The Ambassador's Wife

by Jennifer Steil

  Tazkia had somehow wrangled permission from her parents to stay out past dark that night. She was already perched on the steps of German Haus, waiting for it to open, when Miranda and Vícenta arrived. Draped in black from head to toe, she looked like a small stray phantom. As they started up the steps, she launched herself at them. “I am sorry but is one of you the artist?” Her eyes glinted hopefully through the slit between her hijab and niqab.

  Miranda and Vícenta glanced at each other briefly, smiling, before Miranda said, “Tonight, she is.”

  “And tomorrow, it’s Miranda’s turn.”

  “But privately. I’m only an artist at home here. No public shows for me here.” She did not explain why.

  Tazkia studied them, frowning.

  “And it depends what you mean by artist,” added Vícenta.

  “Vícenta’s more of a performer really. More conceptual. More installation arty,” said Miranda, noting Tazkia’s perplexed look.

  “Tonight I’ll be showing my installation arty side,” said Vícenta. “You’ll see.”

  “Installation art-ee?” Tazkia looked desperate.

  “Why don’t we go inside?” said Miranda. “Then you can see. We don’t mean to confuse you. I’m Miranda, by the way.”

  “Tazkia. I am so happy to meet you. There is so much I want to ask you.”

  Vícenta rang the bell, and a blond girl with a ponytail, one of the German Haus administrators, showed them in. The gallery was just to the left of the front door. Vícenta had been here late the night before, finishing up. In the center of the room was a black figure about the size of Tazkia. Only it was truly shapeless; no hint of hips or breasts or neck was visible. It was an abstracted outline of a Muslim woman. A perfect parabola. On the cloth, in tiny white letters, were quotes from women in the Old City that Vícenta had been collecting for several months, some in Arabic, some in English. On the far side was a gap between the hijab and niqab, where eyes would be. In this gap, in letters of diminishing size, were the words “My soul has no windows.”

  Against the four walls were small screens playing interviews with Muslim women about the hijab. Almost all were completely obscured, but one left her face bare and covered her hair with a flowered purple scarf. It was the brightest spot of color in the room.

  When Vícenta had first explained the idea for the exhibit, Miranda had been skeptical.

  “Seriously? The hijab? Could there be a more hackneyed image of the Middle East?” she’d said.

  “Does that mean we should stop discussing it?” Vícenta had answered. “I mean, the women I talked to, they couldn’t wait to discuss it. Whatever their point of view.”

  It hadn’t turned out badly, Miranda thought. Not her kind of art, but she was seriously old-fashioned in some ways. An oil painter whose subjects were generally recognizable. No wonder she hadn’t found fame and fortune.

  Also on the wall hung a horizontal strip of black cloth embroidered with gold thread. From afar, the gold simply looked like repetitive geometric or floral patterns. But if you looked closely, very closely, you could make out tiny figures. At one end sat Queen Arwa, ruler of much of the Arabian Peninsula from 1067 until her death in 1138. At the other end sat Bilqis, Queen of Sheba, possibly ruler of Mazrooq in the tenth century BCE. A stream of women spilled across the cloth between them, in dozens of postures. Some carried heavy water containers on their heads; some cringed from menacing husbands; others sat in tattered rags, their hands outstretched. “Once, we were queens,” read the tiny embroidered Arabic letters underneath.

  Tazkia took all of this in with dark, serious eyes, as Vícenta darted from room to room making final adjustments—snipping a loose thread here, restarting a video there. A trickle of people had begun entering the gallery and milling around. Miranda smiled at them stiffly, feeling extraneous. She still missed the glass of wine in her hand. Here, there would be plastic cups of fluorescent synthetic juice at a bar in back of the gallery, but not until later. She watched Tazkia catch hold of Vícenta’s arm and follow her around, avidly questioning her. Vícenta didn’t seem to mind (Vícenta never minded attention), chatting as much as she could in between greeting newcomers.

