Lulu in Marrakech

by Diane Johnson

  We were flying a bit lower, so that now the cities of the northern coast were visible on the edge of the sea, arcs of settlement like white rickrack against the turquoise Mediterranean. Then we turned inland, south, toward the desert. We were too high to make out figures, but tiny towers rose here and there out of the chalky landscape. As we came down, the buildings resolved into apricot and beige, more nearly the colors of earth. Now from the sky, you were conscious of more desert lying to the south, the Sahara, a wasteland of hot sand and death, encroaching relentlessly on these human habitations and their precarious water supply.

  When we landed, Madame Frank stood up to reach her carry-on, trapping me in my seat, but I could watch Suma follow the other passengers up the aisle. She carried a nice leather purse and one of those Chinese red-and-white‐striped plasticized paper carrier bags. I noted these things, but mostly now that we were here, I had fallen to thinking of Ian and about whether a month or two with him would be wonderful or unwise. Thinking of sleeping with him caused an agreeable stir, but I reminded myself that months of sunshine and what ever you ate or couldn’t drink in Morocco could also become as monotonous as the the limitless Sahara. If things didn’t work out with Ian, my orders were to attach myself to an institution that I would eventually stay on to teach in or run.

  There was nothing exotic about the brisk, modern airport except the costumes of the cleaners in their washed-out cotton smocks and backless slippers, in contrast to the smart European clothing of the arriving visitors and the people waiting for them. Otherwise all was potted palms and marble terrazzo, like airports anywhere. I looked beyond the passport line and was surprised that Ian wasn’t among the group of excited locals waving to their families or Europeans waving at their guests. Instead, a man I didn’t recognize, with a pudgy, cheerful face and a day’s beard, wearing khakis and loafers, was holding up a sign that read MISS L. SAWYER. He saw my reaction, concluded I was me, waved from behind the barrier, and tapped his own chest to show he was meant for me.

  I looked around for Ian again and couldn’t see him. Though my tendency is to imagine that everything is okay, my training, and perhaps a trace of the slight paranoia that renders you suitable (as ascertained by batteries of standardized tests) for this line of work, spun scary explanations through my mind: Maybe this was Ian’s driver, but he could be a kidnapper, an agent, the bearer of bad news. What should I say to him? How to get his credentials? Asking for a note from Ian was too dramatic, would suggest I had some reason to be fearful. Yet to go with some stranger would be an elementary mistake. I could refuse to go with him, I could say I preferred a taxi.

  And, after all, how could Ian fail to come for me? What did this foretell? Indifference? Regret, perhaps? Yet probably neither—for him, Morocco was a normal place, with functioning taxis, well within the capabilities of a grown woman to negotiate; he would not think of kidnapping or robbery or indifference. This flood of thoughts occurred more or less simultaneously; meantime I smiled to acknowledge that I was L. Sawyer.

  I found a cart and went to pick up my bags. The girl Suma had crowded close to the luggage carousel too. I held her eye for a brief instant and we exchanged the impersonal smiles of people who catch each other looking. Was there something uncertain and imploring about her glance? No lurking male relatives menaced her.

  Madame Frank and Suma piled a suitcase and a box on a cart and began to push it toward the exits, it seemed without talking much to each other, but smiling, like two people of goodwill who didn’t speak a common language. Madame Frank pushed the cart, and Suma walked behind her. I assumed I was seeing her off safely into her new life. My bags were the last, as usual, or so it always seems to me, and then I went past the barrier to where the stranger waited.

  “Miss Sawyer? I thought it was you. Tom Drill. I’m supposed to take you to Ian’s. He had to wait for his tree man,” he said. “I said as I was coming to the airport anyhow… are these your bags?”

  Obviously they were. I still hadn’t decided whether to act on my mistrustful apprehensiveness. He seemed all right, American, familiar, but I couldn’t judge the local context, the significance of his unshaven beard and rumpled khakis. And all the tales of kidnapped agents or businessmen began like this, at the airport, with an unfamiliar emissary saying someone had sent them. He’s just near here, he wants me to bring you to him, he’s waiting, was delayed.

