‘Alison Conway, Assistant Consul at the US Consulate here in Casablanca. We don’t have long, as Inspector al-Badisi and the translator will be here in a moment. But what I wanted to explain before he got here—’
She had no time to finish that sentence, as the door swung open and in walked a man of about forty-five. He had thick black hair, a groomed moustache, and was wearing a light brown suit. He shook my hand and informed me that he was Inspector al-Badisi. He had a dossier of documents with him, which he put down on the table. I asked for water. He shouted out to someone in the hallway. Meanwhile another woman joined us – late forties, severe features, dressed in a dark suit with black hair tied in a tight bun.
‘This is Madame Zar,’ the inspector said, ‘who will be translating for me today.’
‘But we are speaking in French now.’
The assistant consul, now seated next to me at the table, put her hand on my arm.
‘I felt it was better, for clarity’s sake, if everything discussed here was translated, so there would be no ambiguities.’
‘What’s going on here?’ I whispered to her in English.
‘Just let the inspector speak,’ she whispered back. ‘All will be explained.’
The water arrived. The door was closed. The inspector sat down and opened his dossier, bringing out several copies of what seemed to be the same document. Then he looked up and regarded me with formal severity. As he spoke the translator waited for a pause every few sentences before rendering his words into English for me.
‘Madame, on behalf of His Majesty and his government, I wish to offer you our sincere condolences for the ordeal you have been put through. We have, as Assistant Consul Conway can attest, been working very closely with the US Consulate here in Casablanca in the search for you. We are immensely relieved and pleased to have you here, alive and, I hope, reasonably well.’
I said nothing. I just nodded acknowledgement of his very civil words.
‘Now I regret that we must discuss the events that occurred in a sector of the Sahara some forty-three kilometres from the town of Tata. We do know what happened out there—’
I flew off the handle.
‘How can you know what happened? I was there. What happened there was inflicted on me.’
The assistant consul gripped my arm tightly. I shut my eyes for a moment, gathering myself, then opened them and said:
‘I apologise for interrupting you, Inspector. It has been a very long few weeks.’
‘There is no need to apologise, madame. On the contrary, it is we who should be apologising to you, considering what you’ve been put through. As I was saying . . . we are aware of what happened in the desert.’
With that he pulled over what was clearly a prepared statement and began to read it to me. In it he recounted the ‘facts’ of the case. How I had been searching for my missing husband in the Sahara and had been drugged with chloroform while leaving my hotel in Tata to catch the early bus to Ouarzazate. The two ‘criminals’ were named Abdullah Talib and Imad Shuayb, both twenty-one, both from Marrakesh, both working on a road work project in Tata. They beat and robbed me, knocking me unconscious. But after that, the two thieves argued over how to split the money and goods stolen from me. A fight between them broke out, with Imad stabbing Abdullah to death, and then, in a panic, setting fire to the body and returning to Tata. When he tried to sell my laptop and passport some days later in Marrakesh, a merchant notified the police. Imad Shuayb confessed everything after his arrest and was so ashamed of his crimes that he hanged himself in the prison cell in which he was being held while awaiting trial.
When the inspector reached this part of the narrative my shoulders stiffened. I was about to say something – but again Assistant Consul Conway put her hand on my arm, letting me know that silence was the best option. I knew immediately what the inspector was reading me: the official version of what went down, eliminating the nasty public embarrassment (in such a tourist-based economy) of the revelation that a Western woman had been abducted and raped and left to die under the Saharan sun. I could only begin to wonder if, having had his ‘confession’ beaten out of him, my abductor had truly taken his own life or was conveniently suicided to close the case. While part of me was outraged that the rape had been left out of the official statement, the other forensic part of my psyche (the eternal balancer of profits and loss) also understood what the authorities were doing. They were giving me a way out, and one in which no possible legal charges could ever be directed at me, or an investigation demanded by the assailants’ families (because even in self-defence, a murder is a murder and must be investigated). The loose ends were being tied up in a manner in which the case would be permanently closed.
