Lulu in Marrakech (22 page)

35

As to those women

On whose part ye fear

Disloyalty and ill-conduct,

Admonish them first,

Next refuse to share their beds.

And last beat them (lightly).

—Koran 4:37

T
he next morning when Posy and I picked Suma up in the car with Rashid, she had a younger girl with her, who seemed thirteen or fourteen, both their heads demurely covered. The pudgy, sweet-faced little girl kept her eyes resolutely down and said nothing.

“You remember Desi,” Suma said, only that, with a nod of her head toward Rashid to indicate she couldn’t say more in front of him.

Rashid had trouble with the address, and we had to back out of a little wrong street and were a few minutes late for the appointment in Guéliz. The clinic was a stucco, one-story structure with a respectable, clean appearance and a classy brass nameplate on the door, DR. MOHAMMEDINE AZIZ, GYNÉCOLOGUE. The little waiting room was filled by one nurse behind a desk, three chairs, and the inevitable dwarf palm in a pot. I had expected a woman doctor, I had heard that only women doctors examined Muslim women, but, alarmingly, a man in a white coat crossed the room behind the nurse’s desk and vanished into his office.

The nurse greeted us and went to tell the doctor that Mademoiselle Suma Bourad was here. Beyond the open door, we saw the examining table—more like a chair—slightly reclined, like a dentist’s chair, with stirrups that would hold the knees widely splayed apart to afford the doctor an up-close view of the vulva of the victim, who was obliged to lie like a split pomegranate, her lower legs flopping unsupported from the knee brace. A wicked array of specula and spoon-looking devices lay on a tray nearby. The poor little girl Desi seemed to pale when seeing all this, and I thought she uttered a little sob in her throat. Suma pushed her toward the man, who beckoned, without a welcome, as if in his mind he already knew she had committed the transgression she’d been accused of. There was a strange odor of clinic and female that emanated from the doctor’s examining room. I thought of terrible recipes in
The Perfumed Garden.
“Boil well in water, locusts,” said the book. “This immersion is to be repeated several times. The same result may be obtained by fumigating the vulva with cow-dung.…”

Then a new doctor, a woman after all, appeared and closed the door on our anxious gazes. The nurse stared balefully at us. Almost immediately we heard poor little Desi scream. I wondered who was doing what. The woman doctor would examine her, and then the man doctor would sign the certificate, the nurse explained.

“She is frightened,
elle a peur,
” Suma said. “She believes she is hurt forever.”

“They are often frightened,” the nurse said in French to Posy and me. “The doctor is very careful, she is very gentle.”

They were gone no more than ten minutes. The nurse was already preparing a document of some kind, and the woman doctor came out after Desi, waving a drying Polaroid photo. Desi gave Suma’s name and birthday, as she had been told to do, and the nurse looked at her sharply.

“
Bien sûr,
I’m paying her mother,” Suma said to us as we walked outside and waved to Rashid, who was parked. Suma had her arm around Desi’s shoulder, and Desi’s relief at still being alive and, apparently, undamaged had shown in smiles now. Suma spoke to her in Arabic.

“Or you could say Monsieur Khaled is paying,” she said to us. “Of course the doctor was careful not to damage… anything.” We all looked inside the envelope containing the certificate, at the photo that showed a viscous pink anatomical something, like a tonsil or the underside of your tongue. Desi stared at it, as fascinated as we.

“I was afraid he’d insist on taking a picture of Desi’s face, too,” Suma said. “That is, of the person who has sat for the photo. They do that, to make sure it is really
vous‐même
. I hope this is good enough for Amid.” Of course we had questions, Posy and I, but we didn’t ask them. For instance, what had she meant, Khaled was paying?

I suggested we should go get it copied now, and I would see that Amid got a copy, and we’d get one for her parents.

“Thank you, madame,” said Suma. “Please tell me what Amid says and what you think he feels.”

36

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak.

