I was suddenly in free-fall again.
‘I’ll give you fifty dirhams if you take me to every hotel in town.’
‘But I assure you—’
‘One hundred dirhams.’
The man shrugged, then nodded for me to follow him.
We went through the archway that led into the centre of Tata. The town was something of a maze. Dark, twisting streets. Little in the way of street light. We stopped by a true dive of a place, which from the outside looked like a flophouse. A man with a haunted face – his eyes sunken, forlorn – came out from behind the desk and greeted my escort. They embraced. Words were exchanged. I was asked to show Paul’s passport. The desk clerk shook his head, pointing out into the darkness of the night. I asked him to study the photo again to make absolutely certain that he hadn’t seen him. Again he shook his head.
Ten minutes and three hotels later we had come to the end of the line, apart from the place to which I was now being brought to spend the night. At each of these establishments it was the same routine: the passport photo, the question about whether this man was staying there, the shake of the head.
As we left the last hotel I asked my escort his name.
‘It’s Naguib, madame.’
‘What time is the first bus back to Ouarzazate?’
‘There’s one at five a.m.’
‘So I should leave my hotel when?’
‘Four-forty-five will be fine. It’s all downhill and just a ten-minute walk.’
From the shadows a voice began to chant: ‘Downhill, downhill,’ the tone mocking, amused.
Out stepped those two young tough guys who had harassed me just half an hour earlier upon my arrival. They lit up cigarettes and the flirtatious one even tipped his baseball cap in mock salute. When Naguib snapped at them – hissing something angry in their direction – Mr Arrogant said to me in French:
‘We were not trying to be disrespectful, madame.’
Then they disappeared back into the shadows.
‘Do you know them?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid so. They come from Marrakesh. They work on the crew that is resurfacing part of the road near here. They’ve been here for two weeks and think they’re big men from the big city. They’re stupid, but harmless. Shall we head to my hotel now?’
We began to ascend the narrow pathway that led up a Babel-like hill. It was a steep climb, but the moon was full tonight, so we weren’t stumbling in the dark. When we reached the summit I was panting and feeling parched. It had been quite an ascent. Immediately an elderly woman in a hijab insisted that I sit down and found me a bottle of water. Naguib took my passport and 300 dirhams, saying he would fill in all the necessary registration forms. The woman asked if I liked lamb couscous. I indicated that would be just fine, as I had hardly eaten all day and was now famished. Naguib returned and led me through an extraordinary structure: castellated, with great open spaces and an outside walkway that looked down on the village below. The sky was dominated by the very full, spectral moon.
My room was under the eaves: simple, well-furnished, clean. There was a double bed and a decent shower. I handed Naguib 100 dirhams and thanked him.
‘I am back on duty here at six-thirty tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to take the five a.m. bus, as there is one that leaves at eight. You could sleep in a bit and have breakfast and still be back in Ouarzazate by two o’clock.’
‘Is there any chance whatsoever that my husband could have gotten off somewhere between Ouarzazate and here?’
‘The bus can stop at assorted villages – but only if a passenger requests it. So, yes, he could have possibly done that – but these places have little in the way of hotels or restaurants.’
‘Might the driver of the earlier bus be here now?’
‘No – because he returned as a passenger on the evening bus back to Ouarzazate. He won’t be back until tomorrow and I have no way of contacting him. You could wait until he returns tomorrow, and we could ask him together.’
‘I think I’m going to head back on the early bus,’ I said.
‘As you wish, madame. But here’s my phone number if you need me.’
Taking a notebook and a pen from his pocket he wrote it down and handed it to me.
‘Thank you so much, Naguib.’
‘How long will you need before dinner?’
‘Fifteen minutes at most. I just want to shower and freshen up.’
‘I’ll tell the cook to expect you shortly.’
A quarter of an hour later, I arrived at the outdoor terrace that served as a dining room. It was a wonderful open area with six or seven tables. There was only one other guest in situ – a lean grey-haired man, with round wire-rimmed spectacles, a blue short-sleeved shirt, tan shorts, orthopaedic sandals on his feet. There was a book propped up against his wine bottle: Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann. This must be the German who arrived on the earlier bus. The same bus as Paul! Someone who can confirm his whereabouts. Immediately I approached his table. He looked up, his face somewhat lined but still strong, with deep blue eyes that seemed to be harbouring some quiet sadness . . . or was that just me projecting my own sadness on everyone?
‘I’m sorry,’ I said in English, ‘but I don’t speak German.’
He smiled at me. I continued:
‘But I am very competent in English and not bad in French . . . My apologies for interrupting your dinner.’
‘My dinner is finished,’ he said, also in English, pointing to his empty plates. ‘But if you are about to eat and would like company . . .’
He indicated the empty seat opposite his own.
‘That’s really kind of you. But before I sit down I have a rather urgent question.’
‘By all means.’
‘Were you on the bus that left Ouarzazate at two o’clock this afternoon?’
‘Indeed I was.’
‘Did you see this man?’
I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out Paul’s passport, flipping it open to the photo page. The gentleman studied it carefully for several moments.
