The Ambassador's Wife (50 page)

She does an admirable job of it too, smiling and nodding and
asking him question after question about his political career and his thoughts on Britain's development priorities. It hadn't taken long for English to return to her, though she still prefers Arabic. Now, she pushes her coriander carrots and fish around on the plate but doesn't eat more than a few mouthfuls. “I don't know why I am never hungry,” she once told Finn. “I was always starving up north.” She doesn't drink that much either, though the TRiM assessors have warned him to watch out for increased alcohol use. A few bites of food and a few sips of wine are usually all she can manage. The variety and quantity of food in their kitchen seems to overwhelm her. One morning he found her standing paralyzed in front of an open cupboard. “We have
seven kinds
of cereal!” she cried, tears running down her cheeks.
“Seven!”
Unable to choose, she hadn't eaten anything.

She is happiest with the girls. With them, she loses her reserve, her frequent detachment, sitting on the floor of Cressie's room patiently building towers out of wooden blocks for them to knock over. Finn has tried every way he knows to persuade Miranda of the wisdom of finding Mazrooqi parents for Luloah, but she remains unmoving on the topic. Finn realizes his options are limited if he intends to keep his wife. He cannot exactly kidnap the child and drive her to the orphanage or up north without destroying Miranda's fragile peace of mind, and quite probably their marriage.

Now he wonders if he really wants to change Miranda's mind after all. While she was in Dubai, it was he and not any of the staff members who had given the child her bottles of frozen breast milk. At first she had resisted, just as Cressida had when Miranda disappeared, but in the end Finn had persuaded her. It is dangerous, this feeding of orphaned children, he thinks. Habit-forming.

Toward the end of the evening he can sense Miranda's exhaustion. She gets tired easily, often falling asleep with Luloah in the afternoon. At night she is restless, mostly sleeping on the floor. Finn is still careful never to touch her in sleep, afraid of startling her. It has been nearly two months now, and they still haven't made love. At night she lies in bed paging through books on her women Surrealists, lingering over images of solitary hooded figures. Why these artists?
he had asked. She so often had a reason. But she had just shrugged. “Nothing else makes sense right now.”

He has promised himself to wait until she comes to him. Her therapists have told him to give her as much control over her life as possible, letting her make decisions about the structure of their days, their meals, their outings. He assumes this extends to sex. When the therapists advised him to be as predictable and reliable as possible, he had laughed. “I'm afraid I've never been anything but.”

Fortunately tonight no one lingers over the tea and coffee, gulping it down and dashing for the door, in that uniquely Mazrooqi way. Aswad and his entourage quickly trail after them, and Finn and Miranda are left alone on their veranda, sipping coffee in the cooling night. “Thank you,” he says. “I'm sure you were far more polite than I could have been.”

She shrugs. “It's easy when nothing feels important.”

“Nothing?”

“Not Aswad.”

They are silent for a few moments. Finn can taste the honeysuckle in the air.

“Can I ask you something?” Miranda leans forward suddenly in her chair, the same chair he had been sitting in when he upended the table not so long ago while having tea with Celia. A lifetime ago.

“Of course.”

“Did you ever find him? Mukhtar, that is?”

Finn debates how to answer this. He never lies to her, but he can no longer predict her response to anything and he wants to be careful.

“Yes.”

“And?”

Finn runs just one finger across the back of her bony hand. “He was still alive, Mira. I don't know if this is good news or bad news…”

Miranda straightens in her chair, as if abruptly relieved of a weight. “He is alive?”

“You gave him a pretty bad concussion and a cracked skull, but he's alive and well and imprisoned in the Central Jail.”

“Where he may not remain for long.”

“Where he may not remain for long,” Finn concedes. “Mazrooqi jails being Mazrooqi jails.”

Miranda considers this. “Surely he wouldn't stay here? In this city?”

“I doubt it. If he gets out I think he'll head north. Though you never know.”

“No,” she says. “You don't.”

She sits staring into her coffee for a moment and then looks up at him and smiles. “It's good news, sweetheart, don't you think? That I am not a murderer?”

