The Cry of the Dove: A Novel (9 page)

`They shouldn't be watering the vine trees,' I said.

`Why?' Francoise asked.

`Because vine trees don't need much water. If you want a sweet crop then you shouldn't water them much.'

Her dark eyes were smiling when she said, `Of course, you used to be a farmer.'

`And a shepherdess,' I said.

The pots of African violets and wandering Jews were my only contact with farming now They stood like a question mark on the windowsill of Swan Cottage. I cleaned them, fertilized them and over-watered them.When you lived in this street a garden was out of the question. You were besieged by the railway and the garages. At least I had a good view of the river and the hills; a good view of other people's gardens. There was a house in New North Road with a big, beautiful garden. At night, when there were no people around, I would stand on the pavement and stick my head through the hedge to have a look at their seasonal flower beds. They changed the design every three months. You would be passing by and you would smell honeysuckle, lilac, heather or jasmine depending on the season.

I woke up early in the morning, washed and changed, had group breakfast with the nuns, then went for a long walk, down the valley, then up the mountain. My only companions were the amulet hanging around my neck and my reed pipe. I would watch how the sea woke up when touched by the morning light, its colours changing from grey, to coral, to gold, then to turquoise like my grandmother's necklace, which was a string of beads encased by silver. The sun would fight the darkness of the sea. The sunlight would win the day, filling the air with light. The dark-blue sea, exhausted, grew mossy green around the edges. That was the time to join the nuns in the vineyard. I walked towards them, playing their French hymn on my pipe. `Oh! My saviour! Oh! My beloved!' they chanted together. I rolled up my sleeves and the ends of my trousers, kicked off my shoes and barefoot began working in the farm. `Look at her,' Francoise said, `she weeds like a whirlwind.'

The sky was blue, with a few patches of cloud. I snatched my handbag then rushed out of the house, slamming the door behind me. I wanted Liz to know that I had left Swan Cottage. My friend Gwen, who usually expected me Sunday mornings, lived in number eighteen. The door bore a brass plate with the inscription `Docendo Discimus', which was given to Gwen by her colleagues on her retirement. She had explained that it was Latin and it meant `We learn by teaching'.

As soon as I moved in with Elizabeth I began walking by the river every Sunday. Once I was crossing the street and saw an old lady bending down to pick up her walking stick, so I picked it up and gave it to her. `Thank you," she said and tidied up her coiffed hair.

`It's nothing,' I said and smiled.

`Do you live around here?' she asked.

`Yes, number fifteen," I said.

`Are you walking to the river?'

`Yes,' I said.

`Do you mind if I join you?' she said and smiled.

That afternoon we did not stop talking.We talked about the colour of the rainbow arched above the river, Gwen's dog that was so old and ill it had to be put down, my boss Max and absent friends.

As soon as I knocked on the door I was able to hear the shuffling of her feet and the fumbling with chain and key. `Good morning, beautiful,' I said and kissed Gwen on the cheek.

She smiled, pushed her glasses up her nose, and hugged me. `Come in, Salina. Right on time for tea and biscuits.'

I sat on the kitchen chair and watched Gwen, overweight and aproned, making tea. She used to be the headmistress of a comprehensive in Leeds, which she described as an ugly, beautiful, paradoxical and industrial city, and decided to retire in Devon. She bought this semidetached house, dumped all her belongings in a hired van and drove down the motorway.

`Gwen, why don't you sit down? I'll make the tea.'

`No, I will become dependent on you. Can't have that," she said in her sing-song Welsh accent.

Flushed and exhausted she put the tray on the kitchen table. When she wiped her glasses with the apron and sighed, I knew that I could start talking. `I brought you some French strawberry jam and a George Eliot book.'

`Oh! How kind of you. But you shouldn't bring me presents. Not with your salary.'

`Look, the jam is a present but the book is not. You asked me to buy you Daniel Deronda, remember?'

She smiled then produced a five-pound note from the pocket of her apron. The kitchen was cold and dark with just one window overlooking the railway. We sat there sipping our tea and chewing our coconut biscuits. Her son Michael was always the centre of our conversation on Sunday. Michael has done this, Michael has done that. `He's sent me a postcard, look. Tour Eiffel, but upside down and wearing trainers. He's got a new girlfriend,' she said, tidying her short grey hair with her trembling hand.

