The Ambassador's Wife (8 page)

“That's not what I'm worried about.” The Old City was crawling with stray cats, almost all of whom were mangy and riddled with disease. This innocent-looking kitten could be carrying enough bacteria and viruses to kill them all.

“Could I at least fix her paw? I'll give her a bath first!”

Miranda thought about what would happen to the kitten back on the streets. Muslims do not keep household pets, which was one reason the country overflowed with stray animals. But it wasn't just that the local children didn't keep animals at home; they seemed to openly loathe them. How many times had she stopped to yell
“Ayb!”
(shame) at a boy throwing rocks at a cat or whipping a dog with a stick? Torturing animals was a popular local hobby. She often wondered what this suggested about how the children themselves were treated at home.

Relenting, she watched as Madina tenderly lathered the mewling kitten in the kitchen sink with one of Miranda's self-imported organic, nontoxic soaps. With its fur slicked down, it was hardly bigger than a mouse. After fluffing it dry with a spare washcloth, Madina held the kitten still while Miranda examined its back left paw. A shard of glass was wedged into it. Using her tweezers, she carefully extracted it and then rinsed the wound.

“That kitten still needs a vet,” she said. These were not easy to find. Once a year a man at the British embassy brought a vet in from Dubai to treat expat animals, as there were so few qualified locals. But she let the kitten—and the girl—stay.

Madina, Mosi, and Qishr the cat (named after the Mazrooqi drink made from cardamom and the husks of coffee beans) were often joined by students, poets, and diplomatic interns passing through for a month or three. Yet the house never felt crowded. Not only was it plenty big enough to accommodate them all but they were all so busy they were rarely home. Miranda was there most often, because she worked at home, in the airy
diwan
that made up her top floor. Boy-crazy Madina was out nearly every night with a series of Lebanese, Palestinian, Egyptian, Mazrooqi, and Syrian men. They
went to the city's sole nightclub in the basement of the InterContinental, took all-night drives to the beaches of the South, and threw impromptu parties at their homes. Rare was the night she did not come home in love. “I didn't even know there
was
a nightlife here until you moved in,” Miranda told her. She worried over Madina's safety, but Madina assured her they were all gentlemen; she remained a virgin. And then Madina adopted Mosi as her protector. Every evening she would model her spangled skirts and tight jeans for him, soliciting his advice, before dragging him out of the house with her. That she actually got him to leave was impressive; Mosi loathed nightclubs and preferred to keep his own company. But he loved Madina, taking a fatherly interest in her well-being. At first, they had invited Miranda along as well, but she always begged off so that she could work while the house was empty. It was also the only time she could pay serious attention to her students' artwork.

The house was peaceful now. The kettle had boiled, and Miranda poured the water over a cup of green tea leaves and sat down at the kitchen table. They had only two hard plastic chairs, but on the rare occasions that there were more than two people in the kitchen, they sat on the counter or the floor.

Miranda wondered how long she should wait before e-mailing Finn. Three days? The same number of days she used to wait in Seattle before calling someone she'd met at a party? A ridiculous waste of three days, really. She would have Googled “how to invite an ambassador for tea” or something like that if she'd had Internet access. But she did not have Internet access. Wireless did not exist yet in the Old City, and what little wiring could be strung up in these impenetrable houses could not be trusted even to keep the lights on for an entire evening.

To check e-mail Miranda had to walk out of the Old City to a grimy little Internet café in Shuhadā' Square. She didn't do this very often. Squeezing in between two adolescent boys both covertly downloading porn was not her idea of a good time. Every Internet shop in the country was like this, with the young men doing their best to hide their illicit searches from each other, shrinking the images of copulating couples until they were tiny figures in the corners of their
screens. Still, Miranda didn't have to look hard to figure out what they were. All of the fevered and covert behavior around her made it kind of hard to focus on writing to family. Mostly she wrote letters at home and then uploaded them at the café from a flash drive, as quickly as possible.

Why was she so interested in this man anyway? She had no ambassador fetish—the few she had met were terribly worthy and dull—and, well, he was a
man
. Not that she hadn't fallen in love with men before, but not often, and it had been a while. Six years at least. Not since she met Vícenta.

