The Shield of Darius (8 page)

Ben tucked one leg under the other and looked wistfully up at the spotted ceiling, swaying back and forth and singing a whining chant.
“sha-sone, sha-sone, sha-sone. Tee-rat bo-ree day sha-sone.”

The song drew him back into the crowded streets of Damascus where the family had stopped for three days on the way back to the States. While the others rested, he had walked alone from their hotel into one of the sprawling covered bazaars, drawn by the drumming hammers of brass and silver smiths and the animated chatter of haggling Arab merchants. He’d wandered through narrow, stall-lined alleys filled with the pungent heady smoke of hashish pipes and meats roasting over open braziers, realizing after more than an hour in the labyrinth that he was completely lost. His most vivid memory of that moment was that he wasn’t afraid. There was a momentary concern about worrying his parents, then a surge of excitement about working his way back through the twisting tunnels to the outside. It had been disappointingly easy. A few questions asked in Farsi, but understood by the Arab-speaking merchants. Pointed directions, and finally a young man who beckoned him to follow and led him back to the arched gate through which he had entered.

“You with me, washer woman?” Jim’s question from the other bed brought Ben back into the stark confines of the cell. “Hell, you haven’t been here long enough to start flipping out on me.”

“I’m okay. Just remembering.”

“And did your remembering help you figure out how you’re going to talk like an A-rab? Even if you know some of the language, you won’t sound like one – especially a woman. ”

“Ben grinned. “Yeah. I’ve thought about it. I’ll be mute. Just grunt and point. The streets will be full of beggars.”

Jim laughed a deep belly laugh. “You think you can go out there and walk around as some woman who can’t talk? Hell, Ben. That’s just crazy.”

“That’s why it will work,” Ben said, looking again at the square wooden panel below the window, held in place by eight large flat-headed screws. He was back in the bazaar, and one way or another, he believed he could find his way out.

SEVEN

The central offices of the United States Department of State are located in a square, sterile concrete building that sits in a triangle in the Foggy Bottoms district of Washington D.C.  Not every office is housed there. As the department grew, the Bureau of Consular Affairs moved its passport office northeast to an equally uninspiring, but much more functional office building on 19
th
Street, a comfortable walk from the Farragut Square Metro stop. Within these offices Consular Affairs records personal information from the passport applications of over twelve million Americans annually, filing data submitted by seventeen regional passport centers across the country. There is nothing particularly secret or unusual about the information. It includes name and address, height, hair and eye color, occupation, place of birth, and marital status. The passport application also asks for countries to which the applicant plans to travel, departure date, and planned length of stay.

Amy Trossen had been hired as a clerk in the Passport Processing Center of Consular Affairs within a month of having completed her two-year secretarial degree at Forest Park Community College in St. Louis, Missouri. Until Amy left St. Louis for Washington, she and her mother had spent twenty years in the same faded yellow frame house on Taylor Avenue, just east of Forest Park, a home Delores Trossen had rented when she learned she was pregnant with Amy and couldn’t single out the father. She’d thought about trying to have the pregnancy taken care of, but had been frightened and waited too long. When she threatened two of the possibilities with paternity suits, they laughed. “Me and what other ten guys?” they said. With the welts from her father’s hand still stinging red against her cheek, Delores moved out of her parents’ home on Pershing Street and rented the two bedroom place on Taylor Avenue.

Amy had never considered that she and her mother really ‘lived together.’ It had always seemed that Amy lived alone. Until the girl was eleven she had been cared for by Bessie Hall, a mountainous fussing black woman who lived in the bungalow next door. Bessie met her at the bus each afternoon after school, huffed and rolled down the sidewalk to the yellow house where she gave Amy spaghetti and milk for supper, knitted as her “little child” did her homework, then tucked her in at night. Sometimes Amy heard her mother come in after the midnight shift at the GM plant and stumble her way into bed. More often, Delores didn’t come home at all. One afternoon in April, Bessie wasn’t at the bus stop and Amy found her wedged into her old over-stuffed recliner, knitting still on her lap, her big heart crushed by the mammoth body it was no longer able to support. The girl stayed alone with Bessie for nearly an hour, crying and talking to the big dead woman. Then she kissed her goodbye and went next door to tell Mrs. Anston. From then on, she fixed her own spaghetti, tucked herself in, and before graduating from the college at Forest Park had arranged to get out of St. Louis and take the job in Washington.  