`Really? Is she nice?'

`She must be. They've gone to Paris together.'

He had gone to France, but coming to Exeter was too costly for him. To stop myself from saying something that might upset her I blurted, `He must be happy.'

`Yes, Salina, he must be,' she said and tucked the ends of her short grey hair behind her ears.

When I got pregnant with you, Layla darling, my mother begged me to leave the village before my brother found out. `He will shoot you between the eyes with his English rifle. You must go, daughter, before you get killed.' She ran her rough fingers over my face, murmured verses of the Qur'an, kissed me then pushed me away from her. Miss Nailah held my hand and pulled me away. Hand in hand we walked to the police station.

Now I live in Great Britain. I have a job, a car, a husband and a large house. I am rich, so rich I could pay for your university education. One day you will see inc right in front of you. I am sure that my heart would recognize you, would single you out even if you were among hundreds of children.

We worked in the vineyard for hours then the whistle of Mother Superior told us that it was time for lunch. We gathered in the middle of the vineyard around a built-in wooden table laden with food. I would wash the mud off my hands, get a plate and join the queue. We ate freshly baked bread, mountain tomato, green peppers and goats' cheese with thyme and olive oil. I ate quickly with my hands, pushing the slices of tomatoes into my mouth. The nuns would laugh at me. `Nobody is chasing you with a stick in his hand, eat slowly,' Francoise said.

`Shwayy, shwayy?' I pretended not to understand her Arabic.

She would smile.

`South-east of here, you said?'

`Yes' She began collecting the empty plates and putting them on the table.

When the seagulls soared overhead we knew that it was time to go back to work and leave them the leftovers.

`Take me to the sitting room?' Gwen asked feebly. I held her hand and helped her legs, stiff with arthritis, up the step between the kitchen and the sitting room. When she finally settled in her chair, I gave her the book which would keep her busy for a few days. `Look what I have knitted for your Layla.' She spread a small white baby jacket on her blanketed knees. I looked speechless at the intricate pattern of flowers and stars. It must have taken her months to weave it with one needle. `But she must be sixteen by now But, of course, how silly of me!'

Holding her ageing hands I looked for the familiar in her blue eyes, trembling lips and lavender scent. Running my fingers on her green protruding veins my fluttering heart settled and I was able to hold back my tears.

`There was, there was not, in the oldest of times, a young girl called Jubayyna. They called her that because she was as white as goats' cheese. She had dark hair, tomato-red cheeks and big eyes. She used to play in the yard with the hens, goats and camels. They all loved Jubayyna. One day when she was chasing a dog the evil giant snatched her, flung her on his back and took her prisoner in his far-off castle. One of her camels followed her, and stood in the valley surrounding the high castle singing:

`The camel shouted and screamed. Jubayyna cried and cried until her tears flooded the valley surrounding the castle' Then my mother suddenly stopped talking.

`Mother, what happens next?' I gasped.

`Her camel might save her,' she said, hugged me, kissed me then covered me with the white sheepskin rug.

After I did the washing-up and tidied the kitchen I kissed Gwen on the cheek as always and left. I walked up the side street and continued walking on the main road, ignoring the footpath made especially for pedestrians. What if I got run over by a lorry? Would anyone anywhere shed a tear? My hands were trembling when I filled in my donor card. Give any part of my body to anyone who needs it after my death. Get in touch with ... My family did not know my whereabouts and I did not know the whereabouts of my daughter. I scanned the list of people I knew in this country: Parvin, Miss Asher, Liz, Minister Mahoney, my boss Max. `In case of emergency contact Gwen Clayton, 18 King Edward Street,' I wrote. If I died, Gwen wouldn't be able to cope and would ask her son Michael to help her, so my death might bring them closer.

Miss Asher, one of the Little Sisters, the English one, who spoke holding her mouth tight, sat on the bedside trying to convince me in her broken Arabic why I should go with her to Britain and leave the Little Sisters Ailiyya convent in Lebanon. I was happy there.

