Idir’s goodbye was also a nod. So too was Immeldine’s.
‘OK?’ Aatif asked. Now it was my turn to nod. Moments later I was inside the cab of the vehicle. The three women gathered by my window as Aatif slammed the driver’s door behind him, turned the key in the ignition, put the van into gear. With a lurch we began to drive off. My eyes met Naima’s as she raised a hand and tried to look brave. Behind the burqa I began to weep. The daughter I always wanted. The daughter I would never have. The wondrous little girl whom I would never see again.
Aatif drove the hundred or so yards to the edge of the oasis. I looked back once more at the small plot of quasi-arable land in the great sandy vacuum. Their entire world. My entire world for a spell. And now I was going to have to negotiate the malevolent world beyond.
With a bump we crossed through the stone archway that separated the oasis from the desert. Aatif pulled out a lever and said:
‘Four-by-four. We will need it now.’
We started crossing the sand, following a track discernible by the grooves of past tyres. After a minute I craned my neck and tried to spy the oasis. But it had vanished, its pale wall melding invisibly into the bleached horizon.
The cab of the vehicle was a mess. The seats were torn, there was trash strewn on the floor, the windscreen was streaked with sand and dead flies, the ashtray was brimming. And the heat was ferocious. I rolled down my window. This was a serious error. As the vehicle gained momentum, sand blew in everywhere. Immediately Aatif slowed down.
‘You do not have to wear the burqa here,’ he said.
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘It is fine with me. Especially as I do not have air conditioning. So if you also want to get out of the djellaba . . .’
I was instantly post-traumatic defensive.
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
He looked startled.
‘I meant no offence. I just thought you might be more comfortable in your own clothes.’
‘Where I am going to change out here?’
He stopped the vehicle and got out, then went to the back and pulled out the bag containing my laundered clothes; the ones I’d been found in all those weeks ago. He brought it over to the passenger door.
‘You can get out and change behind the car. I will take a walk and have a smoke. When you are dressed call me.’
He said all this in his quiet, shy, matter-of-fact way.
‘Thank you,’ I said, getting out.
Aatif circled around the bonnet and walked out quite a distance into the desert, lighting up a cigarette. He was dressed in a loose shirt, loose brown trousers, sandals, a skullcap on his head. I watched him walk for about a minute, then stop and not turn around once in my direction. Quickly I pulled off the djellaba, the relief of being free of its entombing weight countered by the immediate exposure of all my damaged flesh to the Saharan sun. Within a moment I had slipped on the linen pants and simple white shirt I had bought in Casablanca, then shouted that I was ready. Aatif turned and walked back slowly towards me. At that instant I began to feel shaky. For the first time since I’d woken up violated, battered and near death I was back in the Sahara’s terrifying enormity. I felt as if it was about to swallow me whole and I slumped against the door of the jeep, blindsided by a full-scale panic attack. At which point Aatif – walking towards me – saw what was happening and came running. When he reached me, out of breath and drenched in sweat, I was clinging onto the door handle as if it was a life belt in treacherous seas.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘May I take your arm?’
I nodded again.
He took hold of my hand that was gripping the door handle. His other hand supported my right arm.
‘Let go, please,’ he said. ‘I will get you inside.’
I did as he told me to, all but collapsing against him. He might have appeared short and squat, but when it came to disengaging my grip from the car door and settling me into the passenger seat, he had surprising strength.
Once I was safely inside he went to the cargo area, fished something out and returned with a bottle of water, still dripping wet, making me wonder if he had some sort of basic cooler in the back. He handed me the bottle.
‘Drink,’ he said.
I drank half the litre before handing it to him. He took several judicious sips, then gave it to me again.
‘You need to keep drinking water.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much. I am sorry I snapped at you before. I had a terrible experience out here.’
‘I know. Idir told me. Terrible. I am so very sorry for you. But . . .’
He turned the ignition on. The Citroën reassuringly fired back into life. He put it into gear. We set off. And he finished the sentence.
‘. . . I will get you to Marrakesh.’
I fell back against the seat, the agitation and anguish still coursing through me. Aatif lit up a cigarette and said nothing as we drove for almost an hour along the desert track, the sun beginning to dip, bathing the Sahara in a blue-hour glow. How I wanted to be dazzled and exalted by its frightening beauty. But all I could do was try to stop myself from sinking into a chasm in which all the recent horrors loomed large.
To his credit Aatif said not a word as we barrelled across the sands. He just smoked one cigarette after another, occasionally glancing over at me to make certain I wasn’t going into meltdown again. I appreciated him giving me the space to somehow push the nightmare away . . . for an hour or two anyway.
That’s the problem with the worst sort of trauma. You can will it elsewhere. You can tell yourself you will somehow ‘manage’ it. But you also begin to realise very quickly that, once subjected to its ghastly contours, you are now going to live with it for the rest of your life. Even if, somewhere down the line, you might come to terms with it, reach some sort of accommodation with its abhorrence, it will be with you for ever. Your world has inexorably changed because of what it has visited upon you.
