Lulu in Marrakech (20 page)

32

Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?

—Charles Dickens,
A Christmas Carol

O
n Christmas Day, Suma appeared at the gate at lunchtime. We had planned a Christmassy lunch of turkey and yams, and plum pudding imported by Tom and Strand from England, and were about to sit down, a little subdued by the friendly indifference of Ian’s servants, which strangely intensified the religious significance of the holiday, as if we were Christians huddled in a cave, hiding from the Romans, with Gazi for a hostage. I had spoken to my parents, and my sister in Paris, lying to them as usual, and that made me sad too.

The gate boy let Suma into the compound, and she rang at the door of the villa. Gazi, by agreement, was not in sight. I was in the dining room, but I could hear Suma come in, talking to Ian in her rather sweet, Frenchified voice.

“Oh, monsieur, I came directly.”

“
Merci,
Suma, I’m sure you want to help.”

“If I can, monsieur. I’m not sure that I can.”

It emerged that Ian had telephoned her too, to ask for her help in getting Gazi’s passport. I was surprised at that and asked myself if he would have discussed the wisdom of this with me before Gazi. Before Gazi, I think he and I would have talked over whether Suma was likely to help, wondering whether she instead would tell Khaled; we would have relished all the nuances of this question.

“I’m sure you can help. Come in. You know it is a difficult situation, I hope not too difficult for you in any way.”

“I am sorry, I mean, I just cannot help,” she said in a rush. “I’ve thought about it. It would not be right.” She spoke rapidly, and her cheeks were flushed. “I wish you would talk to Mr. Al‐Sayad. He is very upset, and so are the children. I am so sorry for them.” She explained in a torrent that she couldn’t steal the key to Khaled’s safe, it would be stealing, forbidden by the Koran, and she couldn’t help Gazi without stealing. Also, she could not condone a woman leaving her husband.

“I cannot help Madame Gazi, peace be with her. I am so sorry.”

This was so off the wall I could think of no reply or remonstrance. Docile Suma, French‐educated, a modern girl. Had she never seen a Feydeau play or read
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
? I went to join in the discussion.

“Sit down, Suma,” Ian was saying. “You know we’ve seen your brother? He was here the other night.” Suma followed us into the salon, seeming unsurprised. “Of course we didn’t tell him where you are. He says your mother isn’t well.”

“No, I telephone her often, she is a bit better.”

“I was hoping you’ve thought again about helping Madame Al‐Sayad.” We sat in the salon, and Miryam, as if acknowledging that Suma’s status was above that of a servant, if not quite equal to ours, brought glasses of tea and served Suma along with the rest of us.

“I would like to, absolutely, she is so nice, but it would be to put myself in a false position, with my religion, and with my employer too.” She looked at me as if I would explain this obvious moral choice.

“I don’t know the details, Suma,” I said. “I think Madame Al‐Sayad was very unhappy.” And I said a bit more about unhappiness in marriage. It seemed hard that I should be urging her to help save my rival, Gazi, but I did, which must at least have allayed Ian’s suspicions that I knew about him and Gazi, if he cared. “A very abusive relationship.”

“That’s not true. Mr. Al‐Sayad is a gentlemanly, mild person, very nice to his wife and children,” she said. It crossed my mind she could have fallen in love with Khaled herself, or some complication like that.

No amount of persuasion weighed with her. We thought of getting Miryam to talk to her, or Rashid, since they were Muslims, but how could they avoid betraying to Suma that Gazi was here? It seemed to me that Suma was combining some of the worse traits of both cultures she belonged to—Islam’s lack of humanity and respect for women, its excessive reverence for men, and an absence of sisterly feelings that can be very French.

As we talked, all at once, Gazi herself, evidently listening to the whole conversation, rushed in and seized Suma as if to shake her. “Do you want me to die?” Rattled and surprised, Suma pushed her away. Gazi’s hair flowed over her shoulders, she wore some sort of little sleeveless shift and thong sandals. Suma seemed aghast. Maybe she had never seen her so undressed.

“What have I done to you?” Gazi was demanding.

“Do you want me to go to hell?” Suma said.

This chilled me even more. I had not guessed that Suma was religious enough to believe in hell. Why hadn’t I seen her piety? What clues had I had? Could she really believe she’d go to hell for telling a lie? I hadn’t even known they had a hell.

“Just a little key. It’s on his key chain. Take it when he takes his bath or goes swimming.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid as well.”

“You agree he’s dangerous, cruel,” insisted Gazi.

“No, no, no.”

“He has his bath at six, every day before dinner.”

