I have no idea how long I descended back into darkness. When I awoke I was in a very different place. As my eyes opened, I saw candles and two gas lanterns illuminating what seemed to be the walls of a tent. The fact that I could open both eyes was surprising. So too was the fact that there was an elderly woman—her face like a bas-relief, with only four or five teeth—gazing down at me, and exclaiming as I stared up at her:
“Allahu Akbar!”
I tried to sit up. I was too weak, too enervated, to do so. The elderly woman spoke quietly to me, gently pressing my head down on what seemed to be a cot of some sort. Another woman came over, far younger, pretty, all smiles.
“Hamdilli-la!”
She touched my face with her fingers. I flinched. Even the light pressure she’d placed on my cheeks touched off wild nerve endings of pain. She was immediately contrite, especially as the elderly woman shouted at her to do something. Moments later, some sort of balm or oil was being lightly rubbed into my face. It was then that I realized I was virtually naked from the waist down. Lain out on this bierdlike cot, my legs and thighs covered with assorted cloths; my crotch encased in a white bandage that was covered in now dried blood.
As soon as I saw the blood I was back in that truck, my assailant thrusting into me, tearing me apart.
I began to shudder. Immediately the young woman was holding me, whispering to me in Arabic, calming me, once even gesticulating to the bloodied bandage, then spouting out a long array of reassuring words, as if to say, I know what happened, and it is horrible. But you will be better.
Meanwhile the elderly woman approached us holding a mug of something steaming and strangely aromatic. She motioned for the young woman to help me up, and then encouraged me to drink this highly herbal, bittersweet brew. It had an immediate, soporific effect. Within moments I was asleep again.
When I woke it was daylight. I still felt desperately weak, concussed, with a ringing in my ear that wouldn’t go away. I also urgently needed to pee. But as soon as I tried to sit up I lost my equilibrium, and fell back against the cot. At which point I saw the young girl who’d found me, until now asleep on a mattress in a corner of the tent, scramble up and run over to me. Though still half awake she smiled broadly at me. I managed a fogged smile back.
“Parlez-vous français?” I asked.
She shook her head, then raised her finger, telling me to wait, and ran outside. I could hear her shouting to someone. Within a few minutes she returned with the very pretty young woman whom I’d seen . . . When? . . . Was it yesterday? I only knew it was that same young woman when she removed her niqab once inside the tent.
“Salaam Alaikum,” the young woman said to me. The little girl was by her side, holding onto her djellaba.
“Mema,” she said.
“Your mother?” I asked. A baffled look from them both. I tried a more phonetic word: “Mama?”
That worked. They both smiled and nodded.
I asked the young woman if she spoke French. She seemed a little embarrassed by this and shook her head.
“No problem,” I said, trying to smile back, but suddenly feeling woozy. The young woman told her daughter to run outside. My need to pee was now immense. From my French lessons with Soraya I remembered that she would occasionally drop an Arabic word into our conversation to help me negotiate the Essaouira streets. She taught me a few phrases.
“Ayn al-hammam?” Where is the toilet?
The young woman’s beautiful face lit up at the sound of Arabic. She answered back in a stream of words, none of which I managed to follow. But she did indicate to me that I should wait a moment then raced over to the far side of the tent and returned with a long black djellaba. As she started helping me into it the elderly woman returned, shouting orders to the young woman, who explained that I needed the toilet (or, at least, I heard the word al-hammam in her onslaught of words).
With the elderly woman in charge of things, I was helped into the djellaba. The weakness I’d felt lying down on the cot was exacerbated when I tried to stand up. But the elderly woman had hands as rough and reinforced as a vise. She forced me up vertically. When I attempted to look down at the condition of my crotch and legs she had her hand under my chin and moved my gaze away, while the young woman and her daughter removed all the bandages and dressings. Then they helped me slowly into the djellaba, keeping me upright throughout. The elderly woman then held up a niqab and started explaining—with a lot of hand gestures—that I needed to put it on, as she pointed to the flap in the tent, letting me know that the hammam was outside. I nodded understanding. With the help of the young woman, I organized the niqab around my face. Within moments I felt like a horse with blinders. I was looking at the world from a narrow horizontal slit. I was very conscious that my legs felt raw and my face seemed somewhat out of place. Walking was an arduous business. All three women had to support me as I took my first tentative steps forward.
Once outside the tent the heat and the harshness of the light made me snap my eyes shut. From what I could take in, we were in some sort of encampment—several tents, shaded by a few sparse trees. Was this an oasis? All I could see were the meager trees, the tents, the sand beyond.
The women led me to a small tent. As the little girl opened the flap, the elderly woman told the others to halt for a moment. Disappearing inside, she returned moments later, tucking a mirror into the folds of her djellaba. That got my attention and heightened my sense of fear. She didn’t want me to see myself.
When I motioned to the mirror the elderly woman became very maternal, shaking her finger at me as if I were a child who had been caught seeing something she shouldn’t. Then she motioned for the mother and daughter to bring me inside, giving instructions along the way.
