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Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
Hilary Mantel
From the two-time Man Booker Prize winner, a prescient and haunting novel of life in Saudi Arabia.Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, a maker of maps, but when her husband's work takes her to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map the Kingdom's areas of internal darkness. The regime is corrupt and harsh, the expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are secretive, watchful. The streets are not a woman's territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. She hears whispers, sounds of distress from the 'empty' flat above her head. She has only rumours, no facts to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
Hilary Mantel
Copyright (#ulink_c3631012-90f6-57cb-8634-417e246233a6)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Paperback edition published by Harper Perennial 2004
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1988
Copyright © Hilary Mantel 1988
The right of Hilary Mantel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
PS section copyright © Fanny Blake 2004
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007172917
Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007354955
Version: 2017-07-26
Dedication (#ulink_e7176c62-b824-59a5-a923-c1391507624f)
For Vic and Jeanie Camp
Contents
Cover Page (#u649536c4-9255-522c-8ca2-42c22c0f6cb2)
Title Page (#u3e407230-b9d8-5224-bf21-e4d1b567a089)
Copyright (#u62a2a594-a467-5a48-b89f-6e6729246f5d)
Dedication (#u959c81df-14ba-575b-b16f-262839bf2893)
Author’s Note (#ue24e6e40-88c3-56d4-8d63-00434e9c0a77)
Part One (#u593ac79e-796b-540e-a527-42359056ba8d)
September 1984 IN FLIGHT (#u90c911cf-aca8-5b23-85e6-36fcded9ff0d)
Muharram (#u2060e2aa-79ce-5b92-b6d1-8eee48930cb7)
Safar (#ud03fea58-918c-52a1-bdb2-b8d8e3cf6385)
Rabi al-awal (#litres_trial_promo)
Rabi al-thani (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Jamadi al-awal (#litres_trial_promo)
Jamadi al-thani (#litres_trial_promo)
Rajab (#litres_trial_promo)
Shaban (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
P.S. (#litres_trial_promo)
About the author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the book (#litres_trial_promo)
Read on (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt from Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Note (#ulink_b287fdf7-7a26-52a0-8ea4-b5ccfefd8f38)
Saudi Arabia employs the Hijra calendar, which starts from the year AD 622, when Muhammed left Mecca for Medina. It is a lunar calendar, and the Hijra year is eleven days shorter than the Gregorian year. The months (with many variations in transliteration) are as follows: Muharram, Safar, Rabi al-awal, Rabi al-thani, Jamadi al-awal, Jamadi al-thani, Rajab, Shaban, Ramadhan, Shawal, Dhu-al-qudah, Dhu-al-hijjah. By a recent Royal Decree, a 365-day year has been instituted for fiscal purposes, and 22 December 1986 became 1 Capricorn. The recalculations involved make the fiscal year some forty years behind the Hijra year. So, not the least surprising aspect of life in the Kingdom is that time can appear to run backwards.
Part One (#ulink_0803a904-4fd8-530d-a5d2-1b8152cd7962)
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM
FROM: Director, Turadup, William and Schaper, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
TO: All expatriate staff
DATED: 15 Shawal/3 July 1985
I need not remind anyone of this week’s tragic events involving Turadup employees. In order to safeguard the company’s position in these very difficult times, I must request all staff and families about to depart on leave to behave as follows:
A. Refrain from talking to the press – whatever your holiday destination.
B: Refrain from public speculation about the recent deaths – remember that the matter is still under investigation by the Saudi police and Her Majesty’s representatives.
c. Exercise the utmost caution in personal conduct between now and your departure – dispose (carefully) of all items or substances which could attract the interest of the police, and do not leave your compound without your documents.
I feel sure that if these precautions are observed, we may expect a continuance of good relations with the Saudi authorities, and a smooth passage into the next Five-Year Plan.
May I take this opportunity to wish you, on behalf of Daphne and myself, a pleasant vacation and a safe return to the Kingdom after Haj. Sincerely –
ERIC PARSONS
September 1984 IN FLIGHT (#ulink_577b2df4-249b-5885-be5a-0caad0c67773)
‘Would you like champagne?’
This was the beginning; an hour or so out from Heathrow. Already it felt further; watches moved on, a day in a life condensed to a scramble at a check-in desk, a walk to a departure gate; a day cut short and eclipsed, hurtling on into advancing night. And now the steward leaned over her, putting this question.
