The Loss of What We Never Had

by Carolyn Thorman

  The men were in leather jackets and balaclavas. Wonderful. The men are masked. The women are veiled. Do these people ever kiss each other? The men were tall, slim, and fit, and glided around the cave with the grace of snakes. I couldn’t see the women’s faces but sensed their fear. Or maybe my own.

  Hamid’s okay. He has to be.

  One of the men pointed to Fatima’s leg, running his finger up and down as if measuring the distance between the hem of her burka and her bare ankle. The other three men gathered around, nodding. The angry one opened his jacket and drew a dagger from his belt. A curved ornamental weapon with artificial emeralds—I assume artificial—set in the mother-of-pearl hilt. He positioned the tip against Fatima’s ankle bone. Whatever she shouted, made the guys laugh. Slowly the assailant drew up the blade, lifting the burka along with it. Another guy, the assailant’s assistant, held her steady as she struggled to back away. The assailant gave the knife a quick thrust and in one fell swoop sliced her leg from knee to ankle. She screamed and clung to the jihadist holding her upright. The porous cement was unable to absorb the volume quickly enough. The assistant let go and Fatima collapsed on the floor. The men disappeared through the door without a backward glance.

  Screaming, Fatima writhed on the bare cement. I knelt beside her. Her burka was soaked with blood. The fabric clung to her flesh. I peeled back the skirt. The wound was a clean slice. I managed to get a grip on her slippery leg and lift it. “Dima, get something to keep this leg up and grab some diapers and a blanket.”

  As if knowing exactly what was needed, Maria passed Ooma on to Aisha, came over and gently held Fatima’s shoulders to keep her still while murmuring to her in Arabic. Dima appeared with a chair that proved to be high enough to support the leg above the heart. She left and returned with a ragged blanket, Pampers, and a threadbare towel. Then she hurried to the hotplate. Why now, of all times, was she scooping the almonds from the boiling water? It took me a minute to get it. Smart girl. Sterile water to clean the wound. I fought to get a handle on my rage. Probing the skin along the cut, I glimpsed white tibia. Fury stopped my breath. Fatima continued sobbing as I fastened the diaper over the cut. The Velcro helped.

  “Dima, explain to Fatima why she has to lay still and keep her leg on the chair.”

  I wound he blanket around the Pampers to form a mock pressure bandage. The seepage of blood slowed somewhat.

  By this time, my rage was totally out of bounds. I got to my feet, crossed the room, and banged on the heavy door. “Fucking animals. Get back here with morphine, antibiotics, gauze—” My shouts became a plea. “Please, morphine. Please.” I was shouting at rocks. “You fucking shitheads will pay. I will make every single one of you—”

  Dina put her arm around my shoulders. I stopped pounding. “Say morphine in Arabic. Say I’m a doctor ordering them to come back with—”

  One look told me what she thought; anger was a stupid waste of time. Let it go. Resigned, I dropped my fist and returned to Fatima semi-conscious on the floor.

  Bright red arterial seepage continued through the cotton blanket. How to make a tourniquet? Scanning the room, I spotted the tool chest beside the truck. I called to Dima, and after demonstrating how to apply steady pressure, I said, “Take over,” and made my way around Aisha who stood and bounced Ooma in her arms.

  The bag of rice and dishes atop the tool chest went in the bed of the truck. Trying to tune out Fatima’s screams, I opened the chest. Rusted screwdrivers, wrenches, and nails lay among damp shredded newspaper. A partial set of Allen wrenches and a broken tire jack—mirabilu dictu—a jack extender, the smooth iron rod the perfect length. Now for something to use as ties.

  The leggings on the clothesline, too Spandexy. The rope itself, too rough for the skin. My glance fell on Aisha’s socks. They appeared to be high enough that if tied together. “Take them off,” I ordered. A blank stare. I spun around towards Dima and shouted, “Make her take them off.” Another blank stare, this one Dima’s. I leaned and pinched the white terry cloth between my thumb and index finger. Choosing both words carefully, I said, “I need.”

