The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (2 page)

“Five actual minutes?” you ask. Time is not how you know it, but how the country knows it.

“Five American minutes,” the man behind the desk says.
He pushes a sheet of paper toward you. On the paper you're supposed to write down your passport information. The man disappears to the back office. You assume he's gone to check on the room.

You stare at the passport information form. You take your passport from your backpack. You have your new blue suitcase in front of you and you place your backpack on top of it and lean over the suitcase and the backpack and start to fill out the form. Your name, place of birth, passport number, nationality. When you're done you call out to the clerk: “I've filled out the form.”

He returns to the counter and shows you a list of names on a computer printout, and says, “Which one?” Your name is halfway down the list, which you assume must be a list of people checking in, and then he crosses out your name so thoroughly, so violently, that there's no trace of it. You are given a key to the room that is now available, and you reach for the handle of your suitcase, which is still parked in front of you.

But where is your backpack?

You look on the floor. Not there.

You touch your back. You turn around, while touching your back, as though you might get a glimpse of it over your shoulder. You tell the man behind the desk you don't have your backpack. You look at the bottom edge of the desk, which does not extend to the floor. You think it might have inadvertently slid beneath. The hotel clerk looks down at the floor on his side of the desk. Nothing.

You are growing increasingly panicked—you are in Morocco
and you don't have your backpack. You think of everything in it—laptop, wallet with credit cards and all the cash you took out at Miami International. A three-month-old camera. Your library book. Your toiletries. A pair of small coral earrings. As the list of inventory of lost contents increases, you forget to breathe.

You try to explain to the unhelpful hotel clerk what's going on. He suggests that one of the bellboys might have taken the backpack up to the wrong room. He talks to the young and clean-cut Moroccan bellboys. The bellboys suggest you left it in the van; they tell you the driver is still parked outside. You don't think you left it in the van because you took your passport out of the backpack at the reception desk, didn't you? Maybe you already had the passport. You are so exhausted, so frazzled that you're no longer certain of anything. Everyone else's narrative seems more likely than yours.

You follow one of the bellboys out of the hotel. People pass you on the street—this is a crowded city—but you don't register faces. A color, red, there. A yellow hijab there. When you get to the van, it's locked, so you look through the windows. Nothing on the floor of the van. Where is the driver? Maybe the driver took the backpack and came looking for you. Maybe he's looking for you in the hotel.

You run back inside the hotel. The driver has been located and is waiting for you. He says he doesn't have the backpack. He walks outside to the van with you and unlocks it and the backpack is not there. You return to the hotel. The driver, looking very worried, speaks in Arabic with the bellboys and security guards stationed at the front door.

“They say you wear the backpack when you come in,” he tells you in English. Why were you trying to speak French with him? “They say they remember you had it.”

You wonder for a moment why they were looking at you so closely that they recall this, but you don't have time to wonder: you're half relieved that they remember. Your exhaustion is a curtain you cannot part.

You are beckoned to the luggage room. Someone has the idea that perhaps your backpack was moved to the luggage room, where people store bags when their room isn't ready, or when they've had to check out hours before their flight. Two hotel employees stand at the entrance to the luggage room as though they're flight attendants welcoming you on board a plane. You enter and see it's a small room with shelves, stacked with a dozen dark and travel-worn suitcases. A child's car seat. No black backpack.

You exit the claustrophobic room and walk up and down the gleaming white floors of the lobby, wondering what the hell you're going to do. A man behind the check-in counter tells you not to worry—is it the same one who was purporting to help you, or his friend? You can't tell. You can't remember anything anymore. He says there are security cameras. He points above the check-in desk. “You will watch and we will see if you had the backpack when you came in. We will look and see if the bellboy took it to someone else's room. You will look and we will see,” he tells you.

“Okay,” you say, wondering why these cameras weren't mentioned before. Hope expands within you, as hope does. “How do I see?” you ask.

“Wait here,” he says.

“Where?” you ask.

He points to exactly where you're standing.

While you wait, you watch others checking in. You want to warn them. But warn them about what? The fact that they might have left their luggage somewhere?

A young hotel employee with hunched shoulders enters the lobby and the man behind the desk says something to him. To you he says: “He will take you.”

You follow this hunched man past the ATM machine and into the elevator and you descend to the basement. He leads you into a small room where a large screen covers a cinder-block wall. The screen is divided into four quadrants and you can see that, in fuzzy black and white and mostly gray, it's currently showing what's happening in four different areas of the hotel—the front desk, the black bench in the lobby, a stairwell, and a roof. In the quadrant showing what's happening at the front desk, you can see the couple that's currently checking in. The couple you wanted to warn.

“You sat here on black bench,” the man says in rough English. He points to the screen that shows the black backless bench that runs along the side of the wall, perpendicular to the check-in desk.

“No,” you say. “I was standing at the check-in desk.” You point to the screen where the check-in desk is being shown.

“Okay,” he says. He tries to click on the box but nothing happens.

He tries to type something onto the keyboard but nothing happens.

“I need password,” he says.

The hunched man gets on the phone and calls someone and asks for the security password for the computer. He types the password on the keyboard and nothing happens.

He asks whoever is on the other end of the phone to repeat the password and he tries again. You hear frustration in the form of yelling coming through the receiver.

Five minutes ago, when you were in the lobby and learned of the existence of the surveillance cameras, you had great faith they would reveal which bellboy or hotel guest mistakenly took your backpack. But now your confidence plummets.

Two other men enter the small room. One of them has a beard and you guess this is the same man who was on the phone because he shouts out the password number again. His rage is evident.

Finally the hunched man succeeds and is logged on to the computer.

The bearded man who knows the password turns to you. “You were sitting on the black bench?” he asks, pointing to the image on the screen of the bench in the lobby that runs along the wall. The bench is vacant.

