The Blue Hour (29 page)

“I'm getting on that bus,” I told Yasmina. “Because it's me and me alone who can get him out of trouble.”

“I beg you—”

“No discussion! None!”

I could see Yasmina recoil at the way I snapped at her.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered.

She put a restraining hand on my arm. “I implore you. Go to your room, have a shower, lie down, let me call the gendarmes.”

“My decision is made. And I am going to say this: if, when I get to Tata, I find that he has been taken off the bus by the police—”

“You have my word. I will not make that call. But as you have a little time, I ask that you go upstairs and stand under the shower and drink at least another liter of water. You are in danger of dehydrating.”

I did as ordered, asking her to have a taxi here in just under an hour.

After my shower I dried off and got dressed, constantly pushing out of my head any conflicting thoughts about the wisdom of chasing Paul to Tata.
There is no choice,
I told myself.
I told Paul he was better off dead. He may have betrayed me, but my initial fury set this entire nightmare in motion. And now he seems determined to kill himself. And yes, I know I am beyond panic, beyond confused. But the only end to this panic is to get to him before he falls off the edge.

Downstairs I offered Yasmina money for letting me stay in the room long after the checkout hour. She refused.

“You have been too kind to me,” I said.

“I wish I could convince you to stay.”

“I have to see this through.”

Her reply was a look that said,
No, you don't . . . and you know that
. Then she handed me the hotel card with her cell phone number on the back of it.

“If I can help you in any way, you now know where to find me.”

Ten minutes later I was on the bus heading south. To call this vehicle old would be an understatement. It looked to be a relic of the 1980s, with half-stripped paintwork, chewed up seats, grimy windows, no air-conditioning, no ventilation.

Thankfully there were only ten of us boarding it at Ouarzazate. Which meant that I had two seats to myself all the way to Tata. The other passengers were four elderly women in full niqabs, three men of equally advanced years, a young mother with two babies, a shy adolescent girl who glanced back at me on several occasions, clearly curious as to why I was on this bus. I managed to smile back, but drifted back into my preoccupied reverie. Outside we were traveling through a terrain that was part oasis—trees, patches of arable land—part encroaching sand. There was the occasional change in the topography—a vista in which stern mountains could be seen on the horizon; a densely populated village, its souk in full late-afternoon swing; the tents of Bedouin families pitched alongside the road; the sense that, with every kilometer, we were traveling deeper into a geographic void. I had read online the day before that, in Berber Arabic,
ouarzazate
means “without noise, without confusion.” Gazing out at the darkening terrain—the sand turning copperish in the declining sun—I could understand just why, when compared to the noisy jumble that was other Moroccan cities, Ouarzazate wasn't simply the doorway to the desert but also to the immense silence into which I was now further venturing. When I stared at the ever-expanding Sahara, I could understand why it was something akin to a blank canvas, divorced from the disarray and chaos of life beyond. But I began to wonder if that too was an illusion. You look at a sea of empty sand, two Bedouin parents crossing this terrain with their children, and marvel at the timeless simplicity of it all. The truth is more complex. The necessity of survival. The need to find water. To find money for food and other essentials. Their place in a harsh, unforgiving universe.

Without noise . . . without confusion
.

Life is noise, confusion. We can run to the ends of the earth, and it will still impinge on us. Because the demons within us never vanish—even in a landscape as planed and silenced as the Sahara.

The bus stopped in a tiny village built next to a small stream. I bought a cup of mint tea from a sad-faced man. There was a toilet in a nearby shed: a hole in the ground over which had been constructed a wooden box with a makeshift seat. The smell was overpowering. I emerged choking, desperate for fresh air. But even at sunset, the heat stifled everything.

I reboarded the bus. I attempted to nap. But the bus's lack of suspension and my own preoccupations mitigated sleep. I attempted to strategize. Tata couldn't be that big a place. A handful of hotels at best. I'd stop in each one until I found Paul. I'd soothe and comfort him. I'd call Yasmina back in Ouarzazate and get her to book us tickets on the next flight to Paris. I'd get us back to her hotel by midday tomorrow. I'd . . .

