God is Dead

I cannot say, with any certainty, that God does not exist. Equally, I do not have the requisite faith to proclaim that he is alive, he is alive I tell you. I am reminded of Frankenstein and his monster. If only each of us could see the godliness of the other, be that a person or a concept. Surely the idea of omnipotence, the everywhereness of God, should extend to the human spirit. Not only is he all around us, but he is also within us. Jaded, confounded, blown side ways by draughts of guilt and frustration, we grieve for lack, absence. God is dead because we are dead.

And so it came to pass that I visited father, in his faraway places. The first excursion was to Kuwait, the land of deserts and pipelines. Father had borrowed a friend's apartment. Mother and I were duly installed.

Fahaheel was a small district. There were high rises, where the ex-patriot community lived, and low-rises, where the Arabs lived. Everything western was new. It would have shone, except for the sand, constantly whipped by the winds, so it coated and clung to everything.

The apartment itself was serviceable, if basic. The kitchen was long and thin, but with all the usual accessories; cooker, fridge, etc. I do not recall a washing machine. The sitting was sparse, but I had a favourite armchair, that was covered in striped beige fabric. I think I liked it because it was situated next to the book case. They were not my father's books. The man who the apartment belonged to was on extended home leave. He had packed most of his personal items away, yet the books were perhaps perceived as some sort of decoration.

A built in cupboard, along the whole of one wall of the room, housed the drinks cabinet. Kuwait was a dry country, adhering to the Muslim prohibition of alcohol. This did not stop the ex-pats. Liquor, in all its manifestations, can be quite easy to produce, and they made gallons of it. Date wine was thought to be a special delicacy. It tasted horrible.

Father took home brewing kits from England, and fastidiously kept a supply of rich, dark beer. One day, while we were sitting relaxing, an almighty explosion threw the cupboard doors open. Ale fountained out of the top of one of the bottles. Perplexed father covered what remained in a heavy blanket, in case the same thing should happen again. It was not until he was making his next batch that we discovered why his beer was so volatile. He consistently failed to measure his ingredients properly, substituting kilogrammes for pounds and ounces. Although this ensured that his brews were pleasantly sweet and, therefore, popular, it did somewhat raise the chances of explosions.

I do not remember my bedroom.

The bathrooms were positively space age. Formed entirely from a single piece of white, moulded plastic, they were like ablutionary pods, a la Star Trek. There were no sharp edges out pointed funnels, instead everything was curved. Windowless, they were illuminated by bright, recessed lights, that added to the space capsule feel. After use, I shut the door, pressed a little button, and the whole area was flooded with a disinfectant solution.

I like the smell of disinfectant, especially Detol.

From the apartment I could see right over the town. As sun rose, when all was still sleeping under a blue cast, the first prayer call of the day ran out from the mosque minaret. Tiny figures on the roofs below stood and stretched. “Why do they sleep up there?”
“Because it's cooler at night.”
“But we don't sleep on the roof.”
“That's because we have air conditioning.”

Mother and I frequently scuttled down to the bakery at 6.00am. Situated at the far end of the souk, we saw the queues from quite a distance away. We were always allowed straight to the front. The Arabs found my blonde hair and straw hat quite mesmerising, they even coined a nickname especially for me. I was 'the English rose'.

Hot, flat bread tasted delicious with melted butter. We also bought hard dough bread, that was sweet and dense. Father took sandwiches to work made with this.

Water took on a new significance for me in Kuwait. Dehydration can be a killer, so a large jug was filled every morning and put in the fridge. I had to have drunk it by six in the evening, otherwise I would not be allowed any “Pop”. Anything fizzy, that was not alcoholic, was called pop. For a reason I did not understand, Coca Cola was banned in Kuwait, something about factories in Israel. All other products associated with Coca Cola were also unavailable. I drank a lot of Sprite.

During the day mother and I followed a routine. After breakfast we shopped, wandering through souks, always receiving the utmost respect. Mother liked to look at the fabrics, that were ranged in glorious colour and texture, in the gritty stores. The vegetables on offer were foreign to us. Potatoes, it seemed, did not form part of the Arab diet, so we became accustomed to celeriac. Father did not consider this “Foreign muck”.

In the evenings, when he arrived home from work, he took us out to the gold souks. The old buildings were crumbling, but their windows, with their glass shelving and sparkling lights, were stacked high with glitter. Father knew one particular gold trader, and when we went into his shop he always offered us Sprite. After a few weeks of this ritual I realised that father's drink actually contained gin. I was shocked, because the guy who owned the shop was a Muslim. “Believing and doing, or not doing, are two completely different thing,” father said.

