As the sky grows brighter, she inches toward the door to peer out. But when she moves, the woman in the doorway rustles and abruptly sits. She wears both a hijab and niqab, so her face is almost completely obscured. It is too dark to see her eyes. “Sabah al-kheer,” she says, straightening her abaya around her.
“Sabah anoor.” Miranda is so surprised by the cordial greeting that she responds automatically.
“Feyn ana?” she says. Where am I?
The woman makes a clicking sound with her mouth and shakes her finger back and forth. No no no. She follows this with a torrent of Arabic too fast for Miranda to comprehend. Miranda’s Arabic is nearly conversational, but only if it is spoken slowly and clearly. Finally, she recognizes a phrase.
“Ana Aisha,” the woman says.
“Like the wife of the Prophet,” Miranda says, holding out her hand. “Ana.” She pauses. Surely she shouldn’t use her real name? “Ana Celeste,” she says. It is the first name to come to her.
“Antee Francia?” says the woman, ignoring her hand. You are French?
Miranda responds a second too slowly. Is that what they had decided? Are the French really hated less than the Brits and the Americans? Figuring that pretty much no one is hated more than the Americans, she finally nods. “Aiwa.” Yes. Then, too late, she remembers that French nationality hadn’t saved her friends.
“Why?” she starts in Arabic. “My friends, why were they taken away?”
This provokes another indecipherable torrent of words. The woman waves her arms and makes shushing noises, so Miranda figures she had better try something more neutral. “Please,” she says. “Could I have some water?” She cannot remember the last time she has had a drink. At the picnic? Were they offered anything in that terrible house? Tea, they had been offered tea. Sweet, milky tea that she had accepted gratefully. Besides, you do not turn down tea in this country. She is relieved when Aisha brings her a bottle. Tap water—should any houses nearby contain taps—would be more likely to make her sick and dehydrated than to help her.
No sooner has Miranda finished her bottle of water than she has to pee. She has had to pee for hours, actually, but now the pressure on her bladder is urgent. Aisha finally takes her outside, where Miranda blinks in the dazzling light. They’re in the mountains. North or West, she imagines. There are no mountains in the East, only sand. A heavy mist still enshrouds the tops of the jagged peaks rising to either side of her. Rows of stones crisscross their lower slopes, dividing the cultivated terraces into trapezoids of tender green. Miranda doesn’t instantly recognize the crop. It could be coffee, or cocoa, or even hibiscus. It’s too early to tell, the shoots too young. Around the houses grow scrubby olive-green bushes. If she weren’t a captive here, Miranda might even find her surroundings beautiful.
She turns to look at the small stone hut where she has been sleeping. Its roof is a sheet of corrugated tin and the door a scrap of dirty fabric. It might just as well have been built to house goats or chickens. Off to the right, several hundred feet away, are four or five similar buildings.
She doesn’t see or hear anyone else. The air is still and silent. “The men?” she asks.
“Sleeping,” says Aisha, pressing her palms together and resting her cheek on them, in case Miranda had not understood the word. And the women? she wants to add. My friends? And Mukhtar? Is he alive? But she couldn’t bear to hear the answer.
Behind an especially thick shrub, where a small hole has been dug and obviously used regularly, Miranda pees, the warm stream sending up puffs of dust where it hits the sides of the hole. When she is finished, the woman leads her back to the small house. “We will get water,” she says. “Water for breakfast.” Back outside, she shows Miranda a small, empty stone cistern.
Numbly, Miranda follows Aisha’s instructions while covertly pinching her blouse between her fingers to keep the damp cloth from her skin. It will dry in the sun. The older woman does not seem to have noticed her leaking breasts, the soaking shirt. Its dark color has hidden the stains. Aisha carries two large plastic jugs, and presses two more on Miranda. They are light and easy to carry now, though Miranda isn’t sure how she will manage when they are full.