The inspector continued, explaining how a Berber family had found me lying unconscious in the desert, nursed me back to life and eventually helped get me to Casablanca. Again I wondered whether they actually knew the names of my saviours or whether this was just more official speak. I interrupted him.
‘That is what happened, monsieur. I owe my life to those people who saved me and the man who drove me here.’
The inspector’s face twitched, as if he had been caught unawares by this revelation. That’s when I knew that they knew nothing of Maika and her family, or of Aatif and the way I had been smuggled here behind the burqa. They had just invented the Berber part of the story as a way of explaining why I had gone missing for several weeks. As such my Berber friends would not be receiving unwanted visits from the Sûreté posing all sorts of questions. They would be left alone.
Assistant Consul Conway shot me a look, telling me that I should let the inspector finish.
‘I am pleased that you were helped by our citizens,’ he said. ‘And I would like to say – those men who attacked you, those criminals . . . they are not us.’
‘Believe me, monsieur, I know that,’ I replied. ‘I know that so well.’
‘We have prepared an official statement in English, French and Arabic which Assistant Consul Conway has examined in all three languages to confirm they are one and the same, and which we would like you to sign . . . after, of course, you’ve had the chance to peruse them. We would appreciate it if you would pose for a photograph with myself. It will be released to the media to show that you are alive and well, as there has been considerable concern here and elsewhere about your disappearance. We have been in contact with the hotel at which you and your husband were staying in Essaouira. All your clothes were packed up and sent here to Casablanca, where they will await you tonight at the Hotel Mansour. It is an excellent hotel and you will be our guest tonight. Anything that you want there you can just sign for. When Imad Shuayb was arrested we recovered your passport.’ He pushed this across the table to me. ‘We also discovered that you had a reservation back to New York on Royal Air Maroc some weeks ago that you never used. We have contacted the airline and they have changed the reservation, at no charge whatsoever to you, to tomorrow at midday. We will arrange for complimentary transport to the airport.’
So Ben Hassan had probably called his police contact early this morning while I was still asleep, telling them he had me at his place, but to wait until I was up and ready before coming to take me in. In the meantime the assistant consul had been contacted and everything put in motion to wrap this story up as quickly as possible and get me out of the country tomorrow.
‘That’s all very thoughtful of you,’ I said. ‘One important thing remains outstanding, though. Have there been any sightings of my husband? Any sense whatsoever of his whereabouts?’
The inspector pursed his lips and reached for another file.
‘On the day in question your husband checked out of the Oasis Hotel early in the morning, and was seen walking out of town. A local tour guide named Idriss was going to work in his jeep and saw Monsieur Leuen walking directly into the desert. He stopped and asked your husband if he could offer assistance, as he was heading into a barren area without oases, and was wearing no hat and
carrying no backpack or canteen. Your husband told the guide he was fine and kept walking into the Sahara. That was the last sighting of him.’
‘And that was at what time?’ I asked.
‘The tour guide said it was around seven-thirty a.m.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ I said. ‘I arrived in Ouarzazate at seven and caught sight of my husband at least three times that morning.’
‘Did you speak to him?’ the inspector asked.
‘No – he always eluded me. And the woman at the hotel told me he returned briefly at two o’clock before heading to the bus depot to catch the bus to Tata. I followed him. I saw him in front of me. I missed the bus and took the next one.’
The inspector pursed his lips even further, mulling over some more documents, scrutinising them with care.
‘I have here the statement from the tour guide and the woman at the hotel. Again I repeat – she said your husband checked out at seven, and the tour guide confirmed that he had his conversation with him at seven-thirty. It’s all here.’
‘But I saw him.’
‘If you saw him,’ the inspector said, ‘then why didn’t he answer you?’
‘He was avoiding me. But that woman at the hotel . . . I remember so well the conversation with her when I came back from seeing . . .’
