Not even Ahmed had known that fear was so entrenched in Lizzie’s spirit. Perhaps that was why she had said no. She had convinced herself it was because she still believed in vows, chastity, loyalty, morality and all that crap from her childhood but perhaps it was because he hadn’t realised about the fear. She certainly hadn’t felt frigid with Ahmed. He was such a beautiful young man, younger than she was, and the sort of man whom the female students all noticed. Sitting in the central Agora on campus one day, she had overheard an exchange.
‘Wow, look at that!’
‘What?’
‘Over there, by the bookstore.’
‘Yes, that’s nice.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘No such luck, but I know who he is.’
‘Who? Who?’
‘Control your racing libido, darling, and wait in line.’
‘Come on, who is he?’
‘He’s an Arab.’
‘I don’t care if he’s a Martian. Who is he?’
‘Guest of the English department for six months. Single. Moslem. Charming. Every female he meets is convinced he thinks she’s marvellous and special. He’s got a way with him, you might say.’
‘He could have his way with me any day.’
‘As I said, darling, wait in line.’
It was true, of course; he did make Lizzie feel marvellous and special. She realised that was his way when he seemed to warm to her at that orientation meeting, but she didn’t care because she had been so nervous and so desperately relieved to find someone with whom she could talk and relax. She reminded herself of all that, later, as their friendship grew. It had been the free time, that hour at lunch time she dreaded most when there seemed no point in going to the library because by the time she found a book it was time to leave and the cafeteria was intimidating, full of so many young ones, and they all knew each other, and she felt sure they wouldn’t welcome the intrusion of an oldie and a housewife.
There was an artificial waterway running through the campus generally called the moat. She discovered a small grove of citriodora, those graceful lemon-scented gums, in a corner behind the Arts Building and usually retreated to this green place because at least her solitariness wouldn’t excite any attention there.
Then one day, Ahmed was there too, eating his lunch of flat bread and honey, so they talked and became friends. He told her of his childhood, of falling from the balcony near the beggar and of his mother’s despair that her youngest son would die. He had six older brothers, and he smiled when he spoke of their love and indulgence of himself as the baby. They had all married, gone into good jobs and contributed to each other’s well-being, lifting the standard of living of their parents and each in turn helping with the younger ones.
He spoke with special affection of the oldest son, that honoured position which brought with it much responsibility and influence in family affairs. He had been a pilot, been shot down and Ahmed had been devastated and angry.
His own military service had begun at fourteen when called away from school. He had been sent to help at an outlying military post that was short of manpower for a few days. All he had to do was help on guard duty so that the men could rest before resuming active duty. There was a rueful humour as he told of his fear. It was the first time in his life he had slept away from the family home. He missed his mother, there were wolves howling, and when it was his turn to watch he kept slipping into sleep and then waking full of fear and guilt. When it was his time to sleep, he couldn’t. What if the other young guard slept and the wolves or Israelis caught him out there?
He was not a good soldier, he said, so he became a school teacher, continued his study, won a chance to travel, and the family supported him. There was no surprise that they should, just grateful acceptance. He didn’t really know what it was like to feel truly alone. They spoke of religions. To him she was a Christian—sects didn’t seem relevant, terms like Catholic and Protestant were just exercises in pedantry. Eventually, she confessed her disillusion with any sort of god and her feelings of resentment that there was no purpose, no pattern in the universe and the lives of people. After that, there seemed a special warmth between them as he spoke of his sureness of purpose, the rules that governed his behaviour and made him a man, a creature of worth in his own eyes.
One day, he asked her to accompany him to the city to choose a gift for his mother so Lizzie cut lectures and went. She didn’t tell her husband. It was one of those blustery, wet days that could happen in autumn in Melbourne after a succession of sunny days that had almost convinced you that summer was still with you. Her denim skirt clung around her legs, and her hair was whipped about in all directions. As they turned the corner towards the tram shelter, they saw a tram just ready to pull out.
‘Come on!’ he yelled through the wind.
She grabbed her bag tightly, and they ran together. Even in the rush, she realised he was holding her hand. Laughing, gasping and wind-blown, they landed in the tram, and the conductor smiled indulgently at the energy and exhilaration they brought with them.
‘Calm down, folks! I’ll be back for your tickets when you’ve caught your breath,’ he loped off to chat with other passengers.
‘Oh, help, just look at me! Ahmed, you’re mad! What must we have looked like?’
‘You look beautiful.’
