by James Lepore
~21~
MOROCCO, MAY 14-15, 2003
“When do you think ensoulment takes place, Megan?”
“Ensoulment?”
“Yes. You have heard the word before, have you not?”
“I haven’t, actually.”
“But you know what it means:”
“Of course:”
By late April Megan knew she was pregnant. Not only had she missed her second period, due April 20th, but the telltale signs were there. The slight heaviness in her breasts, the backache, the morning sickness of a month ago, which she had refused to acknowledge at the time. She had experienced these symptoms before. Selfish of her pleasure, her good health, her freedom from the hassles of prophylactic measures, she had used abortion as her surefire method of birth control. With Lahani, she had insisted on condoms, a first for her. In Morocco, abortion was illegal unless the mother’s life was in danger. But obviously something had gone wrong. And now this question from Abdullah, who was sitting silently across from her at the chess table, waiting for her answer.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“As a Christian, I believe it takes place at conception;” said Abdullah. “Any other moment would be arbitrary, established by man for his convenience.”
“I didn’t say I was having an abortion:”
“You asked for a remedy.”
“I asked if there was a remedy.”
Megan rose and went to the front door; she could see through its bead curtain to the street. A portion of pavement had buckled in front of the shop, opening a fissure several feet wide and a foot or two deep. It had filled with water from a morning downpour. Three children, two gangly girls and a small boy, were jumping back and forth over the water, laughing and pushing each other whenever there was hesitation. Steam was lifting around them as the noon sun did its work.
“I can return to France,” Megan said, her back to the pharmacist. This, of course, was what she was trying to avoid, at first telling herself that she did not want to lose the foothold, however tenuous, she had established in the Carrières Thomas neighborhood, then admitting that the idea of another procedure, another stainless steel scraping of her uterine wall, had become, suddenly, quite repulsive. Hence the request, illusory she knew, of Abdullah for a remedy, the dream of every woman with an unwanted pregnancy on her hands, a vial of liquid or a powder that would make it, magically, go away.
“If you have this child, Megan, I will raise it:”
Megan turned abruptly and looked hard at Abdullah, as if seeing him for the first time. His dark eyes shone brightly above his hawkish nose, his thick brows knitted together. For this man, a stranger, to fight for a child’s life like this. Amazing.
“Are you married, Abdullah?” she said. “I’ve never asked:”
“And I’ve never volunteered,” Abdullah replied. “I’m not, but I was. My wife was killed. In Cairo, where I was teaching. And my three daughters. Their throats slit by Islamic fanatics. I was at a conference in Beirut, otherwise I would have been killed as well:”
“What did you do? I mean, why did this happen?”
“I spoke my mind. I named evil for evil. I said that the Islamic fundamentalists had turned their backs on God. That the fanatics among them used the Kuran, used Muhammad’s life, to justify beheadings and the slaughter of innocents. That the average Muslim, the nonfanatic, did not seem to mind all this bloodshed in the name of his God. In my classroom I said these things. The word must have spread. It is not far from the university, from anywhere in Egypt, or the Middle East for that matter, to the places where Satan dwells. Not far at all:”
Megan took a deep breath and remained silent. She could hear the children playing outside and the voice of the shopkeeper next door trying to shoo them away. The women’s clinic she went to to confirm her pregnancy had been on the same street as her hotel, the wide and tree-lined Avenue des Forces Armées Royales. She had walked the two miles back to the Farah, breathing air refreshed by the unexpected shower, and thinking of the unreal possibility of keeping the child. Of finishing her work here in the next month or two and then flying home to Connecticut. Of the look on her father’s face when she told him he would soon be a grandfather. Then she remembered her first pregnancy at age seventeen: the abortion that quickly followed; the surprising joy of keeping it secret from her father; the long, windswept, melodramatic walks she took, the hood of her sweatshirt blocking out the world, planning to the last detail the scene where she would drop the abortion bomb on Paddy, as she often in those days condescendingly referred to her father in her thoughts, just before she left for Europe. The scene never played out. How would it go now? Dad, I’m giving you a grandson; the others I killed.
By the time she walked through the hotel’s glass-and-steel front doors, she had cast these thoughts away—good and bad, bitter and sweet—had managed to harden her heart once again, in the old Megan style, against the idea—with all of its insistent, primeval pull—of home and family. But now the look on old Abdullah’s face, more defiant than sad, devoid of self-pity, brought them back in force.
“Abdullah ... ,” she said.
“There is nothing you can say, child. What is done is done. But I would be putting my own soul in jeopardy if I did not try to prevent the killing of this innocent babe. It is a terrible and tragic destiny to be killed by your own mother before you are born. To be so unloved.”
