Swimming on the Lawn Page 10
There are queues outside the toilets. I join the longest one.
The row of toilets is in the corner of the playground furthest from the classrooms, built against a wall backing onto a side street. The sun is hot on my head, and I wish I hadn’t chosen such a long line. I look around. The girl in front of me holds her glass tube up high. ‘Look at this. How am I supposed to fill this? I’m not a boy.’ A few girls laugh. Others, like me, look away.
The queue gets shorter. The smell from the toilets is awful. I am worried that I might be sick. I practise holding my breath, and counting in my head. Each time I have to let out a breath, the smell seems to be stronger, and I inhale my next breath with my nose and mouth in the crook of my elbow. My hair is damp along my forehead, and my feet are sliding in my sandals. By the time I get to the front of the queue I feel hot and dizzy. I keep squeezing the test tube too hard, and I am afraid I will break it.
‘Are you going to meet the Queen tomorrow?’
I turn. It is Aida, the class loudmouth, and she is glaring at me in a challenging way.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Haven’t you got a special invitation to see the Queen of Britain, then?’
‘She’s the Queen of England,’ I say.
‘No she isn’t, she’s the Queen of Britain. It said so on the radio.’
‘Well they’re wrong. She’s the Queen of England.’
‘You know better than the radio and the newspapers, do you? Well, you are wrong! She’s the Queen of Britain.’
I feel a lump in my throat and tears forming in my eyes. The girl behind me pushes me towards the toilet. ‘Your turn, and hurry up, it’s hot.’
‘She’s the Queen of Britain, you idiot,’ I hear Aida shout as I shut the toilet door behind me.
I stand still. It is dark and I can’t see anything at first. The flies seem to be buzzing their wings extra fast. The pitch is higher and louder than usual, echoing in the confined space, like they are pretending to be aeroplanes. The stink of raw sewage makes me hold my breath. I close my eyes and slowly open them again. The sunlight coming in under the door throws a feeble light onto the concrete steps up to the platform. I step up and look down the hole in the floor. The bucket under the hole is overflowing and I can see big, fat, white maggots, their bodies shrinking and expanding like silent concertinas.
Without touching the walls, I carefully take off my underpants, stepping out of the leg-holes one at a time. I don’t have any pockets in my dress, and so I put my underpants on my head like a shower cap. I lift my skirt and bunch the material under my armpits and carefully squat over the hole. I hold the test tube under me and manage to pee. I feel hot liquid on my hand. I don’t want to look at the maggots in the hole again, but I have to look down to check that the test tube is full. I lean over and turn on the tap. I cup my hand under it a few times and give myself a rinse, then stand up. I wash each of my hands, and then rinse the outside of the test tube, before walking down the steps. I’m about to open the door, but quickly lean against it as I take my underpants off my head and single-handedly put them on.
The Queen of England
Mama is wearing her new dress. She carries Amir on her hip as she walks past the last three houses on our street. Selma, Sami, and I follow as she leaves the sealed road and continues along the dirt track that leads through scrubby thorn trees. We walk alongside a high metal mesh fence topped with barbed wire that protects three huge aircraft-fuel tanks. A big yellow sign has a picture of flames, and another sign with the word ‘Danger’ hangs crookedly from one of the ladder rungs on the side of the nearest tank. We cross the railway tracks for the train that carries the aircraft fuel in special rail cars to the airport. A man on a bicycle rides past.
‘Did you see that man?’ Selma says. ‘He was smoking!’
‘Everyone smokes,’ I say.
‘But the sign says it’s dangerous. All that petrol in the tanks could blow up our street if there’s a fire.’
‘What fire?’ asks Sami. ‘I can’t see a fire.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ says Selma.
‘Mama, Selma said a rude word,’ says Sami.
‘Behave, you lot, and hurry up. We don’t want to be late.’
