The Ambassador's Wife (23 page)

She was happy to see Mahmoud. Which was why she was surprised when she sat down at the desk to work and burst out with “Why aren't people taking to the streets? Why are there not newspaper headlines condemning this as against Islam? I don't understand! If someone were using
my
religion to murder people, and my religion were as central to my life as it is to the lives of most Mazrooqis, I would feel a desperate need to publicly say, ‘This is not Islam! This
is against the Quran!' Why are religious scholars not racing to be quoted in newspaper headlines condemning this, so as to prevent others from following in their footsteps? Why are they letting their religion be disgraced? Why are they not outraged when these murderers use God as their excuse? Do they secretly approve or
what
?”

Mahmoud was calm. Mahmoud was always calm, and he knew her. He had been subject to passionate outbursts before. He looked at her with his tranquil brown eyes and nodded in sympathy.

“And why is it that when something like this happens, everyone I know outside of this country sends me immediate e-mails to find out how things are here, how I am, but not one of my Mazrooqi friends contacts me? The Mazrooqi response to terrorist attacks seems to be something along the lines of ‘Oh.' ”

Mahmoud bowed his head. “I don't know,” he said. “You are right. I wanted to call you, but I thought I would talk with you today. I think we are just quiet because we don't want to make trouble.”

Was that it? she wondered. Were they just cowed? Afraid of drawing attention to themselves? Perhaps they thought that to step forward was to put themselves in the sights of the next bomber. It didn't occur to them that they could change things. She had forgotten the learned passivity of a people accustomed to their powerlessness. She had forgotten their religious fatalism. She had forgotten that for them, change had always been violent.

Her anger was gone, as quickly as it had overtaken her. She felt deflated and sad. Pulling her textbook toward her, she switched into Arabic. She hadn't yet learned to manage her outbursts in Arabic. Mahmoud tilted his new pen toward her so that she could see the purple circle on the cap.
“Banafsaji!”
she said. Mahmoud knew that purple was her favorite color for writing Arabic. “It's yours,” he said. “After this lesson.”

O
N HER WAY
home, she passed a woman's pink leather shoe, its inside worn and blackened, its outside still shiny, with rhinestones winking in the sun. Someone had loved it, someone had danced in it. And now it lay at the side of the road, without a partner, near a dead
orange cat and a handful of plastic water bottle caps. Bougainvillea petals had sifted down on top of it all, as if they had decided they were garbage too. Somewhere a would-be Cinderella was waiting in vain.

It was funny how often boredom and terror went hand in hand. How much they both made you notice. She was overwhelmed now by the infinite details of the world. Her world, here. Times like this, she spent all day at the easel, just to stay sane. Otherwise, her brain swelled with fearful fantasies, rages with no outlet, and images of AK-47s laid out on prayer mats, and she ended up not being able to do anything but stalk the house, a caged panther.

Every evening, when the garden outside her studio window darkened and dissolved into the night and she switched on her lamp (never, ever before pulling the shades, as per security instructions), the familiar fear started up in her belly. Every time she heard the gate clank open, she started from her easel and ran to the window. At least a dozen times it was a false alarm. The guards walked in and out of the gate all day long. She sat back down and tried to work, but when she was waiting, it was impossible. She made herself cups of tea and tried not to imagine the countless ways to die between the embassy and the Residence. At last she would hear the blare of the Mazrooqi police car horn that augured Finn's arrival. There was one long honk, followed by the growl of two armored cars sweeping around the corner of their house and whipping into the gate. This was followed by the unmistakable clatter of the bodyguards leaping out of the car with their AK-47s and scanning the rooftops, escorting Finn for the final leg to the house.

She willed herself to wait upstairs; he liked to find her at work. But at the sound of his cheery “Hiya!” echoing up to her as he took the steps two at a time, she shoved her easel away and started for the door. He was in her arms, he was real, he was smiling. “Fancy a cup of tea?” he said.

