Chapter 25

The docking of the wheat ship was the biggest event in Sa’ An, but nobody ever knew exactly when it would occur. If the boat had been as regular as the sun or the moon, the people would certainly have abandoned all other ways of calibrating the year and begun to mark time by its arrival. As it was, however, the only captains who were willing to sail into the harbour were owners of old and decrepit vessels, which often arrived days, if not weeks, late; and the hungry citizens had no other choice but to continue to cross through the numbers on their calendars and hope. But whenever it happened, the day on which food arrived was known as Deliverance Day. Usually, thirty six or forty eight hours beforehand, a rumour would blow through the city like a windstorm and the countdown would begin, as anxious people waited for the cheap flour to hit the markets—bread for another week. The day the charity boat docked seemed to take on more significance than even their holy day; which although it came more often, didn’t seem to provide quite the same sustenance.

Fareeha crossed through her numbers, counting off the days, waiting. But unlike every other person in the city she wasn’t praying that the next Deliverance Day would hurry along; and she didn’t circle the nineteen on her calendar when the rumour at last blew through the city that the wheat ship was on its approaches to the harbour.

Whenever Mrs. Sharwalla caught her outside struggling with the pump or with a bucket of cloudy water, she would lean over the fence and whoop: ‘What ever is wrong with you, my girl?’ Fareeha would grimace and look up, whereupon Mrs. Sharwalla would pull away and try to hide any new bruises or scratches inflicted on her by Farooq. She often passed over lumps of stale bread, a cupful of dried beans, charcoal, or the remains of a goat-eaten tomato. ‘Now don’t you go hungry, my girl,’ she would addend to her generosity. On other occasions she would narrow her one eye and relate a story of having seen ‘that nasty man’ down in the city, ‘riding around in his Jeep as if he owns the place.’ She would never directly ask Fareeha why he had visited her house but would always offer a hushed warning to keep away from him.

On the seventeenth as the hearts in those around her lifted, Fareeha plodded down into the city, sullen, with half a mind to go and see the harbourmaster; but the closer she got the more she resisted; and after an hour or so of indecisive wandering she found herself far from the harbour—in the city’s once-magnificent spice market.

Although few fresh spices had been seen there for a long time, you could still find a variety of dried and otherwise preserved extracts, condiments and flavourings—all at inflated prices. Fareeha’s empty purse, however, wouldn’t allow her to improve on the taste of her daily ration of beans and bread in any way and she would have to remain satisfied with her own ragged garden and Mrs. Sharwalla’s leftovers to provide added flavour—not that her palette was anything but simple in its requirements.

She pulled up in front of a table, upon which sat a lone box of packaged cardamoms, and suddenly wondered what she was doing there. Her mind went back to the previous evening’s conversation over the garden fence and she remembered Mrs. Sharwalla telling her about a coriander stall, whose owner had mysteriously come into a few bales of black, medium-cut Turkish and was undercutting the going rate by as much as twenty percent. ‘Farooq can take it through a hookah,’ she had said with a hand to her patched eye. ‘It’s not so strong that way—he doesn’t cough and it seems to keep him calm.’

Fareeha moved away from the cardamom and began to look around for the coriander stall. It wasn’t difficult to find: it sat alone in a corner and attracted a steady stream of customers. At a nearby table, festooned with bunches of dried onions, she hovered, fingering the produce but keeping an oblique eye on the brisk business of the coriander merchant.

Without warning, a buzz went up around her and several pairs of eyes darted in the opposite direction. Her own eyes instinctively followed and fell upon the sallow figure of the Englishman, who was bumping his ungainly way directly towards her. She turned back into the dried onions and dropped her head, her fingers checking the knot of her headscarf.

She peeked and from the corner of her right eye saw that he had pulled up, right in the middle of the throughway, like an alert animal, suddenly aware of its next meal. To her and everyone else’s continuing amazement he stood tall, cocked his head, pushed out his chin, and seemed to test the air with his scrunched up nose, unperturbed by the dozens of pairs of eyes to which he had become a spectacle. He sniffed two or three times and then began to look around him. Fareeha quickly looked back into the onions hoping he hadn’t seen her. She knew what had distracted him: the aroma of the exotic. Somebody nearby was burning frankincense.

Phipps soon abandoned his surveillance and moved on behind her. Fareeha adjusted the position of her head and continued to follow him form the corner of her left eye; and then, to her surprise, he stopped in front of the coriander. He held back and missed his turn in the queue several times as silent words passed through his moving lips. She saw both his hands roll into fists just above where his voluminous khaki shorts billowed out from his hairy legs. He took a few deep breaths, stepped forward, and ejected the local word for tobacco—inelegantly and at the front of a sentence of near gibberish that she could not understand. The stallholder understood well enough, held up a handful of pigtail tobacco, and mouthed a figure that broke all the well-formulated rules of haggling.

