THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO

by Wafa Faith Hallam

  All along, and at every opportunity, we kept interrogating her. Slowly, a narrative began to take shape. The stories she told with a strange assurance, and much reluctance, were frayed in the extreme, hanging by threads in her shifting mind, unreliable, confusing. It was difficult to distinguish the real from the delusional. Trying to fit all the loose pieces of the puzzle together, careful not to irritate or tire her, we could not help feeling disturbed and discouraged. It was, however, imperative to stay calm in order to hear it all, to try to contain and repair the damage even as her temper seemed to flare up at the most trivial remarks.

  One afternoon, she agreed to take us to the new house she had rented, showed us the Chevrolet dealer from whom she had “purchased” a new car. From what we could gather, it appeared she had wandered around aimlessly for miles, often in the park, moved a few things from her apartment to the new place—the second floor flat of a two-family house, off Kennedy Boulevard in North Bergen. The place was still empty save for a few kitchen appliances, a blanket, and a couple of towels.

  She never slept and yet never felt better, more powerful or more alive. She was fearless, finally free of others, gotten rid of all the losers in her life; all her burdens had evaporated. She was convinced that she spoke English fluently and had passed her New Jersey driver’s license test without problems, though she fiercely refused to prove it. She kept insisting we had nothing to worry about yet was annoyingly short on specifics.

  In her heightened state of mind, her limited language ability had vanished, her financial insecurity gone, all replaced with a heavenly certainty. Most glorious of all, she’d seen the Light of the All-Mighty. The Angel Gabriel had come to her and spoken the truth. Lord, had she been frightened, and just as quickly awed, by the miracle.

  “I tell you, I saw him just as clearly as I see you now,” she said in an eerie tone. “First, there was this roaring fire… burst in the middle of the living room in that blessed house. Out of the flames, He manifested himself and spoke to me. And another time, it was in the bathroom. Water was overflowing from the toilet; it was like this amazing river, a waterfall, cleansing everything in its wake. He appeared out of the stream and again talked to me. This time I wasn’t afraid. He chose me!” She smiled; her eyes sparkled; she was sitting in my living room, wearing an emerald-green caftan—her favorite shade, the color of paradise, she’d often said.

  We had just finished dinner, and I had put Sophia to sleep. Robbie and Hisham were smoking cigarettes on the terrace. Nezha patted her hand as we continued to try and understand the extent of the material and financial mayhem she had caused. When I heard her go on about her apparitions, my skepticism got the better of me.

  “Okay Mom, listen, please. That’s not possible, those were hallucinations, you must understand this,” I spoke as gently as I could.

  Nezha immediately frowned in disapproval. Mom’s expression changed abruptly. Pure exasperation distorted her features and she exploded.

  “You never believe anything, do you? Because you think you know everything, don’t you?” she snapped, disgusted. “Well, let me tell you, I know what I saw, what I heard. You don’t. And I know what’s coming.”

  She got up and headed for the bathroom, where she locked herself in.

  “Couldn’t you just listen?” sighed Nezha in frustration.

  She was right, of course. Miss No-Nonsense had once again voiced her doubts, prompting Mom’s predictable outburst.

  After that, and in spite of all our supplications, she refused to come out. First she seemed to listen silently inside the small bathroom; next it sounded like she was praying, or rather intoning. Then the chant turned into a lament. She was there for over fifty minutes when at last, she unlocked the door, passed by Robbie and Hisham without seeing them, and stepped out on the terrace.

  For a moment, she stared, at the familiar cityscape greeting her, the glimmering metropolis, the bejeweled bride that had stolen the stars from the night sky, as she’d once referred to Manhattan-by-night. What could she be thinking? We stayed behind, not daring to interfere. She looked up at the dim heavens above and began chanting again, softly, and then louder. Suddenly, without warning, she screamed, a long terrifying, blood-curdling cry, followed by high-pitched howls, calling out to God.