  For some reason German Haus seemed immune from local censure. Despite the parade of Western artists exhibiting here, and the occasional mildly racy film, there had never to Miranda’s knowledge been any protests. She remembered watching Perfume here, and the sharp intake of breath when an exposed breast appeared on the screen. She had been momentarily paralyzed, waiting for a violent reaction. But none had come.

  Still, there were limits. Obviously, no nudes were exhibited. So far, no one had been stupid enough to suggest that there should be. And there was no representation of lifelike human figures, a concession to Islam. The art tended toward the abstract and the geometric. Vícenta’s work just barely fell within the parameters of what was acceptable; nothing she did was very lifelike. And oddly, video was not prohibited, as long as it was not obscene.

  The Islamic aversion to figures pretty much ruled out Miranda’s work. Worried about getting herself into trouble (a constant concern), Miranda read many of the hadiths that govern the objection to figures. The Quran condemns idolatry, but does not explicitly forbid the drawing of humans and animals; that is left to the hadiths, several of which are narrated by Aisha, one of the Prophet Mohammed’s many wives. In one, she says: “Allah’s Messenger visited me. And I had a shelf with a thin cloth curtain hanging over it and on which there were portraits. No sooner did he see it than he tore it and the color of his face underwent a change and he said: Aisha, the most grievous torment from the Hand of Allah on the Day of Resurrection would be for those who imitate [Allah] in the act of His creation.”

  Once, Aisha reportedly brought home a cushion decorated with animals for her husband to sit on. Her gesture was met with rage: “The makers of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection, and it will be said to them, ‘Give life to what you have created [i.e., these pictures].’ The Prophet added, ‘The Angels of [Mercy] do not enter a house in which there are pictures [of animals].’ ”

  That was pretty much all Miranda needed to read. But there were more: “All the painters who make pictures would be in the fire of Hell. The soul will be breathed in every picture prepared by him and it shall punish him in the Hell, and he [Ibn Abbas] said: If you have to do it at all, then paint the pictures of trees and lifeless things; and Nasr b. Ali confirmed it.”

  She had been warned.

  —

  AS THE ART exhibition drew to a close, Tazkia found her. “This,” she said, sweeping an arm toward the walls. “I find it very wonderful. But I am wanting to learn how to draw. And paint. Do you know an artist like this? It is very hard for me to find here someone like this.”

  “You just found one,” said Miranda, smiling. “You are an artist yourself?”

  “No, no. No, but I would like to learn.”

  “Why?” Miranda leaned on the white door-frame, pressing her tired spine against it and longing once again for a glass of champagne.

  Tazkia clutched at her embroidered cloth shoulder bag and glanced around her. “Could we go outside?”

  They had stepped out into the cool, dark, jasmine-scented night. A crescent moon cast pale light that seemed just to reach the tips of the bruise-colored mountains in the distance. But even shrouded by the night Tazkia was nervous. A guard sat at the entrance to the small courtyard, where others were beginning to spill out of the building. Stepping closer to Miranda, Tazkia held open her bag, revealing a thick spiral notebook.

  “It’s my trying,” she said. “My trying to be an artist. Would you look at it? And tell me if I should keep trying?”

  “I’d be honored.”

  “Please, no one can know.”

  “I understand.”

  Tazkia still looked uneasy. There was something else. “There are figures,” she whispered softly. “I can’t help it. They just come.”

  Miranda n
odded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  As if they were conducting a clandestine drug deal, Miranda and Tazkia huddled together, slipping the notebook quickly from Tazkia’s bag and into Miranda’s distinctly unglamorous backpack. As Tazkia turned to go, Miranda touched her shoulder. “You’re not the only one,” she said quietly. “Do you know this?” Tazkia’s eyes remained blank and questioning over her niqab. “Not the only one to paint figures. Not the only Muslim. I will show you.” Her eyes still unsmiling, Tazkia gave a faint nod and, tripping over the hem of her abaya, tiptoed through the garden until she and the night became one.