Very lightly, he took the strands of her hair and slipped them back behind her ears. She couldn’t move. She was even afraid to breathe in case she broke the moment which wasn’t real or lasting or any of those things but she didn’t want it to pass. She wanted to suspend all that reality and stay balanced like this with him looking at her so lovingly. She felt so conscious of him, of the texture of his skin, the pale fullness of his lips and his eyes holding her so objectively and yet wanting her. And she wanted him.
‘You are too transparent for a public place.’
He had spoken, and the moment was different. Then he touched her gently and fleetingly between the curve of her breasts, and she felt herself flushing like a schoolgirl and saw him smile as he moved to the top button of her thin shirt and fastened it.
‘The wind has undone you.’
He took her hand, and they travelled the short distance to the city which was still new to him, and because they were still new to each other, it became new and exciting for her too. They looked at clocks she had seen but never looked at all her life. They introduced themselves to fruit vendors and munched green apples as they window-shopped in the large stores. Paperboys smiled at them, and they smiled back. They tried on hats and laughed at the mirror pictures they were making. He wrapped a long scarf around her hair and covered the lower half of her face.
‘Like this I would see you in my country, like this I would take thee to wife.’
Silence.
It was all around them, enfolding them, insulating them from the noise and frantic activity of the store. It was a silence born of the two of them, their own personal silence, theirs alone. His silence and her silence were merging and enclosing them. Gentle, vulnerable silence. Too vulnerable. Someone pushed her from behind in a rush for the escalators, and she was shoved against him, awkward, ungainly and out of balance. He caught her by her shoulders and held her for a moment before she regained her equilibrium and stood alone. She thought his lips had brushed her hair but she wasn’t sure. She never would be.
He caught her hand. They both laughed softly and wandered on. Outside, the afternoon had the darkness of winter. They only saw the brighter glow of artificial lights spreading warmth from smiling models and mannequins who enjoyed the moment of their lives suspended in glassy security for all to see and envy. The wind with all its restlessness and hurly-burly had settled somewhere comfortably and the rain was quietly glazing the world for them. Just for them, as their hands embraced, warm, firm, gentle and lovingly at ease with each other. He turned to her. His skin was golden, his hair ebony. He was more beautiful than any of the mannequins that gazed smugly at her from their vantage points. He was more beautiful, and he loved her. She saw it, accepted and responded.
‘If you were alone and in my country and we met, and I asked you to marry, would you?’
He knew the answer. She knew it too. And from the warmth of her confidence she smiled, ‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps?’
Smiling too, he held her to him and repeated, ‘Perhaps? What a lovely word is this “perhaps”. And what a lovely woman.’
He released her and was serious again.
‘I do love you and would wed you. Will you come with me?’
‘Come where?’
But she knew. And was afraid. She could feel the fear moving on restless feet in the chambers of her heart and soon it would spread and engulf her, and she would be alone with fear, not knowing the full extent of its power and never really seeing its shape but feeling it, feeling it and screaming silently against it.
‘Come with me.’
He tightened his grip on her hands. Both hands were captive now. They stood facing each other, framed in the lights of the display behind them. He was watching her so intently, so lovingly. He wanted her. She knew that. He loved her. She knew that too. She loved him and she wanted him. He knew that too. For a moment, that was all. The fear was apprehended as the warmth of her longing to touch him, and be touched, welled up. This time they acknowledged it and responded. In the middle of a crowded street, they silently exchanged vows and admitted the physicality of their love. Silently. Privately. In the middle of a crowded street. And the fear was vanquished, irrelevant for a time.
Perhaps if she had gone then. Perhaps. Perhaps. Always bloody perhaps.
Because she hadn’t gone. Not to his flat or his country or any bloody place. Perhaps she was frigid. Perhaps that bloody man she had long ago married was right. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Bloody shit perhaps. Why hadn’t even Ahmed understood the fear? It wasn’t of new places or new people or men or sex or scandal or any of the things he thought it was. Would even she ever understand that core of fear that was part of the essential her? She wanted him to understand, to see that part of her, to see that she was not scared of everything, that some things she faced with courage. Like challenging that god she no longer believed was real.
I think
I feel
like crying.
Hey, God,
I’m talking to you.
At least be good enough
to listen.
I heard a youngster
once
who said,
’God’s just a piece of sky
with whiskers on.’
You know
I don’t believe
in you.
You let sweaty, Roman soldiers
kill your son.
I can love
more than that.
Surely, we are given
life
so we can think,
feel and cry
without
ever
really
understanding
why.
