Lulu in Marrakech

by Diane Johnson

  When we got to Ian’s, it was just after midnight; as we pulled inside the gate, I could see the dark shape of Taft’s van already parked outside on the main road across from the entrance. Inside, the maids were all in bed, Pierre too, evidently, and a pall of oppressed silence lay over the house. In the dark, the odor of the jasmine was almost like ether or chloroform.

  There were no lights on in Ian’s room. I went into the bathroom and listened, then knocked on the door to Ian’s room. When no one answered, I peeked in. Undisturbed bed, no signs of anything moved or out of place. There was total silence except for insect noises from the garden, heard through the open window, but small and desiccated sounds; there were no robust crickets or frogs here. I looked in his closet, but since I’d never looked in it before, I couldn’t tell if things were different. There were no papers, records, incriminating notes; things were almost hotel-like in their austere neatness. Ian was simply not there and his stuff was.

  I went back to my room and changed out of my concert‐going clothes into the pants and shirt I’d wear in the morning. Then I sat on the edge of my bed and just re-experienced the anticlimaxes of the evening—Ian vanished, bombs that didn’t go off, babies that didn’t arrive. I tried to relive the high of the moment when I’d grabbed Desi, but the feeling was gone; it was an action that now seemed banal in its simplicity and questionable wisdom—perhaps, after all, her coat hadn’t been loaded with bombs.

  I eventually fell asleep, thinking about Suma and about the moments the night before when Ian had come into my room. He was trying to make it seem like one of his regular visits, including the possibility of making love (signaled, usually, by his unconscious gesture of loosening his collar), maybe just to hash over the day; but we both knew it had been weeks since he’d slept with me and that some unnamed condition had intervened—I had a name for her, of course. It had been awkward, but I could see he was trying to make his visit seem friendly, normal. Nonetheless it also seemed valedictory, so that when he said, apropos of some local gossip, “Lulu, it’s wonderful having you here, it’s remarkable what a Moroccan you’ve become—I think you really belong here… ,” his tone of deanlike congratulation, hearty and impersonal, was the same to me as saying good-bye.

  Now I tried to sleep a little, dozing off and on, and was waking when Robin tapped on my door, at about four, and asked me to come help Posy. “This is surely it, I think,” he whispered. I came fully awake; I had to start out in the van at five thirty. I wasn’t sure what I could do for Posy except offer moral support, but I went up to their room with Robin.

  Tiptoeing up the stair, we met a boy tiptoeing down—a Moroccan boy, dressed in a white shirt, jeans, little slippers, and a little hat, which meant he must have been about thirteen or fourteen, very pretty, with large, dark eyes. Above on the landing, the door to Pierre’s room was hastily shutting. I had no time to absorb this or ask what it meant. Pierre and the local boy hustlers, why should I even be surprised? The boy was startled but, looking away, slid past us, buttoning the shirt, and went out into the court.

  Posy was dressed, putting things in her bag, or rather taking them out and putting other things in. She’d been packed for a while. “I knew this would happen,” she cried. Whereas before she’d been calm, now, evidently in pain, panic had taken her. She appeared to feel that maybe Robin wouldn’t be the most reassuring companion, not likely to know what to ask in her behalf, and that a woman friend should be with her.

  But of course I couldn’t go with them—I don’t know quite what I said, how I put it. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” and so on, though it must have puzzled them to think I had an appointment at five in the morning. I connected it to Ian, thought I should stay by the phone, vague things like that. It was unsisterly, almost a betrayal, not to go with them. My concern was to get them gone, so that they wouldn’t see me driving off in the van. Even panicked, Posy, going off to face childbirth, was calmer than I, but I hoped my fears didn’t show.

  Rashid was up—I didn’t actually know where he slept. He was standing alertly by the car, clearly eager for a wild ride, an urgency, a drama of some kind. I knew he didn’t have children of his own—Ian had told me, when I had mentioned Rashid’s brother the taxi driver, “The brother has six children, Rashid sends them almost all his money.” He also had said, “The Saharawi are like the Palestinians, and it’s going to finish the same way, I’m sure, only those poor bastards are stuck out in the desert besides. The Palestinians have water at least.…”

  I walked to the car with them.

