Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (18 page)

Joe interrupted her to say fiercely, “Oh come off it, Amanda, stop being ready to sacrifice yourself at the drop of a hat. Of course you’re important. Why else are we here? No omelet’s ever made without breaking an egg or two.”

“Omelet?” she faltered.

“Omelet, yes.”

She looked at him in astonishment. “Of course—yes, I’m sorry.”

“You’re tired—stay quiet,” he told her, and Mrs. Pollifax found herself smiling.
Perfect
, she thought. Apparently Joe, having studied the scraps from Amanda’s journal of her life in Roseville had taken her measure: Amanda was going to be denied guilt and self-effacement. Joe, she thought, was more clever than she’d realized, and possibly Amanda was realizing this, too, because again she gave him a curious and thoughtful glance.

Abdul brought them platters of
khobz
and hummus, saying, “Now I sell for my father in the shop.” He added words to Joe in Arabic, who nodded. “He says eat and quickly change into the clothes he brought us, because when Omar returns we have to be ready.”

Once he had left, the four of them sat down to eat on the rug he’d spread for them. Mrs. Pollifax, looking across at Amanda, said, “You’re not the same person we saw on film being interviewed in the Damascus airport almost two months ago.”

Farrell nodded. “Can’t be. Humanly impossible.”

“True,” agreed Joe. “So who are you now, Amanda?”

She looked at them for a long time before she said shyly, “I don’t know,” and shivered. “There was a film?”

“You were big news—briefly,” explained Mrs. Pollifax. “Farrell and I were shown the film again just before we left to come here. You looked … older.”

“Not very happy,” added Farrell. “Miserable, in fact. How do you feel now?”

“Scared,” she admitted with an apologetic half smile. “I thought last night I was being kidnapped again. I still don’t know who you are, not really.”

Joe said boldly, with a grin, “I don’t mind introducing myself first. I’m Joe Fleming, junior archaeologist, and just along
for the ride, so to speak, because I know Arabic.
They’re
the professionals,” he said, nodding at Farrell and Mrs. Pollifax.

“But … professional what?”

“Finders of Lost Persons Department,” Farrell told her flippantly, “and we have every hope of getting safely out of Syria,” he lied.

“But we’re all scared—a little,” Joe told her kindly. “It’s more companionable to know that, I think.”

Farrell changed the subject quickly. “Have we eaten enough? I can’t wait to see the Duchess in that
burqa.”

“Duchess?” faltered Amanda. “A real duchess?”

“I call her that,” explained Farrell gravely. “We have a long acquaintance.”

Abandoning the food to change clothes Farrell and Joe donned the older and shabbier brown
abayas
while Mrs. Pollifax was shrouded in black from head to foot, with only her eyes to be seen. Unfortunately, in abandoning her previous robe, she left Amanda wearing the only one with inner pockets. Alarmed by this, Mrs. Pollifax removed her black
abaya
, shrugged into her brown one with pockets, and then—hoping for cool weather—pulled the black one over it. “Because I’m the bank, I carry the money,” she explained to Amanda.

“Do I have pockets?” asked Amanda.

“Yes, she sewed them inside yours, too, bless her,” said Farrell.

“She can keep the travel guide and map for us,” added Joe, and handed them over to her, and as he said this the rug concealing the mysterious inner room was pulled aside and Omar hurried in.

“Ready?” he said breathlessly.

“Yes, but what has been arranged?” asked Farrell. “You look—”

“Tired,” Omar told him. “In two days I was to ship an order of kilims to As Sweida. My driver is just back from a delivery to Aleppo and he is tired, very tired. With a little baksheesh he has been persuaded to drive there today.
Now
 … to As Sweida, which in miles is twenty-eight from Bosra.” He looked them over sternly. “You may have to walk those miles to Bosra; I do not know.”

“Does he know who we are?” asked Farrell.

“No. Therefore you cannot bribe him to go farther, if you even see him. You are a poor family without money, friends of friends, who must see a dying relative in the south, I did not say where, and one of you is ill.” To Amanda and Mrs. Pollifax he said, “And do not forget to pray, as women here do.” To Joe he said, “You already know the call to prayer?”

Joe nodded. “All five: the Maghrib, ’Asha, Subh, Duhr and Asr … 
Allahu akbar
three times,
ashadu an la ilaha illa-llullah, ashhadu anna Muhammedanar-rasulullah
twice,
hayya ’alas-sala
twice. Facing east, to Mecca.”

