Tala, a London-based Palestinian, is preparing for her elaborate Middle Eastern wedding when she meets Leyla, a young British Indian woman who is dating her best friend.
Spirited Christian Tala and shy Muslim Leyla could not be more different from each other, but the attraction is immediate and goes deeper than friendship. As Tala’s wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.
Moving between the vast enclaves of Middle Eastern high society and the stunning backdrop of London’s West End, I Can’t Think Straight explores the clashes between East and West, love and marriage, conventions and individuality, creating a humorous and tender story of unexpected love and unusual freedoms.
Chapter One
Amman, Jordan
Amman, Jordan
And then there was the question of getting dressed, and time was running dangerously short. Reema could hardly spend this last hour before her daughter’s engagement party arguing with Halawani about the cake. It was evident from the bulging smear of gold icing that was still slipping down the fabric-draped wall of the vast entrance courtyard that it was her own idiotic staff who had damaged it, probably Rani, wanting to be in charge of the fragile tower of soft sponge and peaked icing, and instead staggering into the wall under its unexpected weight. What did Halawani bake his cakes with anyway, to get that heaviness? As though the more substance and solidity the thing had the better. It crossed her mind that perhaps she should have ordered it sent from London or, better yet, Paris. But if Reema was to be honest with herself (which she had spent a lifetime successfully avoiding, since honest appraisal of one’s motives only caused more trouble than she had energy or inclination to deal with) she had not felt her daughter deserved it. Not for the fourth engagement. Three previous French sponges had already been sent for, admired and eaten, and then she had been forced to taste the bitterness of their regurgitation in her mouth when the engagements had been called off. Although, this time, she was sure that the betrothal would stick. This time, she was hopeful that at the age of twenty-eight, and despite two expensive, American degrees behind her, Tala had finally learned the most important lesson of life – that love and ideals were not actually real. Everyone loved the thought of them. Reema herself loved to read about them in books and watch them on television. But there was a reason why romance and passion were so suited to fiction; and to learn this lesson was a function of maturity, Reema thought, a growth away from the hotheadedness of youth. Over the last week, she had been pleased to see in her daughter’s face a placid calm that was unfamiliar but most welcome. And yet a wriggling worm of tension curled inside her chest. The problem with Tala was that she always did what was least expected. And so if she did ruin this engagement, if it didn’t last, Reema’s one, poor consolation would be that she hadn’t wasted money on the cake.
With only the slightest flinch, Tala had watched her engagement cake crash into the wall. She stood on the landing above, leaning silently over the banister rail, still and unnoticed, watching the flurry of movement in the hallway below. In the midst of the preparations, her mother and the baker were arguing over the smashed cake. She watched them both, body movements and gestures set against each other, heard their rising voices, irritated, pleading. Quickly, Tala turned and went back into her own room. She closed the door with finality by leaning her back fully against it and stood for a moment as if casting around for something to hold onto. Her eyes went to her desk, her laptop, her work. She sat down to finish correcting a contract that had been sent to her earlier that day. The soft shift of her pencil on the stiff paper soothed her in some way, until the chime of her mobile interrupted her. She answered it, while her pencil continued to work.
‘We could just elope, you know.’
She smiled at Hani’s voice.
‘But then you wouldn’t get to see me dressed like a Bond girl,’ she replied dryly. He laughed.
‘Must be insanity over there. With the preparations and everything?’
Tala had just found three errors in one clause and neglected to answer quickly enough.
‘Tala? You’re working aren’t you? Half an hour before our engagement party starts!’
Tala laid the proofs on the desk and leaned forward in her chair.
‘It’s my first order, Hani. I have to make it work. My father’s already pressing me to come back to the family business.’
‘You will make it work,’ he replied, his voice serious, kind. ‘You will. I love you, Tala.’
Tala smiled at the phone. ‘Me too, Hani. Me too.’
When he rung off, she did not pick up her work again, but sat still for a moment, the kind of pause she rarely allowed to punctuate her days. There was music outside floating up to her from the garden – the band was testing microphones and speakers. Closing her eyes, she frowned, straining to hear the song that was being sung.
Heartbreak and sorrow seemed enveloped in the soft liquidity of a female voice, which had an underlying richness that poured along the registers of notes like warm syrup. Her cadences and inflections, the heart-stopping pause as she sang up or down a range, were uniquely Eastern, unmistakably Arab. But the voice was buoyed from beneath by the flamenco rhythms of a guitar and it was pulled higher by the intense, aching stretch of two violins. She listened for a few seconds more, until the band halted their test abruptly, and then she returned, with concentration, to her contract.
