“Mukhtar, you know I can’t shoot straight.” And she swings the gun once more, this time at his head.
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
Tazkia
In the car, Tazkia turns to Madina. “Did you call Finn?”
“No.”
“Shouldn’t we tell him?”
“I don’t want to get his hopes up. Chances are, we won’t find her. And if we do, we might not have good news.”
Tazkia absorbs this. “You don’t think he could help us? Not him, but the embassy?”
“What do you think the chances are that a foreigner would make it up there? Slim to none, kiddo. Slim to none. It has to be us. Two out of three of us are Mazrooqi, and I can pass for Mazrooqi. Besides, we’re women. No one will take us seriously.”
Tazkia can’t argue with that. She and Nadia watch with admiration as Madina talks her way through checkpoint after checkpoint, explaining about the spiritual retreat and how they hadn’t had time to apply for the travel permission slips. Whenever a man demonstrates any reluctance to let them pass, Madina pulls out a thousand-dinar note. “For cigarettes,” she says, folding it and slipping it into his palm. And the men wave them through.
They haven’t stopped since leaving the city, making do with the provisions each has stuffed into her handbag. Tazkia feels queasy after two bottles of Coke and her packet of cookies. Perhaps she should have brought a banana. Something healthy. Miranda was always going on about the amount of sugar in everything here.
At one of the last checkpoints before the northern territories, a policeman tells Madina the pass is partially blocked. They had forgotten about the pass. Madina hadn’t known about it of course, being a foreigner. But the other women should have remembered. The floods of the rainy season often dislodge massive chunks of earth from the mountains on either side of the pass. It could be weeks before the heaps of sludge are cleared from the road.
But the word partially gives them hope. “Do you think we can get through?” asks Madina. The man looks skeptically at their rusted sedan. “It’s not impossible,” he finally says. “But you’ll need help. If I were you I would wait.”
Thanking him, Madina guns the car forward.
Tazkia closes her eyes. If they are meant to get to the North, they will get there. She thinks of Adan. It won’t be long now. She imagines what it will feel like to run her hands over the smooth caramel of his skin. To wind her fingers in his thick, dark hair and inhale his scent. But there her heart stutters to a stop. Can she marry him now, with the paintings out there like a time bomb? Finn has promised to keep looking, but even if he finds them, there will always be someone else who has seen them. Has seen her. Has seen the part of her that only her husband should know. If she were honorable, she would break off with him now, before he is forced to leave her. But she cannot bear the thought of losing the kindest man she has ever known. The man who brings her tiny treasures each time he comes to see her: a miniature vase with a tiny violet, a painted porcelain thimble, a teddy bear the size of her thumb. Things she can carry with her. The man who wrote her poems, sheets and sheets and sheets of poems. If she cannot have him, whom can she have? Has she doomed herself to a lifetime of solitude? To a life without children? Sickened by this line of thought, she opens her eyes. She isn’t the only one at risk, she reminds herself. Along with Miranda’s paintings of Tazkia had been Tazkia’s paintings of Miranda. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell Finn. He had enough to worry about. And then, it might not even matter now.
Nadia, huddled against the back window, hasn’t said a word the whole journey. Tazkia is surprised she could get away; her parents are strict, maybe even stricter than Tazkia’s. But Nadia is the only one who knows the North, who knows this territory and these tribes. She and Madina had to have Nadia. Tazkia wonders how Nadia feels about Sheikh Zajnoon. Are her tribal loyalties to him stronger than her loyalty to Miranda? Maybe she and Madina should have talked about this, about what to do if Nadia turned on them, before they started out. Because surely Nadia should have remembered the pass?
The air cools as the car labors sluggishly up the several thousand feet of hairpin turns to the crossing. Falling silent, Madina focuses on coaxing the reluctant engine onward, over increasingly broken asphalt. Serrated peaks of blue rock rise on either side of them, obscuring their view of anything but the road ahead. It occurs to Tazkia that she has never been so far from home. Gripping the door handle with sweaty hands, she prays.
