Kauthar Read online

  At the Gare du Nord she says goodbye to Liz and Jane, who are heading to Rome as planned.

  ‘I will see you back in Norwich,’ Lydia says.

  In the small hotel just behind the Sacré-Cœur she changes to a single room. The following morning flowers are delivered – four lilac hydrangea heads – and black lace underwear that fits perfectly, even the bra.

  At the end of the month, the month of Parisian affairs, Claude has to pack and catch up with his family in Provence. He says to Lydia, ‘Please move to London, so that we can remain lovers for longer than this month. I am in London on business every two weeks.’ He throws out his bait. He is a seasoned and skilled hunter. ‘I have connections in television there and can get you a job.’

  Her mother’s voice starts to break: ‘Listen to me, I only want the best for you. What are you doing? Your friends are finishing off their teaching training. Why not you? And why go to London? It’s too far away. There’s a lot of crime there. I will be so scared thinking about you, I won’t be able to sleep at night.’ Big tears are running down her cheeks.

  Lydia puts an arm around her mother. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll see, I’ll become a famous TV presenter. I’ll earn enough money to travel back and forth, no problem.’ She sits down next to her mother and takes her hand and strokes it gently.

  And to her father she says, ‘Dad, will you be proud of me if I become a famous TV presenter?’

  ‘Teaching is a better job for a woman. Your mother used to help in the classroom when you were small,’ he replies, and presses the button on his stopwatch again.

  He had pressed it to stop and now he presses it to continue, because it is important that he keeps his time. When he was stationed with the army in Germany he ran the same distance on similar terrain – boggy marsh and moor – in 53 minutes 7 seconds with ease and no strain. He now often finds himself in the region of 58 minutes. This is unacceptable. He needs to intensify his training. As long as he remains under 58. That’s a good time and many of the young soldiers nowadays would struggle to come close. They lift weights, look the part, but he can still outrun them. Stamina! That’s what’s needed. Where is your stamina? And his right thumb presses down on the button, the watch starts ticking and Lydia knows the short interlude during which her father sees to his other duties, such as family, is over.

  For a moment she hesitates, her glance wandering across the lake to the right. The water is violet and the sky above shines watery blue. She steps off the path and into the bog, shifts her weight on to one leg, presses her foot into the moss that is filled with water like a wet sponge. And her trainer is soaked within seconds. They have always lived near moors. Her father loves moors. It’s good training terrain. As a child Lydia never trusted the spongy moss, thought maybe you could drown in it, even though her father assured her otherwise. Or perhaps corpses lay hidden in it and would grab her by the ankle with their white bony hands to pull her down towards them. When they were stationed near Bremen, her father used to run on the Teufelsmoor – the devil’s moor. For Lydia the name was proof enough that the ghosts of dead people were living in its depths, or at least corpses had been dumped there once upon a time and might resurface. At school she learned that Teufelsmoor comes from the colloquial German Duvelsmoor, and that duvel refers to barren land because nothing except peat and cotton grass grows there. But she still doesn’t trust moors. Because names aren’t just hollow signs without meaning.

  She retrieves her foot from the mossy sponge to catch up with the former competitive gymnast who nearly made it in 1960 to Rome and in 1964 to Tokyo, the ex-army officer, her father.

  In the back garden of their house, where he installed a pull-up bar, she is now watching him doing his daily fifty pull-ups. Then he smiles at her and changes his grip, turns the other way and swings back and forth. He lets go of the bar in a backwards movement, turns 180 degrees in mid-air and lands on both feet, knees and torso slightly bent. And as he is about to straighten up he takes both arms backwards, then brings them forward with a single smooth, powerful movement and uses that momentum to help him jump forward and grab the bar once more. Ten further pull-ups. Then bar release. ‘That’s enough for today,’ he says with a happy smile on his face. He picks up the stopwatch he placed on a tree trunk and he presses the button once more, because next he will jog around the garden for four minutes to cool down.

  It’s now Lydia’s turn to jump up at the bar: her hands grip it and she tries to pull herself up, her legs kicking the air as though she is swimming underwater, but the bar slips from her hands.