Worry always seemed foolish then, until the next morning, when he picked up his red cloth bag of sandwiches and kissed her good-bye. That was when the movies started up again in her mind and she
didn't know how to stop them. All she could do was to somehow pin her fears down in paint and hope they stayed there.

JANUARY 4, 2008

Finn

Miranda was in her studio, daubing the final streaks of paint onto a canvas before preparing to meet her students at Mosi and Madina's, when Finn knocked on the frame of the open door. “Could I have a word?” He wore khaki shorts and a blue polo shirt with the logo of his Afghani CP team, his weekend outfit. On Friday afternoons while she was painting or at class he usually read by the pool or played tennis with the US ambassador, if he didn't have too much work.

“Hang on, just finishing.” She stepped back to consider her canvas, still unsatisfied. It was crowded with naked women, as usual, but these women had gaping holes riddling their torsos. Some had voids where their lungs should be, or their hearts, wombs, breasts, bellies, livers, spleens. In each of these holes something rotten had begun to grow, a fat worm, shiny roach, or long-toothed rat.
Nature Abhors a Vacuum
, she wanted to call it.

“I have class, but not for an hour or so.” Wiping her sticky hands on a damp rag, Miranda turned to Finn. Her eyes burned, from either the paint fumes or the hours of intent looking.

“I'm not interrupting a burst of inspiration?” Finn was always fearful of disrupting her work and so rarely came to her studio, though he had created it. As soon as she had agreed to marry him, he'd stripped the front corner room on the second floor of its mismatched, overstuffed furniture and Persian carpets, leaving the wood floor bare. Somewhere in the Old City he'd found a carpenter to make two easels for her, to the same specifications as the one she kept in her former home. In the far corner was a plain blue sofa and round wooden coffee table, next to a long wooden bookcase. Along the back wall was a worktable Finn had covered with the full range of Michael Harding oil paints, boxes of charcoal pencils, and a stack
of new sketchbooks. Next to those were cans of Zest-it (she preferred its citrusy scent to the toxic fumes of turpentine) and gesso. Rolls of unstretched canvas leaned against the table. He'd made her walk from the bedroom with her eyes closed, leading her by the hand. She had looked around her, at the paints, the easels, and the space—all of the space!—and wept.

“I wish. Take a look if you want.”

Finn stepped into the room and tilted his head. “Holy women?”

“Ha ha. But yes. In a way. How are the accounts?”

“Do you really want an answer to that?”

“I guess not.”

Finn looked uneasy, his eyes uncharacteristically lusterless. Something twitched in Miranda's stomach. “What is it?”

“Could we sit?” He gestured to the sofa.

“What is it?” She was alarmed now. “Are you breaking up with me?”

He laughed. “Nothing like that, sweetheart. There's just a few things I think we ought to talk about. Before next month.”

Miranda stayed where she stood. “You used to be a woman?”

“Um…”

“You're addicted to online porn?”

“Sweetheart…”

“You're still married to someone else?”

“Miranda, will you please listen for a minute? It's nothing that serious.”

Demurely, she sank onto the sofa, folding her hands in her lap.

“I'm not sure that you're fully aware of how much your life is about to change.”

She waited, silently. Finn sat down next to her, taking her left hand between both of his.

“You know that once you are official, you'll have your own bodyguard, for one. Once that happens, you will not be able to leave the house without him. You will not be able to spontaneously meet a friend for coffee. You cannot run to the corner store for butter without giving him an hour's notice. You can't go on your long rambles around town unless your guard knows your entire route in advance.”

Miranda frowned at him, nodding. “Okay. I think I get it.”

Finn sighed, a hopeless little gust of air. “Think this through, Mira. Today you can go to class on your own. We're not married yet, protection is still optional. But come February, you're going to have a mandatory escort. Everywhere. And that means to your class.”

Something tightened around her solar plexus, a serpent of fear. “But a man can't come to class. He couldn't. He's—”

Finn searched her face, waiting for some realization she had yet to make. “He wouldn't need to come into the house with you, into your class. But he would be outside. He would see every woman who arrived, every woman who left. Even if they are covered, they won't want to be seen.”

