A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  Material wealth was equally repugnant to him, so before long, she’d traded in her previous career goal of supporting herself as a teacher of English literature for a new agenda of educating the masses in whatever subject and wherever she was needed.

  Despite his strident views, Francisco was exotic and intelligent. His comprehension of art, music, and a wide variety of Latin American literature, along with his tireless intellectual probing, opened her to the outside world in a way she’d never been before.

  He read Borges and Neruda to her in Spanish, and although she didn’t completely understand, she loved the lulling sounds flowing from his mouth. Under his tutelage she’d grown conscious of vast new horizons. Soon, Francisco replaced even Che as her hero; for Francisco seemed to embrace all of humanity in his urgent desire to better the planet.

  She’d loved how he challenged her. Unlike her previous boyfriends, Francisco had big things in mind, and he made no secret that he wanted her to be a part of them. Together they were embarking on an exhilarating mission to rescue the world.

  She’d certainly never doubted Francisco’s love for her and had assumed his feelings for her were the equal of her adoration of him on those amorous afternoons in his rented loft listening to his sermons. Each time he took her in his arms, she wanted to be swallowed up by the universe he painted for her, to soar into oblivion through his lips, eyes, and dogma. He could coax the most abandoned love from her, rousing an uninhibited surrender that made her want to give herself to him again and again.

  He didn’t seem to care whether she was faithful to him. He told her she should be free and bold with her body, that she should own her sexuality. Although his saying this had been meant to empower her, she had no interest in being with any other men. She’d wanted to bear his children and share his life, dedicated to remaking society into a utopia devoid of poverty and misery. She pictured carrying out their life’s work side by side and began to feel that her abilities were as infinite as she deemed his.

  When he abruptly left for San Salvador one morning to visit his ailing mother, she couldn’t imagine not going with him. For a week, she had done everything possible to find a way to finish the semester early to follow him. She even considered dropping out of school altogether.

  Then, on the day she purchased her airline ticket, she learned the truth from a mutual acquaintance. Francisco had not gone home to El Salvador to be with his mother, as he’d claimed, but to be with his wife when she gave birth to their second child!

  In that sickening moment, Joy felt a tectonic shift beneath her. She cried herself to sleep for weeks, aching where her heart had been wrenched out, sure that she would never again find her footing. How could she possibly survive without him to tie her dreams to?

  She couldn’t bring herself to eat, remembering their shared dinners over wine and political discourse, meals that were preludes to love. She could barely concentrate on her studies. Her courses, exams, and career meant nothing now that her love, her entire future, was gone. There was nothing in her world to look forward to. A vast wasteland gaped before her with no recognizable landmark—only a vacuum devoid of reason or meaning.

  How could he have been so duplicitous, and how could she not have sensed at least some sign of it?

  For months, she’d plodded through her courses with indifference. She had no interest in dating, even casually. Something as simple as a Barry White song she’d listened to with Francisco would hurl her into a tailspin of such longing that she would almost collapse at the unbearable memory of his eyes, his lips. She put every ounce of energy she had left into graduating a semester early just to leave NYU and all the memories.

  Then, on a blind date arranged by friends, she’d met Richard.

  At first, she’d dismissed him as just another bourgeois predator on Wall Street, which was what Francisco would have considered him. Yet, once the memory of Francisco and his Marxist dreams began to fade, Richard’s tangible life as a commercial banker started to make sense. Securing people’s money and providing business loans and mortgages no longer seemed to Joy the menacing occupation Francisco had claimed it was. Furthermore, Richard was established in New York and wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t take long before he became more than a healing solace to her. He was a safe landing pad after the disastrous turbulence she’d been through.

  Although he didn’t immediately ignite her passion with the same fury Francisco had, he was outgoing, charming, and witty; and there was a strong comfort in his steady presence.