“I will not steal, or open his safe.”

“He puts his keys on the dresser. I’ve seen them a million times. The bathroom door will be shut.”

“No.”

“I’ll get them myself then,” Ian said.

“Won’t he miss them?” Posy asked. We stared at each other. Naturally he would miss them.

Of course I knew how to take an impression of a key. It’s simple, using paraffin, or sealing wax, or even cold butter—my wax pencils are designed for such uses. My mind foraged for an explanation of how I might have come to have an esoteric skill like that, and I couldn’t think of any to give them.

“How long is his bath?” Ian asked.

“Twenty minutes or so,” Gazi said, hardly enough time to run the key over to the locksmith.

“You have to make an impression,” I said. “In wax or something. I’ve seen it in movies.” Ian gave me a “We’ll talk about this later” look.

“Suma, at least agree that you won’t tell Mr. Al‐Sayad that you’ve seen his wife,” he said.

“I don’t know.
Je ne sais rien
. I need to think, I need to ask,” she said, opening her arms dramatically, as if to invite divine intervention. Ian, exasperated, stomped out of the room, followed by Gazi, leaving it to Posy and me to drink our tea with Suma and utter mollifying sentences about poor Gazi and her terrible life. Suma seemed ruffled, even distraught, though having refused to help us, she was presumably spiritually clean and soon relapsed into a mood of surly serenity, if such can exist. I wish I had realized how actually distraught she felt, with her murderous brother in town, her mother sick, being pressured to filch things from Khaled’s safe. I knew nothing of her life really.

We switched the subject to the medical examination her brother had proposed. Here she was more tractable. She sighed.

“Maybe I should agree. I refused before. Why should Muslim girls have to endure these things?” But it seemed she meant, more or less, that non-Muslim girls should be as prepared to prove their virginity as Muslim girls were; it still hadn’t occurred to her that virginity was not an ideal, universally prized quality. It hardly seemed the time to reexamine that old subject.

“You know what’s involved?”

“Of course I know what’s involved. Has my mother ever spoken of anything else? ‘Sumaya will not take the gym class. Sumaya, never jump over anything, you might break your precious
puce,
then your life will be over!’ If I lose it, her friends will despise
her,
people will laugh at the family; I am the sole bearer of the family reputation, it’s all up to me. Your father and I want the best for you. No nice boy—no nice Algerian boy—French boys out of the question—no one will marry a girl who’s been spoiled.” I couldn’t help but think how horrible the men must be, brought up to think this way. No wonder they had produced the ugly writings in Arabic—“Know, O Vizir (God be good to you!)”—about those bad exhalations and cures for a wide vagina and so on.

“How awful,” said Posy, as if reading my mind. “I’d have given mine away tout de suite just to end the matter.” I supposed she was fishing, to find out what the doctor would likely find in Suma’s case.

“It’s not simple,” said Suma. “You can’t just live for yourself. I do care about my family. Luckily we had the sorceress in.” Suma smiled. “That calmed my mother. The sorceress puts a sort of spell on you that keeps you intact.” Sometimes ’s moral certitudes were more French than the French, but sometimes she seemed to be speaking ironically, and I never knew which.

“We can call someone if you like. Is there a special doctor? You’ll have to see about this yourself,” said Ian, who was back but was clearly uncomfortable with this female subject.

It was a strange conversation for Christmas, and of course Christmas brings back all Christmases, all incidences of family love, all memories of infantile credulity, the better to throw in relief the bleak present reality of a furtive Christian holiday in an Islamic country, a tenuous relationship with an English man of uncertain loyalty, and a clandestine job of indistinct utility and considerable improbability—all this a metaphor for real life, maybe, but not conducive to a mood of happiness.

33

Brabantio: Are they married, think you?

Roderigo: Truly, I think they are.

Brabantio: Oh Heaven! How got she out?

—William Shakespeare,
Othello,
act 1, scene 1

O
f course we knew it was only a matter of time before Khaled learned where Gazi was; there was no real possibility of hiding her, only of protecting her behind our fortress walls. We lived with the constant expectation of a furious Khaled Al‐Sayad arriving on our doorstep, so that it was almost a relief when it happened, a few days after Suma’s visit. He drove up, parked outside the outer gate, and confronted the gate boy, a fourteen-year-old, who stuck to his instructions about not opening up.

