Sirens of Memory

by Puja Guha

  A commotion outside caught his attention, and he rushed out of the sitting room, unable to make out what they were saying from inside. As soon as he stepped out, he heard the words, “Soldiers are coming! Hide the supplies!”

  Raj moved back into the canteen area and tried to make his voice portray a calm that couldn’t be further from his state of mind. “There are Iraqi soldiers coming to the camp. For everyone’s safety it would be best if all of you return to your quarters. We’re going to hide the kitchen supplies and could use your help if you’re able to lift any of the heavier bags.”

  He didn’t wait around for a reaction; instead, he rushed toward the kitchen where three others had already gathered to grab bags of rice and lentils to hide them.

  Would the soldiers really take the food? He discarded the idea before he even had the chance to process it—someone clearly thought that it would be worth the effort to hide the provisions. He heaved a giant bag of rice onto his shoulder and headed toward the bathrooms as fast as he could. Of all the places, they probably wouldn’t look there. A few seconds later he stashed it underneath one of the sinks, glad that the bag was sealed. Not the ideal place to store food. By the time he returned to the kitchen he heard the trucks pulling in outside—he might have enough time to hide one more bag before the soldiers made it into the camp.

  Raj had just hoisted the next bag of rice onto his back when someone caught his arm, and he looked up, frowning to see Mariam’s friend Janhvi in front of him. “What is it?” he panted.

  “You can’t let them come into our room. Please.”

  Why on earth would I let them if I could stop them?

  “Okay,” he was confused, but didn’t have time to argue—he would obviously prevent it if he could. The soldiers were nearby now, shouting, and he wouldn’t have enough time to make it to the bathroom. Acting on instinct, he ducked into the doorway on his left, a tiny storeroom and dumped the bag underneath a pile of desks that they had stashed there when they repurposed one of the classrooms as a bedroom. Back in the hallway, he looked for Janhvi, but she had disappeared. Before he had the chance to find her to get clarification, the soldiers swept through the camp like a tornado.

  Austin, USA – April, 2016

  Mariam squinted from the reception desk of the BookPeople bookstore out into the parking lot.

  You’re seeing things.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, opened and rubbed them, before looking out into the parking lot again, this time from directly in front of the entrance. She told herself no one was there, but remained frustrated and off balance. She returned to the reception desk and made a hasty excuse to one of her colleagues before retreating to her office.

  With a deep breath, Mariam sank into her chair and looked at her desk; the to-read pile on the right had grown considerably in the last week, but she’d had trouble focusing. I thought I was doing better, she sighed, thinking back to her breakthrough in therapy. There was no denying it though, this was the fourth time in the week since she and Raj had told Aliya the truth that she’d seen someone she’d recognized as Tareq. Clearly her mind was playing tricks on her, she wasn’t ready to move on.

  Will I ever be free of him? She reached for her phone to call Teresa’s office and moved her appointment up from the end of the week to later that afternoon, citing a scheduling difficulty since she was hesitant to admit how much she obviously needed another session. Just focus on work. She picked up the first book on the to-read pile, a spy thriller called The Spirit of Destruction, written by a new author the store was considering stocking.

  Mariam opened to the first page and had disappeared into the book for about fifteen minutes before her phone rang. She picked up without noticing the caller ID, “Hello?” she repeated three times before hearing a click and then nothing. The caller ID was listed as “Blocked”. Telemarketers were a frequent nuisance, but most came up as a number she didn’t recognize, rarely blocked. She checked her call log—only to confirm that she had received a total of eight blocked number calls over the last four days.

  Just another telemarketer, she reassured herself. Her hands shook as she remembered the figure that she’d seen in the parking lot, and she suppressed her fears once again. This has to stop, you’re being crazy.

  Mariam reopened her book, and within a few minutes was once again encapsulated by the story, following an Iranian spy engaged in a ploy to assassinate the Kuwaiti monarch and the American agent who was attempting to foil his plans. She smiled as the plot drew her back to Kuwait, to the Persian Gulf Coast and the streets of the Salmiya neighborhood. The book’s portrayal made her want to return there, it had been so many years since she had fled, never considering that she could return once the Gulf War had ended. Mariam leaned back in her chair and fondly recalled the walks she and her mother used to take along the water’s edge before she’d died when Mariam was a teenager. I guess not all the memories are bad, she reluctantly admitted. After checking her watch, she set an alarm for thirty minutes later, when her reading break would be over, and she’d have to go back out to the floor, either to work on the display in the mystery/thriller section that she managed or return to the front desk. As she continued reading, she lost herself in the story, turning page after page, wondering where it would take her next.

  Once the alarm went off, she set the book down and was about to leave when her phone rang again.

  No.

  She reached for it, the muscles in her torso rigid. The caller ID said Raj. She steadied herself against the desk and spent the next several minutes trying to convince him, as well as herself, that all was well. In the end she knew she’d failed and resisted the urge to hurl the phone against the wall.

