The Blue Hour

by Douglas Kennedy

  “Ben Hassan did all this to break him. He got your father, your brothers. Now Paul. He was the last member of the quartet who cost him his career. And he has certainly revenged himself.”

  “But he is still an obese man with a sad life. And someone who was denied his life’s dream—to become a great painter. How does revenge fix that?”

  I drained my glass. Faiza glanced at her watch.

  “I really don’t feel like talking much more,” she said. “I have a class to teach . . . not that I really want to be doing that either. Still, it is my work. And my work, as minor and inconsequential as it is, tucked away in the mouth of the Sahara, does give some form and shape to the day. So . . . I’d like you to leave now.”

  “I just need to know one last thing.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Did Paul give you any indication he was suicidal?”

  “Or would follow my advice and kill himself? Put it this way: I told him that he had ruined my life, that he had ruined his daughter’s life, that he had ruined Ben Hassan’s life. Then I let him know that I knew all about how he tricked you into believing he wanted a child with you. That really sent him into a spin.”

  “And he said what . . . ?”

  “He said: ‘I’ve fucked up everything.’ Then I told him he had to leave. He started to cry. He begged for my forgiveness. I told him, ‘I’m kicking you out. Just as you kicked me out of your life years ago.’ ”

  “So you too had your revenge. Has it changed anything?”

  She lit another cigarette.

  “It’s changed nothing. Nothing at all.”

  She walked to the front door and opened it. “Leave,” she said.

  “I’m sorry you’re so bitter.”

  “And you’re not?”

  Outside I found myself frantically searching for a taxi, the mid-afternoon heat now even more frightening in its intensity. My brain was spinning like the wheels on a slot machine—and turning up zero in the way of solutions. Except the absolute need to find Paul immediately—and to at least alleviate one of his fears by telling him he owed Ben Hassan nothing.

  Did he keep a copy of the loan agreement? Was there a lawyer in Casa I could bring into the picture to break the contract and also sue Ben Hassan for fraud, while also pursuing the authorities to prosecute him for embezzlement?

  Absurd thoughts. If, as Faiza indicated, Ben Hassan really had all those high-up connections, I knew that the best I could hope for was that, once Paul was back home, he never came near us.

  A taxi passed by and halted when the driver saw my frantic waving.

  I was back at the hotel five minutes later, scanning every passing corner of the city for a sighting of Paul. When I walked in Yasmina stared at me wide-eyed.

  “Why aren’t you with Monsieur Paul?”

  “Paul! You found him?”

  “He came back to the hotel.”

  “He what?”

  “He came back. Maybe three or four minutes ago. Left this here for you.”

  She handed me an envelope with the letter R written in Paul’s characteristic penmanship.

  “Surely you saw him as you were pulling up in the taxi,” she said.

  “Had he been there I would have seen him, I was looking everywhere.”

  “But he just wandered out a minute ago. Maybe even less than that. Heading to the bus station. Carrying no bags, but telling me he was going south. You can’t have missed him.”

  “But I did,” I said, now frantic. “Was he on foot?”

  She nodded.

  I turned around. My taxi had pulled away.

  “How do I get there?” I cried.

  “It’s a five-minute walk. Head to the main street, turn left, keep going until you see the station. It is opposite the Q8 petrol station. But hurry—the bus he’s taking . . . I think it leaves very soon.”