  Francisco had destroyed her ability to trust, so it took a while before she began to fully let her defenses down. Opening herself up to Richard’s love was like opening a window onto a totally new landscape. It soon became clear to her that Richard was a solid, prospective mate, and that his was the kind of love she could depend on. His dogged pursuit of her both flattered her and made her feel secure again, his practical “bourgeois” outlook becoming the cure she needed to recover from the visionary Francisco.

  The unexpected memory of Francisco tonight unnerved her. As she stood on this narrow path in Granada watching Richard mulishly lag behind, she wondered why she’d so readily traded in her dreams, traded in one extreme of a man for another. She’d settled, plain and simple. In her haste to get over the thrill-seeking Che, she had succumbed to the reliable Gerald Ford.

  She watched him slip his foot back into his shoe and thought she heard him gasping, as if he were already out of breath.

  “Rich,” she called out, seething with desperation, “please hurry!”

  Beyond the darkness appeared a brightly lit road with several tapas bars and seated diners at outdoor tables. With a crowd in sight, Richard looked reassured and no longer laboring.

  She felt a sudden pinch in her bladder. “I need a bathroom. I’ll slip into the restaurant.”

  Richard slid into a chair at one of the outdoor tables. “I’ll be here.”

  The ladies’ servicio was up some narrow stairs at the back of the bar. It was tight in the narrow room, and since two stalls were out of order and other women were in line to use the single toilet, it took time to get her turn. Then there was another line to wash her hands at the sink.

  When she got back downstairs, the bar was lively, the usual discarded paper napkins and receipts beginning to coat the tapas bar’s floors like snow. Outside, the table where she had left Richard was empty.

  She looked around. “Rich?” she called, just loudly enough to be heard if he were nearby. Thinking he might have decided to have a drink while waiting, she went back into the bar, but he wasn’t there. She peered inside the restaurant to the tables beyond the bar. The place was full, but she didn’t see Richard. She glanced at the upstairs hallway. Maybe he’d gone to the men’s room. She went outside and waited. Minutes passed. She took another look inside the restaurant, scanning the upstairs hallway and the bar again, then went back outside.

  Screw it, Richard, she silently cursed, beginning to suspect he’d wandered off simply to avoid going to Sacromonte.

  Richard had brought along the cell phone he used on his overseas business trips, but even if he were carrying it now, she hadn’t memorized the number. Her own phone was only good for emails here, so she’d left it in the hotel. With no way to contact him, she would simply have to wait until he showed up.

  The few small stores near the restaurant were closing. Glancing anxiously up and down the narrow street and wondering how they could have missed each other, she spotted a sign for Sacromonte across the road. She stood totally still, torn by both the fear settling in her stomach at Richard’s disappearance and by the urge to go forward to see where the sign would lead. Did she dare go alone, wander into the gypsy neighborhood at night?

  She crossed to another alley where a few more stores were still open. There were strong vibrations coming from down the street, accompanied by whistling and muffled shouts of “Olé!” From the sharp tapping sounds, she knew there was a flamenco show taking place.

 
A fluorescent sign blazed above a door where a man was sitting outside, tuning a guitar. This was obviously quite near Sacromonte, or at least its fringes. She glanced back to where she had last seen Richard sitting at the outdoor table. Still no sign of him.

  She turned and headed up the alley toward the sign.

  “Por favor?” she asked the man in the doorway.

  He put down his guitar. “Buenas noches, Señora,” he replied affably. “Si, si,” he said, when she asked if she might take a look inside to see where the music was coming from.

  The whitewashed room was slightly stuffy from cigarette smoke, and a fluorescent light beamed from the ceiling. People were sitting on wooden chairs in a circle, and from where she stood, Joy got a clear view of the dancer, a woman in a bright-blue skirt with an orange shawl draped around her hips. The dancer’s beguiling doll-like face belied her frown of concentration, her staccato foot-pounding at once in sync with the strums of the guitar and its counterpoint.