With a bump we left the sand and returned to a paved road. Seeing a sign ahead for Tata, I shuddered.
‘Do not worry,’ Aatif said. ‘We are not going there. But I am going to pull over in a moment and you are going to have to change back into the djellaba and a burqa.’
‘Why?’
‘Because two, three kilometres ahead of us, there is a police checkpoint.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I passed through it a few hours ago.’
He slowed down. We were on an empty stretch of the road leading to Ouarzazate. He pulled over, telling me that, thanks to nightfall, I could change outside without being seen. But if a car came down the road, headlights blazing . . .
‘I’ll be quick,’ I said, and was out of the car and grabbing my backpack, changing into the djellaba and burqa in under a minute. As soon as I got back in a truck came up behind us, its high-beams illuminating us.
‘You did well,’ Aatif said as it passed by.
‘What happens if the police demand to see my papers?’ I asked.
He reached over into the glove compartment and drew out a Moroccan identity card of a woman around my age – attractive in a severe sort of way, but like all mugshots capturing disappointment in grainy, institutional close-up.
‘Is that your wife?’ I asked.
‘My sister.’
‘Doesn’t she need her papers?’
‘Not any more. She’s dead.’
‘She was so young.’
‘Cancer doesn’t care how young or old you are.’
He lit another cigarette.
‘Anyway, when the police stop us, I will tell them that you are my sister.’
‘And if they ask me any questions?’
‘They won’t. Because you are behind the burqa, and they would have to think us terrorists to ask you to remove your veil. I drive these roads frequently. I can’t say I know all the policemen, or that they know me . . .’
&n
bsp; ‘But if you are from around here . . .’
‘I live in a village many hours from Ouarzazate. If we were going through that département I wouldn’t dream of passing you off as my sister. Everyone knew her. Everyone knows she’s dead. But here – no problem.’
‘But if they do still question me?’
‘Say nothing. I will tell them you are deaf and dumb.’
Five minutes later we were at the checkpoint. Two uniformed cops had their squad car half-blocking the road. They greeted Aatif and asked to see identification. He handed over the two sets of papers. One of the cops shone a flashlight on me. I kept my eyes – barely visible through the slit of the burqa – fixed on the road ahead, and after a moment the beam of light snapped off. They asked Aatif to step outside the car. I heard him answering their many questions, then opening the cargo door and letting them search inside. The mounting terror I felt was immense. If the beam was turned on me again I knew I would go under. And reveal very quickly that I was the woman all of Morocco was looking for.
But within moments Aatif was back in the car, the officer was wishing him a good night, and we were driving off.
A fresh cigarette lit, Aatif exhaled a huge cloud of smoke, his relief tangible. Finally he said:
‘The first checkpoint behind us.’
Twenty-four
WE SLEPT ON the outskirts of a small village, which Aatif told me was around thirty minutes from Tata. This village, a nowhere place off a semi-paved track from the main thoroughfare on which we were travelling, was called Sidi Boutazart. It was en route to the first stop Aatif would need to make early tomorrow morning. I didn’t want to stay anywhere near Tata, so he suggested we camp here.
‘I know a little area that is quiet and where no one will see us,’ he said.
This area turned out to be a small plot of arable ground, shaded by a single meagre tree. A few cows and goats grazed nearby. As before Aatif wanted to assure me of his correctness when it came to our travel arrangements. He took out the two bed rolls and lay one down on either side of the car. Each was a thin cotton mattress with two light sheets, and some netting that he suggested I put over my face when I slept in case the sand flies came out early. When I’d been in the oasis sand flies had been an ongoing problem during daylight hours. At night they vanished into the ether. But come sunrise they were on the attack again. Which is why, as Aatif explained, it was essential to get to bed early and rise just before dawn.
‘You don’t need an alarm clock out here,’ he said. ‘The sand flies provide that.’
With the light fading he moved to his own bed roll, positioned himself in what I presume was the direction of Mecca, prostrated himself on his knees, and with his head touching the mattress, spent several moments saying his evening prayers. When finished he opened the back of the four-by-four and retrieved a small styrofoam box – out of which came a small gas burner, a pot, two plates, two forks – and made us a simple dinner of bread and couscous with a few carrots thrown in. Over dinner – which we had on my side – I asked him about himself. He told me he came from a village called M’hamid, around four or five hours’ drive from here. It was at the end of a paved road that started at Ouarzazate, then passed through an important Berber town called Zagora, before dead-ending at his village, beyond which was the Sahara. He considered himself very much a Berber and therefore had decidedly mixed feelings about the government in Rabat.
‘I deal with the police politely,’ he said, ‘the functionaries who regulate our département. But I also like being able to work around them, not to let them control me. I am not alone in this sentiment. Which is one of the reasons why I said yes to getting you to Marrakesh. If you are on the run from them—’
‘They think I harmed my husband.’