I stopped myself from saying anything more. Because to do so would, I sensed, begin to raise questions about my sanity; questions which I myself didn’t want to answer. I closed my eyes. There was Paul, running away from me on the streets of Ouarzazate. There was the scene at the hotel reception desk, after I’d visited his other wife. Yasmina told me that I’d just missed him. And the sight of his bobbing grey hair and his tall frame in the distance as I raced to catch him before he boarded the bus. Everything else that had happened to me after that was so real. I still had plenty of physical scars from the attack. They’d found the burnt body. Opening that passport in front of me I saw that it was, truly, my own. All tangible, all real. I had lived this story. It was all verified. But those hours in Ouarzazate when Paul was everywhere and nowhere . . . surely that couldn’t have been a spectre, a hallucination, a mirage?
‘Are you all right, Robin?’ Assistant Consul Conway asked me, her hand on my shoulder.
‘No.’
Leaning towards me she whispered in my ear:
‘I cannot give you official counsel, as that is not in my diplomatic remit. But speaking personally, if I were you I would sign the statement. I had one of our legal people and one of our translators look at all three versions. They all match up, and they all let you leave Morocco with the matter entirely resolved.’
So she too suspected (or, indeed, knew) that the burnt body in the desert wasn’t the handiwork of the accomplice who was then ‘suicided’ while in custody.
‘Give them what they want,’ she continued. ‘Put your signature on the statement, pose for the press photograph, spend the night in the five-star hotel they’ve arranged for you, take the flight home tomorrow. They are being very smart about all this. Very conscientious. I strongly advise you to do the same.’
I shut my eyes again. Paul was there, sketching away on the balcony of our room in Essaouira, flashing me a seductive smile as I brought him a glass of wine, telling me he loved me. I blinked. Paul was gone. I blinked again. There he was dashing down that back alley in Ouarzazate, eluding me as always – but still so tangibly there. I blinked again. Nothing. A void as empty as the Sahara.
I opened my eyes. The inspector was staring at me concernedly.
‘Would you like some time to think about all this, madame?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to go home. Where do I sign?’
Twenty-eight
AT FOUR O’CLOCK that morning I sat up in bed. I could not remember a single detail of the nightmare that had snapped me into consciousness. All I felt was a dangerous, oppressive presence. Undefined. Entombing me.
But then I opened my eyes and found myself in this heavily over-upholstered hotel room. Hours earlier, upon being checked in here, I was brought upstairs to find the two suitcases that had been dispatched from Essaouira. It was a shock to see all my clothing intermingled with that of my vanished husband. Whoever had packed up our room there had not separated his from hers. It took me just ten minutes to repack all of my clothes, and to lay out the items I would need until the flight tomorrow. While handling Paul’s things I felt neither rage nor trauma, just a profound numbness. Assistant Consul Conway – she insisted on me calling her Alison – had accompanied me to the hotel in the unmarked police car that the inspector had ordered after I had signed the official statement and posed for a photograph with him. Case closed, it told the world. I had extracted one promise from the police – that the photo would not be released to the press until I was en route to the States the next day. I didn’t want stares at the airport tomorrow. I wanted to be home by the time it was revealed that I’d emerged safely from the wilderness.
‘You handled that all very well back there,’ Alison said when we reached the hotel. The management offered us tea while the room was being made up. ‘They wanted to wrap this up quickly, without fuss. They’re pleased you played ball.’
‘What else was I going to do?’
‘After an experience like yours . . . well, most people would already be showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. I am very impressed that you didn’t break down in front of the inspector, and kept yourself so contained.’
‘I’ve had several weeks to sort through the worst of it. And I need you to do me a favour.’
I explained about the desert family who had taken me in, and the vague location of the oasis which they were calling home right now. I gave her the remaining 28,000 dirhams, then asked if she could perform a minor miracle and get the money to them.