Hey, God,
are you making us pay
for what they did
to your son
while you
stood by,
watched
and did nothing?
So why hadn’t she left with Ahmed which would have been an easier leaving? Why had she prevaricated, waiting for him to understand and console her, waiting for what had never happened? He just assumed she was afraid of all those other things. Perhaps she had wanted the impossible. There it was again. Bloody perhaps. There was no perhaps about her bloody marriage which was stuffed just as effectively as those bloody marrows had been once upon a time.
Lizzie thought about Lebanon with whitewashed houses, dark-veiled women, deep blue skies, aromatic scents, courtyards and orange groves, the lands of Omar Khayam with love songs, romance and poetry. She had started writing again with Ahmed, tentatively, unsure of herself after the long silence, and he had gently encouraged her to try again. For the first time in her life, she heard stories of those distant lands, of his childhood, his home life, his city, his country, his fierce patriotism, the constant fear and military readiness. It had all been so new, so alive, so very, very far from her own existence. That first day when he handed her that bloody awful sherry she had suffered her way through it until she noticed he wasn’t drinking and asked if perhaps he didn’t like it either. He had smiled, taken the vile stuff, found her a glass of lemonade and explained that his religion forbad alcohol. There had been so much she didn’t know but she did not ever feel stupid with him, just that there was so much to learn.
He had seemed pleased when she finally showed him a scrap of her writing. It was not very good, she knew that, but it was about him as a child, based on a story he had told her.
A small brown boy
was laughing
balanced high
upon a ledge
of a balcony
in the sky.
He laughed,
so close to flying,
and didn’t hear
the beggar
in the earth of Beirut
who cried aloud for alms
cried for alms
cried for alms.
He didn’t see the beggar
but he felt the sky
and sun
as his small brown feet
caressed the whiteness
of the stones that were his home.
Laughing,
he trod the wall
high
so high
balanced on his toes
close to flying,
Till he fell
crumpled on the rocks
curled,
bleeding
beside the beggar
who cried for aid
cried for aid
from the mother
behind the shutters
who dreamed
of dreaming days
and her son who would be a man.
The beggar cried for aid,
cried for aid,
cried for aid
till the silence
of the child
reached the mother,
pierced her dreams
and the horror
of the beggar
became hers.
Ahmed’s own English was perfect of course. He had already completed a year’s study at Oxford and was in Australia as a guest of the faculty for one further year before returning to his own university. He made encouraging noises about her writing, but then he became more critical in a way that was complimentary, as if he expected her to do better and better all the time. She must work at her writing, he said. Polish, refine, develop the craft which was essential in an art form. It could not be easy. She must suffer in perfecting her writing. Such suffering would create beauty. His people had learned that long ago.
Now and then, she was taken aback by the violence of his passions, especially for his country and his people. She never thought of other Australians as her people. It was strange to her. She listened aghast to the stories of murder, massacre and torture that whole villages had suffered in the Arab-Israeli conflicts and slowly began to realise how old the problem was, how complex, how seemingly insoluble. It seemed to her there were no “good” guys and “bad” guys any more. Just people who worked to live, and people who killed. Retribution was a concept outside her suburban existence. It didn’t seem to stop. Someone killed so someone else killed so someone else must be killed so someone else must be killed. She didn’t show him when she wrote her confusion.
This man hates
more intensely
than I can love.
He burns
and is burned,
A phoenix of a man.
But with hate.
And this energy
came from love
for a brother,
a mother,
and someone’s dead child.
From love
sprang hate.
Is the phoenix, then,
hate?
Or love?
It seemed that Ahmed and love were always coupled. She and Ahmed never were. Not in the biblical sense. And there were times when the searing frustration of wondering lodged in her and made her want to sit in a corner and howl her eyes out like a kid. Wondering what it would have been like. Wondering if it would have worked. Wondering if she would have filled that want she could not articulate but knew—she bloody did know—it was her right as a woman, as a person, to be satisfied. Why had she said no? Why? Why? Why? Shit. Shit. Shit. She could scream. She should scream. Mum did. Why couldn’t she? Was she really frigid? Perhaps he was right that bloody husband of hers. Perhaps she said no because she was really frigid. But she didn’t feel frigid. She wanted to love someone and have someone love her. Wanted it somewhere deep in the essence of her. It was real. It was. Damn him to hell. Her husband was wrong. He was wrong. She wasn’t frigid. She wasn’t.
So why say no Ahmed?