Clarity arrived, like a slap in the face. “You want me to stop my classes.”

“It's not what I
want
…”

“But that's what you're telling me, isn't it. I can't do the classes anymore.
Jesus
.” She leapt to her feet, paced to the far end of the room before spinning back to him. “Finn, those classes are the only reason I stayed here. Those women are why I am here. Without those women I never would have even
met
you.”

“I know.” Finn didn't move, he just watched her, a helpless sadness creeping across his face.

“
Fuck
, Finn!” He hated it when she swore, but she couldn't help herself.

“You'd be putting them at risk.”

“And I'd be putting you at risk too, right? Isn't that what you are saying? That I could ruin you too? The wife of the ambassador, teaching scandalous things to the natives.”

“I wouldn't have put it like that.”

“No, you wouldn't.” She studied him. This wasn't something she had ever wanted to do, to balance her love for Finn on the scales against her passion for her women, for the thrill of witnessing their little leaps forward, the opening of their eyes.

“So what am I supposed to do with myself? Hold tea parties for the other wives?”

“Only if you want.”

“I
don't
want. I want—”

“You can work. Your own work.”

“I have plenty of time for that already.”

“You can still see them, Mira. It's just, the classes…”

“They could come here?”

“Not all at once. And as you know, some won't want to.”

“Tazzy can come?”

“Of course Tazzy can come. Just—you'll need to be careful.”

She turned away from him, toward the window. Looking out at the slices of garden visible between the bars, she felt a sudden impulse to reach her hands through the glass, letting its splintered diamonds rain around her, and take those iron bars in her fists, to shake them until they came loose. With a jerk of her head, she cast off the vision. These bars were here to keep danger out, not to confine her. She had come to this palace freely, locked herself in with joy.

Across the lawn, Semere trained a long green hose on his roses. The water arced out, catching the sun in an ephemeral rainbow shimmer. The thing was, Finn was right. Even if he weren't worried about his own reputation and security, her women were at risk. They were at risk already, but the watchful eyes of a Mazrooqi bodyguard could only further imperil them. Even had she wanted to continue teaching with an armed man in tow, the women were not likely to show up. A feeling of safety was critical for them to be able to work.

She turned to look back at Finn, slumped and defeated on her sofa, his hands limp on his lap. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so, so sorry.”

And she realized there had never been any decision to make. Finn was her home more than anyone or anything ever had been. “Well,” she finally said. “They've had me for more than three years.”

“Almost a university education. You should make them diplomas.” Light tiptoed back into his eyes.

“Diplomas that they can't hang on their walls, or show to their parents and grandparents? Diplomas they will have to hide, along with everything else?”

Finn's face crumpled. “Right. Sorry.” He unfolded himself from the sofa and came to her, his long arms wrapping around her waist
from behind. “How about this,” he said. “When this posting is over, we'll follow you for a bit. You pick the next country.”

“And your work?”

“I can take a leave of absence.”

“And what would we live on, while we gallivant around Tanzania? Do you know what artists make? How do you feel about lentils and rice?”

“I have savings. Enough for a year anyway.”

Miranda twisted in his arms to see his face. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly. I just don't want you to get fed up with me. To feel like you're stuck playing second fiddle all the time.”

She laughed. “I don't want to play the fiddle at all.”

“Stick with me for a couple more years, love, and you can be the conductor.”

JANUARY 11, 2008

Miranda

For her last class, Miranda chose an exercise on releasing control, a lesson she needed perhaps as much as her students did. She had begun to catch herself thinking of these women as her own creations. Tazkia was to be her masterpiece, the culmination of years of sculpting, her Galatea. Had Miranda not taken her untamed talent and given it form, purpose, freedom? Yet it was, ultimately, the women who did the work. Who stood over their own easels and sketchbooks, illustrating their own dreams. Perhaps it was not altogether a bad thing that the classes were coming to an end, before she lost all perspective.