“No,” you say, and explain that you were at the check-in desk. You stand and point again, just to make sure there's no misunderstanding.

The bearded man instructs the hunched man to play back that camera. The hunched man sits at the computer but doesn't know how to make it work. The bearded man barks something
at him, but to no avail. Three more men enter. Now there are six men in the room. Not one of them knows how to play back the video.

“Excuse me,” you say from the back. “I might be able to . . . May I?” It's a small room and the men part ways so you can sit at the wooden chair in front of the computer. You have no expertise in surveillance, but this does not seem as complicated as they're making it. You use the mouse to drag the curser to the camera focused on the front desk. Then you press the rewind button and you scroll back.

The video player shows a time—10
A.M.
—but it's not yet that time. “What time is it?” you ask. Everyone has a different answer. It's explained that there was a time change the day before. No one has updated the time on the recording equipment.

You can't rely on the time. You continue to rewind, slowly. You stop when you see someone who looks like you but whose hair is darker, more dramatic-looking than your own and whose white shirt looks brighter. But it's you. The monochrome surveillance camera dramatizes every shade. You appear a relic of another era. A daguerreotype; a cameo in an old locket.

You rewind the video slightly further until you don't see yourself at the desk and then you press play. You and the six men in the room observe the video in silence.

You watch as you arrive through the security portal wearing the backpack and dragging the suitcase to the front desk. The bearded man points to the camera and says something to the other men in the room. You assume that he's saying, “Look, she had the backpack when she entered the hotel.”
You yourself are relieved to see this: you didn't leave it in the van; it wasn't taken while going through security.

You watch yourself arguing with the unhelpful man at the front desk about your room and how it was supposed to be ready. You watch him slide the passport information form across the desk. You watch as you remove your backpack from where it hangs on both shoulders and place it on top of your suitcase, which is standing upright on its wheels in front of you. You fill out your name, place of birth, passport number, and nationality and then you return your passport to its secure place in your backpack. You push it down inside, so it can't fall out, or be taken, from the top. You call for someone from behind the desk to help you. You see your mouth move: “I've filled out the form.”

At exactly this time, on the surveillance video, you notice a figure that's been sitting on the black bench in the lobby. He's a chunky man in a suit with a lanyard and a badge; he was not there when you first arrived at the hotel. He stands and takes a diagonal and deliberate path toward you. You see him stop beside you, to your right, while your head is turned toward the left as you try to get the attention of the man behind the front desk. Then you see the chunky man's fingers inch toward your stomach. His hand passes in front of you as he gently and slowly lifts the backpack straight out from where it's resting on the suitcase.

Watching the video, the men in the small cinder-block room start shouting and pointing, and one man grabs his head with both hands as though his favorite soccer player has missed a tie-breaking goal.

On the video, you watch the chunky man in the black suit stand beside you for ten seconds, as though in disbelief of what he's gotten away with. Or perhaps it's another tactic: he doesn't want to make any sudden movements. For a brief second, it looks like he's regretting what he did, and is going to return the backpack to its original position on top of your suitcase. But then, rapidly and with determination, he pulls a strap of the black backpack up over his shoulder, walks efficiently but not too quickly toward the exit of the hotel with his head up, passes by the security men and through the security portal, turns right, and is safely on the street.

You hear a sound coming from deep inside you—a strange, guttural yelp—and you stand up. The hotel security crew are all pointing at the screen and rewinding the surveillance video and exclaiming things in Arabic. Your mind is rioting now that you know for sure your backpack is gone. You see no way out of this. You want to go home. You have just arrived in Morocco and your backpack, your identity, has been stolen. Everyone has forgotten about you; they are all turned to the screen. They are getting more excited, pointing, replaying the crime—they've finally figured out how to play the video on their own. You turn so you're facing the filing cabinets in this tiny room that is a mockery of an office. You think you might cry.
Don't cry,
you tell yourself.
Don't cry.
And you know you won't. A strange adrenaline, a forceful calmness overtakes you. You have been in situations like these before and you feel this tranquillity, the green-blue of an ocean, wash over you.

You turn back around. “I need to cancel my credit cards,”
you tell the bearded man who knew the long and complicated password. He says they are calling the police, and you nod. “They will come here?” you say.

“Yes,” he tells you.

“While I'm waiting, can I make some phone calls?”

The hunched man is assigned to escort you to an office on the second floor. To get there you have to go up one elevator, and walk across the lobby to another. You pass the long black leatherette bench against the wall. It's a narrow, backless bench where no one is intended to sit for long.

On the way to the other elevator that will take you to the second floor, you see the driver of the van that transported you from the airport to the hotel. He is animated and happy. “I told you backpack not in my van,” he says. “I said you have backpack when you come into hotel.” You see how relieved he is that he's not responsible. So happy that your backpack was stolen by someone else!

You nod and continue being escorted to the second-floor office. A plump man in a gray suit stops you. He introduces himself as the head of security at the hotel. Where was he before? Not just when the backpack was stolen, but when the six men who couldn't figure out how to access the security videos were shouting passwords at each other and you were having to show them how to click the arrow on the computer. Where was he then?

The head of security is barrel-chested and his mustache is thick. He reminds you of the man on the Monopoly board game. The banker. He seems proud to be in charge. Even more than that: he seems proud that a theft has taken place in
the hotel and that he will have to talk to the police chief. “We have called the police chief and he is on his way,” he tells you. He's smiling when he says this. What is wrong with him? He's beaming with excitement and pride and doesn't apologize or say he's sorry about the loss of your backpack and its contents. He just stands there smiling, and then he tells you to relax. “Go to your room and relax. We are here,” he says.