  Robin looked at me, shaking his head, and said, “Really, I never thought I would have fantasies of fatherhood, but really, I was just now imagining the child—a great playwright. Not even born and his father is planning his life! These truisms I never imagined of paternal excitement…” He looked absolutely thrilled.

  Posy said, “Lulu, please, please come with us,” and stretched out her arms like a drowning person, tears in her eyes, frightened to be condemned to go off and give birth in the presence of sinister, swarthy, woman-despising North African strangers. I said again that I couldn’t. Of course she accepted this, but I saw she hadn’t expected such a rejection, a blow, even a shock that she had so misunderstood our friendship, to see I wouldn’t trouble to go with her now. I embraced her, and felt her shrink a little, and saw them safely driven off, out of sight. Then I went back upstairs to get the gun and a bag of necessaries I’d packed—just like Posy. The difference in our aims didn’t escape me.

  38

  Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the lawful captive delivered?

  —Isaiah 49:24

  At the appointed hour, a few minutes before five, I crept out through the main gate, aware that I was seen by the gate boy, who’d been wakened by Posy and Robin’s leaving. Though we were far from the mosques of Marrakech, sometimes the call to prayer drifted across the sands, maybe from the radios of the village nearest us or wafted by some crusading current of air, especially before dawn, as today. It was beautiful, and it was possible to feel it as a kind of blessing for this venture.

  The key was under the tire. I got in the van. I wasn’t prepared for the paralysis of my mind when it came to making the smallest decisions, things I hadn’t thought through or learned: Was it better to idle the engine or wait to start it up when I saw them coming? It’s prudent to examine each action, but this need for deliberate thoughtfulness was unnatural; normally I would just plunge on.

  I tried to think the problem through and decided it was quieter and used less gas to wait with it off, but then I was too anxious to do that, afraid that it wouldn’t start, had to know if it would, so I started the motor and then turned it off. The tank was full, and I put the firearm under the seat. I noted two ten-liter cans behind the rear passenger seat, either gas or water or one of each. The light before dawn made the landscape the deep color of violets, the square stucco buildings and walls like cubist paintings from someone’s blue period. Though the first call to prayer had sounded, no one had heeded it that I could see. Not even a rooster had crowed, but then I heard the first one, and in a few minutes, three figures appeared at the end of the street. I started the engine again. I put on a head scarf, a black one left by Gazi, and I had her big abaya in my bag, though I wasn’t sure why.

  As they came nearer, I was reassured to see they were Dom and Snyder. They were… not pushing, but sort of bearing between them an unwilling man whose face was covered by a cloth bag, his hands behind him, probably taped, his mouth too, probably, judging by the silence, the absence of protest or cries. The only noise was the dragging and stumbling of his feet, the crisp strides of Dom and Snyder.

  Dom came around to the driver’s side to look at me—to make sure it was I, I guess—and said, “Good girl,” then helped Snyder push the man, presumably Amid, against the side of the van. They began to undress him. With impressive teamwork, they peeled off a slipover sweater, then his shirt, then they unbuckled his jeans and pulled them down
. As I watched, they pulled down his jockeys, knocking him down in the effort to get him to lift his feet, Amid resisting. Then they yanked him to his feet again. His poor little prick was shriveled with the morning chill, and with fear. I thought they would put something else on him, but they didn’t, just pushed him naked backward into the cargo space and then pulled him out and to his feet again. “Say something to him,” Dom said to me, I guessed so he’d know a female was there. That’s supposed to be especially humiliating.

  “Okay,” I said. “What shall I say?” I hoped he didn’t recognize my voice. I was afraid they might ask me to help with the interrogation later. I had no training for that, and a vivid memory of that dimwitted girl soldier at Abu Ghraib holding the guy on the leash. Now, if Amid was finding this humiliating, he gave no reaction except to thrash against his bonds. Dom next put a loose shirtlike thing over his head; Snyder put a belt around his waist and then began to unwind the tape from his wrists and chain them to the belt. Dom put on a rubber glove—a particularly creepy action—and now, suddenly, punched him in the belly; and when Amid doubled over, Dom turned him around, parted his bare buttocks, and appeared to stab him with something between his cheeks.

