Marie-Anne looked beautiful in a white chiffon blouse with silver-belted black slacks that widened at the ankles and showed only the tips of her closed-toed heels. Her hair was pulled back in a hard ponytail, accentuating the line left in her jaw.
Conversation was as easy as the cool drinks. It was made even easier by the fact that all three of us had been at the same seminar in the morning, one focused on the liberation of Muslim women. The four American NGO workers had all presented different case studies about how to support Muslim women such that they weren’t reliant on patriarchal superstructures or held down by religious restrictions. Marie-Anne had been particularly interested in the idea of giving microloans to Muslim women.
“But my concern,” she said while forking her salad, “is that the women won’t pay back the loans and then the financial institutions that underwrite them will go bankrupt.”
Mahmoud dismissed the concern: “Repayment rates are very high.”
“But what exactly is the financial institution’s return?”
“The purpose of the loan isn’t to get a return. The purpose is to give a woman an opportunity to think highly of us.”
I sat up. “That seems kind of crass. ”
Mahmoud wasn’t having it. “Look, we’re all friends here. Let’s appreciate that charity is just a pretext. We need the women on our side. It’s the only way to win hearts and minds. And giving loans is the most humane way of accomplishing this. Would you rather that we go the French way in Algeria? Go and rip off their veils and clothes and order them to become Western? Because that will just earn us enemies. That’s not the American way. Money talks better than force. It’s not bribery if you call it liberation.”
“Does this actually work?”
“You give people freedom and they come over to your side. Why do you think when the British were building their empire they went around the world and freed everyone’s slaves? It wasn’t because they cared about black people. It was because it reduced the number of people who might fight against them. When I give a microloan to a Muslim woman today, it’s no different than when some British admiral raised a flag in Western Asia and announced that any slave who touched the mast would become free, irrespective of whether his master allowed it or not. We are getting their weakest on our side.”
Marie-Anne turned to me with a smile on her lips; stone in her eyes. It was meant to convey that I was being too skeptical and should tone down my rhetoric. I shut up and looked in the direction of the exhibition.
She faced Mahmoud. “That’s how you know you’re on the right side,” she said. “If what you do is increasing the number of free people in the world. Why shouldn’t we give unto others what our founders gave to us?”
“To the pursuit of happiness.” Mahmoud raised his glass. “May every Muslim in the world have access to it.”
Marie-Anne clinked back. “And also, too, to the rule of law,” she added. “Which can only be brought about through effective law enforcement and surveillance.”
Mahmoud chuckled. He put an elbow in my side and pointed at Marie-Anne. “Please tell me that I didn’t just fall into a MimirCo commercial.”
We all laughed. Marie-Anne patted him on the thigh and straightened his skullcup. “You didn’t fall into a commercial, because when you watch a commercial you still have an option. Here you are bound to commit, like you got my husband to commit to your little venture.”
“Fair enough,” Mahmoud said. “But as an employee of the State Department, I can’t do anything that’s unsanctioned.”
“You’re just building bridges,” Marie-Anne replied. “The bridges will remember you when your government gig comes to an end.”
I observed her. Just a few years ago she had been an impatient novelist and short-story writer, desperate to be published, throwing herself at the mercies of tenured university professors and washed-up hacks who advertised their self-published books on social media. And the only opportunities that had presented themselves had been inseparable from her having to become some hack’s secretary and mistress. Yet here she was now, in a far more lucrative field, making deals happen without having to whore her body out. I felt proud of her. Who would have thought that the business of war would be more feminist than the business of art?
Marie-Anne and Mahmoud discussed how MimirCo ought to go about getting the Wazirati contract. Mahmoud was frank with her: The Wazirati royal in charge of the Ministry of the Interior was facing unrest in a number of his city-state’s coastal villages, where due to the tribal nature of the families it was impossible for him to send physical spies. He needed eyes there and it didn’t matter if they were mechanical.
This news was met with urgency on Marie-Anne’s part. She started shooting messages off to her superiors.
Finding the conversation progressing this quickly and smoothly allowed me to relax. I put my hands behind my head and sunned myself like a lion. In the wild Serengeti of the world my lioness was on the hunt.
* * *
Midnight train back to Philadelphia. We had gone up coach; came back first class. The little cities of New Jersey sliced past us, enclaves for close-knit communities of immigrants to begin the slow and steady climb from anonymity to respectability. A teenager had been pushed onto the tracks near Edison and there was a four-hour wait. The EMT pulled up on a street not far from where we sat. I could see an old Indian woman in a sari trying to speak to the policemen. Marie-Anne called MimirCo during the delay, updating them further about the Wazirati connection. They were excited to send her to the Persian Gulf and asked how she had pulled off making the arrangement. She looked at me and smiled. She didn’t tell them the details. She just said she had been sitting on the jack of clubs.
The next few days Marie-Anne bubbled with a kind of lightness I hadn’t seen in a long time. She purchased a few bottles of Chianti Classico and we hung out on the rooftop of the building or went down to the river and secretly drank from a bottle in her purse.
The only thing that prevented me from fully engaging with Marie-Anne’s celebration were thoughts of Candace. I had to find out how she was doing. I had to find a way to talk to her. Four weeks was enough time to miss a period. A cross to appear on a white stripe. An appointment to be scheduled with a gynecologist. I imagined a life percolating inside Candace. Any iota of me, no matter how small, had to be cultivated, had to be allowed to prosper. It didn’t matter where or through whom my blood became a part of the land. There had to be someone in this vast country who could look back upon his generations and give me the pleasure of recognition. It didn’t have to be a shiny mirror as long as it had the power of reflection. To grow old in a country that reviled me was only acceptable if there was someone who came after and pitied me.
For the next two days I plugged away via text messages and voice mails. E-mail had long ago ceased to be a useful method of reaching a person; but I tried flooding that account as well. One-word messages.
Why.
Aren’t.
You.
Answering.
When personal contact became fruitless, I tried looking her up through the Al Jazeera website, but there was no record of her anywhere. I even tried the age-old trick of first-name-dot-last-name-at-domain-name. It came back Mailer Daemon.
In the middle of the Candace-induced mania I received a message from Mahmoud. He sent over the e-mail confirmations, another set of governmental direct-deposit forms, and the briefing for our time in Madrid. We were to leave in three days. I also received a separate message from Leila who said she had gotten herself teamed up with me on purpose.