“I know, I know. Pretty soon we’ll go for a wonderful walk to a fabulous restaurant where the chef specializes in carrot mush.” Holding my breath against the smell of his sopping pajama’s—a potpourri of ammonia, fish and garbagy vegetation—I stripped him down to his diaper which I removed, shook out and disgusting as it was, put back on him as a buffer against the wiry grass. Overhead, gnats swarmed in a beam of sun. Flies buzzed his red blanket and pajamas that I spread over a shrub to dry. After a quick glance to be sure no one was around, I slipped off the burka and draped it beside Hamid’s wardrobe. Wearing the same tee-shirt I’d been in since being dragged from Dad’s house, I lay down on a wide smooth stone beside Hamid’s ragged nest. A minute later, he fell asleep with his thumb in his mouth.
The sun toasted the flat stone under me into a warm—albeit hard—bed that lulled me into a stupor. The breeze died. The world at rest. I slapped a gnat on my arm. The blood on my shoulder was drying into a thick, soft scab. I must have dozed, for when I sat up, the sun had climbed to the summit of the sky. Hamid stirred, yawned, and went back to sleep. Where were we? I looked around. Another huge stone tipped on its side lay a few feet away. Odd, the precise edges, far too precise to have been caused by erosion. I turned slowly to as not to wake Hamid and saw what I missed when we landed, the red and white striped flare stacks of the refineries outside La Linea. We had come aground in the remains of the Roman settlement hidden among the pipes, metal sheds, and storage drums of Cepsa Oil. Tourist brochures advertised the ruins as an attraction. But there were no tourists, for the municipality had fenced off the broken amphitheater and walls. The rock I lay on and those around me were outside the official perimeter of the defunct archeological park. A year ago, I’d bicycled the C34 that bordered the area. Through the spaces in the green wire fence, I had made out acres of rough-hewn stones strewn around as if a giant fist slammed down on the site and sent the blocks flying toward the sea. I pictured a guy in a toga welding a chisel. And here I sat as if sixteen hundred years had not happened between the mason and me.
Suddenly the aftershock of the trauma caught me in its jaws. The fear, the stress, the images of black masks, shining boots, and the white bone of Fatima’s leg. I started to shake as if with a fever about to crash. I fought to keep a grip on myself. My breath steadied in time to cope with Hamid’s, ‘I’m awake’ scream. He rolled over and groped the grass beside him. My heart gave a sickening twist. No penguin. Assuming we made it to civilization, I’d buy him a bigger and better one. He lay back and instead of rubbing the bruise, dug his fist into his eye, most likely unable to pinpoint the exact source of what hurt. “We don’t want to make that teeny scratch angry, do we?” I drew his hand away. His shrill cries sounded raspy, hoarse as if from a dry throat, and I wondered where I could find water before dehydration became an issue. I got up, lifted the burka from the shrub, and brushed off the sand. A lump within the folds. I sorted through the layers of acrylic—how can fabric be as slimy as egg-white—and pulled out a wad of damp euros. Dima, God bless her. I recalled how she thrust the money into my hand despite my refusal to hand over Hamid. Truth be known, I thought, with a twist of guilt, she would have made a wonderful mother. Giving me money proved her concern for the little boy was greater than her injured pride at being rejected. And maybe she instinctively knew that before Hamid and I reached safety, the money would not only be relevant but downright transformative. I put on the hateful burka, re-wrapped Hamid in his dry red and gold blanket and struck out for the road.
Bleached weeds and emaciated saplings struggled to survive the toxins spewed by the refinery. Not a single sturdy branch where a bird could rest. A gust of wind sent a black plastic bag writhing in the center of the road. I held Hamid in one arm while with the other, I pried his fist from his eye. “Let’s keep Mister Germ out of there,” I said, then thought, please, no infection on top of everything else.
A white van came up from behind. The driver gunned it and swerved around me—gypsy, he would think, or some kind of nut. I folded a section of the garish satin blanket over Hamid’s head to protect him from the noon sun. He found a corner to chew. I eased it from his mouth. “You don’t want that.” We passed the Cepsa Oil welcoming sign, the empty kiosk where a guard should have been, and the dusty cars of workmen parked in the shade of a withered eucalyptus tree.