I stayed up late into the night, I could afford to because of the afternoon siestas. Temperatures reached up to 40 degrees in the shade at the height of the day. Despite the air conditioning it was still too bastard hot to do anything. As the heat wore off mother took me down to the pool. Splashing around in the water liberated us from the oppressive temperatures, but I still had to wear my sun hat and a t-shirt.

I did not make any friends. All the children already knew each other. I was only there for three months, so I was permanently on the outside, not part of the community.

Food was the real thrill in Kuwait. The Kuwait Oil company (KOC) had a club for expatriots in Ahmedi. As work canteens go, it was spectacular. We ate prawn cocktails, steaks and black forest gateaus practically every night of the week. Mother enjoyed this. It meant she did not have to cook. After 30 years of slaving over a hot stove, this was a welcome break.

Father took us to other places to eat. The Mariot Hotel was a big ship, beached just outside Kuwait City. Everything there was white (the tablecloths, napkins, walls, diners), except for the waiters. They were all brown and used to say “Yes Sir,” very quickly when father spoke to them. They nodded their heads and hurried about according to his orders.

At the Ahmedi club there was also a swimming pool, squash courts and various other leisure activities. On father's days off, that were Thursday afternoons and all day Friday, we went to the club and generally lounged about. When we first arrived I could not swim. I did not like the water. I found it difficult and deceptive. Father said it would hold me up. He even tried to show me by floating on his back like a big, fleshy starfish, but when I tried I sank.

“I've got you, I've got you,” he said, standing next to my horizontal body as I kicked and swallowed chlorine. He held the straps of my swimming costume in his hands, dragging it up between the crack in my legs, until I was so uncomfortable I was nearly crying. This went on week after week. It annoyed him that I struggled to lift both legs off the bottom of the pool. I wanted to swim, I really did, but the water kept pulling me down and covering my head. Eventually, in sheer frustration, he threw me in the deep end. Mother laughed. She liked the idea of sink or swim. “That's life,” she often said, shrugging her shoulders, when something horrible happened to me. Bruce, a friend of father's, dived in. His rough hands pulled me up. He was smiling, but I could see behind his lips and eyes there was a very real concern. For the rest of the day he played with me, in the shallow end.

Bruce was a joker. A draftsman. Father was his boss. “I come from a small town just south of Birmingham,” he said. I did not understand that he meant London. I did not have a grasp on irony. I thought it was a fizzy drink from Scotland, that made me tongue orange and my teeth each.

Once had got my confidence he taught me how to swim. I knew the principles. Night after night father would put me, face down, on the dining room table and make me move my arms and legs about. I felt like a frog. The wood dug into my hip bones. Bruce got me to understand that I should not fight with the water. I had to see it as a friend.

“Look, look at me,” I shouted to my parents, who were slapped out on their sun-loungers, under a yellow umbrella, at the side of the pool. Neither of them looked. We were meant to be going for dinner when I got out of the pool, instead I was marched to the car park and unceremoniously man-handled into the back seat. I could not work out what I had done wrong.

Once at home father began to rage. Mother was in the kitchen agreeing with him, while trying to cover up his snarling by banging pots and pans about. She had been looking forward to eating dinner, not cooking it. He went straight for the drinks cabinet and opened a bottle of pear wine, swilling it straight from the neck. I felt worried. I wanted to go and read in my bedroom. “Just sit there,” he boomed, lighting another cigarette. I slumped back into my favourite armchair.

Mother's face was twisted up. She threw the dinner on the table. What was on the plates slopped about. Gravy spilt. I made to move by father sprang at me and I shrank back. His face was millimetres from mine and he was shouting. I pressed myself further into the chair. His cheeks were red. His breath smelt of cigarettes and wine. He said everything so loudly that I could not hear most of what he was saying. He jabbed his finger into my chest. “You're a nasty piece of work you are.”
I nodded.
He poked me harder. “Shaming me in front of all MY men.” His circled the air with his arms. “I've been trying to teach you to swim for fucking weeks. What's the matter? Not good enough for you? Doing it wrong was I?”
“No, I ...”
“Oh shut the fuck up, you stupid little bitch,” and then he hit me and I banged my head on the book shelves. I tried to escape into the back of the chair, but he pulled me to my feet. I heard his belt coming off. It skidded against his trouser material. It sounded like an old man trying to breath. “I'm going to give you the thrashing you deserve, my girl, teach you a lesson you'll never forget” ...

And I never have. That day God died.

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