“Here we are,” announces Madina. “Hang on tight.” She presses her slippered foot to the floor. The car jumps forward, allowing Tazkia and Nadia a view of the wedge of mud and rock slumped across the two-lane road. The left side isn’t too bad, buried in just a few inches, but the right is impassable, a wall of debris. On either side are vertical cliffs. “Good thing I learned to drive in Africa,” yells Madina. “Time to pray!”
But the car lurches only about a third of the way through before its wheels begin to spin in the mire. Madina shuts off the engine and turns to her two friends. “So,” she says. “Who brought extra shoes?” Only Tazkia is wearing sneakers; Madina and Nadia are wearing the slippers or heels they wear every day. “Everybody out,” orders Madina. “If you don’t want to lose your shoes take them off.”
Uncertainly, Nadia tugs off her shoes while Tazkia laces her well-worn Reeboks more tightly. When they climb out of the car, their feet instantly disappear in the bone-chilling muck. “Quickly,” says Madina. “Before we freeze.” Yanking up the skirts of their abayas and tucking them into the waistbands of their jeans, then flipping back their veils, the women pick their way to the rear of the car. “Wait,” says Madina. “We need something for the front wheels, for traction. Can you find small stones? Sticks? Anything not mud?”
Twenty minutes later the women have wedged a mosaic of rubble under the front wheels and gathered again at the back of the car. With Madina at the wheel, Tazkia and Nadia dig their numb toes into the ground and push. At first, the wheels flail in the mud, flinging up useless sprays of filth. “PUSH,” calls Madina. “Harder!” adds Tazkia, her voice panicky. “Someone is coming!” Looking over their shoulders, the women can see a green truck a few turns below, making its steady way toward them. Terror of discovery in states of semi-undress has an invigorating effect, and seconds later the front wheels grip the stones. Stumbling as the car lurches from their shoulders, the women fight their way forward, heaving their whole weight into the car until finally it breaks free onto dry road. Madina pulls several meters forward as the women run to jump inside. Just as the truck commences its own struggle in the morass behind them, Madina presses her foot to the floor.
“I hate to say it,” says Tazkia as the women untuck their abayas and use their socks to wipe their feet, “but with any luck we’ll be coming back the same way.”
“We’ll make it,” answers Madina, “if the rains hold off.”
As they descend from the pass, the air thickens with heat. Tazkia sweats, wishing she could remove her abaya entirely. (She’s almost grateful for her soaking feet, but not quite.) In between checkpoints she flips up her niqab and fans her face with a notebook. Madina rolls down the windows, but still the heat is oppressive. Suddenly, Nadia straightens from her slouch against the door. “Turn here,” she says, pointing to a dirt road branching off to the left.
“Really? Here? But it’s—”
“It’s the best way,” says Nadia firmly. “A back road to the city. We won’t be so conspicuous.”
As Madina steers off the tarmac and begins to bump the car along the dusty, serpentine road, Tazkia glances idly at her phone. Missed call. How could that be? She checks her ringer; it was switched off. The stupid ringer is always turning itself off in her purse. She picks it up to look at the number but doesn’t recognize it. Good, then it wasn’t her family or Adan. Probably a wrong number. She won’t bother calling back, she has hardly any minutes left on her phone anyway. But she switches on the ringer and keeps the phone on her lap.
“Half an hour? Less? Depending.”
Before they get too close to the city, Madina pulls the car over so that they can all pee behind the piles of rocks strewn across the flat countryside. It’s easier than trying to find a bathroom in town. As she squats, Tazkia can see streams of people moving in the distance. Families, walking away from their bombed homes, she imagines. Could Miranda be among them? Or was her prison spared? Or have they gotten her location completely wrong?
“Taz! Phone!” Madina calls from the car. Tugging up her jeans, Tazkia sprints to the car and lunges for her phone.
“Tazzy, is it really you? Don’t hang up.” The voice cracks and begins to sob. Tazkia holds the phone away from her ear and looks at it in amazement. “Mira?” she finally says. “Mira?”