In July Amy would receive her twenty year certificate and pin from Consular Affairs. Until three years ago she had dreaded that landmark as second only to Bessie’s death among low points in her life. Give or take a few weeks, she feared the pin would mark her fortieth birthday, her fortieth year as a single woman, and her fortieth year of virginity. But Javad had changed all that. She would still be forty, of course. But July now celebrated her third year with Javad, three years that had already changed one of those dreaded milestones and promised to change another.

Amy Trossen had grown into a tall angular woman who, before Javad came into her life, spent a great deal of her time in Washington avoiding herself. Her single mirror had been in the small bathroom of her Arlington apartment and she used it only to apply the light makeup that kept other women in the office from asking if “she was feeling well today.” After meeting the handsome Egyptian, she purchased a full length mirror and attached it to the inside of her closet door where she now occasionally stood naked, trying to decide what this mysterious man with the easy laugh and gentle touch found so attractive about her. Though she ate ravenously and had a particular weakness for chocolate caramel cheesecake, she remained thin to the point of appearing anorexic. As her workmates passed thirty and began to bulge around the hips and thighs, Amy stayed rail thin and shapeless.

In her late twenties, Amy had gone through a lengthy period of wondering if she was gay. Not because of any particular sexual urgings, but because she appeared so boyish and breastless, with thick sandy hair that splayed out like a wide corona unless kept short and tightly permed. And she wanted so badly to be held. Not necessarily made love to. The thought of sex frightened her. But held close by
someone!
She felt the longing as she watched lovers walk arm-in-arm along the Mall, mothers cuddle babies on busses, and yes – even women holding hands along the Potomac Parkway. She felt the stirrings that accompanied Javad’s first touches with great relief, and had since decided that hair care was much more a matter of interest and training than genetics. As her hair grew out, she found a fuller, softer style that seemed to compliment her prominent cheekbones and high bridged nose, and although she certainly was not pretty, she now felt very comfortable sitting with Javad at dinner in Washington’s best restaurants.

They had met quite by accident at the opening performance of
H.M.S. Pinafore
at the Kennedy Center. Theater was the only intrusion into society Amy permitted herself, finding in the audiences of the vast main level performance hall a preoccupation and self-centeredness that permitted her to sit among the Washington crowd virtually unnoticed. As a result, though he was seated immediately to her right, she ignored Javad’s initial approach, assuming he must be speaking to someone else. The second “Good evening” was too well directed to be mistaken, and flustered her. But she looked up from her program and attempted a smile.

“Good evening.”

”Are you a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan?”  His accent clipped the words abruptly.

She briefly considered cutting him off with a curt reply, deciding instead to be polite.

“I like some better than others.
Pinafore
and
The Mikado
are my favorites.”

“Those are my favorites also!” He brightened like a child who had just found a lost puppy. “I am also fond of
The Pirates of Penzance
, though I am not very familiar with some of their other operettas. My father used to say, ‘Appreciation is largely a matter of exposure,’ so it is probably unfair for me to judge.”

“Your father sounds like he was a wise man,” Amy said, finding that she was enjoying the conversation.

“Is,” the man corrected. “He is very much alive and still very wise. Unfortunately, he is terrified of flying and will not follow his own sage advice when it comes to that ‘exposure.’ He is living in Cairo, and will be until the day he dies.”

“And you? Are you visiting from Cairo?”

“Oh, no. I have been here almost twenty years now, and have been a citizen for ten. He reached across to her, extending his hand. “My name is Javad Esfarjahni.”

“
Esfar
.... Again, please,” she blushed, “... if you don’t mind.”

Javad laughed lightly. “It’s pronounced just like saying ‘Is far Johnny,’ but with an
Es
at the beginning instead of an
Is
, and the emphasis on the Johnny.”

She turned slightly in her seat and took his hand. “I’m Amy Trossen. That’s like Chosen, but with a Tr instead of a Ch.”

He laughed warmly, showing even white teeth beneath his dark mustache.

“I am very glad to meet you, Amy. Are you just visiting

Washington?”

“No. I work here. One of the Government troops.”

“I live in Philadelphia, “he offered, “but come here often to work with various customs problems. I am in the import business. Mainly Oriental carpets. With all that is happening in the Middle East, they are becoming increasingly difficult to get into the country. You don’t happen to work in the customs office, do you?” He smiled and winked suggestively.

