I Am India Fox

by Virginia Nosky

  Emile laughed and handed her a plate. “Start with the arayes before it all disappears in front of your very eyes.”

  ***

  THE KHANS OF Syria and Lebanon were old caravanserais, or travelers’ inns. The Khan Al-Saboun was tucked among the gold shops of Tripoli’s central souq, or marketplace, a large rectangular structure of the local sandstone, with sweeping two story arcades around the ancient fountain square. Dozens of fragrances perfumed the air of the souk announcing the presence of the famous soapmakers of Tripoli—amber, musk, almond, lilac, rose, vanilla, cedar, laurel, honey, mandarin orange, peppermint, coconut and other essential oils that scented the soaps, shampoos, lotions, face creams, soothing oils, and other products for the exquisite care of the body.

  India inhaled, her eyes closed. “I’d come here with Mariam and we’d spend the day just sniffing. There’s no other place in the world that smells like this.”

  “This was originally a garrison for Ottoman troops in the crusades in the seventh century” Spear commented. “You can still see the loopholes and slits for arrows in the walls.”

  Emile moved over to take a picture of the unique openings Jack had indicated. He said over his shoulder, “You guys go ahead. I want to wander around a bit. Great stuff here. Meet back here in half hour?”

  “Suits me,” Spear said.

  Emile began focusing his camera on a white marble plaque attached to an ancient wall stating in curling Arabic letters: Here in 1622 the fearless Lebanese defeated the Ottoman army.

  “A Half hour isn’t enough shopping time for any bird,” Spear said.

  Emile looked up grinned at him. “Yeah.”

  India patted his shoulder. “Just for that make it forty-five minutes. It takes me that long to make up my mind. See you all later. I know where I’m going. It’s a shop we always went to.” She hurried away from the men.

  “Wait,” Spear called.

  But India had disappeared into the crowd.

  INDIA HURRIED THROUGH the high arches of the busy khan to the shop of Sadr Hassoum, Mariam’s and her favorite. Relieved it was still there, she stepped through the door to revel in over four hundred varieties of soap and other aromatic products. Bins of different shaped soaps lined the walls, some filled with pastel bars, others in jewel-like tones of magenta, sapphire and emerald. Strung from the ceiling were ropes of colored balls. Counters were filled with boxes of soap shaped into flowers and whimsical animals. And of course the piney cedar trees, the national symbol. All tourists seemed to want to take a box of the national symbol back home.

  One section of the store held bottles and jars of shampoos, conditioners, lotions, creams and unguents for the luxurious pampering of the male and female face and body. And over all, the heady fragrances that gave the shop its unique enticement.

  India engaged a salesman in conversation, a rotund bearded gentleman eager to display his wares to what appeared to be a “live” customer. His gestures were expansive as he spread bars and balls and bottles, flower and fruit shapes, until the counter was awash in color and a mix of heady perfumes. He found the blonde American, however, could bargain like the sharpest rug merchant in idiomatic street Arabic, accompanied with emphatic gestures. With eyes full of heartbreak he reluctantly succumbed, and with dramatic protestations of bankruptcy, he hurried off, muttering to himself, to wrap India’s purchases.

  “You’re very surprising. But I expect you know that.”

  India turned from the counter to find Jack Spear slouching against a decorative column, eyes amused.

  She raised an eyebrow and studied him. “And Jack Spear doesn’t like surprises.”

  His smile was slow, “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, you didn’t.” She leaned an elbow on the counter. “But tell me. What does Jack Spear like?”

  He was still for a moment, then pushed away from the column. “I don’t know yet.” He took her arm. “Here comes your shopkeeper lugging half the store. I’ll help you back to the car.”

  “Weren’t you going to send something to your mother?”

  “Already did…while you were tormenting the shopkeeper. It’ll take him a week to get over selling his merchandise for what it’s worth.”

  WHEN SPEAR PULLED up to India’s apartment building, she jumped out of the car and gathered her packages. “Thanks so much, guys. Today got me back into the mindset of Lebanon. I expect you’ll be following up on what Ahmed said. Let me know if you learn more. I’ll try to find Mariam. ‘Bye now.” She swung the SUV door closed and turned to go into the building.

