“How in God’s hell—?” Shredding the remains of the reefer into the grass, Tony raised his head. “First you talk Dad. Then jihadist? As if there’s a link?”
“It’s clear,” I said. And incredibly, all at once it was. “Because the link’s a feeling, not a thinking thing.”
The fear of jihadists, the fear I felt as a child awakening to the thump, thump of heavy footsteps coming from my parents’ bedroom. The thump, thumps followed by my mother’s whimper. Trembling, cringing, I clutched the top sheet and held my breath, waiting for the footsteps to close in on me. They never did. Which was why I was still waiting.
Tony blew the remainder of the shreds away from our rock. “You’re so quiet.”
“Sadists,” I said finally. “It’s as if all the evil in the world has joined forces.”
Tony rose and brushed off his jeans. “Too right, love, too right.
Around eleven, I walked Tony to the car and stood in the driveway as the taillights disappeared into the night. Turning toward the house, I caught a flash of headlights and wondered who on earth would be on this dead-end road at this hour. The car slowed as it passed, then picked up speed. Teenagers looking for a place to make out?
I checked on Hamid in the bedroom and went onto the deck to watch the moonlight play with the ruffles of the junipers. The back yard sloped down to a gully of pampas grass. Beyond the gully, railroad tracks divided the field of scrub from the dried-up creek bed. The distant sea shimmered under the stars. I listened to Hamid babbling and smacking the mobile over his crib. Then to the silence of Spain, the eerie quiet of air uncontaminated by the ever-present low-frequency infra-sound of too many wires, factories, satellites, and cell phone towers. I’ve always thought silence is a form of God’s grace. The pause in the mass when the celebrant takes his seat. The catch between notes in a syncopated stanza. For the first time since finding the woman’s head on the beach, I felt safe. I took a deep breath. The peace smelled of pine.
I moved from the deck to the bedroom where Hamid, having surrendered to the mobile, slept with his arms around his penguin. I touched his nose. “‘Night, mini-munchkin.” Somewhere a dog barked and all at once I missed Mozart. His goofy grin and stump of a tail. This afternoon when Tony and I pulled up to the Casa Pero, he refused to get out of the car and Tony had to drag him into the kennel. The minute Mozart saw the play area he charged ahead and began harassing the other dogs.
I slipped off my shoes. In a rare lapse of bad taste, Mom had furnished the bedroom in American traditional. A Sheraton mirror hung over the Queen Anne vanity, and adjacent to the window overlooking the deck, a magnificent Chippendale desk stood on ball and claw feet. What a relief to take off the black shirt and slacks–my Muslim suit. A University of Texas knee-length tee-shirt served as a nightgown. I settled into the four-poster bed—mom’s lacy canopy was in storage—and opened the Spanish grammar to the chapter on the subjunctive. Drifting in and out of sleep, I was only vaguely aware the book had slid to the floor.
A dull thump from the deck. I opened my eyes. Either I imagined a shadow or one moved outside the window. A dark blur. A dead branch blown from the eucalyptus tree?
A crash. I sat upright. Cautious footsteps crunched across broken glass: toe, heel, toe. My body shut down, a power failure in a storm. Silent men in black balaclavas moved through the doorway. Weapons hung from straps across their chests. Hard to tell how many. A few prowled around the bed, two circled the crib.
“Get out.” My shout muffled by a hand clamped over my mouth. The rough canvas glove reeked of motor oil. Other hands pinned my shoulders to the mattress. When I gagged, the glove drove my head into the pillow. Hamid shrieked, and I fought the arms holding me down.
Hamid’s cry became a sustained scream. A burly shadow raised the butt of his weapon above Hamid’s head, and the baby’s wail broke into hysterical sobs. “Take me instead,” I screamed, as the tallest shadow in the group grab the perp’s arm. The gun was lowered, and I caught my breath the instant before tape was pressed across my mouth. A ripping sound as the tape was torn from the roll. My wrists were held together while someone clicked on plastic handcuffs. The hand-cuffer leaned and drew down the top sheet. Cool airbrushed my skin, and I heard or thought I heard, a collective intake of breath. Dark eyes slithered up and down my bare thighs. Dizzy, lightheaded, I was hyperventilating.
