THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO

by Wafa Faith Hallam

  I poured a little milk in my coffee.

  “I hope you don’t feel too guilty,” he said.

  He sat next to me and gently brushed the hair off my face.

  “Nope, not at all,” I shook my head. “It was well worth it.”

  The thought of the night washed over me. I could still feel him in me.

  “I’d love a warm shower after this,” I pushed the tray off my lap and leaned to give him a kiss. “Thank you, that hit the spot,” I said.

  “I can run you a bath if you prefer. Would you like that?” Robbie offered.

  I nodded, an ecstatic look on my face, delighted with the attention. Magically, everything he did reinforced my fascination.

  He was a dream-come-true Prince Charming—at once cultured, refined, sensitive, passionate, gorgeous, yet humble and sweet.

  I slipped back between the smooth satin sheets. I had never met a man who had satin sheets, I’d noticed briefly the night before when my skin felt the silky texture. But then I had never met a man so at ease with his sensuality, so in tune with his partner’s needs and loving of the female body.

  “Your bath is ready now,” the sound of his voice tore me out of my erotic thoughts. He took my hand and I followed him.

  The sight of the lit candles and the steaming bubbles made me squeal with pleasure. I took off my t-shirt, stepped into the fragrant bath and sank my body into the warm caress of the water. He stayed to wash me and gently massaged my neck and shoulders, re-awakening insatiable lust and sending us back into the thralls of love. Our burning passion was as impetuous and powerful as a tropical storm, and just as overwhelming. We sensed, hungered, and mirrored the same furious need for love and there was no room for anything or anyone else in our world.

  In that complete and utter surrender to each other, we spent the following days, he, taking me to class and returning to pick me up, and I, counting the minutes that separated me from him and the moment of abandon and sweet embrace that I knew would soon follow. The extent of our mutual attraction acknowledged no ends or limits, and for a short while, we lived a blissful existence.

  Within weeks, we were living together.

  16

  Sour Love

  “Please, please go, Robbie, please go away.”

  I was sobbing hysterically, sitting on the cold bathroom floor, my knees pressed against my chest. I kept staring at the door, fearing it would break. My face was ravaged with tears, my hair messy, my heart pounding.

  Suddenly, I heard the wood crack and splinter. He threw himself at me. I raised my arms in front of my face.

  “No, please,” I begged him, “Please stop.” I felt nauseous, sick with fear.

  “No, I want you to stop,” he said. “You started this, you wanted to make me feel like shit again, you cunt.”

  He grabbed my arm, pulling me up. That trash word again, a word I loathed and which, for some reason, sounded dirtier and more hurtful than any other he used to demean me. The first time I’d heard it, it came out of his mouth. I didn’t even know what it meant, just that it sounded filthy, terribly offensive. I felt full of hate towards him, hate and fear. I tried to pull away from his grasp.

  “Let go of me, you fucking asshole, let me go, you hear?”

  He kept pulling me, dragging me with both hands, deaf to my pleas.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it, you bitch, pushing all my buttons. This is what you were looking for.”

  “I want you to leave me alone… now… stop it…” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “I hate you! Don’t touch me!”

  I was seething with rage. And, suddenly, he turned, grabbed me by the hair, and smacked my mouth and nose.

  “Shut the fuck up, you bitch! You’ll have to listen to me now.”

  I was struggling with his hand as he suffocated me, threw me on the bed and sat on top of me, pushing me down with the full weight of his body. I tried to fight him off with all my might, gasping for air, tears running down my cheeks, meeting his hands. I could still make out his distorted face, the spittle gathering at the corner of his mouth.

  He’s a beast, I thought. How could I love such a monster?

  “See what you make me do?” he let out between his teeth, panting noisily, not letting go of me. “I could kill you right now, see? Happy now?”

  I felt dizzy, my chest burning, my strength deserting me… He is going to kill me this time, for sure… Fear engulfed me as I turned limp.