  ‘I am happy to talk about marriage,’ says Kauthar.

  Rafiq smiles and replies, ‘I am a Shiite and you are a Shiite. I know that I want to marry you and stay with you forever. You are the woman I have searched for all my life.’

  We are still standing underneath the ash trees in the empty square. Since he called my name perhaps one or two minutes have passed, as measured by time elapsed on this earth. At a deeper level, though, time is measured differently and on this scale an eternity has gone by since we first met. But in fact it is only our bodies that have stood here. Our souls have already travelled together to the end of time and back. And now this very moment we have arrived here at this spot and it makes total sense that he has spoken these words. Only for an outsider would his sentences appear as if plucked out of thin air, illogical, without context – even silly. But not for him or for me. For neither Rafiq nor Kauthar.

  ‘Still,’ he continues, ‘I can’t blame you if at the moment you think, What does this man want? I don’t know him. How does he dare to talk to me? That’s why I want to propose a zawaj muta’ – a temporary marriage. On your terms. So you have time to get to know me.’ He closes his mouth. Looks at me.

  I say, ‘OK.’

  I don’t know how to continue. A temporary marriage on my terms – that means I can set the time limit, ask for a dowry and also decide if, during this time, we will have physical contact.

  I smile and say, ‘I don’t know what else to say.’

  He, too, smiles. No. He laughs. His hands are still buried in the pockets of his beige trousers. His shoulders are twitching, then his entire body starts to shake with laughter.

  ‘I am so happy that you agree. I haven’t slept for three nights.’

  He holds me with his gaze and his torso leans slightly forward. I would love to touch him.

  ‘Mabruk! Mabruk! Congratulations. Congratulations.’

  Startled, we shoot apart, as if we have stood far too close for far too long. My heel hits a tree trunk. Mrs Alim waves at us.

  ‘Mabruk! Mabruk!’

  She stops a couple of metres away, panting. She catches her breath and lifts her right hand in front of her mouth and produces an ululation.

  ‘I can tell from your faces – it’s happy news.’

  ‘Ya tant, what are you doing here?’

  Rafiq throws a quick, worried glance in my direction. He looks like a little boy caught in the act of committing a misdemeanour. Later he admits he was horrified that in that very moment he might have lost everything, because Mrs Alim’s appearance looked as if it was prearranged.

  ‘I couldn’t stay at home and not know what was happening between the two of you. Mr Alim never tells me anything. And in any case, he’s probably still upstairs and hasn’t got a clue. So I decided I had to find out for myself.’

  Before I even have time to greet her, she rushes towards me and hugs me.

  ‘Mabruk. Mabruk.’ She pinches my cheeks. ‘You are a beautiful couple. I will leave the two of you alone now.’

  Swiftly she turns on her heel and waddles in the direction of the uni building. Despite the weight of her body, her short legs and the panting, she climbs the stairs to the entrance with surprising agility. She disappears behind the glass doors.

  ‘I didn’t know she’d come. Honestly,’ Rafiq says in a concerne
d tone.

  Now it is my turn to laugh. And I feel happy and warm and would love Mrs Alim to be my mother. I could then run after her and ask her what I’m supposed to do next, what terms I should request. I have never entered into a zawaj muta’ before.

  Rafiq pulls the right hand out of his pocket and hands me a business card.

  ‘Here is my card. Please call me when you are ready. I will wait. Ma’salama, ya Kauthar. Goodbye, Kauthar.’

  He turns and heads in the opposite direction. Without looking at the card, I put it into the pocket of my jacket and only take it out again once I am sitting on the Tube. Rafiq Ismail, Anaesthetist. Then his home address in Tufnell Park – one Tube stop away from me.

  At home I search in my books to find out what to do and pray to Allah for instruction.

  I remain on my knees, waiting in silence.