  So far, there hadn’t been kidnappings in Morocco. But there hadn’t been any in Beirut, in Peshawar, Cairo, or Athens, until the first one. Terry Anderson. Daniel Pearl. Thus did my inner discussion go. But if you make a fuss, express hesitation, they will see you have reasons, reasons an uncomplicated girlfriend ought not to have.

  It weighed with me that this guy was American, but I dawdled, hoping Ian would appear, hoping Madame Frank would present me to Suma. They were standing in the lobby, maybe waiting for their own driver. As I watched, a tall woman wearing a yellow blouse walked up to Suma, smiling, welcoming, and they shook hands. A large, handsome woman around sixty, rather glamorous in the style of Mrs. Thatcher, with wavy whitish-blonde hair and a Thatcherian purse. Before I could catch Madame Frank’s attention, Tom Drill greeted the woman in the yellow blouse, “Ciao, Marina.” This was sort of a relief, that he was known to people.

  Marina’s English ness was evident from her size and clothes, and no mistaking the plummy upper-class tones. While they chatted, I smiled again at Suma and said bonjour. “Bonjour, madame,” she said. Yes, it was her first time in Morocco; yes, she was happy to be here. She would be studying and working.

  “Suma will be staying with us,” said Marina, or “Lady Cotter,” in the terms of Tom’s introduction. It was clear she and Madame Frank hadn’t met before, but now they acknowledged each other enthusiastically, and Marina Cotter thanked her for the help of her group.

  As we parted, Madame Frank asked me again what my last name was. “Sawyer,” I said. “I’ll be staying at Ian Drumm’s.”

  “Yes, Lulu’s here to visit Ian Drumm,” Tom told Marina. Oh, how nice. Did their eyebrows raise slightly, did little smiles play across their lips?

  “Yes, a charming man!” said Madame Frank. “I will invite you. I am always trying to get him to sell me his big Palmeraie tract. Maybe you will intercede for me. Au revoir! À bientôt! À bientôt!”

  By now, it was starting to feel to me slightly too propitious that I should so neatly be furnished with all this local information; my arrival was sort of front-loaded with background facts, like the beginning of a play, and Tom Drill later gave me even more—that Sir Neil and Lady Cotter had a showplace riad, that there were a ton of Brits in Marrakech, that Marina Cotter was his own best pal, that she had recently been struck with tragedy: She had been saddled with her grandchildren after a daughter-in-law had died in Nepal. Their son, the father of the children, was in the military somewhere in Africa and couldn’t take care of them. The little granddaughter played with Tom’s daughter, Amelie, sometimes. Suma would be helping Lady Cotter. The Cotters thus had the satisfaction of rescuing a girl and getting a babysitter into the bargain.

  Lady Cotter had given Madame Frank and me a knowing, complicit smile; we were all good people cooperating to help a girl threatened by violence. “And we’ll be seeing a lot of you—we adore Ian, he is one of Neil’s oldest friends, well, since he was a boy, Ian, I mean. Neil and Ian’s father were friends in the Second War.…” She talked on.

  Ian. In general I’m not attracted to Englishmen—too pale and pink, usually, and they smoke and drink too much. Ian didn’t have these faults, but now, not coming to the airport was a fault.

  4

  Some qualities are directly related to the intelligence process. Curiosity is, of course, fundamental, as is a thoughtful turn of mind, matched with some humility against presumptions of infallibility.

