There are others who wait for my answer. “Like Whoopi Goldberg,” some old man says. I feel myself smile and I don't know why. “Six, seven hours,” I say. Someone else's hand is reaching. I remember his freckles from the bar and I back away before something gets broken. “Can you wash it?” he wants to know. “I'll get more napkins,” I explain, moving swiftly to leave the bottles with Howard at the bar, regathering my hair on my way through the parlor.
Before I reach the kitchen, I find them glowing on the bureau in the corner of the sitting room, bound with a broad white sash. I gather them and head out back, past the trash cans, to the small barn that holds crates for china, boxes for linen, things I cannot see. I settle underneath the light hanging high from the beam, studying these strange, strange flowers. I do not know the name for them, but I am drawn in by their blush, their velvet purple centers, by the way they show their seeds. I imagine the island they should come from, lush and distant, my own twin there, waiting for that tug so that something might begin. I touch their warm waxy skin and close my eyes. Outside, another car starts and slows away, and there's that harp music, somewhere farther, finally beautiful. I take my time and pull each petal free.
Summer Comes Later
BY ROBERT FLEMING
Looking out the car window, he saw the red oasis city of Marrakech in the distance, toward the dark outline of the mountains. Ahead three men in ragged djellabas herded a flock of sheep along the road. The truck in front of him weaved wildly back and forth, then jerked to a sudden stop before the sea of unruly wool. The abrupt halt of his ancient Saab sent the entire backseat cargo sailing in the humid air, down into a jumble on the floor, his camera equipment, thermos, pair of battered suitcases, and rumpled bag of figs and dates.
He recognized that he was in exile, away from New York. Fleeing from America. Historically, he was not the first writer in his late thirties to seek a place of solace other than home, the troubled land of his birth, to recover and heal. Baldwin did it. Hemingway did it. In fact, many of his countrymen did it. Still, none of his pals understood why he would walk away from a good-paying job on a newspaper to catch his breath. But he was a refugee of the wounded heart and tarnished romance. He'd had his moment of glory, his day in the sun, his fifteen minutes of fame, and then it'd been all downhill. Like so many baby boomers, he was feeling the aggression of the hungry, skilled young black reporters, half his age, who were not scarred by the memories of Jim Crow and determined to make their mark in the business. He saw them ruthlessly pushing forward throughout the industry, breaking through on every level, more comfortable with whites and the corporate world than he ever could be. This was what he was up against. This was what his wife never understood. In her mind, he had never achieved his potential; he had failed their dream.
His moment under the media sun's glistening rays had come when he'd interviewed Yasir Arafat in the early 1980s in a small pock-marked building in Beirut, Lebanon. A car, full of the man's private staff, all armed, had picked him up at his hotel and driven him blindfolded into the Arab quarter. He'd been guided, staggering, into a room, where the blinders were removed and the short, bearded man sat before him at a long table with a large Palestinian flag mounted on the wall behind him: The first thing he'd noticed about Arafat was his drab–green military fatigues and the large holstered gun on his hip.
“It is the will of Allah that I lead my people back to their homeland, that I overcome the Jewish invaders,” Arafat had said, staring at him as if he were an alien being. “This struggle will not be won overnight. It will take years, maybe generations, to come, but it will come. Before it is over, there will be much war waged in the name of peace, many will die, but it will come.”
When he'd tried to question the PLO leader about the so-called Islamic menance to peace, Moslem extremists, the wild card of Arabian oil, and the interference of the West in the battle for a homeland, Arafat reminded him of the sacking of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, the calling for a Jewish state of Palestine by Theodor Herzl in 1887, the dominance of the British during the late 1930s, the 1947 Partition, the first war by the Arabs against the Jews shortly thereafter, and the annexing of the West Bank by Jordan and the Gaza by Egypt. Without a doubt, it was a history lesson rendered slowly and expertly by the tiny man with the penetrating dark eyes.
“You must know how we feel to be forced from one place to another, nomads, never at home anywhere,” Arafat said through clenched teeth. “Your people endured it as slaves so it must not be a strange feeling for you to understand.”