‘I’m afraid there was no one at all like this individual on the bus.’
‘Are you absolutely certain of that?’
‘When I got on in Ouarzazate I took a seat right at the back, so I walked by everyone who had already boarded.’
‘But he got on right when the bus was leaving.’
‘I remember looking up when the last person got on, but that was the driver.’
‘Sir, please, I saw him get on the bus.’
‘Who’s “him”?’ he asked, pointing to the photo.
‘My husband.’
That got his attention.
‘Sit, sit,’ he said, motioning to the empty chair. ‘My name is Dietrich.’
I told him my own. We shook hands. I changed the subject.
‘Germany is one of around fifty countries that I keep telling myself I should visit,’ I said.
‘If you come, besides Berlin and Hamburg and Munich, you should drive along the Romantische Strasse – and stop at Rothenburg ob der Tauber. A medieval city between Würtzburg and Nürnberg. Completely restored after much bombing in the war. Sehr gemütlich, as we say. A very quiet, beautiful town – and the place I’ve called home for thirty years. I had a very faithful congregation in Rothenburg until I stepped down last year.’
‘You’re a priest?’
‘A pastor. Lutheran. And recently retired.’
‘If I may ask – what brings you to the Sahara in midsummer?’ I asked.
He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
‘I remember once reading in an English novel about a man traversing this corner of the world after suffering a terrible grief, and the writer noted: “He crossed North Africa, trying to empty his mind.” I came here, at an absurd time in the calendar, trying to empty my mind.’
‘Because of a terrible grief?’
He nodded, again gathering his thoughts.
‘My wi
fe of forty-four years died at Christmas.’
‘Oh God, that is awful. Was it sudden?’
‘Completely out of nowhere. A brain aneurysm. She got up from the dinner table at home to fetch something from the fridge. Suddenly she looked startled, then in terrible pain, then she fell to the floor. When I raced over to her she was no more. You know that line, “In the midst of life we are in death.”’
Immediately I heard myself saying:
‘“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” It’s from the Book of Common Prayer. One of the side benefits of being raised an Episcopalian.’
‘And it was also a Latin antiphon: Media Vita In Morte Sumus. And it has appeared often in poetry. Rilke used it in a poem once . . . and now I am showing off.’
‘Hardly. It’s most impressive. And it is good to be speaking with you.’
‘Were you hoping to be speaking with your husband?’
‘Of course,’ I said, the tears welling up again.
‘I apologise for intruding.’
‘You’re hardly intruding.’
‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ he said.
‘I think I’d like that very much.’
He reached for the still-full bottle and poured me a glass. At that moment the lamb couscous arrived. I thanked the diminutive woman for bringing it, apologising for keeping her up so late.
‘Pas de problème,’ she said in a near whisper, disappearing back into the kitchen.
To his infinite credit Dietrich steered us into more neutral waters, asking me about my work, about how I shifted from journalism to accounting, noting that I must know much intriguing detail about my clients through their financial affairs. I asked him about his student years at Heidelberg, and learned that he had two sons, a lawyer and a tax inspector (‘We’d have much to talk about’), living in Nürnberg and Munich respectively.
Then the couscous was finished. Having drunk a second glass of wine I was feeling considerably less shaky. But I now had a desperate need to talk; to sit and speak calmly about my life with Paul – beginning with my doubts and concerns about him before we were married, ending with the discovery of his appalling betrayal and all the crazed uproar since then.
‘Truth be told,’ I said at the end of this monologue, ‘I cannot say for certain that it was Paul whom I saw on the Avenue Mohamed V today. I kept thinking I saw him everywhere before that. But when I shouted at him in the streets of Ouarzazate he never turned around, even though we were only a few feet away. And I’m haunted by the letter he left for me – a letter which let it be known that he was considering taking his own life. In my darkest moments, I cannot help but wonder if I was seeing a ghost.’
‘There is no reason to think he is dead. You told me the woman at the hotel confirmed that he’d left just before you arrived back from seeing his ex-wife.’
I nodded. Dietrich sipped his wine, cogitating.
‘I’d like to posit two thoughts here,’ he finally said. ‘The first is that one of the reasons why his former wife, and his rather dangerous friend, Ben Hassan, were so furious with him was that, on a certain level, he behaved just like an old-fashioned colonialist. He came into a fragile country. He took advantage of many of the people he encountered. He wreaked a degree of havoc. Then he packed up and left, accepting no responsibility at all for the mess he left behind.
‘But the other thing that strikes me about this story is your desperate sense of guilt. He betrayed you terribly. All you did was confront him with his betrayal. That story you told – about his assurances that he wanted a baby with you, and then doing what he did – is nothing less than horrible. I think that you leaving him evidence of his crime – and I do think what he did was emotionally criminal – was an elegant approach. It speaks volumes about your maturity. The fact that you have been desperately trying to track him down since his disappearance from Essaouira, the fact that you are here in the middle of a great sandy nowhere, on your own, still trying to save him from himself . . . Robin, you have my admiration.’