Make plans, as usual. In the hope of regularizing someone for whom regularization was more than a stretch. And yes, Faiza—as angry and vindictive and toxic as she was—did get one thing right: Paul brought chaos into everybody's life. But there was a difference between the Paul I met three years ago—who feigned obliviousness to the mess he frequently engendered—and the man who left me what was a suicide note. He could no longer run from himself. But he could run into the Sahara.

The hours on the bus went by slowly, the vanished sun lowering the temperature somewhat, but not acting as a palliative against the grubbiness of the journey. I nodded off for a spell, waking with a jolt when the bus screeched to a halt, a horn was honked, and the driver shouted one word, “Tata.”

We were in a parking area, outside of a walled town. I had been sleeping against my backpack. Getting off the bus, I was immediately confronted by two young men—both in their early twenties, both trying to grow beards with not much luck, both wearing baseball caps, both eyeing me over.

“Hello, pretty lady,” one of them said in French.

“You need some help to guide you around?” the second one asked.

I held up the photo page of Paul's passport.

“I'm looking for this man—my husband.”

“I know where he is,” the first guy said.

“You do?” I asked. “Honestly?”

“You come with us, we show you,” the second one said, but he was interrupted by the bus driver, who began to shout at them in Arabic, using the word
imshee
several times. These two operators were not so intimidated, however, and began to sass him back, until another man—in his late fifties, wearing a dark suit, also weighed in on the argument. The two guys were clearly enjoying the confrontation. The older of the two was being bold and arrogant, eyeing me up and down, making flip comments (“Don't you want a date with me?” . . . “I love American women” . . . “You don't need your husband, you need a younger man”) amidst this ever-heated interchange with my two protectors. Eventually the older man—he was tall, heavily lined, a cigarette clutched between his teeth, ash dropping on his brown suit jacket—mentioned police and the two operators backed off, but not before Mr. Arrogant winked at me and said, “Maybe some other time.” Once they were gone, the older man handed me a card and explained in French that he worked for a small hotel within the walls, and he could offer me a very clean, safe room for three hundred dirhams . . . discounted from the usual five hundred. If I was hungry he could convince the cook to stay on to make dinner for me. I pulled out Paul's passport and showed him the photograph, asking at what hotel I might find my husband.

“When did he arrive?” asked the man.

“On the bus before mine,” I said.

“That's impossible,” he said.

“How can it be impossible? I saw him leave on the earlier bus.”

“But I met that bus—as I meet all buses here. And there was only one Westerner on the bus: a man around seventy, traveling alone, German.”

“Couldn't he have gotten off when you weren't looking?”

“
Madame
, I promise you . . . I see everyone who arrives by bus in Tata. You can check the other hotels in town, if you wish.”

“I'll give you fifty dirhams if you take me to every hotel in town.”

“But I assure you . . .”

“One hundred dirhams.”

The man shrugged, then nodded for me to follow him.

We went through the archway that led into the center of Tata. The town was something of a maze. Dark, twisting streets. Little in the way of streetlight. We stopped by a dive of a place, which from the outside looked like a flophouse. A haunted-looking man—his face sallow, his eyes sunken, endlessly forlorn—was behind the desk. He came out and greeted the man escorting me. They embraced. Words were exchanged. I was asked to show Paul's passport. The desk clerk shook his head, pointing out into the darkness of the night. I asked him to study the photo again to make absolutely certain that he didn't see him. Again he shook his head.

Ten minutes and three hotels later we had come to the end of the line for all places of accommodation outside the one to which I was now being brought to spend the night. At each of these establishments it was the same routine: the passport photo, the question if this man was staying there, the shake of the head.

As we left the last hotel, I asked my escort his name.

“It's Naguib,
madame
.”

