A Life in Men: A Novel

by Gina Frangello

  Alias and Nawar are chatting in Arabic. After a spell, Alias explains that her son is working at a hotel in Erfoud and hasn’t been home in three months. He writes down the name of the hotel on a book of La Mamounia matches and hands it to Mary, saying, “When you get there you ask for him as your guide and tell him I said hello!” Nawar’s husband is at the market, getting supplies, Alias explains. He will be home tomorrow. The floor has only two sleep mats now, but Mary imagines the years when it must have contained three—maybe more. Where, in a home where every family member sleeps lined up on the floor of one small room, do married couples escape to have sex? Do they rely on sleeping children? Do they sneak downstairs and copulate amid the strongly aromatic sheep? Or do couples search out growing wheat in the fields and make love out in the open in order to escape the confines of family?

  Nawar comes in with the bread. Dressed in the usual colorful Berber weavings, her hair hidden under a bright orange scarf, her face round and flat, bones close to the surface, she seems old: not just old-fashioned but actually aged. She is probably Leo’s age, younger than many of the women teachers Mary goes for after-work drinks with, who joke that forty is the new thirty and still wear their hair flowing and get alpha hydroxy peels in Boston. Here, in this world, forty is the new eighty. Nawar is already an old woman, skin leathered, back slightly bent, no doubt from carrying enormous piles of firewood as Mary saw women doing when she was on the exhaust-filled bus. Here, as in Kenya, death is cheap. No hospital for miles across rough terrain, and surely no one with any real medical training would live in such a village. Here I would be an old woman already; here nobody would think twice at my death or even mourn me. Though of course, as Leo said, here she would have died long ago, probably undiagnosed.

  Yet the bread smells like heaven!

  Kenneth reenters the house quietly, bowing his head to walk in the low-ceilinged room until he reaches the mats on the floor, where he sits next to Sandor and away from her. Nawar brings a bowl of fresh water in which they all wash; then with their right hands they tear off hunks of bread. There is honey for dipping, and Mary thinks that despite Kenneth’s outburst she is fully content right here, listening to the French and Arabic she cannot understand, her eyes meeting Leo’s as if to say, See, see, isn’t this better than Paris? Downstairs, sheep occasionally bleat, the smell of them wafting up and competing with the aroma of the bread. Outside, children titter under the window.

  She goes and looks down on them. One small boy has his penis out and is dangling it at them, sticking up his middle finger as he must have learned somehow, somewhere, even in the absence of TV. She feels keenly chastened. She had allowed herself to imagine that all the villagers were happy they were here, that they were welcome in the most biblical sense, where the traveling stranger passing through town is a treasured guest and hospitality an imperative. It occurs to Mary for the first time that she has no idea what her brother and Sandor are paying Alias to accompany them on such a long trip—that she has forgotten he is not here just for the fun of it. She looks at Alias with a new suspicion. He is sweet and charming, but he is not their friend. Maybe they cannot trust him.

  As if on cue, Alias smiles and says, “I told Nawar it’s your birthday tomorrow! She would like to henna your hands.”

  Without even thinking, Mary’s hands dash behind her back.

  The men are in a circle on the floor mats, munching their bread, the small Berber woman smiling expectantly at her. Mary is familiar enough with the custom of hennaing to know that she should receive the offer as an honor—that unlike at the beauty shops in Boston’s ethnic neighborhoods, here henna isn’t something you get just on a whim as decoration but is reserved for special occasions like weddings, for rituals like warding off the evil eye. God knows she could use a healthy dash of warding off evil. She thinks of Geoff and of how, if it were the two of them here alone with Nawar, she would hold out her hands in an instant, succumb to this honor, and hoard it in her memory to pull out later and savor. Geoff, for all her fury at him for not accompanying her, has never made her feel anything but wholly beautiful; it would never occur to her to be embarrassed in front of him about the shape of her fingers, or anything else. But now, after her spat with Kenneth outside, she feels vulnerable. And Alias. She can’t help thinking of Hasnain and his phantom cousin in his presence. Hasnain was about Alias’s age, and Nix said he was handsome and—asinine or not—Alias is the first young Muslim man she has ever known, handsome or otherwise (and he is handsome). She cannot imagine going to the center of this male circle and holding out her flawed hands and letting them watch while Nawar decorates them. What if Nawar has not noticed their misshapenness before now and recoils? Mary would die of shame.

