“My God, what did you do to this guy?” a colleague joked.
I blushed. “You don’t want to know,” I said slyly, quivering inside.
Thus began a crazy, entirely lustful relationship, which I instinctively knew from day one could not be anything more—he was much too needy, twelve years younger, and wanted children—but which I was unable, or unwilling, to abort even after I realized that my impetuous Latin lover’s initially innocuous acts had become unacceptable.
In the beginning, I was so utterly conquered by his charm and extravagance that I felt flattered with all the attention, flowers, and small gifts. I did not really question his constant calling and turning up at the most inappropriate times in my life, twenty-four hours a day, until I found myself a prisoner of his obsession.
At first, I found it endearing that he met me at work and walked with me to pick up Sophie from school; appealing that he looked for me at the gym and waited for me to finish my workout; loving that he accompanied me to the grocery store and made shopping suggestions; and, titillating that he arrived in the middle of the night at my apartment because he couldn’t sleep without me.
Slowly, however, it did not feel so right, and I questioned why he showed up at the salon where I had my hair cut. I resented his appearing, uninvited, at the restaurant where I had dinner with my sister and girlfriends. Eventually, he began to check my personal mail, checkbook ledger, and daily agenda. His love for me soon turned into a fatal attraction of sorts. I revolted and began to fight back, to no avail. He, by then, accused me of being heartless, unfaithful, and a liar.
“Listen, Carlos, I’ve been thinking about Saturday night, when you said that I didn’t miss you the way you missed me when you were away, and that I didn’t love you the way you loved me, and I’ve come to recognize that you were quite right on both counts.”
I tried to keep my voice down and not get agitated. I did not want to hurt him unnecessarily, but I needed to make myself absolutely clear.
“I feel like my love for you has died a slow death, killed by your obsessive behavior toward me. I’m no longer comfortable with our relationship, not that I ever was, really. From the beginning, I didn’t approve of your irresponsible work ethic, your competition with Sophie for my time and attention, and your insane jealousy. But I was blinded by lust and passion.”
I paused, waiting for him to say something, but he just sat there, staring into his cup of coffee in silence, his long fingers tapping the table.
I went on, “Over the last few weeks, your love has felt like a prison. I feel abused by your mistrust, and I’ve finally reached a point of no return. I’m sorry.”
“You met somebody else,” he sourly blurted out in heavily accented English. “Why don’t you just say you’re with another man?”
He looked me straight in the eyes. I sensed his anger mounting. I stared back at his strong handsome features, stubbly chin, black shoulder-length hair, white skin, and full lips, and forced myself to remain calm and collected.
“No, I’m not with another man,” I said patiently. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but not seeing you as often lately, I’ve realized that I don’t want to spend any time with you anymore. Not because I found someone else, but because I don’t love you anymore, Carlos. I’m free of you, and I’d like you to respect my decision. Please don’t keep calling me; I have nothing more to say to you.”
“You lied to me all the time, from beginning,” he said bitterly. “You never loved me, it’s the truth. I’m crazy for you, want a baby with you, and you play with me like a puppy!” He clenched his fist and jaw.
I felt relieved to be in a public place and not at home—not that he ever was violent, but I was not inclined to find out.
“I never mislead you or lied to you. Every time you expressed the wish, I told you that I had no intention of having children again at my age. Remember I’m forty-four and I already have a child. Don’t get me wrong—I did have wonderful moments with you, which I will always cherish. Please, let’s not destroy those memories with sour grapes. I like you very much, and I really wish you the best. I simply know we’re not right for each other. And, Carlos—” I reached for his hand gently—“I want my apartment keys back, please.”
He pulled his hand away, pushed his chair back, stood up, and with a last anguished glance, briskly walked out of the coffee shop without looking back.
He never did return my keys. In fact, he went back to my apartment, without my permission, to retrieve a few things he had left behind and all the photos we had taken together over the last nine and a half months. This last incident terrified me, prompting me to change the locks and alert the doormen.
For months afterward, he called me and remained speechless.
Only once did I hear him say, “Hi, baby, how are you?” with his unmistakable, guttural pronunciation of the ‘h’ sound.
I hung up on him and kept doing so until I changed my phone number, years later.
At the time of my break-up with Carlos in mid-October 2000, the market had persevered in its decline following its all-time heights of the spring. But the general feeling was still bent on optimism. It was widely believed that the crisis would soon pass, just as it had before. Productivity was still up, unemployment and inflation still down, the economic expansion still alive and well, and the consumer was still giddy from the long stock market orgy that had been going on for what seemed like an eternity.
Only, this time, the Federal Reserve, which, after a string of interest rate cuts related to the Asian financial crisis in 1997–1998, had been bent on a tacit laissez-faire policy, changed course in mid-1999 and initiated a series of interest rate hikes totaling a hundred and fifty basis points in less than a year. The abrupt reversal promptly derailed the mood, and the economy came to a screeching halt quickly followed by plummeting markets.