  —William E. Colby, “Recruitment, Training and Incentives for Better Analysis”

  Soon after signing up for this life, my eye happened to fall on a ma
nual used by Agency recruiters. It said that the type of young person they were looking for must be of above-average intelligence and intellectual curiosity, sociable and extroverted; good at both oral and written communication; have an interest in international affairs; be fluent in at least one foreign language; have “a preference for unstructured, even ambiguous job situations”; have a desire for leadership and readiness “to manipulate others to achieve legitimate goals,” sound judgment, common sense, self-discipline, some experience living overseas, and “experience and ability in relating to foreign persons and cultures”; be good at role-playing; approve of what we would be doing; and not have too many ties back home in America.

  To think that I might conform to that description gave me at least a moment’s pause for self-examination and a stab of chagrin. While some of these are qualities I admire, some certainly are not, and some I know myself positively to lack. It’s true, for instance, that I speak a little French by now, but leadership is the last quality I picture myself having. I had lived overseas and was free of American ties (I had stayed awhile in France after my junior year abroad, then came back to finish college in California and got an M.A. in international relations after, let’s face it, various personal screw-ups and the terminal exasperation of my relatives). I was having fun, or thought I was, but I knew my life wasn’t leading anywhere, and then, coming to the end of my rope, almost by accident I was recruited to my present job.

  Though I should be too old to be a concern to my parents, I’m aware that I am one. They believe I should have found my way before this. Will she ever settle down? Will she marry? If only she would marry. If only she were happy. Their sweetness to me (when I was younger, they were firm, even harsh, about my mishaps) reveals their fear that they have a fragile being on their hands whom they must not challenge. But this is far from true.

  Role-playing, manipulating others—I knew I was doing those when I agreed to visit Ian in Marrakech. I knew I planned to stay on. Ian’s invitation was opportune—my rotation in Kosovo was finishing, it could not seem more natural that I should visit him before my next move somewhere. Of course I hadn’t told him about my affiliation, if only for reasons of tact—if he knew I had other reasons for being in North Africa, that would certainly challenge the sincerity of my attachment to him. It was the one thing no one must know. Once in Marrakech, I expected to find other reasons for staying on. It would seem natural that there would be interests and useful things in Marrakech to attach myself to—a museum or charity, certain people I would meet there.

  As I said, I’d met Ian in Kosovo. After my training in Virginia, I’d been sent to work in Pristina with AmerAID, an international rescue organization. That was my first cover, but of course I also actually did AmerAID work, both overt and covert. Overtly, our office packaged the food donations, coordinated the medical volunteers from Médecins sans Frontières or the Red Cross, dispatched the bundles of cleaned and sorted secondhand clothes arriving from the World Council of Churches and American civic groups, and generally assisted things (despite the disillusioned air of apologetic self‐sacrifice in AmerAID headquarters). And covertly I had a modest success, by having a correct hunch about the whereabouts of Vlad Janovic, a prominent second‐string war criminal we’d been wanting to pick up.

  Now, just as I’d worked in the aid organization in Kosovo, I had a cover mission here, evaluating and preparing a report on female literacy programs for the Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative, MEPI, an umbrella grants organization I had been working for after I was first recruited. As you would hope, in a country where only half the people can read, there were a number of recent programs devoted to women reading, and my inspection work would be expected to take some months. I expected this pursuit would in itself be interesting and useful; I’d majored in social work in college and was more than competent to do evaluations of this kind. I thus had a double feeling of self-satisfaction, serving my country and doing good too.

  It had surprised my family and friends that I could stick at what they saw as drab humanitarian missions, as it surprised me. Still, as they saw it, I had little else to do, hadn’t found another path, so helping others was my path; and at one time I too had really thought the secret of happiness might indeed be a life of service (though not of self-sacrifice; I had no taste for that). Service, a preoccupation with helping others, doesn’t rule out personal happiness, and I had thought it might produce it. It doesn’t seem useful to think about whether you are happy or aren’t.

