Annette was blowing her nose when Noora came to her room.
“I never cried that much when I lost my mother,” she said, sitting up in bed. “I was in love at that time with Bruno, and my world was around him. I was too young to realize. I was so foolish, so selfish.”
“Time to pump your breast, Annette. I want you to get some rest today.”
Noora waited while Annette pumped her left breast. Most women experienced a certain degree of depression, sometimes an inability to relate, and even withdrawal—possibly due to lack of sleep. Thank heavens for breast pumping, Noora thought. The baby had taken to the bottle well; Noora was sure glad about that.
“It’s a blessing you are here. But where she is … I feel her …”
“Who?”
“My mother.”
“Oh?”
“I feel the presence of my maman. I woke up two nights ago after Annou was born, and I saw her. In a vision. There. Where you are standing.” Tears rolled down her cheeks again. “She said, ‘I am proud of you.’” She handed the baby’s bottle and breast pump back to Noora.
“Eight ounces?” Noora said, holding up the baby bottle. “You pumped eight ounces already?” She handed her friend a box of tissues. “You are Wonder Woman!” she teased, trying to add a little light to Annette’s mood. “Four ounces when she wakes and another four ounces in three hours … Right? But we cannot force her …”
“Feed her only when she demands,” Annette said with an exhausted wave.
“Good. I shall feed her on demand. I like that.”
“She was beautiful.”
“Of course,” Noora said.
“I’m talking about my mother.”
“I know.”
“On the other side, they are happy. There is no negativity there. No wars. No revenge. No anger. There is only forgiveness … Forgiveness and deep love and compassion. They show sadness only when we grieve for them. Did you know that?”
“No … No, I did not know that.” Noora turned away. “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, closing the door behind her. She made her way down the hall to the baby’s room.
No negativity in heaven? Wherever that may be. She wanted to believe. Why wasn’t she receiving messages from “the other side,” as Annette called it? Nageeb! Was he happy? Was he with their grandmother? Why didn’t she feel their presence? Her hands full, she quietly pushed the door to the nursery with her elbow, where baby Annou was starting to fuss in her crib.
Nights had become her favorite time, alone with the baby. And now she would have an entire day. She enjoyed feeding Annou, changing her, and rocking her to sleep, singing Arabic lullabies her grandmother sang to her and her siblings, and songs she had learned from Um Faheema. Out of habit, Noora reached for her neck to touch the necklace. She missed it and wondered yet again if Ian Cohen’s maid, Cessi, found it under the pillow … Did she give it to Ian? She would never know.
A week later, Annette’s eyes were bright and she appeared to have gained her strength. “Today, we are going to take ma petite Annou out,” she said.
“I had no idea this manuscript existed!” Annette told Noora as they sat at their favorite sidewalk café. The baby was snoozing in her English buggy, beneath a soft pink satin-and-lace comforter. “We must find someone to translate it. You know, the last few nights … while you were taking care of Annou, and in the morning, when I was supposed to be sleeping?”
“Yes?”
“I have a confession to make. I didn’t go back to sleep. I went downstairs to Alain’s study and read my grandmother’s manuscript. I feel guilty I didn’t stay up with you, but I could not stop reading and … I am sorry …”
“You know how I love to spend time with Annou … But I had hoped you’d get some sleep …”
“I am sorry. I had to … I had to read what Grand-mère wrote … I needed to understand. I know a little German; I grew up hearing it, but I still had a difficult time comprehending the parts she wrote in German. Luckily, toward the end of her journal, she wrote more in French. Did she ever talk to you about a girl named Ghizella? She named my mother after her.”
“Yes, actually, your grandmother mentioned her name the day before she died.”
“What did she say?”
“Something about music. The music.” Noora looked off, trying to recollect that night at the hospital. “‘I hear the music,’ she said. Yes, that’s right. That’s what she said, now I remember; she said, ‘I hear the music.’”