Omar nodded.
“Taib
. I hear a small accent, thus do not speak it loud. In Bosra you must wait near the Citadel, understood?”

Inspecting them all he nodded. “Come,” he said, and lifting the carpet to the room behind them he led them into it. There were huge piles of rugs everywhere, shelves lightly covered with gauze curtains, cupboards, a computer, a telephone. Amanda, walking beside Mrs. Pollifax, looked around her with awe, and when she stopped it was to stroke a soft and velvety roll of plush, and then, curious, she brushed aside a few inches of a curtain over one of the shelves and peeked inside. “Amanda, we must
hurry,”
Mrs. Pollifax reminded her. She walked on, but when she glanced back she thought she saw Amanda slip something into the pocket of her
abaya
but there was no time to chide her for taking something that pleased
her from the shelf, because Omar was pulling aside one of the rugs on the floor, a shabby but exquisite Persian, to reveal a trapdoor and below it a ladder that disappeared into darkness.

He said grimly, “The souk is thousands of years old and many have had to flee thus for their lives but you must never never mention this. I learned of it only from studying ancient documents and maps.” With a flashlight he directed them down the ladder and then pulled the trapdoor over their heads and took the lead.

There were no lights in the tunnel except for Omar’s flashlight dancing ahead of them; they stumbled over uneven ground, the walls of ancient stone damp and lined with lichen. The passage turned only once, quite sharply, and after a few more minutes they reached another ladder leaning against the wall. Omar established it firmly, mounted it, lifted another trapdoor and helped the four of them up and into what appeared to be a storeroom full of oil cans and cartons.

For Mrs. Pollifax it was a relief to see daylight again.

“You are no longer in the souk,” he told them. “The truck is outside—come!”

He opened the door to a large truck that had backed so closely to the entrance that it was impossible to see either the driver or the street behind it, only its open rear crowded with upright carpets, tightly rolled and roped together.

A small passage had been left for them to crawl inside. “There is space in the middle,” Omar told them. “When you are inside I will restore and secure rugs to hide you,” and to Mrs. Pollifax he added, “Allah grant it be well for you.”

One by one they crawled in among the carpets to the space left for them in the center, and seeing Omar close up their means of entry and exit Mrs. Pollifax hoped none of them suffered from claustrophobia. On the other hand, it was a humanely
shaped area so that Amanda and Joe, seated facing each other, left enough room for both Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell to stretch their legs without touching the younger pair. With a sigh of relief Mrs. Pollifax slipped the
burqa
from her face and said, “I can breathe again!”

“Yes, it’s good to see you,” Farrell told her with a grin.

The driver shifted gears and they took off for As Sweida with each bump jarring the spine. “No shock absorbers,” Farrell said with a sigh.

“At least we’re on our way,” Mrs. Pollifax pointed out. “Somewhere. At last. And the driver can’t possibly hear us talk with all these rugs around us, nothing insulates like a rug. Are you tired?”

“Of course not,” snapped Farrell, and promptly fell asleep.

This left Mrs. Pollifax with only her unruly thoughts and worries until she heard Joe say to Amanda very politely, “Was this your first trip abroad?”

Amanda looked alarmed at being spoken to but replied with equal politeness, “Yes.” And then, as if considering what travel abroad
usually
meant, she suddenly smiled.

Nothing had prepared Mrs. Pollifax for a smile: she had seen Amanda grim, serious, angry, and frightened but her smile had the radiance of a sun’s rising. “But I didn’t get very far, did I.”

Joe laughed. “No.”

Regarding him curiously she said, “How did you seem to guess I didn’t care—about living, I mean.”

“Bring out the travel guide I gave you to carry in your pocket,” he told her. “I’ll show you how.”

From one of her inside pockets she brought out the small book and handed it to him, and he extracted two loose folded sheets of paper. “Because of this,” he said. “You kept a journal. Your kidnappers made a fire at some distance from the camp
to burn your passport and everything else belonging to you. They assumed that everything would burn up, but there was a tiny piece of your passport left—Mrs. Pollifax found that—and these charred scraps. I put them together and they … well, they made a picture of what your life had been. Or so I assumed.”

“Oh,” she said, startled, and then, “Oh dear, oh
no
.”

