The Ambassador's Wife (49 page)

The counselor had patted her knee gently and said, “Let's not worry about impressing terrorists now, love.”

One counselor has suggested that she try something called EMDR—eye movement desensitization and reprocessing—apparently the latest thing in treating trauma victims. This involves moving her eyes in a way that mimics the way they move in sleep, which is supposed to help store traumatic events in long-term memory, where they are less troublesome. Miranda is happy to try it—especially if she gets to stay in the country—but she feels pretty lucky on the trauma front. Really, what has happened to her? She was beaten only a few times, was never raped, and had eluded torture. She hadn't
physically suffered as so many others had. As had the man in the cell next to hers. That is the memory that causes the strongest waves of nausea, the one she will use when she tries EMDR, she decides. But does overhearing someone else's trauma count as her own trauma? It doesn't seem right. And yet. She wonders where that man is now. Has he died in the bombing, or has he somehow also escaped?

Her greatest personal suffering had been living apart from her daughter and Finn. She still cannot believe she has both of them back. A dozen times every night she creeps out of her nest on the floor to press her cheek to Cressida's, to inhale her soapy scent, to listen to her quiet breathing.

Every day, she spends a couple hours sifting through the sediment of her memories with a therapist, complaining that the time would be better spent reconnecting with her daughter. Just one affectionate gesture from Cressida would improve her mental health far more than counseling ever could.

While the Office agreed to let them stay, it had insisted on a holiday of several weeks. But Miranda refused to leave the country because Luloah wouldn't be able to accompany them. The child has no passport, no birth certificate, nothing. Finn did not explain this to the Office. As far as they know, Luloah is one of Tazkia's nieces, who needs care while her mother is in the hospital. As a compromise, Finn and Miranda agreed to spend a couple of weeks on this island in the Red Sea, still technically part of the country though it feels a world away. Halim had joyfully welcomed them to his remote resort, tears in his warm brown eyes. “I never thought I would see this day,” he says, every time he sees Miranda. For the duration of their stay he has allowed no other guests (not that tourists are clamoring to vacation here, given the events of the past year). At night they sleep in a round hut with a palm-frond roof, underneath layers of mosquito netting. Halim cooks for them himself, preparing salads, grilled fish and shrimp, hummus, bread. At night after the girls are asleep, Miranda and Finn walk down to the sea, holding hands as they stand staring out into the black night, so dark they cannot tell where the water ends and the sky begins.

The sound of grains of sand rubbing together under her feet
grates on Miranda's nerves, but the girls are euphoric here, which is all that matters to her at the moment. Finn too seems to enjoy designing improbable sand castles and catamarans, digging channels down to the sea. He never looks happier than when he is arranging a picnic for Cressie's bears or reading to her from
The Wind in the Willows
. He has also been kind to Luloah, singing to her at night and helping to bathe and change her. But his care is cautious, the kind of care one might take of a friend's child on a sleepover. There is always a slight remove, and a question in his eyes when he looks at Miranda.

Before they left for this island, Miranda flew to Dubai to see a hand specialist and undergo surgery. Finn wanted to accompany her, but she made him promise to stay with the girls. She trusts no one but Finn. Even when it meant possibly losing his job, he hadn't gone back to London to wait for them to be found. He had stayed here.

However, Finn agreed to stay in Mazrooq only when Miranda's father decided to face his terror of flying to meet his daughter in Dubai. “It must be love,” said Miranda. “This is a man who has not been on an airplane since 1987.” She didn't believe he would actually make it until he tapped on the door of her hotel room the night before her first appointment. He looked smaller than she remembered, pale and slight with just a fringe of white hair remaining, his eyes watery with emotion.

“That Xanax is wonderful stuff,” he said, as she wrapped her arms around him.

They made themselves gin and tonics from the minibar and stayed up past midnight talking, Miranda sprawled on the bed and her father perched on the edge of the pink velvet armchair. While her father had initially been anxious to make sure she was really okay, mentally as well as physically, he eventually felt reassured enough to expound upon his latest research. Miranda didn't care if he sat there reading to her from a physics textbook; she just wanted to listen to the soporific rumble of his voice, as she had done as a child when he read to her of Ariadne and Athena. She must have drifted off while he was talking; when she woke just before dawn, he had gone back to his room.

