Her greatest personal suffering had been living apart from her daughter and Finn. She still cannot believe she has both of them back. A dozen times every night she creeps out of her nest on the floor to press her cheek to Cressida’s, to inhale her soapy scent, to listen to her quiet breathing.
Every day, she spends a couple hours sifting through the sediment of her memories with a therapist, complaining that the time would be better spent reconnecting with her daughter. Just one affectionate gesture from Cressida would improve her mental health far more than counseling ever could.
While the Office agreed to let them stay, it had insisted on a holiday of several weeks. But Miranda refused to leave the country because Luloah wouldn’t be able to accompany them. The child has no passport, no birth certificate, nothing. Finn did not explain this to the Office. As far as they know, Luloah is one of Tazkia’s nieces, who needs care while her mother is in the hospital. As a compromise, Finn and Miranda agreed to spend a couple of weeks on this island in the Red Sea, still technically part of the country though it feels a world away. Halim had joyfully welcomed them to his remote resort, tears in his warm brown eyes. “I never thought I would see this day,” he says, every time he sees Miranda. For the duration of their stay he has allowed no other guests (not that tourists are clamoring to vacation here, given the events of the past year). At night they sleep in a round hut with a palm-frond roof, underneath layers of mosquito netting. Halim cooks for them himself, preparing salads, grilled fish and shrimp, hummus, bread. At night after the girls are asleep, Miranda and Finn walk down to the sea, holding hands as they stand staring out into the black night, so dark they cannot tell where the water ends and the sky begins.
The sound of grains of sand rubbing together under her feet grates on Miranda’s nerves, but the girls are euphoric here, which is all that matters to her at the moment. Finn too seems to enjoy designing improbable sand castles and catamarans, digging channels down to the sea. He never looks happier than when he is arranging a picnic for Cressie’s bears or reading to her from The Wind in the Willows. He has also been kind to Luloah, singing to her at night and helping to bathe and change her. But his care is cautious, the kind of care one might take of a friend’s child on a sleepover. There is always a slight remove, and a question in his eyes when he looks at Miranda.
Before they left for this island, Miranda flew to Dubai to see a hand specialist and undergo surgery. Finn wanted to accompany her, but she made him promise to stay with the girls. She trusts no one but Finn. Even when it meant possibly losing his job, he hadn’t gone back to London to wait for them to be found. He had stayed here.
However, Finn agreed to stay in Mazrooq only when Miranda’s father decided to face his terror of flying to meet his daughter in Dubai. “It must be love,” said Miranda. “This is a man who has not been on an airplane since 1987.” She didn’t believe he would actually make it until he tapped on the door of her hotel room the night before her first appointment. He looked smaller than she remembered, pale and slight with just a fringe of white hair remaining, his eyes watery with emotion.
“That Xanax is wonderful stuff,” he said, as she wrapped her arms around him.
They made themselves gin and tonics from the minibar and stayed up past midnight talking, Miranda sprawled on the bed and her father perched on the edge of the pink velvet armchair. While her father had initially been anxious to make sure she was really okay, mentally as well as physically, he eventually felt reassured enough to expound upon his latest research. Miranda didn’t care if he sat there reading to her from a physics textbook; she just wanted to listen to the soporific rumble of his voice, as she had done as a child when he read to her of Ariadne and Athena. She must have drifted off while he was talking; when she woke just before dawn, he had gone back to his room.
The next morning he escorted her to the hospital. Miranda was grateful for his undemanding presence; he asked no difficult questions and read to her for hours while they waited for anesthesiologists and surgeons. He attended her appointments, asking her surgeon the questions Miranda lacked the energy or courage to pose. “It’s her painting hand,” he had repeatedly explained. “Please be extra careful.” The operation had gone smoothly, though the post-surgical pain was acute when the drugs began wearing off. There was no reason she wouldn’t be able to paint again, said the doctor, but it would take months to retrain the muscles.
“Sure you don’t want to come back to Mazrooq with me?” Miranda asked when it was all over and they were on their way to the airport.
“Sure you don’t want to come back to Seattle with me?”
“Dad, I’ve been to Seattle! You’ve never seen Mazrooq. Arnabiya is the most beautiful city in the world. More important, you could see Finn. He has always loved you.”
“If you don’t mind, could I visit you in Finn’s next posting?”
“Wow, that Xanax must really be good. But I’m not entirely sure there will be a next posting.”
Her father looked at her inquiringly.
“We have a lot to sort out still.”
He nodded. “I imagine you do.”
Her father had listened to what she had to say about Luloah, about her captivity, about Finn, and offered no judgments or advice. For Miranda, this was enough.
“No word from Mom?”
“Not yet.”
Miranda stared out the window at the remote, glittering towers of Dubai. “I’m sorry.”
“When she wants to be found, she’ll be found, and not before. You know your mother.”
“I do.” She picked up her father’s small, dry hand, and held it all the way to the airport.