They had got me a sewing machine and I spent my mornings working in the vineyard, and my afternoons making pillowcases, robes, underwear, petticoats, belts, lamp covers and collars. I copied anything they brought from France. I sewed and sewed, then at sunset, I took my pipe and walked to my favourite spot at the very top of the mountain where I blew happy tunes watching the sun sink into the water and listening to the jingling of cow bells and the bleating of sheep. The kerosene lamps were lit one by one in the valley. It reminded me of my village Hima, my mother and my teacher Miss Nailah. She no doubt would swim out of the castle to safety and then her patient camel would carry her home.

Looking at the wooden bowl full of grapes sitting firmly on the wide windowsill, I said to the English lady, `No, I am not going anywhere, miss, I am happy here.' Arianne, the Mother Superior, tried to talk to me about Jesus, who died to save all humanity. I asked her not to talk to me about God. She stopped, but remained kind and understanding. They stripped me of everything: my dignity, my heart, my flesh and blood. My mother's face was lit up with love when she told me the story of Jubayyna. She kept telling me that I was better than everyone else until I believed her, then I fell, and fell. Even the camel knew the meaning of friendship and ties.

Whenever I walked to town up New North Road, I passed by the big old white house next to the tennis club, my favourite because of its spacious garden. I stuck my head through the hedge to have a look at the neat flower beds. A big apple tree stood in the middle, its trunk covered with ivy. The white lace curtains of the old small windows fluttered in the breeze. Suddenly, I realized that the black shadow near the gate was a Rottweiler so I offered it my head. It began jumping up and barking so I closed my eyes hoping that it would wrench my flesh strip by strip, that it would gouge my eyes out with its black paws, that it would paralyse me with one bite of its scissor jaws. `Stop it, Raider!' a woman shouted from the upper-floor window and I missed the chance of ending it all.

One morning a tired and serious-looking Francoise came to see me. It was still early, and I was lying in bed, trying to decide whether the shriek I heard was that of a seagull or a raven. If it were a raven some kind of parting was about to take place.

`I must talk to you, Salma.'

I sat up then smiled a good morning to her.

She was gazing at her feet when she said, `Khairiyya sent me a letter this morning saying that your family has found out that you have escaped from prison. Your brother Mahmoud is looking for you.'

Mahmoud? When I was young he used to buy me Turkish delights, but a few years later he started yanking my hair with his thin brown fingers. Mother used to watch him in distress. I sat up.

`Sister Asher, who is one of us, wants you to go with her to Britain.'

I covered my arms with the white sheets.

`You will be safer there.'

I wanted to cover my head with the quilt and just lie still in the darkness.

She rubbed her left eye and said, `We cannot take any chances. A policeman has visited Khairiyya recently and asked her about the whereabouts of all the girls we managed to smuggle out. You must go with Miss Asher to England.'

`Hinglaand? Fayn hinglaand?'

`It is far enough,' said Francoise and rubbed her left eye. If the left eye fluttered then parting was upon us. She placed her long wooden rosary around her neck then pulled the tassel down.

`La ma widi hinglaand,' I said and hugged her.

`I know you don't want to go, but you'll learn to like it, habibti,' she said.

The grey concrete building of Exeter Public Library looked like army barracks, but its glass windows gleamed in the warm light of the sun. When I opened the door I was met with a hushed polite silence so I cleared my voice and said to the middle-aged librarian, `I would like to join the library,' but my `o's came out all wrong. I was afraid of being turned down. She looked f o r a form. A leaflet warning against AIDS, `Positive women: call us .. .'was pinned to the noticeboard. I waited for the librarian, who was rummaging through the drawers, to find an excuse to deny me membership. You are an alien, we have no national insurance number for you; you cannot get in. `But I am not an indefinite-leave-to-remain holder, I am not a temporary-visa holder like them Albanians, I am a British subject,' I repeated like a mantra, `I am a British citizen.' I swore allegiance to the Queen and her descendants. Flushed and embarrassed, she produced a form for me to fill in. I was so grateful to be given membership, to be treated like them, that I dropped the form and the pen on her shiny black shoes.