Soon the track turns left towards the tennis club, but Mama continues straight on across the scrubland towards the main road. As we pass the last bush and cross an area of bare sand, the noise from the crowds grows louder. They are standing under the trees on the other side of the main road. Some people have flags and wave them in front of their faces to keep cool and to annoy the flies. Some groups are singing and clapping. There are people lined up along the shady side of the road for as far as I can see, and policemen with long sticks are stopping anyone from stepping onto the asphalt.
We stand around Mama under a very young tree with hardly any leaves. We are the only people on the sunny side of the road. Time passes slowly. It is as hot as the inside of an oven.
‘I’m thirsty,’ complains Sami.
‘Why can’t we stand on the other side in the shade like everyone else?’ whines Selma.
‘Because there are too many people,’ says Mama. ‘We’d have to stand at the back and you wouldn’t be able to see anything.’
Then the clapping and cheering grows louder. A cavalcade of motorbikes comes slowly and noisily into view, followed by an open-topped car. The Queen is standing up in the car, and she has sunglasses on. She is facing the crowd on the other side of the road, and her waving hand is in a white glove.
‘There’s the Queen,’ says Mama, and we all wave, and as her car comes past, the Queen turns, and waves and smiles at us.
Then she is gone.
Granny’s Parcel
Sometimes our English Granny sends a letter to say that she has posted something for us. It usually takes two to three weeks for a letter to get to us, and the parcels can take months, so we have learnt very quickly to do what Mama always says, and that is to wait and see. We wait and wait, often discussing what might be on its way. But time passes and often the hoped-for parcel never arrives. It disappears somewhere between arriving in the country and getting to our post-office box.
But today, Mama comes home with a large brown-paper parcel, tied with enough string to crochet a couple of shopping bags. I notice the long row of brightly coloured stamps, each with a silhouette of the Queen’s head in the corner. I am already planning on giving them to Silver, my Indian friend, for his stamp collection, in exchange for a couple of rare black marbles.
Selma, Sami, and I kneel on our chairs around the kitchen table and lean forward with our elbows on the red and white check oilcloth. The only sound in the room is Mama’s dressmaking scissors as she carefully cuts the string, then the soft whisper of brown paper being slowly unwrapped.
We are surprised that there are no books or magazines. Instead, Granny has sent us ready-made clothes. We look at the items in turn as Mama holds them up for us to see.
There are two white dresses, one with blue and green flowers for Selma, and the other with red and orange flowers for me.
‘Oh dear,’ says Mama. ‘These both look too big. Granny doesn’t realise that you aren’t as big as English girls your age. I may be able to alter them.’
‘May we try them on?’ I ask.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I wish I had the one with red flowers,’ says Selma. ‘I don’t like the blue.’
I prefer the blue flowers, but I take my red-flowered one into our bedroom and get changed.
The dress has buttons all down the back instead of a zip, which means I can’t do them up on my own. The hem of the full-gathered skirt almost reaches my ankles, and it flares out when I twirl. I love it. All my dresses have skirts that end at my knees, so this new dress is special.
I do up the buttons on Selma’s dress, which reaches the ground, and she does the buttons on mine. Then we take turns climbing onto the stool in Mama’s bedroom to look at parts of ourselves in her dressing table mirror.
‘Can I please have mine like this, Mama,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you to make it shorter.’
‘Okay, but if it’s a nuisance, we can always take it up later. I almost forgot – look what I found,’ she says, holding out two fabric belts, one blue and one red, and on the end of each hangs a shiny gold-coloured coin.
‘It isn’t real money,’ Sami says, as he watches me tie the belt around my waist.
‘I know.’ I twirl again. ‘I like your new shirt.’
‘Okay, everyone. Put your new things away. I’m going to make a pot of tea, and then we must all write a letter to Granny and say thank you.’
Cemetery
It is the third day of Eid al-Fitr and Dad is going to the cemetery after breakfast to visit his mother’s grave.