  —

  DESPITE HER GREAT curiosity, Miranda waited until the next day to examine Tazkia’s drawings in the daylight. She sat in her diwan with sun streaming through the windows (it was the only room in the house with large windows, as it was far enough from the ground that uninvited eyes could not intrude. The circular windows, like oversized portholes, made Miranda feel that she was in an airborne submarine), turning the pages with mounting excitement. They were extraordinary drawings. She wondered how Tazkia had managed to make them without attracting attention. She could never have sketched them out in the open, where she could be observed. And surely she wasn’t wealthy enough to own a camera. Few people here were. Miranda thought about the tiny keyhole windows far up in the tall houses of the Old City, windows that allowed women to look out but no one to look in. Perhaps Tazkia had watched her subjects from there, crouched in a dim stairwell, her secret notebook in hand.

  There were sketches of wheelbarrows overflowing with pomegranates; a squat, plain mosque with a cat in its doorway; the city’s immutable skyline against its surrounding mountains. More intriguing were the drawings of people. There was a man sitting cross-legged in a thobe, sucking on a cigarette in his market stall. Smoke rose from a corner of his mouth, but his face lacked any other features. None of the figures had eyes or noses, and most lacked mouths. It was as if Tazkia thought if she left out these details she wasn’t really drawing human figures. There were women wrapped in the blue-and-red sitarah, viewed from the back as they climbed a flight of steps. And there were small children playing in an alley, one holding a kitten above his head while the others reached for it. Miranda hated to think of the fate of that kitten.

  When she was done, she sat in her diwan for a long time, thinking, Tazkia’s oeuvre resting on her lap. Then she called Tazkia. “First, you are already an artist. Second, would you be interested in meeting every week for a small class? And third, do you know any other women who would be interested?”

  They began the following Friday. It was a good day for the women to slip away. Their fathers and brothers all headed to the mosque for Friday afternoon prayers and then often went to sit with their friends and while the afternoon away smoking shisha and gossiping. Their mothers were busy baking or dancing to music in private rooms with their own circles of friends and relatives.

  Tazkia usually arrived first, ripping her veil off the second she was safely within Miranda’s hallway. She was Miranda’s star pupil, a feisty little ball of hyperactivity and nerves. And there were three others now: Mariam, Nadia, and Aaqilah. That was enough, Miranda thought. Any more and they would become conspicuous. Besides, she was running out of space to store their paintings.

  SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

  Finn

  Finn stands outside the gate of Miranda’s former home, holding tightly to Cressida’s hand. He has hardly let go of her since Miranda was taken, cannot bear it if she is even in a separate room. He dragged her crib into his room so that he can hear her breathe when he wakes at night. Miranda would laugh to hear that he wakes several times a night now. He, whom nothing could stir before dawn. Now, he climbs out of bed every hour or two to rest a palm on Cressie’s stomach and touch his rough cheek to her milk-smooth skin.

  Inhaling deeply, Finn knocks firmly on the metal gate. Cressie imitates him, pounding away on the lower gate until Finn stops her tiny fist in his hand. He wonders if anyone can hear from inside. Probably not. He pulls his new phone from his pocket and searches for Mosi’s phone number.

  “Salaama aleikum!” The cheerful voice takes him by surprise. A shrouded form stops by his side and offers her hand. “We’ve been wondering when you would show up,” she said. “We’ve been worried about you.” It takes Finn a moment before he can place the voice.

  “Hello, Madina. Cressie, remember Madina?” Cressie clings to his leg, looking with great suspicion at Madina, who is obscured by black cloth. “It’s Madina,” he reiterates. She pulls aside her niqab so that Cressie can see her face. Reassured, Cressie launches herself at Madina’s knees.

  “Come in.” Madina takes Cressie’s hand as she slips a key into the lock and swings open the gate.

  Once they are settled in the diwan and Cressie is busy exploring the other upstairs rooms, Finn explains to her why he has come.