  Stunned by the horrifying sound, Robbie tried to get her back inside, quiet her down, but she resisted, struggled with him, and then kicked him with surprising strength. Throughout, she bawled in the throes of insanity, her reason twisted, eclipsed in the labyrinth of her mind. She called on God, her savior and the only way out of her hair-raising terror. Someone, a neighbor, called the police, and it wasn’t long before they knocked at my door. It was now abundantly clear we could not handle her on our own.

  I should have listened to the young resident at Palisades, I thought in despair.

  Finally, on March 29, 1990, the day after that freakish episode in my apartment, I had my mother admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital. The psychiatric ward looked friendlier, less ominous this time. Still, she was petrified, and so was I. I couldn’t help but recall that miserable day, years earlier, when she had left me overnight in the Rabat mental institution and I had felt both unloved and forsaken. I knew she was feeling something similar, and my guilt had no end.

  “Why are you doing this? I don’t need to be here. Please don’t leave me,” she begged. She looked drained, and confused. She was quite delusional still; convinced everything that had happened was real.

  “It won’t be for long, Mom. You’ll be better soon. We’ll visit you every day, I promise.”

  She doesn’t really believe me, I thought. She’s much too scared.

  Throughout her ordeal, never once did Mom ask about her husband, or talk about him in public. In her mind and heart, he was gone; departed—as if he’d never existed. He’d simply vanished and she never wanted to know why. In fact, he had materialized, briefly that first night in the emergency room, and just as quickly, after he was told he couldn’t see her, left, probably relieved. I never saw him again.

  Nezha told me later that he’d showed up at Mom’s apartment, just before she was released from Mount Sinai, and asked for his personal belongings. It happened after Mom had finally related to her bits of the incident that had precipitated her descent into insanity.

  He had thrust her out on the terrace and locked her out, screaming and kicking.

  “You’re crazy! What are you talking? I not take your money,” she yelled at him in her broken English. “Chester… Chester,” she called him back again and again, pounding on the glass door, “Open the door, open now.”

  How dare he accuse her of stealing his money, how dare he? She hadn’t even know what he was referring to.

  He went back in the bedroom, searching around for the box where he’d stashed his cash, rummaging through her closets and drawers, throwing everything out. He had to have a drink. He was broke, hadn’t made a penny at the Sunday flea market where he sold all kinds of knick-knacks. He started drinking upon waking in the morning, still inebriated from the previous night. She’d had badgered him in her bad English as soon as he got back home, late, reeking of booze. Where was he again? Where did he find the money to drink? How could he treat her like this?

  She got up at dawn, after waiting for him all night, not sleeping a wink. In fact, she hadn’t had a full night sleep in days. Her brain was always swarming, her thoughts always jostling. How could she have been so wrong about this man? She was sure she’d found her protector at last—the man of her dreams—charming, good-looking, and such a good lover. He was going to take care of her, give her the security she yearned for.

  How quickly things changed. He come short of all her expectations, badly failed her in every way, like every other man in her life, really. He lost his umpteenth job right after they married, went back hitting the bottle shortly after, made terrible scenes every time someone smiled at her. Her parents would be ashamed of her, marrying a loser, again. This time, she picked him�
�a drunken redneck, worse than her first husband in many ways. This one didn’t hesitate to shove her around, humiliate her, and even punish her for trying to prevent him from drinking. Not in the morning, she implored him. She only wanted to help him, rescue him from himself. Now she knew not to trust him, ever.

  She didn’t know how long he kept her on the terrace, prisoner in her own home—worse yet, captive in her head. She tried to force the windows open: all shut tight. Then she watched him leave the apartment, knocked louder, begged, and cried hysterically. Hours went by. She was still in her nightgown, barefoot, cold, and enraged.

  It was gray and drizzly that March morning, didn’t feel like spring yet. The city, across the Hudson, emerged like tattered slabs of steel in the fog, the crests of the Empire State Building and World Trade Center indiscernible, decapitated. She was going to catch her death but what did he care, the bastard. Oh, that’s it! She’d had it. She loathed her limitations, weakness, gender. But it was no good simply resenting her fate, she was going to turn things around on her own, never again look up to a man for security. She wasn’t stupid. Others had done it. An engulfing rage boiled inside her, a spattering cauldron drowning every last sparkle of awareness.