Not a soul in sight. Silence except for the song of Cepsa, its eerie industrial hum carried on a gust that smelled of kerosene. I repositioned Hamid, his weight increasing minute by aching-muscle minute. His large amber eyes roamed the sky, the trees, and the pitted asphalt.
Focus on the task. One foot in front of the other. A mile to the A7. Someone would help—maybe, probably—there must be someone who would not be put off by a ragged Arab woman lugging a baby along the service road of the Autovia. Don’t think, I warned myself. But thoughts broke through anyway. Faint and disjointed voices drifting in and out of the earshot of my imagination like voices from a neighbor’s radio. The kidnapper’s, “Haram, haram.” Dima’s, “The men will kill you.” Mohammad’s, “The lifeboat’s number one, okay.” Overhead the sun burned the world white. I was in an oven baking my brain into a meringue of exhaustion and delirium. I circled a crater of a pothole and returned to the shoulder. Hamid gurgled and in a burst of energetic thrashing tried to wiggle from my arms. “Settle down,” I said. “This is no way to thank your rescuer.”
Hamid was at his eye again, and I paused to draw away his knuckle. “Infection and sick little boys don’t have any fun.” He sucked in his breath, exhaled and howled. Bouncing him in my arms soothed him, so I kept it up.
He’d been rescued from the jihadists. Why did God spare me? Maybe this wasn’t about me at all, but about Hamid. “Yes, you,” I said, looking down at the flushed cheeks. Sweat plastered his thin brown curls to his forehead. His finger moved toward his face, and when I blocked his hand, he batted furiously at my arm. He was certainly no baby Jesus. Yet he seemed a harbinger of hope: his rescue a sign that despite the hate and violence in the world, we would win peace, soul by soul.
The tar burned through my sneakers. Every neurological connection in my brain seemed overloaded—my head a tangle of hot wires. Holding Hamid tightly, I stumbled across a drainage ditch and into a weedy field of industrial waste, where grass grew in the shadow of a pine. I lowered Hamid to the ground, sat, and pulled him onto my lap. With my back against the trunk, I gently rocked him back and forth, slowly allowing my heart to fill with unexpected love for the miniature life in my care. Drool from his lower lip oozed into the neckline of his pajamas. I wiped his chin with the hem of the burka. A wave of shame swept over me when I thought of how I’d resented the diapers, the screaming and the pain-in-the ass-mess that was Hamid when all along I should have been grateful.
A fresh sea breeze momentarily cleared my mind. Mother Teresa you are not, I told myself. With that disappointing reality, I drifted into a shallow sleep interrupted by Hamid’s restless sobs. I rose with a renewed sense of purpose, and with the energy, I always seem to cough up when faced with work that had to be done. Babies need food and dry clothes. “Come with me,” I said as if the poor kid had a choice.
I trudged along the asphalt until I heard a car behind me and moved to the berm of the road. The car slowed. The woman at the wheel lowered the window of the ancient Ibiza. “Ayuda?”
Judging by her pronunciation, she was not a Spaniard. “I’d greatly appreciate a lift,” I said.
“Do I hear an American accent?” Hers had an Irish lilt. She leaned to open the passenger side. “I can take you far as the round-a-bout if it’s a help.”
Balancing Hamid against my hip, I jockeyed us onto the seat and eyed the woman beside me. Her hair was too uniformly red for the age of the smile lines around her eyes. I recognized her sequined tee-shirt from those on the rack at H and M, and she’d bitten for the matching s
lacks. I looked down and pretended to be busy brushing sand from my sleeve while frantically trying to think of an explanation for why an American was in a burka and carrying a baby. But the woman explained it for me.
“A man, wasn’t it, darlin’?”
“A nightmare,” I said.
“Aren’t they all?” Hamid whimpered, and the woman reached and tickled his chin with her finger. “Cute little nipper. You can call me Polly.” She straightened. “As in the name Pauline, me mum took straight from the telly’s, “Pauline’s Restless Heart.” She drew back her hand and shifted into drive. “Got yourself mixed up with one of them A-rabs, did you? Oh, they’re cute all right. You was my girl, I’d shoot the bloke.”
