Guillermo fills his nights working on cases, especially Ibrahim’s. After months of nearly perfect reports with no suspicious withdrawals, he notices new discrepancies in the Banurbano monthly accounts, but now in increasing quantities. Something tells him that while other money-laundering channels are being shut, there’s added pressure to use the bank as a way to move funds and to support programs that have not received legislative approval. Guillermo feels a bit out of his element since he is not an accountant and doesn’t fully understand certain transactions, but he knows that something illegal is going on.
Guillermo does not confess his confusion regarding some of the bank transfers to Ibrahim, since the older man relies on his judgment and has staked his reputation on making the bank’s transactions completely transparent. When Guillermo reports the irregularities, Ibrahim tells the other members of his advisory board. When their response is muted, he tells them he is considering discussing his findings with the press, since he doesn’t trust the president and the judiciary doesn’t seem to care about his allegations.
An appeal to the people might lead the Banurbano managers or even the president to make a public clarification of what’s going on.
Guillermo, aware of how the government can manipulate the truth, advises otherwise; he feels that proof — not accusations — is what they need. He advises that they should collect more evidence, but Ibrahim is incredibly stubborn and impatient — he feels the moment has come.
What follows is ominous. After delivering his threat to the board, Ibrahim receives an increasing number of hang-up calls and anonymous threats. Someone wants him off the board, pronto.
Obviously the president or his wife won’t ask him directly to resign. Oddly, Ignacio Balicar has stopped defending presidential pet projects at the meetings; he seems to be waiting for something. Nothing is done directly in Guatemala. It is all subterfuge, behind smoke screens, curtains, clouds, blankets. It is clear that something cataclysmic is about to happen — this is the calm before the storm — but Ibrahim wants to go public
* * *
Meanwhile, Guillermo is feeling greater and greater loneliness. He is deeply in love with Maryam, but old ways die hard. One night after work he gets together with Araceli at the Stofella, but it is pretty much a disaster. In fact, he has a hard time keeping his erection even when she is touching him. She suggests the little blue pill, which pisses him off.
He doesn’t need the little blue pill. He needs Maryam.
That night he texts her.
Can you talk?
I can’t.
Why?
I am writing to you from the bathroom. No matter where I go, Samir shows up. He is tailing me in our own apartment!
You have to tell him about us.
Maybe he already knows. I can smell the change in him.
Maryam, I can’t take this any longer.
She does not text back any words of assurance.
* * *
And so one night after Samir and Maryam have had a light dinner of Lebanese mezzas and their maid Hiba has left, she decides the moment has come. Later, she blames her precipitated actions on Assala Nasri’s voice, as if her songs were responsible for the confession.
They are sitting in the living room, with walls decorated in framed campy photographs depicting images from the Lebanese homeland: olive fields, jagged mountains, the American University campus; all touristic scenes from their trips, separately and together, to Beirut.
Maryam is wearing a dark blue dress. She looks like a nineteenth-century milkmaid, and is on the sofa reading an article in Poder discussing Barack Obama’s election and how it will affect Israeli and Arab relations. Samir is stretched out on the Barcalounger, with his bare yellow feet up in the air. His eyes are closed. He wears a smoker’s robe over his clothes and he might be dozing.
They are listening to Assala Nasri’s latest recording of plaintive Arabic ballads on the CD player. Something about the way Nasri sings about love, adoration, and her terribly broken heart in an Arabic that Maryam does not fully understand unhinges her. She feels her heart is like the River Jordan about to overflow its banks.
She walks over to the CD player and lowers the volume. There are tears in her eyes.
“What’s this?” Samir says, startled, sitting up.
“I need to talk to you about something.”
Her husband shakes his head. “Why is it always when I am enjoying something and in a state of blissful happiness that you feel obliged to interrupt my pleasure? Is the music bothering you? Do you want me to use my headphones?”
Maryam’s heart is pounding. They are both listening to the same music, but their reactions are so dramatically different. She is thinking of Guillermo’s long and powerful legs, how the hair grows in mild grassy ridges along his chest, how his hands are so sure when he is stroking her. How he knows how to move his penis inside of her so that she is constantly being surprised by where it takes her and what she feels. And the way she comes.
And she cannot imagine what Samir is thinking. Perhaps he is recalling the love he once felt for his wife, long dead after twenty-two years of marriage, or his childhood in Sidon. Maybe he is thinking about the shortage of pliers and extension cords in Guatemala. The price of brackets or tortillas.
But this is the moment. How can she bring it up? Should she cast her love for Guillermo by explaining her unhappiness in sharing a life with an old, unattractive husband? Can she actually blame Samir who she knows might resort to calling her a woman with a fickle morality or, plain and simple, a harlot? Or should she begin apologetically, instead: admit her guilt as something beyond reason and control, plea for release, and accept the fact that she has acted duplicitously and has betrayed her nuptial vows? Should she say that there is something wrong with her, that she has always felt she was born defective and that in actuality she is self-centered, numbed, impulsive?
In the end, she opts for the raw truth, couched in what she feels are the kindest of words, even though she knows as she begins speaking that he will not reward her for this kindness.
“Samir, I am no longer happy sharing a life with you.”
He closes his eyes and gets a pained and sour look on his face, now creviced with moles and deep gullies. There is nothing attractive about him. He pushes down on the footrest of the Barca so that he can sit up properly, a bit hunched over.
“We have been sharing more than a life together, my habibati.” He puts his feet into the leather slippers at the foot of the recliner, even though he will not stand up. He lets out an amused laugh through his thin, discolored lips. “Am I interpreting your words correctly: you want to break your vows, to divorce me?”
Maryam is disgusted by his mocking tone, but tries not to wrangle with him. “I want to leave you. I don’t make you happy.” She wants to put all the blame, with dignity, on her own shoulders, but then backtracks. “We can’t give one another what we need anymore. You don’t please me. And I can’t give you what you need.”
“And what is it that you think I need, young lady?”
Maryam can feel that she is on the verge of losing control, but tries to stay on course. Under no circumstances can she refer to any of his shortcomings, which he is sure not to acknowledge, or digress to his level of sarcasm. “What you have always needed: a woman to admire you, to comfort you, to mirror your being.”
Samir lets out a little laugh that is beyond scorn. “You have never mirrored my being, habibati. When we first married, you were a sweet pretty thing, simpleminded, to be sure — like a strip of plain, shiny copper. I assumed that your heart had never opened itself to any man, but I thought because of the respect I held for your father, and the respect you had for me, that you would be faithful. This is all I wanted.”