unreconstructed people in the suburbs. I knew what she meant. I’d read about the horrible things—rapes, disgrace, disfigurement, and one girl in a Paris suburb had been burned alive.
“Do you hope to go back to France?”
“I am not at home here,” she said vaguely. “Though in some ways it’s better, because no one insults you for wearing the veil. I like it that everyone is a Mussulman. I’d be comfortable at the Al‐Sayads’, where pork isn’t served and prayers are offered, all that sort of thing. Inshallah!
“Well, the Cotters are nice. I have nothing against Christians, I was raised among them after all. But I’ve come to see it isn’t my path.”
I asked her if it had often happened in France that people insulted her for wearing the veil. “Oh, yes, waiters absolutely shrink if you try to come into a restaurant. They pretend you aren’t there. They think you’re a fanatic.” She laughed bitterly at some memory and added, “My parents didn’t like it either because they thought it wasn’t sincere. Sincerity is important in our religion, believe it or not.” I believed it, since you would have to be sincere to blow yourself up. I would have asked her more, but she seemed to want to talk about cinema and the recent French literary prizes—stuff suitable to her age—instead of her future, and she claimed to be perfectly happy with the Cotters for the moment. The Cotters, I’m sure, were pleasant enough—large, British, distant, and cheerful, though they’d been stunned by the death of their daughter-in-law and the subsequent arrival of little Freddie and Rose, and worried about their distraught son, who was now away in the Lancers or some such British regiment. I liked them, at least at first.
The Al‐Sayads, though they were Ian’s neighbors, didn’t mingle much with the European community, but they often sent their two fat children over to play with Tom and Strand’s Amelie as well as with the Cotters’ Rose and Freddie, and often whoever was in charge would bring them to swim in Ian’s pool. We thought it odd they didn’t have a pool. I was at Tom’s once when they came there. Marcia, the Filipina maid, brought them in and then waited outside. Tom and I had studied her for signs of the famous abuse the Saudis are said to inflict on their foreign help, but she seemed fine. We speculated about the Al‐Sayads’ social life—they knew mostly Moroccans, but they also seemed to have a lot of Saudi visitors, judging from the black abayas their women guests wore getting in and out of white limos.
They didn’t invite us to their house, which was named Garden of Harmony, in Arabic of course; but if Gazi or Khaled was in their driveway when Posy and I began one of our walks outside the walls, they would wave in a friendly way, and their visitors, implacable behind their veils, still somehow, by their stares, gave off an air of surprise that such an acquaintance was possible. For all their talk of Yale and Shakespeare, it was plain that the Saudi couple were ambivalent about socializing with the boozy Brits next door; in part, they seemed proud of it, or rather of their ability to mingle and be accepted among Westerners as if there were nothing odd about them. (I could not forget the sight of Khaled at the airport in his white robe and checkered headdress with its crown-of-thorns circlet around his brow. I was never to see him in those again—he must have laid them aside during his Moroccan visits, though Gazi kept to her black shroud disguise.) I also saw her once unveiled in public, at the Mamounia hotel, in a lime-green Armani jacket.
But with us they were always uneasy or on edge, as if at any moment they expected something to happen that would tax their ability to comprehend or stand it—some cultural absolute, some blasphemy that might really damage or appall them. Of course we were all careful not to tread on their beliefs, religion a subject never mentioned even when, as
“Do you hope to go back to France?”
“I am not at home here,” she said vaguely. “Though in some ways it’s better, because no one insults you for wearing the veil. I like it that everyone is a Mussulman. I’d be comfortable at the Al‐Sayads’, where pork isn’t served and prayers are offered, all that sort of thing. Inshallah!
“Well, the Cotters are nice. I have nothing against Christians, I was raised among them after all. But I’ve come to see it isn’t my path.”
I asked her if it had often happened in France that people insulted her for wearing the veil. “Oh, yes, waiters absolutely shrink if you try to come into a restaurant. They pretend you aren’t there. They think you’re a fanatic.” She laughed bitterly at some memory and added, “My parents didn’t like it either because they thought it wasn’t sincere. Sincerity is important in our religion, believe it or not.” I believed it, since you would have to be sincere to blow yourself up. I would have asked her more, but she seemed to want to talk about cinema and the recent French literary prizes—stuff suitable to her age—instead of her future, and she claimed to be perfectly happy with the Cotters for the moment. The Cotters, I’m sure, were pleasant enough—large, British, distant, and cheerful, though they’d been stunned by the death of their daughter-in-law and the subsequent arrival of little Freddie and Rose, and worried about their distraught son, who was now away in the Lancers or some such British regiment. I liked them, at least at first.
The Al‐Sayads, though they were Ian’s neighbors, didn’t mingle much with the European community, but they often sent their two fat children over to play with Tom and Strand’s Amelie as well as with the Cotters’ Rose and Freddie, and often whoever was in charge would bring them to swim in Ian’s pool. We thought it odd they didn’t have a pool. I was at Tom’s once when they came there. Marcia, the Filipina maid, brought them in and then waited outside. Tom and I had studied her for signs of the famous abuse the Saudis are said to inflict on their foreign help, but she seemed fine. We speculated about the Al‐Sayads’ social life—they knew mostly Moroccans, but they also seemed to have a lot of Saudi visitors, judging from the black abayas their women guests wore getting in and out of white limos.
They didn’t invite us to their house, which was named Garden of Harmony, in Arabic of course; but if Gazi or Khaled was in their driveway when Posy and I began one of our walks outside the walls, they would wave in a friendly way, and their visitors, implacable behind their veils, still somehow, by their stares, gave off an air of surprise that such an acquaintance was possible. For all their talk of Yale and Shakespeare, it was plain that the Saudi couple were ambivalent about socializing with the boozy Brits next door; in part, they seemed proud of it, or rather of their ability to mingle and be accepted among Westerners as if there were nothing odd about them. (I could not forget the sight of Khaled at the airport in his white robe and checkered headdress with its crown-of-thorns circlet around his brow. I was never to see him in those again—he must have laid them aside during his Moroccan visits, though Gazi kept to her black shroud disguise.) I also saw her once unveiled in public, at the Mamounia hotel, in a lime-green Armani jacket.
But with us they were always uneasy or on edge, as if at any moment they expected something to happen that would tax their ability to comprehend or stand it—some cultural absolute, some blasphemy that might really damage or appall them. Of course we were all careful not to tread on their beliefs, religion a subject never mentioned even when, as
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