Megan did not speak. When RU-47, the so-called “morning-after pill;” had become available over the counter in France in 2001 while she was seeing Alain Tillinac, she had taken it without hesitation. Which meant she might have aborted a few dozen or so more “innocent babes.” Unloved innocent babes. Suddenly she was crying, thinking of what she had done and why, images of herself as a child—lonely, abandoned—and the hardened, cynical adult that child had grown up to be side by side in her mind. Child, Abdullah had called her, without a trace of irony or bitterness, indeed with a tenderness that had pierced her heart.
“And you?” Abdullah asked. “Do you have a family?”
“I have a father,” Megan replied, wiping away with her hands the first tears she had shed in more than fifteen years. For the first time since she could remember, she had referred to the fact of her having a father without irony. Yes, she had a father.
“A father.”
As he said these two words, Megan could see sadness stealing the light from the pharmacist’s eyes, like a curtain being slowly drawn across them. She knew what he was thinking: I was a father once.
“Yes,” she said.
“Perhaps you should go to him.”
“Maybe. I don’t know what to do:”
“My dear Megan, my offer stands:”
When Megan returned to her room at the Farah, she found two notes on her bed. The first was from the hotel manager:
With deep regret I am compelled to inform you that you must vacate your room by Friday, May 16. We have a long-standing booking for a United Nations conference which will require most of our rooms. I apologize for not informing you when you arrived, but we did not expect your stay with us to be as extended as it has been. The Hyatt, only two doors down, has a reputation for excellent service. If you would like, I will be happy to reserve a room for you there. With deepest appreciation.
The second was from Abdel al-Lahani:
I have unexpectedly returned for a few days. Shall we have dinner tomorrow night? I will meet you at the Farah bar at nine unless I hear from you to the contrary.
Over the last two weeks, Lahani had been urging her to stay at his place. She could have her own bedroom if she liked, he had said, and a room could be easily converted into a study for her. She had smiled and declined. Lahani was too rich and too powerful a man to be overseeing her life in that way. She had already taken and would in the future take other things from him, but not the roof over her head. She would not let him view himself as her keeper. The sixteenth was only two days away. Before settling into a long hot bath, she dia
led the manager’s office and asked his assistant to book her a small suite at the Hyatt.
The next evening, her last at the Farah, she went down early to the bar, called the Oasis, located off the lobby at the rear of the hotel. She liked to sit by herself under the trellis of the bar’s patio at this time of day when the sun was about to set and it was bearable, sometimes pleasant, to be out of doors. The patio was bordered by a long reflecting pool on which floated paper lanterns lit by candles. Beyond the pool were the hotel’s formal gardens, and beyond them its tennis courts and swimming pool. As she sat waiting for her gin and tonic, she could hear above her head birds chirping in the branches of the leafy vine that twined itself over and around the trellis, and in the distance the muffled rhythmic thuds of a tennis match. She had placed her order at the bar on the way in and it was brought to her now by Elnardo, the handsome mulatto waiter who had, after a month of trying, finally stopped hitting on her and settled in to a half formal, half friendly relationship in which they bantered back and forth in French about the doings of Megan’s fellow guests. A four-month stay had earned her this extra amenity, one she enjoyed wherever she went and happened to stay long enough. Elnardo wore a pencil-thin mustache that went well with his broad smile and sly eyes. Perhaps forty or forty-five, in his white waist jacket and black bow tie, with his hip, Parisian French, he was the perfect player on a stage set to take full advantage of Casablanca’s colonial heritage.
“Bonsoir, mademoiselle,” he said, tray in hand, placing her drink and a crisp cloth napkin on the table.
“Bonsoir, Elnardo.”
“Are you waiting for someone?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I take an order?”
“No, he’ll order when he gets here:”
“Very well:”
“Are you prepared for the flood?”
“The flood?”
“Yes, of les politiquement corrects.”
“Je ne sais ...”
“The UN conference coming in:”
“Not here, Madame:”
Megan smiled at Elnardo’s use of the more formal Madame. Perhaps he was concerned that Lahani, whose appearance on this very scene some three months ago had markedly dampened the suave waiter’s ardor, would appear now and be mistaken as to the nature of his attentions to the beautiful American.
“Yes, on Friday. For once I am ahead of you, Elnardo.”
“I’m surprised I have not been told:”
“I’ve been asked to leave to accommodate them:”
“Asked to leave?”
“Yes, but I’ll be back for drinks. I would miss our tête-à-têtes.”
