The Blue Hour (36 page)

It was a phrase I had heard regularly in Morocco. But here it was a benediction, a maternal prayer: “May Allah bestow his blessings on you . . .”

Outside I heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up into the oasis. We all stiffened as the engine idled, then cut. Because we all knew: my driver had arrived.

HIS NAME WAS
Aatif. At first sight he did not inspire confidence. A short man, with a small but pronounced paunch, thinning hair, a handful of brown teeth left in his mouth, world-weary eyes. I judged him around my age, but the victim of a hardscrabble life. His vehicle was a Citroën 4x4, at least fifteen years old, once white, now scuffed and dented, with two front seats and a reasonable cargo area in the back. It looked like it was being run into the ground.

What struck me immediately about Aatif was his immense shyness. Unlike Immeldine, he wasn't taciturn or distanced. Nor did he exude the sort of detached authority that Jabalah displayed. Rather he seemed almost ill at ease around others. An innocent. And an unsure, timid one at that.

There was a rather strange, awkward moment when Jabalah called me over. I removed the niqab. I could see Aatif flinch. Was this due to the fact that he wasn't expecting a Western woman (but surely Jabalah had explained I was American), or owing to my still-battered face? I couldn't tell. Without thinking, I extended my hand in greeting. He looked horrified, as if I had exposed a breast to him. When he took my hand in return his was cold and clammy.

One positive detail: Aatif spoke French. A somewhat simple French, but with more fluency than Jabalah. When we started to talk it was clear that we could make ourselves understand each other.

Jabalah explained that he had informed Aatif about the circumstances that landed me in the oasis. He also understood that I had been robbed of everything, that I had no papers or money, and that I would settle up with him when we reached Marrakesh.

“Do you understand that the police are looking for me?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“Does this worry you?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“As long as you are willing to take the risk,” I said. “I don't want to put you in any jeopardy.”

Another shrug. Then he said, “Two thousand dirhams to take you to Marrakesh.
D'accord?
”

It seemed a very reasonable price, considering the potential hazard for him.

“That's fine—but I am going to need to sell some jewelry in Marrakesh to be able to pay you. I promise that I will pay you.”

A shrug, then,
“D'accord.”

“How long do you think it will take to get to Marrakesh?”

He thought about this for a moment. “Three days,” he said.

“Three days! But it's only maybe six hours by car from Ouarzazate, and Ouarzazate is perhaps seven hours from here.”

“I have many goods to pick up before I go to the souk in Marrakesh and deliver them to the merchant who will buy them. Many stops to make, many people dependent on me. Like your friends here.”

“But . . . if we are going to be three days on the road, where will we sleep? I have no money for hotels or food.”

“I have no money for hotels either. I have two bedrolls in the back. We will sleep by the van at night.”

I didn't like the sound of this at all. I gave Jabalah a telling look, asking with my eyes if I could trust this man. Jabalah gave me a quick nod. Aatif noticed this visual exchange. Looking half away from me he said, “You will be safe.”

“All right,” I said.

With that, Jabalah and Immeldine spent the next ten minutes filling up a portion of the cargo area of the Citroën with rugs, lace napkins, lace doilies, and skullcaps. I could see Jabalah negotiating with Aatif, clearly hopeful that he could return in ten days with a good sum for them. From the way he was indicating his pockets and the sparse garden that was tended beneath one of the trees, I sensed that money here was urgently needed. How I wished I could have reached into my pocket and handed them five thousand dirhams right now.

“When I get to Marrakesh and sell my ring,” I told Jabalah, holding up my hand, “I will ask Aatif to bring some money back for you.”

Immediately Jabalah waved his hands. “We took you in because you were in need,” he said. “There is no need to repay us.”

“I cannot begin to thank you . . .”

Again Jabalah waved his hands, but then thought about it for a moment and made the smallest of bows in my direction. Naima was standing near him. He touched the horseshoe pendant, which she was now proudly wearing around her neck, and bowed again toward me.

Aatif closed the cargo door of his vehicle. It was time. Aicha started to weep again and held me for several moments. Maika also seemed to be fighting tears but was absolutely determined not to cry. As she squeezed my shoulder I noticed she had made a fist with her right hand and was, I sensed, demonstrably making it clear that she approved of the way I'd hit back at the men who'd attacked me Naima glanced up at her father for approval before going over to me. I kneeled down. She kissed me with great delicacy on both cheeks. Intriguingly there were no tears, none of the sense of impending loss that we both shared alone with the other women in the tent that had been my refuge. Here, in front of her father and grandfather and a visiting man, she was conscious that she was under a paternal gaze and needed to act with restraint. After a moment she went running back to her father, looking up at him for approval—which he gave with another of his characteristic nods.

Immeldine's goodbye was also a nod. So too was Jabalah's.

“Okay?” Aatif asked. Now it was my turn to nod. Moments later, the niqab veiling my face once again, I was inside the cab of the vehicle. The three women gathered by my window as Aatif slammed the driver's door behind him, placed the key in the ignition, put the van into gear. With a lurch we began to drive off. My eyes met Naima's. She raised a hand and tried to look brave. Behind the niqab I began to weep. The daughter I always wanted. The daughter I would never have. The wondrous little girl whom I would never see again.

Aatif drove the hundred or so yards to the edge of the oasis. I looked back once more at the small plot of quasiarable land in the great sandy vacuum. Their entire world. My entire world for a spell. And now I was going to have to negotiate the world beyond.