  Dammit! I was doing so well, but all it takes is some idiotic telemarketer for me to come unhinged.

  She returned to the floor and spent an hour restacking books in her section and two others, avoiding the reception desk like the plague until it was time to head to therapy. When she turned onto the street, she spotted a man on the corner taking pictures who she could have sworn she’d seen that morning when she was parking her car.

  You are really losing it, she shook her head, but at least you don’t think he’s Tareq.

  Austin, USA – April, 2016

  Tareq hit the unlock button on his car key as the local investigator that he was working with opened the passenger door.

  “I think she saw me this time,” the investigator said. “I still don’t understand why you wanted me to take so many pictures of BookPeople, you already know that she works there.”

  Idiot, Tareq thought, then answered with a shrug, “I wanted to be sure it’s the same person, and I couldn’t go in and ask. Like I told you, she’s been shirking child support payments, but I had to make sure it’s her before I go in and confront her.”

  “Whatever, man, I’m sending you the pictures now,” the investigator tapped on his phone screen. “You should have them in a second, so please go ahead and transfer the rest of my fee. Will you need anything else?”

  Tareq stared at his phone, waiting for the pictures came through. Once he’d downloaded them, he scrolled through quickly, zooming in on one of Mariam sitting in her car.

  It’s her. He smirked at the confirmation, there was no mistaking it. He’d been following her, observing her daily routine, but had been unable to get close enough without giving himself away. After four failed attempts in the last three days, he’d met with this investigator the evening before to solicit his services. She was so close, they would be together again. A wave of anticipation passed over him as he recalled the soft curve of her neck, the feel of her hair in his fingers, and the creaminess of her skin.

  “Actually, yes, could you send me a few pictures of her daughter—the one that she’s actually taken care of, that is. Her name is Aliya Ghosh.” He handed over the family photo of Raj, Mariam, and Aliya.

  “Sure, no problem.” The local investigator took a picture of the photo with his phone, then looked back
at Tareq expectedly. “It’ll be the same fee, same arrangement.”

  “Right,” he pulled out his wallet and handed over double the remaining payment they had discussed in cash, half for what remained on the initial assignment, along with fifty percent of the next one.

  After counting the bills quickly, the investigator nodded. “I’ll text you the pictures and you can drop the rest of the money at my office.”

  Tareq waited until the investigator was out of sight before he wandered into the bookstore. He kept to himself and moved toward the mystery section in the back. He wanted to take advantage of the time that Mariam was gone to see what she did all day. He stopped at the café and ordered a cup of coffee, grimacing at the first sip—it was a far cry from the slow brewed coffee that he made in the Bialetti at home.

  Still sipping it as a distraction, he took in the books in the mystery section, noting the number of male authors and a few of the more gruesome plots, at least from what he could gather based on the book descriptions. She’s spending her time on this trash, he wanted to spit on the books in a combination of disgust and disbelief. After stewing over the display for another ten minutes, he wandered around the store in search of the staff offices until he found them nestled on the other side of the café. With a quick glance around, he opened the door and walked past four desks until he found the one labeled with Mariam’s assumed name: Ritika Ghosh. He could barely stop himself from grabbing her nameplate and flinging it out the window. Instead, he pocketed it and straightened out the pile of books and papers, making sure that all of the corners were precisely lined up. Tareq paused and picked up the book on the center of her desk, the cover featured the silhouette of an attractive woman superimposed on top of an image of the Kuwait Towers. After reading the back cover, his frown deepened, and he stuffed it into his other jacket pocket where it bulged slightly. He checked his watch—he had to get moving before someone saw him in there and spoiled the surprise. He grabbed a tissue from the box on her desk and ran it over the surface to pick up any dust, cringing at the black specks before he tossed it in the trash bin under her desk. Patting his pockets to make sure that he had both the nameplate and the book, he exited the staff bay quietly, not allowing himself to relax until he was safely back in his car.

  Tareq relished the last sip of coffee in spite of its acidic taste, he’d found Mariam, and he felt closer to her than he had in years—he had sat at her desk, shared the space where she spent so much time.

  I have to save her from all this filth. He felt even more vindicated, remembering the books on display in the mystery section of the store. This man Raj has corrupted her, but not for much longer. He revved the engine and input an address in the Travis Heights neighborhood into the GPS. He didn’t even need to check the file from the investigator in D.C., he’d already memorized the address, 1605 Drake Avenue. The engine purred as he turned south toward Town Lake, reflecting his contentment.

  We’ll be together again soon, my Mariam.

  Salmiya, Kuwait – September, 1990

  Mariam huddled in the corner of her room and waited for the nausea to abate. Her bouts of morning sickness had grown more frequent over the last two months, but their severity had decreased, and most of the time she could wait it out if she sat still for a few minutes, far away from any smells that might trigger another vomiting spell. The heat didn’t help, but thankfully the evenings brought some relief now that August was behind them.

