Swimming on the Lawn Page 7

  I sigh with relief as Dad comes out of the building. He is accompanied by another man carrying a two-gallon tin container. Mama is standing by the car, carrying Amir. Dad introduces Mama. ‘Helen, this is Mr Hassan. He’ll be going with me on the building inspections of the villages, tomorrow.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ says Mama in Arabic, and smiles as they shake hands.

  ‘And who is this young champion?’ says Mr Hassan, giving Amir’s cheek a gentle tweak.

  ‘Amir,’ says Amir.

  ‘A champion and a prince!’ says Mr Hassan, with a delighted laugh.

  Dad opens the boot and Mr Hassan puts the container in, and then they shake hands. ‘See you in the morning,’ says Dad, as he gets into the car and starts the engine.

  ‘Inshallah, God willing,’ says Mr Hassan.

  ‘Everyone in?’ asks Dad.

  ‘Yes,’ we all chorus from the back.

  ‘I expect you are all wondering what I’ve got in the boot?’ asks Dad as the car accelerates. The hot wind through the windows feels refreshing.

  ‘Yes,’ we all chorus again, turning it into a game.

  ‘Any guesses?’

  ‘Sugar,’ says Sami.

  ‘Pretty close.’

  ‘Sugar cane juice,’ says Selma.

  ‘Maybe even closer.’

  There is a long silence as we think what it could be.

  ‘Give up?’ asks Dad.

  ‘Yes,’ we chorus again.

  ‘Molasses,’ says Dad. ‘We’ll take it home with us on the train.’

  Dress-ups

  The day after we get back home, it feels as if we have never been away.

  Mama is adding crushed garlic and black pepper to the onions sizzling in the frying pan. Breakfast is almost ready. I drain the water off the cooling boiled eggs, then quickly tap each egg on the wooden draining board several times and peel away the cracked shell still clinging to the membrane, leaving a smooth perfect surface. Soon I have ten ready-to-eat eggs in a bowl on the table. Mama ladles beans onto the fried onion and stirs. ‘Is everything ready?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  Selma has set the table, and taken out the bread, the salad, and the boiled eggs.

  ‘Have you chopped the coriander?’

  ‘Yes.’ I pass her the plate of herbs.

  ‘This will have to do. I’m sure it’s warm enough. The flame has just gone out, so we must be out of gas. I thought the beans weren’t warming up. Could you please put them into a serving dish and tell everyone that breakfast is ready. I’ll just ring and order another gas cylinder. With a bit of luck it will be here in time for me to cook dinner.’

  After breakfast, Selma and I carry the dress-up box out of the storeroom and put it on the verandah. Sami starts rummaging and pulls out one of Mama’s old blouses, the navy blue with white polka dots. ‘I’m going to wear this,’ he says.

  I go back into the house and carefully climb the shelves of the built-in wardrobe in our bedroom. I yank the old red woollen army blanket with the black stripes down off the top shelf and carry it out to the garden. On the lawn under the big tree, Selma has arranged two dining chairs side by side with their backs towards the backs of two other chairs placed a couple of paces away. We drape the blanket over the four chairs to make a flat-roofed tent. We have to put bricks on the chair seats to stop the weight of the blanket pulling the chairs over and collapsing the tent. We crawl inside and inspect the space. It seems dark at first, but there is enough light and air coming in between the chair legs to make it comfortable.

  ‘It’s nice in here,’ I say. ‘I’ll get the picnic rug, and you can get the pillows off our beds.’

  Half an hour later there’s the beep of a motorbike horn as the gas man arrives in his little yellow three-wheeler scooter with a tray on the back, just big enough for four dumpy gas bottles. He drives right up to the kitchen door, heaves a gas bottle off the back and carries it into the kitchen. A car pulls into the driveway. Aunty Ursula’s boys have arrived. Hashim and Adil – who are about Sami’s age – have a German mother, who is a friend of Mama’s. She drops them off at our house when she has an important appointment. The boys are shy, but they understand quite a bit of English, whereas we only know a few words of German. Mama claps her hands. ‘Let’s find something for you in the dressing-up box, then we’ll do some action songs. Come along. Sami and Selma have already got something on. Your mama will be back in a few hours, and we have lots to do until then. Oh, listen. It sounds like Amir has woken up just in time. Selma will fetch him while we have a look at the clothes.’

