The Bamboo Stalk

6

6My mother’s intuition was quite right about his remark on how she looked like a Thai girl. My father was hinting at something. He didn’t say it straight out, but there was an insinuation. My mother didn’t tell me all the details, but he must have been clear about what he wanted, because she answered him firmly. ‘Sir, I left my country to get away from things like that,’ she told him. As time passed, his hints became more explicit but my mother stood her ground.

Then one day he said, ‘Shall we get married?’ and she finally relented. She must have been very pleased, because she accepted the marriage, which wasn’t really much of a marriage.

It was the summer of 1987 and my mother had been in Kuwait for about two years. As my mother told me, and as I later experienced for myself, the summers in Kuwait are brutal. Rashid’s family spent the weekends in their beach house on the coast south of Kuwait City. The house is still there and the family gathers there from time to time.

My grandmother and my aunts had gone there with the Indian driver, on the understanding that my father would drive my mother and the cook there and join them. He set off later the same day but he didn’t go straight to the beach house. He stopped the car in front of an old building not far away. He and my mother got out, while the cook stayed in the car.

‘It was old and in bad shape,’ my mother said, talking about the building. ‘Apparently it was housing for foreign workers. There were clothes hanging on lines in the courtyard and in the windows. It didn’t look like a woman had been near the place in years. There were tyres of various sizes piled up in the corners of the courtyard, and abandoned planks of wood, old wardrobes and cupboards covered in dust and thrown aside any old how. There were coils of wire and mattresses that were torn and faded by the sun. Instead of going in through the front door your father took a narrow passageway to the left towards an outer room. There was a man waiting for us there. He looked like an Arab, with a long bushy beard and a dark mark in the middle of his forehead. He was wearing an Arab gown and an Arab headdress but without the black band that Kuwaitis usually wear to hold the headdress in place. The man called in two other men, who apparently lived there. We didn’t stay long. We sat down in front of the man, who started talking with your father in Arabic. He turned to me and asked, “Have you been married before?” I said no. He asked your father something in Arabic and he answered yes. Then he turned back to me and asked, “Do you accept Rashid as your husband?”

‘He wrote out a piece of paper after we agreed. We signed it, Rashid and me. Then the other two men signed it too. Then it was “Congratulations.”

‘On the way back to the car, I was rather sceptical. “Is that all it takes to get married?” I asked.

‘He nodded and said, “It’s simple.”

I was hesitant and I didn’t feel any different towards your father. When we got out of the car he was my master, and when we got back in again, he was still my master. “Are you sure?” I asked again.

He took the piece of paper out of his pocket. “This piece of paper proves it.” He put his hand out, offering me the paper. “You can keep it,” he said. I asked him about the old lady and his sisters. “Everything in good time,” he replied casually. I shut up. I wasn’t convinced we were really man and wife, but because of the way I felt towards your father I accepted it.

‘We got back in the car and drove off to the beach house. The cook didn’t say anything but he was looking at me suspiciously.’

* * *

I doubt my father did what he did because he really wanted to marry my mother. Perhaps he just wanted to have his way with her. Anyway, it was good of him to go through with this strange marriage.

That same night they had a secret rendezvous at a time set by my father. After midnight my grandmother and my aunts went to sleep. When the lights in the house had gone out one by one, my mother slipped out and walked along the beach in the cold sand.

‘Josephine,’ my father whispered. He was launching the boat into the water. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

‘You shouldn’t call me that any longer,’ he replied. ‘Come closer,’ he beckoned, ‘so I don’t have to raise my voice and people notice.’

My mother went up to him and stood there while he launched the boat and jumped in.

‘Has everyone gone to bed?’ he asked.

‘Just now. The old lady and the girls have gone to their rooms.’

He put out his hand to her. ‘Come,’ he said.

She was confused. ‘Where to?’ She asked.

He was still holding out one hand to her. With his other hand he pointed out to sea at a red light that was flashing.

‘Near there,’ he said. ‘We won’t be long. An hour, or two hours at the most.’

She looked behind her at the beach house. ‘But, sir, I . . .’

‘If you insist on calling me “sir”, then I, as your master, order you to come with me.’

My mother took a few hesitant steps towards the boat. She left her shoes in the sand and started to wade deeper and deeper into the water. The water rose above her waist. She grabbed my father’s hand and he put his arm around her waist to lift her into the boat.

He pushed off from shore with a long wooden pole, then started the engine as soon as they were out of easy earshot, while my mother sat next to him with her knees folded up against her chest, hiding the contours of her body, which would have shown through her wet clothes.

Then and there, far from shore and close to the flashing red light, as the boat rocked in the calm sea, I made my first journey, leaving my father’s body and settling deep inside my mother.