‘Ain’t you gonna wash me? I’m dirtier than a sweat hog,’ Blake teases.
I grin at him.
Water is precious. We wash each other with wrung out washcloths.
When we come out of our tent, hours later, the men are huddled around the fire eating a sort of mutton stew, olive bread cooked on hot stones, and drinking date spirit. Abdul brings us our food on lovely blue glass plates. Hard to imagine they have saved these pretty pieces just for us. Such beautiful manners, these wild desert travelers. I smile my thanks.
‘The desert mushrooms,’ the interpreter tells us in his distinctly mannered accent, bowing his head politely, ‘are for later. Desert luxuries.’
I nod. There is a world of difference between him and the cameleers. He is sly and gallant, and they are as noble and heroic as warhorses.
I work the tough, fatty chunks of meat with my teeth while I watch the warhorses enthusiastically lick their fingers, their wooden plates. Afterwards Abdul brings us delicately perfumed tea in dainty gold-rimmed glasses.
The desert makes no sound unless we make it. And so the men make their sounds, they chant their holy invocations to their God. The resonating sounds become part of the timeless desert landscape. I imagine the sound moving through the endless expanses of sand. Where does it go? Who catches it eventually?
It is when we stop for morning prayers the next day that the radio message comes through. At first I don’t bother to listen, but the immediate stiffening of Blake’s body alerts me. I turn to watch him curiously. The hardening of his eyes, the thinning of his mouth as he listens… Until he is a stranger.
‘No,’ he says finally. ‘Give me two minutes then call me back.’ He meets my eyes.
‘What is it?’ I whisper, my feet shifting nervously from side to side on the burning sand, my heart thudding in my chest.
‘My mother is in Bangkok.’
Whatever I had expected, I had not expected that. I pull my hand away from my mouth, and, baffled, demand, ‘Why?’
‘She wants to meet Sorab.’
I shake my head in disbelief. ‘Without us being there?’
‘You decide. We can either stay and keep to the schedule or we can leave today.’
I don’t have to think. Even if he had stiffened and become hard and cold I would not have trusted my son with her. His family give me the creeps. I want to leave at that very moment. ‘Can we leave now, please?’
To his eternal credit he does not attempt to talk me out of my decision or placate me. Simply nods and lapses into a tense, thinking silence. When the radio goes again, he says, ‘Arrange for us to be picked up now.’ He pauses and I hear him say. ‘Really?… Good.’
‘What was that about?’
‘My mother cornered Billie and insisted she be allowed to spend time with Sorab.’
‘Oh yeah? What did Billie say?’
‘Told my dear mother to f**k off.’ He smiles reluctantly.
We wait for the helicopter in the glare of the sun in our city clothes.
‘What will happen to the men?’
‘They will return to their homes.’
In twenty minutes our ride creates a veritable sandstorm as it lands. Abdul kisses my hand and the cameleers turn to stare me in the eye for the first time. I am no longer a woman, but a curiosity. A woman who would bare her hair, the shape of her body, and her legs. Their eyes are like the desert. Timeless and full of secrets. I commit them to memory, knowing we will never meet again.
Five
Victoria Jane Montgomery
When the lunch bell rings I make my way to the canteen. Despite the restraints of that first night, it is not like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest here.
In fact the first day was relatively simple Once they established to their satisfaction that temperature, pulse, blood pressure, EKG and blood values were all normal, and I did not harbor a desire to hurt myself or anyone else, they let me loose upon their premises and their ‘experts’.
The experts’ job is to get to ‘know’ me through lengthy interviews to excavate my full life history, my family background, and my criminal and psychiatric history. The assessments include personality tests, neuropsychological tests, tests for malingering (the technical term for faking a mental illness) and general cognitive tests from intelligence to memory.
You see, here, they believe in progressive and compassionate care.
The building I am imprisoned in is incredibly beautiful. It was erected in the nineteenth century by a baron for his mad wife. The interior is high ceilinged, and ornate, with long, rambling, sunlit wings. Apparently his wife had loved playing the piano so he had a grand piano installed in every room. After the servants found him stabbed to death—his face gruesomely contorted with horror—while she sat calmly playing the piano, the building was closed and abandoned for many years.
Now the ceilings are still full of intricate moldings to rival the Baccarat Gallery Museum in Paris, and the walls retain their original warm pinkish shade of off-white, but the pianos are gone, the windows have bars over them, and the sun-filled corridors are populated by over-medicated, dazed patients shuffling aimlessly up and down them.
And the large room where the Baroness played to her audience of one corpse has been designated the common room. It is dimly lit: the curtains remain drawn at all times. A huge television is mounted on one wall and patients wander in and slump in armchairs and rocking chairs to stare numbly at the flickering screen: cartoons playing on a loop.
I avoid it like the plague.
The dining area is full of natural light and rather pleasant, other than the unidentified brown smears and stains on the walls. There are no decorations except for a poster listing banned items—nail clippers, razors, tweezers, lighters, medication, belts, shoelaces, spiral-bound notebooks, jewelry and under-wired bras.
Of course, there are other things that are not on the poster that are banned too, like physical contact with other patients, food in the rooms. The only rule that concerns me is inpatients not being allowed to make calls, only to receive them. But I think I have the solution. She walked into my room this morning, keys jangling on her belt. The name tag pinned on her uniform, appropriately enough, said ‘Angel’.
I walk along the aisle and a large, dozy cow in a blue apron slaps a huge mound of macaroni cheese on my tray. I stare at the thick, lumpy concoction with a sort of culture shock. This is what passes for food. Another uniformed staff in a hairnet dishes out the vegetables: green beans, carrots and a graying sludge that she calls mashed potato. I thank her politely, and, moving along, pick a bun from a basket of bread rolls. These would come in handy in Palestine when those kids run out of rocks and stones to throw.