Of Sea and Sand

by Denyse Woods

  And yet it wasn’t all about the magnificent East. Thea loved Baghdad because it had already marked her, aged her. Already she knew that she could never recover from the Friday-evening scenes at bus stops, where huddles of soldiers gathered, young and scared, with their distraught families, who had come to wave them off, knowing they might never see them again. Those goodbyes gave her sight of other lives, of the crisp pain of war. She worked with people who had relatives at the front, and she saw, daily, the anguish in their eyes. Her brothers, back home at college, were safe from conscription, and her opinionated mother could speak her mind, whatever her views. In Baghdad, Thea watched her tongue, and grew up.

  For the same reasons, their plans to integrate with Iraqis were largely doomed. The women at work were friendly, but wary. Most subjects were off-limits—travel, politics, what they had done at the weekend even—and any attempt to speak their language met with a studied bemusement. Those colleagues who spoke English insisted on doing so, even for the slightest pleasantries. There was no encouragement if Kim or Thea tried to say “Good morning,” or “How are you?” in Arabic. “No, no,” their colleagues insisted, “we must practice English!” Perhaps they knew it might one day be their means of escape, but it was frustrating. Thea and Kim liked the women, wanted to know them better, but when, one day, they invited those who had a little English to join them for tea at the hotel the following Thursday afternoon, the invitation, though graciously received, was neither accepted nor declined. It was only toward the end of the week that excuses started coming: Alia had to help her mother; Rabia was expected by her grandparents; and Najma was vague—thank you, but she could not come. There were no reciprocal invitations.

  “What happened to hospitality being the cornerstone of Arab life?” Kim grumbled over dinner. “I thought inviting strangers into your tent was part of the culture. What gives?”

  “What gives,” Reggie said, “is that it’s against the law to fraternize with foreigners, except in very restricted circumstances.”

  “But we work with them!” said Thea.

  “Yes, but all that is monitored. I’m sorry,” he went on, dropping his voice, “I should have told you. They have to be very careful whom they speak to.”

  “Even a couple of harmless women like us?”

  “Yes, because they might find out stuff Saddam doesn’t want them to know. They might get hungry for a different kind of life.”

  “But they can’t leave the country,” Kim said, exasperated.

  “Except to study,” said Thea. “What about Iraqi students abroad—paid for by the government? They’re out, mixing with people.”

  “That’s a risk the government has to take. They need the expertise. Besides, those students are closely watched. They scarcely go anywhere without someone on their tail.”

  Thea remembered then how the Iraqi doctor had left the pub in Dublin as soon as a couple of fellow Iraqi students appeared.

  “They were probably working for security,” Reggie said, “and he knew that.”

  “Other students?”

  “Sure. Regime and anti-regime. Everyone is on one side or the other. The same with our colleagues. One side or the other, and don’t ever believe you can tell which. They don’t know who’s watching them, they only know they’re being watched, so you two rather put the women on the spot. If they’d expressed any pleasure at being invited, that could have been taken as courting foreigners, even if they said no.”

  “Which explains the flatness of their refusal?”

  “I imagine so.”

  An oblong platter of hummus, tabbouleh, and beetroot was placed on their table. The war had closed most of the city’s restaurants, so the team usually ate in the hotel and they enjoyed their evening meal together, often retreating afterward to Reggie’s spacious corner bedroom, where they were frequently reduced to helpless laughter by silly jokes and pointless anecdotes, amusing only to the blended mentality of a small group living closely in restricted circumstances. Thea loved it all—from the hummus to the hilarity. These were good times. Good times in Iraq.

  Gently, swiftly, Sachiv Nair became a preoccupation, and as those early weeks passed, Thea had reason to believe that he knew it, maybe even reflected it. Increasingly, whenever she stepped into the lobby at that miserable hour of the morning, his eyes were already turned toward the elevators. As she emerged, he dropped his moon-like lids, and then, when her heels clipped across the marble, he looked up with a greeting, a hand reaching out for her key, and she would go her way while he stayed at his post. She began to wonder if the day would be as long for him as it was for her until she pushed those revolving glass doors and emerged into his world again.

