A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson Read Free Book Online Page A

her. Frieda blinked to break the memory before it came, but couldn’t stop it: the tickle of her mother’s long hair on her arm, a low voice saying, ‘Don’t cut your hair, baby, it’s your power.’ A pair of scissors in Frieda’s hand digging grooves into her little fingers.
    She stood up and went to the door. Nathaniel was walking slowly down the stairs, obviously stalling, waiting for her to call him. He looked up at her but she flattened herself against the wall and said nothing. She turned and looked at the drawings on the wall, the seagulls floating, wings touching. She liked them, though Peabody probably wouldn’t.

The Art of Wheeling a Bicycle: Steering is a subject for serious consideration; a sharp eye, quick determination, constant care and a steady hand are needed.
    7. A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes
    May 6th
    I write this by the light of a linseed lamp accompanied by the tapping of too many insects throwing themselves against the paper windows like souls struggling to be allowed in. Or out. Millicent’s sleeping breath is fast, Lizzie’s is soft and dull; they are so close, these days, that even their breathing seems to call to one another. This heat hangs like a dead weight over all of us and still we do not know when the trial will be, or, indeed, what it means. Officials from the magistrate visited tonight, there were whispered meetings between Millicent and Mohammed but she explains nothing to me.
    I am watching her, Millicent. I need to understand why my sister worships her so. She is always in an agitation. There is no humility to her, interesting, for one who is supposed to be humble in the Lord’s name, she rubs her heel to the sound of her own ambition. Her neck shows the strained length of a person in a hurry to achieve a personal quest. She will do anything to achieve it. Her fingers are bony, and untrustworthy.
     
    Dinner was on the floor in the reception room. We sat tailor-fashion on the large rug in the central room to eat and were served mountains of knotted meat bones, spiced yoghurts and almond breads. Rami arranged small pieces of mutton skewered on to long pokes of metal on trays before us. I dipped them into a thick, brown, fruity sauce, and then a spicy red one. Lizzie ate almost nothing and I remembered the day Mother brought home a baby sister, Nora. Appalled at our mother’s evident fresh love for this imposter, Lizzie and I made a pact to be together for ever. We believed this as children do, with our hearts complete and true, our eyes wide and clear. I now watched as occasionally, she put the camera up to her eye, as if to take a photograph of the scene before her, although she never did.
    The skinny, dark-skinned slave girls, to whom we are not allowed to speak, brought out dishes of baked figs in a red sauce and another impressive tray of meat. I ate what I could with the baby asleep behind me in a bundle. Millicent turned, suddenly, from Mohammed and Khadega and leaned towards me, pointing at the baby.
    ‘She needs a name.’
    ‘Is it our place to name her?’
    ‘The Lord has placed her in our arms as a gift,’ she amended herself. ‘She is a symbol of His bond of love and so I suggest we call her Ai-Lien.’ Millicent put down her metal poke of kebabe meat. ‘Which means Love Bond.’
    Mohammed was smiling at the great spread of food surrounding him and the women attentive like sparrows. The older women wear dark abayas and brown conservative veils.
    Millicent lowered her voice, ‘Christians are not wanted here. Mohammed is making arrangements.’
    I was alarmed, thinking that we were to be arrested.
    ‘Are we leaving?’
    Millicent nodded, ‘Mohammed introduced me to a Suchow merchant, Mr Mah. He has a house we can rent very cheaply outside the city. A good one, built as a pavilion. It stands in a beautiful, cool garden.’
    ‘Outside of the city? Where?’
    ‘Just outside the Old Town city walls. We will remain under house-arrest.’
    I was