4pm
Sitting room floor has ten piles of assorted clothing, two suitcases and a rucksack. Son is reciting what he is taking with him on his two month trip to the Holy Land which he makes sound like a tour of duty with the Foreign Legion. ‘Trackies, jeans, one pair of football shorts…’
‘Why, are you planning on playing soccer?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ While he’s out there saving the Palestinians from tyranny and single handedly solving the internal disputes between Hamas and Fatah there might just be time for a quick game of five aside. Perhaps they could just form opposing soccer teams and toss for Gaza instead of goals?
He’s still going through his packing list: ‘Swimming shorts and some casual shorts…’
‘Surely not just the casual shorts, what about some formal shorts? What happens if there’s a gala dinner and you need to wear black tie?’
‘Ha ha, but maybe I do need smart shorts in case I have to be clean.’
‘It was a joke…’ But he’s now rolling socks.
‘Take anklets,’ Suggests the youngest.
‘I don’t have any that match.’
‘I can just see the Palestinian kids in Ramallah being really judgmental if you turn up with mismatched anklets…’ Says his other sister.
‘Yep, what’s that organisation called where you go and act as an international witness – I’m sure one of the qualifications is having formal shorts and matching anklets’
‘The International Solidarity Movement.’ She and he both offer at the same time.
‘Oh-my-name-is-Anbara-and-I-know-everthing-about-everything…’ He mimics very fast like the voice over on an American drug add where they have to tell you all the side-effects in the last two seconds.
He moves all the clothes from one pile to another but nothing goes into the rucksack or the two suitcases he’s leaving behind.
‘Shall I take a football shirt?’ He hesitates over the political correctness of the Chelsea strip. ‘Everyone likes Brazil, that’ll do’
He folds and unfolds several shirts, makes a new pile and still nothing goes into the suitcases.
‘Please, pack the suitcases that you’re leaving behind and get them up into the attic.’
‘Why are you nagging?’
‘Because they’ve been here for two days now and you leave in two and a half hours and I don’t want them still sitting here when you’re gone. Every time you've left this house in the past two years I've had to clean up after you, I don't want to have to do it again. I'm going away myself tomorrow.’
‘Well you shouldn't leave everything to the last minute, should you? You’re stressing and you’re stressing me. Don’t you think I’m stressed enough?’
‘It’s a ruddy holiday, not a Stalinist Labour Camp in Siberia, you do remember that don’t you?’ But he’s taken his martyred expression upstairs by now asking his sister to lend him her copy of Vernon God Little which she doesn’t want to give as her boyfriend before last gave it to her and it has sentimental value.
‘You’re too attached to material goods,’ he says.
Strangely, she doesn’t kill him.
4.15pm
The Brazil shirt has been joined by another from Italy. The rucksack is now half full but he’s still waiting for a few more things to be dried. In the kitchen there are three overflowing bags of washing and the tumble drier is doing cartwheels despite it being 37 degrees outside on the hottest day of the year. The two other suitcases are still empty the sitting room remains full of folded clothes.
4.30
No change.
4.45
Son surveys the piles of clothes and announces that he has too many and should probably throw some away or give them to charity. He fetches a recycling bag. I suggest he should hold on to them for a while so he doesn’t need to buy new stuff since he’s so worried about materialism.
‘Are you serious? You want me to hold on to clothes I don’t want till they are out of fashion?’
‘I thought you were above fashion?’
‘Yeah, but I don’t want to look like a fool, wearing ten year old clothes, do I?
‘They’re just t-shirts, they are hardly likely to be so deeply unfashionable next year when this lot are lost, faded or irremediably filthy.’
He shakes his head at my warped logic and starts sifting through the piles for possibly the twentieth time.
5pm
He has one pair of white trousers in his hand. 'These are so dirty, I'll never wear them again.' He puts them into the recycling bag. Nothing else moves. Oxfam will be delighted.
5.15
‘Please, for the love of God, would you put these clothes into the suitcase and then take them up to the attic’
‘Yeah, yeah. In a minute. You are so fussy. You don't love me. All weekend you've been ignoring me so you could ply Worcester man with melons and cured meat.'
'I would happily ply you with cured meat, but you're a vegetarian.'
'That's beside the point, you don't nag him like this...’
5.30
One by one he begins carrying t-shirts and jumpers from one side of the room to the empty suitcases on the other. The drier beeps. He saunters off into the kitchen and returns with one towel.
I close my eyes.
6.05
Suitcases packed he finally lugs them upstairs. There is the sound of running water in the shower. I hear him yell for shampoo.
6.25
He appears wearing a towel, talking on the phone to the friend who is taking him to the airport who is parked outside the house:
‘Yeah man, I’m nearly ready, but you said you’d be here at 6.30. You’re early.’
6.26
He returns dressed in the usual uniform of bad boxers exposed like the rising sun from belted jeans and a t-shirt which he asks us to assure him is politically inoffensive to both Arabs and Israelis. It says 'I like Sheep'. I'm sure there's a deeper meaning that is passing me by. And then I remember that it belongs to his brother. All property is theft don't you know? He starts tying up the straps on his rucksack. One breaks.
‘I need to swap over to another bag. This one is broken.’
His sister and I look at each other in horror then she patiently rethreads the strap back on to the catch and it snips into place.
6.27
He decides he needs luggage labels, and a charger for his phone.
6.28
‘What about these jumpers draped all over the radiators which, I hastily check, thank goodness, are not switched on.
‘They’re still damp.’
‘But what shall I do with them? Leave them there till September when you come back.’
‘Put them away. They’re just a few jumpers.’ There are at least five of them hanging by their arms like drowning men.
‘And what’s all this stuff in the kitchen?’
‘They’re not mine, they’re yours.’
‘What do you mean, they’re mine.’
‘It’s my sheets from college, they don’t belong to me though, they’re yours.’
‘So you’re leaving me with all your laundry.’
‘It’s not my laundry, it’s the house’s laundry. I told you it’s sheets.’
I spot a tank top, a belt and towels in the mix of one of the hampers.
6.29
He’s standing at the door with his sisters while his entourage carry his rucksack to their car. There are two of them and they’re picking up a third on the way to the airport. I’m surprised there isn’t a marching band outside and a farewell banner in the back window of the car.
He kisses his sister. ‘Don’t get murdered,’ says the eldest.
‘Don’t get put into jail,’ says the youngest, punching him in the stomach. He thumps her back on the arm.
‘Don’t get deported,’ I say, while secretly hoping that he doesn’t even make it past the airport in Tel Aviv and is back safely, if messily, home again by the end of the week.
'And don't drink the water in the Old City. Your uncle Rashid got dysentry. And stay out of your cousin's way. Remember she's an alcoholic. She likes young boys. And don't swim in the sea in Tel Aviv - the currents are dangerous. And don't...'
We have the requisite farewell photograph and I come inside. There’s another jumper slung over the radiator in the hallway. Eldest daughter sits down beside me on the sofa. Youngest joins us. We sit there companionably enjoying the brother-free peace as I contemplate washing 'my' sheets.
Then at 6.31, the phone rings: ‘Can somebody pick up?’ he says…