“Apparently, Ghizella was the girl she could not save. She rescued many children,” Annette said, picking up Annou and holding her close to her heart. Tears welled in her eyes. “She wrote that … one night she undid the gas pipes and the Germans could not fix them to gas a group of prisoners … they were all children. They made them walk in the freezing rain to the next concentration camp that had a bigger gas chamber. It was then that they escaped. Except for Ghizella, a sixteen-year-old girl … When they had a chance to run, she told Grand-mère that she had to stay behind because she heard the music … Like it was a specific music … ‘It is time for you to go and for me to go on and follow the music,’ she told Grand-mère … And a long time ago, when I was in school, I blabbed it all out to one of my dearest classmates, who told everyone in school, et elles m’ont blasphémée! They cursed me. All of them. They said I was a liar and the Jews killed their Jesus. We had it coming, they said.”
Noora thought of the killing in Israel and the Middle East. She wished she could somehow have the power to stop all this hatred. “So much violence. In the end … we are all the same.”
“Isn’t that what Grand-mère used to say?”
“Yes,” Noora said. “She wrote it in her manuscript. ‘In the end, we are all the same …’”
“I never knew she killed two German guards and … a cook. A woman.”
“She … killed?” Noora was stunned.
“Yes. She killed a German woman in the kitchen, a woman who suspected her and was going to denounce her, and my grand-mère took her place as the cook. She smuggled scraps of food the Nazi guards left behind every night when she served them their dinner, and fed the scraps to the children in the camp. These details that she described … It was hard for me to read. I was tired, but I wanted to understand. More than anything, I want to know what she wrote in the first three hundred pages, the ones she wrote in German.”
“Ahna worried she had nothing to leave you and her new grandchild … All her paintings and family jewelry were taken by the Nazis.”
“She left the type of treasure no one could ever take away,” Annette said, gently rocking her baby. “Things I didn’t appreciate when I was younger. Her story. It must be told—for the next generations and for those who still believe it never happened … and for Annou.”
The next morning, Annette’s eyes were bright and she was filled with excitement. “I showed Alain Grand-mère’s manuscript. It looks like she started writing it almost forty-five years ago. He is taking it to a translator.”
That night and in the early morning, Noora thought about that manuscript. Annette was right. Ahna’s story must be told. But how?
Chopping vegetables in Annette’s kitchen, Noora couldn’t believe how time had flown. More than two months elapsed, and baby Annou was growing cuter and more enjoyable every day. But Noora had that certain anxious feeling that there was something missing with her own life. She was happy living with Annette and her family, of course, but still it was not her home. She knew in her heart there was another plan. Yet she had not come up with anything.
That evening, when Alain arrived home for dinner, he walked in the kitchen, gave his wife a kiss, and handed her an envelope. “We’re invited to the doctors’ ball—at the yacht of the Prince de Monaco …”
“Very funny.”
“No, really,” Alain said with a grin.
Annette opened the stylish envelope etched in gold, and her eyes lit up as she read the card. “Oh, mon Dieu! Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu! I
t’s the yacht I have admired forever …”
“And now you are formally invited. Along with a few selected doctors and their wives, to His Majesty’s yacht. I suppose they figured I was important,” he said with a wink.
Noora noticed the change in Docteur Alain after the baby’s birth. When Annette was pregnant, he seemed concerned and preoccupied. Quite possibly because he had lost his first wife and feared he might lose Annette during her difficult pregnancy. Now he appeared happy and at ease.
“Is Annou asleep?”
“Oui, mon chéri.”
“Already?” he asked.
Annette was engrossed in reading the invitation, holding the card as if it were some kind of a priceless piece of jewelry.
“We just put her down,” Noora answered, bringing the large bowl of salade Niçoise to the dining table.
Annette turned off the fire under a simmering pot of bouillabaisse. “The party at the yacht is only a week from now. What will I wear? It’s not enough time for me to lose ten pounds!”
“You look perfect the way you are, ma chérie.” He put down a few large euro bills on the counter. “You may want to check out the designer dress in the window of that boutique you like so much.”