He handed her the two sheets of paper. “I’m sorry. I know journals are very private and it was intrusive of me to read your thoughts but we
had
to find out if you were inside that fenced compound. Which we didn’t know until we found that corner of your passport.”

Looking at the put-together sentences she said, “But from such scraps and snippets … it’s embarrassing.”

He nodded. “You’re blushing and I’m sorry. Usually my work is studying the Umayyads, who occupied Syria from
A.D.
661 to 750. It was sort of like archaeology; I was interested in someone my own age leaving behind a script—I mean words. Except,” he added humorously, “you weren’t an Umayyad. And once I heard about the hijacking I was also curious as to why you just walked up to the nearest hijacker and asked for his gun. I wanted to know what you were like, and who you were.”

There was a touch of anger in her voice when she said, “So now you know.”

“Exactly,” and he added bluntly, “I deduced that your parents were a pair of bloody misers, and didn’t allow you to do anything you wanted, in fact they were abusive.”

She looked horrified. “Abusive? Oh no, they
never
hit or beat me, never.”

He said gently, “There’s such a thing as
emotional
abuse, Amanda.”

“Emotional abuse?” she said wonderingly.

“Yes … indifference, neglect, lack of warmth and loving.”

He had shocked Amanda, and she glanced quickly away from him, but although she didn’t speak she looked thoughtful, and Joe—
wise Joe
, thought Mrs. Pollifax—said no more, closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. But Mrs. Pollifax noticed that Amanda’s eyes kept straying, puzzled, to the sheet of paper in her lap with its strung-together half sentences that described a life she’d lived in Roseville, Pennsylvania. But it was worth remembering, thought Mrs. Pollifax, that she’d planned a trip to Egypt, and it had taken courage even to apply for a passport and board a plane.

A few minutes later Joe opened his eyes, and aware of the travel guidebook still on his lap said, “Well, let’s see what it says about As Sweida before it goes back into Amanda’s pocket.” He opened it, consulted the index, turned a page and immediately winced. “The word ‘charmless’ is the first word I see.”

Farrell said dryly, “Well, we’re scarcely tourists visiting it as sightseers.”

“Its history? During Byzantine rule, Arabs poured over the area,” he read, “destroying and killing, and in the next century streams of molten lava from hill craters flowed over it, turning it into a country of black basalt stones. It is sometimes called ‘Black
soiudâ’
 … Sounds gloomy,” he added. “And just as Omar said, no transportation between it and Bosra.”

He returned the guidebook to Amanda, who stuffed it back in her pocket.

“So we walk?” asked Mrs. Pollifax, wincing.

Joe frowned. “You? Absolutely not—there is such a thing as
gallantry. Let me nose around the place first. Give me some of your hoard of bills and let me see what I can find.”

Farrell said warningly, “Joe, you’ve got to be
careful
. My God, if you’re careless—they’re looking for us.”

Joe nodded. “But not for me, I don’t
think
I’ll head for the oldest, poorest section of town. It’s unfortunate, but the less affluent people in any town are the very last to hear about people the police want. Trust me.”

“No choice,” growled Farrell.

“What we must do is find you a wall to sit on not far from this highway and where I can find you. Sit and eat some leftover dates and don’t look at anyone.”

Amanda suddenly giggled, and they looked at her in surprise. She said apologetically, “I’m sorry; it must be nerves. I mean it’s … it’s …”

Mrs. Pollifax patted her hand. “It’s not Roseville.”

There was no more conversation. The truck bumped and rattled, the sun poured down on them, and there seemed an inordinate amount of dust raised by the truck. It felt a long journey, although Omar had said it was eighty kilometers. They stopped once, for the noon call to prayer, and an hour later the truck stopped again. This time the driver walked around to the rear, cut ropes and moved rugs to let them out, and without interest spoke only two words in Arabic. Hastily Mrs. Pollifax slipped the
burqa
over her head again.

“He means get out,” whispered Joe, “and not too politely, either.”

“Shukren,”
he murmured as they dismounted to find themselves at the edge of the town, but what startled Mrs. Pollifax was to see that the earth lining the highway was bloodred and the stones really were as black as lava. The truck at once drove off in a cloud of dust to some remote part of As Sweida,
and they quickly crossed the highway to enter the town. After a short walk they found a low wall of black stones near a gas station, from which hung a picture of Haffiz al-Assad, and a sign stating that the garage sold diesel gas, kerosene and NGK spark plugs.