neck. “Reina’s just so… so… well isn’t she just!”

“Have you got Perfection?”

An American woman, Suzy or Sandy or Sophie or something of that sort, who lay, back bare, chin down as thin pieces of gold foil were delicately brushed onto her skin, creating swirls and curves of thousand-dollar colour that followed the contours of her perfectly scrubbed, perfectly tanned, perfectly toned, perfect flesh.

I leant over from my couch to see what she was talking about.

“It’s an app,” she explained, turning for me to look. “A life-coaching tool, a way to make a better you. You sign up, give it access to your data, and it helps you get better!”

“What kind of data?” I asked.

“Oh, everything, really. Loyalty cards, air miles, online shopping, bank accounts. The more information it has, the better it can help you. Like, when I first signed up, I took a picture of myself and it was able to tell me my height, weight, shoe size, the lot — it’s clever, just so clever. And I was overweight then, I mean — well, I won’t tell you! — but it found better menus for me, good trainers, because that’s what matters, isn’t it? And every time you reach a goal, like, getting to your perfect weight or buying the perfect shoes from an in-app retailer, you get points, and after a number of points you get a subscription-linked experience!”

“What kind of experience?”

“Oh, just amazing, amazing. At five thousand I got a free haircut at Pike and Ion, it was sensational, they just understand hair. At ten thousand I got three hundred dollars of spending money to use at the SpringYou outlet at the mall, three hundred! I couldn’t believe it, but of course, the app knew what I bought, and just by buying the right clothes I got an automatic five-hundred-point bonus. I’m at fifty-two thousand points now, and can’t wait to see what the next unlock is.”

I smiled and said it sounded wonderful, amazing, how I could use something like that in my life.

“You should get it!” she exclaimed. “You’re so pretty already, with just a bit of work you could be perfect too!”

I smiled. This was my third day in the company of these women, and the first time they’d ever met me. I was good at being obliging.

And that evening,

“Do you have Perfection?” I asked Reina, as we ran together in the women-only gym, headscarves discarded, sweat clumping in our hair.

“Yes,” she mused. “I do. It’s something my family might invest in.”

“Is it as good as people say it is?”

“I… suppose it could be.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“It… Leena made me sign up, she told me I was… do you know how sometimes people say words and they should be terrible, but because you know the people and the way they say it, they aren’t? Only of course,” she added, “they are really.”

“What words?” I asked.

“Oh, the usual. Fat. Frumpy. Boring. Unattractive to men. Dull at parties. Frigid. Of course it shouldn’t matter, those are her things, not mine.”

We kept running. Then she said, “I used to think that it was okay just to be liked for being me.”

I nearly laughed, but there was such sadness in her eyes, and I was out of breath, so I didn’t. Instead, “People who see who you are like you for you, I’m sure of it.”

She smiled, and looked away, and we didn’t talk again that night.