Missing Out

And all the time she was laughing, crying, sniffing. Chatting to her friend as they both pulled the ends of their tobes over their left shoulders, wrapped the material neatly in place and over their hair. ‘This sandal is so ruined you can’t even wear it as a slipper!’ her friend said.

He felt cynical watching them, especially when, now that the demonstration was disbanded, other students passed by, cursing and spitting, with torn shirts and the pathetic remnants of their banners. He did not have the anger to demonstrate, he did not have the ability to enjoy the thrill of rebellion. And the next day, as he predicted, the futility of their action was exposed. Mahmoud Muhammad Taha was hanged on a Friday morning.

Later, or perhaps at the time he was looking at her through the vines, he thought, I could talk to her now. She would be approachable now, not formal or shy. She would yield to me now. And over the years we will talk of this day again and again and claim it was the start. But he let her go, rang the professor’s bell and soon heard footsteps coming towards him from inside.
It is pointless to resist fate, impossible to escape its meanderings. But who knows how to distinguish fate’s pattern from amid white noise? Years later when his mother led her campaign, the name Samra cropped up. His older sister was dispatched to test the waters. The reception was good. Prospective bridegrooms living abroad (it didn’t matter where) were in great demand.

When they walked into his room in London, they quarrelled. But this was not because the room was small and designed for one student. He had applied for married students’ accommodation but the university had yet to allocate them a flat. The tension started up as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom. There were droplets of water on her hair and her arms, the sleeves of her blouse rolled up. ‘Where is your prayer mat?’ she asked.

‘I don’t have one,’ Majdy said. He was lying in bed enjoying his return to that particular quiet of London, the patch of moving grey sky he could see from the window, the swish of cars on wet roads. It was as if Khartoum had been grinding around him in a perpetual hum and now that humming sound was pleasantly absent.

‘Well, what do you use instead?’ she was already holding a towel. ‘Where’s the qibla?’

He would need to figure out the direction of the Ka’ba. From Britain, Mecca was south-east of course, because Saudi Arabia was south-east. So in this particular room, which direction should she face? Where exactly was the south-east?