Annette looked at the money. “It’s too much!”
She wrapped her arms around her husband and kissed him passionately. Noora turned away, blushing. She occupied herself putting the silverware on the table.
“We can’t go,” she heard Annette say.
“Why?” Alain and Noora exclaimed simultaneously.
“I can’t leave Annou.” She set the invitation on top of the money on the counter.
“But I’ll be here with the baby. You wouldn’t want to miss such a wonderful opportunity. You’ve always dreamed of being invited on board one of those yachts …” Noora bit her lip. It wasn’t up to her to barge into their private life.
“But that’s when I nurse Annou. That’s our bonding time together, since the rest of the time I just pump …”
“She’s almost three months old,” Alain interjected. “It’s only for one night,” he said, looking genuinely disappointed.
“What time does the party begin?” Noora had to ask.
“Eight. Just when I nurse her.”
“The party will go on until dawn,” Alain said. “We can be fashionably late.”
“It’s always a pleasure to take care of Annou. She’s used to me at night,” Noora offered.
“I cannot impose on you every time I need to go out.”
“You never go out! I am your friend and Annou’s godmother. We are family. You have been wonderful to me; you gave me a lovely room, a home …” But at times, Noora felt like she was a freeloader.
“I like you to be here,” Annette said. “I couldn’t have managed without your help. And Alain wants you here as well.”
“Absolutely,” Alain chimed in. “Annette, you’d better try on that dress as soon as the store opens tomorrow—before somebody else buys it!”
“How do I look?” Annette said, modeling her new strapless cobalt blue chiffon gown, while her husband waited at the front door.
“Fantastique, of course.” Alain said. He turned to the window by the door and peered outside.
Clad in a tux, he looked like a young Alain Delon, the French movie star who was especially popular during the fifties and sixties.
“That’s our limo pulling up,” he said, and wrapped a shawl around Annette’s shoulders.
“You both look fabulous,” Noora said, holding the sleepy baby in her arms. “Have a wonderful time. I want every detail, Annette,” Noora whispered as the couple left. Annette stopped midway, rushed back to Noora, gave a gentle little kiss on the baby’s forehead, and ran back to join her husband.
Noora dimmed the vestibule lights and pulled the lacy curtains next to the front door. She watched Annette and Alain as they were whisked away in a black stretch limousine.
“Well, Annou,” she whispered, “it’s girls’ night in.” Baldo, the old Bouvier, was still at the vet’s after a hip operation and needed to stay one more night for observation.
“We sure missed that big furry pup, didn’t we?”
The baby wiggled in her arms. Noora carried her to the nursery and laid her gently in her crib. Annou stretched out on the soft sheet and produced tiny moaning sounds as she sucked on her pacifier.
“Sleep tight, little angel,” Noora murmured.
Making her way to the kitchen, Noora smiled, thinking how much she loved the quiet of the night. She wished Alain and Annette would go out more often. She put a few last dishes away and tidied up the kitchen, then dimmed the lights lower and sat on the rocking chair by the breakfast nook. She realized she had craved sanctuary, and while she had found it temporarily in Paris with Ahna, tonight, she really felt safe and cozy in Annette’s home, alone with Annou. In a lovely villa in the South of France, no less. Noora imagined Annette and her Docteur Alain boarding the luxurious yacht. She hoped Annette would dance until dawn and not feel rushed to come home.
Through the lacy curtains, a shadow passed outside. Out of that window was the carport. There was no car parked there; Alain’s Jaguar was in the shop. It had to be her imagination—or the headlights of a passing car making shadows.
She had planned to watch an old movie, keeping the sound low so she would hear the baby. She rose out of the chair and picked up the remote she had left on the kitchen counter. Again, she saw a shadow—this time passing from the other direction. The shadow of a man, Noora realized, her heart immediately starting to pound.