Would I survive rape? You bet I would. I’d live to kill every single one of these bastards.
The guy fingered my tee-shirt and as if teasing either me or the others, slowly raised the hem. Another gave a shrill falsetto scream. “Haram, haram.”
The guy let go of my shirt. My muscles went limp.
Two men tied my ankles with that hairy twine used to bale hay. Hamid howled, and when I struggled to position both feet into a kick, the burly one drew back his arm, slapped me across the face and laughed, his breath hot with garlic. My cheeks burned with humiliation more than pain. I stared up at him, amazed how those gentle brown eyes with their long soft lashes had just estimated the distance between a gun and a baby’s skull.
A guy at the foot of the bed held a plastic shopping bag that he turned upside down. A mound of black rags tumbled out. With both hands, he held up a burka, then transferred it to one hand and pointed to me with his other.
Harsh Arabic consonants scratched the air. An argument broke out full force, the tall guy, apparently the leader, pointed to my wrists, then to the rag. Shaking his head, he repeated what I construed as “idiots.” Fingers pointed to the garment, then to me, and I gathered the knuckleheads tied me up before realizing I needed to stand to put on the kaftan. “See what happens?” I said. “When you have guns for brains.”
Garlic breath motioned to a colleague, who unhooked his weapon and held the muzzle against my temple. The ankle-twine was unwound, the handcuffs, unclipped. Another of their stupid mistakes—I was able to swing my legs over the bed and fling myself against the man with the gun. A knee plowed into my stomach. I doubled over. A kick from the metal toe of a boot landed on the ribs only halfway healed. A flood of liquid pain. They hauled me to my feet, and I was held upright as the tall guy slipped the burka over my head. The cheap jersey fabric covered with lint came with the stomach-churning smell of rancid cooking oil and sweat.
Why the burka? The foggy thought answered itself. Of course. I could be punished their style, stoned or beheaded. As if the method made a difference. The guy fussed with a black drape of some sort, a kind of shawl. Then came a black sheet over my head, nose, and mouth. A screen of stiff mesh fell over my eyes. The ensemble was topped by an elastic headband to hold the grotesque outfit in place. My vision was blocked on both sides. Blinders on a horse on route to the glue factory where it didn’t want to go.
I was half-dragged, and half goose-stepped from the bedroom and though the living room. When we passed the hallway, I motioned to Tony’s silk scarf, and the dragger took it off the hook, and together we lurched out the front door. One of the guys followed with a screaming Hamid.
The SUV in the driveway was either dark blue or black. The door slid open at the same time my feet left the ground. Thrown headfirst onto the back seat, I landed face down onto cold vinyl upholstery that smelled of burned garlic and charred lamb. Someone climbed in and sat on the small of my back, a sudden terrible weight that forced the air from my lungs. I must have passed out, for when my head cleared the weight was gone and one of the assailants sprawled in the seat beside me.
Grasping the headrest on the back of the front seat, I pulled myself upright. Periodically the SUV stopped, started and crawled forward, leading me to think we must be in Algeciras traffic. Each passing street lamp cast a stripe of yellow light across the man’s black jeans. His leather jacket hung open over a dark tee-shirt. Slits, in his balaclava, exposed amber eyes a
nd thin pale lips. I smelled whiskey.
The eye-screen forced me to twist my entire body to see out the back window. Bright headlights tailgated the SUV. Hamid’s with the rest of the team, I thought of turning from the blinding glare. When the driver lowered the window to toss out a cigarette, the smell of the sea carried into the back seat. I heard the whine of machinery, the incessant beep of a truck backing up, and the low blast of a horn—a moan that could only come from a ship.
Condensation clouded the window on my side of the back seat. I lifted my handcuffed hands and cleared the glass with my sleeves. We were on the service road along the A7 near La Linea. The sky glowed with an eerie amber light from the refineries. The jihadist sitting next to me partially blocked my view through the window on his side, making me crane my neck to see around him. Whiffs of whiskey rose from his jacket. We turned on to the stretch of highway skirting the harbor. A sign wired to the Cyclone fence read Trans-Mediterranean; the arrow under the words pointed to the ferry embarkation wharf.