“Yes,” he says. “Good news indeed.” And he takes her hand.

APRIL 29, 2011

Miranda

Miranda sits, staring at the blank canvas in front of her. Spread out on her worktable are colors and palette, brushes and Zest-it. The stink of oils and oranges wafts memories toward her: long afternoons of toil in her old city
diwan
, safe in the rocky womb of her house. Painting so seriously, as if the result mattered, as if it could end war or feed a child. Now, she hungers for these instruments of her craft not because she harbors the illusion that she will create something lasting, something important or praiseworthy. But rather because she believes if she can just empty her teeming head onto that blankness, spread out every theory, belief, and opinion before her, she will begin to understand them.

Yet she cannot touch the brushes. She is afraid. Too soon after her surgery, too soon after the bandages had been unraveled, she had tried to transfer an image to paper and her hand had moved as if a stranger to her. No longer an instrument of her will, of even her subconscious impulses, it had moved under the directive of some malign spirit. The result was a splotchy mess communicating nothing, revealing nothing. She remained locked in her own skull.

“Suddenly, I'm a fucking amateur Impressionist,” she'd said tearfully, emptying an entire jar of gesso over her efforts. Later that night,
Finn had found her burning the canvas in their garden. Now, the matches have disappeared from the kitchen, along with the knives and any other sharp instruments. Finn isn't taking any chances on her mental state. She has promised him repeatedly that no matter how despairing she got, she would never harm herself, would never put him and Cressida and Luloah through that loss. So perhaps he is just trying to protect her work—though it no longer feels like her work. Nothing she creates has any relationship to her.

But she is stronger now. Twice a week she goes to the Saudi-German Hospital to see a stout Russian physical therapist who gives her exercises to improve her fine motor skills. She takes these seriously, spending an hour every morning slowly contorting fingers and thumb around a small red ball. Finn has been urging her to return to work. “So many times you have told me that your work is how you process the world,” he said. “And when have you ever been more in need of processing the world?”

“Perhaps I don't always want to know what I am thinking,” she responded. But she does. She does want to know. She is just too afraid to see how altered her mind—and her hand and her vision and her movement—has become. She is afraid that the voice she once had has been forever silenced.

Pushing herself up from her chair, Miranda picks up her phone from the desk and dials the only person she thinks might understand.

T
HE TWO WOMEN
stand next to each other in the studio, staring at the empty canvas. It is the first time they have been alone together since Miranda's return. Tazkia has visited several times to play with the girls, but never to come to the studio. “I don't know how to begin again,” says Miranda, wrapping her cardigan more tightly around her. “I don't know what to do if it doesn't work.”

Tazkia, still clad in
abaya
and
hijab
, is silent. She looks at the easel, at the paints, and out the window at Semere cutting the grass. “After everything,” she says. “This is what matters?”

Startled and dismayed, Miranda turns to her. “
Yes
. It matters. The mere act of doing it matters. I thought you might understand that.
Isn't that why you haven't been able to stop yourself for all of these years? Why you kept scribbling in those school notebooks, knowing the possible consequences? Of course it's not the only thing that matters, of course not. For me there is Finn and Cressie and Luloah. And you. And the thirteen million struggling women of this country. And safety and stopping the momentum toward war and hunger and pain and disease. But there is also
this
.”

Tazkia looks down, examining her shoes. “I'm not sure I am the right person to help you.”

Miranda turns to her. “Tazzy, I don't have anyone else. No one else here who knows what it means to speak with a paintbrush.” Her voice is desperate, pleading. She hates the sound of it. What does she think Tazkia can do for her?

“I'm not sure I still know how. To speak with a paintbrush, I mean.” Tazkia shifts uneasily from foot to foot.

Miranda looks at her in surprise. “Aren't you working?”

Tazkia shakes her head, her brown eyes lusterless. “Not since the paintings disappeared.”

Taking Tazkia's hand, Miranda pulls her down on the studio sofa. “Tazzy,” she says, stroking the short brown fingers. “We'll find them. I promise. We'll keep you safe.”

Tazkia avoids her eyes, staring down at her lap so that the folds of her
hijab
fall across her plump cheeks. “I don't think that's possible.”