The toilet was a bucket, with a pail of water nearby. The young girl pulled up my djellaba. But when I attempted to inspect what I suspected was severe sun damage to my legs, her mother repeated the same procedure as the elderly woman. She placed her hand under my chin to keep my gaze upward.
They settled me on the bucket, and I let go. The stinging that accompanied the urination was frightful. The young woman gripped my shoulder, helping me through it. When I finished, the little girl went over to the pail, dipped a rag into the water, and handed it to me. I cleaned myself with it, noticing that when I touched my vulva it was instant agony. The mother saw this and gripped my shoulder, her hand gestures indicating that I needed to be patient, to not be afraid, to give it time.
They got me back to the tent. The elderly woman helped me off with the niqab and the djellaba. Once I was naked they laid me down again on the cot, the little girl keeping my gaze upward by standing over me and touching my chin with her index finger anytime my gaze wandered away from hers. I felt oils being rubbed into my legs and thighs, and some sort of balm being applied to my cheekbones and the areas around my eyes. Then I smelled that strange herbal beverage being brewed again—the one that ensured a deep slumber. They were knocking me out again. The elderly woman raised my head and put the mug beneath my lips, and I drank down the brew in several gulps. Moments later, as the darkness recaptured me, I wondered: Will I ever leave this place . . . and do I even care?
TWENTY-ONE
I SLOWLY BECAME cognizant of minutes, hours, days—whenever I was awake. Which wasn’t very often, as my rehabilitation involved drinking that herbal dram twice a day and sleeping almost nine hours each time.
The curious thing about this tisane was that it was ferociously potent, but also left me feeling peculiarly clearheaded when I reemerged into the world.
Not that I was in any way “clearheaded.” On the contrary, the battering that my head and eardrum had received meant that I was suffering from some sort of serious concussion and inner ear damage. Only sometime later did I realize why the elderly woman who took charge of my recovery had insisted on having me knocked out. This was her way of keeping me sedated and allowing the brain to heal.
The elderly woman was named Maika. Her daugh
ter—the beautiful young woman who had been at my side throughout—was Aicha. And the little girl who came upon me and saved my life . . . that was Naima.
I discovered their names on the day that Maika decided I was ready to come off the eighteen-hour sleep cure. Before then the herbal medicine had kept me so drugged that only the basic sort of information seeped through. But on the morning when Maika did not give me another dose of the tisane, a certain fog lifted by the early afternoon. Gesturing to myself I explained that my name was Robin.
“And your names?”
Naima understood immediately—and pointed to her grandmother and mother, informing me of their names before pointing to herself and saying, in a wonderfully bold and forthright voice, “Naima!”
Her grandmother rolled her eyes, as if to indicate that such exuberance would be tolerated only for a certain number of years. But when I gave Naima the thumbs-up she mimicked the gesture, delighting in it, showing her mother and grandmother with amused pride how well she could do it. Though Aicha encouraged her, clapping and laughing as her daughter marched around, Maika called time on this little escapade when she gestured for me to stand up, indicating I should walk toward her, unaided. For the first time since Naima had found me in the desert I was being permitted to take steps without the three women being there to help me. I was uncertain at first, wondering if I could actually make it across the floor of the tent—which wasn’t more than four feet—without stumbling. When I tried to rush at first, Maika held up her hands and indicated that slowness was key. I followed her advice, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, testing my balance, so conscious of my fragile state. But I did make it over to the far side of the tent, and was rewarded with applause from Aicha and Naima and a curt nod from Maika.
The tent. There was the cot on which I had spent so much time sleeping. There was a dirt floor. There was a gas lamp. Two buckets. One for washing, one for drinking water. There were two stools for guests to sit on. That had been my world for at least a week, maybe ten days, perhaps longer.
When I reached the other side I had to sit down on one of the little stools for a few moments, as I had started to feel woozy. Maika touched my head, made a flapping gesture with one hand, then held both up. I took this to mean that I was still not completely recovered. Then she got me to stand up and ordered Aicha and Naima to help me out of the simple white nightgown Aicha had brought to me several nights before and in which I had been recently sleeping. My legs and thighs were still wrapped in white cloths, prepared with oils that gave off an herbal, medicinal aroma. The bloodied bandage covering my vulva had been changed daily. Though the bleeding had long since stopped, Maika had insisted on using what seemed to be a salve on both lips and deep into the vagina itself, administering this on a twice-daily basis.
Maika decided the moment had arrived for me to inspect the damage done to me . . . or perhaps to see how its recovery was progressing. As they began to undress me, and to remove the cloths from my legs, I instinctively looked away. Whereas earlier on I had been curious, now that I was finding my way back to some sort of skewed norm, the last thing I wanted to contemplate was how badly disfigured I was. I knew that would raise the question of my life beyond this tent—and whether I could ever get back to it. Or, if the injuries were so severe, whether I would ever want to.
