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Seven Aba Didn't Often Share His Wishes with Us but He Did That Day

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Seven Aba Didn't Often Share His Wishes with Us but He Did That Day Seven aba didn't often share his wishes with us but he did that day. We were at the farm and he was wearing a safari shirt. He was irritated a little because he did not like the family gatherings that my mother organized. He preferred meetings with business friends, useful contacts, to day-long picnics spent playing cards and eating nonstop. Leaning back on his deckchair, he looked up as a small plane flew past, spraying pesticide. `One day,' he said, `I'm going to have my own private jet. Three more years at the maximum - I've got it all planned!' `Wow,' Omar and I said at the same time. We were sitting on a picnic rug on the grass. `Think of your father, kids. I started out with nothing, not a father, not a good education, nothing. Now I'm going to have my own private jet.' `I'll learn to drive it,' said Omar. `I'll take lessons.' Baba looked at us over his gold-rimmed glasses and asked, `So how old are you now?' `Nineteen,' Omar chanted. `Nineteen, already? And you too, Najwa?' `Yes,' I smiled. He was teasing us. `I thought you were eighteen.' `That was last year,' said Omar. I laughed. It rarely happened but today Omar and I were dressed in identical colours. We were both wearing Wrangler jeans and I was wearing a beige polo neck and he had on a long-sleeved beige shirt. Mama came and took a photo of us. Years later, after everything fell, that photo remained. Omar and I smiling, a pink flower wedged in my hair, my legs crossed, my elbow on my knee and hand on my chin. Omar close, his back against my arm, his eyes bright, legs stretched out, hand resting lightly on the tape recorder, the cassettes scattered on his lap and on the red-check rug. Years later, when everything fell, I would narrow my eyes and try to distinguish by colour 1 and words the tapes on the rug, tapes we used to buy on our summer holidays in London: Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Hot Chocolate and nay own tapes of Boney M. Everything started to fall that night, late after the picnic, after the barbecue, after the guests had gone home and we also had gone home. After grilled kebab and peanut salad, boiled eggs, watermelon and guava. We drove back home and we were quiet, we were all tired. I washed my hair that night because of all the dust that had got into it. I examined an ant bite on nay elbow. It was swollen and raised and I could not stop scratching it. The telephone call came late at night, close to dawn. I heard it and I thought someone had died. It had happened before, someone dying, a close friend or relation and Mama and Baba having to leave the house in the middle of the night. Over the next days of mourning they would say, We came as soon as we heard the news ... we came at night.' I didn't get out of bed. I was not curious enough. I heard Baba's voice on the phone but I could not distinguish his words. I could hear his voice and something about it was not right. There wasn't the bite and shock that came with death. I sat up in bed, saw the outline of the room slowly come to focus as my eves adjusted to the dark. The nights were still cool; we did not need air conditioners. If they had been on, I would not have heard the phone. The door to Omar's room was closed. I walked down the corridor to my parents' room. Their light was on and the door was ajar. I saw the suitcase on the bed. I saw Mama tucking some of Baba's socks in the suitcase, which was already nearly full. He was getting dressed, buttoning his shirt. He turned and looked at me as if he couldn't see me, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to he going out in the middle of the night. Are you going away?' I asked but neither of them answered. N/lanma continued to stalk the room, packing, distracted, as if she was listening to a voice in her head, a voice that was listing things for her, telling her what to do. 'Go hack to sleep,' she said to me. Wide awake, I went to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, smoothed my eyebrows, admired how the yellow of 2 my pyjamas suited my skin and forgot about Baba. When I got out of the bathroom, I heard him starting the car. It had to he him starting the car because Musa didn't sleep over. Musa went home every night. I wondered where Baha was going, where was he travelling to. Why didn't they tell me that someone important had died abroad? I went into Omar's room and started to wake him up. He woke but didn't come with me to the window. I looked through the curtains. I saw Baha easing the car out of the garage, over the pebbles towards the gate. I saw the night watchman drag open the gates for him. Then I saw the headlights of a car coming fast down our road. It stopped with a screech in front of our gate, blocking Baba's car. Two men got out. One hovered near the gate and the other went and opened Baba's car door, like ,Musa opened it for him every day but not like that, not exactly like that. Baba turned the ignition off and got out of the car. He spoke with the man, gestured towards the hoot of the car. The man said something to his friend and the friend opened the hoot and took Baba's suitcase out. They started to walk towards their car and just left Baba's car beached in the parkway, neither in the house nor out of it. Baba took out something from his pocket, probably money or the car keys, and gave it to the night watchman. Then he got into the car with the two men. He sat in the hack seat and that was wrong, I knew. He shouldn't he in the hack seat. I had never seen him sitting in the hack seat, except in taxis or when Musa was driving. And Mama was next to me; she frightened me. The way she ground her teeth, stopping herself from crying, and hanged the window softly with her fist frightened me. Omar came and put his arm around her, led her away from the window. What's wrong?' he said. `What's wrong, Mama?' His voice was calm and normal. I looked out at the dark empty street, at Baba's abandoned car, at the watchman trying to close the gate and realizing that he couldn't. He couldn't move the car because he didn't know how to drive. It would have to wait for morning, for Musa to come. `What's wrong, Mama?' Oniar's voice was patient. They both sat on his bed. `There's been a coup,' she said. 3 Eight ur first weeks in London were OK. We didn't even notice that we were falling. Once we got over the shock of suddenly having to fly out the day after Baba was arrested, Omar and I could not help but enjoy London. We had never been there before in April and the first thing we did was go to Oxford Street and buy clothes. It was fun to do all the things we never did back home; grocery shopping, pushing the Hoover around, cooking frozen food. It was fun to do all the things we usually did in the summer. Omar went to the cinema in Leicester Square and I don't know how many tapes he bought from HMV. I went through Selfridges trying the perfumes and getting my face made up at the Elizabeth Arden counter. But Mama was not herself at all; she was in a daze, sometimes crying for no reason, muttering to herself in the middle of the night, immune to the excitement of London. She refused to go out shopping and constantly followed the news of the coup; surrounding herself with all the Arab papers as well as The Times and the Guardian, phoning round and leaving the TV on all the time. Our flat in Lancaster Gate was constantly filled with other Sudanese: businessmen passing through London, anxious Embassy staff who were awaiting the inevitable changes that would come about with the new government. They all reassured Mama about Baba. `They'll soon let him go and he'll join you here,' they said. `It will all die down,' they said, be patient, they'll flex their muscles at the beginning and then they'll slacken.' She listened to them quietly and I helped her serve coffee and tea. Her face was harsh without makeup, her hair out of the way in a bun because she no longer went to the hairdresser; the jumpers she wore under her tobe were in sombre colours. Randa called me from her college in Wales. `I can't believe it, you're really here!' she shrieked. 'I can't believe it either - I was just saving bye to you a while back 4 ...' What are you going to do now?' 'We're waiting for Baba to join us - we're worried about him.' I swallowed and there was a burning in my forehead.
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