“But we haven't heard anything at all yet. If someone had seen them, if someone wanted to expose you—expose us—wouldn't they already have done it?” Finn hasn't been able to track down the secret paintings. Late one night, fortified by a few gin and tonics, he had cornered Norman in the club. But the OSM had denied any knowledge of the paintings. “But you're the only one with a key,” Finn had insisted. “Who else could have taken them?” Norman had shrugged. It is maddening, waiting for them to turn up. Terrifying for Tazkia. Thank god Norman is leaving in May; Miranda feels sick every time she sees his face.

Tazkia looks up then, but without hope. “What else would they do with them?”

Miranda sighs. “I don't know.”

Tazkia looks away from her, toward the open door.

“What are the chances anyone would even know the paintings are of you? Maybe whoever took them doesn't know who you are.”

Tazkia finally looks at her, with the first hint of hope in her eyes. “Maybe,” she says. Only then does Miranda remember she had stupidly written Tazkia's name on the back of the canvas, in tiny, perhaps illegible letters. She does not say this.

“Why don't you paint with me a little? Add a little beauty to the world? Try to think of something else?”

“No.” Her voice is firm. “Not me.”

Miranda looks at her, leaden despair tugging at her gut. “Okay,” she says, deciding not to press the issue. “I'm sorry, Tazzy. I'm sorry to bring you here if it upsets you.”

“I wish I could help you, if this is what you really want.” Tazkia looks again at the canvas, then down at Miranda's scarred left hand. “Do you remember the stick exercise?” she says abruptly, her tone lightening. “When we taped the sticks to our paintbrushes and you said we needed to let go of control?”

Miranda stares at her former student, disconcerted by the change in direction.

“This is what you need to do! Now your hand
is
the stick. It is keeping you from controlling your brushes in your usual way, no?”

Miranda turns her palm over in her lap, examining it as if expecting to find it sprouting leaves.

“Can't you let your hand talk in a new way, even though it doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like you? Because it
is
still you. A damaged you. An uncontrolled you.”

Miranda looks up from her hand and stands. Without her customary control, perhaps her unconscious will finally take the lead. Perhaps there are wonders to discover, surreal juxtapositions she cannot purposefully invent. Slowly, like a sleepwalker, she steps toward her easel. Tazkia remains sitting as Miranda smears a paintbrush in a dish of black ink and holds it over the void. “Nothing is precious,” Tazkia whispers, quoting her teacher. “What comes from your hand
is not important.” When Miranda touches down, begins moving the ink in shaky lines, Tazkia slips out the door. It is nearly an hour before Miranda notices she is gone.

MAY 5, 2011

Norman

Norman sweats his way to the check-in desk. He's wearing too many clothes for the afternoon heat, but his bags are stuffed to overflowing and he hadn't had room for everything. He is relieved to be heading home. It has unquestionably been an action-filled posting, and he is looking forward to a few months in the relative safety of his Clapham Common flat before heading off to Mali. His wife has gone on ahead to London, leaving him to organize the packers and their airfreight, and he relishes the prospect of a solo flight. He can already taste that first gin and tonic. A family of nine pushes ahead of him, dragging a tower of ragged suitcases and cartons. Damn these Mazrooqis. Why can't they learn how to queue properly? They all rush the ticket desk in a mob, and you have to fight your way through them to the front if you want a decent seat. Doesn't matter if you're flying business class; there's no business class until you're on the plane. Fucking third-world airports. These he won't miss when he retires. Heathrow has its drawbacks, but at least people there know how to queue.

At last at the front, he heaves his three suitcases one by one onto the scales, hanging on to the oversized paper-and-string-wrapped parcel of paintings. He hadn't known what else to do with them. He couldn't leave them behind, had been unable to think of anywhere to leave them that wouldn't give himself away. And he certainly couldn't have sent them ahead with the rest of his luggage for his wife to unpack back in London. He had to take them with him, and checking them seemed too risky. The airport people weren't supposed to check diplomats' bags, but the Mazrooqis were not renowned for doing the things they were supposed to do.