—William Congreve,
The Mourning Bride
, act 1, scene 1

T
he next night, the eve of our planned rendition of Amid,
le tout Marrakech
would attend a well-publicized concert at the French Cultural Center to benefit the Hassan II hospital and associated charities. The Paris Baroque Ensemble, chorus, and soloists would perform Moroccan and French sacred music, and the French consul would host drinks beforehand and a reception at the entr’acte in the courtyard. My status as Ian’s official companion, as opposed to mere house guest, was confirmed in public for the first time by my being there on his arm. This should have pleased and reassured me, but I saw only its utility for him in deterring speculation about Gazi being at his house, if any such existed. I knew it was my role as the beard.

Half of the invited guests were Moroccan, the other half French, with a few Brits and Americans thrown into the mix. Strand was there, but not Tom. The Moroccans were mostly wearing European clothes, with important jewelry, but some wore splendid embroidered djellabas and caftans. I half wished Americans had a native costume for ceremonial occasions, though I suppose it would be jeans. One of the king’s sisters was to look in, at least for the first part of the concert, which would feature works by Messiaen, Telemann, and Verdi, and the Moroccan composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab, and extracts from the
nouba
Ochaq, what ever that would turn out to be, all to be performed on the piano, violin, oud, qanoun, and ney.

“The princess’ll sensibly miss the works of Olivier Messiaen, Trois Petites Liturgies of the Divine Presence, ” said Ian, reading from the program. “The most deeply horrible music imaginable, I should think, Messiaen.” I was impressed that he was so musically literate but apparently of conservative tastes. I wasn’t familiar with the music of O. Messiaen.

But I must have been more aware than others of the presence of the DST, the Moroccan secret service, stout men in suits hovering near windows and exits, obvious to me by their burly size and expressions of alertness dissembled by nonchalance. That wasn’t surprising, given the royal attendance, but I was totally dumbfounded to see Taft, elegantly dressed in a dark suit. To see him, moreover, moving toward us, accompanied by a well‐dressed CIA‐wife type (gray‐blonde, slim, and fiftysomething, in a cocktail suit). He wore a hearing aid, or so it was meant to seem.

“Lulu! How nice to see you!” He kissed me on one cheek and waited to be introduced to my companions. The woman was called Peggy Whitworth. I introduced Ian, Posy, and Robin with elaborate correctness, unsure, though, whether to present them to Robin first, as the famous and oldest one, or to Peggy, the female, finally choosing the famous poet.

“Peggy drove down from Rabat just for this. Her husband, Dick Whitworth, and I were together in Korea. Honored.” Taft nodded at Robin and shook all the hands.

“Dick’s not much of a music lover,” Peggy said, to explain her solo presence. No attempt was made to explain how they and I were acquainted, though I tried to think of one for later.

“Ian was just saying he wasn’t a great Messiaen fan,” I said.

“It’s bloody hell, I’m sure,” Posy said brightly. “French. The whole program is designed to goad me into blurting my most philistine thoughts. I know Robin hates it when I do utter them. Perhaps he sincerely doesn’t have them!”

“Messiaen you have to have heard a few times,” Robin conceded. “I heard his Mass for Double Choir at the Madeleine in Paris, and it was overwhelming,” he said, not contradicting her on the cultural correctness of his inner life. Or maybe he didn’t hear her. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the suspicion that Robin was slightly deaf; he had that way of declaiming to forestall conversation. “Is it great music? Just possibly. It’s hard to know. Or is it ‘an empty, high-spirited trip through a complicated score,’ where nothing happens, as, I think it was Adorno, said. And what we can expect from the Parisian Baroque—is it?—Ensemble cannot be guessed.…” He went on with his monologue in this incomprehensible way.

What was Taft doing here? Was this his way of telling the DST he was here on the up and up, with nothing to hide? Looking around the room as best I could, I didn’t see Colonel Barka, but I knew he’d been worried about Taft being in town, a circumstance puzzling in itself, since it was our people who had put me in touch with him.