Maika—shrewd old bird that she was—worked out my fear on the spot. Being someone who clearly did not believe in the art of mollycoddling, she disappeared outside for a moment as Aicha and Naima undressed me, returning with a mirror in hand. She began to remove all the cloth bandages around my legs and thighs. Having been left for dead, half naked in the sun, meant my lower extremities had been exposed unprotected for several hours. So too my face. When the bandages were finally off—and I refused to look down—she gently but firmly forced my head south. My thighs had long red welts on them, some truly virulent, others already starting to fade. My legs also displayed several nasty burned blotches. But what was most alarming were the clusters of tiny off-white and red welts everywhere, up and down both legs and very much concentrated around my right thigh.
“What are these?” I said, pointing to these dozens of microblisters. Immediately Maika began to lecture me in a reassuring way, explaining (by tapping her thumb rapidly against her middle finger and then diving with it against my thigh) that while unconscious I had been attacked by some sort of insect. She tried in French: “Des puces.”
Fleas. Sand fleas. Which I had read about in one of the many Moroccan guides I’d devoured prior to my trip. They were prevalent in the desert. They came out at sunrise and were merciless whenever any sort of human or animal flesh was in their immediate vicinity. The density of blistering welts was shocking. Maika saw my distress. Through the usual elaborate pantomime of hand gestures, she indicated that, in time, they would diminish.
“And the burns,” I said, pointing to the deep red welts, some still blistering. Maika motioned downward with her hands, as if to say, They will lessen. Then she touched my shoulder in a firm but comforting way, and said one word: “Shaja’a.”
When I looked baffled as to its meaning she tapped my heart, my head, and then forced my chin up with her index finger. The penny dropped.
“Courage?” I asked, trying to give it a French pronunciation. Aicha immediately nodded her head several times, saying something to Maika who also concurred. Waving her finger in my face, like a corrective Mother Superior, she repeated, “Shaja’a.”
Immediately Naima was imitating her grandmother, wagging her finger at me, saying several times over: “Shaja’a, shaja’a, shaja’a,” even causing her usually grim-faced grandmother to smile for a moment or so.
Maika now moved the mirror directly in front of my vulva, making me see that the lips were mostly healed. She then asked Aicha to bring over the tin of homemade salve with which she had been treating my ripped insides. Then, indicating that I should spread my legs a bit, she dipped her fingers into the salve and began to explore within me. The way these women treated me in such a kind, knowing, and direct way was both surprising and necessary for my still-fragile state of mind. The fact that they were involving Naima in all this—without, I’m certain, going into the reasons why I had been injured—struck me as canny and demystifying. Here, the young girl watched while her grandmother prodded and probed within me. That I wasn’t going insane with pain—just a small amount of discomfort—I took to be a positive sign. Withdrawing her fingers, Maika put her thumb up (she too had adopted this gesture). She made assorted hand movements to indicate that, in her expert opinion, all was repaired within.
Now it was time for the revelation I was most dreading: the state of my face. What’s that old line about it being the mirror of the soul? If that was the truth, then my soul was still battered and scarred. As Maika presented me with the mirror I could see her daughter looking distinctly uneasy, as if expecting me to fall apart at first glimpse of the lingering impairments. I closed my eyes, took a deep steadying breath, and opened them.
What I first noticed were the sunburned red patches on my forehead and cheeks, and a plethora of small bites. All those hours with my face in the sand had allowed the fleas to run riot. Again Maika signaled that, in time, they would diminish. So too the blistering welt that covered my chin. But what shocked me even more was the deeply discolored bruise that covered my right cheek, spreading up to the blackened ring beneath my eye. My left ear was slightly cauliflowered from the punch that the little shit had landed on me, a punch that left me with an ongoing echo. And my lips were still severely chapped. I lowered the mirror. I tried to stifle a sob and failed. I was a disfigured freak show. Seeing my battered self brought back the monstrosity wreaked on me—and the insanity of the pursuit of a man whom I should have simply cast aside as soon as the nature of his treachery had become clear.
When I started to break down, Aicha immediately put her arms around me, letting me bury my head in her shoulder. But Maika wouldn’t stand for such a show of s
elf-pity. Literally pulling me away from her daughter, she bore down on me with that bony exclamation point of a finger, almost shouting at me as she gave me a fast and furious lecture in a language completely beyond my comprehension, but which, by this point, I could somehow understand. Following her broad gestures I intuited the central gist of her sermon:
“Don’t you dare feel sorry for yourself. What has happened has happened. You have survived. You are not dead. You will be able to walk. You will be able to have babies. Your face will heal. So too your legs. There may be scars, but they will not be disfiguring ones. We all have scars. But now your duty to yourself is to get back to your life when you are ready. But no more self-pity. That is not allowed here. I will not accept it. Understand?”
Maika’s vehemence was so forthright (and loud) that Naima hid in her mother’s skirts. I stood there with my head lowered, fighting back tears, feeling very much like a censured child, while also knowing that everything she had just told me made complete sense, that I had no choice but to somehow get beyond the horror of it all.
The Blue Hour Page 24