I don’t have many memories of this granny, because she rarely left the village and only came to the city towards the end of her life when she was unwell and had to see a specialist at the hospital.
She died when I was young, but I used to know the words for ‘water’, ‘thank you’, ‘very good’, and ‘come and eat’ in her tribal language. So I knew what she wanted when she asked for a glass of water, and she always said ‘thank you’. It was also my job to tell her that dinner was ready when she was staying with us, and while she was eating she always said it was ‘very good’. And I remember she was nearly always on the verandah sitting on her prayer mat, which she seemed to find much more comfortable than a chair.
‘Can I come with you to the cemetery?’ I ask Dad while we are all having breakfast in the garden.
Before he can reply, Selma says, ‘Can I come as well?’ Then she quickly looks at Mama and says, ‘Please. I won’t be a nuisance. Look, my dress is clean. I haven’t spilt any food on it. Can I go?’
Mama looks at Dad, who then says, ‘You can come if you’ll both be good. It’s a long way in the car, and we’ll be visiting some people on the way.’
Our hair freshly combed into ponytails and our hands washed, Selma and I stand by the car, waiting for Dad who is still in the house getting changed. We watch Mama through a gap in the creeper that covers the end of the carport. She is singing and pushing Amir on the swing.
A few minutes later Dad comes out looking magnificent, like a king. His white turban is perfectly coiled and his pale cream jellabiah is freshly ironed. Over it, despite the growing heat, he is wearing his gold-coloured heavy damask cloak with a fine cream-coloured design. As he opens the car door, his cloak swishes and I breathe in the warm scent of sandalwood.
We drive through the town centre past the closed shops, and then out the other side through a densely populated area. We catch glimpses of the river in the distance then lose sight of it as we turn off the asphalt road onto a dirt track between houses closely huddled together. Dust billows behind us and also blows into the car each time a car overtakes us, or a car passes us coming the other way. Sometimes our own dust cloud catches up with us when we slow down and Dad toots the horn to warn some sauntering goats to get out of the way. It is too hot to wind up the windows, but when the dust gets too thick, we close our eyes and hold the hems of our skirts over our noses. After twisting and turning through a maze of narrowing alleyways the car stops by a blue gate in a high brick wall.
Dad knocks on the gate, and then pushes it open and steps into the courtyard. We follow and stand behind him as he claps his hands and calls out, ‘Peace be upon you. May God protect your family and your home.’ A young boy comes out of one of the rooms and ushers us into the guest reception salon. We sit on low, narrow beds with hand-embroidered sheets, and brightly coloured cushions and pillows to lean against. A large round table is placed in the middle of the floor. Its top is a decorative brass tray that holds a cut-glass bowl filled with individually wrapped, brightly coloured boiled sweets winking at us through their transparent cellophane wrappers. Some men enter the room and shake hands with Dad, then a young girl comes in and waves at Selma and me to follow her to the family quarters.
We pass through another gate into a smaller courtyard where lots of women, wearing their best clothes, sit on a carpet on the verandah drinking tea and chatting, while children of various ages chase each other around the yard laughing. Selma and I kneel down and shake hands with the women who exclaim at how pretty we are, and pinch our cheeks in appreciation, before giving us a handful of sweets each and telling us to go off and play. We are surrounded by children as we share out the sweets, and before long we are joining in their game of tag, running around and getting hot while having a good time.
Half an hour later we are called and told it is time for us to go. We wave goodbye to our new friends as our car drives away. And we carry on waving until we can’t see them any more.
‘Did you have a good time?’ asks Dad.
‘Yes,’ we both say together, and laugh.
‘I’m really hot,’ says Selma, holding her ponytail off her neck.
‘Me too,’ I say, slipping off my sandals and flapping my skirt over my legs, before asking, ‘Dad, who are those people we went to see?’