Reema glanced at the kitchen clock. For fifteen minutes now, she had been trying to get Halawani to take back the cake and repair it, which he steadfastly refused to do lest she interpret it as an admission of guilt on his part (which of course, she would have). Turning on her velvet-slippered heel, she left the competing protestations of the staff and the baker, not to mention the grating screech of the microphones that were being tested outside, and the irritating itch of her husband’s nervousness as he watched two hundred table settings of silver and stiff linen being checked, and stalked across the heavy blocks of pure marble that covered the entire ground floor of the house like the finely veined, flawless skin of a soft-complexioned woman. She stepped carefully onto the wide sweep of the staircase and walked up as if leaving a room filled with a hundred admirers. It was one of her small pleasures, this ascending of the staircase, which was such a showpiece, such a piece of theatre, suspended above the flowing expanse of the living area below. At the top she turned left (the right wing of the house contained her daughters’ suites) and crossed twenty yards of hallway before gaining her own bedroom.
The bed was of gargantuan proportions, adorned with a selection of suede and silk cushions. She liked the romance of the look, and it was echoed in the hand-painted wallpaper, in the florid flounce of the curtains and in the plump pinkness of the sofas which framed the sitting area. Conscious of the time, Reema walked straight into her dressing room, where the much-anticipated pleasure of a strong cigarette awaited her.
Her Indian housekeeper, Rani, was standing in the middle of the room, holding two glittering evening gowns, each arm stretched high above her head in an effort to prevent the hems from touching the carpet. She was only barely successful in her endeavour, since she was a good eight inches shorter than Reema and her dresses.
Reema paused and her eyes flickered intently over each gown.
She pointed.‘That one.’
‘Yes, Madam’.
With relief, Rani laid down the gowns. The tops of her arms ached.
‘Where’s my coffee?’
‘Coming, Madam.’
Reema sat upon the plush, velvet chair before the towering, three-panelled mirror, attached a slim black holder to the end of the cigarette, applied the flame of an alabaster lighter to the other end, and sat back. Her face was not bad, she considered. Not for a fifty-four year old mother of three. She sighed out a cloud of cigarette smoke. She was aware that the continuous dragging on cigarettes had deepened the lines around her eyes and mouth, but they were not as bad as those of the other women in her bridge group (except for Dina, but everyone knew she had a Brazilian plastic surgeon practically on her payroll).
Rani reappeared carrying a pot of Arabic coffee and a small silver cup. She placed these on the table behind Reema, poured out a cupful of the steaming dark liquid and, with a sidelong glance at Reema’s unsuspecting back, silently spat into it.
‘Your coffee, madam.’ Rani crossed the room and politely offered the cup to Reema. She watched eagerly as Reema lifted the coffee to her lips, but only to blow a cooling breath onto it.
‘Where’s my husband?’
‘In the garden, madam.’
‘Did the dress fit Tala?’ Reema asked. ‘She didn’t stop eating at lunch.’
‘Like a glove, madam.’ Rani watched the coffee cup’s movement up and down, the gentle cooling of the liquid. Let her drink it, she prayed. Let her drink it.
‘Lamia – did you take in her clothes?’
Rani nodded. ‘By two centimetres, madam.’
Satisfied, Reema lifted the coffee to drink but then remembered her youngest child. Rani shifted a little.
‘Did Zina like the gold dress I chose for her?’ The cup touched Reema’s lips, was tipped up ready for the first sip.
‘She loved it, Madam.’ Rani’s careful tone was designed to smooth over the sarcasm of the reply, but only caused Reema to lower the coffee cup and throw her housekeeper an evaluating stare. Rani smiled brightly, encouragingly, but it was too late. Reema placed the untouched coffee back into her hands and began to apply her make up.
The moment that Zina had seen her sister’s engagement cake, she had felt blindly impelled to get out of Jordan and back to New York. The teasing restlessness of her limbs, the impulsive desire to turn and walk calmly, coolly through the quiet house and out of the immense double front doors, was almost overwhelming. She pictured herself out there, outside, walking, walking on, picking up the rhythm of her stride as she made her way along the winding private road that led down their own private hill and towards the dark surroundings of the Jordanian countryside. Away to her right, she would see the lights of Amman, winking seductively from this distance; she would look up and see the startling white purity of the stars, studded into the ebony sky, guarded by a desert moon as sharp-edged as a scythe.