  Envelope in hand, I charged down the maze of alleyways, then bounded along the avenue Muhammed V, oblivious to the scorching afternoon, the pavements burning through my sandals, certain that up ahead I could see Paul’s six-foot-four frame, his long gray hair bobbing with his bouncing gait. I was running faster than I have ever run, my eyes suddenly going foggy, the bus station up ahead, the bus there, me pushing myself against a heat so dense, so viscous, my equilibrium going sideways, but, oh, God, no . . . there he is getting on the bus, and I start to scream, “Wait, wait, wait . . . ,” and, no this cannot be, the bus door closes and it pulls away, and I am seeing people on the street in nearby cafés, hearing myself scream, signaling to the driver to stop, and the bus is now turning out of the depot and down the main drag of Ouarzazate. I reached the bus station around thirty seconds later, fell into the dirt, and blacked out for a moment, and people rushed over, and two men helped me to a nearby café table, and one of them rushed inside while the other kept my head between my legs, and the second man returned with a sodden cloth that he put around my neck. As he helped me back into an upright position, a flash flood of sweat rolled down my face. I was handed a chilled bottle of water, which I drained in moments.

  The men kept asking if I was all right, if they could get anyone to help me, why was I running like that?

  I still had the envelope in my left hand. I asked for more water. I opened the letter. Though my eyes were still having trouble focusing, I still was able to make out the following lines in Paul’s even more tortured scrawl:

  I have hit the wall. I am now heading to the end of the line. Don’t pursue me. Let me do what I have to do.

  I am beyond sorry. But forgiveness is not merited in this instance. Which is why I am now disappearing. Permanently.

  You were the love of my life. I only see that now.

  Farewell.

  P.

  I looked up from the letter and into the faces of the men all huddled around me, their concern and worry at my mental and physical state evident.

  “Where was that bus heading?” I asked.

  A voice said:

  “Tata.”

  “What’s Tata?” I asked.

  “A town six hours south of here.”

  I shut my eyes.

  “What time is the next bus to Tata?”

  EIGHTEEN

  ONE OF THE men who came to my aid was a taxi driver. He insisted on driving me back to the hotel and refused my offer of money for the ride. When I reached the front door, Yasmina came racing out and helped me into the lobby. She found me more water. She sent one of the cleaners for another wet cloth to put around my neck. She told me I should go upstairs and lie down. She would check on the flight to Paris, as there was still time to catch it.

  “He left on the bus to Tata,” I said. “The next bus to Tata leaves in ninety minutes. I’m getting on it.”

  “But Tata is a six-hour journey from here. And it is absolutely in the middle of nowhere.”

  “He’s threatening to kill himself,” I said, brandishing the letter. “If I get there tonight there is a good chance I can find him before—”

  “Madame, one simple call from me to the gendarmes will see the bus stopped somewhere between here and Tata, and your husband taken into protective custody.”

  What she said made sense. But I was operating according to a different sort of logic, in which I had convinced myself that if he fell into the hands of the authorities Ben Hassan was certain to be contacted. Given that he was still so set on revenge, who’s to know what horror he would instruct them to concoct for Paul. Two days in a Moroccan jail would break him. No. Two hours would be enough to upend what little equilibrium he had left. Especially with Ben Hassan’s ability to pull all sorts of evil strings. The stories about Faiza’s father and brothers were still fresh in my mind. I could easily see Paul being “suicided” while in protective custody—and the officials (along with everyone else, from Ben Hassan to Samira to Faiza to the very kind woman behind this hotel desk) all corroborating the fact that he was in troubled mental health in the days leading up to his death by hanging in his padded cell
; a suicide that Ben Hassan could easily effectuate for one thousand euros.

  “I’m getting on that bus,” I told Yasmina. “Because it’s me and me alone who can get him out of trouble.”

  “I beg you—”

  “No discussion! None!”

  I could see Yasmina recoil at the way I snapped at her.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  She put a restraining hand on my arm. “I implore you. Go to your room, have a shower, lie down, let me call the gendarmes.”

  “My decision is made. And I am going to say this: if, when I get to Tata, I find that he has been taken off the bus by the police—”

  “You have my word. I will not make that call. But as you have a little time, I ask that you go upstairs and stand under the shower and drink at least another liter of water. You are in danger of dehydrating.”

  I did as ordered, asking her to have a taxi here in just under an hour.