27
Gathering Storm
It is difficult now to remember the kind of hysteria that spread through the Western World as the dawn of the new Millennium approached. The Y2K bug, as it was dubbed, was going to wreak havoc in the global economy: Computer networks everywhere were expected to not recognize the new date, then crash and burn. In fact, there were more people concerned about the millennium bug than the tech bubble, suggestive of the tree hiding the forest analogy. But then, I too was living a fantasy of my own making, working hard and heedlessly spending money, living a sexual fantasy with no grounding in reality, and overlooking signs of my mother’s impending relapse.
Both my sister and I had been vigilant over the years, watching her medication intake closely even as neither one of us actually lived with her. Because my sister spent half the year overseas and I was living in the same building, I was at least close enough to monitor my mother’s mood and general health almost on a daily basis. By then, it was clear to us that she could not be subjected to any stress without paying a price. Overall, however, and for seven and a half years, she had led a healthier life-until the early fall of 2000.
That summer Nezha had been away with Sami in Djerba, an island off the southern coast of Tunisia, and Carlos and I had gone to France to collect Sophie at the end of her summer camp in Brittany. After we reunited with my kid, we decided to skip the rainy Parisian weather that August, chase the sun, and join my sister and her husband on their Mediterranean island for a beach vacation instead.
In Djerba, the news from Mom was not good. On the phone, she seemed to be more dejected than usual, and her mood did not improve much after I returned. She’d had a terrible summer, with long stretches of depression and insomnia. She’d also been sensitive to stress generated by money and family problems. Her brother Abderrahim had cut off the monthly stipend he’d been allocating her for decades under the pretext that the money was sent to my father, in Morocco.
In fact, I was using Mom’s checking account in Morocco to send Dad his monthly stipend and I gave Mom her money here. The idea was to minimize money transfers back and forth with the ens
uing bank fees and currency rate fluctuations. Mom had been hurt by her brother’s decision and wanted to call him and explain the situation in an effort to change his mind.
“No, Mom, you don’t have to do that. Your brother has been very generous all these years. You don’t need him anymore. I can take care of you now,” I’d reassured her.
“But you’re already helping me, and you have your daughter and dad, too. My brother is so rich; it’s like a drop in the bucket for him. I’ve got nothing. Why does he have to do that?” she’d wept.
The issue of two of her brothers’ extraordinary wealth had always been a source of both great pride and veiled envy. She was convinced she’d gotten the short end of the stick, and that life had been unfair to her and her children. All her life, she felt that as the youngest and most wronged sister, they could have done more to help her financially.
But perhaps it wasn’t just the stress. The seasons seemed to play a part, too. Over time, a pattern became evident. Toward the end of the summer, in September-October, and again at the end of winter and the onset of spring, in March, her disposition grew noticeably somber. This time, she was the one who asked to be admitted. She said she could feel her mood shifting, although without reaching an acute manic stage.
It was decided to take her to St. Mary’s Hospital, in Hoboken, the very same place she had dreaded in the days of her first delusional blowup. Sadly, this last confinement, although lasting less than a week—from September 21 to 26, 2000—left her with lasting physical impairments.
As soon as she reached the psychiatric ward, she was administered the customary basket of drugs, including Zyprexa. In the spring of 2000, the FDA had approved it for the short-term treatment of acute manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder. It was believed that it acted more quickly to stabilize the patient’s mood. In my mother’s case, the drug triggered strong side-effects, and she fought hard against taking it.
Her main complaints were that she felt weakness throughout her body and impaired range of motion. So difficult were her movements, she could not make it to the bathroom on time, she admitted in humiliation. She described it as a sort of paralysis. Then there were the usual dizziness, garbled speech, and drowsiness. Finally, she suffered from severe edema in her legs.
Despite her protestations, she was administered the drug and required to stay on it until Depakote stabilized her mood. All attempts at discussing the issue with the attending psychiatrist at St. Mary’s were fruitless, and my calls were never satisfactorily answered. I cannot begin to express the depth of my regret for having her admitted. The hospital staff, for the most part, was unresponsive, or rather anesthetized, to the plight of their patients and their loved ones. My poor mother had unwittingly entered the gates of hell.
After her discharge from the hospital, she never returned to normal. The first signs that something very wrong had occurred were her persistent leg edema and skin disorders. She had dry, flaky, and itchy rashes on the skin all over her body and in particular on her hands, ears, and scalp, even inside her nose. Her nails had thinned out and become prone to some kind of fungus. Other symptoms included a sore mouth and raw genitalia, making eating any spicy or acidic food impossible and urination a burning agony. She visited a couple of dermatologists, who performed various skin tests and reached different conclusions: she was told she suffered from psoriasis, then eczema, and finally allergies. The different creams and ointments prescribed had no effect whatsoever.
In the meantime, her hands were so sensitive she had to wear cotton gloves at all time. Weeks later, the discomfort turned into acute pain, spreading from her hands and wrists to her arms and shoulders. The stiffness and difficulty of movement were evocative of the Zyprexa days. The pain was so intense; she was confined to bed, where her suffering seemed to intensify at night and upon awakening. Around that time, the news of her older sister Aisha’s death reached her and her emotional distress translated into increased physical dysfunction.