A kiosk ahead sat on the median strip. A uniformed watchman sauntered from the doorway, and after a quick exchange with the driver, we re-entered the traffic to poke along behind an eighteen-wheeler lumbering toward the container terminal. The diesel fumes made it hard to think.
Tomorrow morning Tony would find an empty house. He’d call the local police; a sensible reaction, but useless. They wouldn’t know where to look. The only hope was Zak and his renegade Knights of San Avila. Would they help? Sure. That’s what knights do.
High overhead a forest of loader-cranes was silhouetted against the peculiar blood orange sky, an acrid, industrial color I could almost taste. A minute later, we swung onto an unpaved track ending in a parking lot.
A decrepit palm swayed beside a copse of flags. The engine off, the only sound was of ropes clack-clacking against flagpoles. The Moroccan eagle and the Union Jack flapped in tatters. Not so the Spanish flag that was twice the size of the others and reigned a foot above. An iron fence separated the parking lot from the commercial docks. I made out the hull of the Kara Maru, a Japanese freighter with its name on the bow.
The jihadists’ car with the rest of the terrorist team screeched to a halt beside us. All four doors flew open, and the men clambered out. A baby screamed. No other kid in the world had Hamid’s vocal range, decibel level, and most of all, his volume sustainability. His recreational scream and I sighed with relief.
The driver of our SUV turned to the jihadist beside me, and before I grasped what was happening, a blindfold was wound around my eyes and tied behind my head. My perfume lingered on the silk scarf Tony gave me, the scarf the kidnapper grabbed on his way out of Dad’s house. You’d think terrorists would bring their own supplies. One more indignity, like digging your own grave.
The door on my side opened, and two guys dragged me from my seat onto the ground. The fear in my bloodstream hit a clot, and my knees almost gave out. Hands gripped my elbows and hauled me across the parking lot. The squeak of hinges must have been from the gate on the iron fence.
A fierce gale from the sea plastered the stinking burka to my thighs. I was on a walkway that rattled and swayed with each gust. A gangplank? My handlers steadied me on a landing. My right arm was suddenly free, and I realized I’d lost half my escort team. The remaining jihadist ushered me down a flight of steps. From all directions shouts in Spanish mingled with shouts in Arabic. More turns—funny how quickly you get the hang of intuiting surroundings you can’t see. I sensed interior walls on both sides. Each step took me farther from the voices fading in the distance. My escort stopped. A ping of an elevator, the clatter of doors, and I was inside where the feel of the motion told me we were going down.
We landed with a bump. More corridors. My handler left me standing alone while he jingled what sounded like a hundred keys and spit out Arabic expletives until he found what he wanted. A whiff of minty chewing-gum when he bent to unlock the handcuffs. The click of a doorknob and I felt a blast of cool damp air. Behind me, a door closed, and I heard the grate of metal on metal as the bar of a deadbolt slid shut.
The gentle rock and roll of the floor told me the ship was docked and not yet underway. A rustle at my back and when the blindfold came off, I faced a woman in a navy-blue burka.
“Hola,” she said. “Me llama Dima.” A veil covered her lower face. Heavy black kohl outlined her huge brown eyes.
I touched my chest. “Paige. Pero, no Español. Or should I have said ‘nada Español?
Dima held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart and said, “My English.”
The vast room was the size of a warehouse. The air reeked of mold laced with gasoline. Faulty Fluorescent tubes hummed and flicked blueish light over acres of gray cement. A battered Toyota pickup sat along a far wall. From the yellow lines painted on the floor, I gathered this was a decommissioned ferry. In the center of the hold, two women in burkas milled around a plastic table. Muslim women in veils, women I always called burkas for that’s the only aspect of their humanity the world saw. Not people, burkas were all they were—what they had become—had allowed themselves to become. An ancient burka dandled an infant on her knee.
Where was Hamid? My palms sweat. He’s okay, I reassured myself. Maybe the Muslims were taking him to his imam of a father. That’s the case, why bring him to the port in the first place? Don’t panic. If you pray, he’ll be fine.
In the corner, a tall burka fussed around a hotplate resting on the truck’s tailgate. A wire ran from the appliance to the floor where it was met with an extension cord which slithered around a rear tire and up to an outlet on the wall. Beside the pickup sat a toolbox, the kind used as storage for a truck bed. Now it was used as a kitchen countertop. A bag of rice and a few dishes rested on the lid.
