THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO

by Wafa Faith Hallam

  I stepped out in the dimming light with huge dark glasses hiding my puffy face and rushed back home, praying I would not meet anyone I knew. Those therapy sessions were exhausting and for what? All I did was rehash the same current plights and wallow in the same old remembrance cesspool.

  30

  Costly Choices

  The Manhattan skyline shimmered in the blue velvet sky, its etched reflection mirrored in the Hudson. My thoughts were darker than the river water. The front door of my apartment opened and closed. I barely budged. My sister stuck her head through the terrace door behind me.

  “What are you doing out here?” she asked. “Come in, it’s getting cold.”

  I turned around without answering.

  “Well, you’ve been crying a storm again, I can see. I really wonder how much good those therapy sessions are doing you. It’s been almost three months, right?”

  She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me inside.

  I ignored her question.

  “I’ve decided to put both my apartment and Mom’s up for sale,” I said after I sat on one of the high chairs of my kitchen island.

  Nezha looked at me in astonishment. Before answering, she switched on the hanging lights over the black granite counter and stood facing me.

  “Both apartments? Mom’s, too?”

  I nodded in silence.

  “Did you tell her? After all, that’s her home. I know you bought it and it’s in your name, but you gave it to her.” She only articulated what was tearing me up inside.

  “Listen, I know. I didn’t come up with the idea lightly. This is an extreme decision for drastic times. That’s why I need your help to announce it to her.” I bent my head and added under my breath, “I feel bad about it. But I’m in bad shape in every way… My income’s dropped significantly, and it’s no longer enough to cover everything. I’ve been borrowing money every month just to keep up. I need some financial relief.”

  Carrying both mortgages and maintenance payments was ruining me, and I had nowhere to turn.

  I hurried on, “I will not sell hers if mine finds a taker first. Since I’m not sure of that, I’m putting both on the market at the same time.” I looked at her for moral support. She was well aware of my situation.

  We had been in contact the entire time she was overseas, and we had spent hours together every day since she returned from Tunisia to close on the sale of her own apartment. I would have asked her for help if I knew she could afford it. But she had been struggling to pay off her own mountains of debt.

  Before she could answer, I added: “I also wanted to ask you to take Mom to Morocco and have someone—a family member perhaps—take care of her around the clock. I can’t do it anymore,” I sighed.

  I knew she was the only person I could turn to for this sort of thing. She had been going to Morocco far more often than I had, and she’d even been hinting at moving back there. She was convinced that it was far easier and cheaper to hire help and live more comfortably in that country.

  But at that moment, my sister’s expression betrayed her bewilderment.

  “Oh my God, Wafa, these are big bombs you’re dropping on me. Mom isn’t going to like this. Living in Morocco doesn’t appeal to her at all anymore. It hasn’t in a very long time!” she moaned.

  “I know, sis. But I cannot do it anymore. I’m at my wits’ end, and broke. The truth is I can barely take care of my own daughter… not to mention you’ll be going back to your husband soon,” I lamented, my anguish oozing through every word.

  “Well, why doesn’t Sophie go spend some time with Sami in Tunisia? He’d love to have her there, and you’ll get a break. She’ll have a good time with him and the dog. And you and I can join them in a couple of weeks after we straighten things up with Mom.”

  That sounded like a worthy idea to me. I was also aware that Nezha needed to pacify Sami’s feelings. Sending Sophie to stay with him for a few days was another way of further postponing her own return. He protested that she was abandoning him every time she went to the States. She would promise to be gone for a month and end up staying two or three instead, leaving him lonely and distressed. But it was a real torture for her to live away from her family. It was not something she would have chosen to do were it not for him.

  “Sending Sophie alone to Tunisia will not be a walk in the park either, I assure you,” I said.

  At fourteen, she wasn’t easy to deal with. Her school results were atrocious, and her principal had informed me they were keeping her behind in eighth grade, a catastrophic prospect in my eyes. But since the tuition cost a fortune, taking her out of the Lycée Français was really the only option. The problem was compounded by the fact that the public schools in our town were overcrowded and populated by children of working-class Hispanics, which in itself did not bother me in the least—diversity rather appealed to me—but the crowded classrooms, limited resources, questionable discipline, and substandard education caused me to reject that possibility.

  “What to do with her schooling this fall is going to be another problem… God—” I muttered.

  I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead with my fingers.

  “Why is everything so difficult? I’m so confused. I’ve got to find a way out of this shit somehow…”

  “Let’s deal with one thing at a time,” advised Nezha. “You send Sophia to Sami while I convince Mom to go to Morocco,” and added, “I’ll take her myself on my way to Tunis. And I think you should join us there for a couple of weeks to rest and clear your mind. A brief escape will help you recover from your despondency.”

  I was grateful to her for presenting me with solutions, no matter how short-term.

  Everything seemed to go smoothly at first.

  Nezha had booked their trip to Casablanca for July 9 and helped Mom pack. The ride to JFK was uneventful; it was only when they reached the gate area crowded with passengers anxious to board the plane that the mood changed.

  “You want to get rid of me, don’t you?” Mom blurted out all at once.