  Spear rolled down the window. “Take care if you decide to go into Beqa’a. Let me know if I can help.”

  “Well, uh…thanks.”

  “Emile knows where to find me.” He put the car in gear and pulled into traffic.

  India watched as it disappeared. I can’t quite figure you out, Mr. Reuters. But I’ll work on it. I know that. She smiled to herself. Reuters, any guy with a mouth that looks like yours bears looking into.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Two days later, Noon

  INDIA PACED AROUND the base of the four meter high sculpture of The Martyrs on the main square of the city. The memorial rises from the street surrounded by the din of a city enamored of its motor vehicles: horns, squealing tires, roaring acceleration, choking exhaust fumes. The looming, larger than life bronze man and woman, pockmarked from bullets of the civil war not long past, was a memorial to the martyrs from World War I, when the city had endured months of starvation in a siege by the Ottoman Turks.

  India looked at her watch. She was early for the rendezvous with Youssef, the man Mariam’s note had told her to meet, but now it was twelve o’clock and she felt anxious. For the tenth time she studied the sky-colored dome of Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque across the square. It was new to her, begun in 2002 not dedicated until last year. It looked like a younger brother of the famous Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Just after she left in 2002 the excavation architects for the new building discovered an old paved and columned Roman street. It was a big story at the time. The mosque was to commemorate the murder of Rafic Hariiri, a prime minister cut down by a Hezbollah assassin, the same man commemorated in naming the city’s airport. Now, the yellow sandstone exterior with its gold tracery gleamed in the sun.

  India glanced down the street, impatient. Beirut seems peaceful enough now, but the Middle East is never really far from blowing up. In Tripoli, Ahmed sure sounded like something might be ready to pop. And, heads up, world. India Fox is here, in the middle of it all. I wonder what this meeting with Mariam will lead to. Hurry up Youssef, whoever you are.

  She walked around the statue again. As she checked her watch for the dozenth time an insistent horn sounded. A whining old Mercedes shimmied to a stop in front of her, sighed and coughed up a puff of black smoke.

  She stepped forward. “Youssef?”

  His voice was abrupt. “Get in.”

  She opened the back door and was barely inside the car when it wheeled into traffic, emitting another cloud of black smoke and throwing her against the back of the seat as the door banged after her.

  If she’d thought she would pass the time in conversation with Youssef, she was soon disabused of that notion. Her first forays were met with either silence or an impatient grunt. She sat back and was resigned to looking out the window at the turbulent traffic, expertly negotiated by the fearless Youssef.

  India had assumed their destination would be in the Beqa’a Valley. As the car left the corniche and turned inland, sights became familiar to her. The valley is in actuality a high plateau between the Mount Lebanon Range and the Jebel Barouk, or Anti-Lebanon Range, historically a corridor linking the Syrian interior and the coastal cities of Phoenicia. An agricultural area, its most famous contemporary crop is “Red Leb,” a high quality cannabis, also used for hashish, and poppies for opium. But its wines were once famous throughout the region as well and again vineyards were cropping up and gaining global recognition.<
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  As the old Mercedes lumbered and whined up a slope India drew her jacket around her. With a rise in altitude and away from the mitigating sea breezes, the temperature had dropped and the interior of the car took on an uncomfortable chill. She doubted Youssef would turn on the car heater, even if it had a working one. At the last moment she’d put a cashmere muffler in her handbag and she took it out, winding it around her throat. Out the car window as they climbed, agricultural fields spread out, in varying shades of brown and some green for the hardier winter crops that a few scattered farmers still cultivated. Emile had told her the government efforts to get the farmers to grow barley, beans, wheat, lentils, or tend orchards of apples and almonds had been an illusion. The main cash crop of the region was cannabis for especially hashish. Planting season would be in a couple of months when the opium poppies for opiates, and cannabis, so-called Indian hemp, would be seeded.