As Aisha leads the way down a rocky path, Miranda places her feet in the woman’s footsteps. At least she’s wearing sneakers. Thank god she wasn’t kidnapped in heels and an evening dress, on her way to yet another national day. That is something for which she can be grateful. She wonders how far it is to water. The women of some villages spend all day fetching water, she knows from her travels as well as from listening to the various aid groups, the British Department for International Development in particular, naturally. This is a country without rivers, without lakes, without working systems for conserving rainwater. It has survived by sucking slowly away at the providentially profound underground reservoirs. But even these are finally running out, and in some places workers have to use oil-drilling equipment to reach the water. The woman shuffles down the wadi, her feet picking up speed. Grateful to be moving, to be conscious, to be handed responsibilities to keep her mind away from black holes of despair, Miranda follows.
JUNE 7, 2007
Miranda
After Tucker and his team finished searching the house and left, Miranda ran upstairs, peeling off the blouse and skirt. Her heart was still racing. She wasn’t used to so many machine guns so early in the day. Certainly not before coffee. She had better not push any more buttons for a while. Apparently there were more; Finn had told her on the phone there was one above the painting of the Queen in the front hall (which the housecleaner, Desta, had set off several times with her duster), one by the bathroom, one in each guest room, one in the kitchen, and one in Finn’s downstairs office. Good to know.
As was usual on a Thursday, the house was empty. She glanced around the bedroom. It was impeccably neat, aside from the tousled bedclothes and last night’s sundress, which lay on the floor where she had discarded it a few minutes after arriving.
She still hadn’t met the household staff—the cook, the cleaner, the housekeeper, the gardeners. Unsure as to how they would react to her spending the night, she always arrived after they left the house at 4:00 p.m. and scurried out the door before 6:00 a.m., when they began their shift. Finn had told her a little about each of them, in preparation for their eventual introduction. There was Negasi, the sturdy Residence manager–housekeeper who had worked at the house the longest, in various capacities, for at least three ambassadors; Teru, the moonfaced cook who had nearly been fired for unpalatable menus before Finn sent her off to study at one of the five-star hotels; and the clumsy but devoted housecleaner, Desta, renowned for regularly setting off the alarms. Semere and Yonas worked in the gardens. They were all Christian, which was significant because a fair amount of alcohol—which would have made Muslim staff uncomfortable—was served at the Residence.
But whom were she and Finn fooling? The staff knew when she was there. Miranda couldn’t get in and out of the Residence without passing the guards—who were most certainly aware of her arrival and departure times. And no one gossips like guards. Even before she met Finn, Miranda was a member of the British Club, one of the only bars in town. One either joined the club or became a teetotaler. All gossip eventually reached the ears of the Vietnamese-Mazrooqi bartender Abdullah, who had been a frequent guest at parties she and Vícenta threw in the Old City. On Halloween he had shown up at their home in full drag under an abaya. “Is it true,” he had whispered, “that in the US there are men who dress like this all of the time?” Having intuited the truth about her and Vícenta, he trusted her with his own secrets.
The property around the Residence was constantly monitored by closed-circuit TV, which meant the guards could zoom in on anyone on the grounds. At the end of the lawn was a pool, used by embassy staff. The guards, whose exposure to semidressed females was limited at best, were perhaps understandably excited by all the bathing-suited Brits.
“They rank them,” Abdullah told M
iranda. “From one to ten. Want to know who number one is?”
She did. Abdullah named a friend of hers, Sally, a tall, curvy Amazon of a woman with long dark hair who was in charge of the consular section.
“And guess who they call the Potato.”
She guessed.
“It’s a good thing I don’t swim there,” Miranda said.
“Yes, but you swim at the InterContinental, and you think those guards aren’t rating women?”
Miranda sighed. Arab men, Western men, not as different as you’d think. What else did the Residence guards know about her?
She sometimes thought she was followed when she walked from Finn’s house to the Old City. The same car would pass her seven times, slowing down each time it approached. She’d finally noted its license plate, which was blue, meaning a local registration. “Do you ever send anyone to watch me?” she had asked Finn. “To make sure I get home safely?”
