The door opened. She heard an interloper in the hall being shooed away. “Babies are out. Babies are out. No one’s allowed on the floor.” She turned out the overhead light, smoothed the bed, unhooked her bra, and waited. She could hear Cassie’s cry echoing in the hall. When she arrived, she was crying so hard her eyes were squeezed shut and her body was shaking. She began sucking without missing a beat. Every third or fourth swallow made her choke, but she kept on eating. She choked, gulped, and shivered until, exhausted and sated, she fell asleep.
Her forehead was slightly sloped from birth; otherwise she was a near image of her mother but with different coloring. Her eyes and hair were dark brown and her skin was faintly tinted. Star prodded to loosen one of the little fists. The baby opened her eyes and grabbed her mother’s finger tightly. “Hey,” said Star, smiling down at her daughter, “you’re a strong little girl. Do you know I’m your mom?”
When Paul took them home from the hospital, he urged Star to put in a transatlantic call to her mother.
“It’ll cost a fortune.”
“Never mind. We can afford it. It’ll make you feel better.”
There was limited access over the water and calls had to wait their turn. The operator said the best she could do would be six in the morning, Washington time. But then came the disappointing news that no one was home. According to Muffi, who answered, her parents were attending a wine growers’ convention as a special treat for their anniversary.
The telephone rang at dusk with a warning shrillness. “Hello,” she said. The operator asked her name, there was a series of clicks, and then, “Nijmeh? It’s Baba.”
“I have a baby girl. I wanted to tell Mama,” she blurted out.
“Stop. Don’t say another word. Please . . .” His voice faded in and out. “I wanted you in my arms for this, habibty . . .”
The first two days she wanted only to sit by herself, perfectly still. If she dared tell anyone what she was thinking, they would be shocked. She herself was shocked enough to be mesmerized—Oh, God, why? It seemed so perverse—by imagining gruesome, detailed pictures of her mother. She wanted to be able to grasp and understand the horror of the worst moments. Over and over she ran the scenario in her head—the floor giving way, the panic, the screams, her father reaching for her mother’s hand, heavy ugly shoes mindlessly grinding her mother down, easily crushing her skull, her jaw, the sockets of her eyes—the crisp cracking noise reverberated in her brain. She couldn’t bear to look at any photographs of her mother sound and whole.
The first few nights were dreadful. She had to bring herself up, struggle up through dark rings of deadly weight. She awoke rigid with terror—her temples throbbing, her throat emitting unintentional sounds—and thought, No, no. It can’t be. There are too many things left unsaid. Mama!
On the worst day, groggy from the sedative Menden had given her, she thought she was still in the hospital giving birth and something had gone wrong with the baby. She began to cry deep wrenching sobs and when Paul came to comfort her, she told him Cassie was dead. Her milk dried up and a nurse was brought in to care for both of them. It was two weeks before she could gather her thoughts enough to send any words of comfort to her father.
My dearest Baba,
When I wake up in the morning, there’s a moment when I think: it didn’t happen! Mama’s alive and I’m going to take Cassie to see her. But then . . . the truth just falls in on me. I call out to her and say, “Mama, please don’t go.” I worry that I’ll go under and what will happen to my baby? Those few moments before she died . . . she must have thought about leaving us—leaving you—and it must have broken her heart. If we could only have taken that pain away from her.
I’m trying very hard to do what I think would make her happy. Not to despair and not to break down. Baba, I want to make Mama proud of me, do you understand? I want to be like her. I want to be good. Mama was like no other person I’ve known. She never felt misunderstood, which is a gift. She did what made her happy without a fuss. What made her happy was to love you—that was easy to see. And to love me. I dream about her. She’s atop a splendid horse and her face is backlit by the sun. It’s so sad that she never saw the baby. She would have been able to let go with Cassie in a way that she couldn’t with me.
This little girl I have will help me through this ordeal, but who will help you? I have such an urge to come home. I need to see the farm and walk around. If I was there, perhaps we could get her back . . . you know . . . in a special way. She wouldn’t be totally gone from the farm. That was her place and if she had her choice, she would stay there for eternity. Don’t worry, we’ll go there together and find her.
Your daughter now and always,
Nijmeh
Truth withheld, Ead Bolus had learned, almost wills itself to surface. That’s why when people were intrigued by his profession and amazed at his investigative success, he told them sincerely, “It’s not as difficult as it might seem.”
He picked up an amazing amount of information with very little effort by asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers and filling in the emotional pauses with educated guesses. He had done many jobs for Rashid, who enjoyed stockpiling blackmail material “just in case.” Ead had looked into many, many closets, including some belonging to government people, but this job was uniquely satisfying and creative. High-class.
The very first day, from the girl’s father, who was uncommunicative and unapproachable, he found out the most important thing of all.
They met at a large family affair. Ead had wangled an invitation by persuading Jameel Mishwe that he was related to his wife, Zareefa. How could they refuse when he promptly handed them a “small gift from the States”? “It’s nothing, really. My wife wanted to be remembered to you.” It wasn’t nothing. It was an electric blender. If you brought someone a present, claimed kinship, but asked nothing in return except acceptance, how could they refuse? And they did not. He gambled that Samir would attend any large family affair. Wasn’t he the patriarch?