I felt my eyes welling up. I lowered my head, fighting back tears. Dietrich reached over and took my hand, squeezing it in a way that implied one word: courage.
‘You will get through this,’ he said. ‘Think of it as a maze, a labyrinth. But you haven’t lost your ability to negotiate your way out of its ensnaring contours. The biggest devastation, in my experience, is the loss of hope – and the revelation that there is so much you just didn’t see.’
‘Oh, I saw a great deal about him . . . but I chose to ignore all the early-warning signs; all the telltale indications that he truly couldn’t handle the responsibility implicit in building a life with another person.’
‘Sometimes the need for hope blinds us to other more evident verities. What else can we do but keep trying to see things a little more clearly?’
‘As you do.’
‘Don’t be certain of that. I have my limitations and flaws like everyone else. Just as my marriage was hardly perfect.’
‘It did last forty-four years.’
‘That it did. But we separated for six years, during which time we both had relationships with other people. It was my initial weakness – an involvement with a woman who also happened to be a parishioner – that sparked the separation. It caused many problems and hindered my clerical career. Finding our way back to each other . . . that was a remarkable journey. Not facile. And not without considerable pain. But the result was twenty more extraordinary years together. Then, out of nowhere, she died. Herta was only sixty-eight. As I used to tell parishioners who had suffered a tragedy, we never can completely fathom God’s plan for us.’
‘But do you truly believe that it was His hand which “smote” your wife down?’
Dietrich smiled.
‘I appreciate your use of Old Testament language. I have no answer as to whether He is an all-seeing, all-controlling God who decides our fate. God for me is a more complex idea. You know it was Montaigne who stated that the unknowingness of life is something that we all must embrace.’
‘I do believe you can have religious faith and be thinking at the same time.’
‘But you yourself have never been able to embrace the idea of faith?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I have plenty of faith . . . in the need to fight forward. And though I would, on a certain level, like to fall on my knees right now and beg Him to somehow deliver my husband to me, I sense I would be talking to myself.’
‘I will nonetheless pray for you tonight . . . and for your lonely journey into this Niemandsland. A no-man’s land. Like the terrain beyond Tata. Last week, in another corner of the Sahara, I spent two days out on the dunes. I drove myself – which was very risky, as once you leave the road you are driving directly on the sand. I had to rent a four-by-four – and the owner of the hotel wanted me to hire a driver, a guide. But I had to do it alone. Solo.’
‘What were you trying to prove by heading out on unpaved Saharan tracks, alone? Was it about communicating with God?’
He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
‘It was about confronting my loneliness.’
‘Loneliness in the face of grief?’
‘Of course. But also loneliness in the face of God. And the fact that I finally know now that He cannot provide me with the answers I need.’
‘Yet you still believe?’
‘Indeed I do. I do so not out of habit or the need for ritual – though I do love so much about ecclesiastic ritual. I think I also still believe because I need to allow myself to be open to the inherent enigma of life. What is real to us? What is a mirage? Why do we spend a lifetime trying to somehow discern between the two? And when we die, when this corporeal self is no more, if it is simply the end of consciousness . . . then what?’
‘That is the great mystery,’ I said.
He glanced at his watch.
‘I promised my son Horst that I would Skype him late tonight. He is going through a divorce now. He’s just thirty-two wi
th a little daughter – my granddaughter – and he is devastated, even though he’s been unhappy in the marriage for years. But he is choosing immense sadness at the moment. I can appreciate that. I chose that myself at certain difficult junctures in life.’
‘You’re a very good father, calling him so late.’
‘Being a parent – it is a lifetime job. They are always your children. And you are always engaged with their vulnerability and their own struggles to try to carve out something happy . . . or not.’
‘Being a parent . . . that dream is dead for me.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I turned forty last October.’
‘The way medicine works today you still have time.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘I must say this was not a conversation I was expecting to have in Tata,’ he said. ‘The man of faith in me might even posit the idea that we were brought together tonight for a reason. Even when you are stricken by the most desperate solitariness or doubt, someone can come along and remind you that no one is alone.’
‘Beautifully said. One final question. Did God speak to you when you were all alone – and so severely vulnerable – in the Sahara?’
‘Of course He did.’
‘May I ask – what did He tell you?’
‘He told me to get back to a place of safety.’
‘Good advice.’
He stood up.
‘I will be taking the eight a.m. bus tomorrow – so if you’d like a travel companion back to Ouarzazate . . .’
‘I need to take the five a.m. bus.’
‘You’ll have no sleep.’
‘True – but there’s an afternoon direct flight to Paris. I am going to see if I can get a place on it. And the early bus will get me back to Ouarzazate in time.’
Now it was my turn to stand up. As I took Dietrich’s hand he executed a small, almost formal bow – a hint of old-world courtesy in the midst of the desert.
Five minutes later, back in my room, the air conditioner cranked up, I couldn’t help reflecting on that sage piece of advice that Dietrich received from the Almighty while facing the void of the Sahara.
Get back to a place of safety.
The Heat of Betrayal Page 22