He’d looked puzzled. “No,” he’d said. “I’m not really allowed. Do you really think you’re being followed? It’s not just the usual harassment?”
Miranda wasn’t sure. She had grown accustomed to the constant verbal onslaught as she walked down the streets, which ranged from innocuous “I love you”s to the rather surprising (given the dearth of English spoken in the country) “suck my dick.” The men here made a big show of their deep respect for their women, which they demonstrated by keeping them wrapped up and locked away at home. But for some reason this alleged respect rarely prevented them from harassing her or even her women—all of whom were completely covered—on the streets. Miranda couldn’t be accused of trying to attract anyone’s attention. She dressed in long skirts and long sleeves, keeping her curls knotted at the back of her head. Yet the violet-gray of her eyes was enough to invite inspection in the streets. The catcalls in her wake were the kind she might expect back home in Seattle, were she to walk down the street wearing nothing but fishnets and a sequined bikini.
Finn was still looking at her, concerned. “I can let Tucker know,” he said. “He’ll try to find out who it is.”
Miranda shook her head. She was wary of taking advantage of Finn’s resources. She’d managed here for years on her own, she could manage awhile longer. “I’m not really worried,” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
—
NO ONE AT the embassy knew about their affair. It wasn’t against policy, but they weren’t sure how people would react. “When I first joined the Foreign Office, they gave us a lecture on romance while abroad on a posting,” Finn told her one night. “They said, ‘Look, you’ll be meeting exciting people in all sorts of places, you’re bound to play around. Just do us—and yourselves—a favor and sleep NATO.’ So, I think we’re okay.”
Miranda laughed. “You only picked me so you’d be sleeping NATO?”
“I’d have picked you no matter where you were from. But then I’d have to keep you secret forever.”
“You’re keeping me secret now.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No. Yes. I’m not sure.”
“It won’t be forever. It’s just that I’ve hardly started here and I’d rather get to know people a bit better before I begin flaunting my personal life.”
“Is it because of the painting thing? My women?”
“I love your painting thing. And your women.”
“You haven’t met them.”
“I love them anyway. I love how you talk about them. I love the paintings you’ve shown me.”
She kept her women’s paintings on the fourth floor of her four-story home, where their families had no chance of finding them. No one had ever seen them but Finn. She probably shouldn’t have shown them even to him. You couldn’t be too careful.
—
MIRANDA STOOD NAKED again in the middle of the bedroom. The blinds were still drawn, though you couldn’t see into the house during the daytime. Finn wouldn’t be back until lunch, possibly later. She picked up the cold cup of tea he had made her before leaving and drank it in three swallows. Might as well go to the gym before the embassy people got there. It was still early enough.
The gym was just across the lawn, through a gate at the bottom of the garden. It was a modest, one-room building that housed only one treadmill, one bike, one rowing machine, one stair-climber, and a bunch of free weights. But at least everything usually worked. There was even a boom box and a stack of CDs, most of them belonging to Tucker. He trained here, often with his team. He had them on a strict routine of free weights, running, and crunches. Some mornings Miranda could hear him yelling “As-raa!” (faster) as the men did laps around the Residence. Tucker knew only a few Arabic words, but he made a valiant effort to use them as much as possible.
Miranda plugged in her iPod and speakers, climbed onto the treadmill, and fiddled with the buttons. All of it took getting used to. The guards, the constant guards. The absurdly oversized house. The lack of freedom. But what she found hardest of all was the happiness.
She had never been so happy. She had never been so appreciative for every single second of her life. It wasn’t just Finn, although he was a major source. The happiness had begun when she moved to Mazrooq, three years ago. For the first time in her life, she had been able to paint whenever she wanted to paint. Every second of the day was hers to fill. She could while away entire afternoons over lunch with Mazrooqi friends. It still amazed her how warm everyone was, how quickly she was invited into people’s homes. The Mazrooqis, for all of their weapons, were an unguarded people. Their homes and hearts swung wide open the minute they laid eyes on a stranger.
