The Ambassador's Wife (12 page)

“In addition to that. I've decided that it's time to tell my staff. It's silly, really, to wait any longer, and it just makes it seem like we're doing something wrong.”

“Which we're not.”

“Which we absolutely are not. So I think I'll say something at Saturday's morning meeting. If that's all right with you.”

“Is there a reason it shouldn't be? Do you have ex-lovers in the embassy who are going to come after me with AK-47s?”

Finn laughed. “I haven't had a girlfriend in five years.”

“So you say. I still don't believe you.” The five-year gap bothered her. It was impossible for Miranda to envision going without intimacy for that long. Besides, Finn was brilliant, attractive, personable, and single. How many people were there like that in the Foreign Office?

“I've been busy. I've moved quite a bit in the last few years. And I don't manage time well.”

“And everyone else is married?”

“Either that or they just didn't fancy me.”

“Impossible.”

“This is why I love you.”

“Well it's not for my cooking.”

“Wait—you cook?”

Miranda laughed and choked on a bit of crumble. Finn pounded her on the back.

“Ow!” she winced and pulled away from him.

Finn looked stricken. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt—”

“No, it's okay, really. I'm just a bit…bruised. I had a little incident in the gym this morning.”

He raised an eyebrow. “
Another
incident?”

Miranda told him about Antoinette and the treadmill. Finn tried valiantly to keep a straight face but couldn't manage it.

“It wasn't funny!” she said.

“No, no, I'm sure…I'm just…thinking about the CCTV footage.”

Miranda groaned. “Nooooo, seriously? That was on camera?”

“Sweetheart, you're at the ambassador's Residence. Everything is on camera.”

“Even here? Even now?” She stretched a toe underneath the table to nudge his knee.

“Especially here. We're on the porch! Someone could try to climb in our windows from here. But we are safe inside. Or so I've been told.”

“God I hope so.”

“Well if they have any footage of what we get up to inside, we ought to be able to charge people to view it.”

“Pay-per-view ambassador porn. Sounds like a promising category.”

“Promising at least a better income than I have as a civil servant.”

“And more than you'd make as an artist.”

“Indubitably. Especially given my complete hopelessness with a pencil. Speaking of which, I haven't seen any new pieces lately. Shall we go to yours after lunch?”

“Are you allowed?”

“If I give the guys an hour's notice.”

“Okay. I don't think anyone else is home. But if we eat anything there we'll have to wash our own dishes.”

“Heaven forfend. I'll bring them back here.”

“Go tell the guys then. I'll head upstairs and slip into something much, much less comfortable.”

F
INN WAS THE
only one who had seen the paintings. Anyone in his position had to be good at keeping secrets, she figured. Besides, if there was anyone as enthusiastic about supporting the local women as she was, it was Finn. More than thirty paintings were secreted in her house, stacked in boxes within an unused wardrobe in a cramped room on the roof. She wondered what she would do with them when she eventually left. Where would her girls be able to keep them? They could not store them at home, where their families would see them. While some might be able to accept a still life or two under their roofs, surely the recent paintings would arouse furor. Or worse.

She sighed. Why was she doing this? Why was she encouraging these women to cultivate talents that they would never be able to use? But she knew the answer. The answer was simple. She was teaching these women to paint because they wanted to learn. They wanted to learn so badly they made up excuses to get to her house. They risked being found out. They kept secrets from people they loved.

“T
ELL ME AGAIN
how you found all these women,” Finn said on their way over. “Tell me how Tazkia found you.”

“You already know about Tazkia!”

“I'm getting old. I forget things. And I want to memorize everything that has ever happened to you.”

Miranda smiled. “Call me Scheherazade,” she said. “Okay. Tazkia.”

“Wait, should we change her name for the purposes of the conversation? With the guys up front?”

“They don't speak English. They'll only understand her name. For all they know we're saying Tazkia is the most pious and virtuous Mazrooqi in the entire country.”

“Okay,” said Finn, though his brow remained creased.

