The Course of Love. A novel pdfdrive com

particular environments, the leaflet goes on. That’s why the Malagasy giant
jumping rat has such big ears and strong hindlegs and the redtail catfish of the
Amazon sports a camouflaging sandy band across its midriff.
“Of course,” Kirsten interjects, “but these adaptations aren’t much use when
your new habitat is actually the Prague Zoo, where you’re living in a concrete
hotel room with a meal delivered to you three times through a hatch and there’s
no entertainment except for the tourists. You just grow fat and tetchy, like the
poor sweet melancholic orangutan, designed for a life in the forests of Borneo—
and not holding up too well here.”

---

“But perhaps humans are no different,” adds Rabih, a little put out that a
hominid should be receiving so much of his wife’s sympathy. “We’re also
saddled with impulses which were probably sensible when they evolved in the
plains of Africa, yet which give us nothing but trouble now.”
“What sort of things?”
“Being super alert to noises in the night, which now just stops us sleeping
when a car alarm goes off. Or being primed to eat anything sweet, which only
makes us fat, given how many temptations there are. Or feeling almost
compelled to look at the legs of strangers in the streets of Prague, which annoys
and hurts our partners. . . .”
“Mr. Khan! Using Darwin to get me to feel sorry for you for not having seven
wives and yet another ice cream . . .”
It’s late on Sunday evening by the time they finally land, exhausted, at
Edinburgh Airport. Kirsten’s bag is second off the carousel. Rabih has no such
luck, so while they wait, they sit on a bench next to a shuttered sandwich shop.
It’s unusually warm for the time of year, and Kirsten idly wonders what the
weather will be like tomorrow. Rabih gets out his phone and checks. A high of
19 degrees Celsius and sunny the entire day: remarkable. Just then he spots his
bag on the carousel, goes over to collect it, and adds it to their trolley. They
board the bus back into the center of town just before midnight. All around them,
similarly worn-out passengers are lost in thought or dozing. Suddenly
remembering that he has to send a text to a colleague, Rabih reaches into the
right pocket of his jacket for his phone, then looks in the left pocket, then stands
up a little in his seat to check the pockets of his trousers.
“Have you got my phone?” he asks Kirsten in an agitated voice. She’s
sleeping and wakes up with a start.
“Of course not, darling. Why would I take your phone?”
He squeezes past her and reaches up into the overhead rack, takes down his
bag, and fumbles in the outer compartment. An unfortunate reality gradually
becomes clear: the phone has gone missing, and with it his communications
system with the world.
“It must have been stolen somewhere in the baggage reclaim,” observes
Kirsten. “Or perhaps you left it behind somehow. Poor you! We can call up the
airport first thing tomorrow and find out if anyone has handed it in. But the
insurance will cover it anyway. It’s sort of amazing this hasn’t happened to one
of us before.”
But Rabih fails to see the wonder of it.
“You can use my phone if there’s anything you want to look at,” adds Kirsten
brightly.

---

Rabih is furious. This is the beginning of an administrative nightmare. He’ll
be made to wait for hours by a series of operators, then have to dig up paperwork
and fill out forms. Oddly enough, though, his fury isn’t directed only at his loss;
some of it also appears to have found its way to his wife. After all, she was the
one who first mentioned the weather, which in turn prompted him to check the
forecast, without which the phone might still be safely in his possession.
Furthermore, Kirsten’s calm and sympathetic manner merely serves to
underscore how carefree and lucky she is in comparison. As the bus makes its
way towards Waverley Bridge, an important piece of logic falls into place for
Rabih: somehow all the pain and bother and hassle, every bit of it, is her fault.
She is to blame for the lot, including the headache that is right now clasping
itself like a vise around his temples. He turns away from her and mutters, “I
knew all along we shouldn’t have gone on this crazy, unnecessary trip”—which
seems a sad and rather unfair way to précis the celebration of an important
anniversary.
Not everyone would follow or sympathize with the connection Rabih has just
made. Kirsten never signed up to the job of guardian of her husband’s mobile
phone and is far from responsible for every aspect of this grown primate’s life.
But to Rabih it makes a curious sort of sense. Not for the first time, everything
is, somehow, his wife’s doing.