  People my age were in general not brought up in a tradition of service, but I suppose I was. My father is a retired air force officer, now a professor. In his last post, he’d taught at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, and then after retirement he took a civilian job at the junior college in Santa Barbara, where my mother is from. My grandmother was a candy striper at a hospital; a docent at the museum; a member of the Red Cross, the Altar Guild, and the King’s Daughters; and an election official. My mother and stepmother both have been members of Planned Parenthood, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the League to Save Lake Tahoe, the League of Women Voters, and who knows what else? Was I not in a natural progression? (But, I have to say, most of the time, growing up, I thought all of that the most total, time-wasting, bullshit optimism.)

  Strange to think that now if they knew about my real job, they would object—the danger, the distant postings, and above all the taint of patriotism and conservatism and clandestine assassinations and so on, for, paradoxically—given the military background—they were nice liberal Californians, horrified by all that. What they believed was that I had taken another job with AmerAID, and even that alarmed them with its smell of government. Californians, we lacked the links to good Eastern schools and Yale and so on that would have made a spy agency a more normal option. But AmerAID was an aid organization after all, and to some extent they were relieved that I had fallen into a respectable family pattern after those early false starts.

  I actually did (do) believe in serving my country, even if I haven’t lived there recently, not counting the months in Virginia. But it was there I had also come to see that it wasn’t service I was really drawn to, it was adventure, and it was in that spirit I was off on this mission, a secret mission, as all would be, with a new name, a slightly altered biography, and, fortuitously, with Ian for cover. As to my employers, I didn’t know what they saw in me, yet I was prepared to defer to them; I expected to discover, eventually, some property in myself that I would recognize as validating their view. Meantime I just felt like me, a little skeptical but willing to learn.

  We had been taught that sometimes you must forget your personal history and come to live another. Sometimes you must learn not even to respond upon hearing your real name, not even by a tiny acceleration of your pulse. On the other hand, your new name must turn your head as if you’d been hearing it from the cradle. I had been given elementary Arabic, but here also with a cautionary injunction not to seem to understand it. I would learn that this injunction was not necessary: I would understand very little.

  In some other respects, I can see now, I was going to Marrakech with a negative attitude. For one thing, I was a little frightened of Islam; after all that’s happened, who isn’t? Maybe Muslims themselves are afraid of it, disconcerted to find themselves prisoners of societies where even their families and people they know might turn on them and blow them up. Maybe they are too afraid to speak out, for fear of getting fatwa’d, or even beheaded, like Daniel Pearl. I thought of the many tales of girls killed by their fathers and brothers, and of how no one speaks of, or even bothers with the names of, those poor young boys strapping on their suicide belts—surely with some ambivalence? Salvation must seem so eventual when the world is here and now—what makes them do it? I keep thinking about them. Had they said good-bye to their parents? Had they recited special prayers? Did they believe them?

  So now I was thinking of this poor girl Suma, who was fleeing some of the things her religion had
brought down on her, oppressed like the erring girls in a film I saw, made to do laundry for terrifying, sadistic Irish nuns. Those nuns were ostensibly Christians. After what we had seen in the Balkans, I wasn’t reassured about Christians either. At one point we were taken to see the bones of the Srebrenica victims, neatly polished and bundled to be returned to their families, Muslim boys killed by Christian men. Then there are the Hindu crazies, setting fire to trains and mosques to burn alive the nonbelievers. Are there any virtuous religions? It really doesn’t seem so. It almost seems that religion makes you wicked.

  5

  KATOUBIA MOSQUE, MARRAKECH

  A stunning example of how the Moroccan architectural artistry is particularly reserved for religious buildings. Though the dars and riads and kasbahs and nomadic tents (even) all provide the architecture nerd with lots of eye candy.

  —Photo caption on political Stew Web site

  While Marina Cotter was helping Suma, Tom Drill was all helpfulness to me; he heaved my suitcase onto his cart and retrieved a few parcels of his own. “I co-run a tea shop, more or less an expat hangout, heavily patronized by Brits, so I have to send for certain things from London: demerara sugar, certain kinds of tea.” He went on with these details, amiability itself, increasing my discomfort, my rising irritation at Ian.