silent night

The country was soulless. Cold. Literally and metaphorically. “You’re biased, Roza.” Her husband said, reprovingly. She shrugged. “I only generalise.”

And here she was again, pushing a child in a stroller, fighting the wind, verdant green scarf whipping behind her like a banner. She spent most of her time in the flat, eyes glued to the white screen, arranging and rearranging her thesis endlessly. Once a day she took the child out for a walk to get some fresh air. When she forgot, she felt so guilty she stuck one of her yellow notes on the pc as a reminder, with WALK MIRA! written on it in blue highlighter.

Mazin had looked amused when he saw it. “Do we have a dog?” he asked, with a slightly bemused expression. And then he’d plucked up Samira from her chair and put her in her stroller and found Ali and herded him out the door. She should have got some work done in the peace and quiet of the flat, but she found that she’d got used to the noise of her family around her, and when she tried to concentrate she realised she wanted to be outside with the wind in her face. So she’d turned on the TV and got a mug of coffee and nursed her resentment at her husband’s presumption, waiting for them to come back so she could put it all into words.

Yesterday Ali had thrown a snowball at the window of their red-bearded neighbour.

She’d heard the shouts from her room and got up from the chair for the first time since she’d sat down that morning to look out of her window, seeing the neighbour shaking his fist like an incensed fiery-haired Santa and Ali standing in the snow squawking back at him in Arabic, a parrot with bright striped hat and overalls in a white, pure field of snow.

Ali’s feud with the neighbour had begun almost as soon as they’d moved in and the neighbour had tramped up to complain about their noisy, uncivilised feet clomping over his head. Ali hadn’t helped matters by galloping through the rooms and gibbering like a baboon while the neighbour tried to lodge his complaint with the head of the household.

There was no point trying to made amends, really.

“You could try”, her husband had said, with a punctilious expression. She only looked at him when he said that, with a thin smile that conveyed her full, unspoken answer.

Her husband made himself unobtrusive, like a piece of a puzzle put into the wrong box, he survived by being indeterminate. Wherever he went he melded chameleon-like into the surroundings. Sometimes she despised him for it, sometimes she was forced, grudgingly, to admit that it was a useful talent. When the neighbour came to complain about Ali’s behaviour, her husband was half conciliating, half patronising. The neighbour’s restrained, angry words ran through the maze Mazin gave him, at every turn he agreed with everything their neighbour had to say. And then when it was all over and he had shut the door behind the neighbour’s departing back, he had ruffled Ali’s hair and tweaked his nose and sat down to watch the news.

But she was different. She couldn’t let things slide.

“It was Ali’s fault.” He pointed out lightly when he noticed her standing in the doorway staring at him with beady eyes and what he called her irritated mouth, a thin, zipped line.

“He knows. He won’t do it again. Will you?” Mazin asked.

Ali grinned and swung his head from side to side, exaggeratingly. He had his knees up, and sharp elbows out like the ears of a jug.

“It was only a snowball.” He said. “Not a stone. I didn’t break the window.” Mazin raised his eyebrows at her and smiled, just slightly. Samira gurgled and he caught her up and threw her up into the air.

Well, there was only a few months left and then they would leave this godforsaken country. She felt like wearing a label saying: HERE TEMPORARILY. With perhaps a cursive explanation beneath the frustrated capital letters. Like: Dear native inhabitants: I solemnly swear I really wouldn’t want to live in a snow globe for ever and ever amen. Her thoughts made her laugh to herself and Samira kicked her legs and crooned. “Your mother is going a little crazy, love.” Roza told her. But she was still thinking about it.

It’s the thesis, stupid, the explanation would say, if she had anyone to explain it all to. The sooner she can finish the sooner it’ll be over. But its taking a long time, and her confidence is shaky, and she’s not very sure she wants the end to come, after all, because she knows it can be much much much better, and she knows Mazin is not much good at constructive criticism. He prefers reassuring praise.

Dogs barked, a sudden flurry of noise, and then a high-pitched voice began to sing Silent Night, wobblingly, waveringly. She recognised the tune. Even at Christmas this place was dour. A dingy shopping centre, brightened up by cheap dull tinsel that fell apart at the slightest touch and fell to the floor in a glitzy winter parody of autumn. Eid was round the corner. She’d gone to the centre to pick up a few things yesterday, to push herself into brightening up the house and impose an appropriately festive atmosphere on their dour little flat. She’d walked home, the bags cutting red lines into her hand and the moon-faced blonde woman and her black dog were standing in the doorway as she came up. The woman had been leaning against the door, and straightened up a little when she saw her approach, as though she had been waiting for her, watching as she struggled up the snow-slippery path. Roza stopped by the door and put her booted foot on the brakes on Samira’s stroller to keep it from slipping down and caught her breath.

The woman had white-blond hair cut short to frame her face. A small fleeting look passed between them, like a humourless smile, or a cool greeting. The woman’s face was distantly familiar, not only because she was, or must be, a neighbour, but because it wore a familiar reserved expression, halfway between condescension and a strange, exasperated sort of kindness. It was the way she might look while cleaning up the mess her daughter had made with her food. Roza would have nodded and walked past, immediately, if it had been in any way possible to walk past. The dog’s head reached the woman’s hip, as she stood with her weight on one leg. She nudged him forward to block the door and stood now, with her head tilted to one side and a smile beginning to lift the edges of her lips.

She stepped forward, suddenly. “Do Mohammedans really think black dogs are devils?” The blonde woman asked, with her head tilted like that, not at all confrontational, not the slightest bit antagonistic.

And Roza had stood there frozen, her thoughts ticking over into fierce sharp words that could not escape the snowstorm of her fury and whirled ineffectually instead, and more words wallowing in a dictionary swamp, somewhere behind it all. Something white blacked out her mind. It sounded paradoxical, but that was how it was. She did not know how long she stood there, only that it was long enough for the snow to sting her face and melt on her gloves and cover her shoulders with fine white crystal dust. Then the inner door opened and their red-bearded neighbour’s mousy wife scurried out, and the woman turned and left. Her face was calm and still as the moon. It was all over quickly.

And when it was over, she realised that she was full up. She wanted nothing more to do with this perpetual winter time, and the little sparks of resentment and carefully fuelled anger that kept them all warm and barricaded inside. It wasn’t even hatred, just impersonal, straightforward animosity. That would do. She would carry it with her and leave it behind as she left.

11/07

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