A World I Never Made (5 page)

Lulled by the sound and movement of the train and the sight of its shadow double racing along with it, Megan fell to thinking of her father and of the Christmas-to-New-Year’s week they had just spent together in Rome. Why was it that the holidays, with their insistent sentimentality, distorted and blurred relationships, like the racing shadow she had been watching distorted and blurred the shape of the train? She had dragged him to midnight mass on Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s. It was a wondrous spectacle, but why had she done it? Why change their routine of fortune-teller and Chinese food on all the Christmas holidays they spent together in Europe ? Afterward they had had champagne and exchanged gifts in their hotel’s penthouse restaurant, Rome’s seven hills gleaming below them. That scene came back to her now: the smile on her father’s face as he opened his gift—a richly tooled wallet from Florence—and the awkward silences that followed.

These were and were not the same as the silences, awkward and sad, that she had experienced as a child, both when Pat was away and when he was home, which in the early years seemed only to be at holidays. One Christmas, when she was seven or eight, after Pat had bought them the little house in New Canaan and Megan allowed herself to believe that all was finally well in her world, Pat left abruptly on New Year’s Eve for a job in Iran. She remembered watching him pack, wanting desperately to ask him to call her from this exotic place Iran, as she had heard from school-mates that their fathers did when away on business. But the words did not come, and Pat, in the short and brutal silence that followed, no doubt guilty and with a scotch or two under his belt, was soon dropping her off at Uncle Franks with a hurried kiss and barely a good-bye. She had turned the tables on him since then, but there was no great satisfaction in it after all. She hated New Year’s to this day.

Six days later he was gone, relieved, she was sure, to be on his Alitalia flight to New York, scotch in hand.
Something’s different,
he had said to her on their last night together, at dinner.
You seem quieter.
He probably thought she had been jilted by a man, gotten her just desserts at last. Poor Pat, she had left him to work his life out on his own, much as he had left her when she was a child to work out
her
life on her own. He had years ago stopped asking her when she was coming home, which was too bad, because if he had asked her this year she might have told him she was thinking about a return trip. A trip to
Connecticut
—the word itself was oddly comforting—might be just the respite she needed. How would he have reacted?

The sensation of the train gradually slowing interrupted this chain of thoughts. Megan first looked at her watch—they weren’t due to arrive in Marrakech for another forty-five minutes—and then out the window. She saw ahead an old and crumbling concrete siding next to a signal stand with one of its paddle arms broken off at the base. As the train came to a stop at the concrete platform, she could hear voices, men’s voices, jabbering in the corridor, and then, a moment later, a handsome, well-dressed Arab man slid open her compartment’s door and told her in perfect English that they were clearing the track for another train to pass and would be delayed a half hour or so. Familiar with the ways of the Maghrib—the so-called western Muslim world—she shrugged and went out to the cracked concrete platform to smoke, sitting on the edge of the equally cracked signal stand with her large, all-purpose carry bag at her feet. These feet, shod in skimpy gold sandals, their toenails painted red, were lovely and, she knew perfectly well, shockingly naked for a Muslim culture. But she made no concessions to any culture. Neither her faded jeans nor her pale green silk blouse were form-fitting, but it was obvious that she was shapely.

The other passengers, all men, about a dozen in all, paced the platform or talked to one another in staccato Arabic or Berber. The handsome Arab went off toward a vendor who doubled as a taxi driver and who seemed to have arrived at the siding out of nowhere, which was what pretty much surrounded them in all directions. When he completed his transaction—talking and smiling as the vendor filled a paper cone with dates—the man turned and began walking toward Megan. The other passengers, in the frenetic style of the Muslim world, had accosted the conductor as soon as he stepped onto the platform. They stopped pestering him for a second to stare at the shockingly
outré
and discomfiting Megan and the totally Westernized and equally discomfiting Arab who was about to join her on the signal stand. Megan, who had seen the handsome Arab sitting in a private compartment aloofly reading the
Herald Tribune
as she made her way through the initially crowded train looking for a seat, was not certain that he would approach her. This was not, after all, a bar in a fancy hotel in Casablanca. This was
in country
so to speak, where there were no hotels or bars, and where the local Muslims took their code of conduct seriously, a code that abhorred fraternization with Western women in public or otherwise. But the man did approach, casting a casual glance at his fellow male Muslims and a quick sly smile in Megan’s direction as he crossed the platform.

He sat a few feet from Megan, crossing his long legs, smoothing his trousers, and then clasping his manicured hands on his lap before speaking. “Is this your first trip to Marrakech?”

“No.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know yet:”

“May I suggest a place? I am there often:”

“Of course. Where do you stay?”

“I have my own place. But I know several hotels where Westerners are welcome. If you give them my name it will help:”

“And your name is?”

“Lahani. Abdel al-Lahani. My Western friends call me Del. And yours?”

“Megan Nolan.”

“You are American.” This was a statement, not a question. It was obvious that she was American and therefore it was not a very insightful statement. But something about the way he said it gave Megan pause. Could it actually be condescension? Or better yet, contempt? The tone of superiority in his deep and confident voice was barely detectable, but nevertheless there, and it sent a mild thrill through her heart. A thrill that stirred the demon anticipation that had been sleeping there for quite some time.

“American,” she answered, her voice neutral, her eyes flat. She could tell by her new friend’s New York or Parisian-cut suit and impeccable grooming that he had money and decent taste. These were two of her three prerequisites in a man she might take to bed. The third was harder to define. She often thought of it as unconscious superiority, the kind so obvious in royalty or celebrity or the bored children of the nouveau riche. Whatever it was, she knew it when she saw it, and if the Arab sitting next to her had it in the abundance she thought he did, then the dance might be on.