‘It is not my business whether you did or didn’t.’
‘I promise you, I didn’t.’
‘If you say that I believe you.’
‘But what you also need to understand . . .’
Out came the entire story in one exhalation. I kept it short, and didn’t get into the reason why Paul vanished – except to say that I had discovered a betrayal on his part. I also explained about the police inspector in Essaouira who was determined to frame me. And the friend of my husband in Casablanca who had cheated him. Then the events in Tata and beyond.
Aatif listened in silence. When I had finished he lit one cigarette off the other.
‘That policeman in Essaouira . . . I’ve known people who have been persecuted by men like that. They decide you are guilty. They will run you to the ground, changing evidence and everything else to ensure they can win the conviction. They are not Berbers.’
I then explained my plan about selling my rings in Marrakesh, getting to Casablanca and bribing that shady former friend of my husband to give me a false passport and get me out of the country.
‘I want to be direct with you. I don’t want to hide anything. I want you to understand all the risks here.’
‘I saw your face on television before I came out to the oasis,’ he said. ‘So when Idir told me it was you I was to take to Marrakesh . . .’
A pause, then the smallest of smiles crossed his face.
‘Now that I know we need to outsmart that police inspector – well, a game is a game, n’est-ce pas?’
The night sky above us was astonishing. In the oasis I was put to bed most evenings at sunset. Here I got my first proper glimpse of the celestial floor show on display. The clarity in the desert was dazzling. Such density of constellations. Such a sense of heavenly potential. Even deep in the country, just ten miles from Buffalo, on a perfectly clear night you could never discern even thirty per cent of what was apparent here. It was like discovering an entire added component to the universe. My dad always said that looking up at a constellation underscored our insignificance. But tonight, seeing such immense radiance – particularly in the light of recent events – was galvanising. I looked to the stars and they told me that since nothing, in the great cosmic scheme of things, is important, everything that defines us is vitally important. What else do we have but our lives, our stories?
‘It is an amazing sky,’ I said to Aatif.
‘Nice, yes,’ he said, sounding less than overwhelmed.
‘I wish I could believe in heaven, in some sort of eternal paradise. I thought about that when I saw you praying earlier.’
‘It is important to believe in paradise. Especially when life is hard.’
‘Faith is a complex thing.’
He thought about that for a moment.
‘No, faith is simple. And good.’
‘Do you have children?’
I saw him tense and apologised for asking what was clearly the wrong question.
He lit another cigarette. After several long drags he asked me if I would like tea – and told me that Maika had given him several days’ supply of the tisane that had repeatedly knocked me out. This was welcome news, as I had been wondering how well I’d sleep out here under the desert sky.
‘A mug of that would be wonderful.’
He went off to fetch water from a big plastic container in the back, then boiled it in a pot on top of the stove. Knowing how swiftly the tea induced sleep I told Aatif I was going to change into my nightshirt before drinking it. He stood up and walked a good distance away. I retrieved my bag and quickly changed, then hiked in the opposite direction from Aatif, lifted up my nightshirt and baptised the sand. How strange to think that everything I had once taken for granted – like a toilet or the Internet or even a phone – had been out of reach for so long. And how I had adapted – because I’d had no choice but to do so.
As soon as I’d finished the mug of tea I wished Aatif goodnight. Crawling in between the two sheets, I placed the netting over my head and stared up at the luminescent heavens above. Just before sleep overtook me I glanced over at my companion. He had walked out into the middle of the nearby unpaved road to smoke another cigarette and he too was looking up into the
great lustrous unknown. I saw him wipe his eyes. Was he crying?
But then the tea did its magic and the world vanished for a spell.
Aatif was right. The sand flies, arriving with first light, were a pernicious outdoor alarm clock. At least ten of the wretched creatures were dancing on the net covering my face. Light was cleaving the sky.
Aatif was already awake, making tea. He wanly waved hello.
‘Sleep well?’ I asked.
‘OK.’
‘Where are we headed today?’
‘We go back to the main road. I have stops in several villages. You will need to cover yourself. There may be roadblocks.’
So I changed yet again. By the time we hit the road I was already bathed in sweat.
‘First stop is Tissint – about an hour from here,’ Aatif said.
We headed back to the main road. The sun seemed even more ferocious this morning. When I pulled down the visor to try to mitigate its blinding effects Aatif reached over and opened the glove compartment, pulling out a pair of sunglasses with red plastic frames.
‘You can use these.’
I thanked him, but when I unveiled myself in order to put them on, he hissed:
‘Get the burqa on now!’
I looked up. We’d hit a bend in the road. Right in front of us was a roadblock with a police car parked so as to only allow one car through at a time. Fortunately there was a big truck ahead, but I saw one of the officers glancing in our direction just as I got the burqa back in place. Had he seen me? If so, was this the beginning of the end?
The Heat of Betrayal Page 27