It was, in fact, three days before she managed to get herself to the Internet café to write to Finn. Whether that was due to ambivalence about jumping off this particular cliff or a simple lack of time was anybody's guess. Miranda must have done a passable job with her note, as he wrote her back about seven minutes later to see if she might be free for tea the next day. She replied to say she was, pretty much any day, and would he like to have tea at her place? After all, Finn was new to the country, and had the misfortune of living outside of the Old City.

The next morning, before Miranda had even managed her first cup of coffee, “the guys” or “the team,” which was how Finn referred to his bodyguards, arrived at her gates to do a “recce.” Miranda's fogged brain puzzled over what
recce
was short for. Reconnaissance? Was that it? Somehow that seemed an odd word to have applied to her beloved home. She panicked when she saw them at her door, worried they would search her rooms and find the paintings. But they merely knocked politely at the gate, made sure the address was correct, glanced around her courtyard, and vanished. Finn arrived several hours later.

Turned out she needn't have worried about the teapot. The guys stayed outside in the courtyard (and at the top of her street, the bottom of her street, and across her street. There may even have been some at a neighbor's window).

“Do you have a curfew?” Miranda asked nervously, peering out one of her tiny slot windows.

“Yes. I absolutely must be at the embassy by seven thirty in the morning.”

“Hmm,” she said, noting with a glance at her phone that it was only 5:00 p.m.

“I know,” he said sadly. “It doesn't give us much time. But I'm free Thursday too.”

Miranda laughed. “We haven't even sat down yet! How do you know you'll want to see me again Thursday?”

“I know,” he said simply, smiling. “I just know.”

S
O DID SHE
. She'd known since the second the pomegranate rebounded and she looked up to meet his eyes. She didn't believe in love at first sight, but apparently you don't have to believe in it for it to happen. The funny thing was, it wasn't merely that kind of physical chemistry buzzy thing that had happened with so many of her previous loves, including Vícenta. It was a calmer, quieter thing, saying
not
(or rather, not
only
) “I want to throw this man down on the pavement and have my way with him” but rather “I want to be doing crossword puzzles with this man on Sunday mornings thirty years from now.” That kind of thing. On top of the buzziness.

There was something else that set Finn apart from her previous lovers. She had chosen him. For so long she had simply allowed herself to be chosen. There had been hardly any space in between her romantic entanglements. As soon as one ended, she had always told herself that she needed time alone, needed time to be free. But it never happened. She'd be at a St. Patrick's Day parade and suddenly find herself dancing with a firefighter in an Irish bar. Or she'd be doing volunteer work painting schools and a skinny girl with a shy smile would invite her to her art studio. People kept happening to her.

Granted, she kept letting them in. Miranda had always been more of a why-not? kind of person than a why? kind of person. So when she met someone who was attractive, bright, kind, and slightly eccentric, she couldn't find a reason
not
to get involved. Which was why after Vícenta left she had striven to keep herself unattached for nearly two
years, aside from a few minor flings. Solitude, it turned out, was wonderful. She loved not having to report her whereabouts to anyone. She loved eating alone in her kitchen with a book. She loved sketching in her
diwan
over the first cup of coffee of the day. It was an entirely new kind of freedom.

But Finn she chose. She chose him when she led him the long way through the Old City so that they'd have longer to talk. She chose him when she invited him home. She wanted to keep choosing him.

AUGUST 9, 2010

Finn

Cressida is hot and restless in his arms, squirming against his thin T-shirt. She is dressed for bed, in her blue flannel pajamas and fleecy sleep sack. It still gets cold at night, especially in this vast marble-floored monstrosity of a house. Numbly, Finn had somehow managed the bath and bedtime stories. They'd read
Ferdinand, Dear Zoo
, and
Giraffes Can't Dance
. Nothing that mentions a mummy. He is thankful for the routine of lifting his daughter into the bath, pouring water over her curls, and rubbing the flannel lightly over her back and bottom. Usually he sings, but that was the one thing he couldn't do tonight. He'd tried, as he brushed her eight tiny teeth and smoothed the lavender lotion over her fat little thighs, but his voice had cracked and died.

