The Blue Hour

by Douglas Kennedy

  Just before I surrendered to the night I grasped Maika and Aicha’s hands and said, “Shokran.”

  I came to and was shocked to discover it was almost 11:00 a.m. When I got off the cot and changed out of the nightshirt and back into the djellaba and niqab, I noticed a certain physical stability that had been absent for so long. Then I started considering again what might happen if Jabalah turned me over to the cops and the shakiness began to reassert itself. But I managed to get dressed, wrap the niqab around my face, and make it to the toilet without succumbing to another panic attack.

  When I returned I found Jabalah standing outside. “I would like to speak to you,” he said.

  “Of course.” I motioned that we should go inside. He shook his head. I instantly regretted my faux pas, as there was absolutely no way he would enter a tent alone with a woman who wasn’t his wife, mother, or daughter. He pointed to the tent where we ate dinner. I followed him over, removing my niqab once inside. He bent down in front of a little gas stove and illuminated it, boiling a small kettle of water, then opening a tin and throwing a large handful of mint into a pot, filling it with hot water, and waiting several minutes for it to steep. Nothing was said during the tea making. After pouring us out two glasses, he handed me one and nodded gravely as I thanked him. He motioned for me to sit down on one of the two stools. Then, in his hesitant French, he said, “I know what happened to you. I am very sorry for what happened to you. I do not want to judge you. But . . . the police are looking for you. If they find you here, they will accuse us of hiding you. This will be bad for us. So you have to leave.”

  I acknowledged his decision with a nod of my head.

  “I know all your money and papers were stolen.”

  “I don’t know what I should do next,” I told him. “I was so unwell after the attack that I hadn’t really thought about how I would proceed once I left here. All I know is that I will never forget for the rest of my life what you and your family have shown me.”

  He scrunched up his lips.

  “The man who drives the rugs and things that the women make . . . he will be here late this afternoon. I will ask him to take him with you. He will be going to Marrakesh, but usually makes many stops along the way.”

  “You have to tell him I am wanted by the police.”

  “Of course I will tell him that. He is my friend. Go back to your tent now. Think how you will get money and papers—because you will need both. I will have my wife fetch you when the driver arrives. His name is Aatif.”

  With a final nod he left the tent.

  A few minutes later, back in the tiny space I was going to be vacating in just a few hours, I tried thinking through a solution to my rather large problem. I had no easy answers. The accountant in me reasserted herself for an hour or so, weighing up all the checks and balances available to me. They were virtually nonexistent. Say I found a phone and called Morton in the US, and told him he needed to wire money to me. Say that my disappearance had been picked up by international news services, and was also being monitored on the internet (no doubt, a small item—but a husband and a wife separately missing in a North African country, with overtones of foul play, would cause interest). Even if Morton wired the funds there I would have to show ID to collect them at a bank or some outpost of Thomas Cook, and I had no ID. Then there was the little problem of the previous night’s television news bulletin. It is a strange experience, watching a missing persons report in which you are not only the individual the police are trying to track down, but also the chief suspect as well. Remembering Inspector Moufad stabbing that photograph of me, I was in no doubt that if I simply went and turned myself in I would be burying myself alive.

  So wiring money from overseas was out of the question, especially as the Moroccan version of the FBI and Interpol were probably now monitoring any potential emails or wire transfers in the name of Robin Danvers. As they had broadcast my mug shot last night on Moroccan television, there was a good chance that it was going to be a regular feature on future news broadcasts until I was apprehended. Would the Moroccan police also put a Wanted poster up in post offices and banks and, indeed, places where foreigners would collect money? Were they sophisticated enough in their surveillance techniques to have flagged any emails sent or received from rdanvers@buffalomoney.com? When Paul had first proposed this trip I quietly googled “Moroccan terrorism” just to reassure myself that the security situation was as good as Paul had said. Bar a terrible bombing of a Marrakesh tourist café in 2005, and certain warnings about travel in the extreme south, all the reports I read noted that the country was a highly stable one. But like every other place on which the specter of terrorism had fallen, Morocco had a very sophisticated intelligence and antiterrorism apparatus at work—which surely meant the monitoring of telecommunications and the internet. The fact that a national manhunt was under way for me . . . I was absolutely convinced that the moment I sent or received an email, the alarm bells would go off, and the geographic location from which it was read or dispatched would be flagged. Yes, I could borrow somebody’s cell phone to call the States, but if I couldn’t physically collect the money without photo ID, why would I risk a call? Especially if the Moroccan Sûreté and the US Embassy here had alerted the NSA and the feds to my disappearance, and they too were monitoring calls to my office, my home, my professional colleagues.

