The Ambassador's Wife (16 page)

“What has she been eating?” asks Miranda, stroking the girl's cheek.

“Tea.”

“Tea?”

“That is all we have to give her.”

Carefully Miranda takes her nipple between her fingers, holds it over the child's lips, and squeezes gently. A few drops of watery milk spatter onto the girl's lips. A tiny tongue darts out, searchingly. The taste is sweet. She opens her mouth wider. Miranda squeezes more milk into her mouth. For nearly an hour she repeats this, alternating
breasts and continuing to try to get the child to suck. She licks her own finger to clean it and gives it to the girl to suck, then transfers her to the nipple. The child doesn't have the strength to suck for more than a few seconds, but Miranda is patient. Her body relaxes as her breasts are slowly relieved of their stores. She does all of this mechanically, trying to calculate its significance. If her captors need her to feed this child, surely they won't kill her now? Is this girl her salvation? But before this morning, they hadn't known she was breast-feeding, hadn't known about Cressida. So why have they spared her?

Aisha watches for a while before beginning her morning prayers, prostrating herself on the dirt floor. Miranda wonders how old the child is. She doesn't even know her name. She waits for Aisha to finish her prayers before she asks.

Aisha isn't sure of the girl's age—no one here is ever sure about anyone's age—but thinks she is not more than a few weeks old. She has no name. Or rather, no one knows her name. But Aisha had passed by the ruins of her house and heard the crying. The child had been lying under an inverted V of mud bricks, surrounded by splintered plaster and stone. “I could not just leave her there when Allah had spared her,” she says. “Though we have nothing to give her. The women left here are either too old or too young to have milk.” The girl had been staying with one of Aisha's sisters, who fed her tea.

I don't have enough milk for a newborn, Miranda thinks. Perhaps her body will adjust to the child's needs, but she has no idea. Aisha squats, anxiously watching Miranda.

The frail child has fallen asleep in her arms. Miranda rewraps her in the dirty blanket and places her on the mat. They had swaddled Cressida until she was three months old and could wrestle her arms and legs out of her blankets. “Like the Incredible Hulk,” Miranda had said. Finn had looked at her questioningly. Another cryptic pop-culture reference.

Aisha stands. “
Haasna
. Now we get the water.”

“But the child,” Miranda starts. The woman nods and disappears into one of the other houses. When she returns, she carries a long bolt of red-and-black striped cloth. Together, they fashion a sling so that Miranda can carry the infant close to her chest. Miranda pays close
attention to the way Aisha folds it. To think she had paid nearly fifty dollars for a custom-made sling for Cressida. That amount of money seems ludicrous to her now. The baby smells faintly of fecal matter, though Miranda imagines it has been a long time since she consumed enough calories to trigger a bowel movement. Miranda is surprised to find herself trusted with the infant. Aisha could just as easily have carried her, but she seems to have abdicated responsibility.

The girl sleeps all the way to the spring and back, exhausted from her efforts to nurse. When the water is stashed by the fire and the women have settled on the ground to eat their beans again, the baby opens her eyes and lets out a feeble howl of hunger.

“Well, that's a good sign,” whispers Miranda, setting aside her tin plate and picking up the child. “Let's try this again, shall we?”

AUGUST 30, 2007

Miranda

Miranda stood in front of the mirror and groaned. “
Nothing
works!” The silver-and-black sundress, which had always felt so modest back home in Seattle, made her feel exposed and slatternly. Sighing, she slipped the straps from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. “Everything makes me look either Amish or prostitutional,” she said, stepping out of the puddle of polyester at her feet.

“Prostitutional?” Finn watched her with amusement from across the room, where he was adjusting his tie. He was wearing khakis and one of his many long-sleeved, stripy shirts.

“You men have it easy. You can wear pretty much the same thing in any culture. It's a minefield out there for us.”

