Back on the home front

By Fayza Hassan
Observing the new war as it unfolds can be time-consuming. It is for me, anyway. I hurry home from work to turn on the television and watch, mesmerised, as motley bedraggled populations are blown to kingdom come. Two weeks on, the reason for the devastation remains unclear. I also worry about the anthrax mystery. Whose idea of a sinister joke is that? And do the Americans have enough antibiotics or not? They don't seem to be able to make up their minds. One particular evening last week, however, my new routine was interrupted brutally. I was not fated to hear Suleiman Abu Ghaith's fiery speech and threats of more death and destruction. As I waited for Al-Jazeera to broadcast his latest ravings, a sharp noise resounded outside my window. At first I thought it was a gunshot, some fool venting his frustrations on a stray dog; but no animal howl followed. Instead, I heard a woman screaming hysterically. Then I heard my daughter call out anxiously: "Come quickly, he is going to kill her." It soon became plain that the young couple upstairs, the son and daughter-in- law of our landlord, were having a major matrimonial disagreement. "Did you hear him slap her?" asked my daughter in awe. "I thought it was a gunshot," I told her.
There were more piercing screams and I opened the front door just as the young woman came running past, hollering that she wanted someone to take her back to her father. I closed the door quickly when I saw a hairy hand yank her roughly back upstairs. "I'll call the emergency police," my daughter decided. "We are not going to let him kill her." She dialled the number and reported the incident. As she listened to the answer on the other end of the line, a look of disbelief slowly appeared on her face. "Say that again," she whispered, and was silent for a few seconds, then replaced the receiver without a word. "You know what he told me?" she said in wonderment. "He said 'good for him, let him kill her'." I had no time to comment, as a minute later we found ourselves propelled into act II of the production. Now the woman was screaming that her husband was dying: "Please, please," she shrieked, "call a doctor."
This time, I ran upstairs. The door to their apartment was wide open, the entrance blocked by a group of concerned neighbours. Dishevelled, her face red and stained with tears, the young wife was slapping herself, while a man, leaning over her husband, who was stretched out on the floor, seemed to be attempting CPR. "We need an ambulance," someone said; "he is having a heart attack." I said I would call the ambulance, but pointed out that there was a doctor in the building next door. They would do well to call him in case the ambulance took a long time arriving.
My daughter called the ambulance. At first there was no response, but with sheer perseverance she finally managed to raise the person on duty. She had to answer 21 questions, give the address three times, and provide several telephone numbers before we could finally settle down to waiting. The screams had stopped and we heard footsteps on the stairs, then a door slam shut. I guessed the doctor had arrived. There was no sign of the emergency police, or the ambulance.
We tried to figure out what was happening. He wasn't dead, I reasoned, because we would have heard more screams. "Did they really have a fight, or was she calling for help because he fainted?" I wondered aloud. My daughter was fairly sure that it had started with a fight. "She wanted to go back to her father, remember?" she said. "How did he end up on the floor, then?" I asked. "Did she hit him back?"
Finally, there were more footsteps. Someone was going upstairs. I opened the door. Our downstairs neighbour was on his way to the couple's apartment. He seemed to know more than we did. "I have to help them make up," he said. "Young people should not fight. Problems should be solved with discussion and understanding." I was glad we had our own Kofi Annan at hand, but still wondered about the absence of either police or ambulance.
An hour later, the doorbell rang. My daughter answered. "Did you call the police?" I heard a voice inquire. When she said she had, the juvenile policeman began complaining. "Well, you disturbed us for nothing," he whined. "They said that there was no fight." Disgusted, she chose not to argue and offered him a glass of tea "for his trouble." "Maybe they will remember us and next time we ask them to intervene, they will get here more quickly," she said, not really believing her own words.
The following day, all was quiet and I remembered that I had not heard the couple's two children babble as usual early in the morning. Had the molested wife gone to her father's house, or been sent there by her in-laws, displeased at the sight of their fallen son? Had he been taken to hospital? Had he really had a heart attack, or was he faking? That was one of my husband's favourite ploys, to which he resorted when he could not talk me into submission. So many questions remain unanswered. A week on, I am still dying to know, but cannot ask, of course. Good manners require that when the drama is over the spectators pretend that it never happened. And besides, we are still waiting for the ambulance.
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