  It was harmless. A crush. He was married, in his early thirties. She passed by a few times a day. Pleasantries were exchanged, like the keys. A few flirtatious smiles, some eye contact, but there would always be that desk between them. That marble barrier. In spite of it, the longing—to talk to him, to linger and dally without attracting attention—grew more persistent.

  There was very little they could talk about at Reception, with everyone milling around and military personnel coming and going, but she often watched him from the alcove, where she read and drank tea, raising her eyes when discretion allowed. Whenever an advance party of soldiers swarmed into the lobby, Sachiv managed to maintain about the place a distinctively civilian bustle, and Thea noticed how he even maneuvered the overdecorated generals and their eager underlings with a cold efficiency. He pulled the necessary strings, but showed no deference. In contrast, when wedding parties bundled into the hotel, he gathered a cheerful staff around him and allowed no missed detail to spoil the spectacle as the newlyweds arrived in their chariots—huge white Cadillacs—and families crowded into the lobby, the women ululating and waving their arms, while the bride came in under a swarm of hair and lace, broad with gown and grinning past her scarlet lipstick. On Fridays, the one day Thea could hang about, Sachiv was rushed off his feet, what with the martial and the marital, so it made no odds when Reggie started taking them out on day-trips. The kitchen provided picnics wrapped in foil, slabs of unleavened bread and cans of soft drinks, and they would head off to whatever sites of interest had grabbed Reggie’s attention.

  Thea was reluctant to leave the sphere in which she could catch even brief glimpses of Sachiv, but Reggie’s excursions were to leave an indelible mark, because Iraq too could give her a look, could stand still and yet tinker with the heart. It brought out her other self—the one who was curious, daring, who could no longer see her horizon, since it was now so far away. In her room at night, she gazed at maps and made plans, and read of the Marshes, of Ctesiphon and Babylon, and the holy towns of Karbala and Najaf.

  One day, in the western desert, things turned for Thea, on two counts. Removed from Sachiv for longer than she liked, she guessed herself to be in trouble, love kind of trouble, though she scarcely knew the man, and driving through Karbala, past its celestial golden mosque, she became further entranced by Iraq, though she scarcely knew the place.

  Beyond Karbala, across the steppes, they approached al-Ukhaidir, a great rectangular fortress, miles from anywhere. At a distance, it looked like a shoebox, but as they pulled up, its remote elegance silenced them. Its long external walls, intact, were indented with bricked-in arches and stocky towers, while the upper part had crumbled away. It was all aglow; a golden place. They went in, reverently, through the arch and under a fluted dome, past stocky columns and architraves, and emerged into the main courtyard.

  Reggie muttered facts and figures—built during the Abbasid Caliphate, eighth century; 165 rooms, mosque, guest quarters, bath with heated bricks; secret tunnels; forty-eight towers on the external walls; innovative architecture, including pointed arches and a new way to build vaults, which had later made its way to Europe with the returning Crusaders.

  Shaded cloisters led to brilliant, sun-filled rooms, the light filtering down from above. It was like a sandy cathedral, with
no town of its own, shining from the inside out. Two young boys, one in a leather jacket, led them up closed stairways and open steps until they emerged on another level, where they sat on a dome in the barely warm sun.

  Kim pointed to a far-off tail of dust, thrown up by a pickup truck on the plain. Her arm and hand made an undulating curve against the flat, almost savage landscape. “We can see for miles,” she said, “but there’s nothing to see.”

