I Think of You: Stories by Ahdaf Soueif Read Free Book Online Page B

come back? Tokyo. All those pretty little girls in red miniskirts and white cotton gloves operating the elevators and incessantly bowing: “Thank you for shopping at our store, we hope you have a good day, we hope you will come back.” All those gaudy shrines, presided over by sleepy-eyed Buddhas who had sat inscrutable as she clapped her hands and tied a piece of paper with a wish to the sacred tree. She had always wished for one thing. Incoherently. Make it right. Dear God,
    Buddha, Allah, make it right. She felt the pricking of tears behind her eyes, but she would not cry. Two whole years had passed since that day in the living room of the cottage and she was not going to cry anymore.
    She resumed her search for the missing silver and in a corner of the larger sideboard she found it. She drew it out. Trays, ashtrays, candlesticks, and a trophy inscribed “Miss Cairo University 1970 .” Eight years ago … All were tarnished. Bits of them were quite black. Typical again, she thought. He can’t bear to see them tarnished and can’t be bothered to get them polished, so he tucks them away in a corner and hopes they’ll disappear. Or maybe he even hopes that by some miracle when next he thinks to look, he’ll find them gleaming and bright. She rubbed a corner of the cup with her thumb. I wonder if he has any polish? she thought again. With a surge of energy she made for the kitchen. She stood looking around. His mother had bought them the kitchen fittings and her aunt had made the curtains. So pretty, with their blue flowers and white broderie anglaise trimming. They were still there, the sunlight shining gently through them. And there was the breakfast bar and the little two-eyed cooker where she’d learned to make goulash soup. She looked at the sink. There were two unwashed glasses. She took off her rings and watch and started to wash them. They’d always had friends around. Parties. How had she managed with such a tiny kitchen? Such a tiny fridge? She opened the fridge. Even the containers had been carefully chosen and had blue flowers to match the curtains. In the door were two bottles of beer and a bottle of white wine and seveneggs. She opened a round container. It was full of jam. She dipped a finger in it and licked. Date jam. His mother’s date jam. She had a vivid image of him: a serious little boy of seven, playing in the sea at Alexandria. His nanny wades out from the beach holding up her galabiya with one hand, the other holding out a sandwich. She waves and calls, “Come out now. Come and have a date jam sandwich!” When he was seven she had not yet been born, but the image was vivid in her mind from stories repeated by his mother every time she gave her a present of a large jar of date jam. She made it with her own two hands. The dates were laid neatly one on top of the other and in the center of each one was an almond and a clove. Then they were covered with syrup. “It always brought him out,” she would say. “He loved the sea, but he loved his mother’s date jam more.” And she would laugh.
    She put the lid back on the pot and closed the fridge door. Where were those photos of him as a child that she had had framed? They were not hanging anywhere. But then he had never been particularly keen on them. She remembered the silver. She rummaged around in the kitchen cupboards. She found some shoe polish and some powdered soap, but that was all. She closed the cupboard doors and went back to the dining room. Slowly she put the silver back into the corner of the sideboard. I could buy some, she thought. I could go right now and buy some polish and come back and do it. She closed the sideboard door and looked up at the wall above it. There they were. The framed maps of Sinai. The two old army maps he had used when he made his celebrated trek across the desert.
    He had gone with a friend. They had traveled by jeep and by camel, spending days at the monastery of Saint Catherine and weeks with the