  There’s a scramble and clothes are being pulled out and thrown on the floor. I choose the straw hat that got squashed when it got run over by the car. I also put on one of the necklaces we’d made a long time ago, when we’d painted dried macaroni tubes and strung them on coloured wool. Hashim and Adil both want to be cowboys, so Mama finds some squares of material that she folds into triangles and ties loosely round their necks. They pull the fabric up over their mouth and nose, and I pretend to not know who they are. Mama makes herself a colourful turban and puts on a pair of her old, not-so-white cotton gloves.

  Under the shade of a big tree we play simple action games so that Amir can join in. Then it’s Amir’s favourite. ‘Okay everyone, now it’s “Two Little Dickie Birds”,’ says Mama. ‘Hold up your index fingers like this. Turn your hands the other way, Hashim, so your fingernail faces out like a little face. That’s it. Good. Everyone got their hands up by their shoulders? Good. Everyone sing the first bit together now and remember to wiggle your fingers. Two little dickie birds sitting on a wall, one named …?’ Mama looks at Hashim.

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘Well done, And one named …?’ Mama looks at Adil.

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘Very good. Fly away … Peter, put one hand behind your back. Fly away … Paul.’

  When we get to the part that goes, Come back Peter, come back Paul, I tickle Amir’s tummy and he squeals and wriggles. ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ is next. Then we play Simon Says, taking turns being Simon and making up things for everyone to do. By the time we’ve done the Bunny Hop we are hot and itchy from falling over so many times on the grass.

  ‘Okay, everyone, take your costumes off and put them back in the box. I’ve made some lemonade and I’ll bring it out. We’ll have our drinks by the tent.’

  Soon everything is flung back in the box and Mama is carrying a big tray out towards the tent. Everyone is quiet while we drink lemonade, and eat homemade peanut ginger biscuits made with the holiday molasses.

  Mama carries the tray back to the kitchen while we wash our hands and faces at the garden tap. Then we all crawl into the tent and lie down in a row, our heads on the pillows, as we listen to Mama who sits on a chair outside the tent and reads to us from Sami’s favourite book, Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins.

  Mangoes

  It is Friday. Dad drops Selma and me off in the street outside the gate of our friends’ house. Our friends, three sisters, live in a huge double-storey building that we secretly call a palace. The circular drive that sweeps up to the front door is almost as big as the roundabout in the centre of town.

  A little boy is pedalling his blue car along the drive, making loud engine noises. ‘Hello,’ we call out, but he ignores us. We call out again and he still doesn’t answer. We continue on towards the house along a well-trodden dirt path that meanders between shrubs to the kitchen door. The cook is busy chopping vegetables, but smiles at our greeting and says that the girls are upstairs in their bedroom.

  The house is cool. The window shutters in the large reception hall are open, and rectangles of sky are reflected in the glazed terrazzo tiles, as though they are mirrors. Selma and I pass between the rows of pillars leading to the staircase. When we reach the last pair we each put a hand on the pillar next to us and swing ourselves around it, and then race up the stairs and along the corridor to the huge bedroom that seems to belong in a storybook.

&n
bsp; Three beds are spaced out on the long side of the room. There is a bedside table and lamp beside each one. The beds are strewn with books, clothes, and dolls. Wardrobes with their doors open stand between the tall windows opposite the beds, and at the very end of the room, facing the door we came through, are glass doors that open onto a balcony overlooking the back garden. Rapunzel would have needed very long hair for it to reach the ground from up here. No one is in the room. ‘They must be in the garden,’ I say.

  ‘Probably in the secret hideout,’ says Selma. She picks up a comic from the bed closest to the door and holds it up. ‘Look. It’s a new one. There are lots of them. They must have just got these sent from England. We could sort them into date order and read them.’

  It is very tempting. ‘We can read them later,’ I say. ‘Race you down the stairs.’