  Youssef turned abruptly onto a dirt road that wound its way through groves of ancient cedars. He spoke into a cellphone, his words lost in the noise of the rough diesel engine of the Mercedes. They bounced and rattled along the sketchily maintained road, occasionally passing a flock of sheep or a grazing herd of cattle. Twenty minutes later they pulled into the yard of a red tile-roofed farmhouse.

  India leaned forward. A woman waited outside a small courtyard. India recognized Mariam immediately. As Youssef swept the car up to the end of the drive and halted in a spray of gravel, India swung open the car door and jumped out as the car settled in a billow of oily gray fumes.

  The two women rushed together and embraced in a flurry of greetings and embraces. As the car rumbled away, Mariam, holding India’s arm led her into the lower level of the two story house. “Things will look different than when you were here before.” She opened the door and motioned for India to enter.

  Youssef chugged off to a barnlike outbuilding, as a farmhand leading a cow turned into its open door.

  Inside, Mariam indicated the bales, wrapped in white opaque plastic, stacked around the walls. “My brother and I have more and more become dependent on the hemp for hashish. We keep our father’s farm and vineyards going on what we can earn here.” There was a strong odor of vegetable matter—a sweet-smelling hay-like fragrance. She smiled. “The West likes our cannabis and hashish better than our apples and wine.”

  “The U.S.?” India asked.

  “Not so much there. We like the Netherland merchants. The Dutch legalized hashish and marijuana, so the demand is dependable there. We do well in France, Britain, Belgium and Turkey.”

  The lower floor was dedicated to the processing of hashish. Mariam explained as they walked through to the stairs to the upper floors. The first room with the plastic-wrapped bales was storage for the finished drug that was ready for buyers. The adjoining second room was for drying of the plants, where the trichomes of the female cannabis plant, compressed resin glands, are mechanically separated from the rest of the plant’s stalk to produce hashish. The third room stored the rough plants that had not been separated for drying.

  Mariam and India ascended the small spiral stairs that led to the upper floor’s kitchen. An aromatic hint of baking floated down. Mariam patted India’s arm. “Ah, can you tell I have baked your favorite baba au rhum?”

  India sniffed the aromatic cake, then smiled. “Ah. You’ve been generous with the rum, as usual.”

  The two women sat over coffee and the fragrant cake at the wooden table, its whitened top worn smooth with years of food preparation. Sunlight streamed through the leaded windows, warming the room. India unwound her scarf. “Ah, Mariam, it’s so good to see you. I was a little concerned when I didn’t hear from you. We’ve usually kept in touch at Christmas.”

  “I just got your last letter and was going to answer it,” Mariam said. “I hadn’t been down to the main house in the valley for two or three months. We’ve been busy here and my father didn’t need me at the farm. Tell me, how do you happen to be here?”

  India recounted her time at the network in New York and the incredible luck to have been sent to Beirut. “I jumped at the chance, as you could imagine. I’m only getting settled and making some connections. I may ask you for some advice on people I should see. The man Ahmed, whom I met in Tripoli, told me you were with your brother. He is with Hezbollah? That surprised me. You’re Christians and Hezbollah is Shi’a. Not natural allies.”

  “It is my brother’s connection, mostly. The government isn’t strong in the rural areas and there is little organization. People are tribal here, and many of the Christians, as well as Hezbollah are well-armed. The Anti-Drug police used to burn our fields and destroy our irrigation systems, but then the growers got arms, so now they leave us alone.” She shrugged. “My brother sees an advantage to place his loyalties where there is hope of order.”

  India sensed in Mariam’s replies a vague evasion. Still it was worrisome that Christians had allied themselves with a terror group, despite the fact that it was “organized.”

  “Tell me about the ambassador. He is well?” Miriam asked.

  “He’d like another posting. He’s bored with the intrigues in Washington. He’s only fifty-seven and not ready to retire. I expect he’ll be in Washington until the next administration needs him somewhere.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She’s well, I guess. I expect she loves all the plots and counter-plots in the capital. She always did enjoy that sort of trouble-making.”

  “Is she happy you’ve been sent to Lebanon?”

  India gave a short laugh. “I’m not sure she remembers I’m not still at Stanford.”