  Abruptly, he released his grip, laid down on his back next to me, still holding me with one arm on my chest.

  “All I wanted was for you to come to me and tell me you love me,” he said meekly.

  I couldn’t believe my ears; the same improbable argument. He hurt me because I did not show him enough love! How could I possibly love him when he physically abused me, when every fiber of my being was repulsed by him? Why was it so difficult for him to understand? He really saw it as my way to escalate the violence between us, my inability to show him affection in a convincing way. He thought it was easy, quite simple. I was sure he was out of his mind, a deranged psychopath, in those moments, and I viewed myself as a pathetic fraud of a woman, who stayed with him in spite of his sadistic streak. He turned toward me again, buried his face in my hair.

  “I love you so much, baby, but you drive me crazy,” he whispered in my ear. “Please forgive me, I don’t want to hurt you-I know I’m a jerk, a rapist… But all I want is for you to love me.”

  He kissed my neck, pulled closer to me. I remained stiff and unresponsive, scared to make a move, my swollen face still feeling the sting of his fingers. A deathlike blur had swallowed a chunk of my heart. I couldn’t begin to measure the depth of my despair.

  The first time that had happened I’d found a hand-written statement he had left for me to read. He had the most unattractive, and least readable, handwriting of anyone I knew—all in tightly skewed capital letters and poor punctuation. Today, as in the past, I find it hard to decipher. In his agitated mind, Robbie seemed to have glimpses of clarity and stretches of delusion as he wrote:

  We had sunny days, we had dark days, but we loved each other with an intensity I’ve never before experienced and always wanted. But we played games with each other. Crazy isn’t it, two who love but hate at the same time […] I told her I was tired of this cruel game we both played, I wanted to stop. She couldn’t stop; she said I hurt her so much; she wanted to hurt me even more.

  I hoped that eventually she would be reasonable and recognize her gamesmanship; I hoped she would see that we both wanted love; I hoped she would stop, forgive, forget, and come to my side. But she didn’t. I woke up the next day; the first thing I sensed was that she was not there. The bitch was still tormenting me, still punishing me, and still begging me to stop her from going on.

  I went to her bed and I told her to stop, I slipped inside and held her. I was angry, I had wanted to stop, all I had wanted was to feel her affection, but all I did was to punish her brutally. I told her she was evil because she couldn’t stop - she was as evil as me because she couldn’t stop punishing. I begged her for affection, I begged her to stop me from punishing her, but she was adamant. I hit her, reflexively, I never figured anger and affection were linked so spontaneously. I hit her and I knew then there was no return. I hated her because there was no return.

  I begged her pardon, I wanted forgiveness but I knew none was due. I grabbed her, I shook her, I hated her, I abused the only one I loved because she wouldn’t and needn’t love me. I was forcing her to hold me, but it was a bag of potatoes, a corpse that I held, there was no response—only fear, hate and regret. I couldn’t force her to love me, I couldn’t beg her for love and yet I couldn’t remain unloved.

  The rapist’s paradox: how can he expect to be loved and understood when he violates another by force? How can he make the assumption he is loved in the first place?—And how can he impose himself on the life of one he loves, without force? What does anyone do, let alone the rapist, when he
is rejected? The rapist tries to extract affection violently […] Wafa, I rapist, am desperate, I lover, accept your conditions. I lover cannot expect your love, I rapist demands it […] I feel sorry for them both, I understand them both, I love them both, I forgive them both […]

  What did he mean? I kept wondering in vain. And yet his tortured logic did somehow convince me that he loved me enough, his frustration was justification enough, for his abuse. I did not then pause and reflect on the ramifications of his message. I just put it away as soon as the storm passed; not realizing it contained the seeds of years of agony. Today, as I read and re-read it, I’m still hoping to understand the hidden meaning behind his behavior and my decision to stay with him despite it all those years.