  She says, “Can I do my feet instead?”

  Alias asks Nawar and then responds, “No, no, she says the feet won’t dry in time for you to put your shoes on and make the walk back. Your sandals will ruin the feet. To do the feet, you have to have time to leave them bare. She says the hands.”

  “All right,” Mary says. To refuse would be worse. She thinks for a moment of the ferry to Athens and the woman who offered her what she now knows was a rose-flavored Turkish delight, and how Nix commanded her to swallow the thing rather than spit it out. How she took it as a punishment, but how Nix was right. To refuse Nawar would be unthinkable.

  Leo says, “Can I get my hands done, too?”

  Sandor elbows him. “It’s for girls. What, you want them to find you a husband here in the village while they’re at it?”

  “Why is it for girls?” Leo demands. “It’s like a tattoo, and ink isn’t gender specific.” He turns to Alias. “Is that true? I thought in this culture a man can get whatever he wants, so if I want henna, why shouldn’t I have it?”

  Alias shrugs. “The men use henna for their hair and beard sometimes. But you have no gray yet, so there’s no need.”

  Sandor snorts, “No gray? Look closer.”

  “I don’t want it in my hair,” Leo says. “I want to get it with my sister for her birthday. She shouldn’t have to get it all alone. She’s sick of being the only girl.”

  Mary has never realized, until Leo voiced it for her, exactly how true this is. She imagines herself and Nix side by side in this stuffy room, hands extended gleefully, comparing designs. So much she has missed. Nix was not the only girl in the world—not her only friend in grade school, in high school. There were others, girlfriends she laughed and shopped with and talked with on the phone, some even after her diagnosis. But after Lockerbie they all just reminded her of Nix in a way that hurt too badly, and then she began to travel in a world dominated by men, and recently her illness, work, and marriage have been more than enough to handle. Has she purposely avoided letting any new woman get too close, like a widow leading a celibate life after the death of her beloved? She grasps Leo’s hand. “Will Nawar do it? Can you ask her?”

  Alias shrugs and asks Nawar. To everyone’s considerable surprise, Nawar laughs aloud, revealing several missing teeth. Her big grin lights up the room.

  “She says this is a big experience for her,” Alias says dutifully, doubtfully. “The American men are very different from our men, and she is happy to give you the masculine design.” He frowns openly. “My sister does henna, too,” he says. “In Marrakech. She wouldn’t do your hands, though. She would not be allowed to touch you—if you came to my father’s house, she would put on the burka so you can’t see her face. You’re not supposed to touch a strange man, one not part of the family, not Muslim. But the Berbers are different and they do things in their own way, so fine, she says it’s okay with her.” He folds his arms across his chest.

  “Dude,” Kenneth says, “You were drunk off your ass with us the other night, rambling about your girlfriend the French schoolteacher. I wouldn’t get too high up on that holy horse if I was you.”

  “That’s my life,” Alias says stonily. “Not my sister’s.”

  “Well, Nawar doesn’t have to worry about
touching me,” Leo says, rubbing Sandor’s leg happily. “She’s as safe as a nun in a convent.”

  Alias does not translate this. Sandor looks as though he would like to kick Leo several times in the ribs. Kenneth, on the other hand, looks pleased, as though something interesting is happening, as though he approves of this turn of events. Mary and Leo scoot to the middle of the mats while Nawar mixes the henna. They sit knee to knee, suddenly giddy. Leo takes off his silver rings and hands them to Sandor. He takes Mary’s hand again and brings it to his lips and kisses it.

  “I’m so happy to be with you for your birthday,” he whispers. “This is one of the best days of my entire life.”

  Tears smart in her eyes. She does not mind her fingers anymore. She breathes into Leo’s ear, “Thanks for the save—now they’re all looking at you, not me.”