  —

  IT DIDN’T TAKE long for the Foreign Office to decide he could no longer be trusted to carry out his duties in an impartial manner. It wasn’t anything he had done. Every day he had continued to work tirelessly, coordinating with the US embassy to investigate every angle of Miranda’s case (though because a US national is considered at the highest risk, the Americans want to avoid taking a visible lead) while continuing to fulfill almost every other obligation of his post. If anything, he was more dogged than ever in his efforts to mediate a peaceful agreement between the northern and southern leaders. For months he had worked to assemble his coalition of twelve tribal leaders, six from each side, painstakingly chosen for the respect they commanded in their home governorates, plus a handful of officials from the ruling and opposition parties. He had met with each leader personally, explaining the specific consequences to outright hostilities and conversely the possibilities available to them in peace. The FCO was concerned about the increasing aggression on both sides, not least because of the threat of a new flood of immigrants making their way north to the UK to beg asylum. And now Finn had a personal stake in keeping the country as calm as possible.

  But he wasn’t surprised when the Office decided to replace him with the very competent Celia Rhodes, fresh from Sudan—temporarily, they had promised, just until Miranda was back. No ambassador would be kept in post under these circumstances. No matter how good. No matter how critical his current projects. There would always be “concerns about his continuing ability to take dispassionate decisions and to focus on the priorities of Her Majesty’s government.” Wilkins, his current line manager, has been enormously sympathetic, reassuring him of his continued employment, so long as he returns to London until Miranda is found. He can work on the Mazrooq desk if he wants, said Wilkins. Or do something unrelated if that is more comfortable.

  Yet a return to London is unthinkable. How could he go without Miranda? How could he leave her in a country edging toward civil war, especially when he is no longer in a position to help prevent it? How could he ever explain to Cressida a decision to leave the country without her mother? So he requested Special Unpaid Leave, SUPL in FCO-speak. He has some small savings, and it costs almost nothing to live here. He will stay for as long as it takes. This is his fault, after all. It couldn’t have been an accident that kidnappers had made off with the wife of an ambassador. But this is not what weighs heaviest on him, not what keeps him staring into the darkness until the predawn prayers blare from the neighboring mosque. He cannot help thinking that he deserves this. This is repayment for Afghanistan, for his deadly naïveté, for Charlotte. This is the world’s way of not letting him forget. He has never been a religious man, but he cannot shake the feeling that this is some kind of divine retribution. If there can be such a thing without a divinity.

  The Office was deeply unhappy with his decision. You’ll be in danger, Wilkins said. We can’t afford to pay for protection for you once the new ambassador arrives. People know who you are. You’re a target. And don’t even think about going after her yourself. You know we need to control the
situation. You know the dangers of going rogue. Finn had patiently listened to all of his arguments, had let him present his whole case, and then he had said simply, “Have you never loved anyone?”

  —

  MIRANDA’S FRIEND KARIM, who lived near her old house and had often run errands for her and Vícenta, helping them pay electric bills and find a repairman for their capricious washing machine, had found him the house. It was in the Old City, where he had always dreamed of living but which had been forbidden to him as ambassador. Diplomats lived in a wealthy suburb north of town, which was allegedly safer, but which in fact just made them easier to target, with their monstrous guarded homes and conspicuous diplomatic license plates (called CD plates, for corps diplomatique). In the Old City, Finn felt he could almost disappear. He still couldn’t navigate the maze of streets alone. And while his neighbors stared at him and cried “Welcome, welcome!” whenever he left the house, they didn’t appear threatening.

  Of course, many people knew who he was. Something like that was hardly a secret. And they were curious to see the ambassador who had moved to the Old City, where no ambassador had ever made a home. The ambassador who had lost his wife. The embassy had not been able to keep that out of the papers, despite their best efforts. How embarrassing it must be for Mazrooq, for those Mazrooqis who cared, to have failed to protect the wife of an ambassador. An ambassador who was here not only to support the country’s democratic aspirations but to offer increased food security, water purity, and education for girls. (Not that everyone believed this to be true. There were still many who believed, despite evidence to the contrary, that the Brits were there to recolonize the country. Finn was constantly reassuring tribal leaders that when the UK had pulled out on November 18, 1968, it had meant it.) This man was helping their villages to get sewer systems, and they had allowed his wife to disappear. As soon as they heard the news, all of his contacts in the government had phoned Finn with eloquent condolences. He had no use for their poetry; he wanted their help, which has thus far not been forthcoming.