“As would I, mademoiselle:”
A short time later, Megan watched as Lahani arrived, stopping at the captain’s podium to shake hands with the majordomo type there who was in charge of the prized patio seating. Probably handing him a hundred dollars. Banking it, as he would say, for the next time, when he actually needed a table. She was familiar by now with the way in which her new lover kept Casablanca—both its servant class and its society types—in his thrall. Wherever he went he was known and deferred to. It wasn’t just money, Megan reflected as she watched Lahani chat with the tuxedoed captain. Or merely movie-star looks, though he had both in spades. It was power; power made more, not less, palpable because it was forever in reserve, wielded when necessary with the lightest, the most unnerving, of touches. Dressed in a stylishly cut navy blue blazer and white lightweight flannel slacks, all eyes, certainly the women’s, were on Abdel al-Lahani as he took his leave of the waiter and headed toward Megan. He kissed Megan’s hand and told her in a whisper that she looked beautiful before sitting down. Elnardo, hovering nearby, appeared immediately and took Lahani’s order of Gray Goose on the rocks with a twist of lime.
“So,” Megan said, “what happened in Angola? Why have you returned so quickly?”
“The Americans changed their minds, or rather their bankers did:”
“Why?”
“The risk was high and the government wanted ninety-five percent of the profits:”
“Only ninety-five percent?”
“Yes. They knew they weren’t dealing with one of the big boys and thought they could hold a gun to their heads. The bank said no:”
“What was Luanda like?”
“A backwater:”
“Did they pay your fee?”
“Yes, of course:”
“Good, you can afford dinner. I’m starving.”
Lahani smiled and then nodded to Elnardo as the waiter placed his drink on the table and left.
“Where would you like to eat?”
“You decide:”
“I have something to tell you first. I hope you won’t be offended:”
Megan, instantly alert, did not reply. In the three months she had known Lahani, he had not once by word or gesture made himself even the slightest bit vulnerable. He was possessive of her in the way that all powerful men are possessive of their women, but he was never jealous, never weak. It was weakness that was exploitable, that turned men into fools. She had no diabolical plan to exploit Lahani, nor had she any of her other lovers. But by their need they seemed to beg for it and she accommodated them whenever she could, which was most of the time. Thus she was able to travel first class and stay in suites in the best hotels in the world. She remained silent, but so did Lahani.
“I’m listening,” she said finally.
“I know that you are pregnant:”
This was a shock to Megan, a complete shock. But she knew better than to lose her composure. If Lahani was to be beholden to her in some way, then she did not want to squander the newly acquired chips she held with an emotional outburst, the kind of reaction that in the games that men and women played would enable him to too quickly start regaining lost ground.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“I have been worried lately for your safety. Carrières Thomas is a very dangerous place. I had you watched while I was away this time. You were seen going into the women’s clinic. When I was told I became worried. I thought you might be ill. I never dreamed you were pregnant. I know the owners of the clinic. I prevailed upon them to give me a copy of your chart. I am to be a father, but I am sorry I learned of it this way, sorry to have to tell you of this ... this invasion:”
Megan took a breath and then a sip from her drink, assessing this information at a rapid rate, as if it were necessary to do so for a reason that was specific and important but that she could not put her finger on.
I bad you watched. I know the owners. Your chart.
“I’m surprised, Del,” she said, “but I’m not upset:”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes. You were worried about me:”
“I was. It all seems so cloak-and-dagger, but I was hoping you see it that way.”
Megan finished her drink, baby’s first gin, remaining silent. Silence, she knew, was a reaction, but much less open to interpretation than anything she might say at this moment. In her heart there was a strange mix of fear and anger, but her instincts, honed over twelve years of dealing with men in every stage of their development, in every European capital, told her that it was imperative not to give voice to either.
“Of course I will pay for everything,” said Lahani,“and acknowledge the child:”
Acknowledge the child? Megan thought. But all she said was,“Let’s talk about that later, Del. Right now I’m starving:”
~22~
MOROCCO, MAY 15, 2003
Megan awoke alone just before dawn in Lahani’s custom-made king-size bed. Moonlight flooded into the room through the French doors that dominated the far wall, moonlight so bright that the shadows of the doors’ diamond-patterned mullions were cast in sharp contrast on the room’s large expanse of white-carpeted floor. The gossamer curtains that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the doors were billowing gently into the room in the night breeze. Megan had placed her shoulder bag
on the sill of one of these windows before putting on one of Lahani’s silk shirts and getting into bed with him when they arrived after their late dinner. She lay for a few seconds and watched the ceiling fan above the bed spin slowly. The sex was so good, she was certain, that he would never guess that it was to be their last. She rose and went to her bag for a cigarette. Lahani had been absent in the middle of the night before, sometimes working in his study, sometimes leaving her a note to say he had left on a business trip and would call on his return. As she lit her cigarette, she was hoping it was the latter this time. She would never have to see him again. The acting she had been doing for the past hours would be over. And she would have control of the child. Complete control.