Free Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel Page A

in the shadow of the wall. Beyond the wall, between the parked cars, boys play football in the street. Andrew is not happy about the sliding door. He no longer believes that the crime rate is low; he has heard some terrible stories. Someone he works with has advised him to block the track with a length of wood, so that it cannot be slid back from the outside, even if the handle is forced. He has done this.
    If Frances is willing to pry out this piece of wood—not easy because he has made it fit so exactly—she can draw back the door and—careful to close it behind her, to keep the insects out and the cold air in—she can stand under the shabby tree, and the wall which is a foot higher than her head. She can hear car engines revving up, and the children’s shouts, and sometimes the soft thud of the football against the bricks. When she goes inside and shuts the door these sounds still come to her, muffled, very faint, as if they happened last year.
    They have been out to dinner twice now, and to a party, and met a lot of people; they are becoming familiar with Jeddah cuisine, and with the strange but addictive taste of siddiqui and tonic. A telephone has been installed. The diary is kept less attentively, because her inner ear is attuned again to other people and the outside world. And yet, the first two weeks have changed her. Introspection has become her habit. There are things she was sure of, that she is not sure of now, and when her reverie is broken, and first unease and then fear become her habitual state of mind, she will have learned to distrust herself, to question her own perceptions, to be unsure—as she is unsure already—about the evidence of her own ears and the evidence of her own eyes.
     
     
    Within a day or two the unblocking of the hallway brought Yasmin to the door, gesturing gracefully behind her; I am from Flat 2, I hope you will come and have a cup of tea with me. Frances followed her across the hall. She felt dull and badly dressed in her limp cotton skirt. Yasmin’s glossy hair hung to her waist, and a gauzy veil floated about her shoulders. One slender arm from wrist to elbow was sheathed in gold bangles.
    She closed the door of Flat 2, swept off the veil, and handed it to her maid, who stood inside the doorway. “Put on the kettle,” she said to the woman. The maid scuttled away; a short, dark, low-browed woman, with a faintly pugilistic air.
    “She is from Sri Lanka,” Yasmin said. “She is not much use, but thank goodness I have got her. Raji calls so many people for dinner every night that I have no time for the baby.”
    “People don’t seem to have much domestic help here. It surprises me.”
    “In the grander households, of course, you will find it. But the Saudis are discouraging it now. They don’t like the foreign influence. Of course, it is a good point, these young girls come to the Kingdom as housemaids, and then they cause trouble.”
    “Do they?” Frances sat down, where she was bidden. “What sort of trouble?”
    “They get unhappy,” Yasmin said. “Because they have left children behind them at home. Also the Saudi men, you know, they find that these girls are not very moral.” The maid came in; put down the tea tray. Yasmin dismissed her with a nod. “Then the poor things are trying to commit suicide. You would like some of this Crawford’s shortbread?”
    “Thank you,” Frances said. She took a piece. Yasmin gave her another composed smile; poured tea. “How?” Frances said. “How do they commit suicide?”
    “They throw themselves from the balconies. Silly girls. But this one, I have got a reference for her. She is all right, I think.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “It is Shams.”
    Frances repeated it, tentatively. “I can’t quite get hold of it.”
    “Shams,” Yasmin said. “As in ‘Champs Elysées.’”
    “Oh, I see.”
    “Means ‘sunny.’” She tittered. “I do not find her a little ray of sunshine about my house. But Raji was six