  Despite my qualms about all this, I was impressed with their efficiency and air of calm. They didn’t seem hurried or to fear being seen or interrupted. Maybe others—maybe Moroccan DST—were keeping watch for us around the corners. I knew I’d rather be on our side than Amid’s. Later, I saw how peculiar it was even to think of taking sides; of course I was on “our” side. But I’d also begun to see that ambivalence is built into life in the shadows; even as you hope for unshakable convictions, you feel them drain away. Part of me would rather have gone to the hospital with Robin and Posy, out of friendship and curiosity, and the special excitement of a new baby coming, and in the name of female solidarity. But only a part; why did the other part feel glad to be getting behind the wheel?

  “Okay,” Dom said, and nodded at me to get back in the driver’s seat. Snyder drew out his gun and walked around to sit next to me. Dom, evidently not coming, waved us off. I knew the way.

  Snyder wasn’t talkative. From time to time, he reassured himself that Amid was still inert, hence docile—there was no metal divider between us and him. There wasn’t much traffic, trucks mostly, and the occasional cart, horse or mule-drawn, lumbering along, going where?

  “This isn’t so bad,” Snyder said. “We used to have to get them to Salé, or even Damascus.”

  I’d calculated it would take us about seven hours, at worst, depending on the roads and traffic. The van handled well in the windless morning: The day might be unseasonably warm. With luck we’d be there and back by dinnertime. That’s if we just dropped Amid off and didn’t stay around. That’s what I hoped.

  I was glad I didn’t have to meet his eyes. I tried to think about him as a fanatic, a danger, a cruel brother, master of murderous intrigues; but I had little preparation for this way of thinking, as I had never met a murderer or dangerous person that I could think of. But of course, in my line of work, at some point I would meet one, would interact with one—I remembered Desi but somehow couldn’t count her. So far, no dangerous people except maybe my own experienced colleagues Dom, Taft, and Snyder. Maybe they’d killed people. Anyway, they knew when to duck, had a wariness that came from experience. I would be like that eventually, though people assured me most of us go a whole career with perfectly clean hands. Why shouldn’t I?

  These were my thoughts as we sped along. I was happy to be going fast on an open road—it made me homesick. Amid kept my mind off the subjects that really made my heart pound: Ian, Gazi, and Posy. I imagined Posy groaning and writhing, suffering in her labor, chewing on a rag, Robin mopping her sweaty brow—a scene from Gone with the Wind, maybe, or any Western in which a baby is to be born.

  Snyder seemed so glum, I had to battle a hostesslike urge to draw him out, as we drove along, with questions about nothing, banalities that wouldn’t reveal us to Amid, if he woke up and was listening.

  Me: “So, did you get a chance to see the mosque?”

  Snyder: “Yeah, I walked around the garden. Very nice.”

  Me: “Lovely mosaics.”

  Snyder: “They can’t depict the human figure. Why is that?”

  Me: “I don’t know.”

  Snyder: “Some edict of the Prophet. His whims.”

  I agreed with Snyder there, except that the Prophet seemed not so much whimsical as just a man limited by his era and desert background. It was the fault of his followers that they couldn’t tell the difference between a durable general injunction like “be good” and some specific tribal management issue like “only four wives to a man” or “a camel is worth four cows.”

  I tried to imagine what Amid was feeling or thinking, but I couldn’t. My own self-consciousness too painfully intruded: What was I doing here, how had I come to this, barreling along a road in an Islamic country with a naked victim and a gun? Other imponderables: What about Ian, and where was he? Was Pierre a sexual tourist? The true nature of Khaled? Posy’s baby? Would she ever forgive my seeming indifference to her one real‐life adventure? Probably Amid wasn’t feeling anything; he still hadn’t moved. I was vaguely angry with him for cheating me of a conversation in which I would have probed the subject I cared most about—whether he had planned to kill Suma. The interrogators at Ain Aouda weren’t going to ask about that.

  I began to think Amid should stir. He was still lying with a disconcerting limp inertness that made me want to poke him, just to see.