‘I can’t promise anything,’ she said, ‘but I’ll try.’
‘I don’t want the law involved. They’re a bit wary, I sense, about anything to do with the government.’
‘Berbers?’
I nodded.
‘It will be an interesting challenge finding them.’
‘May I ask you a direct question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Have the police conducted a search of the desert near to where my husband was last seen?’
‘Absolutely. And they’ve found nothing so far.’
By nothing I knew she meant no body, no desiccated corpse, burnt by the sun, fed upon by vultures.
‘And that tour guide who saw him – he clearly identified Paul?’
‘I read the report from the Ouarzazate Sûreté. He described a Caucasian male, around two metres tall – that’s six foot five – thin, with long grey hair and several days’ growth of beard. Does that sound like your husband?’
I shut my eyes and again saw Paul’s hair slapping the shoulders of his white shirt as he raced for the bus in Ouarzazate, my entreaties to him to stop only accelerating his pace.
‘Yes, that sounds like him.’
‘Of course, there could have been another Caucasian male of a similar age and build and hairstyle who went out hiking in the desert that day. And I have checked with my colleagues at all the other Western consulates and embassies here. There’s no one else of that description missing.’
She chose her next words with care. ‘You still do maintain that you saw him on the streets of Ouarzazate, later that same day, several hours after he allegedly disappeared?’
‘I saw what I saw. But what any one of us sees . . . is that ever the truth? Or is it just what we want to see?’
She considered this for a moment.
‘Trust me – and I know this, because I lost my sister five years ago in a car accident where I was the passenger – it’s when you are beyond the initial trauma that it jumps up out of nowhere and grabs you by the throat. Don’t be surprised if, now that you are out of danger, it begins to get tricky for a while.’
At four that morning the ‘trickiness’ be
gan. That sense of a dark force in the room with me, about to encircle me and wreak havoc. I couldn’t pinpoint who or what it was. What I found myself doing, after getting up and pacing the room, was throwing on something to wear, heading downstairs with a suitcase containing all my husband’s clothes, and giving them to a homeless man in his forties who was lying near the gutter. I just put the case in front of him and handed him 500 of the 1,000 dirhams I’d held onto for tips and incidental expenses. His eyes widened when he saw the sum of cash I had pressed into his palm.
‘Why me?’ he asked.
‘Why not you?’
Back in the room I ran a very hot bath and sat in it for the better part of an hour. A long soak, during which I started to cry and then couldn’t stop until I was so wrung out that, after drying myself, I forced myself back into bed with the hope that sleep might overtake me again. But I was wired now and very wide awake. So I turned on my laptop and saw that Morton had answered the email I’d sent to him after checking in to the hotel, informing him that I was alive and would definitely be landing tomorrow (now today) in Buffalo. I also mentioned that Paul was missing, presumed dead. Morton’s reply was all business:
Will be at the airport. Very glad you are out of harm. Re: Paul. You should know that, under NY state law, a missing person cannot be declared dead for seven years. But there are some legal things we can do to protect you. More when we meet. Best – Morton. PS – I can finally sleep now, knowing you are OK.
Trust Morton to practise ultra-pragmatism at a difficult juncture.
The rest of the day passed in a strange blur. An unmarked police car picked me up at the hotel, as arranged, at nine-thirty. At the airport I was checked in and taken through a special security line by the two officers charged with getting me on the plane. A representative of the airline met us and escorted us to a private lounge. The cops stayed with me until the flight was called, taking me to the gate and watching me board the plane. They wanted to make sure that I was leaving the country.
Eight hours later I was in front of an immigration officer at Kennedy airport in New York. I had expected to be bombarded with questions – but it seems that my ‘gone missing’ status hadn’t been filed against my name on the Homeland Security website (or maybe the US Consulate in Casablanca had already arranged for it to be pulled). The officer scanned my passport and asked me how long I had been out of the country. When I told him, he asked:
The Heat of Betrayal Page 32