The Other Americans(25)

I didn’t care. It was just for a few days, I told her. All the way to the cabin, I thought about my father. He had driven on this stretch of the 62 every day. Here was the gas station where he stopped for refills, the used books store where he picked out his paperbacks, the liquor store where he bought his beer. Already, life went on without him.

When I got to the cabin, I found that the front door wouldn’t open. The key got stuck. With some effort, I pulled it out and went back to the car. Remembering a trick my father had taught me, I rummaged through the glove compartment for a pencil, with which I colored the teeth of the key until they were dark with graphite. Then I tried the lock again. This time, the door creaked open. The smell of dust and musk immediately made me sneeze.

The place was barely furnished. Under the window sat a gray sofa, its cushions stained and pilling. There was a small kitchen, with two stools at the counter, and a Formica-topped table with an unsteady leg. A stone fireplace separated the living area from the queen-size bed. The bathroom was the only private space. I opened the kitchen door and stepped into the backyard. There were several yuccas, a Joshua tree, and two garden chairs, caked with dust and weighted with stones to prevent their tumbling over in the desert wind. Here and there were tools my father had bought with the intent of landscaping, but by the looks of the yard he had never used.

I walked back through the house to the front porch, where the swamp cooler hung. A turtledove had built its nest on top of it and now the bird turned its head toward me, as if daring me to disturb its peace. We stared at each other for a moment. “All right, little mama,” I told her, palms raised in defense. “We can share.” Slowly, I slid my hand behind the metal box and turned on the water valve. All the while the turtledove kept watching me. I stepped back, drenched in sweat, and went inside.

I wanted to call Detective Coleman to ask for news, but it was early yet, and so I kept myself busy cleaning house. I scrubbed the sinks, wiped the windowpanes, swept the floors. The bookcase took a while to dust, as I sat on the floor leafing through the paperbacks that lined it. Spy novels. Mysteries. Thrillers. Was that what my father came here to do all those weekends when he said he was renovating? Or were these books meant for the tourists?

By the time I was done cleaning, it was the middle of the day and I felt suddenly exhausted. I went to sleep in my clothes. Again, I dreamed about him. We were in a train station, filled with travelers rushing about, dragging their roller suitcases behind. The creaking of the wheels came from every direction, making it difficult to hear him, though he was standing right beside me. Hurry, Nor-eini. Hurry. We’re going to be late. When we went downstairs to our platform, I saw that we were not in a train station at all, but at a port. The ocean was cobalt blue and stretched before us endlessly. We managed to fit into a small boat with our bags. My father began to paddle, working his oar expertly, but I had trouble with mine. This way, Nora, he said. Look. Hold it this way. But the wooden handle kept slipping out of my hands.

I woke up in a sweat, my clothes sticking to me and the smell of household cleaner in my nostrils. After taking a shower, I glanced at the clock. It was finally time to call Detective Coleman. “We’re still investigating,” she said when I reached her. There were 251 silver Fords in town, she told me, and it would take some time to figure out which one was involved in the accident—and that was assuming that the car belonged to a local, not a tourist.

“Has anyone come forward? A witness?”

“No, no one yet.”

I tried to steel myself against more disappointment, but it came anyway. I would call Coleman again tomorrow, I thought. Perhaps tomorrow there would be some news.





Maryam




For a long time after my husband died, I felt as if I were caught in a heavy fog, unable to see my way forward, or even to perceive much of what was going on around me, the arrangements that my daughters were making, often without consulting me I should say, so that when I did speak, it was only to agree with a decision that had already been made. And yet that Thursday night, I forced myself to come out of the haze, put on some fresh clothes, and go see Sleeping Beauty at the elementary school. I did it for the sake of my grandchildren, who were only eight years old at the time; they didn’t know much about life, and therefore nothing at all about death. I walked into the school cafeteria thinking we would have a normal evening as a family, but my son-in-law wasn’t there, he had an emergency at the office, and my daughters started arguing about my husband’s will. They couldn’t even wait to get home to do it, they were yelling at each other in front of everyone, deaf to my pleas to lower their voices, and after a while I gave up, folded my hands in my lap, closed my eyes, and recited the Surat al-Nas, over and over again. I was so relieved to see the curtains part, and the king and queen appear onstage, that I started applauding like a madwoman.

When I was young, I was easily enchanted by new friends, new places, new ideas, but later the magic would wear off and I would see things for what they were. Other people were different, like my friend Karima Ait-Yaacoub, who was the voice of the student movement at the university in Casablanca, and I would say its face as well, because they put her on all the posters, after she went to prison. She was arrested early on, I think it was in 1979, they put her in Derb Moulay Cherif, which you may have heard of, perhaps, it was such a famous prison, if one can say that prisons are famous, maybe there is a better word for that kind of fame. Afterward, her husband was left to plead her case in and out of court, until he got himself arrested, too, distributing flyers for another protest, so that their children had to be taken out of school and sent to live with their grandmother in Midelt. I didn’t want that life for Driss and me.