About an hour after we’d left Rabat the train slowed again for the Casablanca stop, and the two salesmen and the man with the newspaper gathered their things and let themselves out into the passageway. The man named Salim got up and took one of the now-empty seats on the opposite banquette.
There were fewer passengers to get on in Casablanca, and as the train started southward again the three of us had the compartment to ourselves. The man with the sunglasses and the long legs dozed, but Salim, evidently still holding a grudge, fixed his eyes on me and stared unabashedly. Four hours to go, I told myself, trying to concentrate on the dark landscape. Outside the window the countryside was black, pocked and dimpled here and there by a lone electric light or a pair of headlights where the train tracks ran close to the road. Ten hours, I thought, to carve through this tiny slice of Africa. And yet people had imagined they could conquer this continent.
Some two hours out of Casablanca a conductor appeared, checking our tickets before heading on to the next compartment. Except for the tongue clicking earlier, my fellow travelers had not spoken, and I had taken them for strangers. But as soon as the conductor had left us, they nodded to each other, briefly exchanging words. Their manner was disconcertingly businesslike. The man in the sunglasses peered out into the passageway, evidently watching the conductor. After a few minutes, he reached up and pulled down the privacy shade on his side of the compartment. The man named Salim did the same, completely obscuring the view from the passageway. Then, quickly and efficiently, he flipped the door lock.
I sat up, my skin prickling with fear and adrenaline. The Beretta, I told myself, but there was no time to retrieve it. Salim had already grabbed my pack. In another second the man with the sunglasses was on top of me, his hand on my shoulder, his legs straddling mine. Salim set the pack down on the seat opposite me and undid the top flap.
I shrank back into the seat and stilled myself, my mind considering the possibilities. There was no point in calling for help. The noise of the train would drown out any sound I could make, and in the end I’d just wear myself out. I took a deep breath and brought my knee up into the man’s groin. My bones connected perfectly with the soft flesh, and the man doubled over. He swore in Arabic, then staggered, thrust off balance by the rocking of the train.
I brought my leg up again, and this time the sole of my shoe found his chest. He reeled backward, knocking into the wall, and sank to his knees, retching.
Leaving the pack, Salim reached into his pocket and produced a little bone-handled knife. “I see you haven’t forgotten how to be a bitch, Leila,” he sneered, his English perfect now, British public school. Planting his feet firmly on the floor of the compartment, he brandished the knife in front of him.
We stood for a moment like that, bodies balanced over the jerking and swaying carriage, eyes hard on each other. You can do this, I told myself, half of one eye on the crumpled figure in the corner of the compartment, the man still wheezing to catch his breath. You can do this.
Salim smiled slightly, the expression exaggerating the crook in his nose. He took a step toward me, and the train jerked violently to the left; the car careened wildly. I slid my foot around his ankle, my boot hooking the back of his calf, and threw my right fist against the front of his throat. The man tottered for an instant, hands gripping his windpipe; then he fell back into the banquette.
Grabbing my backpack, I opened the door and slipped out into the passageway. I hurried backward, passing from one car to the next, glancing over my shoulder as I went. What damage I had done would only be temporary; I knew my pursuers could not be far behind. Faces peered out at me from the compartments, an old woman and a child, four young backpackers, a strange group of women in black chadors, only their dark eyes visible beneath the folds of fabric.
I paused outside the women’s compartment, looking ahead toward the dark window that marked the end of the car and the train. Beyond, there were only the tracks falling dizzyingly away. And behind me, Salim and his long-legged friend.
Sliding the door of the compartment open, I stepped inside. The women turned to me in unison. There were four of them, two older than the others, the skin around their eyes delicately puckered. Even in Morocco, a Muslim country, it was not usual to see the chador, and there was something otherworldly about the foursome, something almost perverse about these silent and shadowy women.
“Help me!” I pleaded in French, my breathing labored.
The women remained silent. One of them shifted slightly under her cloak, then blinked up at me.
“Help me!” I repeated my request in English, stepping deeper into the compartment.
One of the older women pressed her head to the window and peered down the passageway. Turning back, she barked something to the other three; then she and the woman opposite her pulled down the privacy shades. In an instant the women were up. One of them grabbed my rucksack and stuffed it in the overhead storage rack while another pulled down one of her own bags. Unzipping it, she removed a wad of black fabric. It took no more than twenty seconds for the eight hands to cover me. There was a knock on the door, and someone pushed me down into a seat.
The knock came again, and the same woman who’d first spoken lifted her shade. My pursuers peered into the compartment, Salim’s crooked nose almost touching the glass. The older woman opened the door a crack and said something to the two men, her tone severe, reproving. The man in the sunglasses smiled at her and made a little bow, a show of mocking respect. She slammed the door in his face and turned away.
The two men hesitated a moment, their eyes ranging across each of us; then the man with the sunglasses said something to Salim, and they moved off toward the rear of the train. I took a deep breath and exhaled. A minute passed, and another. Finally, the men reappeared, heading in the direction they’d come from, hurrying now. The woman next to me reached over and grasped my hand through her cloak. Her grip was tight, her hand cool and smooth.
“Thank you,” I said, and the four veiled heads nodded together.
The silence broke, and there was a relieved rush of conversation. Until that moment, I realized, I had not really heard Arabic spoken by women. It was entirely different from the language spoken by men, softer and rounder, more like a song. One of the women gesticulated, and her chador unfurled like a great black bird, like a wing opening to take me in, like the walls of the convent, the community of women they enwombed.
They spoke animatedly, as if to cleanse themselves of the earlier tension, and as they did, I began to see how different they each were. Here was the joker, and here the bossy one, and next to me, the serious one of the group, the one who had squeezed my hand. Each one was unique, as each of the sisters had been. The sisters. I shuddered under my chador, thinking of that night at the convent, Heloise’s pale face. Pushing back the folds of fabric, I glanced at my watch. Two hours to Marrakech and no stops.
The train slowed slightly, and I got up and went to the window. Up ahead, some dozen small lamps flickered along the berm of the rail bed, the lights like fireflies, arcing and bobbing in the darkness. The train slowed further, crawling to a stop. In the glow of each lamp I could see a small boy, a cluster of dark faces and white teeth. The boys approached the cars close to the front of the train, holding up pottery and trinkets, pleading with the unseen passengers. Several hands thrust bills or coins out in exchange for the meager goods.
Two hours for Salim and his friend to find me, I thought, glancing at the women. I stood and unwrapped myself, folding the chador, laying it on the seat.
“Thank you,” I said again to the women. “Shukran.” The Arabic word came easily to my tongue.