  In January 1982, I transferred from Gainesville’s Santa Fe Community College to the University of Florida, and continued my fast-paced accumulation of college credits in order to graduate as soon as possible. By the summer of that year, my siblings and I became the unwitting victims of Uncle Hak’s unpredictable fortune. As his business went from boom to bust, he went broke, and stopped sending us money.

  My mother was getting depressed by the day, and I had slowly but surely used up every penny I still had of my savings on tuition and expenses. We were also faced with the meteoric, fifty-percent appreciation of the US dollar that started in November 1980, at the exact time we arrived in America, and went on till 1985.

  In August 1982, I wrote a letter to my rich uncles, begging them to help us pay our outstanding school fees. I never received direct acknowledgement for my request but my mother got a little monetary assistance that barely made a difference. She was continually borrowing money from family and friends to send us in America.

  After only a few months of living with Robbie, on October 2, 1982, I moved out, following another horrifying fight, and went to live with a kind old lady who rented me a room in her house in a wooded neighborhood of Gainesville, not far from campus. Gina’s peaceful presence helped me cope with my heavy heart and study load. At the same time, my relationship with Robbie went through multiple phases of silence, heartbreak, arguments, and passion.

  On his twenty-third birthday, in December 1982, he left Gainesville for Houston, Texas, where his parents, taking a break from their lengthy overseas assignments, had recently bought a house. He had failed to graduate as he planned and he still had to turn in a research paper.

  In reality, he could have graduated by simply resubmitting the paper, Exegesis of the Philosophy of Love, which had earned him high praise from his teacher. But she had proceeded to add his paper so good that it could be used as an honors thesis with only minor adjustments. Instead, Robbie decided to turn it into his magnum opus, a grand honors dissertation on love as both an expression of religious fervor and human emotion. Sadly, the masterwork turned into a quagmire and eventually led to a final incomplete grade for his course and a failure to earn his bachelor’s degree altogether.

  From January to September 1983, in his parents’ house in Houston, Robbie tried to finish his paper. But after months of research and reading the likes of St. Augustine, Rosenzweig, Kierkegaard, and Buber, he turned again to Plato and other Greek philosophers, and never saw the end of it. The depth and complexity of the subject matter became so overwhelming that he retreated into endless procrastination made worse by heavy pot-smoking.

  During that time, and in spite of the pain of separation, I focused on the completion of my bachelor degree and, in April 1983, graduated with honors and an election to Phi Beta Kappa, a distinction I didn’t fully comprehend then. Robbie and I decided that I would visit him at his parents’ house in Houston for a couple of weeks before going to Morocco for the summer.

  For the first time in my life, I knew exactly where I was heading after that. I had received a surprising phone call from New York University’s dean of graduate studies, when I least expected it.

  “Wafa, it’s for you,” Gina had said, handing me the phone.

  “Who is it?” I’d asked, looking up from my book.

  She’d given me a quizzical look that made me smile. I loved that woman with all my heart. A spunky seventy-four-year-old with short, white hair cut in monk fashion, and intelligent blue eyes, she spent her time volunteering at her church and tending to her garden and home. The rest of the time, she spent reading in a comfortable armchair in her living room, pausing every once in a while and admiring the red cardinals helping themselves at her inviting birdfeeder. We enjoyed watching the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour and other educational PBS shows. We talked about many things and she, without ever interfering and much compassion, listened to my personal drama.

  “Hello, is this Wafa?” the voice, on the other end, had asked.

  “Hi. Yes, yes, it is.”

  “I’m Martin Schain, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science at NYU.

  We received your application,” he went on. “How serious are you about NYU?” he asked me point blank.

  “Well…” I hadn’t thought about that.

  NYU was, in fact, at the bottom of the list of universities I’d applied to. I had already received acceptance letters from Georgetown and Harvard, and even been personally interviewed by a gentleman sent by the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins. The problem was always the same, they would love to have me in their schools, but they couldn’t offer any financial help the first year on account of my foreign student status.

