End of Manners

by Francesca Marciano

  “Maria? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes. Yes, I can. Yes, you were saying about the Times magazine.”

  “I’m going to pitch that and the one about opium licenses. I’m going later today.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No, I’m not. Just manic. Are you game?”

  I paused. She was serious.

  “Yeah. Sure. Why not?”

  “Wonderful. I just wanted to make sure I could count on you.”

  It felt good to be listening to her voice again. It reminded me how the atmosphere Imo created wherever she went, that always surrounded her like a room spray, had a much lighter, safer quality than the world I inhabited, especially at that moment. I realized I didn’t want to end the phone call because I needed a bit more of that precious scent.

  Visiting hours were over, but no one had come to tell me I had to leave, so I didn’t move from the bench outside Leyla’s room. I kept waiting for Hanif to return from the other hospital and tried to go back to reading my book. Yet it was hard to concentrate on a story, a voice, sitting there, with the thought of Leyla lying in that bed right across from me. She seemed so much weaker and sicker than I had expected her to be. In the time that I had been sitting out there, no one had come to check on her. I couldn’t figure out whether she had been forgotten—I wouldn’t even know whom to ask—so I lifted my eyes from the book and tiptoed over to her bed.

  I leaned over and looked at her closely.

  Hanif hadn’t exaggerated: she was exquisite. She had very white skin, smooth, almost translucent. Her mouth pale, fleshy; a shadow of down over her top lip. Beneath the closed eyes, two dark, almost purple crescents that underscored the pallor of her face. Some auburn locks had strayed from her headscarf and covered her cheekbones and I delicately pushed them aside with the tip of my finger. She didn’t stir. Her body seemed very small, almost bony, save for her round, full, pregnant belly.

  I was hoping she’d open her eyes so I could see them too, those cat-green eyes Hanif had described. I would’ve liked her to see me, so that I could smile, squeeze her hand, tell her that everything was okay, her husband was coming back soon. That everything was going to be all right with the baby.

  At first I wasn’t quite sure why I did this, but I took my digital Leica out of my bag. As I pointed it at her I realized what an aggressive gesture it was in this situation. And yet I couldn’t help myself; I had this urgent need—at last alone, nobody stopping me, no fear of offending her—to see her up close through my lens.

  Now her skin was perfectly in focus; I could make out the tiny pores. What I saw wasn’t just her flawless complexion but a face that was losing heat and color and was becoming more and more remote, otherworldly, because of what was leaving her. Leyla didn’t appear to be suffering, or even sleeping, for that matter. She looked as if she had withdrawn into some deep recess, as though this were merely her vacated body, smooth and cold as a beautiful statue lying on a marble bed. Suddenly I felt a new determination, as if this photo was the most important one of all, the one I’d be ready to risk anything for. I don’t think I realized it just then, but what pushed me to capture her image was probably my sense that she was slipping away. I wanted to retrieve her somehow.

  I pressed the shutter release. She didn’t open her eyes. I did it again. And again. I ran my hand over her shoulder. I let it rest on her skin. It felt cold, stiff, so I pulled the covers up. But the feeling of that coldness lingered on my fingers.

  I ran out to find someone, hoping they could reassure me, someone who would tell me that everything was under control, that there was nothing to fear. As I walked the deserted corridor, hearing the wailing of newborn babies filtering from the rooms, doors slamming, footsteps quickening, metallic cabinet doors creaking, as I went in the direction of these sounds in search of someone who would reassure me that, really, I needn’t worry about her, I was assailed by a frightening thought: while I had been holding the lens so close to Leyla’s face I hadn’t even checked to see whether she was actually still breathing.