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
Miranda
Miranda stands looking down at Mukhtar’s limp form, unsure whether he is dead or merely unconscious. She doesn’t want to know. And she has no time to examine him. Quickly, avoiding looking at his chest or mouth for signs of breath, she goes through his pockets until she finds his phone. She takes this and a five-hundred-dinar bill and glances around her to make sure she is not observed. But everyone seems to be moving away, away from the blasted buildings, away from the city. She wonders if all of her other guards are dead. Luloah has grown quiet in her hiding place, having become fascinated with arranging pebbles in a straight line. Miranda limps back to her and scoops her up. Luloah protests, and Miranda retraces her steps to get her a handful of the pebbles before starting again toward the lights of the city. It is the dark places she fears, the emptiness with its invisible arms reaching to grab her. She and Luloah will be safer in town.
As they make their slow way down the mostly abandoned streets, they hug the walls, staying in the shadows. She has got to find something to make a sling for Luloah; the child is too heavy to carry for long, and Miranda’s ankle yelps with every step. At each corner, she has to set the girl on the pavement for a few minutes before she can move on. It’s already getting lighter, the desert sun burning away the shadows. People move past her, men on their way home from mosque, women carrying pink plastic bags of bread, parentless children chasing a cat. They stare at her curiously but say nothing. Miranda wonders what she looks like. It has been months since she has seen a mirror. Her hair is growing out, and stands out from her head in stunted, greasy ringlets. Her left hand is wrapped in a strip of cloth and soaked with blood. She wears a long black skirt and loose, ragged polyester blouse, both coated in dust. Of course many of the people she passes are also dusted with plaster, victims of the same attack. Wide-eyed and stunned, often bleeding, they pass without seeing her.
As soon as she feels far enough from her prison to stop for a few minutes, she dials Finn, heart skipping, amazed she remembers his number. Yet it doesn’t even ring; a message in Arabic informs her that the line has been disconnected. Nausea threatens to overwhelm her. Could he also be in trouble? Perhaps he has left the country, taken Cressida to safety. Desperately, she tries to dial the embassy and the Residence but gets an error message both times. Damn it. Has she forgotten the numbers?
At a tiny storefront she stops to buy a bottle of water for her and a packet of crackers for Luloah, who turns them around in her hands marveling at them before running her tongue around an edge. The shopkeeper smiles at her and reaches over to pinch Luloah’s cheeks with thick, grubby fingers. Squatting out of his sight, Miranda unwraps her hand and pours water over the wound. The pain is so acute she leans in to the wall and vomits onto the pavement. Luloah crawls toward her, pulls at her skirt. The blood is still coming from her palm, but slowly. She rewraps it in the bloody cloth, trying to keep the cleanest part over her wound.
What is she going to do? She crouches on the pavement for a moment and gives Luloah a taste of her water. She could ask a stranger for help, take a taxi all the way home to Arnabiya, or call someone else. The last is the only logical option. She isn’t feeling particularly trusting of strangers at the moment, and she doesn’t have the money for a taxi or the permission slips to get through the checkpoints. So whom should she call? Tucker? Dax? They are the logical choices. But she doesn’t know their numbers. There are only two phone numbers she knows by heart, Finn’s and Tazkia’s. Tazkia. Miranda sits heavily down on the pavement. Luloah leans against her as she dials. She lets the phone ring a dozen times before giving up. No one in this fucking country ever answers the phone, and voice mail does not yet exist. Tazkia won’t call her back; she never has minutes on her phone. Besides, she won’t recognize the number.
Sighing, Miranda tucks the phone in the waistband of her skirt and hauls Luloah up again. When a small boy runs past her, trailing a Palestinian scarf like a kite, Miranda calls after him. He stops and stares at her. She pulls out her remaining dinars and holds them in her palm. “For the scarf?” she says. “Could I have the scarf?” Greedily, the boy scoops the coins from her hand, tossing the scarf on the ground before running off. Miranda picks up the scarf and uses it to tie Luloah to her waist. That’s a bit better.
She walks on, passing mosques, bombed-out homes and businesses, shops, and half-built concrete houses with iron rods pointing skyward, awaiting a second floor that will never come. No one has to pay taxes on an unfinished house, so there is little motivation to complete any new construction. She squints, suddenly aware of how long it has been since there was sun on her skin. Tilting her face upward, she drinks it, gorges herself on it. Euphoria wafts through her: At this moment, she is free.