  She was sitting in her wheelchair, waiting to be taken onboard.

  Nezha had had Mom agree to go to Morocco with her to be cared for by Fatima, her recently widowed oldest brother’s second wife, and her two teenage daughters. She was to live in their large villa in Temara, south of Rabat. Uncle Khalid, Mom’s youngest brother, also lived nearby with his wife and three children. We hoped his presence would make it easier for her to feel comfortable and get better.

  “I can’t go back,” she whimpered. “There isn’t anything there for me anymore.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. She pulled Nezha down by the hand to face her.

  “My home is here now. I don’t want Wafa to sell my apartment; I don’t want to go to Morocco. Please don’t send me away, let me stay home,” she pleaded, sobbing softly, unmindful of being in public, devastated by the sudden realization of her imminent departure.

  “My God, Mom, what’s this? How can you say these things? I thought we’d talked about this. We love you and only want you to be properly taken care of. You’ll be surrounded by close family, not strangers.”

  We had been nervous all along about Mom’s uncharacteristic submissiveness. It was now clear she had only been concealing her torment.

  “You know our circumstances, Mommy,” Nezha went on, wiping her tears with her bare hands. “We have too many things going on and nobody to care for you at the same time.”

  Mom shook her head in disbelief, squeezed her daughter’s hand. Nezha grabbed her other hand still squatting by her side. Her legs ached. She was aware of the stares around her.

  “You’ve already fallen down twice at night just trying to go from your bed to the toilet in your room,” insisted Nezha, “It’s a wonder you didn’t break a bone, or worse.”

  Luckily, she had fallen down on the carpeted floor of her bedroom. It took the help of a big man to get her back in bed. My sister, who had been staying with her to relieve me, had had to
call one of the building’s porters in the middle of the night. None of that seemed to matter to Mom.

  “So you want to get rid of me, I can see that… I’m too much of a burden for you!” she wailed, submerged in dread.

  “It’s not true. You’re crazy to think this way,” retorted Nezha.

  “Is everything alright?” inquired a flight attendant. “We’re about to start boarding shortly, and you’re going first.”

  “Yes, thank you. We’ll be ready in a minute,” said Nezha. She turned to face Mom again.

  “Mom, please, this is not helping. And, you’re wrong. We’re not leaving you forever, only a short time, I promise. Just give us a few weeks to settle things out and for you to get well. But you too must do your part and get better.”

  Leaning over, she kissed her tenderly, dabbed her face with a tissue she pulled out of her purse and cleaned the makeup smudges.

  “It’ll be okay, Mommy, you’ll see,” she said.

  Then she walked behind the chair to wheel her onboard. She was trying hard not to burst into tears herself.

  I was resting on a lounge chair under the large beach umbrella provided by the hotel, shielded from the fierce Mediterranean sun, when my cell phone rang and pulled me out of my torpor. I scrambled to answer.

  “Hello?” my sister’s voice immediately shook me into full alertness.

  “Nezha? Hi, I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” I muttered at last. “How’s Mom doing?”

  “Badly,” she said, “she’s doing very badly.” Her voice broke, “Last night, at around three in the morning, a few hours after she took antibiotics, she began vomiting and passing blood in an uncontainable diarrhea. She was rushed to the emergency room of the Polytechnic Clinic nearby and given an intravenous.”

  My heart skipped a beat. A few days earlier, upon their arrival in Morocco, my sister had called to tell me what had happened at boarding time, and all I could do was vehemently defend my decision. She had concurred with much sadness. After that the news had been that Mom was suffering from a burning sensation in her mouth and throat which made it very difficult for her to chew or swallow. The symptoms kept getting worse until she could no longer eat, drink, or talk. All the doctors who examined her had diagnosed the ailment as an oral yeast infection, but the latest physician she’d seen had prescribed antibiotics, insisting that it was an inflammation rather than a candidiasis.

  On July 23, Mom had taken the first dose of the medication only to be hospitalized a few hours later. The following day, giant, white, thrush-like ulcers had appeared on her tongue and oral cavity. The sores had erupted very quickly and spread to her throat. After five days, she still hadn’t had any food or drink and was still incapable of speech.

  “None of the many specialists who examined her had any idea what was wrong with her,” explained Nezha. “So yesterday I had her admitted in one of Rabat’s most reputable private hospitals, Sheikh Zayyed.”

  I could hardly believe my ears. This was the worst imaginable scenario, a nightmare.

  “But what are they all saying? What the hell is wrong with her?” I pressed her; my guts knotted.

  “No one knows, Wafa. The ulcers were so severe, they were eating away at her tongue. She almost lost the tip of it. She’s being kept alive intravenously.”

  I could hear her heave a sigh. I so shared her grief.

  “When I saw those lesions, Wafa, I swear I thought she had Aids. Thank God, that was ruled out. Still, the only thing her doctors agree on is that this is caused by some kind of human immunodeficiency. In other words, her immune system has collapsed,” she went on. “Multiple tests have been ordered. Most have turned out negative, and the rest are inconclusive. Her doctors are mystified, to say the least. They can’t figure it out. And, trust me, there are some really good specialists here.”

  “Oh my God, honey. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this on your own,” I said.