Every foreign reporter he knew had warned him how shrewd and perceptive Arafat could be, possessing skills that often misled journalists into underestimating him, much to their chagrin. But he would not be fooled. He researched the leader from his early days as a founder of the Al Fatah, the guerilla army formed to fight the Israelis in 1959, to his post in the fledgling PLO in the mid 1960, and finally to his ascension to PLO chairman in 1969. When the PLO was kicked out of Jordan in 1970, Arafat and the boys moved to Beirut.
“Why aren't you writing this down?” Arafat asked him, motioning to one of his aides.
“Well, this is pretty much background,” he'd replied, holding his pad up. “I'm waiting for your response to my questions about any movement to the peace process.”
Arafat picked up the telephone and spoke quietly into it. While the leader talked, one of his most trusted men tried to place his chief in context, speaking softly about his exploits in battle, the speeches, and the botched assassination attempts. He was indeed a survivor.
“Someone must pay the cost of peace, take it on, and not be afraid to die,” Arafat continued after the phone call ended. “I'm not popular with anyone. The guns are pointed at my head from every direction. Let me ask you this. Do you think the Americans will ever accept us as they do the Jews?”
The two men talked for almost three hours nonstop and the result was a series of articles ARAFAT SPEAKS! that brought him praise and book offers back in the West. That was then. That was before the days of the Great Drought.
Now he was back in the region, following up leads about fundamentalist hardliners, terrorist cells, threats to American embassies, and the changing winds of the Islamic Jihad. On the road to Marrakech, he understood that his nerves were frayed at the edges, unraveling swiftly, and nothing could prevent him from doing something stupid.
Tempers flared in the white glare of the noonday sun. He watched the men in the truck descend on the Berber herders, arms waving, shouting in harsh Arabic for the herders to clear a path. Fierce and proud, the Berbers took their time, moving at a slow regal pace, casually guiding the animals to the road's narrow shoulders with well-aimed pokes of their sticks. Behind him, others grew impatient, filling the air with sharp curses, guttural threats and the angry barks of their car horns.
Sitting behind the steering wheel of his aging car, wrapped in the stifling Moroccan heat his mind went back to his beloved ex-wife Janet, her satiny voice in his head mixing in seamless unison with the cacophony of mayhem outside. The tape played on, spilling brine onto his internal wounds, triggering that bone-deep ache, the bitter regret of his failed marriage.
Finally, the traffic moved, winding up the road toward the city. Woozy from the long drive from Tangiers, he tried to remember his first trip to Morocco in the 1970s, when he stayed at the El Monsour in Casablanca, the Rebat Hilton and the grand old Momounia in Marrakech. He was a kid then, in his early twenties. His father gave him the trip after reading Paul Bowles' novel, The Sheltering Sky, with Port and Kit trying to jump-start their dull lives with an ill-fated trip to the desert: the vast, merciless Sahara. His father, ever the academic with his literature class at Columbia, stood with him in the air terminal, going through his checklist of essentials for international travel. First, travel light. Second, buy your medicines such as aspirin, cold medications, and toiletries before leaving the States. Third, and most important, keep your traveler's checks, credit cards
and cash on your person in an inside jacket pocket, not in your carry-on luggage or other suitcases. Fourth, lock up your valuables in the hotel safe. Don't leave them unprotected in your hotel room. All good advice. Being well-traveled, the old man knew what he was talking about.
This time in Marrakech, he stayed in a small hotel not far from the city's Holiday Inn, which featured adequately sized rooms with telephone and old Philco televisions harking back to the glory days of Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. After checking in, he sat on the queen-sized beds, thinking of taking a stroll down near Hotel Layesh where there was always action and a questionable clientele. Kif peddlers. Quick-fingered thieves. Burned out torch singers. Forsaken women on carnal display, outside of the protection of the Qur'an. Dangerous at night, it was also not particularly safe to stroll down there in daylight.