This feeling is quickly followed by vertigo and panic. She has no money. She cannot get food for herself or Luloah or take a taxi or pay for a room. At any moment she could be plucked off the streets again by men with malign intent. At any moment someone could take Luloah from her. The faster she gets off the street the better. Plucking the phone out of her waistband, she dials Tazkia again.
FEBRUARY 14, 2011
Finn
Finn is exhausted. He had finally fallen asleep after the morning prayers, only to be woken an hour later by Cressida’s cries. She hasn’t slept long enough either and is uncharacteristically clingy. Finn lurches downstairs to make her porridge and cut her up a mango, but she doesn’t want to eat, throwing sticky pieces of fruit to the linoleum floor. “I know how you feel,” he tells her, peeling up the pieces of fruit and rinsing them in bottled water. “But we have to somehow go on.”
The empty day stretching before him is an affront. He needs work, he needs action. He rings Dax, who says to call him later. He is still working on finding someone to send up north. Maybe Finn should go back to London. Is he doing anyone any good here? All of his connections and friends have proved useless. He feels scooped out, impotent. And if he doesn’t get out of this fucking house he will lose his mind.
Disregarding Bashir’s warnings and refusing his company, he takes Cressida out for a long walk through the Old City. He wants to lose himself. Cressie struggles to keep up, stumbling on the cobblestones, and he lifts her to his shoulders. Despite his black mood, he is struck anew by the beauty of the city. It has no straight lines. Every building leans and curves. Narrow lanes lead past stalls selling handcrafted daggers, carved wooden doors, multicolored scarves, intricate silver jewelry. As he passes one of the jewelry stalls, a man rushes out to greet him and shake his hand. It is the place Miranda had taken him that first day, where he had bought the coral necklace for his one surviving aunt. The man pulls him inside, disappears into the back, and reappears with a glass of sticky-sweet tea. “So happy to see you again,” he says. Finn has been back several times since that first visit, every time he needs a gift for a visitor or friend back home. But this is the first time he has found his way here without his team.
He sets Cressie down on the floor and accepts the glass of tea. She wanders over to the wall display of necklaces and fingers the beads. “Your daughter?
” says the man. Finn nods, sure that it is careless to admit such an attachment. But he is tired. Tired of caution, of fear, of being on constant alert. The man disappears again and returns with a glass of unnaturally orange juice for Cressie, who sucks it down hungrily. It must be getting close to lunchtime. Before they leave, Finn buys a strand of turquoise beads for Cressida, placing them around her neck, and a string of dark emerald beads, in the stubborn hope that he can someday give them to his wife. Cressida insists on wearing these too, and he lets her. Because he has to say no every time she asks for her mother, he says yes to almost everything else.
As they wind their way deeper into the city, Cressida makes him even more conspicuous than usual. A stream of women who want to touch her feet and cheeks slow their progress. “A doll!” they say. “Is she a doll?” He isn’t sure whether the question is literal. Do they really think she might not be real? When they reach a pretty little square in front of a mosque, he sets Cressie down again, and they order fasooleah and sit in plastic chairs to scoop up the fried beans with their bread. Cressida is overjoyed to eat without silverware and treats the baguettes as paintbrushes, their table as her canvas.
Several men join them, asking the customary questions. Where is he from? Does he love Mazrooq? Is it not a beautiful country? How old is Cressida? She is very big for her age, is she not? How many other children? Why not? Finn answers them, asking them questions of his own about their lives and livelihoods. As he listens to them explain their family histories, their neighborhoods, their work, he thinks how often he would rather be talking with them than with the diplomats with whom he was forced into conversation at every national day. The men play peekaboo with Cressida, making her laugh with funny faces, and crouch down next to her to sing her songs. This is what he and his staff are missing in these high-security environments, where they are kept sealed away from most of the population. The everyday pleasures of everyday people. Finn finds himself suddenly very curious about all sorts of things. He asks the men their thoughts on the president, the chances of war, on the kidnappings in the North, and his ideas for new development projects. They are happy to rail against the government and condemn the kidnappings and offer critiques of his ideas. Only when Cressida’s head starts to bob sleepily toward her remaining beans is he able to tear himself away.
The Ambassador's Wife Page 36