One of the things she loved about living here was that every day she had only to throw on one of her three floor-length skirts with one of her seven cotton Indian blouses. That was it. No agonizing over which pants worked with which shirts, or which dress was most flattering. Further abbreviating her morning routine, she wore minimal makeup and kept her hair tied up in a ponytail or knot at the back of her head. It was so freeing to shed all of the accoutrements of vanity.
Yet, oddly, she received more male attention on the streets here than anywhere else she'd ever lived. “I look like Laura Ingalls Wilder in mourning,” she said to Finn, “and they treat me like I'm Dolly Parton.”

Now everything had changed. When she went out with Finn, they were just as likely to mix with Western diplomats as they were to mix with the locals. And at Western homes, the women
did
pay attention to fashion. At least, certain women did. The wives of ambassadors, for example. The thing was, Miranda didn't own anything remotely chic. She traveled light. What on earth would she do when she and Finn had to host dinner parties together?

Tonight they were stepping out together for the first time, to the InterContinental for a dinner and dance celebrating the launch of a new adventure tourism agency (for very brave tourists, willing to wander into lawless lands to scale monumental walls of rock). Miranda found the agency's optimism about its prospects refreshing. Few diplomats thought anything could succeed in the grim political and economic climate of Mazrooq. She felt like wearing something cheerful, something red. But while the hotel was certainly quite Western (and as fancy as it got in this city), there were certain to be Mazrooqis there as well. So did she deck herself out in bright Western wear and risk shocking the Muslims, or wrap herself up in modest lengths of cotton and risk being thought dowdy by the international community?

At last she found a suitable compromise: a long, polka-dotted black skirt topped with a sleeveless, embroidered black blouse. For safety, she added a black pashmina shawl to cover her shoulders. Her black leather sandals were scuffed and gritty with embedded sand, but the skirt was long enough to hide them. Finn, who had just finished straightening his green flowered tie, inspected her selections lying out on the bed. “What?” she said. “You don't like them?”

“They're fine,” he said. “It's just…would you mind terribly if I ironed them? And give me those shoes.” Wordlessly, she handed him the shoes, and he disappeared downstairs into the utility room, emerging twenty minutes later with freshly pressed clothing and shiny sandals.

“Wow,” she said. “Full-service ambassador.”

“Attention to detail, darling. It's part of the job.”

“You're almost as useful as Negasi,” she said, admiring her improved feet.

Brushing her hair, Miranda wandered over to the window. The fanciful metal grating, all swirls and curls, somewhat limited the view of the drive. But she could see the massive armored car just beneath the bedroom window, all four of its doors standing open, surrounded by men gripping AK-47s as they surveyed the surrounding rooftops.

“The guys look ready,” she commented.

“Always,” said Finn. “Usually about an hour before I am.”

T
HEY SLIPPED OUT
the front door just after seven. Mukhtar, who had been lurking in the shadows of the bougainvillea bush beside the stairs, emerged to shield them from the possible bullets of possible snipers on the way to the car. Would she ever get used to living steeped in hypothetical menace? Finn strode past her to the far side of the car. He was required to sit on the right, directly behind his bodyguard, something Miranda had learned when she once tried to climb into his side of the car. She hadn't yet earned the right to her own bodyguard, so her protection wasn't officially important.

Climbing up into the armored car was impossible to do gracefully, but finally Miranda managed to haul herself and her trailing skirts through the open door. Not until their seat belts were fastened did Ali start the car.
“Masa al-kheer,”
he said politely.
“Masa anoor!”
she and Finn chorused back.

Finn was cheerful in the car, chatting in effortless Arabic to Ali and Mukhtar. Miranda's Arabic was slowly improving, but she still understood only about half of what was said. She caught “sun” and “England” and “weather.” Apparently some of the men had just returned from a training course in the UK. “There was sun in England, but it had no heat,” Finn translated for her. She smiled.

Miranda was preoccupied. This was the first time she and Finn had ever been out in public as a couple. It felt momentous. Almost as momentous as Finn telling his staff about her earlier in the week. Miranda had been sitting on the edge of his bed, watching him change
out of his suit after work. “What did you say?” she asked. “ ‘Just in case any of you were worried, I'm finally getting laid'?”

“Um,” he said, turning from the closet lined with dress shirts organized by color and fabric, looking slightly embarrassed. “I'm afraid I told them we were engaged.”