The telephone rang. It was Dr. Mrabet, a great friend of his father and his old Columbia professor in Middle Eastern literature and philosophy. Word was he possessed a connection to several terrorist groups in the region, some of them violent and extreme.
“William, welcome to Marrakech,” the doctor said. “So what are your plans?”
“Following up a story on the Al Kufir, a band of hardcore extremists who have had their hands in much of the terrorist attacks in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan,” he answered. “I'm waiting for a contact, someone to get me inside.”
“Maybe that's a story you should leave alone,” the doctor replied. “One you should step away from. Come around and see me. We'll talk about old times.”
“Why do you say I should leave it alone?”
“Because there are some things you should not bother. Walk away and go home. These people are fundamentalists devoted to the Islamic Jihad and I don't think they're anyone you might want to aggravate. You're an American. They hate Americans. I say leave it alone and go home.”
“I can't,” he said. “I've got to take a chance. I need this one.”
The doctor switched gears. “Why aren't you married, good looking man like you?”
“Our marriage didn't take,” I said. “My wife stopped loving me. I came here to get my head on straight. To heal. And to win a Pulitzer by doing the first inside story on Al Kufir. I can't leave until I do that.”
“Do you know what I'm hearing, William?” The doctor's voice had a bite to it.
“What?”
“There is talk around the city that you're not just a journalist, that you are something else. A spy, a CIA operative. Believe me, if you go digging for your story in the wrong quarters, you will be killed. These are very serious, dedicated people. The streets are not safe. There have been shootings, bombings, kidnappings of foreigners, and other things. General unrest. The police and army are everywhere. Be careful, please.
The spy comment struck a nerve. “So that's what they say. Well, I am what I say I am.”
The doctor laughed low in his throat. “Tell that to the men who follow you about. My son, your every move is being watched. If you stay here, you're a marked man. Enough about this story. We'll talk more when I see you.”
“I look forward to that,” he replied.
“Insha'allah, worry not because Allah makes all things right,” the doctor said. “He is merciful, compassionate and fair. If you are meant to get this story, it will be so and nothing can stop it from happening. If it is the will of Allah. Worry not, my son. What is meant cannot be stopped.”
The phone went silent. After the call, William reviewed his notes, checked the addresses from his sources, and fell asleep on the bed. It was just a matter of time.
Now at dusk, he remained holed up awaiting word if the righteous would welcome him, an infidel, into the world. While he waited he watched a nude couple through the window on the side of the hotel. He could see everything. The woman knew how to work her magic. Her Arab lover did his part as well, letting her straddle him on the bed, kissing and licking the soft brown skin of his broad chest around and near his erect nipples. At times, she indulged in her love play as if her life depended on the heat of her passion. But there were moments when the fervent kisses, frenzied caresses, and demented wails bordered on fake, like something out of a well rehearsed strip show, a practiced lie nevertheless. She rode him hard and strong, the man's hairy hands worrying her moist sex underneath the cloth while her fingers encircled his neck. When his nature had been sufficiently aroused and his sap was high, he applied his tongue to the tender skin near her navel and down in the curly cleft between her legs. Her screams of joy echoed in the air to mix with the occasional murmur of gunfire. Her Arab lover then tilted the amber glow of the lamp as he moved to re-enter her, so the watcher could see his thin, craggy face. Once the brown man plunged into her again, he never took his eyes off the stranger across the alley until she trembled violently once or twice underneath him, her sweaty legs locked tightly around his gleaming buttocks. The Arab man knew the dark American was watching them.
Watching them brought it all back. Janet and the days before the crack-up. He felt utterly alone now, cut off from the world, from all tenderness, love or redemption. Despair, terror, and gloom landed against his chest like a series of cruel, vicious slaps.
“Sweetheart,” Janet, his wife said the night before she left him.
“What, baby?”
“William, tell me you'll never leave me. Tell me you love me.”
She was toying with him. The marriage was already dead. He never answered her, mumbled something under his breath and rolled away from her, angered that she'd even asked that of him.