  “Silly girl,” Leo says. “Think of your fingers like a battle wound. They show what a courageous person you are. You have to get used to them because you’re going to be looking at them for a long, long time.” His eyes are teary, too. Their heads are draped together, whispering, while Nawar busies herself and Alias sulks and Kenneth and Sandor talk to each other about nothing so that Leo and Mary can have their moment. And this must be what sex is like in a place like this: the world gives you space because it has to. Because people will stake a small space for intimacy even when there is none.

  SHE WAKES GASPING. Sometimes this is how it is. Air-hungry, nothing she sucks in able to reach bottom, breathing out when it feels like there is nothing to expel, desperate for the exhalation to end so that she can try again, pulling and pulling but empty. Her breath comes faster. This is what it was like in the hospital, when the nurses came in and gave her oxygen, and one, her favorite, Crystal, would smooth her hair and say, It’s all better now. She staggers in the dark. Her portable compressor is recharging its batteries, plugged in with the adapter. Inside her pack is her albuterol, her TOBI just in case. Groping around, she shoves the inhaler into her mouth and gulps, waits for the relief, allows herself those moments of hope. She walked today for a total of something like six hours, not counting the midday rest at Nawar’s home. There are people with CF who would give anything to walk even a few blocks without needing a two-hour nap to recover. She is lucky; she is strong.

  But tonight the albuterol isn’t helping. She used her Flutter before bed, but sometimes it’s not good enough, and the DNase isn’t for immediate relief, takes twenty minutes to even use. Maybe it would help, though, if she could get to it—it’s in the freaking hotel refrigerator and there’s no one at the desk at this hour to retrieve it for her. Dizzy, she switches on the lights.

  If only Kenneth were here. After their fight earlier he got his own room, fabulously cheap—less than twenty bucks—clean, and pretty, with a small pool out back. In a few years there will be luxury riads all over this area and wealthy Europeans will be building summer homes, but right now that has only just started to happen; now you can still find bargains easily, you can pay for your own room and not break a sweat. Her lungs feel thick, the back of her throat coated with mucus. She makes herself cough but it’s not productive, requires too much air. Panic washes over her like anesthesia until she cannot feel her hands and feet. Her chest hurts, and mucus this thick could be an infection. If she gets an infection here, she is doomed. She will have to go home right away, while she can still get on the plane without its being a major production. It is past midnight; she is now thirty-three. Her cough is getting desperate, loud. A knock on her door.

  “I’m fine,” she calls. She is not sure why.

  “Are you choking?” The voice is Alias’s, not what she expected. Why is it always the wrong man at her door? “Do you need help? I know the Heimlich maneuver.”

  She starts laughing. It hurts her chest, and when she sits up, spots burst in front of her eyes. What is the altitude here? What are her oxygen levels? If only she could get at her DNase and thin this shit out and cough it up. She opens the door, tries to speak, coughs violently in Alias’s face.

  He seems to realize at once that she hasn’t just swallowed something the wrong way. “You are sick,” he says, and she snaps, “Duh,” then feels awful for it. She tries again, “I left my medication in the hotel refrigerator. Could you find it for me?”

  “Of course. Do you want me to get your brother while I’m gone?”

  “No, no, just hurry, please.”

  Back on the bed she pounds her chest, arranging the pillow under her back so that she’s slightly upside down. She closes her eyes and imagines Mom’s cupped hand: the patience, the perfection of the small blows, how invasive and infuriating it felt, so much that she never realized, too, how safe, how utterly without thought she was able to be, her mother responsible for her body’s outcome. Alias returns with her ampoules, her name written on them with a Sharpie in Geoff’s handwriting. Mary leaps from the bed, still coughing, and grabs her meds, shoos him away, and slams the door. She keeps coughing into the mask; it’s hard to breathe in; she’s getting everything wet. Out in the hall she hears shuffling, becomes aware that Alias must still be there. She leans her back against the bed, settles into the mist, counts backward. When she was in high school and wanted to calm her spasming lungs, she would sometimes say the Lord’s Prayer in her mind over and over like a meditation. Recently, through all her tests and procedures, Geoff always insisted on staying in the room with her and would talk to calm her, or sometimes just sit at her feet and hold her toes. The space around her in her single room feels enormous now. What she would give to have a body in here with her: any body would do. Time passes; air moves in and out. She takes the mask from her face. Coughing is easy now, necessary, the mucus desperate to come up, streaks of blood in the sputum. She gets the toilet tissue she’s been carrying—because it’s rarely available except in hotels—and rips off hunks, spitting into it. She should go to the bathroom but it’s down the hall and she doesn’t want to see anyone.