  On the way back to Baghdad, they had to contend with road checks near every bridge and were careful to conceal their cameras beneath the seats. Photographs of any military installation would warrant immediate arrest, and since the military were everywhere, taking even the most harmless photograph was risky. Bridges were nerve-racking. The soldiers were edgy and bewildered, uncertain what to do with a bunch of foreigners who had scraps of paper allowing them to move about the country, but after frowning and trying to appear aggressive, they waved them on every time. So they drove on along the dead straight road to Baghdad that evening, watching a red sun sinking into the darkened desert. When Iraq wooed Thea, she offered no resistance.

  Ireland, though, could still pull her strings, especially when history was in the making. On a cold February afternoon, Reggie, Thea, and Geoffrey huddled around a tiny transistor radio in Geoffrey’s room, struggling to hear, through the scratch and screech of poor reception, the Ireland versus Scotland rugby match that would determine who won the Triple Crown tournament. Having already beaten Wales and England, the Irish had only to beat Scotland to claim a prize that had not been theirs for thirty-three years. That was why this decider had the whole country sitting on the edge of its seat, and around the world, among the Irish diaspora, many an émigré was glued to a transistor radio like this one. Thirty-three years. Thea was moved when she heard the crowd roar—the familiar distant din of Lansdowne Road—she could even feel the hum of the fans’ expectation. The low voice of a commentator and the sharp pierce of a whistle meandered out of the radio with neither urgency nor compassion, yet they grappled with every sound, sucking in the aural crumbs that inadequate radio waves threw their way. Straining to hear the score, Geoffrey had leaned ever closer, as if his proximity to the plastic transistor would increase his proximity to this there-again gone-again match, while Thea and Reggie, who was also supporting Ireland, sat on the edge of the twin beds, twisting their hands, waiting for history to deliver.

  In Baghdad, where the only contact with home was infrequent deliveries of mail brought in the bags of rare travelers from London, the agonized cries of Ireland were like a bittersweet illusion. Perhaps they weren’t winning at all.

  The commentary eventually faded as hissing interference took over the airwaves, destroyed the tenuous link with Dublin and swallowed the Triple Crown decider with a gulp.

  It was much later that evening when Reggie, after running into a Scot at Reception, hurried up to Thea’s room and banged on her door, yelling that they had done it! Ireland had indeed beaten Scotland and won the tournament. She squealed as they leaped about and a rugby party was hastily convened in her room, where they celebrated as late as a working night allowed. After the others had left, Thea pulled her curtains closed against the city lights and had a sudden vision of her father, so clear that she might have walked into their sitting room the moment the final whistle blew. Not for him great leaps into the air and roars of delight, no: he was sitting in his green easy chair, his fingers around a bottle of Guinness, eyes brimming.

  “I hear,” Sachiv teased her the next morning, “that congratulations are in order, Miss Kerrigan?”

  “They certainly are, Mr. Nair.”

  Temptation was a toy, a plaything, and although she told herself she was no marriage-wrecker, she could not quit those significant glances, which soon mattered more to her than tea and cakes after work. She wanted to gush like a teenager, but Kim revealed a puritanical streak. A girlish crush on the manager, Kim could apparently accept, but open flirtation met with open disapproval, so she wasn’t told about the subtle smiles that were exchanged at every opportunity. Neither did she notice that one day, when they passed through the lobby, Sachiv did not smile or say hello, but shook his head at Thea, as if defeated.

  It moved her. They had had no more than three conversations on their own, and although those had been openly cordial, there was an undercurrent, accepted by both, referred to by neither. There were so few opportunities to speak to one another alone that Thea began to lose heart. She simply wanted to know him, a little, to find out if he was indeed the man she thought she saw. Perhaps they would have nothing to say, given the chance, but that chance never seemed to come and conversation continued to elude them.

  Until, one night, Thea’s phone rang, shaking her from deep sleep.

  “I want to make sex with you.”

  She had turned on the light, picked up the receiver and heard the words before becoming properly conscious. “Huh?”

  And the voice said again, “I want to make sex with you.”