I tried for a grateful smile.
“I’d drive you all the way to downtown Algeciras, but got to get to the farmacia before they close. Siesta my foot, Spaniards just don’t want to work. Did the boyfriend throw you out? To the dogs, what he did to my Katy, who got mixed up with a sailor. Spaniard, A-rab, they all look alike, skinny as whippets, those sexy eyes and curly black hair and just when they’ve convinced you they’re mister super, it’s bam, the old heave-ho and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth.”
I thought of the waves in Zak’s hair that sprang back into place when I ran my fingers through them.
Polly looked me up and down. “Bet those rags he puts you in are hot as the devil’s breath.”
“You’re right about that,” I replied. “Maybe I can buy something in Carrefour’s—the one across from the McAuto. Would it be out of your way?”
“No problem darlin’,” she said. “Hang on, sharp turn coming up. Here we go.” She swerved onto the 112B ramp. A minute later when I stood in the parking lot and was about to close the car door, Polly said, “If it’s a few euros you’ll be needing, I can—”
“No, but thank you very much.” The kindness of strangers, I thought as she pulled away. Or was it the strangeness of kindness.
In Carrefour’s’ I bought a sippy cup, water, and juice to hydrate Hamid. In the bathroom, I outfitted him with Dot-Tot diapers and new pajamas. Taking off the burka, I told Hamid, “We can kiss this goodbye,” and changed into a cheap sweater and skirt. Weird to be moving along the aisles pushing a cart with Hamid in the baby seat, as if we were normal shoppers. Possibly no scars showed. The store carried Hamid’s carrot mush that I took with me into the restaurant where I ordered eggs, the most food I’d had since the haira on the boat. Finished, I ordered ice-cream. “Just like everybody else,” I said wiping sticky stuff from Hamid’s hands.
In the store’s entrance, a Vodaphone kiosk sold mobiles. With Hamid still strapped in the cart, I took my new Samsung to the parking lot for better reception and waited impatiently while the clinic nurse called Tony to the phone. “I bought the minimum minutes,” I said. “Talk fast.”
27
Stretched out under a blanket on Tony’s sofa, I watched him set a cup of hot water on the coffee table. “Watch don’t leave a white ring on the surface,” I said.
He moved the cup onto a magazine, and dunked a tea bag up and down in the water. Without looking at me, he asked, “is Zak shagging you?”
The question not entirely unexpected. It had probably been bugging him for some time. Still, I was taken aback and tried for a clever reply. I could act offended, say, ‘none of your business.’ Act coy: ‘who wants to know?’ Or seductive—’jealous?’ I went for the truth. “Once.” I said. “It wasn’t pretty.”
Tony rested the teabag it in the bowl of a spoon and wrapped the string around it. “I ought to say I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry, it wasn’t, as you say, pretty.” He squeezed the bag and concentrated, or pretended to concentrate on the color of the tea. “But sorry it didn’t work out? No.”
Was he critical of my—what? Morals? Judgment? I studied his face to see how much, if anything, he cared. During our harried days of baby-care, I’d begun to think of him as a combination husband and brother. Sometimes when we laughed at Hamid or stumbled over each other during emergency mop-ups, I felt a giddy rush of partnership, togetherness or affection or whatever you call the feeling for a man who was far more than just a friend. Or a brother.
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.
“Why did you ask about Zak?”
“Curiosity,” he said finally. Rude, yes, to speculate on someone’s personal life. I’m sorry.
I forced a smile.
He passed me the cup. “And I’m still curious why someone savvy as you—want milk?”
“Straight’s fine.”
“Why you see anything worthwhile in that daft con-artist who calls himself a knight but is no more than a dangerous piece of living shit.”
“And to think you don’t even know him,” I said.