Fareeha released a lungful of air through her pouted lips and glared at the coriander seller. She then pulled the dusty bottom of her dress from the market floor and stomped up behind Phipps, who was by this time reaching into his shorts for money. She put a hand onto his arm and tore into the merchant.

Phipps freed his arm and jumped away in one swift movement. It took him a moment to realise what was happening, and then after clearing his throat he said: ‘Mrs Azziz! Fancy seeing you here.’

Fareeha tried to hold his eyes but they wandered before she could feel anything but their chill. ‘Mister Phipps,’ she said, ‘you must know the price of things before you go shopping for them; this place is full of sharp hands and cheats.’ She glared again at the coriander seller, a small man who now cowered behind his table, wiping his palms on his white apron.

The look of shock had slid from Phipps’s face. ‘And the price of tobacco is . . . ?’

‘A lot less than he was trying to steal from you. Why don’t you let me handle this.’ She scolded the man again, made him weigh out an exact quantity of the best leaves he had, and ordered him give her a pinch extra for being so dishonest in the first place. She then took several coins from Phipps’s upturned palm and paid.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said with a grin when they were well away from the aroma of onions and coriander.

‘And I wouldn’t have thought that you would have known the going rate of tobacco in the market,’ Phipps retorted—without a grin.

‘Oh . . . but my husband smokes,’ Fareeha replied quickly before adding, ‘all the men here do.’

‘Right,’ Phipps said gravely.

Fareeha caught another whiff of exotica. ‘Frankincense,’ she said, ‘can you smell it?’

‘Mmm; I was wondering what that was; it’s . . . enchanting.’

‘Here, try this,’ Fareeha held out a very small pinch of dark resin. ’It’s from the frankincense—Sa’ An’s chewing gum.’

Phipps popped it into his mouth and began to chew; and then a surprising thing happened: his cast look of fear and hatred seemed to drop away for a second and a fleeting grin played over his face. His next words, ones of gratitude, carried the feint aroma of eucalyptus.

‘Don’t mention it,’ Fareeha said. ‘Oh, I should tell you, I went over to the university to look for the professor.’

Phipps stopped chewing , his face expressionless again.

‘But I found no more than you did! No sign of him, I’m afraid. Only a few of the older staff are still there and they have never heard of him—I asked several people.’

‘That was very kind of you,’ Phipps said in an emotionless voice.

‘I could try again . . .’

Phipps at once shook his head from side to side and then began to chew again. It was a while before he spoke. ‘Any idea when you’ll be crossing the Gulf?’

Fareeha bit her bottom lip. ‘No . . . it’s a bit out of my hands actually . . . but perhaps very soon.’

‘Good. They are ready to fly over the equipment; I just need to let them know which port . . .’

‘Yes . . . I’ll tell you as soon as I know. I really do want to help. ’

‘Thanks. I just hope my telephone holds out; it’s supposed to keep me in touch from anywhere in the world, but it doesn’t seem to like this place—the dry air, I suppose.’ Phipps paused and drew the nail of a forefinger over the stubble on his chin. ‘I almost forgot,’ he said, with a return of gravity, ‘Hussein is looking for you—the harbour man.’

Fareeha felt a small butterfly take flight in her stomach. She blinked at Phipps. ‘Oh . . . you saw him?’

‘Seems that I left something down there at the harbour, not sure how that was; anyway, he dropped by the Department of Water Resources to tell me and asked me if I’d seen you. I think he was on his way to the bathhouse.’ He took off his hat to scratch at something underneath.

‘Your ears!’ Fareeha said, looking at their red tips.

‘And my damned nose,’ he said, bringing his hand down to its shiny surface. ‘Ought to be careful; the trouble is there’s so much to do out there.’

‘It’s really wonderful what you’re doing for us,’ Fareeha said, staring into Phipps’s blue eyes. She looked for a second to long then broke away. ‘but are you sure you’ll be alright? I mean it’s not just the sun that’s dangerous out there.’

‘It’s nothing, really.’ Phipps replaced his hat, nodded at Fareeha, and then began to gangle back in the direction he had come.

‘I’ll let you . . .’ He was already too far away and she stopped. She waited for a moment, watching his head bob away through the half-empty market, then raised fingers of her right hand to the scar on her forehead.