The Ambassador's Wife

by Jennifer Steil

  “When she can eat beans and bread, she will come back here.”

  “She will be okay?”

  “Insha’allah. We must pray for her.”

  —

  NADIA LISTENS TO her cousin’s story with wide eyes. The two women have closeted themselves in Imaan’s diwan, with the windows shut. “And you didn’t ask who the father was? Even after she mentioned it?”

  Imaan shakes her head.

  “Or where the girl was sent?”

  “It didn’t seem like she wanted to say.” Somehow Nadia always makes her feel like an ignorant country girl. She envies her cousin’s bravery.

  “Imaan, think. Who important died recently?”

  Imaan stares at her, eyes widening. “Can you really not remember?” Nadia’s hands fly to her mouth. “Forgive me. I wasn’t thinking. I haven’t forgotten. I will never forget. I promise you, Imaan.”

  They sit for a moment staring at the thin, filthy red carpet between them, the threadbare pillows, remembering the funeral procession through the streets, their keening mothers, the blanket-swaddled body lifted above the crowds, tilting over their heads. He had been their inspiration, their spiritual father, their protector from the president’s men. From the president’s planes.

  Abruptly Nadia looks up. “You don’t think—? Did he have—?”

  Imaan slowly nods. “I think so, yes. With his last wife. I had forgotten.”

  “But she’s a girl.”

  “A girl with a very important daddy. The most important daddy a girl could possibly have.”

  JANUARY 3, 2011

  Finn

  Kaia and Doortje sit next to each other on the pristine white sofa, their thighs and hands touching, seeking comfort. Fear hasn’t loosened its grip; it is engraved on their faces. The women are thin, pale, blue veins showing through their wrists and temples, though they said their captors had fed them regularly and well. “Captivity doesn’t improve appetite,” Kaia says, smiling faintly. They are exhausted, having already endured their first debriefing.

  Three days after the cash (sent via two separate couriers from Dubai) had been tossed, as instructed, over the fence of a small cement factory in a remote northern town, the women had been rolled out of the back of a van outside the InterContinental hotel. (“It’s always the InterContinental,” the Dutch consultant had commented. “A perennial favorite with kidnappers across the region. I’m surprised they haven’t launched a special hostage drop-off area.”)

  “I’m sorry to have to ask you questions now,” says Finn softly. “I promise I’ll be as brief as I can. I know you are anxious to get home to your families.”

  “It’s all right,” says Doortje. “But I am afraid we won’t be much help. We haven’t seen Miranda since the night we were first taken.” The women take turns telling their story again, finishing each other’s sentences. It is a story they have obviously been telling each other for months, looking for clues, looking for sense.

  “Mukhtar was shot?” says Finn. “Is he dead?” He must be. Otherwise he would have returned to the Residence. And this means—Finn’s heart lifts—this means that that shot he heard on the phone was not for his wife. There was also the drawing to prove that she had survived that first attack, though she may have been injured. Still, he was famished for proof, there could not be enough proof, until he could brush his fingertips against Miranda’s flesh, warm and living.

  The women shrug. “We didn’t see him after that.”

  “So the men who originally took you, they still had Miranda when you were given to the second group of men? She wasn’t given to anyone else?” If it was an opportunistic kidnapping, perhaps the original group of men was less lethal than any group to which she could be sold. AQ, to name one.

  “We were all traded together the first time,” says Kaia. Finn notices a slight tremor in the fingers resting on her thigh. “And then later we were given to the others.”

  “Did you ever overhear anyone mention Miranda?”

  “They wouldn’t have known her name,” Kaia reminds him.

  “Of course. But did you hear them mention, ‘the other woman,’ anything like that?”

  Doortje leans forward. “Neither of us speaks much Arabic, so we didn’t understand a lot of what went on. But we did manage to ask them why she was taken somewhere else. Because at that point they couldn’t have known her nationality or her position. So why would they separate her?”

  “I think I heard them say ‘the other one isn’t worth anything,’ at some point,” says Kaia. “Which only makes sense if they were aware that she was from a country that wouldn’t pay a ransom.” She flushes slightly with the guilt of surviving, returning. “And that we were from ransom-paying countries. We had said we were all French, so if they believed us, why would they have separated Miranda?”