  I never offered to go to Morocco to help her, though. I had already done my part. And Nezha never asked. In fact, she seemed grateful that I was in Tunisia with Sophia and Sami.

  “Look, I’m already spending hours in the hospital every day. Also Hanan, Mom’s new young maid, is amazing, with the sweetest temperament. She has not once left her side and attends to her needs day and night. Truly, there isn’t anything more you could be doing,” she reassured me.

  Still I couldn’t help feeling mortified that I had let Mom down, no matter how defensible my choice. Her worsening condition did nothing to alleviate the remorse of having sent her away and not being there. This was my punishment, and not a day went by when I wasn’t haunted by an eerie sensation of absolute disconnect between my presence in a beach resort and my mother’s near-death state far away from me.

  When Sophia and I returned home from our Mediterranean retreat, Mom was still on intravenous support; she remained so for the first twenty-five of the thirty-nine days she was hospitalized. When the oral candidiasis seemed to lift and she began to eat and talk a little, other lesions appeared on her scalp. These were painful purulent pustules, which first showed up on her temples and within two weeks spread to her entire skull together with shooting throbbing pain. She was discharged on September 5, still suffering from these head lesions, and pretty much undiagnosed. The vast number of talented specialists who had examined her had not been able to identify her illness with any degree of certainty.

  Back home, I had to figure out what I was to do next. My mother’s condition was consuming me, and I could reach no solution that did not include her. Materially, I had already drastically downsized my lifestyle and reevaluated my priorities. But there was no escaping the fact that my financial situation had continued to deteriorate. My managers were demanding that I return to work or else face the consequences. And after months of therapy, I reached the inescapable conclusion that I could no longer go back. My psychologist agreed, deeming it challenging for me to fully recover without changing careers altogether. And indeed, the mere thought of returning to pick up my personal belongings was so unbearable, and generated so much terror, that I just abandoned them until the bulk of it was shipped back to me months later, I never having set foot in my office again.

  There was nothing rational about any of it. All I knew was that I was living in a state of incomprehensible dread and, even more so, loathed the very idea of returning to my place of work. The stress had already materialized by taking shape within my womb. But the once small embryo of fear that had germinated months earlier in my uterus had grown into a snarled, melon-size mass of blood and tissue, causing random hemorrhages and prompting pre-menopausal symptoms that woke me in the middle of the night, drenched in my own sweat and paralyzed by my own destructive thoughts. Yet not even that monstrosity, and the fact that I was sure to lose my health insurance as well as my mother’s invaluable coverage, was enough to make me reconsider my decision.

  I was sailing in the fog without radar or lighthouse to guide me through the rocks and shoals of my destiny; and once I crashed, I kept making haphazard decisions without conviction and with shattering consequences for me and the people I loved most. My apathy and confusion had shut off my horizon, and no hint of light was visible to me anywhere. My instinct, and determined old self, had deserted me for good.

  As I suspected, and apprehended too, my mother’s apartment sold first that summer, relieving the financial pressure though deepening my remorse. In the fall, my daughter did not go back to the Lycée Français. I opted to home-school her with the help of an online program in Florida. Before long, my sister and I came to the conclusion that, if we all lived in Morocco, our immediate problems would be solved. Mom would be forced to recognize that we had not abandoned her, and I would leave the stress of working on Wall Street, and the prevalent xenophobic hysteria, behind. I began dreaming of a more catered and peaceful life in my native country.

  In time, with our know-how and experience, we were confident we would also be able to start a business in Morocco. Nezha
was already exploring the options. Moreover, we had invested in a good piece of land on the island of Djerba in Tunisia just before 9/11. And even though the ambitious project we had capitalized on never saw the light of day, the property was still there, appreciating in value. If nothing else, we thought we could sell it at a good profit when the time came.

  In December that year, and despite Sophia’s ferocious opposition, we left home for Morocco—with express instructions to my broker to double his efforts to find a buyer for my apartment.

  31

  Back to Morocco

  The return to my birthplace was therapeutic. My sister and I spent the first two weeks looking for the perfect house, big enough for all of us: Mom and Hanan, her young live-in maid, Nezha—and Sami later—and Sophia and me. We settled on a brand-new rental, a sun-drenched villa facing the Atlantic Ocean a few miles south of Rabat, in Harhoura. We furnished it with Nezha’s and Mom’s furniture, which I had shipped from the States along with Mom’s small Chevrolet Cavalier. The house was so large I had to order an additional custom-made, Moroccan-style salon, and furniture for two extra bedrooms. There were a total of four bedrooms and three full baths on the second floor.

  The master-suite alone, which was immediately designated Mom’s special private quarters, was as big as a very large studio apartment, with another 140 square-foot terrace facing the sea. It easily accommodated her king-size bed, TV set, dresser, make-up vanity chest, desk, and a comfortable sitting area. Downstairs, on the ground floor, in addition to a vast foyer and a powder room, there were three living spaces, divided by a working fireplace. The dining area opened into a large tiled terrace facing a small garden with two solitary palm trees and the ocean beyond its iron gate. Next to it, a huge kitchen led to a laundry room and garage.