The cave, the silent women, the noxious air... Now I know how Jonah felt, only instead of trapped in the belly of a whale, I was in the belly of a boat.
One of the burkas approached Dima and me, stopped, and stared.
“Her name is called Aisha,” Dima said in careful English.
Blue-black skin shone between the head wrap and veil. Dark eyes with blood-shot iris’s and a subservient slump of the shoulders reminded me of women I’d seen from the sub-Sahara. Mali, Somalia, maybe she was Sudanese. Her burka touched the straps of her sandals worn over white ankle socks which could use a hefty dose of detergent. She made no eye contact but pointed to the mattresses and blankets piled against the green wall. Come to think of it, everything in the cavern was painted a bilious pale green—doors, woodwork, and the exposed pipes that clung to the walls like topiary vines. A staircase spiraled up to a steel door. Dima must have caught my expression for she said, “Not possible.”
Nevertheless, first chance I got I’d check if it were locked. Oily stains formed black squiggles on the floor, the residue of the incontinent rust-bucket vehicles the boat ferried back and forth between Europe and Africa. A ship carrying goats, tourist junk, heroin, and good people along with people up to no good. How on earth did terrorists get their hands on a used ferry? And who were the burkas? Bona-fide passengers locked inside to keep out the crew? A typical Middle East solution to relationship problems—women locked in, men locked out. Or were the burkas migrants whose families paid a coyote to smuggle them from the third world to the first. The most sinister scenario, the burkas were slaves trafficked by a middle-man who had them up for re-sale, the ferry used a car-lot for abused women.
Why hadn’t the terrorists killed me? Save manpower; kidnapping is labor-intensive. Maybe they wanted to gain popularity by posting my beheading on YouTube. Maybe hold me for ransom. They’d find my mother. And if she paid… I turned back to my surroundings.
No evidence of a washer or dryer, but a hairy thick seamen’s rope ran from a support beam to a pipe along a wall. Odd, ho
w the clothesline held no dresses or slacks, only control-top leggings, and knee-high stockings. Under their black tents, the women must be in the only normal-people clothes they owned. I’d heard burkas weren’t usually worn in the privacy of home, or when men weren’t around. Why did the women keep them on? As I formulated a tactful question for Dima, she came up to me, took my hand and led me to the others as if I were a kindergartner being introduced to the class.
Our first stop was at the hotplate where the burka named Fatima held a wooden spoon over a dented aluminum pot. The sweetness of her smile showed in her eyes. She turned and resumed boiling almonds.
When we came to the old woman and the baby, I learned the child’s name was Ooma. I forced a smile. Unbelievable an infant could be so ugly. A narrow head, spikes of orange hair, beady eyes. What was God thinking? In a desperate attempt to fix the kid up, a ridiculous red bow was fastened to an elastic strap around her head. Dima touched the woman’s shoulder and said, “Maria,” then added, “abuela,” one of the few Spanish words I recognized.
And Maria certainly seemed more of a grandmother than a regular mother. Her skin was wrinkled carbon paper above the veil, her eyes clouded as if thickened with brown cornstarch.
Dima showed me the bathroom with its miniature sink and toilet. No tub nor shower.
Spotless, I saw with relief. In a make-shift pantry, a wooden crate held a gallon of cooking oil and a box of mint tea bags. An under-counter sized refrigerator was packed with Spanish stabilized milk—Hamid hates that goo—and Gerber’s baby food labeled in Arabic with a blond toddler grinning on the jar.
Now that my hands were free, it struck me I could shed the head-gear. I unwound the screen-thing and veil and wadded them into a ball I tossed on an empty chair. Dima screamed and put her hand where her mouth might be. Maria put her hand over Ooma’s eyes while chef Fatima held the spoon in mid-air and shook her head, no. I got the message. The headcover and bottom veil went back on, but not the screen-thing. Enough was enough, I thought, just as the door to the hallway swung open. The instant the four men barged into the room; the women’s hands flew to their faces to check their veils were in place.
The Loss of What We Never Had Page 18