—
WITH HER HAND bandaged, Miranda has to leave all of the diaper changing and bathing to Finn, who has taken over with grace. She has told Finn everything she knows about Luloah. While it isn’t much, it is enough to worry him. When she had confessed whom she believed the child’s father to be, the vertical line between his brows deepened. “These are not people we want to piss off,” he’d said.
“It’s a little late for that. Do you think they’ll be happy that I managed to slip out of their clutches? Surely you don’t think I should have stuck around just to keep them placated?”
“Of course not. But she’s not our child, Mira.”
Miranda had only looked at him, doors slamming shut in her eyes. “Well, maybe not yours,” she had said evenly. Finn had let the subject drop.
Finn
But here on the beach, as he watches little Luloah push her pebbles into the mouth of a plastic bottle that has washed up on the shore (the better to keep them away from Cressie), he feels compelled to revisit the issue.
“Mira, could we talk about the child?” he says.
She squints at him with sudden intransigence. “The child?”
“Luloah.”
“Talk,” she says.
“I can see how you feel about her,” he says. “I only have the slightest idea of what you have been through, and I suspect that she helped to save you as much as you saved her. But we cannot keep her.”
Miranda pulls her knees closer to her chest and stares at the sand, unwilling to look at him.
“First of all, adoption is illegal in this country—at least the kind of adoption that would allow us to take her home with us. No matter how much we might want her. You know that, don’t you?”
Miranda remains mute, unmoving.
“And even if there were a way around the law, you know how I feel about adoption. I just couldn’t feel the same way about her that I feel about Cressie. And is that fair?”
She looks up. “Could you really not?”
“We’ve had this conversation before.”
“I know, but…Look at her, Finn. Look at her.”
Finn looks. Luloah is already noticeably chubbier than when he first met her. Her hair is thick and spiky, and when she smiles as she shakes her bottle of pebbles at Cressida he can see two teeth in her lower jaw. “Mira, she
is a lovely child. You don’t need to convince me.”
“Even if you don’t love her like you love Cressie—and don’t parents always love each of their children differently, biological or not?—wouldn’t what you could offer her still be better than the alternatives?”
“She belongs to a tribe, Mira. She has her own people.”
“So what are we supposed to do with her? Send her back to the terrorists to become a future suicide bomber? Or to be wrapped up in synthetic fibers, denied an education, and married at the age of twelve to a lecherous old man?”
“There are others in her tribe besides terrorists, maybe a family who could care for her—”
“You cannot be that naïve. Those men only kept me alive because of her. She is Zajnoon’s only remaining child. Do you think she will be allowed to live a peaceful family life? Do you seriously think they won’t be pressuring her to produce an heir by the time she turns thirteen?”
“There is the orphanage. You said the children were treated well there, that they looked happy.”
“Only compared to my subterranean expectations! It’s still an orphanage, where she won’t have anyone’s attention for more than a few minutes a day. Where she will come down with every Mazrooqi infection. She will have food and clothing, but what about love? What about when she is older? Where will she go? And actually, do you think Zajnoon’s people won’t find her there?”
Finn sighs. “So just what do you suggest we do?”
“We take her with us when we go.”
“And how do you propose to get her a passport? I don’t suppose you picked up her birth certificate up north?”
Miranda looks at him, tears in her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she says. “She doesn’t remember any mother but me. What do you think it will do to her if I give her up now?”
“She’s so young,” says Finn as gently as he can. “She won’t remember.”
“Maybe not consciously, but her cells will know. All of her atoms will know that they were once loved and then thrown away.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Finn says, a desperate sadness in his eyes. “I don’t want to throw her away.” He reaches a hand toward her and then withdraws it.
“Don’t you?” The tears are coming fast now.
“Mira, Mira, stop. We can talk about it another time. Let’s not let the children see you upset.”
“I have been nursing that tiny girl for more than five months now. She is made from molecules of my milk. Do you see that fat on her cheeks? That is part me. Those toes? Little pieces of Miranda. If that doesn’t make her part of my tribe, then I don’t know what does.”
Finn can think of nothing to say.
APRIL 3, 2011
Finn
Finn watches Miranda from across the sitting room as she leans in to listen to the Mazrooqi Minister of Islamic Affairs expounding from the chair next to hers. Her body is still, her eyes focused gently on his, her brow slightly furrowed. When the man on her other side interrupts to add his thoughts, she trains the same attention on him. It fascinates Finn to observe this evolution of his wife. Captivity has taught her silence, has taught her how to listen. When she does speak, it is to ask a thoughtful yet pointed question. She is naturally more anti-drones than ever, but she expresses her opinions tactfully and only after having drawn out those of her Mazrooqi companions. While he had personally enjoyed her combative stance at dinner parties, he realizes that what she has become is much more effective. Could she be—a startling thought—learning the art of diplomacy?