  The interviewer from John Hopkins had kept insisting that it would be no problem finding me an assistantship the second year. So could I find a way to pay for my first year? No, I couldn’t, at all. It was not a matter of choice. I was seriously beginning to lose all hope of attending graduate school, when a New York friend suggested that I try NYU.

  “They have a large entitlement program,” he’d said, “and a very diverse student body.”

  So I had sent them a last-minute application.

  “To tell you the truth, Mr….”

  “Schain,” he said. “Martin Schain.”

  “Sorry, yes, Mr. Schain. To tell you the truth, I’ve been accepted by all the schools I applied to. The thing is I can’t afford any of them at this point. So it’s all about financing for me right now,” I explained.

  “Oh, not to worry,” he quickly replied. “You are at the top of our list for a fellowship that will cover your entire tuition.”

  I held my breath. “You know I’m a foreign student, right? I couldn’t even work outside the school,” I’d said.

  “Well, here it is. You will also be getting a monthly stipend to help you with your living expenses and books.”

  He had paused waiting for my reaction.

  “Wow, really? And… how much would that be?” I’d asked.

  “I can’t tell you that over the phone. But I can assure you, it’s very generous. So, what do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think it’s great, very generous of you really… I’m speechless… Yes, of course, I’d love to attend NYU,” I’d said, elated: The impossible had happened.

  He had gone on asking me all sorts of questions about my travel overseas, work experience, and complimented me on my academic achievements.

  “You will be getting a formal acceptance letter and more information in the mail within the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to meeting you soon personally,” he had said.

  I’d hung up and shouted in Gina’s direction, “Guess what? I’m going to New York! That was the dean of NYU. They’re paying for everything. Can you believe it?” I’d said overjoyed.

  “Well, I think no one is more deserving than you,” she had replied with her customary poise, and she returned to her book.

  The sun was already shining brightly in the Texas sky on that balmy morning of May. The bedroom shades were still shut, and I slept peacefully.

  I had arrived in Houston a week earlier and was planning to stay another two weeks. After five long, tormented months of separation from Robbie, I was anxious to re
new our initial commitment to each other. He, on the other hand, was visibly happy to be living at home after so many years away at school. His mother’s love and admiration were constant, unconditional, and she showed him total devotion. His relationship to his father was more complex. Robbie felt he was always falling short and, throughout his life, strived to earn paternal respect.

  “Hey, baby, wake up, we have to get ready,” Robbie called out softly. He jumped out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

  I am a notoriously late sleeper, and early mornings are just not my thing. The clock on the night table read 7:35AM.

  “It’s too early,” I mumbled in a sleepy voice, turned over, and went right back to sleep.

  Robbie was already in the shower. When he came back, towel dry and ready to dress, I had not budged.

  “Come on, Wafa, we agreed last night that we’d explore Houston today. There’s a lot to do and see,” Robbie insisted, pulling up his jeans.

  He walked to the window and opened the shades, letting the sun stream right in.

  “No, please, Robbie. It’s too early,” I protested, shielding my eyes. “We don’t have to go so early. I’m tired. I’m on vacation, remember?” I pulled the sheet over my head, attempted to ignore him.

  He was fully dressed by then.

  “Come on let’s go, Wafa. You can sleep later,” he persisted. He pulled the sheet away and shook my shoulder.

  “Stop it, Robbie, I want to sleep a little longer. We can go later, it’s not the end of the world,” I replied vehemently and pulled the sheet back over my half-naked body.

  Swiftly, his mood changed. In frustrated rage, he kicked me hard with his foot.

  “You selfish, fucking bitch,” he grunted in disgust.

  Shocked, I sat up on the bed and rubbed my leg where he’d kicked me. I looked at him dismayed, completely awake then, trembling, and now outraged.

  I yelled back at him. “What the hell is wrong with you, you fucking asshole? I don’t want to go anywhere with you now, that’s for sure.”