So Khaled just came in through the smaller door at the side and walked into the compound and up to the house in plain view of anyone in the garden, which included me, waiting for Rashid, who was bringing the car around. Khaled was wearing jeans and a sport coat, and he seemed calm. Turning away from the door while he waited for someone to answer it, he saw me standing by the drive and waved. The door opened behind him, one of the maids, who said something, shook her head, spread her hands, saying what ever she’d been told to say. The door closed, and Khaled began to walk toward me.

Of course I’d planned to lie when this happened. But when he came up, he seemed so completely informed, there was no point. Just as I was trying to think of how to circumvent the “I know you know my wife is here” part of the conversation inevitably to come, he said directly, “What do you think I should do?” With his beard, longish hair, and anguished, duped expression, he looked a little like the Jesus of Italian painting. It was a look of almost sweet resignation, as if to say “What a fool I’ve been, with my fancy American-formed ideas of female liberation. My friends are always telling me I should beat the shit out of her.”

He didn’t look like he was going to kill her, though, and everyone knows that it’s often these nice guys and long-suffering spouses who somehow most invite the indifference and infidelity of their mates.

“I have no idea,” I said. “These things—”

“I can’t call the police, I can’t break down the door. Maybe I can call the police, I could say kidnapping.”

“Everyone would just say—”

“Well, God curse her, just tell her to go to hell,” he said, his voice breaking like a teenager’s. This seemed like a lame curse to me. He didn’t look frightening or murderous, he looked like a man in pain.

“I’m sorry,” I said stupidly, and of course I was sorry, he didn’t know the half of it. Had he known the half of it, maybe he would have commiserated with me; we could have had at least a misery-loves-company kind of conversation. He looked at me rather wildly for a second more, then walked off down the path, and just then Rashid drove up anyhow.

In the car, I said to Rashid, “Do you know who that was?”

“The husband of the new lady?”

“Yes.”

“He who can’t control his women is a fool,” said Rashid. “ ‘Leave her ye in the sleeping‐place and beat her.’ ”

I
had begun to think of how nice it would be for me if Gazi got her passport and could fly off somewhere out of my life; the idea of Khaled’s key began to torment me. It would be easy to creep in and get it, if all was as Gazi had described it, and easy to make a wax impression, and get another key made, and open the safe and get the passport. Ian had only been speaking with bravado when he said he’d go get it, but I thought about it in earnest. As a clandestine action, it should not have been beyond me. Not only for reasons of love did I think about it, either; it was a sort of professional challenge, though I also knew it was absolute folly to take chances for merely personal reasons like getting rid of Gazi.

I was obliged to confide in Posy to a certain extent, and she agreed it would be exciting to steal Gazi’s passport for her. We would go visit Suma, to discuss her virginity test or her brother, and Posy would distract her. It had to be during Khaled’s bath, and he would never know we were there anyhow. The keys would be on the dresser; it was the work of a minute. It wasn’t clear how we’d keep Suma from knowing, though.

“You could ask to use the loo,” Posy said. “She and I’ll be talking.”

“What about the other maids and people in the house? And the kids?” There were things to be worked out, certainly. We talked about this a few times, then let it drop, but I got Gazi to draw me a floor plan, and she was enthusiastically behind the idea.

“An easy thing. Khaled is a predictable man. After afternoon prayers, he goes with his telephone into the bath, and there talks to Saudis and does various deals and talks to his office while soaking in the bath. How long he takes depends on what he has to do, but it is never less than one half-hour.”

“What do the maids wear at your house?” I asked.

From her stare, she thought this was an odd question. “Why doesn’t Suma help me?” she cried. “What have I done to make her angry? Nothing! She has to write a few letters in French for Khaled, type a little, she has her dinner with us, not the children, she has some time off every day.”

“If I dressed up like a maid… ,” I said. I could imagine the safety of the black robe, the veil, my hair covered.

“The maids would not go into Khaled’s room during his bath,” she said. “Never when he was in there.”

T
his was two days after Christmas. Taft had told me to be ready on Thursday to drive the van to Rabat: I should set up my excuses for being gone all day. He wouldn’t say why we were going to Rabat, though I knew we intended to pick up our “subject” then. I wondered if Taft didn’t altogether trust me and thought I would tell the colonel our plans. Or maybe he didn’t trust the colonel. If the colonel knew what we were up to, he would have time to warn Amid, and then if Amid wasn’t where Taft had determined he would be, we would know he’d been warned. The leak would point to me having told the colonel and would also mean that the colonel was in touch with Amid.

But I did tell the colonel, and I will always wonder whether I was right. At the time, though, I had no paranoid suspicions and appreciated Taft giving me warning to allow for me to set up a cover story about going to visit a literacy program near Rabat.