“I'll try to avoid saying her name much. Okay?”

“Fair enough.”

“Once upon a time there was a feisty little artist named—well, a feisty little artist. She lived in a stone house carved out of the Old City, with her mother and father and two sisters and two brothers. Our artist was the youngest. During the day, her father ran a tiny store, where he sold batteries, water, sodas, cookies, candy bars, milk, and yogurts.”

“No porridge? I feel like there should be porridge in this story.”

“Don't be so English. Mazrooqis don't eat porridge.”

“What do they have for breakfast?” he asked. “I'm never invited for breakfast.”

“Well, our artist's mother baked long, skinny baguettes and stir-fried chicken livers and onions for their breakfast. Two sisters and one brother remained at home. Only the artist had attended university, where she had studied the unwomanly art of geometry, drawn to its logic and relation to her own secret scribblings.”

“See, you didn't mention the geometry part before. What else are you keeping from me?”

Miranda smiled and picked up his hand from the seat to give it a clandestine squeeze. “Not a single thing.”

M
IRANDA HAD MET
Tazkia at German Haus, at Vícentas first installation. Eager to explore an unfamiliar part of the world and interested rather abstractly in the plight of women in the Middle East, Vícenta had come here on an artist's grant and Miranda had taken a sabbatical to accompany her. Of all the cultural centers in the city, German Haus was the most active, often inviting foreign artists to exhibit their work, usually with the stipulation that they also teach a workshop for the local population. There, Miranda (who spoke exactly eleven words of German, most of them names of foods) had met weavers, batik artists, painters, photographers, writers, and sculptors. Not all of whom were German. It didn't seem mandatory. She had watched presentations on alabaster, mined by hand here, and suffered through countless German movies with only Arabic subtitles. So few places in the city offered any kind of entertainment that she'd become willing to sit through just about anything.

Tazkia had somehow wrangled permission from her parents to stay out past dark that night. She was already perched on the steps of German Haus, waiting for it to open, when Miranda and Vícenta arrived. Draped in black from head to toe, she looked like a small stray phantom. As they started up the steps, she launched herself at them. “I am sorry but is one of you the artist?” Her eyes glinted hopefully through the slit between her
hijab
and
niqab
.

Miranda and Vícenta glanced at each other briefly, smiling, before Miranda said, “Tonight, she is.”

“And tomorrow, it's Miranda's turn.”

“But privately. I'm only an artist at home here. No public shows for me here.” She did not explain why.

Tazkia studied them, frowning.

“And it depends what you mean by
artist
,” added Vícenta.

“Vícenta's more of a performer really. More conceptual. More installation arty,” said Miranda, noting Tazkia's perplexed look.

“Tonight I'll be showing my installation arty side,” said Vícenta. “You'll see.”

“Installation art-ee?” Tazkia looked desperate.

“Why don't we go inside?” said Miranda. “Then you can see. We don't mean to confuse you. I'm Miranda, by the way.”

“Tazkia. I am so happy to meet you. There is so much I want to ask you.”

Vícenta rang the bell, and a blond girl with a ponytail, one of the German Haus administrators, showed them in. The gallery was just to the left of the front door. Vícenta had been here late the night before, finishing up. In the center of the room was a black figure about the size of Tazkia. Only it was truly shapeless; no hint of hips or breasts or neck was visible. It was an abstracted outline of a Muslim woman. A perfect parabola. On the cloth, in tiny white letters, were quotes from women in the Old City that Vícenta had been collecting for several months, some in Arabic, some in English. On the far side was a gap between the
hijab
and
niqab
, where eyes would be. In this gap, in letters of diminishing size, were the words “My soul has no windows.”

Against the four walls were small screens playing interviews with Muslim women about the
hijab
. Almost all were completely obscured, but one left her face bare and covered her hair with a flowered purple scarf. It was the brightest spot of color in the room.

When Vícenta had first explained the idea for the exhibit, Miranda had been skeptical.

“Seriously? The
hijab
? Could there be a more hackneyed image of the Middle East?” she'd said.