  We run through the kitchen and round the far side of the house and along the hedge to the hideout. It is a wooden shed, surrounded by bushes and trees so that it looks a bit like Davy Crockett’s cabin. Inside, on the dirt floor, are some old chairs, and a table littered with a mismatched doll’s tea set. There is also a bike and a doll’s pram, but no girls.

  I step into the dry irrigation ditch that runs along beside the hedge and, bending over so that I won’t be seen, run quietly along it, hoping to surprise our friends. Selma follows. I hear the sound of slamming car doors, coming from the neighbouring property on the other side of the hedge. I stop and kneel down so that I can peer through a gap close to the ground. There is a big lawn that ends at an asphalted parking area. Men in shirts and trousers, and wearing Palestinian keffiyehs on their heads, are making their way into the building. One of the men is carrying a gun over his shoulder.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ asks Selma.

  ‘Men from Fatah!’

  ‘What’s Fatah?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just some people from another country.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Nothing. Just getting out of cars and going in.’ I don’t mention the gun.

  ‘We could find the others and play at being spies.’

  ‘No,’ I say, standing up and stepping out of the ditch.

  We walk around some bushes and onto a gravel path that goes towards the back of the garden. We hear laughing coming from the mango tree. The girls are sitting on the branches eating mangoes.

  ‘We’ve been waiting ages for you,’ says Angela. ‘Come on up.’

  I step onto the overturned bucket and pull myself onto the lowest branch, then help Selma up behind me. We can’t go any higher as our friends are in the way, and they don’t move. Margaret, the eldest, stands up on her branch, reaches up and picks a mango that she passes down to me. Then she picks another for Selma. We squidge the mango carefully with our hands until the fruit inside the skin is liquid, then we bite a hole through the skin at the pointy end and suck the delicious mango juice through the hole.

  ‘Hurry up,’ says Sarah. ‘It’s time for our beauty treatment.’

  Selma and I finish sucking and then peel away the skin, exposing the pale mango stone.

  ‘Ready, ladies?’ says Sarah in her best grown-up voice. ‘Start!’

  We rub our faces with the mango stone, smearing what is left of the mango juice onto our cheeks and foreheads.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ shouts Margaret. ‘Fire!’

  We throw what is left of our mangoes at each other, hoping not to get one back.

  Bad News

  The next afternoon, while I’m reading in bed, I hear the phone ring and Dad answer. A short while later Mama comes into our bedroom looking upset. ‘Your Uncle Omar has died,’ she says.

  ‘How can he be dead?’ I ask. ‘He isn’t ill and he isn’t old.’

  ‘He needed an operation, so he went to Egypt because he felt he would get better treatment there. He died under the anaesthetic.’

  I can’t believe that Uncle Omar is dead; that we won’t see him again. Uncle Omar is special. He is young and handsome. He is always well dressed and has a good job. But best of all he is fun and he really likes us and his sister’s children who we think of as our cousins. Whenever Dad is away, Uncle Omar picks us up from school in his two-tone Mercedes. Selma and I feel like princesses in such a lovely car, and he often drives us home the long way round, and he lets us lean our elbows on the open windowsills.

  Mama is still talking. I hear her say something about next week.

  ‘Next week?’ I repeat.

  ‘Yes, that’s when the body will be flown back. I think we should all go to the bikka.’

  The bikka means ‘The crying’. We have been to bikkas before, but not for someone we like and love so much.

  I still can’t believe he is really dead.

  ‘What’s going to happen to his houseboat?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Mama.

  Uncle Omar lived on a houseboat on the river. He designed it himself. It looks like a cube and it has two storeys, and it floats on rows of oil drums. Inside it is just like a real house with nice furniture. He even has curtains over his bedroom windows, not just shutters like we have at home, and outside the downstairs living room is a deck where Uncle Omar taught us to fish with real fishing rods. If any fish were caught, he cooked them for us in his kitchen. I was always happy that I never caught a fish, but I liked sitting by the water, listening to the grown-ups talking.

  ‘It’s time he got married,’ I heard someone say once. ‘We bring suitable girls to his attention, but nothing.’

  ‘He’s always travelling abroad with his work,’ said someone else. ‘Did you hear what Mustafa’s son has been named?’