  The audience included some Asians and a few Nordic-looking blondes, so Joy assumed this was one of the “touristy” flamenco shows the guidebook warned against. Nonetheless, the music was catchy and the dancer fervent and agile. When the woman ended her dance and sat on a chair alongside the guitarist and singer, a young man with a shock of blue-black hair, wearing a dark suit, stood and took her place. Focusing his austere gaze on the floor, he began to follow the chanting of the singer with his own lightning-quick steps. His aquiline nose and dignified air reminded Joy of a Navajo, and she lingered a few minutes, gliding on the echo of his thudding heels. Like the woman before him, he exuded a visceral sensuality, bringing to life Joy’s vision of the archetypal Spanish male. Spellbound by his powerful stomping and shimmering hair, she envisioned making love to him, melting into that potent energy.

  “No?” said the man outside the door with the guitar as she left.

  “No. Gracias.”

  She crossed the street and returned to the restaurant where she’d last seen Richard, a quiver in her stomach and an edgy discomfort shimmering along her skin. She knew she shouldn’t have left the restaurant without him.

  5

  “Is something wrong, Señora?”

  She spun in the direction of the voice swimming to her through the darkness. A young man in a dark T-shirt and jeans, his black hair slicked back in a ponytail, was sitting at a table, holding a bottle of beer. He looked somewhat familiar, unless perhaps after a week here all Spanish men were beginning to fuse into one Andalusian face with dark eyes beneath sensuously knotted eyebrows. A backpack was propped on the table in front of him.

  “Do you have trouble?” he asked in English as he stood with an air of concern.

  Joy paused. The earnestness in his voice drew her toward him. He was tall, and she had to look up to meet his gaze. “I’m looking for my husband. He’s wearing a blue shirt and has light-brown hair.”

  She realized that the wine at dinner had taken effect the minute she said this, divulging to a stranger the fact that she was alone.

  “I saw him with you before, but not here,” the young man said, taking a sip from his beer.

  She wondered whether she’d heard him correctly. “You saw us before?”

  “You were at the Alhambra today?” he said, placing the bottle on the table.

  The Alhambra? She wasn’t sure what he meant, but then, slowly, she began to see the young man who had been sitting on a chair across from hers, deep in contemplation. She’d pegged him for a tourist from India. A yogi.

  “In that room with the stucco, the room where the massacre took place?” she asked.

  “Si,” the man said. “La Sala de los Abencerrajes.”

  She felt her face brighten at the memory of watching him bask so serenely in the silence of that exquisite room and how thankful she’d been to find someone else as taken by it as she was. “I remember. You looked like you were meditating.”

  He smiled. “Too many people for meditating. That is my favorite room in the palace. I go there only to enjoy it.”

  She recalled how fascinated she’d been with the dainty airiness of the stucco ceiling, which had led to her poignant thoughts of Stephen, before Richard had ruined things by bringing up that horrible slaughter.

  “Are you—from here?” she asked, noting that he seemed to speak with a different accent from the Spanish she’d been hearing.

  He looked surprised. “Do I not look Spanish?”

  “You do. Yes, you do,” she said quickly. It was something she couldn’t pinpoint, but she clearly sensed something different about him.

  He chuckled, revealing as his lips parted, the glint of white, even teeth. “I’m from here, in a way, although officially . . .” He paused a moment. “From Morocco.” He nodded upward to the illuminated Alhambra complex rising high from the adjoining hill. “I am descended from the Medinas. Some of my ancestors once lived there.”

  She glanced toward the fortress hill. “In the Alhambra?”

  He nodded. “Many years ago. We still have the key to our house.”

  “A key?” she asked in disbelief. So that was it. He wasn’t a local. She wondered whether he might be joking. She’d read that the last descendants of the Moors had mostly been evicted from Spain early in the seventeenth century. “Moroscos?” she asked.

  He nodded again. “Si, Moroscos.”

  She stifled a gasp, hardly believing she was talking to someone whose roots went back to those fabled times. She hadn’t imagined that any from that bloodline were still here.