  As I kept pondering the lack of options open to me, I kept twisting the two rings on my left index finger. Which is when the penny dropped. When Paul proposed to me three years ago—it was during a romantic weekend in Manhattan—he brought me to Tiffany’s to choose an engagement ring and wedding band. He’d just sold a few lithographs and insisted that I choose a very beautiful single diamond ring and white gold wedding band, which cost together thirteen thousand dollars. When I worried out loud that this was far too much money to be spending on rings he made an amused comment to the very gracious, very formal saleswoman about “my wife-to-be understanding the bottom line far more than I do.” I could see the saleswoman smiling politely and taking in Paul’s long gray hair and his leather jacket and black jeans, and telling him the two rings were an elegant choice, and him slapping down his credit card, and me thinking how wonderfully romantic and impetuous my man was, and how I hoped he’d have the funds to clear the credit card debt the following month.

  But now . . . now I had on my left index finger the one negotiable piece of currency on me. Surely, if this driver was heading to Marrakesh, there were several serious jewelers there who would be willing to buy my rings. I wouldn’t raise anything close to their original value, but I would, at the very least, come out with around thirty, forty thousand dirhams. Maybe I could then find another driver to get me up to Casablanca. I would barge in on Ben Hassan. I would wave the money in his corrupt face and get him to issue me one of his false passports. I would then find another driver to get me to Tangier and the boat to Spain. Once I was on the other side of the Mediterranean—and out of the shadow of the Moroccan Sûreté—then I could call Morton and a lawyer and see about getting the US Embassy in Madrid to issue me a new passport to get me home.

  So there it was. A plan, of sorts. Getting from here to Marrakesh might not be the simplest of journeys, but I didn’t want to consider any of that until I met the driver and sized him up, and found out his price. But first . . .

  There was a terrible moment when Aicha and Naima paid me a midmorning visit, bringing me an early lunch of pita and couscous. Naima ran to me and threw her arms around my legs and started to sob, putting together three of the English words I’d taught her: “You no go.”

  When I crouched down beside her she buried her head in my shoulder. I looked up and saw Aicha also in tears. I held Naima for several moments before loosening myself from her embrace. Keeping my arms around her, I said, “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you. But I must go home.”

  I touched my head and my heart. “You will always be here and here.”

  Naima smiled s
adly as she too touched her head and heart. “Here and here,” she repeated, pronouncing each word beautifully. Now I felt tears. Aicha also choked back a sob. I reached beneath my djellaba and unfastened the silver chain around my neck. Bringing it out, I showed Naima the sterling silver horseshoe that had been a gift to me from my great friend Ruth only nine months ago on a weekend visit to Brooklyn, just after Paul and I decided to try to have a child. When I announced this to Ruth, she couldn’t have been more thrilled for me. She returned that evening with this gift—a small, elegant luck charm. No charm has much luck against an operation guaranteed to render pregnancy impossible. But maybe, just maybe, it brought me the good fortune to survive the ordeal in the desert and land me here.

  I put the charm around Naima’s neck, explaining that my best friend had given it to me, and since we were best friends—I signaled this by pointing to the two of us and then touching my heart—I wanted her to have it. Naima had the horseshoe in her little fingers, looking at it with wonderment. When her grandmother entered the tent a few moments later, holding some of my clothes in her hands, Naima ran over to her and proudly showed off her gift. Maika smiled gravely at her granddaughter. Approaching me she handed me my freshly laundered pants and underwear. She also brought a fresh djellaba and a niqab, indicating that I was to keep them as a gift . . . and through more of her gestures, also letting it be known that I might need them en route to Marrakesh. Then she did something completely uncharacteristic. Out of nowhere she embraced me. Taking me by both shoulders, she touched one of her leathery hands to my face and said, “Allah ybarek feek wal ’ayyam al-kadima.”

  It was a phrase I had heard regularly in Morocco. But here it was a benediction, a maternal prayer: “May Allah bestow his blessings on you . . .”

  Outside I heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up into the oasis. We all stiffened as the engine idled, then cut. Because we all knew: my driver had arrived.

  TWENTY-THREE

  HIS NAME WAS Aatif. At first sight he did not inspire confidence. A short man, with a small but pronounced paunch, thinning hair, a handful of brown teeth left in his mouth, world-weary eyes. I judged him around my age, but the victim of a hardscrabble life. His vehicle was a Citroën 4x4, at least fifteen years old, once white, now scuffed and dented, with two front seats and a reasonable cargo area in the back. It looked like it was being run into the ground.

  What struck me immediately about Aatif was his immense shyness. Unlike Immeldine, he wasn’t taciturn or distanced. Nor did he exude the sort of detached authority that Jabalah displayed. Rather he seemed almost ill at ease around others. An innocent. And an unsure, timid one at that.

  There was a rather strange, awkward moment when Jabalah called me over. I removed the niqab. I could see Aatif flinch. Was this due to the fact that he wasn’t expecting a Western woman (but surely Jabalah had explained I was American), or owing to my still-battered face? I couldn’t tell. Without thinking, I extended my hand in greeting. He looked horrified, as if I had exposed a breast to him. When he took my hand in return his was cold and clammy.

  One positive detail: Aatif spoke French. A somewhat simple French, but with more fluency than Jabalah. When we started to talk it was clear that we could make ourselves understand each other.

  Jabalah explained that he had informed Aatif about the circumstances that landed me in the oasis. He also understood that I had been robbed of everything, that I had no papers or money, and that I would settle up with him when we reached Marrakesh.