  The filthy socks twisted around the rod; the rod positioned on the thigh—I’ll never know exactly why the Mickey Mouse set-up worked. The miracle was it worked at all. “There’s still the danger of shock,” I said.

  I bent over Fatima, gathered a handful of the hateful black veil, and drew it off. For a minute, the sobs subsided as if she were distracted by the cool air. A pretty woman, she was about thirty with regular features and jet-black hair. No pallor nor indications of shock. “Get rid of this.” I handed it to Dima.

  Fatima gave a weak smile as we helped her onto the least moldy mattress we could find. She reached for my hand and held it as she passed out again. God was kind.

  “If no infection, she’ll make it through,” I said. “Through hell.”

  I brushed a few loose black hairs from Fatima’s cheek, knowing that in the hours ahead each cry, each scream, each gasp of her breath would tear my heart to shreds.

  Later that afternoon I sat at the table across from Maria who was attempting to shove a mashed grape down Ooma’s throat.

  It was getting through to me. The hotplate on the tailgate, the ugly baby, green walls, a woman who was peacefully boiling almonds, now half dead. I was an inmate of a medieval madhouse. I corrected myself. This was not a madhouse. The inmates were not crazy. The reality was the inmates, me, perhaps the entire world from Afghanistan to New York were victims of one crazy cult.

  Once more, the door to the hall flew open, and one of the jihadists held the screaming Hamid straight out in front the way a person who hates dogs would deliver a puppy to be euthanized. The baby was naked except for the diaper working its way down his thigh. His feet frantically kicked and flailed. A yellow stream ran down his leg.

  I reached for Hamid, and miraculously, he calmed down in my arms.

  The guy held the crease in his jeans, flipping the fabric back and forth as if trying to dry the wet denim. He looked up and shouted, “Kess ommak.”

  Dima lost it. When she shouted “Kess Ommak” back, he jerked up his head and let go of his pant leg. Calmly, he walked over, drew back his arm, and slapped her with the back of his hand. Her palm flew to her cheek. He slammed the door on his way out.

  Dima, her face flaming, eyes red-rimmed, held out her arms for Hamid. I shook my head no, drew him closer, and carried him to a mattress. My soaked burka smelled of a clogged toilet. Dima, God bless her, trailed behind with the Pampers.

  Half an hour later Hamid, in a lavender dress donated by Maria, slept in a cardboard box I dredged up from the junk under the staircase. I lay on the mattress beside his box and listened to Fatima gasp as she tossed beneath the blankets. Hungry and exhausted, I found prayer impossible, hopeless until the teeth of anxiety quit gnawing on my gut.

  Once again, the door opened.

  Now what?

  Whatever was flung into the room arced through the air and hit the cement. The door closed. I got to my feet, walked over, and looked down. One of the penguin’s webbed feet was missing, the yellow toes of the other foot were black from the oily floor.

  23

  The ladies crisscrossed the room, back and forth, back and forth, their skirts sweeping the floor with the swish of worn brooms. With nothing to do and nowhere to go, they must be going out of their minds. In the far corner, Fatima lay quietly in a stupor of pain and exhaustion.

  A hissing sound from overhead speakers, static, then the call to prayer, “Allahu Akhbar. Each burka stopped and bowed her head. The call was harsh, with a hysterical edge. What happened to the magnificent kingdoms of carpets, Rumi, the miniatures of Alyshir Navoi, and Nasser Shamma’s that beats the heart from the desert? When had the call to praye
r become the sound of a car bomb?

  I tucked the penguin beside Hamid, and without opening his eyes, he wrapped his arms around his broken bird. The mattress on the floor beside him was thin as a cookie sheet and just as hard. I hadn’t slept since the night before last. I almost dozed off when I smelled sandalwood perfume and heard Dima whisper, “Are you from London?”

  I propped myself up on my elbows. “Texas.”

  I sensed a smile behind the veil. “Cowboy.” She sat back on her heels, gave a furtive look at the women pacing the room, and said, “I’m here to warn you.”

