At five o'clock on the morning of 13 March 1986 I stood with my husband in the half dark outside our house, listening. Nothing in this place was simple, so we thought: what if the car doesn't come? Beyond the contingent sprawl of buildings, the lunar landscape was silent: stars setting, and no birdsong in this parched place. The houses of our neighbours, unlit, seemed to have edged away from us, easing back into their little plots of dust. In the distance you could see the line of the highway: just the odd moving dot of a car, some early or nefarious commuter heading down to the snarled-up city. The grey light was indefinite; you wouldn't know, unless like us you repeatedly checked your watch, if this hour was dawn or dusk. We must have missed the call to prayers, blanked it. An Arab dawn comes, I had been told, when by the first glimmer you can distinguish a black thread from a white.
Then in the distance, hardly perceptible at first, the hum of a vehicle, coming uphill towards us, hidden at first by the curve of the road. When the car came into sight, the office car, we faced each other and smiled. My husband turned back to the house and locked the door. Our four years of Jeddah were over. We dropped the keys through the letterbox. I had hoped for a satisfying clatter: instead, a soundless tumble to the vinyl tiles.
Continue reading...