  “What was that we used on him?” I asked Snyder.

  “Shot of pentathol,” Snyder said. “Practically instantaneous, but the downside’s the time, it’s short-acting, so, the oxycodone suppository.”

  Seven hours ahead of us. With the light, storks gathered by the side of the road, so correct for Posy’s enterprise. The goats were already up the trees. Maybe they slept in the trees—I didn’t know, and neither did Snyder. In the months I’d been here, I’d gotten used to the strange sight. Eventually we turned on the radio—Moroccan music. Our map took us 280 kilometers, almost to Rabat, then we were to turn off south on a road to Ain Aouda, a small city off of an even smaller road, then go by unmarked road to the prison facility the Moroccans were building with our help.

  It was a “black site,” a place we didn’t acknowledge existed, a heavily fenced cement-block building, cars and vans within, guards at the gate. We had passwords and IDs, which were carefully checked by two teams of people, Moroccan, with somewhat startled looks at me. While they were conferring, I put the scarf over my hair again. I’d pulled it off in the hot car.

  “We have cargo,” Snyder said at the inner gate, nodding at the lump under the blanket. “Client,” I said, pronouncing it the French way, “cleeyant,” in case the guard didn’t speak English. He leaned in to look for himself, nodded, and we drove into the compound. Men with guns ringed the van. Snyder got out, opened the cargo door, and pulled the blanket off Amid. He hesitated, as if he saw something strange, then pulled on the inert Amid’s arm, which flopped. Two guards helped Snyder pull him out and lay him on the cement. There wasn’t going to be a quick turnaround here, so I killed the engine and got out too. Snyder said, “I think he’s dead, the son of a bitch.”

  We all stared in dumbfounded silence. I had that numb feeling you get when your first fears are confirmed. We should have stopped to check him. Snyder dropped to his knees and pulled the tape off Amid’s mouth. The boy was a funny color, and he looked pale, limp, and waxy. Then his mouth opened and vomit oozed out, cupfuls, foul and foamy, in a torrent of reeking bits. Someone began running.

  Snyder pushed uncertainly on Amid’s chest, then tried to rearrange his limbs in a better position for resuscitation. I could see him hesitate and think of mouth‐to‐mouth resuscitation. But almost immediately, a big, red-haired man, maybe a doctor, apparently American, took over and wiped Amid’s mouth, then felt around inside it.

&n
bsp; “Aspiration tube,” he said to someone. “Probably too late.” I was impressed there was medical assistance here at such a level, for tubes came flying from somewhere, feet, shouts, an IV bottle on a stand was rattled over from another building. Snyder and I backed away so the doctor could work. Minutes went by.

  “Dead on arrival,” said Snyder, looking at me. “Son of a bitch. Shit, that’s tragic. He took a hard blow to the gut.”

  “Allergic to the drug?” I said, but mostly I was thinking, This is my fault. If only I’d said something when I’d had the feeling something was wrong, when he’d lain so still. Still, how could he just die like that, without a twitch or objection? But he was dead, apparently had vomited and choked on his vomit. I thought of the blow to his belly and of how silently he’d lain there, tranquilized, so we’d thought. At some point choked but had given no signal, no resistance or protest, perhaps was unconscious and hadn’t even known.

  Snyder was as shocked as I. We waited, as at the scene of an accident, for someone to take some action, interrogate us, make a report, but no one did, Snyder cursing at Amid as if to curse him back to life. Eventually the doctor sat back on his heels, shaking his head. The men glanced at him and away, hiding the reproach in their glances. Stupid, arrogant American bastards.

  All at once, two men standing nearest us turned to me and began angrily shooing me away with flaps of their arms, as if I were a goose; go, go, shoo, just go, I took them to be saying. I backed away and went around to the other side of the van where they couldn’t see me, but I could see them through the windows. Snyder came to stand by my side a minute. “Probably one of their prohibitions. No blondes,” he joked. Then he went back to talk to them. To my surprise, Snyder, whose conversation was monosyllabic and profane, spoke fairly voluble French and Arabic when he had to, learned at Georgetown.