  Everything dilated and softened as in a dream. The corridors stretched, they became infinite, just like those in nightmares. I went into the rooms looking for a nurse, an orderly, and yet all I could see was women sleeping, their breath heavy and stale. They all looked abandoned to me, like bodies piled up one on top of the other. As I went in and out, in and out, opening and closing doors, I realized how this situation was deadly serious. How hopeless. How could I have ignored the pallor, the temperature of Leyla’s body? Everything had been telling me what I wanted to ignore. Life was rapidly flowing out of her. I couldn’t figure out what would be the right thing to do: whether it was more urgent to go on searching for help throughout that frozen labyrinth, or to stay close to her. Suddenly, the fact that I had left her alone seemed terrible. I thought of Obelix. How I had held his hand till the end. I couldn’t bear that I had abandoned her.

  I tried to ring Hanif, but a mechanical voice in Dari told me he was out of range. But even if I had reached him, what else could he do, other than what he was doing already? As I strode back to Leyla’s room, I came across a woman with bare feet in a green plastic apron. I pointed to Leyla’s door and shouted, “Doctor, doctor!” The woman nodded and moved away, but I didn’t know whether she had understood that she had to go and get someone.

  And as I entered the room again, I saw her eyes. And a look I can’t forget.

  The green eyes were open, wide and staring, as if she had just woken from a nightmare. I rushed to her and took her hand in mine. I leaned over her and saw her pupils dilate and shrink. The dark pupil, encircled by specks of gold navigating in the moss green of the iris. Yes, they were the eyes of a cat, but now they were staring at me, alarmed, questioning.

  Where am I? Who are you? What’s happening? Am I dying?

  Her breathing had changed. It was shallow and rasping now. As if she couldn’t get enough oxygen into her lungs.

  “Okay, it’s okay,” I whispered and stroked the back of her hand. It was cold like stone. “Hanif is coming. Hanif is on his way.”

  It was dark when Hanif came back. He had managed to get hold of only one bag of blood for the transfusion. He said that was all he’d been able to find in the whole city.

  “And I went to pick up your ticket,” he said, as if it were quite normal to have stopped off at the agency. “Your flight is tomorrow at nine a.m.”

  The envelope with the agency’s logo had my name on it, misspelled.

  “Oh, Hanif. Thank you, you shouldn’t have. I would have done it later.”

  “It’s nothing. It was on my way.”

  In the meantime, a cousin and the neighbor had arrived. They were bony young women with the same unhealthy complexion that comes from spending too much time indoors. At first they had seemed more taken by my presence than by Leyla’s pallor and stillness. Now they fretted around the bed, straightening up sheets and pillows.

  Hanif was filling them in in Dari. They kept nodding and at the same time checking me out, sneaking sideways glances. Hanif was speaking rapidly, with a more authoritarian tone than I was accustomed to hearing him use. Then he leaned over Leyla and whispered something to her.

  “Her breathing is…” His voice had tensed up. He brushed her face with his fingertips. He too looked pale, rigid with fear.

  “Yes, I know,” I said quickly. “We must call someone. Now.”

  “They’re coming. I left the blood bag downstairs and they said they’re getting ready to—”

  “No. They must come now,” I said forcefully. “Tell them to run over here fast. We can’t wait another minute.”

  Hanif stared into my eyes for a second, then cleared his throat and looked around.

  “You’ll stay here, won’t you? Just in case…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at me. We nodded at each other and he was gone.

  I sat on the bench outside the room for what seemed an ete
rnity, while the cousin and the neighbor sat by Leyla’s bed in the room. I kept my eyes fixed on them, ready to read any sign that something new was happening, and constantly checked the swinging door at the end of the corridor. The two women had taken out some food from a plastic container and were eating slowly with their fingers, cross-legged on the floor. They seemed quiet, as if they were sitting in their own kitchen. At last I saw Hanif show up, out of breath and in the wake of a tall, portly woman with thick glasses, a mole on her cheek and jet-black hair shot with a streak of white. I figured she must be the doctor. She was wearing a stained white coat and was speaking loudly to a couple of nurses who were following behind.

