In the Midst of Life

Mrs Cunningham was continuing:
    ‘The women had their fun, though, in the hammams.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘The public bathhouse; hot, wet and steamy. You lie naked on the stone floor, heated from underneath by wood fires, and a bath attendant throws a bucket of water over you and starts rubbing you with soap and a rough cloth – to stimulate the follicles, they say. But, believe me, that’s not all it stimulates, I can tell you! All those women laughing and massaging each other! What happens in the men’s hammams doesn’t bear thinking of. Crowds of men and boys rubbing each other! Boys from the age of seven or eight –just think. There’s a dandelion there. Look! Try and get it out, will you?’
    I had done enough weeding with my grandfather to know how to attack a dandelion.
    ‘Good girl. You’ve got the root. That’s more than Evelyn could have done.’
    She chuckled a throaty laugh.
    ‘Poor Evelyn. What she needs is a good slide around in a hammam. She’s like a dried up bit of old soap – she needs a good rubbing and lathering in all that steam to soften her up a bit.’
    She chuckled again, and I thought of poor Evelyn on the 5.30 from Paddington, returning to her clever and scornful mother and a few hours of guarded conversation and mutual backbiting.
    But I liked Mrs Cunningham. It’s funny how you can see real nastiness in some people, especially in their relationships with others, and like them just the same. She was different, and I felt flattered that she seemed to enjoy my company.
    She invited me to her house one Saturday afternoon, but when I arrived it was clear that she had forgotten, because she had gone to stay with her son, James, for the weekend, and Evelyn was there alone. I felt embarrassed and said I would go, but Evelyn pressed me to stay.
    ‘I suppose you’ve been hearing all about the souks and the hammams and the veiled women?’ she said.
    ‘Yes. Isn’t it fascinating?’
    ‘It probably is the first time you hear it, but when you get the same old stories over and over again, you can grow tired of them. Has she got to the one about the camel trek across the desert yet?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘She will. And the one about the time she wandered into a brothel by mistake?’
    ‘Wow! A brothel! That’s interesting. What happened?’
    ‘She’ll tell you. Nothing can be more boring than an old woman who lives constantly in the past.’
    ‘She’s had an interestinglife.’
    ‘Yes, but she’s a scorpion when you get to know her. She drove my dear father into the arms of another woman, that’s for sure.’
    I began to feel uncomfortable; getting involved in this female feud was something to avoid. I changed the subject.
    ‘She seems to have a lot of dislike for religion.’
    ‘Oh yes. She is a very enlightened woman, in that respect. My father was an atheist – or is, perhaps I should say. My brother and I were brought up non-believers. Really, it is the only rational way to think. Religion has had its day. I don’t know that any intelligent person can believe all that nonsense about virgin births and rising from the dead.’
    I did not know how to answer. I was very young and impressionable. I had been brought up as a Christian, and had attended Sunday School, which entailed a lot of bible study, but I don’t think I was very committed. To hear this older woman, who was a Cambridge graduate, make such a statement shook me.
    ‘We are members of the British Humanist Society’ she continued.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘We believe that men and women are on this earth to do their best for one another, to act with goodness and kindness and justice for the common good. There is no divine intervention – that is just the wishful thinking of weaker minds.’ She glanced at me, and smiled a faintly superior smile. ‘I suppose you were brought up to believe that old business about God the Father, God the Son, etc.?’
    ‘Well, I suppose I was.’
    I hadn’t heard anyone talk like that before, and it disturbed me.
    ‘Darwin proved conclusively that there is no God who made Man. Mankind has evolved over millions of years from the animal world. It’s all biology, not theology. Man made God from his imagination.’ She laughed derisively. ‘Anyway after the last war, what is there to believe? Nearly two thousand years of Christianity – “love thy neighbour as thyself” – and what did it produce? The German concentration camps.’
    She had struck home. Nothing has ever