“What time is the first bus back to Ouarzazate?”

“There's one at five a.m.”

“So I should leave my hotel when?”

“Four forty-five will be fine. It's all downhill and just a ten-minute walk.”

From the shadows a voice began to intone, “Downhill, downhill,” the tone mocking, amused.

Out stepped those two young tough guys who had harassed me upon my arrival. They lit up cigarettes and the flirtatious one even tipped his baseball cap in mock salute. When Naguib snapped at them—hissing something angry in their direction—Mr. Arrogant said to me in French, “We were not trying to be disrespectful,
madame
.”

They disappeared back into the shadows.

“Do you know them?” I asked.

“I'm afraid so. They come from Marrakesh. They work on the crew that is repaving part of the road near here. They've been here for two weeks and think they're big men from the big city. They're stupid, but harmless. Shall we head to my hotel now?”

We began to ascend the narrow pathway that led up a Babel-like hill. It was a steep climb, but the moon was full, so we weren't stumbling in the dark. When we reached the summit I was panting and feeling parched. It had been quite the ascent. Immediately an elderly woman in a hajib insisted that I sit down and found me a bottle of water. Naguib took my passport and three hundred dirhams, saying he would fill in all the necessary registration forms. The woman asked if I liked lamb couscous. I indicated that would be just fine, as I had hardly eaten all day and was now famished. Naguib returned and led me through an extraordinary structure: castellated, with great open spaces and an outside walkway that looked down on the village below. The sky was dominated by a very full, spectral moon.

My room was under the eaves: simple, well furnished, clean. There was a double bed and a decent shower. I handed Naguib one hundred dirhams and thanked him.

“I am back on duty here at six thirty tomorrow morning,” he said. “There is a bus that leaves at eight. You could sleep in a bit and have breakfast and still be back in Ouarzazate by four.”

“Is there any chance whatsoever that my husband could have gotten off somewhere between Ouarzazate and here?”

“The bus can stop at assorted villages—but only if a passenger requests a stop. So, yes, he could have possibly requested a stop—but these places have little in the way of hotels or restaurants.”

“Might the driver of the earlier bus be here now?”

“No—because he returned as a passenger on the eight o'clock bus back to Ouarzazate. He won't be back until tomorrow. I don't have his cell phone number, so I cannot get in touch with him until I actually see him. You could wait until he returns tomorrow, and we could ask him together.”

“I think I am going to head back on the early bus,” I said.

“As you wish,
madame
. But here's my phone number if you need me.”

Drawing a notebook and a pen from his pocket, he wrote it down and handed it to me.

“Thank you so much, Naguib.”

“How long will you need before dinner?”

“Fifteen minutes at most. I just want to shower and freshen up.”

“I'll tell the cook to expect you shortly.”

A quarter of an hour later, I arrived at the outdoor terrace that served as a dining room. It was a wonderful open area on which six or seven tables were situated. There was only one other guest—a lean gray-haired man, with round wire-rimmed spectacles, a blue short-sleeved shirt, tan shorts, a pair of orthopedic sandals on his feet, a book propped up against his wine bottle:
Der Zauberberg
by Thomas Mann. This must have been the German who'd arrived on the earlier bus. Someone who rode the bus with Paul! Someone who could confirm his whereabouts. Immediately I approached his table. He looked up, his face somewhat lined but still strong, with deep blue eyes that seemed to be harboring some quiet sadness . . . or was that just me projecting my own sadness on everyone?

“Sorry, but I don't speak German.”

He smiled at me. I continued, “But I am very competent in English and not bad in French . . . and my apologies for interrupting your dinner.”

“My dinner is finished,” he said in English, pointing to his empty plates. “But if you are about to eat and would like company . . .”

He pointed to the empty seat opposite his own.

“That's really kind of you,” I said. “But before I sit down I have a rather urgent question.”

“By all means.”

“Were you on the bus that left Ouarzazate at four o'clock?”