“And you?” she asked.

“I am Saudi Arabian:”

“I see. A prince of the blood?”

“No, nothing of the sort. I am a businessman. That is all:”

“What kind of business?”

“I sell influence:”

“What kind of influence:”

“The kind that gets people large government contracts—to explore for oil, to build factories, to rape the land:”

“How is it that you have this influence to sell?”

“Such a good question, but one that would take time to answer. Perhaps we can have dinner in Marrakech. I will be there for five days. My home is in the medina. There is a small hotel on the same block, the Sultana, that you would like very much, I think.”

Megan thought this offer over, seeing, dispassionately, all the phases of the relationship unfold before her mind’s eye.
So sure of himself, this rich Saudi.

“I leave for Zagora tomorrow,” she answered.

“Zagora? In the mountains? What brings you to Morocco, Ms. Nolan, may I ask?”

“I’m a writer. I’m researching a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“There is a blind family living outside of Zagora, in the foothills. Husband, wife, six children, five of them blind. I am going to interview them:”

“And how did you hear about this family?”

“A friend of mine was in the Peace Corps there. He told me about them:”

“And what will you write about them? That they are blind and poor?”

“Yes, the usual bullshit:”

After she said this, Megan casually put her cigarette out in the dirt at her feet, turning away from Lahani for a second. When she turned back, her features composed, even tranquil, she looked for but saw no trace of a shadow in the businessman’s dark, deep-set eyes. Indeed, he smiled and barked out a short laugh, throwing his head quickly back as he did.

“Such cynicism,” he said. “And who will buy such a story?”

“If I understate it enough,
The New Yorker, or Harper’s.”

“No drama:”

“God forbid:”

“God forbid.
Do you believe in God, Ms. Nolan?”

“No, but it’s faith that matters, not belief.”

“A fine distinction:”

“Not so fine. And you? Are you a believer?”

“I am Muslim. For me there is Allah and no other.”

“You’re not a terrorist, are you?” Megan asked. “A Wahabi madman?”

“Such direct questions,” said Lahani, “are not asked in the Arab world.” Megan watched his eyes as he spoke. She had meant to insult him and his culture. But again he seemed amused, not in the least angry or put off. Her intention was not to get a glimpse of what the real Abdel al-Lahani might look like beneath the highly civilized mask he wore, although that glimpse might be interesting, and useful. It was to set the pattern of their relationship early. But either he was very clever, very much in control, or the mask was real. Each of these alternatives intrigued her, as did the way his dark eyes flashed brightly when he smiled and laughed. He was handsome, she had to admit, and there was an intriguing hint of cruelty in his finely sculpted lips and mouth.

“Are they answered?” she said.

“Your question is a statement, is it not, Ms. Nolan?
I am in charge,
you are saying.
I am not afraid.
Statements do not require answers:”

“I already know the answer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, you either are or you aren’t.” It was Megan’s turn to smile. As she did, her face, which had shown no emotion throughout the conversation except perhaps mild curiosity, was suddenly transformed. Her austere beauty no longer a barrier, her smile became an invitation: to innocence and corruption, joy and pain. As smiles went it was pretty breathtaking, and she could see from Lahani’s reaction, watching as he drank in his first taste of the most dangerous drink he would ever take, that he thought so, too.

“Good, then we can have dinner tonight:”

“It will have to be late. I have to sleep, and make some calls:”

“By all means. Say the lobby of the Sultana at ten?”

The Sultana was indeed an exquisite hotel—some twenty well-appointed rooms surrounding a hushed and verdant courtyard with a splashing fountain and reflecting pool at its center. While her tub was filling with hot water, Megan stood on her balcony looking down on the courtyard. The fountain was in the form of a lion’s head spewing water from its flared nostrils. She watched the reds and yellows of the pool’s tiled floor shimmer as the water moved in concentric waves over them toward the outer rim of the pool and then lapped back. Megan loved irony. She saw it as the ultimate cosmic hypocrisy, the final revenge of the gods of fate against humans who were too vain to know they were vain. It was therefore a matter of the most supreme irony to Megan that after ten years of tramping around Europe, caring for nothing except seducing rich men, accepting with thinly veiled disdain their gifts of cash and jewelry while letting them know that she was in charge of her own life
and
of theirs, she had succumbed to something outside of herself.

On September 11, 2001, she had been in bed with one of these men, a beautiful twenty-four-year-old graduate student in linguistics at the Sorbonne, whose father owned some fifteen high-brow jewelry stores throughout France. She had returned from the bathroom after their afternoon lovemaking to find Alain at the edge of the bed, glued to the television screen in their room at the Ritz, his eyes agog. A Noam Chomsky conspiratorialist, he was later to declare with confidence, his veneer of bored sophistication back in place, that it was the Jews who flew the planes into the buildings in New York and Washington. But that afternoon his face was unguarded as his child’s brain absorbed the events transpiring across the Atlantic—several thousand Americans dead, the president and the Congress scurrying for safety, America in shock as it watched the repeated clips of the twin towers being hit and then collapsing. On that face Megan saw satisfaction and delight. And to her amazement she was angry. The smugness on the femininely beautiful face of America-hater Alain Tillinac had struck Megan Nolan dumb. To this day she summoned up that face, that look, with revulsion.