  “About the women?”

  “The cameras.”

  Aha, cameras. Why the burkas wore burkas.

  Dima’s veil moved in and out with each breath. “We will make talk with my hands as if I don’t know English. Be careful. They’re going to kill you.”

  Saliva hardened to crust in my mouth. Dizzy, heart pounding, I finally managed to ask, “How?”

  She didn’t know.

  Hamid squirmed in his sleep. “And the baby?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  I had to get off this boat. “Will we ever leave port?”

  She pointed to the kitchen and tossed her head as if performing for an audience. “After these women are paid for by the man, we go to Naples to pick up more. Next, Dubai.”

  “Sex trafficking?”

  Dima stiffened and drew back. “My cousin Mohammad is the scientist to fix the engine and tonight he’s the watch-duty.”

  “Watchman,” I said.

  She rose and brushed at her gown. “We do more talk later.”

  I rolled onto my stomach and stared over the edge of the mattress. Stared at an oil stain on the floor until it became a black skull.

  . . . . .

  No windows and no clock made it impossible to track time. I tried to assemble an escape plan that refused to coalesce. No amount of rational thought could overcome the fact I was going to die. Right here on the good ship hospice. How did other die-ers cope?

  Like me, they blocked the picture of how it would happen. Wallowed in life review. Listed every injury received and everyone delivered. I analyzed all the relationships I’d screwed up, patients I’d misunderstood, my husband’s suicide I’d failed to prevent. The list went on.

  Who would be at my funeral? Wait—no funeral, my leftovers would be fish food. There was my office in Houston. The confidential files. Who would finish my book on medication resistance? Mom was the executor of my outdated will, and I wondered if she could handle selling my house and all the accounting it would involve. Please, God, more time.

  I always hoped when my turn came, I would go out on my own terms. But a glance around the room confirmed what I already knew, no weapon, no cliff to drive over, no meds for a liberating overdose.

  The door opened, and a masked guy came in carrying an iron cauldron. After setting it on the floor, he strolled the perimeter of the room. The hold was below sea level, nevertheless, he seemed to be checking that no one was digging a tunnel. He looked down at the bloody blanket around Fatima’s leg and quickly moved on. Then stopped when he came to Hamid. Dima pointed to me. Without knowing a word of Arabic, I got the message, “infidel.”

  The guy stroked Hamid’s silky hair while chatting up Dima. I recalled Casey telling me jihadists believed establishing a bullet-proof caliphate depended upon next-generation Muslims. Victory by demography. I thought of my own Byzantine Catholics, our elderly parishioners dying in their houses cluttered with icons and rosaries draped over lampshades.

  The guy tickled Hamid under the chin and in return got a wide toothless grin. He laughed and held up his index finger in the jihadist salute. The smell of boiled meat drifted from the pot. Goat? I looked down at chickpeas, rice, carrots, and yams swimming in a broth of turmeric. Hamid had settled back in his box and instantly fell asleep. Not knowing the impact harira would have on his stomach, I decided to get my own meal over with, then feed him Gerber’s to stay on the safe side.

  A burka approached with a measuring cup in one hand and a Carrefour’s bag in the other. The Styrofoam bowl and spoon she handed me were stained harira orange. No doubt dinnerware was washed in the bathroom sink—If washed at all. Germs? You bet. Death by sword? Or E-coli? All the ladies except Marie, who was at the table feeding Ooma, sat on the floor around the cauldron. Following Dima’s lead, I dipped the cup into the harira and filled my bowl. Not bad. The tremors in my hands eased as the starchy soup went down.

  Dima finished before me and motioned to Hamid. When I nodded, she lifted him and picking up a jar of baby food on the way to the table, she joined Marie. A flash of envy when I saw she did a better job than I could sliding the spoon into Hamid’s mouth. Each time he turned away his head, she chased it and pounced. Finally, she dropped the empty jar into the filthy oil drum used as a trash can.