The next morning he escorted her to the hospital. Miranda was grateful for his undemanding presence; he asked no difficult questions
and read to her for hours while they waited for anesthesiologists and surgeons. He attended her appointments, asking her surgeon the questions Miranda lacked the energy or courage to pose. “It's her painting hand,” he had repeatedly explained. “Please be extra careful.” The operation had gone smoothly, though the post-surgical pain was acute when the drugs began wearing off. There was no reason she wouldn't be able to paint again, said the doctor, but it would take months to retrain the muscles.

“Sure you don't want to come back to Mazrooq with me?” Miranda asked when it was all over and they were on their way to the airport.

“Sure you don't want to come back to Seattle with me?”

“Dad, I've
been
to Seattle! You've never
seen
Mazrooq. Arnabiya is the most beautiful city in the world. More important, you could see Finn. He has always loved you.”

“If you don't mind, could I visit you in Finn's next posting?”

“Wow, that Xanax must really be good. But I'm not entirely sure there will be a next posting.”

Her father looked at her inquiringly.

“We have a lot to sort out still.”

He nodded. “I imagine you do.”

Her father had listened to what she had to say about Luloah, about her captivity, about Finn, and offered no judgments or advice. For Miranda, this was enough.

“No word from Mom?”

“Not yet.”

Miranda stared out the window at the remote, glittering towers of Dubai. “I'm sorry.”

“When she wants to be found, she'll be found, and not before. You know your mother.”

“I do.” She picked up her father's small, dry hand, and held it all the way to the airport.

W
ITH HER HAND
bandaged, Miranda has to leave all of the diaper changing and bathing to Finn, who has taken over with grace.
She has told Finn everything she knows about Luloah. While it isn't much, it is enough to worry him. When she had confessed whom she believed the child's father to be, the vertical line between his brows deepened. “These are not people we want to piss off,” he'd said.

“It's a little late for that. Do you think they'll be happy that I managed to slip out of their clutches? Surely you don't think I should have stuck around just to keep them placated?”

“Of course not. But she's not our child, Mira.”

Miranda had only looked at him, doors slamming shut in her eyes. “Well, maybe not
yours
,” she had said evenly. Finn had let the subject drop.

Finn

But here on the beach, as he watches little Luloah push her pebbles into the mouth of a plastic bottle that has washed up on the shore (the better to keep them away from Cressie), he feels compelled to revisit the issue.

“Mira, could we talk about the child?” he says.

She squints at him with sudden intransigence. “The
child
?”

“Luloah.”

“Talk,” she says.

“I can see how you feel about her,” he says. “I only have the slightest idea of what you have been through, and I suspect that she helped to save you as much as you saved her. But we cannot keep her.”

Miranda pulls her knees closer to her chest and stares at the sand, unwilling to look at him.

“First of all, adoption is illegal in this country—at least the kind of adoption that would allow us to take her home with us. No matter how much we might want her. You know that, don't you?”

Miranda remains mute, unmoving.

“And even if there were a way around the law, you know how I feel about adoption. I just couldn't feel the same way about her that I feel about Cressie. And is that fair?”

She looks up. “Could you
really
not?”

“We've had this conversation before.”

“I know, but…Look at her, Finn.
Look
at her.”

Finn looks. Luloah is already noticeably chubbier than when he first met her. Her hair is thick and spiky, and when she smiles as she shakes her bottle of pebbles at Cressida he can see two teeth in her lower jaw. “Mira, she is a lovely child. You don't need to convince me.”

“Even if you don't love her like you love Cressie—and don't parents always love each of their children differently, biological or not?—wouldn't what you could offer her still be better than the alternatives?”

“She belongs to a tribe, Mira. She has her own people.”

“So what are we supposed to do with her? Send her back to the terrorists to become a future suicide bomber? Or to be wrapped up in synthetic fibers, denied an education, and married at the age of twelve to a lecherous old man?”