With a bump we crossed through the stone archway that separated the oasis from the sand. Aatif pulled out a lever and said, “Four-by-four. We will need it now.”

We started traversing the desert, following a track that was discernable by the grooves of past tires. After a minute I craned my neck and tried to spy the oasis. But it had vanished, its pale wall melding invisibly into the bleached horizon.

The cab of the vehicle was a mess—torn seats, trash strewn on the floor, the windscreen streaked with sand and dead flies, the ashtray brimming. And the heat was ferocious. I rolled down my window. This was a serious error. As the vehicle gained momentum, sand blew in everywhere. Immediately Aatif slowed down.

“You do not have to wear the niqab here,” he said.

“Are you sure of that?”

“It is fine with me. Especially as I do not have air-conditioning. So if you also want to get out of the djellaba . . .”

Immediately I was posttraumatic defensive.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

He looked startled.

“I meant no offense,” he said. “I just thought you might be more comfortable in your own clothes.”

“Where am I going to change out here?”

He stopped the vehicle. He got out. He went to the back and pulled out the bag that contained my laundered clothes, the garments I'd been found in all those weeks ago. He brought it over to the passenger door.

“You can get out and change behind the van. I will take a walk and have a smoke. When you are dressed call me.”

He said this all in his quiet, shy, matter-of-fact way.

“Thank you,” I said, getting out of the van.

Aatif walked out quite a distance in the desert, lighting up a cigarette. He was dressed in a loose shirt, loose brown-colored trousers, sandals, a skullcap on his head. I watched him walk for around a minute, then stop and not turn around once in my direction. Quickly I pulled off the djellaba, the relief of being free of its entombing weight countered by the immediate exposure of all my still-scarred flesh to the Saharan sun. Within a moment I had slipped on the linen pants and simple white shirt I had bought in Casablanca, then shouted that I was ready. Aatif turned and walked back slowly toward me. At that instant I began to feel shaky. For the first time since I had woken up violated and battered and near death, I was back within the Sahara's terrifying enormity. I felt as if it was about to swallow me whole. I suddenly slumped against the door of the jeep, a full-scale panic attack blindsiding me again. At which point Aatif—walking toward me—saw what was happening and came running. When he reached me, out of breath and drenched in sweat, I was clinging on to the door handle as if it were a life preserver in treacherous seas.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I nodded.

“May I take your arm?”

I nodded again.

He put one hand on the hand that was gripping the door handle. The other supported my right arm.

“Let go, please,” he said. “I will get you inside.”

I did as ordered, all but collapsing against him. He may have appeared short and squat, but when it came to disengaging me from the van door and settling me into the passenger seat, he had surprising, forceful strength.

Once I was safely inside he went to the cargo area, fished something out, and returned with a bottle of water, still dripping wet, making me wonder if he had some sort of basic cooler in the back. He handed me the bottle.

“Drink.”

I drank half the liter before handing back it to him. He took several judicious sips, then gave it back to me.

“You need to keep drinking water.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much. I am sorry I snapped at you before. I had a terrible experience out here.”

“I know. Jabalah told me. Terrible. I am so very sorry for you. But . . .”

He turned the ignition on. The Citroën reassuringly fired back into life. He put it into gear. We set off. And he finished the sentence.

“I will get you to Marrakesh.”

I fell back against the seat, agitation and anguish still coursing through me. Aatif lit up a cigarette and said nothing as we drove for almost an hour along the desert track, the sun beginning to dip, bathing the Sahara in a blue-hour glow. How I wanted to be dazzled and exalted by its frightening beauty. But all I could do was try to stop myself from sinking into a chasm in which all the recent horrors loomed large.

To his credit Aatif said not a word during the hour that we barreled across the sands. He just smoked one cigarette after another, occasionally glancing over at me to make certain I wasn't going into meltdown mode again. I appreciated him giving me the space to somehow push the nightmare away . . . for an hour or two, anyway.

That's the problem with the worst sort of trauma. You can will it elsewhere. You can tell yourself you will somehow “manage” it. But you also begin to realize very quickly that you will be living with it for the rest of your life. Even if, somewhere down the line, you might come to terms with it, reach some sort of accommodation with its abhorrence, it will be with you forever. Your world has been inexorably changed.

With a bump we left the sand and returned to a paved road. Seeing a road sign ahead for Tata, I shuddered.

“Do not worry,” Aatif said. “We are not going there. But I am going to pull over in a moment and you are going to have to change back into the djellaba and niqab.”

“Why?”

“Because two, three kilometers ahead of us, there is a police checkpoint.”

“How do you know that?”

“I passed through it a few hours ago.”

He slowed down the van. We were on an empty stretch of the road that, if followed, would bring us to Ouarzazate. He pulled over, telling me that, thanks to nightfall, I could change outside without being seen. But if a van came down the road, headlights blazing . . .

“I'll be fast,” I said, and was out of the van and grabbing my backpack, changing into the djellaba and niqab in under a minute. As soon as I got back in the van a truck came up behind, its high beams illuminating us.

“You did well,” Aatif said as the truck passed us by.

“What happens if the police demand to see my papers?” I asked.

He reached over into the glove compartment and drew out a Moroccan identity card of a woman around my age—attractive in a severe sort of way. But mug shots—my own included—always seem to capture life's cramped disappointments in grainy, institutional close-up.

“Is that your wife?” I asked.

“My sister.” he said.