“Don’t worry, we all want to roll these people up,” Taft had said, meaning, I took it, Amid et al. Now he said, “Peggy is a talented pianist herself.”

We found seats, which were not reserved, and somehow I was sitting next to Colonel and Madame Barka and the Crumleys, with Ian and Pierre Moment behind us. I was acutely aware of Madame Barka, whom I had never met; I had never been sure there was a Madame Barka.

Some efforts of beautification had conferred an air of musical seriousness to the basic auditorium style of the French Cultural Center. The small stage raised the musicians a little higher than the audience. Behind them two vases of flowers stood in niches against the back wall, which was decorated with framed photocopies of music manuscripts, perhaps Debussy or Satie. The soloists sat in folding chairs to one side, and a quintet of instrumentalists sat in the center, while the chorus crowded in and out as they were required.

The music started, beginning with “Nouba Raml al Maya,” with the Chorale Josseur, for “violin, oud, qanoun, and ney,” followed by “Va Piensero” from
Nabucco
—perhaps this work is obligatory wherever French people gather—and a short choral extract from Telemann. To this piece, the oud, qanoun, and ney contributed their sounds with a peculiarly discordant effect so metaphorically appropriate to the idea of East and West attempting harmony. Next we stood at our places during a short break in the program while the royal lady departed, a youngish woman in brocade with a dozen people in attendance.

The works after this pause were politely received. I was relieved that I was now able to hear Arabic music with more plea sure than when I first came, but I wasn’t sure how much pleasure the locals were going to take in this French work. Perhaps it could pass as ecumenical; though it did mention Jesus quite a lot, the words spoke more generally of love, and it seemed quite possible that it was supposed to be taken as referring in religious terms to profane love as internationally understood, the opposite of the Song of Solomon:
“Mon arc‐en‐ciel d’amour / Désert d’amour chantez, lancez l’auréole d’amour…”
All of which made me think only of profane love, of Ian, of Ian and Gazi, of other passages in my life, though the music itself tended to blight any reveries with its intrusive cacophony of atonal sounds and peculiar instrumentation.

You are the music while the music lasts. When the music was over, we all stood up for the real interval, with dreamy smiles of approval masking relief, and drifted toward the area where the drinks would be served. I couldn’t see Ian, who had been sitting behind me.

“Heavy duty,” said Strand.

“Mademoiselle Sawyer, let me present my wife, Aisha,” said Colonel Barka. I inhaled her perfume; she was a stoutish lady in European dress, with a beaming, pretty face and the dyed black‐red hair one sees so often on brunettes of a certain age. Apparently she spoke no English, so she did not attempt to speak to me at all but smiled in a welcoming fashion, understanding that I was an acquaintance of her worldly, estimable husband, he who went out every night. This took a few minutes of chat as we shuffled along in the slow-moving aisles toward the foyer.

How are strange, upsetting things gradually borne upon you? It didn’t strike me in a flash, but just with a dawning sensation of dread, that Ian was no longer there. Wasn’t in the crowd, wasn’t looking for me, wasn’t to be found. At the same time I was aware that Taft, with a significant look at me, was moving rapidly toward the foyer and that some DST guys, who had seemed to leave at the interval with the princess, now moved in front of the windows of the lobby. The colonel, however, and Madame Barka shuffled along with the rest of us, unconcerned, talking of music.

“Drinks” were fruit punch and a slightly rum-spiked version, signified by different glasses, passed by waiters with trays of them. When, after ten minutes, Ian didn’t come back, I felt afraid and flew to the side of Robin Crumley. Imagine a world in which Robin Crumley seemed a haven! I clung to him, and to Posy’s enormous bulky presence, hoping the three of us would make a target big enough for Ian to find us.