  Finn looks at them with renewed interest. “So…it is possible that they did know who she was.” The women shrug again. “Which means…” He isn’t sure he wants to know what this means. “This was planned,” he concludes. “She was targeted. Or, you all were, but they had plans for her entirely unrelated to their finances.”

  DECEMBER 2010

  Miranda

  When Miranda opens her eyes, the darkness remains as pure as when she had them closed. What has woken her? The man next door? Another rat? A scorpion? Her pulse quickening, she sits, scooting toward the wall, scraping the back of her head on the plaster. Her body tenses, bracing for the inhuman—or all too human—howls from the adjoining room. Only then does she hear the knocking. It is soft yet insistent. What kind of guard knocks before entering a prison cell? thinks Miranda crossly.

  “Aiwa,” she says without expression, without moving. It’s a bit early for breakfast. Unless Ramadan has started. Didn’t they just have Ramadan before she was captured? She cannot remember. Maybe it’s her turn for a beating? The door creaks open and a man stands there, next to the guard. He is dressed like the guard, in desert camouflage and a puffy down parka. Mazrooqis run for their winter coats every time the temperature dips below seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Both men are shorter and slighter than she is. I could take them in a fair fight, she thinks. If there is such a thing. And then she remembers the guns. The great equalizers. And these are AK-47s; she has checked. In fact, she has studied them, trying to remember everything Tucker and Mukhtar taught her, just in case. She’s so busy examining the guns again that it takes her a moment to realize that he is carrying something, a small bundle in a blanket. Not another one, she thinks. I cannot take another one. My heart can only break so many times. But when the man holds out the bundle to her, the child gives a familiar cry, reaching scrawny, grayish brown arms up to Miranda.

  “Luloah!” she exclaims, taking the child. Then, wary of exposing her joy to hostile scrutiny, she falls silent, clutching Luloah to her chest. The little girl is frighteningly light again. Her face is pointed, elfin, not rounded like a baby’s. Miranda wants to nurse her right away, but she must wait for the men to leave. They stand there, looking awkward. “I am to tell you that this child is not yours,” says the man who had carried Luloah. “But she must not die.”

  “No,” Miranda agrees. “She must not.”

  The men still stand there, staring at her with the child.

  “Law samaht,” she finally says. “This child needs to eat.”

  Looking slightly embarrassed, the men shuffle backward and reach for the door.

  —

  THERE IS A slight improvement in her food after Luloah’s arrival. They bring her glasses of milk, of mango juice. She receives beans with her bread; she hasn’t had much more than bread and rice for days. Sometimes there is even a banana or a couple of withered dates.

  It hadn’t been easy to get Luloah to nurse again. She had lost so much strength that it was once more difficult for her to suck. But Miranda was patient and determined. Soon, she thinks, she might be able to start giving Luloah a bit of her fruit. She instinctively knows to conceal this information fro
m the guards. Because if Luloah can eat solid food, she might be able to survive without Miranda. But perhaps Luloah simply hadn’t been willing to accept food from anyone else. Maybe that is why they gave her back.

  Miranda is aware this is a temporary situation; the guards have made that clear. But she doesn’t allow herself to dwell on this. Instead, she redoubles her efforts to survive, to stay strong. She eats every scrap of food, even when she has no appetite. In the mornings, when Luloah naps, she does jumping jacks and presses her palms into the filthy floor to practice sun salutations. Something to keep her muscles from wasting entirely. Perhaps most important, she makes an effort with the guards. Swallowing her revulsion, she says good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. She asks them how they are. Surprised and wary, they are slow to respond, but finally, they do. They must be almost as bored as she has been. Every week or so a guard hands her a new bundle of clothing. She wonders where it comes from. Mazrooqi women in the cities never wear skirts like this; they wear skimpy dresses or tight jeans under their abayas. The customary covering keeps them from needing any other modest clothing.