Miranda looked at him, startled. “We are? You've known me what, five months?”

“Six. Nearly seven. About as long as you've known me.”

“It's just—I don't remember a proposal. Did you do it while I was sleeping?”

“Well, it just seemed the easiest way to say it.”

“Huh.”

“Huh?”

“It was
easier
to say we were engaged than to say we were seeing each other.”

“I wanted them to take it seriously. I don't want to look like I'm behaving frivolously.” He looked at her anxiously. “Are you cross?”

Miranda was quiet for a moment, studying him as he stood before her in plaid boxers and a slightly creased white dress shirt. His pale, bare legs made him look terribly vulnerable. “No one even knew you were seeing me, and now you tell them we're
engaged
? Don't you think that's bound to strike someone as odd?”

“Not anyone here—the Mazrooqis regularly marry people they haven't ever met.”

“But the Brits don't. At least, not as far as I know….Aren't you going to look rash? Or if not rash then secretive, for not having disclosed our alleged courtship?”

Finn frowned. “I hadn't thought of that.”

“Hadn't you?”

“I'm sorry, love, I thought I was doing the right thing.” He came and sat beside her, taking her hands in his.

Miranda sighed. “Well, what did they say?”

“
Mabrouk
, for the most part. Congratulations. The local staff said
mabrouk
. I don't think it struck any of them as odd in the least. And my British staff were all very polite about it.”

“Of course they were. You're their boss.”

“Are you sure you're not mad?”

“It's just…Would you mind letting me know if we've set a date? I mean, just so I can get it on my calendar?”

“Miranda…” He pulled her down onto the bed so they lay side by side, facing each other. “It's just, I know already. I've never felt this way. I know I will marry you. That is, if you're willing.”

“Is this a proposal?”

“Absolutely not. I'd like to try to arrange something a bit more elaborate. Think of it as a kind of pre-proposal. A testing of the waters.”

Miranda smiled. “Well, I'd hate to make you a liar….I guess you could say the water's warm enough for wading.”

The ride to the hotel felt endless. Through the window she watched the oversized mansions of the elite fly by, their heft squeezing out any hope of gardens. The Mazrooqis had an odd aversion to outdoor spaces; they built their homes with neither yards nor courtyards. How ugly it was here, in the wealthy end of town. Yet the Mazrooqis were proud to live here, proud to have escaped the claustrophobia of their city's ancient, rocky heart. Nadia once confessed that she had never been to the Old City before she began visiting Miranda. Unfathomable, to live so close to perfect beauty and to shun it.

Her mind strayed to who would be there tonight. Some of her friends from the Old City, certainly, as most of them were so desperate for evening entertainment they would attend the launch of a paper airplane. Mosi and Madina might come. But she didn't know who else was invited. Many ambassadors probably had more prestigious things to do with their evening. Or maybe not. It wasn't such a hopping town that there were swank social gatherings every night. They had chosen the event carefully. It wasn't political, wasn't diplomatic, wasn't high-profile. It was a low-key celebration of a local company, a comfortable place for them to come out as a couple.

The guard at the entrance to the hotel's parking lot waved them right through. This didn't happen when Miranda arrived by taxi (as she had many times, to swim at the pool or meet a friend for lunch). When she arrived alone, the guards stopped the car for ten minutes or so while they ran mirrors attached to the ends of sticks under the
engine, checking for secreted explosives. Not that she minded; she was all in favor of security measures. But it was fairly time-consuming, so eventually she just had taxis let her off down the road from the hotel and walked the rest of the way.

Tonight they were driven right to the entrance. A doorman ushered them from the car through the revolving doors, directing them to a small herd of white-robed men who surged toward Finn, kissing him and shaking his hand. Miranda had never felt so invisible.
“Sa'adat assafir! Ahlan wa sahlan!”
Your Excellency! Welcome! Finn vigorously resisted being called Your Excellency, but the Mazrooqis clung to honorifics. They surrounded them, picking them up in their current and wafting them toward the elevator. Finn made an attempt to introduce her but was interrupted by new arrivals slipping in at the last minute and thrusting their hands at him.