Zina sat up on her bed, disappointed – with herself, for wanting to escape Tala’s party – but mainly with the cake. Until she had parted her curtains and watched the garish bulk of that cake being brought into the garden, she had been successfully convincing herself that she was glad to be home. Most of her apparent contentment had been achieved at her own expense, through basic psychological trickery. She knew she was adept at evoking a romantic nostalgia for things like the jasmine trees, the scent of smoked aubergines, even the ageing faces of her mother and father. But it was all a fantasy of the mind, an elaborate structure to enable her to get through an evening, a week, a month in this place, without succumbing to a nervous breakdown. Gold icing. Who, in God’s name, ever used gold icing? It looked metallic, the cake, as though it had been sprayed with car paint and it encapsulated everything that irritated her about the Middle East. The gaudy, unnatural look of it, the probably poisonous taste of it.
And then there was the dress. Draped across the foot of the bed was an offensively gold concoction. Pinned to the shoulder of the dress was one of her mother’s stiff, gilt-edged note cards. In Reema’s florid hand were written the words: ‘No black. It’s an engagement party, not a funeral. Mama.’ She could imagine her mother had congratulated herself for an hour after thinking up that hilarious line. Carelessly, Zina pulled the note off and tossed it into the bin.
As she regarded the dress mournfully, it became clear to her (and not for the first time) that her mother obviously hated her. A tear of self-pity touched Zina’s eye, even as she realised something far more serious – that her dress had obviously been chosen to match the cake. A snapshot of a previous engagement cake, an emerald-turreted confection – had it been Tala’s first? – flashed into her mind, and beside it, her mother, somewhat younger, in a brilliant green Yves Saint Laurent dress and matching eyeshadow that had not seemed so inelegant amid the general style overkill of that period.
Drawing in a long breath, she tried to dispel the vague nausea that suddenly touched her, and made a conscious effort not to recall the other cakes, the other parties, the broken engagements, the desperate fiancés, the feuding families. In one short week she would be back at university in New York, and would have a month to recover from this trip before returning for the wedding. In the meantime, she began to list in her mind the things that would help her to get through the evening without resorting to sarcasm or sullen silence.
At the top of that list was the knowledge that she would not be putting any of that cake into her mouth. If it was bad luck, then so be it. Frankly, she had eaten cake three times before, and not one of the engagements had stuck. Although, a moment later, the thought struck her that perhaps that had been the good luck after all. She smiled slightly and headed into the bathroom.
‘Is this seven millimetres?’
Lamia, waiting for mirror space behind the broad shoulders of her husband, stepped forward and peered at the ruler that he used to measure how much of his handkerchief peeked from his tuxedo pocket. She nodded, and Kareem lowered the ruler and turned away, satisfied.
‘I just hope this is the last engagement party your father has to throw for your sister.’
Lamia tried very hard to concentrate only on her own reflection in the polished glass. She adjusted her necklace, pleased with the way it set off the elegant sapphire-blue of her evening dress. But Kareem was fidgeting at his immaculately ordered closets, checking that the edges of his ties were aligned, needling the perfect rows of socks, needling her.
‘Poor man,’ he said, clicking his tongue.
‘He doesn’t mind,’ Lamia offered.
‘Of course he minds. He’s kind enough not to show it. But for a man of his standing to endure the shame…’
Lamia closed her eyes just long enough to block out the sound of her husband’s voice. She opened her eyes, and cast a half-smile at her own reflection before turning to him.
‘How do I look?’ she asked.
Kareem’s long-lashed brown eyes passed over her figure and for a brief, pleasurable moment, Lamia felt conscious of her own beauty.
‘You could cover your shoulders a little more.’
She looked down. ‘It’s not cold.’
He plucked a shawl from the closet and strode across the room, holding it out to her.
‘It’s not proper.’
The music, over which the first guests were chatting, still haunted Tala as she descended into the garden which was transformed for this night with hundreds of lamps and glowing lanterns that created an expansive circle of light around the crisply dressed tables and the open sided marquees. Beyond the lights were swathes of lush lawn (Reema had insisted on installing an impractical and hideously expensive state-of-the-art irrigation system to crush once and for all the relentlessly encroaching desert landscape) and dotted between were fountains, footpaths and the occasional piece of ancient sculpture, dramatically lit for the occasion. Tala paused in the shadows and looked around. There were softly translucent candles, and music that rose in ripples behind the tide of chattering voices.