  Another knock at the door. Christ. She opens it and still it is him.

  “I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  Mary wipes her mouth gracelessly. “I’m fine,” she snaps. “Look, no offense, you’re a great guide—today was awesome—but I don’t think you even like us very much, and we’re not paying you by the hour. I want to be alone.”

  Alias blinks at her in the dim hallway. He is still dressed in his street clothes and she wonders why he hasn’t been to bed yet, what he has been doing. “Why do you think I don’t like you? I like you.”

  “Right,” Mary says. “You wouldn’t let your sister touch a gay male Jew, but you like us just fine.”

  Alias laughs. This surprises her. She has not seen him laugh before.

  “You don’t look Jewish,” he says.

  “And I suppose that’s supposed to be a compliment.”

  He shrugs. “The Jew and the Arab, they look the same. It is not a compliment.”

  She coughs sharply, covers her mouth. “So you came to my room in the middle of the night to tell me I’m ugly?”

  “I came to see if you are okay.” Alias gives an exaggerated shrug. “If you choke, at La Mamounia they don’t like that and I’ll get fired. I’m just a guide, after all.”

  A smile spreads across her face. She feels it, big, and her breath is able to support it. She says, “You’re funny. I don’t get you, though. You seem like a normal guy—the way you dress, hanging out with us at a restaurant drinking and talking the night we met. But then you say these things. Like we’re just infidels and you don’t think we’re the same as you are.”

  “The Koran is the one truth,” he says somberly. “But I’m an infidel, too, just like you.”

  “See!” Mary realizes that she has flung open her door—that she has for all intents and purposes invited the boy inside. “How can you say that the Koran is the truth but then casually disregard it and not do what it says? If that were really what you believed, wouldn’t you be spreading out a little prayer mat right
now and not even talking to a Jewish woman? Wouldn’t you be wearing a beard and not dating a French girl? Are the pleasures of this life really so amazing that you’d sacrifice your eternity in paradise for a Flag Spéciale beer? Come on! It’s like you’re just saying what you’re supposed to say but you know it’s all a load of crap.”

  He is nodding. His eyes have gone flirtatious somehow and it is the opposite of what she needs, she who already has more men in her life than she can handle. “The pleasures of this life are so amazing,” he says. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so,” she scoffs. “I’ve tasted Flag Spéciale.”

  He steps inside the room. “Where is your boyfriend? You don’t share the room together? You are still a virgin, until you get married?”

  She laughs. She wants to ask if it’s proper for him to ask this question of a woman, but she can’t stop laughing.

  “Oh!” Alias’s eyes widen. “He isn’t your boyfriend then? He is homosexual, too?”

  “No!” Mary says. “No, he’s not gay. He is”—she pauses—“just a friend.”

  Alias is sitting on the bed now. Where was he when she started to cough? How is it that he is the only one who heard her? Maybe this is a dream.

  “Your friend has the wrong idea about my girlfriend,” he admits, and he looks a little bit embarrassed, uncertain. “I must have made a mistake with my words on our first night. She isn’t French, she teaches French. She is Moroccan, Muslim, like me.”

  “But she’s educated,” Mary says. “I bet she doesn’t wear a veil.”

  “Correct. Well, sometimes she wears one, if she visits her family and goes out someplace with them. But not in Marrakech, no, she doesn’t. None of our friends do. This is not the Middle East. You Americans don’t know the difference. Morocco is almost like part of Europe.”