  How long was she glued, like a fly, stuck against the glass pane of the terrace door, after her ranting and raving had died? She couldn’t tell. Her body had turned numb, before her mind froze in a paralyzing wrath, hostage of its relentless and obsessive chatter. When she finally saw him enter the apartment, she didn’t budge, followed his every step—eyes unblinking—through the small foyer, galley kitchen, dining-area, toward the terrace door. He’d had his drink; his blank gaze said it all. A taste of bile filled her mouth.

  He put a hand on the handle, waited for her to back off to let her in. Instead, she threw herself at him with unexpected fury, shouting a torrent of words he didn’t understand, tried to beat him, scratch him, bite him. He held her back with both hands, arms outstretched, leaning forward to steady her, his heavy putrid breath filling her nostrils.

  Suddenly she spat at him, ejecting a mouthful of saliva and spleen with all the strength and contempt she could muster. The thick, foul spittle hit him smack in the face and that’s when he slapped her, hard, sent her flying across the room. She stood back up in a flash, rushed to open the entrance door wide, went after him again, and pushed him out, her eyes popping out of her head, hissing wildly for him to get out, forever, out of her life.

  She slammed the door after him, ran into her bedroom, got dressed feverishly, and called her daughter, twice. The second time, she let it all out, vomiting all the nauseating rage, frustration, and despair heaped high inside her.

  My sister’s quiet sobs were clearly perceptible over the line. I listened silently, allowing room for her sadness before resuming her account of the final acts of Mom’s doomed marriage.

  “When I first cleaned Mom’s bedroom and found the infamous tin box, I was shocked, outraged, and very angry at him. Everything was there, perhaps eighty dollars in cash, plus the so-called ‘valuables’ he’d accused her of stealing. More like cheap trinkets,” said Nezha with contempt. “I watched while he packed his clothes, and when I saw him reach under the bed, I knew what he was looking for. Before he left, I handed him the box and told him how vile he was and how I wished he’d disappear from her life for good.” Her tone betrayed her sullenness. “When he saw everything was in there, he turned green, the son-of-a-bitch, and he left like a dog, tail between his legs.” She took a deep breath. “I still have that image of him in my head, the way he walked to the elevator… like a thief.”

  21

  Dead-End

  “She means nothing to me,” he said ruefully. “We were friends, that’s all. I needed someone to talk to.”

  Robbie leaned over to extinguish his cigarette and glanced at me from the corner of his eye. Night had fallen, and Sophia was already sleeping. It felt hot and humid—a typical New York summer—in spite of the air conditioning. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. He looked thinner, and his features were strained with fatigue. The long flight from Tunisia had taken its toll.

  “You were living at her place, Robbie. I may be naïve, but I’m not stupid. You’ve made a fool of me for too long already. I’ve had it, enough!”

  I tried hard not to cry. Tears only complicate things, inspire pity and remorse but not always for the right reasons. I felt betrayed to the core. Yet in the midst of my hurt, and perhaps for the first time, there was a flicker of resolve. There was gnawing fear too, though a voice somewhere was whispering to trust my instinct, overcome my dread.

  Robbie had just spent a few weeks working with Sami, Nezha’s new life partner, in Tunis. Sami had quickly become very close and was considered a member of the family. He and Nezha had met on December 21, 1991. Robbie and I had invited her to Carnegie Hall for Handel’s Messiah. But halfway through the performance, she’d become restless and, during the intermission, left to meet some friends who were dining at the China Grill, a popular restaurant in Midtown. Sami had invited everyone.

  A plump and flamboyant man, in his mid-thirties, Sami was a supremely self-confident Tunisian entrepreneur, and he’d instantly fallen in love with her. A couple of months earlier, she’d had a traumatic breakup with Hisham and was determined to learn to live independently, without a man by her side for once. At first, she was rather put off by Sami’s flashy style and extravagant generosity. He, however, was not a man to take no for an answer; thence began a relationship that changed, not only her life but mine, too.