Both calculated gambles proved fruitful. It was easy from there on.
“I had the pleasure of meeting your lovely daughter,” he told Samir when they were introduced. “We have mutual friends.” He didn’t miss the hopeful look in Samir’s eyes before they became guarded.
“Was that recently?”
“Two weeks ago. She appears radiant. Like any new mother.” There. He’s never thought of her in those terms. “Your granddaughter is impressively precocious and looks very much like her mother. Paul is enraptured by his baby girl.” He paused only an instant before adding, “You must have been much the same at your own daughter’s birth.”
Samir was reflective, mulling over this information. “No. I was out of the country when Nijmeh was born.”
“Too bad. But I’m sure your wife had many others to marvel at the exquisite creature God had seen fit to send her.”
“On the contrary.” Samir was taking pleasure now in deflating this stranger who had access to his daughter and granddaughter. “My wife was quite alone when our daughter came. She had no one even to help her with the birth except for my sister. They did it together and managed very well when you consider the result.”
This was better than he’d hoped for. He could have probed further on the paucity of children. Why, if the result was so grand, had they had only one child? But that was information easily had elsewhere. No need to antagonize the man, who had already had enough torment.
The following afternoon, he stopped for coffee at the Grand Hotel, where the local businessmen could be found in the evening, chatting as they smoked the narghilla. “What I miss most about living in Palestine,” he mused to the local druggist sitting next to him, “is the gossip. I would never have predicted how comforting it is to discuss everybody’s affairs and chew over people’s misfortunes. I miss it dreadfully.”
“Mmm.�
� The man clamped his lips over his pipe, wondering briefly if it would be to his advantage to admit that he, too, loved to hear gossip. He decided to admit only enough to allow this fool to rant some more.
“Who heads the gossip mill these days?”
“Ah . . . you mean who has the biggest mouth? Nothing”—he held the pipe away from him and thrust his chin in the air to emphasize what he was saying—“but nothing is said or done that doesn’t pass Rose Muffrige’s lips. She works at the post office. So she knows what is going on here and also in the far reaches of the globe.”
“How many days for mail to reach the States?” He had chosen the earliest hour to go to the post office so she would have plenty of time to talk.
Rose Muffrige shrugged. “Who knows? Am I there when it arrives? I only know how many days from there to us.” She sniffed as if to imply that he had to earn her respect and had not done so yet.
“Of course. How stupid of me.” His eyes narrowed and he leaned close to the grille. “I need your advice,” he said conspiratorially. “I attended a social event with Samir Saleh and when I inquired after his wife, he walked away from me. What’s wrong? I don’t want to make a faux pas or cause anyone pain. Is she ill?”
“His wife is dead,” she said and when the shock sank in, added, “She was crushed to death in a hotel that collapsed in Beirut.”
“Poor man. No wonder he walked away from me. To lose his wife so early in life.” He sighed. “I’m glad I cleared up the mystery.” He made signs of being on his way, but Rose leaned over, planting her arms and ample bosom on the counter. She wasn’t about to lose her audience so quickly.
“The marriage was not an ordinary one. Samir could have had his pick, but he had to have Nadia Mishwe. No one could understand it. She was set to marry someone else but Samir got his way. He tricked her into marriage. She was heavily veiled and thought she was marrying an Englishman.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Samir had reason to regret what he did time and time again.”
“Why? He loved her . . .”
“Nadia couldn’t carry a child. She got pregnant several times but always miscarried.”
“But she did have a child.” He stepped back, confused. “I’ve met her.”
“Well, that was a miracle. The midwife made her stay in bed for the whole nine months. Even so, she didn’t have much hope. She confided to me that Nadia probably wouldn’t make it because of some internal problem. But . . . she did.”
“That was Nijmeh?”
“Mmm. Sweetness itself . . . a little angel.” She patted the back of her hair. “When the time came, I arranged the marriage myself. Samir came to me for help.” Having said this she removed herself from the counter and began to straighten two stacks of forms. She had said enough for one day.
“Strange,” he mused. “When this eagerly awaited baby was finally born, no one was there to greet her.”
“Who told you that?” asked Rose as if he had betrayed her.
“Samir. He said only his sister helped with the birth.”
“I never could understand that at all,” said Rose. “Mary Thomas, who had helped dozens of women give birth, was just down the road but Julia never called her. I could never understand why she took such a chance when Nadia had had such difficulty. But”—she hunched her shoulders and widened her eyes with puzzlement—“they did it all themselves. Everything. I thought that was very foolish. Very foolish.”
From Rose he went to the offices of the Palestine Post. A man as prominent as Samir must have provoked a story or two. He was hoping to see the birth announcement, but something much more intriguing caught his eyes—a story of a bizarre and tragic plane crash with a large, ghoulish picture of the wreckage and the mangled bodies. He looked at the picture for a long time. Then spent equal time perusing the passport photos of the couple: young, attractive . . . he had an eerie feeling. They looked vaguely familiar, especially the woman.