“Does that mean we should stop discussing it?” Vícenta had answered. “I mean, the women I talked to, they couldn't
wait
to discuss it. Whatever their point of view.”

It hadn't turned out badly, Miranda thought. Not her kind of art, but she was seriously old-fashioned in some ways. An oil painter whose subjects were generally recognizable. No wonder she hadn't found fame and fortune.

Also on the wall hung a horizontal strip of black cloth embroidered with gold thread. From afar, the gold simply looked like repetitive geometric or floral patterns. But if you looked closely, very closely, you could make out tiny figures. At one end sat Queen Arwa, ruler of
much of the Arabian Peninsula from 1067 until her death in 1138. At the other end sat Bilqis, Queen of Sheba, possibly ruler of Mazrooq in the tenth century BCE. A stream of women spilled across the cloth between them, in dozens of postures. Some carried heavy water containers on their heads; some cringed from menacing husbands; others sat in tattered rags, their hands outstretched. “Once, we were queens,” read the tiny embroidered Arabic letters underneath.

Tazkia took all of this in with dark, serious eyes, as Vícenta darted from room to room making final adjustments—snipping a loose thread here, restarting a video there. A trickle of people had begun entering the gallery and milling around. Miranda smiled at them stiffly, feeling extraneous. She still missed the glass of wine in her hand. Here, there would be plastic cups of fluorescent synthetic juice at a bar in back of the gallery, but not until later. She watched Tazkia catch hold of Vícenta's arm and follow her around, avidly questioning her. Vícenta didn't seem to mind (Vícenta never minded attention), chatting as much as she could in between greeting newcomers.

For some reason German Haus seemed immune from local censure. Despite the parade of Western artists exhibiting here, and the occasional mildly racy film, there had never to Miranda's knowledge been any protests. She remembered watching
Perfume
here, and the sharp intake of breath when an exposed breast appeared on the screen. She had been momentarily paralyzed, waiting for a violent reaction. But none had come.

Still, there were limits. Obviously, no nudes were exhibited. So far, no one had been stupid enough to suggest that there should be. And there was no representation of lifelike human figures, a concession to Islam. The art tended toward the abstract and the geometric. Vícenta's work just barely fell within the parameters of what was acceptable; nothing she did was very lifelike. And oddly, video was not prohibited, as long as it was not obscene.

The Islamic aversion to figures pretty much ruled out Miranda's work. Worried about getting herself into trouble (a constant concern), Miranda read many of the
hadiths
that govern the objection to figures. The Quran condemns idolatry, but does not explicitly forbid
the drawing of humans and animals; that is left to the
hadiths
, several of which are narrated by Aisha, one of the Prophet Mohammed's many wives. In one, she says: “Allah's Messenger visited me. And I had a shelf with a thin cloth curtain hanging over it and on which there were portraits. No sooner did he see it than he tore it and the color of his face underwent a change and he said: Aisha, the most grievous torment from the Hand of Allah on the Day of Resurrection would be for those who imitate [Allah] in the act of His creation.”

Once, Aisha reportedly brought home a cushion decorated with animals for her husband to sit on. Her gesture was met with rage: “The makers of these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection, and it will be said to them, ‘Give life to what you have created [i.e., these pictures].' The Prophet added, ‘The Angels of [Mercy] do not enter a house in which there are pictures [of animals].' ”

That was pretty much all Miranda needed to read. But there were more: “All the painters who make pictures would be in the fire of Hell. The soul will be breathed in every picture prepared by him and it shall punish him in the Hell, and he [Ibn Abbas] said: If you have to do it at all, then paint the pictures of trees and lifeless things; and Nasr b. Ali confirmed it.”

She had been warned.

A
S THE ART
exhibition drew to a close, Tazkia found her. “This,” she said, sweeping an arm toward the walls. “I find it very wonderful. But I am wanting to learn how to draw. And paint. Do you know an artist like this? It is very hard for me to find here someone like this.”