  It had been a year already since Robbie had accepted a full-time household administrator and butler position with a wealthy New Yorker on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He was well paid but unhappy with his function and mostly resented the many humiliating and unpleasant tasks his employer’s cocaine habit subjected him to. So, when Sami talked about his upcoming month-long consulting job in Muscat, in the Gulf of Oman, Robbie expressed the desire to work with him. When they returned, it was decided he would also travel to Tunisia to assist Sami with his textile business.

  The whole idea was unplanned and foolhardy—and not just because Sami didn’t understand English while Robbie spoke a limited French and knew absolutely nothing about textiles or manufacturing—but also because their temperaments could not have been any more different. Sami was an impassioned doer, a workaholic intolerant of incompetence and laziness, set in his ways, and deaf to criticism. In contrast, Robbie was a laid-back romantic, a cerebral thinker prone to endless discussion rather than action, who viewed Sami as a pathological bully insensitive to the nuances of every situation, particularly when people were involved.

  To make matters worse, Sami’s business, like the entire Tunisian textile industry, was facing serious challenges and teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Misunderstandings, clashes, and disillusionment were inevitable. Soon, both men felt growing levels of mistrust and serious dislike toward each other. To cope with such thorny circumstances, Robbie looked for solace in the arms of a Tunisian woman.

  “A woman of little virtue, you know the kind. And he stayed in her house!” Nezha had told me on the phone from Tunis. “Sami and I hesitated to tell you, but he really left us no choice. He’s not working anymore, not that we can’t trust him with anything anyway. Already in Oman, last May on Sami’s consulting job, he went wild with the female employees, especially the Asians, you know. It was as if he’d never seen a woman in his life. Incredible! We didn’t want to upset you then.” She paused. “I’m so sorry,” she’d sighed before ending the call.

  My mind had gone numb. “Oh my God, oh my God,” was all I could manage throughout our conversation. Anger suffocated me. I’d had my doubts about his indiscretions over the years, and we’d had many fights over his infidelity, rumored or suspected. But for the sake of peace, denial, or both, I had always grudgingly accepted his explanations and taken his word at face value, although not without swelling resentment.

  Watching him squirming in his sea
t and chain smoking as he explained himself, I could still recall how, some eight years earlier, I’d lived through one of the most miserable nights of my life. Robbie was a bartender in Midtown Manhattan then, and he worked mostly nights. I’d gone to bed when the phone rang.

  “Hello?” I’d answered half-asleep.

  “Wafa? Hey it’s me, Robbie. Did I wake you?” I’d glanced at the florescent hands of the alarm clock on the bedside table.

  “It’s two in the morning, Robbie. Where are you?” I’d asked hesitating between annoyance and worry.

  “Sorry, the restaurant closed late. I needed to unwind. I’m having a drink with some people,” he’d explained. This was not terribly atypical, I thought.

  “So when are you coming home?” I’d asked mildly irritated.

  “Well, that’s why I’m calling,” he’d begun, carefully weighing his words. “Listen, uh, you know how we sometime, uh, you know…fantasize…about another woman…a threesome?”

  My heart had sunk. “What? What the hell are you talking about?” I’d exclaimed in a mounting frenzy. I’d pushed the sheets off and jumped on my feet. “Where are you really, Robbie? What are you up to?” I’d snarled on the phone.

  “Alright, calm down, okay! I told you, I’m at the Sheraton bar on Seventh Avenue and I met this woman. I thought you’d like her. Why don’t you come and join us?” he’d persisted in earnest.

  Fleeting images of my husband in the arms of a lewd home-wrecker had flashed in my head, the entire scene uncanny to me, outrageous, and profoundly humiliating. What kind of women haunts hotel bars in the middle of the night, waiting to be picked up by libidinous tourists and drunks, anyway? Was he high, or out of his mind? I’d wondered.