‘I don’t think so.’ They had already eaten; dinner, she supposed. So much smoked salmon is consumed on aircraft that it is a wonder there is any left to eat at ground level. The steward had just now whisked her tray from under her nose. ‘You could give me some brandy,’ she said.
‘Two to get you started?’ Hand hovering over the trolley, he seemed to approve her choice; as if what lay ahead were something to brace yourself for, not to celebrate.
‘And one of those nice plastic glasses,’ Frances Shore said. ‘Please.’
Across the aisle grown men were getting drunk on Cointreau. One of them cocked an eyebrow at the steward. He leaned over them; his face, pale and seamy under the late-night lights, showed a kind of patient disgust. Drinks were free of course, but on the Saudi run this standard airline ploy had the status of charity work. His fingers, dispensing the miniature bottles, were as clean and careful as a bishop’s.
The businessmen had done their talking earlier; passed sales charts to each other. ‘I wonder how Fairfax is doing in Kowloon?’ one of them asked.
His companion dug his plastic fork into a millefeuille, and made no reply. ‘How long now?’ he asked after a while.
‘Three hours.’
‘Keep the drinks going then.’
‘Enjoy it, gentlemen,’ the steward said. The woman held up her coffee cup. He swayed towards her with the pot. ‘Non-dairy creamer, Madam?’
I always wonder about this stuff,’ she said, accepting the foil packet. ‘It says what it isn’t, but not what it is.’
‘That’s life,’ the steward said. He moved away again. Dull clunk of ice cubes against plastic. Flimsy cushions flatten under head and back. Onwards. The man with the tough millefeuille stares at the dial of his watch, as if he could make the time go faster. Or hold it back.
Left alone, she closed her eyes. She was apprehensive, yes. She turned over the steward’s comment in her mind, because she was not one to let flippancies go unexamined; it paid to examine them, as there was so little, she always thought, in what people said when they were trying to be serious. You could only describe the future by exclusion; say what will not occur. Say what you will not be: an ice dancer, a cosmonaut, a mother of twelve. Much less easy to make a single positive prediction even for the coming week; much less easy to say what, in a month’s time, you will have become.
Andrew’s letters had been short, practical. They told her to bring flat sandals, British postage stamps, a bottle of Bovril. His voice on the phone had been hesitant. There had been the odd, expensive silence. He didn’t know how to describe Jeddah. She must, he said, see for herself.
She picked up the half-cup of coffee: black, and almost cold now. When she moved her legs, newsprint rustled, a paperback slid from her lap on to the seat. She felt stiff, uncomfortable. She began to think of lurching along to the lavatory, braving the bleary stares.
When the steward came back she said to him, ‘There aren’t many women on this flight.’
‘It’s not the time of year. Christmas and Easter, the wives fly out.’
‘Why don’t they stay?’
‘They can’t stick it. More coffee?’ She shook her head. ‘It must be your first trip. Got a husband out there?’
She nodded.
‘Visa all in order?’
‘I hope so. But I don’t read Arabic.’
‘Be waiting for you, will he?’
Again: ‘I hope so.’
‘Been out there long?’
‘Six weeks.’
‘Quick work,’ the steward said. ‘To get you out so soon.’
‘It’s the company who organized it. He says it’s not that easy, but they’ve been in Saudi for a while and they know how things are done.’
‘We all know how things are done,’ the steward said; he rubbed finger and thumb together, rustling an imaginary wad of notes. ‘What’s his line of country?’
‘He’s a civil engineer. They’re putting up a big new building for one of the Ministries.’
‘Likes it all right, does he?’
‘I don’t really know.’ During those phone calls (direct dial, good clear line) she’d not inquired of Andrew, are you happy? It would have meant another expensive silence, because he did not deal in that sort of question. He’d have found it strange from three paces, never mind three thousand miles. Could the man be right, she wondered, had someone been bribed on her behalf? It seemed such a small thing, obtaining a visa for one unimportant woman to join her unimportant husband, but she had once been assured, by a man called Jeff Pollard, who understood these things, that when corruption took root in a country it spread in no time at all from monarchs to tea boys, from ministers to filing clerks. She believed him; but did not feel herself a better person for the belief. She had been round and about southern Africa for five years, in regions where, by and large, the possibilities of corruption had not been fully explored. Andrew thought that, once, someone might have offered him a bribe; but through the other party’s ineptitude and poor English, and Andrew’s naïvety, the occasion had passed without profit.
As this occasion will pass, she thought; and in time, this flight. ‘More brandy?’ the steward inquired.
‘No thanks.’
‘Lived abroad before?’