There were exquisite dresses cut from elegant fabrics, draped over long, slim bodies; there were jewels that gleamed against tanned, olive skin. There were butlers and waitresses, in starched white and rustling black, moving with purpose amongst the colourful women and the suited men. Tala knew that her parents had outdone themselves. She had been surprised that they had even suggested a party this time around, bearing in mind her dubious history, but it had become clear to her quite quickly that her mother was actively planning to use this fourth and final engagement as a way to wipe clean all the lingering shame and embarrassment of the other three.
Reema had organised a party designed to scream her family’s support for their eldest daughter, and to ensure that nobody missed the fact that this final fiancé outshone even the three wealthy heirs she had previously been promised to, because Hani was handsome and articulate, as well as Palestinian, Christian and rich. Tala lingered at the edge of the party, holding back from that first plunge in to people and talk and dancing, and looked around her, narrowing her eyes slightly, so that the deep, liquid blue of the sky, which held a crisp-edged moon and coldly bright stars, was rimmed at the lower edges with the flickering pulse of the candlelight.
Uncle Ramzi spotted Tala first, pulling his niece into a small circle of people. The women kissed her, commenting on the simple, clean lines of her dress in an effusive way that made her understand that they disliked it. The men grinned their congratulations. The young ones had carefully slicked hair and, like their fathers, held glasses of whiskey. Her uncle was already smoking a Montecristo cigar shaped like a small torpedo. Tala hugged him.
‘Ammo Ramzi! You managed to get on a plane!’
Ramzi pulled back in dismay. ‘Plane? You know I’ll never get on a plane. Not after that dream I had.’ His large hand mimed the sudden crash of an aircraft. He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘The crash! The devastation!’
‘Ammo, the dream was in 967.’
‘Right after the Six Day War,’ agreed Ramzi. ‘Israel has a lot to answer for.’ This drew sympathetic murmurs from the people around them even as Ramzi assured her that he would not have missed her party for anything.
‘I wanted to meet the man who made it this far – again.’
There was a flutter of laughter and Tala glanced up at the circle and caught the nervous expectation in the fading sounds they made.
The last time she had broken an engagement, she had done so at the party itself, irritated beyond control by the insulting, chauvinistic bravado her fiancé had adopted in front of his family and friends.
Despite her instinct to brush off their clinging curiousity with a joke, Tala felt lost suddenly. She looked to her father, instinctively, for some quiet support but he had moved away, always unable to stand still, and was directing several tuxedo-clad waiters to reposition the heat lamps around the immaculately laid tables. The night was cool, after a day that had been harshly hot, and the persistent breezes would only become colder as the night wore on. Then, at the far edges of the informal circle surrounding her, she caught sight of her youngest sister. Zina’s eyes were fixed on her own with a serious look under which amusement lay bubbling. The touch of that glance restored her and she turned back to her uncle.
‘I love him, Ammo.’
‘Of course you love him. He’s Christian and he’s rich.’
‘He’s kind and honest and forward-thinking. And handsome,’ she added, to soften the insolence that they would have perceived in her tone. Her uncle smiled, but leaned in to her as he accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter. Tala noticed Ramzi’s eyes lingered appreciatively on the young man’s form as he took the glass from him.
‘Handsome is good, my dear. But ask your aunty why she married me. Looks and character come and go. Only large sums of money last forever.’
He was rewarded with guffaws from the men, and faux-disapproval from the women, most of whom, Tala noted, had married for money rather than love.
‘Apparently so,’ she replied, and they were uncertain of the meaning of this reply, and because they were uncertain they read it, correctly, as an insult, though none of them showed it. They only laughed outwardly and congratulated themselves inwardly that their own children were not as overeducated and smart-assed as Reema and Omar’s.
Her duty done with her uncle, Tala extricated herself and found Zina.
‘You look amazing, habibti,’ her youngest sister told her.
‘Thanks. I wish I could say the same,’ Tala replied, taking in her sister’s gold dress. Ruefully, Zina glanced down at herself.
‘You know, I think I found those weapons of mass destruction the Americans were looking for. How clever to disguise them as Mama and Lamia. I wish you’d come from London earlier,’ Zina added. ‘Who shows up the night before their engagement?’
‘I was working, Zina.’ Tala’s tone held the air of a confession.
Zina squeezed her hand, a touch of encouragement and understanding. She felt better, calmer, reassured by the familiar exchanges with Tala. There were times when Zina regretted that for the past fifteen years she and Tala had lived in different countries. While Tala had finished boarding school in Switzerland, Zina had remained at home in Amman with her parents. By the time she followed Tala and Lamia to school, the two older girls were already at university.