“The bloke set you up. Conned you into taking the baby he knew bloody well was a hot potato. Figuring if there were a cock-up—and there certainly was—you’d be the fall guy. He—”
Tony stopped mid-sentence. “Forgive my carrying on when you must be absolutely exhausted. You’re a bloomin’ mess.” He leaned and gently smoothed back a few strands of hair from my forehead. “But a super nice one.” He glanced at the foot of the sofa. “Agree, Mister Mozart?”
The dog lifted his head.
“He hates when you wake him up,” I said.
Tony stood and gathered my empty bowl and crumpled pretzel bag and headed into the galley kitchen. His place was furnished in Ikea minimalism; the Holmsund sofa, Ingatorp table, and Kallax shelves buckling under the stacks of Lancet and British Family Practice journals. A print of Alexander the Great hung above the fireplace. The carpets were rough North Africans: Marrakesh orange and reds, a black and brown practice rug from a souk somewhere south of Agadir, I guessed. Overall the ambiance of the place reflected someone thoughtful and well-organized, albeit a bit frugal.
The refrigerator door slammed, and Tony returned with a Heinekens and a carafe of orange juice. “Juice for you. Alcohol and pain meds do not mix,” he reminded me.
I ran my fingers over the bandage on my arm. “You did a good job. And I appreciate your springing Mo from the kennel.”
“If it turned out you didn’t come out of this—”
“Alive.” I finished the sentence for him.
“I would have adopted him.” He leaned and slapped Mo on the back. “Think us bachelors would get along, old boy?”
A sudden memory of the afternoon on the ferry, Dima’s expression when I told her I was worried about my dog if I never made it off the boat. Her eyes revealed her thoughts. Only infidels kept a dog in the house. Picturing Dima brought back the hold of the ship, the smell of gasoline and rotten wood, the sound of Fatima’s sobs and the footsteps of men in black.
Tony filled his glass and waited for the foam to settle.
“If you only knew how I felt when you pulled up in front of Carrefour’s and I knew it was over,” My voice trembled. “Don’t mind me. I always choke up when I’m being rescued.” I motioned to Mozart, the tea and the blister pack of antibiotics on the table. “Thank you.”
When Tony pulled up to Carrefour’s he’d helped Hamid and me into the car, and as soon as we were in his apartment in Marbella, he’d rustled up blankets, hot soup and something to knock me out while he sutured the bullet wound. Only four stitches. A hot bath for Hamid, carrot mush and now the little guy was ensconced safely among pillows in a big-people bed.
Careful to keep his beer from spilling, Tony returned to his leather lounge chair. “When I saw the broken window at your dad’s, I went bollocks. Called the hospitals, hotels, and your embassy.” He sat forward. “Oh, before I forget, let me go get it.” He went to the bedroom and return
ed with a brown envelope. “I got Karl to overnight me your passport.”
I swallowed hard. There were no words.
Tony resumed his place on the lounge. “The embassy routinely issues replacements. It would take days, weeks, probably never, before the Spaniards to get enough internal clearances to inform the US they’ve confiscated an American passport. Assuming the police had a legal right to hold it in the first place. Our administrative guy said he wasn’t sure about Spanish law.”
I ran my fingers over the blue jacket with its gold eagle. On the first page there it was my birth date. My identity reinstated like a migrating robin who finds its way back to the same nest. Was my life still where I’d left it? The god-awful pine paneling in my office in Houston I’d yet to have replaced? My ‘don’t mess with Texas’ coffee mug? Was my house still standing and were the roses holding their own against black spot?
“Blimey, Paige, are you crying?”
I wiped my cheek. “Hot tea makes my eyes run.”
“Sure. Right. Hot tea will do that.” He came over and put his arms around me.
Every bone in my body softened as I rested my head into the curve of his shoulder, against his firm body and crisp white shirt that smelled of Clorox and that antiseptic Spanish soap.
28
Tony’s tiny Panda rattled over the unpaved road to the village of Molino del Santo. He pulled over at the base of a limestone outcrop while I looked up at the fifty-foot statue of Our Lady of Tarifa draped in canvas. She stood facing the harbor, and beyond it, El Ksar on the North African coast. The statue would remain under wraps until this afternoon when the Pope would unveil it.
The Loss of What We Never Had Page 22