  And Claude throws his head back and is laughing with his mouth open, his blazer open, and his big belly shaking. He is laughing at Lydia after he has asked about her first childhood memory. So she told him about the clouds. How she would lie in her bed and stare out of the window for hours and choose the biggest, most luxuriant cloud. She would jump on it and travel far away. And when the cloud began to dissolve, she’d jump on to the next one. But sometimes she’d stay where she was because she had managed to attach herself to another cloud and bolster the one she was sitting on. For days Lydia would wonder if it were possible to live on a cloud. She wasn’t concerned about building a house, finding something to eat – all these mundane concerns wouldn’t matter if you lived on a cloud. Rather, she was wondering if she could float with and on the cloud, lie down on it, sleep there peacefully. If the cloud would hold her, never letting her go, so that she needn’t fear it might dissolve beneath her. On the other hand, she was also looking for a cloud that she could leave if she wanted to, a cloud that wouldn’t get upset if she decided to change. That was important to the girl. She didn’t want clouds to be angry with her and dissolve in rage.

  Claude is snorting with laughter. ‘This is your first childhood memory?’

  They are sitting in a chic London restaurant. Wood-panelled walls with black and white photographs of famous people who have dined here over the years. The photos are marked by signatures and thank-you notes. The waiters wear uniforms and from the street it is not possible to look inside the restaurant. Lydia will come here many more Thursday evenings.

  ‘C’est mignon.’ He finally shuts his mouth and leans forward across the table and strokes Lydia’s cheek. ‘You are sweet. And beautiful.’ His hand moves underneath her chin. The smile disappears from his lips. ‘Et je t’aime.’

  She feels her chin lying in his hand. For a moment she is confused. She didn’t expect the last sentence. Even though Claude called her that afternoon at work. And at first she didn’t understand he was calling from London. He wasn’t supposed to be here until next week.

  ‘I couldn’t wait any longer. When can I see you?’

  ‘Are you in London?’

  ‘Give me your address and I will pick you up tonight at nine.’

  Claude doesn’t reply to questions. He is arrogant and she doesn’t need to say yes. Even though he has now installed her here. Lydia thinks, Il m’a installée. For days, these words have been in her head. She’s not working in a TV studio. It didn’t work out, Claude said. Instead he found her a job as an assistant in an estate agency, where she makes a lot of coffee and sorts through papers. She won’t stay there long, she thinks to herself. And she hasn’t told her parents that she isn’t working in TV – yet.

  And she says yes to Claude, because she feels special and loved and honoured that he is already visiting her, that he couldn’t wait.

  ‘The fact that you are now living in London will make it all so much easier for us,’ he says.

  ‘You don’t know if I want to continue with this affair. Now that I am here in London I might dump you,’ she replies.

  He looks at her silently.

  ‘You want this affair. I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because you have nothing to lose.’

  ‘And you? Why do you want this affair?’

  ‘Because it could lose me everything.’

  So that’s it. A game, where she has nothing to lose and can only win. At least, posh restaurants and nice hotels. She doesn’t love him, and is convinced that she won’t ever love him either. He has kids and a wife whom he won’t leave. His family back in Paris serves as a limit, a barrier for her feelings, beyond which she can’t, and doesn’t want to, venture. She needs these limits, so that her feelings are kept in check, so that she doesn’t imagine that he is the love of her life; the man with whom she will share the rest of her life, who will save her, like a knight on a white horse, who will recognize her for the person she is and through whom she will fulfil her real potential. Lydia accepts the Je t’aime as a clever move by him in the game, their game, Claude and Lydia’s affair game. And within the logic of the game his words are sincere. He isn’t lying. And she tells him about her cloud and he laughs, laughs at her, and she thinks, You are fat and arrogant and could be my father. And he says, I love you, and he kisses her across the table. For a moment she keeps her eyes open and sees his closing, feels his hand behind her ear, on her cheek. And behind him she sees the black and white celebrities and imagines, as she always imagined when she was a small girl, that proper kissing means turning the head from left to right and then from right to left. He gently bites her lower lip and she closes her eyes and senses his soft, full lips and his tongue in her mouth, and thinks, This is a game and I have nothing to lose.