When his editor called two hours later from New York, his eyes were swollen from crying. His voice was thick with tears and the words stuck in his throat. None of it was lost on the white man who had hired him when no one else would, especially on a big time city daily.
“How's the story coming?” his editor asked, his tone cheery.
“It's a waiting game but I expect something to break any day now. I've put some feelers out and the fish are circling. I expect a nibble soon.”
“Bill, we believe in you. But we can't foot the bill for you to take a vacation. We expect results. Find the rag heads you need to talk to and get this thing over with. And don't take any unnecessary chances.”
“Yeah, you bet,” he said, then hung up. Outside, police sirens sounded in an annoying chorus.
If it is the will of Allah. What is meant cannot be stopped. If it is the will of Allah.
He looked out of the window toward the hotel across the street, hoping for a distraction from the room where the young Arab couple met every day. But the shade was down and there was nothing to see. Not a damn thing to watch. Killing time, he sprawled on the bed, completely nude, smoking cigarette after cigarette. As the ashtrays filled and the black telephone on the nightstand near his bed remained silent, he became more and more anxious. Then his mind wandered back a few years to when he covered a rash of terrorist bombings in Tangiers, committed by a new splinter group determined to shake up the status quo.
Once in Tangiers, he saw a woman, dressed in rather risqué Western clothes, being shunned by other Arabs walking along one of the city's narrow side streets. Her head and eyebrows were shaved, much like the French woman collaborators of the Nazis, who were marched through cobbled Parisenne streets after the Second World War. The unforgiving crowd parted for her, this vessel of condemned female flesh, like the stacked waters of the Red Sea under the power of Moses' blessed staff. As he'd neared the scarlet woman, he'd seen alarm and fear in her dark eyes and in the contorted expressions of the others as they went out of their way to move around her, avoiding all contact. His companion, Abu Omar, a writer from a local Arab newspaper, had cautioned him to steer clear of her as well. No talking or touching.
The woman's beauty was in her modern attitude, her courage to be bold, at least that was what he told himself. To her, he was just another American infidel. As she passed him her gaze changed from fear to a sharp look of disdain, and
she marched past with her head held arrogantly aloft. Each of her proud steps sounded a brutal note of contempt for both him and the crowd.
Eventually, the memories of the woman and Tangiers dissolved into another fit of worry and self-loathing. He was not a weak man but lately all of his feelings were right at the surface. He cried again, the same stale tears. As he reached for a tissue, the telephone rang. The game was on. A man speaking thick Arabic mentioned Al Kubir, his Islamic Jihad story, the doctor's revered name, and said for him to be at the marketplace, at Djemaa El Fna tomorrow at two. The caller concluded with a threat that if he were not there, there would not be a second chance. They would not contact him again. Dr. Mrabet's words came back to him with a fury: If it is the will of Allah.
After hanging up, he sat on the windowsill and smoked a cigarette, watching the soldiers man a barricade down the street from his hotel. Twice he'd tried to go to the open-air market on the edge of the square not four blocks away, but soldiers, carrying machine guns, had turned him back. They told him that it was not safe to be on the streets, to return home because a group of rowdies were shooting at anyone dumb enough to be out walking on the cobbled roads. Which was not true. Something else was going on in the city. Angry, he defied them this day to make a short jog across the road to a turbaned merchant, who sold him a bag of nectarines, mangoes, figs, raisins, and a bottle of fermented palm wine.
Upon his return, the man at the desk told him that he had two international calls while he was out. One from a woman with a husky voice, sounded like a man with a bad head cold and the other from a man with high-pitched nasal voice who asked if he was still alive and whether the hotel had been strafed by bullets during the afternoon ruckus. Neither person left a number to call back. He went upstairs and turned on the radio to listen to the evening program of foreign chatter and music. That night, there was no show across the alleyway, although he did see the woman leave the building dressed in traditional garb with veil with a man in European clothes carrying two gift-wrapped boxes. They drove off in a small dark sedan, which had a jagged line of bullet holes in the door on its passenger side and a shattered rear window.
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