He read the account carefully, catching his breath when he came to the next to last paragraph: The body of their infant daughter, also a passenger, was never recovered. Authorities, certain that the baby could not have survived such impact, decided that gruesome speculation over the whereabouts of the body served no purpose.
He found it almost equally provocative to learn that “a white, untanned circle on one of Kenneth Walker’s fingers attested to the presence and mysterious disappearance of the dead man’s ring.”
When he went to see Julia, he had to be more inventive. He had to tell her that he was there on behalf of the Walkers. It was a stroke of luck that the Walkers lived within eighty miles of his own residence in Washington. Therefore it was perfectly reasonable for him to tell her that they had asked him to find out anything he could about the circumstances of their son’s death.
The moment the name was off his lips, fear transformed her face. He had known what to look for and he had found it. He really didn’t need to ask anything else. He was that certain. But being that he was there and the room was so pleasant and he always enjoyed a brandy in a well-decorated room with an easy chair and a fireplace, he stayed and let her dig a deeper and deeper hole. He was almost embarrassed for her and afraid she would say too much. She appeared almost hysterical enough to admit to what he now knew she and her sister-in-law had done.
When he returned to the States, he went to the archives of the Times Herald, the Washington Post and the Evening Star to see what the society pages had on the Walker family. Two papers had the story of Jason Walker’s suicide. There were the usual wedding announcements and a family portrait in the Sunday gravure magazine. He got a formal Bachrach engagement photograph of Carolyn Walker, née McCarren; Walker’s mother and father, Mary and Jason; Walker’s sister, Charlotte; Charlotte’s daughter, Sally; Carolyn’s mother and father. He laid them all out and convinced himself that his conclusions were accurate.
Next he visited a photographer and requested a composite made from all the photos, using Mary Walker’s chin and the spectacular Oriental setting of the eyes, the McCarren forehead and the straight silken hair and elegant nose of Inga McCarren, née Lisle, Carolyn’s mother. The result more than supported his hunch.
He wrote out a report in diary form, presented his case, and stood looking out the window while Rashid Ibn Rashid read through it. When he saw the papers drop to the table, he said, “Star Halaby is the genetic beneficiary of the McCarren-Walker clan. She is not the natural daughter of Samir Saleh or Nadia Mishwe. As best I can piece it together, no one—certainly not the girl herself and certainly not her father—knows of this. The mother knew but the mother is dead. There is one person left who was there. An aunt. I went to see her and when I mentioned the name Walker, it was as if I’d shot her mother before her eyes. I would bet my life that Kenneth Walker’s missing ring is in her keep.”
Rashid was silent and Ead prepared to leave. “What will you do with this information?”
“Nothing right now.” He closed the folder. “But I like to keep my options open.”
“Forgive me, but . . . who is there to manipulate with this information? Certainly not Nijmeh Halaby.”
“It’s complicated. If I wanted only to hurt the girl, I could tell her all this and confuse her, but that wouldn’t mean much. The only way I can use this information is to threaten to tell her father. She’d never want that. She knows it would kill her father and she would do anything not to have him know.”
“And what is it that you want from this girl? What does she have that you want?”
“I want her husband.”
“Her husband?” Ead Bolus was not often surprised, but this bit of news sent his eyebrows north. If Rashid was homosexual, he hid it well. Her husband.
“Yes. I want him for my Asha.”
The little coffeehouse was overcrowded and steamy. The windows had triangles of frost at the corners and the diners were hunched over their food, glad
to be indoors. The waitresses, tendrils of hair escaping their pleated caps, bustled from table to table.
Delal poked at the crust of a meat-and-vegetable pie and served herself a spoonful. She sighed, cut a piece of meat into tiny pieces, and then put her knife and fork neatly at the top of her plate. “Aren’t you hungry?” asked James. “I wouldn’t mind having some of yours if you’re only going to mush it up.”
“Huh? Oh . . . go right ahead.” He took the serving spoon and helped himself. She buttered a large piece of bread and placed it on his plate.
“Thanks. What’s the matter?”
“James. I’ve got something to tell you . . . you mustn’t get upset. It’s not your fault. I took all the risks on my own. You never pressured me to have sex.” He stopped chewing and looked around, which made her think she was talking too loud. She repeated the last sentence in a whisper. “You never pressured me to have sex. I take equal responsibility. I’m a big girl.”
“What are you talking about? What do you take responsibility for?”
“For what’s happened.”
“What’s happened?”
She imagined that he looked impatient, a bit annoyed. Just wait, she thought, here’s something worse. “I’m pregnant.”
He looked so stunned and surprised she thought he might keel over. “God,” he said, making the word so dense that it hung in the air. “I’m sorry. I just never considered that something like that could happen to you.”
“What’d you think?” Again his look made her return to whispering. “What’d you think? I’ve got all the same equipment as the next lass and you’ve got all the equipment as the next laddie. And . . . look . . . it happened. We made a wee bairn.” She was trying to sound gay and brave and cool and collected.
“Delal, it’s not funny. How can you joke about it?” He was leaning way over the table to keep the conversation private.
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