Here, there was no worrying about preparing for her classes at Cornish College or finishing her grading. There was no worry about money. Rent cost her almost nothing. Before Vícenta left, they had split the expenses of their ten-room home. Vícenta’s grant money and Miranda’s small savings went a long way here. A dinner of beans and bread cost a dollar. Fish might cost a couple more. Electricity and water were a few dollars a month. Her biggest expense was probably her cell phone, which still cost less than thirty dollars per month.
Living in a poor country set her free, freer than she had ever been.
Plus, with Finn there was none of the awkwardness she had always felt with other men. In the past, only with a woman had she felt her body truly unclench, the result of her politics falling in line with her heart. With men she had always been wary, monitoring every interaction for signs of a power imbalance. Loving a woman didn’t carry the burden of the long history of patriarchy. It just felt easier. But then, nothing about Vícenta had been simple or easy. While she had rescued Miranda from the predictable tedium of academia, launched her into this captivating country, and prodded her work forward, Vícenta had inspired as much anxiety as ardor. Her mercurial passions had wrenched Miranda in too many directions at once.
With Finn, she felt instantly at home. It continued to surprise her, how uncomplicated everything was with him. Finn’s patience and consistency allowed her to be the mercurial one. Nothing frightened him. When she was euphoric because her work was going well, he loved her. When she flew into an irrational fit of rage because she could not find her favorite black cardigan, he loved her. When she wept uncontrollably at the beauty of a painting in the middle of a public gallery, he loved her. Vícenta’s love had always felt conditional, contingent, hazardous. Her unpredictability, her extremes, had edged Miranda toward caution and pragmatism. Someone always has to play the anchor. It was a role she had gladly handed over to Finn. With him, she could simply be.
There wasn’t a room in the house in which they hadn’t made love: the front hallway underneath the stained-glass Union Jack and the disapproving eyes of Elizabeth II, the second Finn closed the door on their last guests; the dining room, straddling a chair; the kitchen, over the cold industrial metal counter. They made a point of it. When would they ever have so many rooms at their disposal again? When in their future lives would they ever have such a luxury of space? He
r desire for him still astonished her. That she could feel this for a man. Yet she did. Unmistakably, undeniably, she did.
Almost from the start of things with Finn, she had been waiting for this happiness to be taken away. She had always assumed that meeting the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life would be blissful. The search was over, there would be no more broken hearts, and she would be drunk with joy. Wasn’t that how she was supposed to feel? She hadn’t expected the accompanying terror. The second she knew that she wanted to be with Finn for the rest of her time on Earth, an abyss opened beneath her. Not because she doubted him or worried he would leave her. Their relationship had always been—perhaps bizarrely—free from that particular worry. But because she was newly vulnerable in a way she had never experienced, in a way for which she had no preparation.
It was possible, the world being as the world is, that she could lose him. Almost anything could happen—a car accident, a heart attack, the flu. It didn’t help matters that here, he was a true target. This wasn’t just her morbid imagination, it was fact.
That Finn had bodyguards should have been reassuring to her, but it had the opposite effect. The fact that he had bodyguards implied that he needed bodyguards. Ten of them. This fact didn’t create her terror, which was purely precipitated by her overwhelming love, but it fed it.
She didn’t feel deserving of this happiness. She hadn’t led a particularly exemplary life. She’d been self-absorbed and single and free. She’d put her passion for painting before all else—her family, her friends, her lovers, Vícenta. She wasn’t cruel. She never purposefully caused anyone pain; she was kind to strangers on buses; she played with children in coffee shops when their mothers needed to use the toilet; she recycled. But she had never had to truly sacrifice anything dear to her. So how was it that she suddenly came into this happiness? Why her and not the millions of raped and tortured women of the Congo? Why her and not the Bosnian Muslims? Why her and not the millions of babies who died every year in the first few weeks of life? Did they not deserve even a small portion of this joy?
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