  Now everything happened fast, in a succession of orders, people rushing, the doctor raising her voice, the nurses hurrying in and out of the room. Whereas before everything had been still and silent, suddenly it turned into chaos. A whirl of people, apprehension, adrenaline. Even though I couldn’t make out what they were saying, I sensed that we had moved into another realm. I saw Leyla being wheeled out on a gurney. I caught a glimpse of her face, her eyes still closed, the lids so heavy they seemed sewn shut. She was being pushed with such haste, her head flopped from side to side as if her neck were broken. And this was the last I saw of her.

  The doctor spoke quickly to Hanif, in an urgent tone. He looked at her with a pleading expression and then, just before she left, he put his hand on his heart and whispered, “Tashakor, tashakor…”

  He looked at me with shiny eyes and mumbled something. I didn’t catch what he said. I asked him to repeat it.

  “They’re giving her a Cesarean. They’re going to try and save the baby.”

  But I couldn’t figure out whether this meant it was still possible to save Leyla.

  Then I found myself alone once more in the large, empty corridor. The hospital sounds reverberated, cavernous and obscure. I stood at the window for a few minutes, looking out at the snowflakes that had started falling in the deserted courtyard. Only now was I aware of the cold that had seeped into my bones.

  I called Jeremy’s number. He said, “Yes, I know. The Rabia Balkhi Hospital. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  It must have been nearly two in the morning.

  We had gone through a whole bottle of corky wine between the two of us and we were now sipping vodka from small coffee cups. The remains of a burnt omelette sat on the table next to the overflowing ashtray. We’d come home from the hospital hours before, but Jeremy hadn’t been able to get through to Hanif on his cell until eleven thirty.

  There was nothing they could do, he had said. The blood wasn’t nearly enough for a transfusion, and then there were other complications. But the baby had survived. A girl.

  “She’s very small, but the doctor says she will be all right,” Hanif had said.

  I motioned to Jeremy to hand me the phone, but as soon as I heard Hanif’s voice, I knew I couldn’t go on.

  “Hanif…Hanif…” I whispered into the phone. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you, thank you. You’re very kind. I appreciate everything you did. Thank you, Maria.”

  His voice cracked slightly. Like glass.

  “No, I’m the one who should be…Really, Hanif, anything you…I’m so sorry…I just wanted you to know that if you need any—”

  I stuttered, unable to take that extra step and go beyond the propriety of our exchanges. I ended up sniffing, as Hanif remained politely silent on the other end of the line.

  This man who was so kind, so composed, so understated in his grief.

  “Please forgive me for tomorrow morning…” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Unfortunately I can’t take you to the airport. In the morning I have to…”

  “Please, Hanif, don’t even think about it. You are the one who must forgive me. Because of me and Imo you didn’t get to spend those last days with Leyla. I was…and Imo too…we were so—” Suddenly I remembered Hanif’s absorbed expression while driving, the way he’d been constantly struggling to get a signal on his phone, waving and talking in the wind, up and down any hill. “Oh, my God, I am so, so sorry.”

  But each and every word that came to mind seemed inadequate and too small.

  I was leaving Kabul, thanks to a ticket paid for with half of Hanif’s salary, a sum I had accepted without hesitation. I had felt, no longer than a few hours ago, that I had every right to do so; at the time it hadn’t seemed possible that someone else might be in greater peril than me. If it’s true we are all more dignified in the face of death, well, in the face of this death, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to feel dignified at all.

  Jeremy was smoking, staring at the bottom of the ashtray as he stirred up the butts with the tip of his umpteenth cigarette. Bread crumbs were clinging to the woolly down of his sweater; he brushed them off with the back of his hand.

  “I didn’t know her, I had never seen her,” he said as he spit away a scrap of tobacco stuck to his lip. “You know someone for a long time, you do so many things together, once he even saves your life and then…you realize you’ve never been to his house, you don’t even know what his wife looks like. It’s depressing.”