  She asks for a Quran and a few days later, for water and a bar of soap. “To wash myself for prayers.” She doesn’t know why she hasn’t thought of this before. She uses the pitchers of water to bathe Luloah first, and then herself. Last, she rinses out the cloth diaper. When it is warm enough, she leaves Luloah naked on her sleeping mat and tries to rush her to the chamber pot in the corner when her face screws up and her body begins to strain. Every other minute of the day she spends feeding, entertaining, and rocking Luloah. When the cries of the man next door seep through the wall, she sings, loudly. Luloah must not absorb the toxins in those sounds. A few days after she first heard him, Miranda had listened to the man praying, in Arabic. He must be Mazrooqi. Why is he being tortured? Why torture one of their own and not her, citizen of a loathed enemy country? But these are questions she knows better than to ask the guards.

  In the mornings, she lays Luloah in the tiny square of sunlight, hoping she will soak up enough UVB rays for her body to manufacture a few vital specks of vitamin D. When the girl has regained a little strength, Miranda props her up against a corner to practice sitting while she reads to her from the Quran. Luloah is, after all, a Muslim child. For at least half an hour every day she lays Luloah on her stomach so she can practice lifting her head, just as she had done with Cressida (who had hated “tummy time” and screamed until Miranda rolled her over). But most of all, she talks.

  She begins with the memories she has been cataloging to keep from going mad, telling Luloah about her first drawings, the round figures with scribbles of hair and spindly arms and legs her mother had called her pod people. From there she moves on to school, paintings, boyfriends, girlfriends, art shows, college, travels, Vícenta, Finn. She tells her everything. When she has nothing more to say about her own life, she recounts every Islamic myth she can remember. Her women had told her dozens, though she can remember only a few. She remembers the mi’raj, the mythical predatory rabbit with a spiraling unicorn horn—not only because she has a fondness for bunnies but because the word mi’raj also means Mohammed’s ascent into Heaven. She also tells Luloah about the buraq, the winged horse that carried the Prophet to Heaven during the mi’raj. She describes the ababil birds that allegedly protected Mecca from invading elephants by dropping bricks on the invaders. “Do you think Mazrooq ever had elephants?” Miranda asks her small charge. “And what ever became of the ababil, I wonder?”

  As she talks, Luloah stares up at her with those huge, dark eyes and clings to her toes for dear life. She is a serious child, more solemn than Miranda remembers. Had this girl really ever laughed? Occasionally she ventures a few syllables out loud, for which Miranda congratulates her. She still speaks to her in a mix of Arabic and French, afraid to be overheard in English. Her dreams mingle these languages, only these, as if she has forgotten even how to think in her native tongue. It is too dangerous to think in English. Though they must know who she is by now. Finn wouldn’t have been able to conceal her disappearance for long. Where is he? Cressie must be speaking in sentences by now. But this line of thinking leads only to bottomless despair. Better to focus on the child in front of her, the child who curls into her at night, pressing her snotty, drooling, filthy little face into Miranda’s neck.

  In an attempt to summon a smile from her grave charge, Miranda plays patty-cake with her, and Miss Mary Mac. She sings “Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,” lightly touching each body part as it is mentioned. It doesn’t rhyme in French or in Arabic, but still. She attempts to translate “The Grand Old Duke of York,” one of Finn’s favorites. “Al ‘atheem duq al-York, qaada ashra alaaf rajul…” It doesn’t quite scan, but Luloah never complains. Miranda tells Luloah about the country in which she was born. “So many people here never leave their own neighborhood,” she says to the child. “Some of my women have lived in Arnabiya their whole lives and have never been to the Old City. None of them have been to the deserts in the East or climbed the mountains in the West. You are not going to be like that. You live in an extraordinary country. You must see it all. I was lucky, habibti, I got to see it before the Brits locked me up in the Residence. Before I met your daddy—” Miranda stops, appalled by what she has just said. This is not her child, not Finn’s. She pauses, takes a breath. Luloah simply looks at her, tiny eyebrows knitting together. “Before I met Finn, my husband, I traveled. Vícenta and I traveled together, and after she left I traveled alone. Especially when I knew I was about to lose my freedom.”