“There are others in her tribe besides terrorists, maybe a family who could care for her—”

“You cannot be that naïve. Those men only kept me alive because of her. She is Zajnoon's only remaining child. Do you think she will be allowed to live a peaceful family life? Do you seriously think they won't be pressuring her to produce an heir by the time she turns thirteen?”

“There is the orphanage. You said the children were treated well there, that they looked happy.”

“Only compared to my subterranean expectations! It's still an
orphanage
, where she won't have anyone's attention for more than a few minutes a day. Where she will come down with every Mazrooqi infection. She will have food and clothing, but what about love? What about when she is older? Where will she go? And actually, do you think Zajnoon's people won't find her there?”

Finn sighs. “So just what do you suggest we do?”

“We take her with us when we go.”

“And how do you propose to get her a passport? I don't suppose you picked up her birth certificate up north?”

Miranda looks at him, tears in her eyes. “You don't understand,” she says. “She doesn't remember any mother but me. What do you think it will do to her if I give her up now?”

“She's so young,” says Finn as gently as he can. “She won't remember.”

“Maybe not consciously, but her cells will know. All of her atoms will know that they were once loved and then thrown away.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Finn says, a desperate sadness in his eyes. “I don't want to throw her away.” He reaches a hand toward her and then withdraws it.

“Don't you?” The tears are coming fast now.

“Mira, Mira, stop. We can talk about it another time. Let's not let the children see you upset.”

“I have been nursing that tiny girl for more than five months now. She is
made
from molecules of my milk. Do you see that fat on her cheeks? That is part me. Those toes? Little pieces of Miranda. If that doesn't make her part of my tribe, then I don't know what does.”

Finn can think of nothing to say.

APRIL 3, 2011

Finn

Finn watches Miranda from across the sitting room as she leans in to listen to the Mazrooqi Minister of Islamic Affairs expounding from the chair next to hers. Her body is still, her eyes focused gently on his, her brow slightly furrowed. When the man on her other side interrupts to add his thoughts, she trains the same attention on him. It fascinates Finn to observe this evolution of his wife. Captivity has taught her silence, has taught her how to listen. When she does speak, it is to ask a thoughtful yet pointed question. She is naturally more anti-drones than ever, but she expresses her opinions tactfully and only after having drawn out those of her Mazrooqi companions. While he had personally enjoyed her combative stance at dinner parties, he realizes that what she has become is much more effective. Could she be—a startling thought—learning the art of diplomacy?

At the moment he is particularly grateful for her powers of distraction. Their most recent visitor from the UK, one of the country's few Muslim MPs, is nearly an hour late for the dinner they are hosting in his honor, and stomachs, including his own, are rumbling. Yet no one is glancing toward the dining room or checking his watch. A hand on his sleeve interrupts his reverie.
“Sa'adat as-safir?”
says the Minister of Water, to whom he is supposed to be listening. “I was asking what you thought about solar-powered desalinization plants.” Reluctantly, Finn gives up trying to eavesdrop on Miranda's group and turns to the man at his side.

Finally, Fawzi Aswad and his entourage arrive. Finn tries not to show his annoyance at their tardiness as he escorts the MP to the table. No cocktail for him, not when he can't be bothered to show up on time for his own party. (They hadn't been sure he would drink anyway, but it turned out he was one of those westernized Muslims who were happy to accept a glass of wine if unobserved by other Muslims.) It hasn't been one of his better official visits. Earlier in the day Finn had taken Aswad to meet the president, and the MP had promised the president a whole host of things he could not possibly deliver. First, Aswad had assured him that the UK would entirely fund the renovation of a hospital in the South, where he was born. This would take millions of pounds. In fact, it would take the entire development budget for the country. Exacerbating matters, Aswad then promised the president that the UK would crack down on the pirate Mazrooqi TV station operating out of Britain, despite the fact that the station was breaking no British law. This promise sends unforgivable messages: that British laws are meaningless and that freedom of the press is unimportant. And because of these ridiculous messages, the president had dismissed them before they had time to address the situation with the North, which is disintegrating daily. The government has escalated its attacks, and the northerners have shut down all routes to their territories. Additionally, Aswad was late for nearly all of his meetings and had a habit of talking over other people. Why do we elect people like him? Finn wondered. Thank god Miranda is sitting next to him at dinner.