  I asked him whether he was going to the funeral. He shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Why? It would mean a lot to him, I’m sure.”

  Jeremy sighed.

  “It’s different here. It’s a more closed ceremony. For non-Muslims, I mean. Anyway, I don’t know. I’ll see.”

  We sat in silence, trying to deal with our awkwardness and the sense of inadequacy that had followed us all the way to his place from the hospital. We didn’t talk about it, but we both shared the knowledge that we—us, the foreigners—didn’t know what to do with ourselves at a time like this. When all that was needed was to be able to be close. To Hanif. To one another.

  “Never once in these ten days did he say anything that hinted…” I began. I felt guilt, shame. I had to justify my carelessness. “I mean, I don’t think he had any idea it was this serious, otherwise I’m sure he would have—”

  “Of course he didn’t know,” Jeremy interrupted me. His voice had a bitter strain. “But he needed to work, he needed the money. He couldn’t afford to sit by her bed and monitor the situation closely. Which is what he’s hating himself for.”

  There was a pause. I felt sick to my stomach.

  “I’ve borrowed half of his money to pay cash for my ticket,” I confessed.

  Jeremy looked at me, incredulous. He buried his face in his hands. I rushed to defend myself.

  “This was when I had no idea that this was going to happen, I swear I—”

  “How much?”

  “Seven hundred dollars.”

  Jeremy stared at me. He shrugged. “Fuck.”

  “I told him you could advance him the money, that I’d pay you back and—”

  “Of course I will.”

  “If you could let him have it tomorrow. I thought he might need it now for…” I paused. “For the funeral.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “It’s really important.”

  “I know, I know. Don’t worry, I won’t forget.” Jeremy poured more vodka in his cup and gulped it down in one go.

  “If Hanif’s wife didn’t make it in a hospital in the center of Kabul,” he said, “just imagine the other women in the rest of the country. In winter, all the roads are blocked with snow. If there’s an emergency, nothing can get through, no helicopters, no trucks, nothing. One in seven Afghan women dies in childbirth. Did you know that? It’s horrendous.”

  He exhaled the last of the smoke and ground the butt forcefully in with the others.

  I thought of how Imo and I had been mainly concerned with bringing our goods back home and getting out as fast as possible and in one piece.

  “What kills me is that we were too busy doing a story on violence against women to pay attention to the fact that one of them was dying of childbirth. If
that wasn’t shameful I’d say it’s ironic.”

  “It’s both.” Jeremy was biting his nails, staring at the wall, his eyes going out of focus. “And that’s exactly the point. As a Western journalist I have to decide each day which portion of these people’s suffering is going to be my theme of the day and which is the portion I’m going to have to ignore so it doesn’t get in the way.”

  I shook my head and we remained silent.

  Jeremy got up and slipped a CD into the slot. Now the notes began to fill the room, slowly swelling, spreading like a fog that saturated the void that had come between us. Jeremy stretched out on the couch and held his hand out to me.

  “Come here. Get those shoes off.”

  I slid in next to him and laid my head on his shoulder. His arm squeezed me lightly, with delicate pressure. I adjusted myself to find my position. I listened to his breathing and the music.

  “What is it?”

  “Some guy from Kentucky. I don’t remember his name.”

  “Where is Reuben?” I asked after a silence.

  “He’s in bed. He has to get up very early tomorrow.”

  So I had been right. I knew nothing was going to happen between us and that made me feel better. We just needed to generate some warmth to balance out the cold in the place that has been left empty. I closed my eyes.

  “I’ll take you to the airport tomorrow,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  The tip of my nose brushed against his neck. I got a whiff of his scent; it was dry, saline, like a shell found in the sand.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Then let’s stay here.”

  From so close I could make out his lashes, strangely long for a man, the short bristles of the sandy beard that had started growing on his chin, the whole magnified panorama of his features. It had been a long time since I’d heard the regular breathing of a man so close, his warm breath on my face.