At the moment he is particularly grateful for her powers of distraction. Their most recent visitor from the UK, one of the country’s few Muslim MPs, is nearly an hour late for the dinner they are hosting in his honor, and stomachs, including his own, are rumbling. Yet no one is glancing toward the dining room or checking his watch. A hand on his sleeve interrupts his reverie. “Sa’adat as-safir?” says the Minister of Water, to whom he is supposed to be listening. “I was asking what you thought about solar-powered desalinization plants.” Reluctantly, Finn gives up trying to eavesdrop on Miranda’s group and turns to the man at his side.
Finally, Fawzi Aswad and his entourage arrive. Finn tries not to show his annoyance at their tardiness as he escorts the MP to the table. No cocktail for him, not when he can’t be bothered to show up on time for his own party. (They hadn’t been sure he would drink anyway, but it turned out he was one of those westernized Muslims who were happy to accept a glass of wine if unobserved by other Muslims.) It hasn’t been one of his better official visits. Earlier in the day Finn had taken Aswad to meet the president, and the MP had promised the president a whole host of things he could not possibly deliver. First, Aswad had assured him that the UK would entirely fund the renovation of a hospital in the South, where he was born. This would take millions of pounds. In fact, it would take the entire development budget for the country. Exacerbating matters, Aswad then promised the president that the UK would crack down on the pirate Mazrooqi TV station operating out of Britain, despite the fact that the station was breaking no British law. This promise sends unforgivable messages: that British laws are meaningless and that freedom of the press is unimportant. And because of these ridiculous messages, the president had dismissed them before they had time to address the situation with the North, which is disintegrating daily. The government has escalated its attacks, and the northerners have shut down all routes to their territories. Additionally, Aswad was late for nearly all of his meetings and had a habit of talking over other people. Why do we elect people like him? Finn wondered. Thank god Miranda is sitting next to him at dinner.
She does an admirable job of it too, smiling and nodding and asking him question after question about his political career and his thoughts on Britain’s development priorities. It hadn’t taken long for English to return to her, though she still prefers Arabic. Now, she pushes her coriander carrots and fish around on the plate but doesn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls. “I don’t know why I am never hungry,” she once told Finn. “I was always starving up north.” She doesn’t drink that much either, though the TRiM assessors have warned him to watch out for increased alcohol use. A few bites of food and a few sips of wine are usually all she can manage. The variety and quantity of food in their kitchen seems to overwhelm her. One morning he found her standing paralyzed in front of an open cupboard. “We have seven kinds of cereal!” she cried, tears running down her cheeks. “Seven!” Unable to choose, she hadn’t eaten anything.
She is happiest with the girls. With them, she loses her reserve, her frequent detachment, sitting on the floor of Cressie’s room patiently building towers out of wooden blocks for them to knock over. Finn has tried every way he knows to persuade Miranda of the wisdom of finding Mazrooqi parents for Luloah, but she remains unmoving on the topic. Finn realizes his options are limited if he intends to keep his wife. He cannot exactly kidnap the child and drive her to the orphanage or up north without destroying Miranda’s fragile peace of mind, and quite probably their marriage.
Now he wonders if he really wants to change Miranda’s mind after all. While she was in Dubai, it was he and not any of the staff members who had given the child her bottles of frozen breast milk. At first she had resisted, just as Cressida had when Miranda disappeared, but in the end Finn had persuaded her. It is dangerous, this feeding of orphaned children, he thinks. Habit-forming.
Toward the end of the evening he can sense Miranda’s exhaustion. She gets tired easily, often falling asleep with Luloah in the afternoon. At night she is restless, mostly sleeping on the floor. Finn is still careful never to touch her in sleep, afraid of startling her. It has been nearly two months now, and they still haven’t made love. At night she lies in bed paging through books on her women Surrealists, lingering over images of solitary hooded figures. Why these artists? he had asked. She so often had a reason. But she had just shrugged. “Nothing else makes sense right now.”
He has promised himself to wait until she com
es to him. Her therapists have told him to give her as much control over her life as possible, letting her make decisions about the structure of their days, their meals, their outings. He assumes this extends to sex. When the therapists advised him to be as predictable and reliable as possible, he had laughed. “I’m afraid I’ve never been anything but.”
Fortunately tonight no one lingers over the tea and coffee, gulping it down and dashing for the door, in that uniquely Mazrooqi way. Aswad and his entourage quickly trail after them, and Finn and Miranda are left alone on their veranda, sipping coffee in the cooling night. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m sure you were far more polite than I could have been.”
She shrugs. “It’s easy when nothing feels important.”
“Nothing?”
“Not Aswad.”
They are silent for a few moments. Finn can taste the honeysuckle in the air.
“Can I ask you something?” Miranda leans forward suddenly in her chair, the same chair he had been sitting in when he upended the table not so long ago while having tea with Celia. A lifetime ago.
“Of course.”
“Did you ever find him? Mukhtar, that is?”
Finn debates how to answer this. He never lies to her, but he can no longer predict her response to anything and he wants to be careful.
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