“Not quite. I’m with Consular Affairs. Passport Office. Now if you need to go out of the country to buy a carpet, I can help. But I won’t be able to do anything to help you get it back in. Not very exciting work, I’m afraid.”

“It sounds very interesting to me. Tell me what you do.”

Amy was not used to talking about herself, but filled the ten minutes until the curtain rose chatting comfortably with Javad. During the performance, he occasionally touched her arm and nodded at a song he particularly liked and when intermission came, she felt comfortable enough to ask about his import business.

“I can get you a very good buy on a Persian carpet if you like. Wholesale prices. Kashan, Baluchi, Isfahan – just tell me what you like.”

“It’s enticing, but I don’t know the first thing about them, and I’m afraid Persian rugs are a bit beyond my budget.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said, wagging a finger playfully. “And I can teach you all you need to know. Selling rugs is like selling automobiles. I have to repossess them occasionally. But unlike cars, they become more valuable with age. Let me try to find you a nice used Kashan.” The curtain rose on Act Two, cutting short his sales pitch and he didn’t pursue it again as they walked together after the performance into the long, red-carpeted foyer with its ornate row of Scandinavian glass chandeliers.

“I have enjoyed this very much, Amy,” he said as he helped her into her jacket. “Would I appear too forward if I asked if I could call you the next time I come to Washington? Perhaps there will be another performance that we could enjoy together.”

She gave him her number, thinking it a nice gesture on his part, but certain she would not hear from him again. He called two weeks later and invited her to dinner.

“The Boston Pops is scheduled at the Concert Hall. It should be a light and fun performance.”

She found his company even more relaxing and comfortable at their second meeting. He brought a color brochure of his carpet selection, describing varieties and values.

“Whew!” she gasped as she leafed through the pages. “I had no idea these were so expensive!”

“An investment of a lifetime,” he smiled. “But I haven’t come to sell you one. I just wanted you to know what I do. You have made my last two visits to Washington my most enjoyable ever.”

The following November, she took two extra days over Thanksgiving and drove to Philadelphia at Javad’s invitation. They had been seeing each other two or three times a month, always in Washington, and she now invited him to her Arlington apartment for drinks and dessert after each evening out. They talked and he held her. Nothing more intimate. Just long quiet evenings resting against his warm chest, listening to her collection of favorite show tunes until he said he had to go. She hadn’t asked for more and he hadn’t offered.

As she forced her blue Taurus up to seventy to stay with the holiday traffic surging out of the city along I-65 toward Philadelphia, she had wondered on that Thanksgiving eve if he wanted any more from her. He was a perfect gentleman – if that was what constituted perfection now days. Though she knew they were friends, he still did not seem to care for her enough to want her thin and unexciting body. She tried to push the thought aside, concentrating instead during the three hour drive on the comfort she felt in his arms and in the softness of his parting kisses. But it kept creeping back, stirring through her entire body and whispering that she wanted more from him than comfort. She wanted him to love her.

Amy found the Persian Garden Oriental Imports on 18
th
Street just north of Rittenhause Square. Though the storefront was narrow and inconspicuous, she stepped through the door into a spacious room of lush ferns and colored fountains, separating knee-high piles of richly patterned carpets. Javad met her with a long crushing squeeze and showed her to an office hung with elaborately engraved brass trays and finely woven silk tapestries. The air was scented with sweet smoke and steeping tea leaves. He served the tea in delicate glass cups with almond flavored pastries and asked about her drive, then led her back into the display room.

“Let me show you my treasures,” he said, lifting a small rug, geometrically patterned in red and black, from the top of one pile. “This is a Turkoman. See this distinctive design? It is one of the tribal emblems. And here is a very nice Heriz. It has a strong angular pattern with an interwoven stem and leaf motif.”

He showed her Sennehs from Kurdistan and multi-colored Kashans, each with the pride and appreciation of one who loves his trade. As they completed the tour he turned to her abruptly, his face clouding.

“Forgive me. I have been thoughtless. You must be tired after driving all this way. I’ve been so excited about showing you these….”

She pulled him to her and kissed him. “I wouldn’t have missed it. But I
am
tired.”

“I’ve made a reservation for you at the City Center Hilton – but it is a reservation I would be happy to cancel.”

She looked at him expectantly, but was afraid an answer would show that she misunderstood.

“Amy, you are an extremely attractive woman.” His dark eyes caressed her face and she almost believed him.