  That afternoon I created a playpen by shoving the mattress against the wall and blocking the other three sides. Hamid crawled in circles, every now and then getting tangled in the folds of one of Ooma’s long black nightgowns—burkas for kids. After an hour of energetic squirming and rolling, he collapsed on his stomach with his arms outspread like the wings of a downed bird. I tried to catch a nap, but Fatima’s soft moans kept me staring at the ceiling.

  It must have been near ten or eleven that night when the burkas dragged mattresses from the pile. Dima lugged hers to the Toyota where with her head under the tailgate, she was sheltered from the overhead light. Despite promising brief outages, the damned fluorescent bulb never went out.

  I was the only one who took off the burka. Under it, I still wore the tee-shirt I was in when the thugs grabbed me. Who cared if the camera caught a foot or a knee? A jihadist’s thrill of a lifetime.

  When the room settled into a rhythm of Marie’s snores and Fatima’s soft whimpers, Dima rose from her mattress and came to sit on the edge of mine. “It’s okay because my cousin does all-night watch.”

  I slid upright and rested my back against the wall. “Where’d you learn English? And for heaven’s sake take off that veil.”

  She hesitated, then slowly lowered it where it lay draped around her throat. No lipstick, no makeup except the black kohl. Only white teeth in a brilliant smile. “My father teached languages in the Quaker University in Tangier.”

  “Why are you on this boat?”

  She did her best with the English she had. I organized the bits and pieces of her story into a coherent narrative.

  Dima’s family were rich. Not just by Moroccan standards, but by international membership in the world of yachts, private schools and what she referred to as their palace. She was twenty-five now. When she was seventeen, her parents married her to Khodaidad, who just graduated medical school in London. The couple had no kids. An admission that came only after she gathered the courage to confess a shameful defeat. “Allah deserted us.”

  A few years ago, the Emir’s Army had overrun Tangier. During their brief reign, Khodaidad was indicted for dispensing Vicodin to a child with cancer. He was convicted of betraying Allah, who relieves all suffering and sentenced to amputation of his right hand. Instead, he bought an Italian passport and made it to Naples, where he waited for Dima. Dima’s parents paid Mohammad a hefty bundle of baksheesh—Dima didn’t give a figure—to smuggle her aboard this old ferry on its weekly run to Italy.

  “My husband’s a good man,” she said. “Gentle, kind. No craziness. Mohammad and I will help you out of your—”Her search for a word brought, “Condition.”

  “Situation.”

  “Situation,” she agreed.

  Relief came over me as a wave. “You mean get me out of here? Can you do it?”

 
“Simple. I gave Mohammad a big gift to give to his friends on board, who are sensible. He buys alcohol and sleeper pills. The friend helps Mohammad lower the lifeboat hanging over the back—you saw it on your first way.”

  “I was blindfolded.”

  “Oh, I forget. Do you know to work—?” She made rowing motions.

  “Oars? Of course.”

  “In Algeciras, you’ll find your own people.”

  I thought it through step by step. “If the lifeboat’s in the water… it’s a long way down from the deck.”

  She gazed over my shoulder at the wall, then faced me. “Somehow they’ll drop you.”

  Somehow.

  “Remember, I’ll have the baby,” I said.

  After a pause, she replied, “I’ll watch him, and so will Khodaidad, too.”

  It took a minute for this to sink in. All at once, the offer to help made sense. Hamid in exchange for my escape. In a sense, buying him. I put my assumption to the test.

  “How can I ever repay you? Your risk and what you paid the friend?”

  She took my hand and folded my fingers onto my palm. “Don’t worry. Every day of his life, I’ll tell little Hamid about his angel.”

  “Meaning, no baby, no escape.”

  She avoided my eyes. “I bring Mohammad.” She got up, headed upstairs to the steel door, and knocked.

  Cousin Mohammad’s English was so-so, but Dima picked up the slack. Introductions: Mohammad bowed, I nodded and after the usual tiresome Middle East overture of ‘how are you’s? I pinned him down. “What if the captain and the crew wake up while you’re arranging the dinghy?”