  ‘I heard,’ came the reply. ‘What kind of foreign name is that?’

  ‘Did you watch that Egyptian film on the television last week? Omar El Sharif – he is so handsome. Those eyes: just like a gazelle’s.’

  ‘But not as handsome as our Omar, or as tall.’

  I remember the time when Uncle Omar had been overseas, and he brought back a whole bolt of pale pink duchess satin, with an embroidered border of little flowers in a soft cream. The material was divided up between all us cousins, and Mama made two beautiful dresses, with the embroidery around the bottom of the full skirts, and matching embroidered sashes. The satin felt so smooth, and at night our dresses changed hue depending on how the light shone on the folds of our skirts. They were the prettiest dresses we’d ever had.

  The Houseboat

  A group of uncles comes to visit. They are all dressed in traditional loose white jellabiahs. Most of them are bareheaded, but one wears a bright white turban tinged with purple from too much bluing-powder in the rinse water. It glows as if it is lit from within.

  It is late afternoon and still hot so Dad ushers them out to the coolest part of the garden where the lawn is shaded by trees on the west. They sit on the cane chairs that Mama recently painted a pale blue to match her favourite blue bowl. The bowl is now in the middle of the egg-yolk coloured cloth that covers the cane table. It is filled with water on which float creamy white frangipani flowers with sunny yellow centres.

  I carry out the tray with the jug of fresh lime squash that Mama has made with extra sugar. The ice cubes clink as I walk across the driveway and down the steps to the lawn. Putting the tray on the table, I slowly pour out the drinks and listen to what the uncles are saying.

  ‘I had a phone call from Hassan. He is in Cairo sorting out the paperwork. He can’t get any answers from the hospital. It’s all a bit suspicious. How can a routine operation go wrong?’ says one uncle.

  ‘Just because the patient is a foreigner they think they don’t have to explain themselves,’ says another.

  ‘Anyway, Hassan says he can’t even confirm with his own eyes that he has been given the right body. It is sealed in a metal coffin.’

  ‘That is a problem,’ says Dad. ‘The body won’t be in any condition to be taken out and prepared for burial in the traditional way.’

  ‘According to
Hassan, the coffin can’t be opened. Omar will have to be buried in the coffin. We’ll have to explain to the women and assure them that it is Omar’s body in there, even though we are not sure ourselves.’

  I pass a glass of cold lime drink to each of the uncles, and then the last one to Dad.

  ‘Shukran. Thank you,’ they each say to me in turn.

  Selma comes out with a plate of biscuits. She puts them on the table without offering the guests any, and runs back into the house. I pick up the plate and hand it round. Each uncle takes a biscuit. They carry on talking, and repeating themselves.

  Back in the kitchen Mama is preparing the tea tray.

  ‘They are talking about Uncle Omar,’ I say. ‘What if it isn’t Uncle Omar in the coffin?’

  ‘Of course it will be. They’re just talking a lot of nonsense. They have nothing better to do. There is absolutely no reason for someone else to be in the coffin.’

  Mama refills the sugar bowl, and then looks at me and says, ‘Remember last year when there was that terrible storm in the night? We had to get you all up and then quickly carry the beds onto the verandah before we were all soaked. Remember what happened to Uncle Omar on his houseboat?’

  I’ve heard this story before, but it is good to hear it again. I smile and say, ‘I can’t remember properly.’

  Mama checks the kettle on the stove before continuing. ‘Uncle Omar was fast asleep inside his houseboat and not even the thunder woke him. As the rain poured down, the water on the river rose really fast, and the moorings came loose and the houseboat floated down the river. He said afterwards that he dreamt the house was rocking.’

  Mama is now polishing the teacups and saucers with a clean tea towel and stacking them on the tray. ‘The houseboat went all the way past the bridge. Luckily it didn’t hit any of the bridge supports, it just drifted on the current for miles. By early the next morning it had wedged itself on the riverbank by a small village. The villagers had never seen anything like it, and they thought it was something sent by a shaytaan or evil spirit. Uncle Omar woke up when he heard people shouting, and looked out of his bedroom window. He saw a completely different view to the one he expected!’