  Three weeks before she moved in with Finn, her Arabic teacher, Mahmoud, had driven her eight hours to the east, to the cities of mud-brick high-rises and fertile valleys where dates and honey were cultivated. This was what she had instead of a bachelorette party, a final taste of freedom.

  “Shall I tell you the story, habibti? God knows we have time. And it’s important that you know a little bit about your own country, no?” And she begins.

  “We reached the first checkpoint outside of Arnabiya just before 9:00 a.m. There are checkpoints everywhere in your country, habibti. It makes getting around pretty tricky for a foreigner. But Mahmoud had brought a stack of about sixty copies of our permission-to-travel form, which he kept on the windshield and handed out at every stop. Fifteen minutes or so later, our police escort arrived, and we headed off to breakfast, the predictable fool wa fasooleah with stretchy white bread in a roadside mat’am. You’ve had a bit of that here, yes? When the guards aren’t watching. Don’t tell the French, but your people make better bread.

  “Back on the road, we saw almost no other cars. We pulled over once, so I could photograph a mountain that looked like a camel’s head. When I climbed out of the car, my camera swinging from my hand, a soldier by the side of the road forced a Kalashnikov into my arms. So Mahmoud took a picture of me, looking like every other adventure-seeking tourist here, holding the massive gun. I felt mildly ashamed, and of course the one thing running through my mind was that my father would kill me if he knew I was holding a gun. Funny that you can be in your late thirties and still worry what your father will think. I suppose that never goes away.

  “We were about an hour outside Dibra, our first stop, when Finn texted me to say that a car bomb had just killed a van full of German tourists there, right on our route. Other friends also texted, saying, ‘Turn around!’ Mahmoud didn’t seem remotely concerned, until all of his family members started calling to tell him he was insane to continue on our journey. They would not have worried were he alone, but he was with me, an ugly American, a walking, talking target. Mahmoud has about fifty or so immediate family members, meaning his phone rang pretty much nonstop. But we didn’t turn around. Mahmoud had promised to show me his country’s bounty, and damn it, he was going to show it to me.

  “At every checkpoint, a police officer took a copy of our permission slip and asked my nationality. (This is something you will never have to worry
about, my little Mazrooqi.) Every time, Mahmoud said I was French, while I kept my head scarf wrapped tightly around my head, my sunglasses obscuring my eyes, and stared demurely at my lap.

  “We lost our police escort somewhere in the mountains before Dibra. ‘I guess they think we’re safe,’ Mahmoud said, shrugging. He isn’t much of a worrier, Mahmoud. But then in the city itself, we got two police cars, one to drive in front of us and one behind, which made us pretty conspicuous on the otherwise empty roads. Mahmoud conceded that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to spend the night there, but he thought we’d be pretty safe on a speed tour of the tourist attractions. After all, there had already been one bombing that day, what were the chances of another so soon? So we whipped past the massive dam, the temples, Dibra’s Old City, so fast all of my photos are blurry. On the way back to town for lunch, we passed the remains of the car that had exploded earlier, behind pink police tape. It had shattered into such tiny pieces of confetti there was almost nothing left. Actually, you don’t need that image in your brain. Forget I said that.

  “Before lunch, we had to give our police escort money. When you get a police escort, you are responsible for the care and feeding of these men for the length of their time with you. Our first police escort demanded money before they turned us over to the second, whom we treated to lunch. It was the kind of restaurant you find everywhere here: a large, tiled room full of shouting men and abuzz with a thousand flies. Waiters spread newspapers over the long tables, banging down metal plates of rice and meat, tossing sheets of bread at diners like Frisbees. No menus in these places; they all serve the same thing. Mahmoud asked for lamb and rice, and zabadi and khubz for me. I was holding a pen and started doodling my name in Arabic on the newspaper. I wrote ‘I am Miranda from France.’ The men around us went into fits of excitement when they saw me forming Arabic letters. ‘SHE WRITES ARABIC!’ they shouted at each other. I felt like a child who had just learned to walk. You’ll feel like that someday, insha’allah. Then the cook leaned out of the steaming kitchen window above us, and shouted to Mahmoud.