  She leaned her head back against the wall—the nausea was passing now, but the deep feeling of loneliness remained. If only that would pass in a quick bout as the nausea did… Mariam let out a long sigh and tried not to fixate on their plight. The school camp had given them sanctuary, and Tareq was gone, but she still lived in a constant state of fear. If she interacted with anyone at the camp more than the occasional hello, they would figure out that she was Kuwaiti and she’d be putting Dinah and herself at serious risk. She trembled, recalling the Iraqi soldiers who had raided the camp less than a week before. They had confiscated food and water but had caused more chaos than anything else. As far as she knew they hadn’t been looking for Kuwaitis—it hadn’t sounded like it from the shouting she’d heard while she and Dinah were hiding in their bedroom—but she’d never been more aware of the danger.

  If they’d found us… the mere possibility made her shudder again. She had heard the rumors—a Kuwaiti man who had gone out to buy bread and came home to find that his seventeen-year-old daughter had been taken prisoner, the families who had vanished overnight, among others. The soldiers who raided the school had threatened to take some of the younger Indian women away…she didn’t want to imagine what they would have done to her and Dinah if they had been discovered as Kuwaiti women hiding out at an Indian refugee camp.

  What would the soldiers do to the people here, if they found us? Mariam drew her knees into her chest, Are we putting everyone here at risk? An image of the soldiers coming back and executing half of the camp at gunpoint came to mind, and she tried to shake it off. She couldn’t stand to deliberate on what would happen to the people who had taken them in, given them refuge, if they were discovered. Contrary to what Dinah had predicted, they had managed to keep a relatively low profile, interacting only with Janhvi, so as far as she could tell, no one suspected their true nationalities. They kept Arabic conversations to a minimum, speaking only in English, which—although it would seem odd to others at the camp—wasn’t necessarily a red flag. Mariam tried to throw a Hindi word or phrase into her occasional encounters, then excuse herself for how she’d never learned to speak the language properly. Still the idea that everyone might be in even more danger, all due to her existence, haunted her.

  I put Dinah in danger because I didn’t leave Tareq, and now everyone here might pay the price.

  Mariam’s gaze wandered to the side of her bed to the Mylanta tablets that Raj had procured for her, and she couldn’t help but smile. The way he had looked at her, the genuine concern, the gentleness in his eyes when he had waited for her outside of the bathroom, all of that brought her comfort. She had never seen those emotions in a man before, certainly not someone outside of her family—tender moments had been few and far between even there.

  Tareq never looked at me like that. Not even once in the time that they’d been married, nor before or on the day of their wedding. She squeezed her eyes shut as the memory of his touch returned, his mouth on hers, along with the sense of being so powerless and incapable of stopping him. Mariam tried to push the images away, but they came on even stronger, and she could feel his hands on the drawstring of her kamese, grappling at her underwear. Her back crashed into the wall, and the tears took hold. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed.

  This will never be over. Even when he is not with me, he’s always there.

  When the intensity of the emotions subsided, Mariam wiped her eyes; she had considered several times whether or not to report Tareq’s death. Under normal circumstances, they might have stood a chance of acquittal—Janhvi had killed him in self-defense. She could have blamed his death on the soldiers, but if there was an investigation, she knew that his body would tell a different story. Anyone interrogating her would also see through such a story in a heartbeat: she could imagine the questions about why Tareq had been killed in someone else’s house. With the Iraqi invasion though, there was hardly any rule of law left, and simply by being Kuwaitis she and Dinah were already too much of a target, making them even more likely to be fingered as responsible for such a crime. Despite the constant rumors, the actual number of Kuwaiti deaths were low, especially now, and she also feared drawing too much attention to herself and the camp. The soldiers wouldn’t need any other excuse to take them into custody to beat and rape them, they would be labeled criminals, after all. Even if there were some hope that they would see her side, Mariam couldn’t imagine taking that risk. She placed her hand over her belly, thinking of the baby growing inside her. Besides, she couldn’t do that to Dinah, or to Janhvi,
both of whom had saved her from Tareq. She owed them both so much—reporting Tareq’s death was unthinkable since it meant that something might happen to either of them.

  Mariam collected herself, she had to find a way to get past these thoughts, they were rapidly becoming a never ending abyss.

  Tareq was a monster, she reminded herself, echoing variations on phrases that both Dinah and Janhvi had used to describe him. He’s not worth your guilt, or your time. She looked up at the ceiling and nodded to herself, then maneuvered to standing position. The nausea had subsided now, and Dinah needed her help with the laundry—that was enough of memories for the moment.

  Salmiya, Kuwait – September, 1990

  Raj sauntered into the kitchen and poured several small cups of masala tea from the pot that one of the women at the camp had prepared. He paused and savored a sip before serving it in the sitting room. His mother had started to make masala tea for him when he was studying for his entrance exams to university. He relished the sweetness, evoking memories of how she had said she would only make it if he was studying, not if he went out to play cricket with his friends as he’d so often been tempted to do. She had thought the tea would act as an added incentive, although he already put more than enough pressure on himself—even if he had procrastinated studying from time to time.