  Mariam shook her head. “It is sad when mothers and daughters are not close. They miss so much.”

  “Mariam, my love, Mother isn’t close to anyone. Probably not even my father. It’s a wonder I was conceived. I might call it a virgin birth, but Mother could hardly be called a virgin.” She sighed. “But I do know I’m my father’s daughter. I look just like him. I am just like him. So they connected at least once.” She stood quickly. “Show me around. The view is beautiful here. Snow on the mountains. I’ve missed that.”

  As they strolled through the barnyard, two brown and white shepherd dogs followed them, chasing away the reddish hens and one flamboyantly colored rooster that pecked at the winter grass. When the birds got too close to the two women, the dogs circled among them, setting off a storm of squawking and flapping wings. Mariam laughed. “Pick out a fat hen and I’ll fix your favorite shawarma if you’ll stay the night.”

  “That is so tempting, but, I really can’t. I’ve hardly unpacked and I have to pick up the car I ordered. When I get more settled, I’ll come back. We’ve not even caught up yet.”

  Mariam was quiet for a moment, then said, “Let me know when you want to come back. I’ll have Youssef pick you up again. Driving here by yourself would not be safe.”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine, Mariam. I don’t want to bother him. Besides, I wouldn’t want to impose on him again. I couldn’t get a word out of him on the way up. I don’t expect to get any on the way back. I’ll have my car by then and I remember the way, don’t worry.”

  Mariam caught her sleeve. “You will let me know when you are coming, hm?”

  India glanced at her friend, whose face didn’t reveal concern. It revealed nothing. Jack Spear had warned her that the back country wasn’t safe for her to go driving around. Was it really dangerous? She touched Mariam’s shoulder. “Yes. Yes, of course,” she answered. “I’ll let you know.”

  Mariam sighed as they saw Youssef get in the Mercedes and start the balky car. “Youssef’s seen us. He’s impatient to get going.”

  “I won’t wait long, I promise. I’m so glad for today. I missed hearing from you.”

  “And India.” Mariam said, after India as she got in Youssef’s car. “You’re more like your Mother than you know.”

  As India waved through the dirty window, the omah called out, “And you look just like her.”

  The
Mercedes disappeared in a greasy black cloud.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The American Embassy reception three days later

  AFTER THE U.S. embassy detail inspected her car India pulled her new, second hand Audi 4x4 up to the compound gate. The marine sentry motioned her to the valet. She waited behind a blue Porsche and was startled to see Jack Spear get out. He has two cars? Reuters must pay pretty well.

  The ambassador had invited him to the reception the day Jack, Emile and she had been to the embassy. But what interested India most was the dark-haired beauty he was helping out of the passenger side. Looked Lebanese, she thought, surprised at the irritation the girl brought on. She was smartly turned out, mini-mini black dress, some kind of brocade gold and silver wrap, sky-high heels at the end of very long legs. India yanked down the visor mirror and checked her lipstick. Spear and the girl disappeared into the embassy compound. India pulled the Audi up to the valet. Shuttles were taking the guests into the grounds leading up to the reception hall.

  Inside, Ambassador Mary Masterson stood at the front of the receiving line, which consisted of embassy personnel—attaches and aides and their spouses. The ambassador greeted India warmly, then passed her along, promising to find her in the crowd as soon as she could get away. India noted Spear and his ravishing companion talking to a group near one of the temporary bars. She turned in the other direction. The room showed long, sandstone block walls that rose to a vaulted ceiling. Side walls were painted a pale coral, with woodwork finished in a reddish brown that, with the copper chandeliers gave the hall a sort of blushy glow, relieved by a series of long, jewel-colored Persian runners. At each end of the hall were standards with the American flag and the red and white Lebanese flag centered with the symbolic green cedar tree.

  Waiters circulated with glasses of champagne. India took one and spotted Emile with a group that India guessed were American University people. I’ve been at enough academic and diplomatic shindigs to spot professors when I see them. Also one of the men was the image of Emile and the elegant woman patting his arm and proudly smiling at him had to be his mother. No wonder Emile was so good looking, with his dark, wavy hair and the eyes of a foal.