  She was both stunned and curious. “Does it bother you to go there? To the palace?”

  He seemed to consider this, and then shook his head. “I come only to experience the beauty. It is beautiful, no?”

  She inhaled. “Breathtaking.”

  He nodded, shutting his eyes as if peering back in time through some inner telescope. “I’m proud of those who built it,” he said softly. Then he smiled. “My family believes the Muslims will get Granada back one day.”

  She looked at him, not sure how to respond, wondering if this was wishful thinking on his part or whether there were those who actually believed that Moroccan descendants of Moors would regain Granada from Spain.

  After a pause, she said, “You speak such good English. And Spanish.”

  “I went to the universidad here. I’m an architect.”

  “You live here?”

  He shook his head. “In Morocco.”

  “Where all this came from,” she said, unable to hide her admiration.

  He smiled. “There are beautiful buildings in Morocco, but no Alhambra.”

  She shrugged. “Not in New York, either.”

  “New York?” he said, glancing at her with obvious, unabashed approval. She noticed again how tall he was, although not as tall as Richard. His amber skin was what had given her the impression that he was Indian. She hadn’t thought Moroccan.

  He nodded toward a succession of cafes ahead. “Shall we look for your husband?”

  She glanced around. Somewhere in the pit of her stomach, or perhaps in her head—she was no longer sure where the wine had settled—she knew she shouldn’t stroll up the street at night with a stranger. Although the idea of continuing to search for Richard at night alone made her shudder, being escorted by a strange man was equally unnerving.

  Then it occurred to her that she did need to prove to Richard that not everyone in Granada was out to take advantage of tourists, and this man seemed to want to be helpful. Besides, there were people everywhere. Hoping that she and Richard would get to Sacromonte that evening, she’d left her passport and credit cards in the hotel safe, and so she had little cash or anything of value on her that could be stolen.

  She’d been yearning to discover Andalusia her own way. She had, after all, imagined meeting an amiable Spaniard tomorrow who would show her the sights while she waited for Richard to return from the bullfight. A Moor accompanying her was even better.

  The young man told her he
was Hussein from Rabat. She introduced herself and they started up the street.

  From the adjoining hill, the Alhambra glared down, its ramparts lit like candles on a birthday cake. She imagined a pregnant Queen Isabella leading the campaign against Granada, round-bellied and exhausted, staring up at the starlit sky as she eagerly awaited news of the Spanish victory. She couldn’t help but feel admiration for Isabella’s determination, despite her aversion to the queen’s merciless ambition. Not even pregnancy had impeded Isabella’s resolve to conquer this coveted town.

  “It must be hard to know that your ancestors once lived there,” she said, hesitant to say Alhambra before a descendant of the people who had built and then been banished from this hauntingly beautiful place.

  Hussein nodded, looking somewhat glum. “It is.”

  He slung his pack to his other shoulder, freeing his arm next to her. With his sleek, long hair and slender frame, he looked so young. This put her at ease, as if she were walking beside one of her own Hunter students.

  They went to the bar next door. He waited outside while she stepped inside and scanned the bustling crowd.

  “No?” he asked when she came out.

  She shook her head, feeling silly and worried. How could she explain to this young man that she’d lost Richard in the short time it took her to go to the toilet?

  They walked up more steps toward another restaurant.

  “This is your first time in Andalusia?” he asked.

  “My first time in Spain,” she said, marveling at the fact that it had, in fact, taken her so long to come to this wondrous place. Again, she realized too late that she may have made herself vulnerable by admitting that her surroundings were all new to her.

  Breathing deeply from the climb, she glanced at his face. She noted again the high bridge of his nose, the dark eyebrows that sloped toward his temple giving him a pensive air. Spaniard or Moor? Even the last, ill-fated Moorish king, Boabdil, bore the blood of both Spaniards and Moors. Boabdil. He had famously wept as he was forced to abandon his beloved Granada in defeat.