  I call Rafiq the next day and leave a message on his answer ­machine. I would like to enter a zawaj muta’ for one month and should there be any physical advances, they will come from me. The dowry is up to him. But as soon as I put down the receiver I am overcome by doubts. Was I too formal, too business-like? As I am sitting on the Tube on my way to work I try to calm myself. I try to convince myself that the manner in which I spoke was God’s intention. All of this is out of my control. This is not my path but the one God has chosen for me. I have to follow it, wherever it may lead. With or without Rafiq. My egotistical self wants this man as my husband because I desire him. He brought Rafiq to me after I had searched for months for a husband and had asked my sisters, who introduced me to their brothers and relatives.

  ‘I am pregnant,’ Lydia says to Claude.

  Two days ago, when the pink line appeared in the little plastic window of the pregnancy test, she was not surprised. It was an intended accident. She knows what she is doing. She worked at the estate agency for a year and then she found a job at the London Library. And every second Thursday Claude comes to London and they go out for a meal and afterwards to his hotel. When she is with Claude she wants to be his wife and she is convinced that for the last two and a half years she’s just been waiting for the moment to become his wife. However, when she’s back in her bedsit, she knows that she has to finish this affair, end this game, because the outcome will no longer be in her favour. She is losing. And so she plays her trump card. She falls pregnant. It’s an accident. She didn’t plan it. But a tiny door in the back of her mind stood open for this final move. She knows Claude will not leave his wife, he won’t marry her. But now she will be his mistress with a child. His secret child. Only he and she will know about it. And of course the people she knows in London. But they won’t know who the father is. And his wife will not know about the child either, as she doesn’t even know about Lydia’s existence. Lydia, however, knows everything about the other woman. Claude talks about her, complains about her, is bored with her. But he feels duty-bound to stay with her. He comes to Lydia because he wants to. She is his secret life. And now they will share a secret. Lydia will give birth to their child and the quest for a purpose in her life will thus become redundant.

  And she tell
s Claude that she is pregnant. She is lying on top of him, her cheek is resting on his naked chest, her legs are open wide above his limp penis. It is Friday morning, five to seven. She can see the time on his watch on the bedside table. She wanted to tell him last night, but then she didn’t. And now, even before she has finished pronouncing these three little words, she realizes it was the wrong moment.

  ‘Who by?’ he asks. Sleepily.

  She watches the big hand as it moves on to the thin line before the number eleven. Claude loves traditional watches. She is still waiting for his chest to be lifted by laughter, although she already knows that this won’t happen.

  ‘Who by?’ she eventually echoes his question.

  ‘Yes, who by?’

  He pushes her off his belly and sits up, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed. Lydia sees his back and a thin red line, which she must have drawn with her fingernail last night.

  ‘By you. There is no one else.’

  Her reply meets his back, then his bum as he stands up. She is looking at the watch once again. The big hand has moved on to three minutes to seven. Two more thin lines, then one final jump on to the big fat line and it will be seven o’clock. And she already knows that her life will be totally different at seven o’clock. She observers how Claude’s fingers close around his watch.

  ‘I thought you are taking the pill,’ he says.

  She can see his left wrist from the side. His right hand closes the locking mechanism. It shuts with a click.

  ‘It was an accident,’ she replies, as Claude walks into the bathroom. The door shuts.

  For a moment she lies still, then she gets up, dresses, in no hurry but without pausing in her stride. The air around her feels thick and is holding her upright. She takes her bag and leaves before Claude reappears from the bathroom. She wishes she would be angry with him. Kick against the closed bathroom door, crash her fists into it, throw her body against it until he opens up. And then scream at him, hurl herself at his huge fat body, tear his hair out, kick him between the legs until he starts reacting, defending himself, hitting her. Or until he squirms on the floor like a worm, and she will continue to boot him, right into his writhing, screaming body. His body, her body, it doesn’t matter who is beating and who is getting beaten – as long as her anger abides. She sees the images in her mind’s eye as she walks down the stairs: slowly, a step comes into view, then her foot, then the next step, then her other foot. An invisible glass bell jar ensures that she does not fall apart, is holding her together, in one piece, protects her and protects the world from her. No one can touch her and she can’t touch anyone.