I Can't Think Straight Read Online Free PDF Page B

souk in Amman is a dump,’ Tala informed her. ‘But I can have someone take you there if you like.’
    ‘That’s kind of you,’ Leyla replied. She was secretly shocked by the presumption that the sudden wedding invitation would be accepted. ‘But I’m afraid I won’t be able to come. I have to work.’
    ‘Do you like it?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Your work?’
    Leyla hesitated. ‘Mostly. It’s finance and numbers, mainly.’
    ‘But it’s not your passion?’
    She did not know how to answer such a question. It was the first time she had ever been asked it. She looked at Tala’s eyes, softly brown, intent, alive.
    ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not my passion.’
    Apparently unconscious of the impression she was making, Tala reached for the small tray of syrup-drenched pastries that accompanied the tea, offering them around before putting one into her mouth.
    ‘Mama, we’re having dinner in an hour,’ Reema said reproachful-ly. ‘And there is not a millimetre to spare in your wedding dress.’
    ‘I’m not going to starve for another six weeks, Mama.’ Tala ate another pastry and looked at Leyla. ‘Join us for dinner?’
    ‘I don’t know, we…’ she looked to Ali, but he was explaining supply chain economics to Tala’s father. Quickly Leyla cast around for another question to ask.
    ‘Will you get married in a mosque?’ she asked, falling back on the wedding plans as an acceptable avenue for small talk. But she noticed Reema’s eyebrows meet in a frown.
    ‘A church,’ Reema corrected. ‘A church.’
    ‘Not all Arabs are Muslims,’ Tala said.
    ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…’Leyla began, but Tala interrupted her.
    ‘Are you a Muslim?’
    Leyla wondered if Tala simply did not know how to ask questions about the weather. She sat up as she nodded. The ornate, carved chair in which she sat was becoming uncomfortable, but she felt an unusual pulse of energy moving through her limbs.
    ‘Why?’ Tala asked.
    ‘Mama, what kind of a question is that?’ Reema demanded. ‘Because she was born a Muslim.’
    ‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Tala.
    ‘Weren’t you?’ Reema asked. Leyla felt her mouth opening uncertainly and then closing again, but Tala left no time for any reply.
    ‘She was born female and a certain race,’ Tala told her mother.
    ‘And if she’d been adopted by a Jewish family, she’d have been Jewish.’Reema sat back and exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke in relief.
    ‘Thank God she wasn’t adopted. What the Middle East doesn’t need is more Jews!’
    ‘Mama, please!’ Tala closed her eyes, shook her head and sat back.
    Out in the hallway Rani, the housekeeper who, as always, had travelled with Reema from Jordan, pushed out the swing door from the kitchen with her ample backside, for her hands were holding a silver tray carrying a crystal tumbler of water. She paused for a moment in the dim corridor, listening briefly as Reema expounded on politics and religion. She spat into the water, and then, with a slight flourish, dropped in a tablet of soluble painkiller that fizzed its way up the glass.
    Leyla felt the room spin for a moment, but the moment passed.
    She forced herself to focus on the arrival of an Indian housekeeper, bearing a small gilt tray upon which a glass of effervescent liquid rested.
    ‘Your headache medicine, Madam,’ Rani said. Leyla watched the housekeeper intently, seeking respite from the aggression of the conversation, but found instead that the woman’s eyes held what seemed like a malicious gleam as she watched Reema lift the glass to her lips.
    ‘I don’t have a headache,’ Reema remembered suddenly. Rani’s face dropped as she pushed the tray nearer.
    ‘But it is seven o’clock, Madam. Your usual headache time.’
    Despite the logic of this reply, Reema dismissed her with a flick of the hand, then rose and excused herself. She had no more than three quarters of an hour to re-apply her make up and get dressed for dinner. Even from the