“ ’E probably went to the gents’,” said Robin in a strange, faux-cockney accent. But when we had stood there another ten minutes, Ian hadn’t appeared.

“I think I’m not perfect,” Posy was saying.

“My dear, to what do we owe this disarming admission?” said Robin.

“I mean, it might have to do with the baby. Or I’m just hungry. My stomach could be upset.”

“Good God,” said Robin.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Posy said. “There for a minute…”

I wasn’t paying that much attention to Posy—she’d been saying things like this for a few days. I was thinking about Ian: Maybe he he’d gone to the men’s room; but other possibilities flooded across my mind, suggested by Taft’s presence and by the vague questions that surrounded Ian, even if I didn’t articulate them. “We’re going to roll up these people,” Taft had said.

Peggy Whitworth in her brilliant yellow cocktail jacket came up to us, radiant, and said, “We get so little music in Rabat.” Now I didn’t see Taft, either. Maybe I was just having an attack of paranoia. Strand was next to me. “Do you know Strand Carter? This is Mrs. Whit‐worth,” I introduced them automatically, and it seemed to me they exchanged a look, the tiniest glint, that said they did know each other. Was I imagining this? “Have you seen Ian?” I began to say to each person I knew, keeping Robin in sight. I went outside, where people smoked. Rashid, waiting with other drivers at the curb, had no notion where Ian was, had not seen him, or so he said. I went back inside.

Now there was Taft again, grim, and he said in a low voice, “Shit, Lulu, something’s off here.” It seemed to me then that everyone else was in on some plan, and knew what was happening, and were conspiring together to keep something from me. My head swam. Like a bride waiting at the altar, I insisted on standing in that lobby until everyone got impatient and made me come back to sit down.

I went back in. The second half of the program was about to begin, and it was about seven thirty. Afterward, the Moroccans would be going to restaurants to have their dinner, and we were expected at Madame Frank’s. It struck me that maybe Ian would turn up there.

As I sat down, I was occupying myself with these observations, trying to train myself to notice, notice, when, in a way I’ve gone over and over trying to account for, in my peripheral vision, something jarred. It was a small note of discord in an otherwise calm atmosphere, in which I was apparently the only distraught person; I assumed my agitation at not finding Ian was peculiar to me.

I had been thinking of explanations of why Ian wasn’t there, and about Posy’s intermittent labor pains, and about how I was failing her by my insufficient interest in the drama of birth. I’m interested in it, of course, but just then almost everything else was more absorbing: my Amid journey; Ian’s whereabouts; Gazi; when I should go back to Khaled’s with the key, which the colonel was to slip to me to night but hadn’t, to get her passport. Who was Peggy Whitworth? Still, I did feel for Posy and resolved to be more of a sister or mom to her at her hour of need.

Nor can I account for my own actions next—they seemed automatic, and in retrospect I can see that if I’d thought through what to do, I’d have hesitated or fled. This wasn’t something I’d been trained for, wasn’t the automatic action of a well-trained person, and was not anything I’d ever faced; it was an impulse. But it was that I saw Desi, little Desi the certified virgin, kitchen maid at the Al‐Sayads’, sitting at the end of the row ahead, where no one had been sitting before.

Her clothes startled me. They seemed wrong. She wore a bulky, padded coat in an Indian print, but in retrospect, it wasn’t even that so much, it was the fact that she was there at all, this child, a maid at the rich Saudi house—what on earth was she doing here? She was sitting in front of me and a little to the side. Without thinking, I moved over a couple of chairs to be directly behind her and leaned forward to make sure it was she. Strange: When I moved places, I took my purse with me. From behind her, I could inspect even more closely; the bulky, long garment she wore was not a garment she would wear, and the curve of her thin little shoulders and—for I leaned around to see her profile—her look of glazed despair, tears dried on her cheek, told me I was right to be scared.

The person whose chair I’d taken appeared and was tapping me on the shoulder.
“Madame, je pense que vous avez pris ma place…”