‘They are distant relations. One of the men you saw comes from the village, but he is a cousin of a cousin. I haven’t seen him in a long time, but his wife died recently, so he has brought his children to live with his brother’s family.’
‘I didn’t see any crying children,’ says Selma. ‘I would cry if Mama was dead.’
‘You can’t cry all the time,’ says Dad. ‘I expect they have cried enough.’
Selma and I look out the car windows, quietly thinking our own thoughts until we arrive at the cemetery.
Dad parks the car under a lone thorn tree and we get out. The cemetery is just desert. There are dirt humps here and there, and the rest is just flat sand with some areas marked by short wooden stakes or stones the size of house bricks. In the distance there is a square building, like a large room with a pointy dome on top, marking where an important religious person is buried. There are no proper paths, and we don’t know if we are walking between or over the graves. We follow Dad as he walks, then stops. He looks around, and then changes direction and walks on. Selma and I keep our eyes focused on the ground, because the last time we came we found some coins. Dad says we can have some, but not too many, because they are for the poor.
At last Dad stops and squats down. He sweeps and smooths an area of sand with his hands, and puts a few stones neatly at the corners. Then he stands and holds his hands in front of him at chest height, his palms up, as though they are the pages of an open book, and says some prayers. When he finishes he curls his fingers into his palms as if he is trapping the words, before placing his palms on his face and gently dragging them down as though smoothing the skin from his forehead down to his chin.
Then he reaches into his jellabiah pocket, and pulls out some coins that he throws over the grave. We know we can’t have any of these.
‘Dad?’ I ask. ‘How do you know that this is Granny’s grave? Nothing is marked out and there are no names.’
‘I just know,’ he says. ‘It’s time to go home.’
The Library
Selma and I have read all the books we’d each borrowed, as well as some of each other’s, and so we pack them up, let Mama know where we are going, and set off to walk to the British Council Library. The morning is hot and sunny as usual, so we keep under the trees most of the way. The houses we pass have high hedges shielding them from the road, but we peer up open driveways or through wrought-iron gates, glimpsing gardeners at work, or occasionally young children chasing each other on smooth green lawns, and we breathe in the alternating scents of gardenias and jasmine and car exhaust.
‘What kind of books are you going to borrow today?’ Selma asks.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘Probably an adventure story. I liked Kidnapped best out of what I chose last time. But I might look to see if there’
s an Agatha Christie I haven’t read yet.’
‘My favourites are the Grimms’ fairytales. I might see if I can find some other fairytale books.’
‘How can you like those? I think they’re really frightening. I stopped after the second story.’
‘That’s what I like. I like being scared.’
We are walking past some closed gates when a dog suddenly appears out of nowhere. It barks and jumps at the bars. We both scream and run a few metres out of its sight. We can still hear it panting loudly as it keeps up with us on the other side of the hedge.
‘That was scarier than a Grimm fairytale,’ I say, still holding my bag of books up to my chest, walking quickly, but ready to run again.
We hear a lot of noise ahead. When we come to the main road we see a column of tanks rumbling past followed by army lorries. The tanks’ metal tracks have scraped the asphalt into parallel ragged grooves. The military vehicles are raising clouds of dust. Some of the soldiers packed on the back of the trucks are shouting and cheering, and some are singing. I wish Sami was with us. He would have been thrilled to see the procession.
‘Where are they going?’ asks Selma.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Perhaps they’re on manoeuvres.’
‘What are manoeuvres?’
‘It’s when they practise.’
‘Practise what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why won’t you tell me anything?’
We turn the last corner onto the library road. The library is in a house rented by the British Council. There is also a big room that is sometimes used for exhibitions and special parties. Three houses before the library, and even though we are expecting it, I feel my heart race when we are ambushed by another dog, one that growls and lunges at us, almost strangling itself. The dog’s long metal chain is stretched tight, preventing it from getting too close to the open gateway. The sight of its glistening white teeth, wet with saliva, makes us run without stopping until we are at the library.