I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops by Hanan al-Shaykh Page A

turn up the music, moving his head from side to side with the beat, then lay facedown on the floor.
    I saw myself on the roof of our house as I spread the couscous out to dry on a sheet in the sun for the last time before my journey to London; I could see the whole town in my mind: the tops of the trees, the minaret, the ancient wall that ran round the town. I could think of nothing except going to London and finding my way among its tall buildings sparkling with lights.
    I saw the friend of Aisha’s helping me escape from her house in London, carrying one of Aisha’s children, while I took my suitcase and dragged the other child along with me. I could see Aisha’s English neighbor shutting her front door in our faces, and yet all the same we left the two children on the doorstep and ran after I’d pinched their cheeks to make them cry so that she’d have to come out to them.
    I walked in the cold London without stockings, without an overcoat, without a sweater. In Marks & Spencer there were hundreds of dresses and sweaters and beautiful nightdresses. I paid the woman at the cash register and smiled at her. She smiled back and said the coat I’d chosen was really pretty. I was overjoyed. She approved of my taste and I’d given her the right amount of money for the red coat, which I still haven’t worn.
    I bent eagerly over the vacuum cleaner, as if it were a magic broom to transport me to another world, from poverty to riches. The implements available for cleaning here were as many and varied in color and smell as the places I had to clean. Aisha’s gold chain, which I had hidden among my clothes, was in my hands one moment and the next on
the
counter in the Oxford Street goldsmith’s.
    The red of my anger bubbled up like the rosy orange juice squeezed by the machines in the tourist street in our town. It ran down between my eyes and made me see everything blood-red, even though seconds before my mind had conjured up a pleasing vision: the English boy’s sister. She was polite, she gave me a small box of chocolates with a thank-you card and kissed me and shook my hand when she came for Sunday dinner. She had been different from her brother and from his friends, who used to visit us and make themselves at home in my clean room and on the clean bed, delighted to find a video and a cassette recorder, who atemy nice food and listened to loud music and swallowed the drink they brought with them. They all said they wanted to visit my country and I nodded my head, promising it wouldn’t cost them a penny, thinking how the people in the town would crowd around them, look at their colored hair, some of it short and some long. I smiled at them, heaped more food onto their plates, poured more mint tea or coffee into their cups. I wanted their approval, even if they did smell so terrible, the reek of their hair in its stiff, bright tufts mixing with the fumes of alcohol.
    I began to alter my standards of hospitality, offering them my pale, cold face when their music grew louder, when they began laughing among themselves and didn’t take the trouble to explain their jokes to me as they had before, or repeat their words until I understood what they were saying. The English boy showed the others all the implements and products I had collected for cleaning and disinfecting, telling them I had a mania for cleanliness, and I’d once decided to wash all his clothes and he’d had to stay indoors the whole day.
    I felt revolted by them and began to sleep in the hall, dragging a pillow and a wool blanket off the bed and leaving the room to them, in the hope that they would understand my anger, that they would no longer stay till the early hours of the morning, stepping over me as I lay asleep, leaving overflowing ashtrays and empty glasses and cans andbottles strewn about the floor. Sometimes they were so drunk they fell asleep where they were and lay without pillows or covers until I returned from work, and then I would rage at them