She reached a point where she could neither get dressed on her own nor turn over in bed. She could not sleep without sleeping pills—and sometimes even they didn’t help. Her life became an endless misery marred by great frailty and unrelenting pain. She could not open a jar and dropped objects because she could not maintain her grip. She was incapable of going up or down a flight of stairs. She entered a car with difficulty and was subject to cramping in the legs and sometimes the arms. Occasionally, she had blurred vision, and she remained depressed, crying for hours and wishing to die rather than live under such conditions.
I began researching her condition in medical books and journals, thinking she might have some sort of neurological problem or neuroma. I took her to see Dr. Michael Davis, a neurologist at Cornell-New York Presbyterian, who speculated that she could be suffering from a chronic episodic condition known as ‘polymyalgia rheumatica’—an inflammation of the large arteries with the exact same symptoms she had been describing, often affecting people over sixty years of age. He ordered a blood test to check her erythrocyte sedimentation rate, or ESR. It confirmed his diagnosis of increased inflammation, albeit non-specifically.
Dr. Davis prescribed Prednisone, a popular immunosuppressant corticosteroid prescribed for a broad range of autoimmune and inflammatory ailments. He also suggested a follow-up with a rheumatologist and a psychiatrist, since Prednisone could trigger mania in manic-depressive patients.
A renown specialist in rheumatology at the Hospital of Special Surgery, Dr. Susan Freedman was, however, quite certain that polymyalgia rheumatica was not the right diagnosis, and she ordered another slew of exams to determine what was responsible for the high level of edema and pain. Her tests resulted in no additional positive diagnoses, and Dr. Freedman, besides recommending decreasing Prednisone’s dosage, sent us back to Mom’s internist, Dr. Ronald Klein.
The pain came under control thanks to Prednisone, the severe edema was unabated. Soon though, irritability and insomnia, as well as kidney and lower back pain, reappeared and prompted Mom to discontinue the steroids. She would get on, or off, depending on whether the searing pain subsided or recurred. Meanwhile, Dr. Klein referred her to Dr. Philips, who proceeded to order the complete cessation of Prednisone to allow for yet another test, a muscle tissue biopsy, which was performed in Holy Name Hospital. After three weeks off Prednisone, Mom’s physical pain reasserted itself and had become unremitting by the time the results of the muscle tissue biopsy were received in another three weeks.
From the result of the muscle tissue biopsy and an electromyography test (EMG), Dr. Philips diagnosed a condition called diffuse peripheral neuropathy, or degenerative disorder, which, in lay terms, indicates pretty much any type of nerve damage with all kinds of causes. In the end, nobody really knew what ailed her. She, however, knew, without the shred of a doubt that Zyprexa, had been at the root of the damage to her nerves, only there was no way to prove it-not that we ever thought of taking any legal action. Finding lasting relief was her only wish. All along, and after months of searching and wishing for a miracle, her symptoms had seemed to subside, only to give way to new complaints.
Her depression worsened. Depakote and her anti-depressant were ineffective in preventing, or even alleviating it. She was constantly crying and could almost never sleep. Worst of all, the inability of so-called specialists to come up with an accurate diagnosis aggravated her emotional state. She was appalled at the physicians’ inability to determine the cause, or causes, of her symptoms—even as she continued to put her faith in them and hope for a diagnosis. The fact that they just passed her along and appeared to drop her case, or more deplorably, hinted at some form of hysteria or psychosomatic disorder, while distancing themselves, caused her great grief.
By then I was just as discouraged as she was. If there was any redeeming grace, it was that I was fortunate to have Mom fully covered by my health insurance. Since I was unmarried and she was my dependent, my Merrill Lynch health plan was extended to her. I had taken her to so ma
ny doctors and specialists that I had an entire address book set aside just for that. And every single time, I held my breath and prayed that we would soon see the end of her purgatory.
Each time I faced a new physician, I went through her entire history, symptoms, aches and pains. Invariably, he or she would comment on my familiarity with the drugs and conditions, frequently inquiring whether I was a doctor myself. And indeed I was very knowledgeable, from all those hours spent on the internet, reading medical publications. I talked fast, aware of the time constraint of my interlocutors. Too often, I had too many questions to be answered, and their replies were invariably fuzzier than I hoped.
My mother’s health was not the only issue I was forced to contend with at that time. Besides my work obligations and my daughter’s care, I became involved with the renovation and expansion of my apartment. It was timely that I had ended my relationship with Carlos: At least I didn’t have that headache to deal with.
The first phase of the construction went on pretty smoothly, until I was ordered to stop all work and wait for all permits to be duly filed and approved, and all fees-and fines-paid.
“What happened?” my sister asked me on the phone from Tunisia.
“Well, do you remember that older lady who lives one floor below me?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. The one with the dog?”
THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO Page 25