  After my shower I dried off and got dressed, constantly pushing out of my head any conflicting thoughts about the wisdom of chasing Paul to Tata. There is no choice, I told myself. I told Paul he was better off dead. He may have betrayed me, but my initial fury set this entire nightmare in motion. And now he seems determined to kill himself. And yes, I know I am beyond panic, beyond confused. But the only end to this panic is to get to him before he falls off the edge.

  Downstairs I offered Yasmina money for letting me stay in the room long after the checkout hour. She refused.

  “You have been too kind to me,” I said.

  “I wish I could convince you to stay.”

  “I have to see this through.”

  Her reply was a look that said, No, you don’t . . . and you know that. Then she handed me the hotel card with her cell phone number on the back of it.

  “If I can help you in any way, you now know where to find me.”

  Ten minutes later I was on the bus heading south. To call this vehicle old would be an understatement. It looked to be a relic of the 1980s, with half-stripped paintwork, chewed up seats, grimy windows, no air-conditioning, no ventilation.

  Thankfully there were only ten of us boarding it at Ouarzazate. Which meant that I had two seats to myself all the way to Tata. The other passengers were four elderly women in full niqabs, three men of equally advanced years, a young mother with two babies, a shy adolescent girl who glanced back at me on several occasions, clearly curious as to why I was on this bus. I managed to smile back, but drifted back into my preoccupied reverie. Outside we were traveling through a terrain that was part oasis—trees, patches of arable land—part encroaching sand. There was the occasional change in the topography—a vista in which stern mountains could be seen on the horizon; a densely populated village, its souk in full late-afternoon swing; the tents of Bedouin families pitched alongside the road; the sense that, with every kilometer, we were traveling deeper into a geographic void. I had read online the day before that, in Berber Arabic, ouarzazate means “without noise, without confusion.” Gazing out at the darkening terrain—the sand turning copperish in the declining sun—I could understand just why, when compared to the noisy jumble that was other Moroccan cities, Ouarzazate wasn’t simply the doorway to the desert but also to the immense silence into which I was now further venturing. When I stared at the ever-expanding Sahara, I could understand why it was something akin to a blank canvas, divorced from the disarray and chaos of life beyond. But I began to wonder if that too was an illusion. You look at a sea of empty sand, two Bedouin parents crossing this terrain with their children, and marvel at the timeless simplicity of it all. The truth is more complex. The necessity of survival. The need to find water. To find money for food and other essentials. Their place in a harsh, unforgiving universe.

  Without noise . . . without confusion.

  Life is noise, confusion. We can run to the ends of the earth, and it will still impinge on us. Because the demons within us never vanish—even in a landscape as planed and silenced as the Sahara.

  The bus stopped in a tiny village built next to a small stream. I bought a cup of mint tea from a sad-faced man. There was a toilet in a nearby shed: a hole in the ground over which had been constructed a wooden box with a makeshift seat. The smell was overpowering. I emerged choking, desperate for fresh air. But even at sunset, the heat stifled everything.

  I reboarded the bus. I attempted to nap. But the bus’s lack of suspension and my own preoccupations mitigated sleep. I attempted to strategize. Tata couldn’t be that big a place. A handful of hotels at best. I’d stop in each one until I found Paul. I’d soothe and comfort him. I’d call Yasmina back in Ouarzazate and get her to book us tickets on the next flight to Paris. I’d get us back to her hotel by midday tomorrow. I’d . . .

  Make plans, as usual. In the hope of regularizing someone for whom regularization was more than a stretch. And yes, Faiza—as angry and vindictive and toxic as she was—did get one thing right: Paul brought chaos into everybody’s life. But there was a difference between the Paul I met three years ago—who feigned obliviousness to the mess he frequently engendered—and the man who left me what was a suicide note. He could no longer run from himself. But he could run into the Sahara.