  She slammed down the phone, her heart thudding. What the hell?

  It was two a.m. A prank call. Fine, she thought, but an in-house prank call. Someone in the kitchen, perhaps, or another guest, even, killing the small hours, that was all. That was all. She turned out the light and rolled over. Most nights, she and Kim were the only women guests in the hotel, so it wasn’t surprising that they should be targeted like this.

  Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again. Thea sat up, cursing. With every ring, fear climbed a notch. She waited, rigid, until it stopped. Her mind hurled itself around her brain until it became snared on one ghastly thought: those boys—the waiters—had keys to the rooms. They let themselves in every morning when they brought breakfast. . . .

  They let themselves in.

  Out of bed in a blink, she flew to the door, double-locked it and put on the chain. Then she sat up against her pillows, barely breathing so that she might hear every sound in the corridor. Half past two. Locked in fright, she waited, wanting to be asleep, feeling every minute pass until, in the deep silence of the building, she heard a key slip gently, quietly, into the door handle. Her eyes stared across the dark toward the alcove, where her ears were pinned to the door. Lungs jammed, heart whacking against her ribs, she thought she heard the handle turn, but the double-lock held. The key slipped out.

  Thea pulled in what air she could. Her banging heart was hurting her chest, so she tried to take deep, even breaths, like her aunt always told her to do, to help her body relax, let go, but fear had better tricks. She hated to be afraid, to be squeezed until her faculties—movement, logic, control—were disabled, as when she had once gamely stepped out across an Incan suspension bridge made of grass and, a few meters in, felt a shaking in its fibers and forgot how to move. Paralysis. Fifteen minutes of it, during which terror held her so tightly that she couldn’t even hear the voices urging her forward, or back, because she knew with certainty that if she stepped either way, she would slip between the ropes and tumble into the gully.

  Fear, again, in the wild seas off county Clare, when, lying on the surfboard and gripping its waxy rails, she realized she couldn’t read the waves. They were contrary, slapping about, bullying, like a battalion of grubby soldiers, white steam coming off their shoulders. The lads had told her not to go in: it was too gnarly for the likes of her, and when the sheer, clean slate face of one determined sucker reared over her head, it was only the nose of her board that got her over the top of its razor-sharp lip. And so she continued, flat on her belly, gripping for dear life, unable to make a clear decision, any decision, until an Australian had to come to shepherd her back to the foamy slop by the shore. “Properly clucked, eh?”

  “Clucked?”

  “Scared of the waves. Never go in when you’re scared.”

  She was properly clucked now, too. Rigid, she lay in her hotel bed, every sinew alert. Her door was locked, secure; there was no way her caller could get into the room, and yet . . . he might get in. Fear: t
hat most unreasonable of reasonable emotions.

  There were no more disturbances and, just after dawn, she fell asleep.

  It was Friday, so breakfast came late, and when the knock woke her, she pulled her robe firmly around her before opening the door. There would be no more lying in bed when breakfast was delivered. She stood by the door while the waiter—he might or might not have been the prankster—put the tray on the table by the window, gave her the docket to sign, and left.

  Kim was appalled. “You need to tell Reggie,” she said, in the lift.

  “Nah, it was a prank. His mates probably put him up to it. He won’t try it again.”

  That day they drove to Babylon. Thea, tired, stared out as Reggie took them along the Euphrates, through Hillah, and out to the mound that was all that remained of the fabled Babylon. Its Hanging Gardens, had they ever existed, had long been surrendered to earthquakes and time, but the brick outlines of old homes and streets gave a strong sense of the distant past. As she wandered, Thea could hear voices—those of the women who had once stood gossiping by this doorway, perhaps, or the merchants who had hurried toward the grand ziggurat, making deals, or the people crossing the moat. . . . She could hear voices.

  She turned. It must be a group. Tourists? But there were only a few meandering couples. “Reggie?” He was a few steps behind her. “Who is that?”