Once she had been so sure of the answer to her question. Once she had believed she was right. Once she had believed that there were rules by which one lived and played. Once she had believed. Once. What a sad, disillusioned word it was by itself. No more “Once upon a time” now. Just a lonely invocation of things past, finished and gone. No one had ever seen that final piece of scribble.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Once
I was thirty,
plain,
suburban.
I was safe
I was secure
Because I had a husband.
Then when I was thirty
a young man loved me
He was beautiful,
golden,
ebony
with living, loving eyes
that even found me beautiful.
So I was
for a while.
Once,
the young man
kissed me
gently,
tenderly.
I felt his longing for me
in soft folds
about my nakedness.
So I sent the young man far away
because I had a husband.
Today,
I am thirty-five.
Last night,
I found my husband
with a whore.
Somehow, the potential to write dried up that night. Like everything else in her life, it had never really developed, never reached fruition or amounted to anything much. The story of her life. Shit, again she was sounding like Mum. What an irony. Could mother and daughter ever be less alike? Ahmed said he loved Lizzie, and there was the blue enamel pin he offered her as a token. It had been his mother’s. His mother wasn’t dead. He had not been to his mother’s wedding nor to her funeral. Lizzie went to Gwennie’s wedding and to her funeral where she was supposed to say goodbye—but she never did. Lizzie would wonder forever why she had said goodbye to Ahmed, and she would forever remember the hurting.
It was the only time he ever telephoned her at home. Term holiday had begun so she was not going into campus for lectures or tutorials. When she answered, heard and recognised that voice she had been conscious of her whole body springing into life as she was physically aware of her breathing; it was something she had to do deliberately and consciously. So was the pumping of blood through the veins. She could feel her skin feeling the telephone, feeling the air, feeling the touch of her clothes. She could feel his pain and longing.
‘Please. Please, I must see you again.’
She didn’t know. Wasn’t sure. Couldn’t think. Her husband was in the next room. ‘I leave tomorrow. Come today. I must see you. Meet me anywhere. But please come. I need to see you.’
She knew that if anything were to change, it would be because of his need of her. Because she believed it. There had been times when she had lectured to herself about his charm, his looks, his appeal to every female who knew him. There had been times when she had been able to convince herself it was all just a sordid little intrigue to him, something to boast about, the Christian woman he had known in a foreign country. There had been times for all of that but they had passed. She had loved knowing she was loved by someone so beautiful.
They met in the library where they had met so many times where he had sometimes read to her from Omar Khyam, and she had loved hearing him. They had laughed together when she tried to explain what “corny” meant. Initially, he had been offended. Omar Khyam was not shallow, sentimental, melodramatic. Nor was his love of her. Then she drew a word picture of a middle-aged matron gawping at a young lover who sniggered his way towards the bed with sleazy looks around the covers of a love poem. He laughed, then loved her with his smile so the cynicism faded, and she tucked away the memory of the exchange. This time, there was no laughter. As she looked at him, she knew he had been weeping. There was no secret. He felt anguish, and he wept. Yes. The need was real. She would come with him. Tomorrow; as she said it, she knew that it wasn’t true. He knew it too. They were pretending. Having done that, there was nothing left to do. So he went away from her. Lizzie hadn’t cried, hadn’t been distraught, sobbed or been violent or anything. She had just been emptied. The last dream had gone, and Lizzie just stopped feeling, stopped being.
At night, in her own whitewashed house, she opened windows to let in the darkness so it could dispel the stale, rotten smells, and as she pushed against the glass, the other-room-reflections faded and she could see through to the night itself.
She couldn’t see the moon, but it must have been there because there was a soft glow on the grass and trees. She felt the frost approach her and retire defeated to hoar the dark hair of the rise behind the house. Light escaped from the house but found itself trapped in frozen formations that were held by the crispness of the night. Somewhere up there was a bedraggled hammock slung between a huddle of eucalypts that stood back to back with their fingers outstretched against a world they couldn’t bear not to peep at. Slowly, she would move around the room setting things in order, then stoke the fire so it glowed and crackled warmly.
She would stand a moment watching the light glinting off the beaten copper hangings bringing them to life, releasing the beauty stored away in them. Once there had been so much beauty around her. Mum—she was beautiful. Ahmed. This house. The grove of citrodora. The night. The night was lovely. The water had been like that too, when the car crashed through the bridge. It would have accepted her decision and received her gently. She liked to think of that drifting, floating before she chose to live and fought against dying which might have been a foolish choice. Warmth might have reached out to swaddle her. She might have smiled and snuggled into the gentleness seducing her. Perhaps. Always that bloody perhaps.