He is trying to get her to drink. Along with everything else, he'd panicked over what to give her before bed, without Miranda there to nurse her to sleep. But thank god for diplomatic connections. He'd rung one of the German dads from Cressie's playgroup in desperation, and less than an hour later he had several canisters of imported powdered formula. It wasn't long before Cressie could have cow's milk, he thought, but he couldn't remember the exact age. Miranda has always done Cressida's meal planning. She insists on whole grains, vegetables, and as much organic food as they can import in overstuffed suitcases. She would never have let Cressie drink the milk here. There is hardly any fresh milk available; they drink only the
long-life milk that comes in boxes. “By the time Cressie is old enough for cow's milk, we'd better be living somewhere that has organic dairy or I'm buying a cow,” she said.

Once he had the formula, Finn couldn't remember whether he was supposed to mix it with boiled tap water or with bottled water. Miranda had said something about bottled water being bad for babies, too high in minerals or fluoride or something. His mind raced now, trying to recall her words, her directions. Why hadn't he paid better attention?

He finally opted for the bottled water, sure that whatever was wrong with it couldn't be worse than the local tap water.

But Cressida isn't having it. Apparently sharing her mother's militant aversion to formula, she spits out the teat every time he tries to press it between her lips. Pushing the bottle away with both hands, she burrows her damp head into his armpit and wails.
“Mummy mummy mummy!”
Her small fingers claw at his chest, pulling down the collar of his shirt.

“You won't find what you're looking for there, sweetheart,” he says softly, rocking her. She opens and closes her mouth like a fish, catching the cotton of his shirt. He tries again with the bottle, but it only makes her cry harder. How is he going to get her to sleep if she won't drink her milk? How long will it take her to dehydrate if she keeps refusing her bottle? He catches himself. If she gets thirsty enough, she'll drink. She already takes water with her meals, doesn't she? She'll be fine. Even with no milk, she'll be fine. He lifts her to his shoulder and stands. Walking from room to room, switching out lights as he goes, he finds he is able to hum. And nearly forty-five minutes later, when he has hummed “Scarborough Fair” at least a dozen times, her sobs subside and she drifts off to sleep against the rumble of his chest.

Downstairs, Negasi, Teru, and Desta are huddled in the basement bedrooms they use occasionally after late dinner parties and before early breakfasts, refusing to leave Finn alone in the house. They had wept and hugged his rigid body. He was unable to respond, except by awkwardly patting their warm backs as if it were they in need of comfort. The dinner plates of
hammour
and creamed spinach, the potatoes
and rhubarb crumble, meant for the EU ambassadors, were stacked in rows in the refrigerators, uneaten.

Gently, Finn lays Cressida down in her cot and stands looking at her. At least she isn't old enough to understand what has happened. She isn't old enough for him to have to explain. Still, she is old enough to be devastated by the absence of her mother.

The first twenty-four hours are the most vital in a kidnap, as he knows all too well. If the victim—
god
, can he really think of Miranda as a victim? She just isn't the victim type—isn't found in the first twenty-four hours, the chances of finding her diminish rapidly. He's been working all evening, pulled constantly between the urgency of finding Miranda and his desire to comfort his daughter. But even the frenetic activity hasn't been able to stifle the intrusive thought that somehow this is fitting punishment. Doesn't he deserve this? Hasn't he been waiting for seven years for this particular darkness to catch up with him? He had been careful—painfully, lonesomely careful—for so long. Until he met Miranda. Still, if he deserves this, surely Miranda doesn't. Some people might call—and no doubt have called—her past checkered, but he would call it honest. She loved fiercely and freely, without thought of consequence. And she fit an awful lot of people into that tough little heart of hers. “I don't understand this societal obsession with one true love,” she said. “How can we be so small-minded? Don't we have things to learn from many loves?” She hadn't tried to hide anything from him. She refused to live a lie. This is what he loves most, and what frightens him the most.