  The hours on the bus went by slowly, the vanished sun lowering the temperature somewhat, but not acting as a palliative against the grubbiness of the journey. I nodded off for a spell, waking with a jolt when the bus screeched to a halt, a horn was honked, and the driver shouted one word, “Tata.”

  We were in a parking area, outside of a walled town. I had been sleeping against my backpack. Getting off the bus, I was immediately confronted by two young men—both in their early twenties, both trying to grow beards with not much luck, both wearing baseball caps, both eyeing me over.

  “Hello, pretty lady,” one of them said in French.

  “You need some help to guide you around?” the second one asked.

  I held up the photo page of Paul’s passport.

  “I’m looking for this man—my husband.”

  “I know where he is,” the first guy said.

  “You do?” I asked. “Honestly?”

  “You come with us, we show you,” the second one said, but he was interrupted by the bus driver, who began to shout at them in Arabic, using the word imshee several times. These two operators were not so intimidated, however, and began to sass him back, until another man—in his late fifties, wearing a dark suit, also weighed in on the argument. The two guys were clearly enjoying the confrontation. The older of the two was being bold and arrogant, eyeing me up and down, making flip comments (“Don’t you want a date with me?” . . . “I love American women” . . . “You don’t need your husband, you need a younger man”) amidst this ever-heated interchange with my two protectors. Eventually the older man—he was tall, heavily lined, a cigarette clutched between his teeth, ash dropping on his brown suit jacket—mentioned police and the two operators backed off, but not before Mr. Arrogant winked at me and said, “Maybe some other time.” Once they were gone, the older man handed me a card and explained in French that he worked for a small hotel within the walls, and he could offer me a very clean, safe room for three hundred dirhams . . . discounted from the usual five hundred. If I was hungry he could convince the cook to stay on to make dinner for me. I pulled out Paul’s passport and showed him the photograph, asking at what hotel I might find my husband.

  “When did he arrive?” asked the man.

  “On the bus before mine,” I said.

  “That’s impossible,” he said.

  “How can it be impossible? I saw him leave on the earlier bus.”

  “But I met that bus—as I meet all buses here. And there was only one Westerner on the bus: a man around seventy, traveling alone, German.”

  “Couldn’t he have gotten off when you weren’t looking?”

  “Madame, I promise you . . . I see everyone who arrives by bus in Tata. You can check the other hotels in town, if you wish.”

  “I’ll g
ive you fifty dirhams if you take me to every hotel in town.”

  “But I assure you . . .”

  “One hundred dirhams.”

  The man shrugged, then nodded for me to follow him.

  We went through the archway that led into the center of Tata. The town was something of a maze. Dark, twisting streets. Little in the way of streetlight. We stopped by a dive of a place, which from the outside looked like a flophouse. A haunted-looking man—his face sallow, his eyes sunken, endlessly forlorn—was behind the desk. He came out and greeted the man escorting me. They embraced. Words were exchanged. I was asked to show Paul’s passport. The desk clerk shook his head, pointing out into the darkness of the night. I asked him to study the photo again to make absolutely certain that he didn’t see him. Again he shook his head.

  Ten minutes and three hotels later we had come to the end of the line for all places of accommodation outside the one to which I was now being brought to spend the night. At each of these establishments it was the same routine: the passport photo, the question if this man was staying there, the shake of the head.

  As we left the last hotel, I asked my escort his name.

  “It’s Naguib, madame.”

  “What time is the first bus back to Ouarzazate?”

  “There’s one at five a.m.”

  “So I should leave my hotel when?”

  “Four forty-five will be fine. It’s all downhill and just a ten-minute walk.”

  From the shadows a voice began to intone, “Downhill, downhill,” the tone mocking, amused.

  Out stepped those two young tough guys who had harassed me upon my arrival. They lit up cigarettes and the flirtatious one even tipped his baseball cap in mock salute. When Naguib snapped at them—hissing something angry in their direction—Mr. Arrogant said to me in French, “We were not trying to be disrespectful, madame.”