Perhaps she had been focusing on the wrong type of nostalgia this week.
‘Are you excited about the wedding?’ Zina asked. Tala shot her a sarcastic look.
‘Flower arrangements, menus and napkin rings? I can’t wait.’
Zina smiled. ‘Then why are you getting married?’ There was only a small hint of amusement in her eyes and in the tone of her question.
‘What should Hani and I do?’ Tala asked. ‘Live together?’
‘It’s modern times.’
‘Not in Amman. You’ve been in the States too long. These six months dating Hani are the longest I’ve ever gotten away with, without a ring.’
Zina considered. ‘I think you should blaze a trail.’
‘So it’s easier for you and Lamia?’ Tala laughed.
‘Lamia?’ Zina snorted. ‘She’s set us all back by a century.’
Instinctively, they both looked over at their sister, who caught their eyes upon her and made her way to them. She looked at Tala.
‘Mama says you should be entertaining your guests.’
Zina laughed. ‘Yeah, Tala, you really should be familiar with engagement party etiquette by now.’
‘That’s not funny,’ Lamia noted.
Zina regarded Lamia with all the irritation that had built up since she had coerced her into putting on the heinous dress. ‘It is if you possess a sense of humour.’
Tala sighed. Before them, the swimming pool glowed with submerged lighting and the interior walls displayed a delicate, intricate mosaic. The white-clothed tables radiated out from the pool over the lawns, while beyond, the wild profusion of jasmine trees and flowers stood sentinel, scenting the air with their perfume.
‘Hani’s here!’ Lamia exclaimed.
They followed Lamia’s gaze. At this distance, Hani was hard to pick out amongst the group of relatives who accompanied him, for he wore a similar tuxedo and hairstyle, and he seemed very much at ease amongst the back-slapping, shoulder-squeezing, loud congratulations that the men conferred on him as he arrived. But Tala noticed that he glanced up at every opportunity and she knew that he was looking for her; and when his eyes did find her own, their calm, even gaze reassured her.
‘God, you’re lucky, Tala,’ Zina said.
‘I know.’
She went forward to meet him, exulting in the familiar smell of his skin and clothes, clinging to him for a long hug. Only the smattering of applause from guests watching them brought her back to herself, to self-consciousness.
‘Have you had a drink?’ Hani asked her, holding her hand. Tala shook her head and he picked up two glasses from a passing tray.
‘Here,’ he said, smiling. ‘To you and me. To us, Tala.’
She touched his glass with her own ‘To us, Hani.’ Tala grasped his hand and turned to listen to the girl who was singing. She was raised high on a special dais on the other side of the pool, far enough removed from the partygoers to appear like a lone angel spreading her message in vain. Tala listened, aware of only the music and the throb of her own rushing pulse in her ears, from a heart that she felt now as a physical presence in her chest, swelled with emotion; a spilling of feeling that she could not recognise as either happiness or sorrow.
Release Date: November 1, 2008
Release Time: 82 minutes
Cast:
Lisa Ray as Tala
Sheetal Sheth as Leyla
Antonia Frering as Reema - Tala's Mother
Dalip Tahil as Omar - Tala's Father
Ernest Ignatius as Sam - Leyla's Father
Siddiqua Akhtar as Maya - Leyla's Mother
Amber Rose Revah as Yasmin - Leyla's Sister
Anya Lahiri as Lamia - Tala's Middle Sister
Kimberly Jaraj as Zina - Tala's Youngest Sister
Rez Kempton as Ali - Tala's Bestfriend | Leyla's Boyfriend
Daud Shah as Hani - Tala's Fiancé
Sam Vincenti as Kareem - Lamia's Husband
Ishwar Maharaj as Sami - Kareem's Younger Brother
George Tardios as Uncle Ramzi
Nina Wadia as Rani the Housekeeper
Born in the UK, Shamim is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, and director.
Her next book, The Athena Protocol, is an all-female YA contemporary action thriller that is published by Harper Teen in September 2019.
Her debut novel, The World Unseen, won a Betty Trask award and the Pendleton May First Novel award.
Shamim has adapted and directed the films of three of her novels including, most recently, Despite the Falling Snow. The book was published by Headline in the UK and St Martin’s Press in the US. The movie stars Rebecca Ferguson and Charles Dance in a story of love and betrayal in cold war Russia. Her films have won 47 awards internationally.
Shamim’s third novel, I Can’t Think Straight, formed the basis of her cult hit film of the same name.
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