  “Do you understand that the police are looking for me?” I asked him.

  He nodded.

  “Does this worry you?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “As long as you are willing to take the risk,” I said. “I don’t want to put you in any jeopardy.”

  Another shrug. Then he said, “Two thousand dirhams to take you to Marrakesh. D’accord?”

  It seemed a very reasonable price, considering the potential hazard for him.

  “That’s fine—but I am going to need to sell some jewelry in Marrakesh to be able to pay you. I promise that I will pay you.”

  A shrug, then, “D’accord.”

  “How long do you think it will take to get to Marrakesh?”

  He thought about this for a moment. “Three days,” he said.

  “Three days! But it’s only maybe six hours by car from Ouarzazate, and Ouarzazate is perhaps seven hours from here.”

  “I have many goods to pick up before I go to the souk in Marrakesh and deliver them to the merchant who will buy them. Many stops to make, many people dependent on me. Like your friends here.”

  “But . . . if we are going to be three days on the road, where will we sleep? I have no money for hotels or food.”

  “I have no money for hotels either. I have two bedrolls in the back. We will sleep by the van at night.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this at all. I gave Jabalah a telling look, asking with my eyes if I could trust this man. Jabalah gave me a quick nod. Aatif noticed this visual exchange. Looking half away from me he said, “You will be safe.”

  “All right,” I said.

  With that, Jabalah and Immeldine spent the next ten minutes filling up a portion of the cargo area of the Citroën with rugs, lace napkins, lace doilies, and skullcaps. I could see Jabalah negotiating with Aatif, clearly hopeful that he could return in ten days with a good sum for them. From the way he was indicating his pockets and the sparse garden that was tended beneath one of the trees, I sensed that money here was urgently needed. How I wished I could have reached into my pocket and handed them five thousand dirhams right now.

  “When I get to Marrakesh and sell my ring,” I told Jabalah, holding up my hand, “I will ask Aatif to bring some money back for you.”

  Immediately Jabalah waved his hands. “We took you in because you were in need,” he said. “There is no need to repay us.”

  “I cannot begin to thank you . . .”

  Again Jabalah waved his hands, but then thought about it for a moment and made the smallest of bows in my direction. Naima was standing near him. He touched the horseshoe pendant, which she was now proudly wearing around her neck, and bowed again toward me.

  Aatif closed the cargo door of his vehicle. It was time. Aicha started to weep again and held me for several moments. Maika also seemed to be fighting tears but was absolutely determined not to cry. As she squeezed my shoulder I noticed she had made a fist with her right hand and was, I sensed, demonstrably making it clear that she approved of the way I’d hit back at the men who’d attacked me Naima glanced up at her father for approval before going over to me. I kneeled down. She kissed me with great delicacy on both cheeks. Intriguingly there were no tears, none of the sense of impending loss that we both shared alone with the other women in the tent that had been my refuge. Here, in front of her father and grandfather and a visiting man, she was conscious that she was under a paternal gaze and needed to act with restraint. After a moment she went running back to her father, looking up at him for approval—which he gave with another of his characteristic nods.

  Immeldine’s goodbye was also a nod. So too was Jabalah’s.

  “Okay?” Aatif asked. Now it was my turn to nod. Moments later, the niqab veiling my face once again, I was inside the cab of the vehicle. The three women gathered by my window as Aatif slammed the driver’s door behind him, placed the key in the ignition, put the van into gear. With a lurch we began to drive off. My eyes met Naima’s. She raised a hand and tried to look brave. Behind the niqab I began to weep. The daughter I always wanted. The daughter I would never have. The wondrous little girl whom I would never see again.

  Aatif drove the hundred or so yards to the edge of the oasis. I looked back once more at the small plot of quasiarable land in the great sandy vacuum. Their entire world. My entire world for a spell. And now I was going to have to negotiate the world beyond.

  With a bump we crossed through the stone archway that separated the oasis from
the sand. Aatif pulled out a lever and said, “Four-by-four. We will need it now.”

  We started traversing the desert, following a track that was discernable by the grooves of past tires. After a minute I craned my neck and tried to spy the oasis. But it had vanished, its pale wall melding invisibly into the bleached horizon.

  The cab of the vehicle was a mess—torn seats, trash strewn on the floor, the windscreen streaked with sand and dead flies, the ashtray brimming. And the heat was ferocious. I rolled down my window. This was a serious error. As the vehicle gained momentum, sand blew in everywhere. Immediately Aatif slowed down.

  “You do not have to wear the niqab here,” he said.

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “It is fine with me. Especially as I do not have air-conditioning. So if you also want to get out of the djellaba . . .”

  Immediately I was posttraumatic defensive.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  He looked startled.

  “I meant no offense,” he said. “I just thought you might be more comfortable in your own clothes.”

  “Where am I going to change out here?”

  He stopped the vehicle. He got out. He went to the back and pulled out the bag that contained my laundered clothes, the garments I’d been found in all those weeks ago. He brought it over to the passenger door.