She dashed out to the corridor. Holding the television remote to her chest, she slowly peered back toward the kitchen. Everything appeared normal and the curtains were glowing from the light outside. Alain had probably left the exterior light on. That’s when she saw the silver doorknob of the kitchen door next to the laundry room turn. Someone was trying to open it! The door had a deadbolt above the knob. The doorknob slowly turned back to its original position. She heard rapid footsteps. Oh my God, quick, she had to make it to the baby’s room! As she dashed down the long corridor past Annette’s room to the nursery, she heard the rattling of a window in the master bedroom. Please God, let it be the wind, she thought, trying to still her pounding heart. But there was definitely someone there. Noora snatched the portable phone in the vestibule. The baby! The corridor to the nursery next to the master suite never seemed farther to reach. When she finally made it to the baby’s room, her heart drumming harder yet, she saw that all was dim, just as she had left it, and the baby was sleeping soundly in her crib. She heard the dreadful sounds of shattering glass. She screamed. The baby jumped and immediately began to howl. She grabbed Annou. Must run! Where? Not the front door! Too close to the kitchen where she heard the shattering window. Quickly, she switched all the lights on, in the nursery, while screaming loudly in French: “I have a gun! I HAVE A GUN!” She heard footsteps running down the driveway. Had he entered the house? She heard a car screeching away. The phone in Noora’s hand rang, jarring her even more and it nearly slipped out of her hand.
“Allo? ALLO!” she answered, while trying to console the howling Annou.
“Is everything okay?”
“Oh … Annette …” Thank God! “She just … heard the ringing of the phone,” Noora huffed, out of breath.
“Ah non, I’m so sorry, but I had to call you … I imagined Annou was in her crib and couldn’t hear the phone, and … Can you imagine I wanted to be invited on board a yacht all my life, and now that I am a guest … an honored guest if you please, all I am thinking about is my baby! I miss her!”
“Annette, Annette, listen.” Was that prowler gone? Was it that evil man?! Could it have been …
“I don’t care about yachts and parties,” Annette continued, totally unaware of Noora’s trauma. “Unless I have bébé Annou avec moi! I’m crazy! Can you believe that? Can you hear me? Allo-allo?”
Holding the phone between her ear and shoulder
, with the baby snugly in her arm, plugged to her pacifier, Noora turned on as many lights as she could find in the house while making her way down the hall. It seemed that who ever tried to break in was gone. Oh God, what if it was that man, Moustafa?
“Noora … Are you there? Is something wrong?”
“Baby’s fine. Someone tried to break in … But he ran away. Everything’s fine now. Everything’s fine … I’m sorry …”
The next morning, after the police dusted for fingerprints along the windowsills, Alain was informed indeed there had been prowlers—two local young hoodlums had tried to break in.
“But we have an alarm,” Alain said.
“It wasn’t turned on, mon chéri,” Annette said. “We turn it on when we all go to sleep …”
The thugs had been caught, they were told by the gendarmes, but Noora was not convinced. “At last you’re mine… this time, you won’t get away…” A strong shiver ran through her body.
Had he really drowned? How could she know for sure?
Later that afternoon, Annette assured Noora that indeed, the young prowlers had been caught. “They were two teenage boys who break into homes when they think no one is home. They must have seen us leave in the limousine. And of all the times, Alain’s car was in the mechanic shop, so they thought no one was home …”
During the next few nights, Noora lay awake, thinking about the incident.
Annou was now sleeping through the night. Annette’s once-weekly housekeeper had grown so fond of the baby, she asked Annette if she could work for her more often, and take care of baby.
Noora knew it was time to leave.
“It’s not that I’m not happy here,” Noora told Annette several days later, while they were strolling along the croisette with Annou in her stroller.
“It would be selfish of me to ask you to stay. We will miss you very much. But you know …” Annette stopped and stared out at the sea. “We all have our destiny. You must listen to your heart.”
“My heart tells me I should take a copy of Ahna’s manuscript with me. Would you mind?” Noora asked.
Light of the Desert Page 54