“Always good advice,” Rachel responded. “Sounds like something my mother would say.” Again Ariana steeled herself for a conversation about religion that could very well head in the wrong direction.
“And my mother, too,” Hani added. “She is always telling me to not work so hard, to enjoy life more. Not to mention that she is anxious for more grandchildren. What, twelve is not enough?” He smiled and shook his head.
Ariana breathed a sigh of relief. How different this guy was from Nasim, and Nasir, and just about every other idiotic player she knew. He was like the anti-player.
But Rachel wasn’t done. “Ariana and I were just talking the other day about kids, weren’t we, Ariana?”
“We were?” Ariana’s words came out in a croak. She twisted in her chair to search for the waiter.
“Ariana would be great with kids. She’s just so … you know, so damn enthusiastic.”
Why couldn’t the woman shut up already? What was the matter with her? This was just about the most Ariana had heard coming from her mouth since they had met in Dubai four days before.
“See that little guy over there?” Rachel continued, pointing to a dark-haired boy of about four years old who was chatting away nonstop while his father remained prone under a striped umbrella, his eyes half-closed. “That would be Ariana’s kid, right?” She turned to Hani. “Am I right?”
Hani’s response was interrupted by the buzzing of his phone against the glass tabletop. “Please excuse me for a minute,” he said as he stood and walked away to take the call.
“Bloody hell!” Ariana threw her arms in the air. “What was that all about?”
“Oh, come on. You know you’re attracted to him.”
“I am not!”
“I think you are.”
“He’s too short!”
“What do you want? He’s just your height. Tall enough.”
“And he’s too young.”
“Give me a break. You have no idea how old the man is.”
“Well, he probably still lives with his mother. And you know how that goes.”
“Come on. You said yourself you wished you knew more men like him.”
“I was just talking.”
“I saw the way your eyes followed him just now as he left the table.”
“But I don’t know anything about the guy.”
“He’s not married. He wants kids. He has a job.” Rachel ticked off the facts on her fingers, as if tallying a score.
“Oh, bugger off, Rachel. That’s not knowing a person.”
“So find out more. You seem to be pretty good at that.”
The conversation came to a halt as Hani returned to the table. “Please, you will have to excuse me,” he said. “That was Miza, calling from the hospital.”
“Hospital? Is she all right?” Ariana stood. “Can I do anything?”
“No, no. It is not her. It is her husband. He had an accident. That is why she is there, at the hospital. But she needs my help. I must go get her now.”
Ariana watched as he hurried toward the door leading to the lobby, his broad shoulders and firm triceps straining the sleeves of his shirt.
“Sit,” said Rachel, “before your eyes bug out of your head and your tongue falls out of your mouth.”
13
“Damn it, Ariana!” Rachel grabbed her throbbing toe and hopped around the suitcase lying wide open in the middle of the floor, its contents spilling out as if the bag had been blown up by suspicious TSA agents. A glance at the other bed showed it vacated, the smooth covers in sharp contrast to the twisted sheets and tossed pillows of her own bed. Yellow light seeped through the cracks around the closed bathroom door, and from inside came the sound of running water.
“I’ll be right out!”
Rachel sighed and pulled on her khakis and T-shirt and vest.
“Good morning!” Ariana chirped from the bathroom doorway as she rubbed her wet hair with a towel. “Did you sleep well?”
Rachel didn’t answer. She never slept well. And last night was no different, only made slightly worse by the fact that Ariana had made the unilateral decision to move in with her. “It’ll be fun! Sort of like a mini slumber party!” she’d claimed as she handed over her own key card to Miza. Of course Rachel couldn’t object. The poor Zanzibari woman had arrived back at the hotel looking so distraught—her hands shaking, her eyes red and swollen from crying—that not to take pity on her would have seemed totally heartless.
She and Ariana had moved to the hotel bar after the breeze at the pool turned into a fierce wind, taking menus and towels and beach umbrellas and anything else that wasn’t nailed down along with it as it swept across the patio. At the entry to the dark lounge they were greeted by a sign: DANCING STRICTLY PROHIBITED. Rachel resisted the urge to break into a little jig, just to see what would happen. It wasn’t until they were seated at a corner banquette that she realized they were the only two women in the bar, surrounded by robed men sitting alone or in pairs, sipping drinks as their eyes remained fixed on a television mounted high on the wall, where MTV’s finest twerked and grinded their half-naked bodies across the screen.
It was there that Hani found them. And before he could even explain what was going on, Ariana had given up her room.
Now Rachel checked the time and sighed out loud. She took the toothbrush from her backpack and brushed in the sink by the minibar, then headed out to find coffee.
In the breakfast room she filled a mug with three shots of espresso from the machine, then dug the phone from her backpack and began to type.
Maggie: Having a bitch of a time finding what I need. Fixer is worthless. Caught her looking at travel brochures. WTF? Can’t we do any better than this? I’d be better off on my own. Tempted.
“Well, come on. What are you waiting for?” Ariana stood before her, her shiny hair cascading in loose curls over her shoulders, her lipstick and handbag a matching salmon. “That’s ours.” She pointed and led Rachel toward a white 4x4 idling in the driveway.
“My friends!” The driver turned from the rear-view mirror to face the women sliding into the back seat behind him. “Welcome back to my car.”
Rachel narrowed her eyes at Ariana.
“What?” she whispered defensively. “It was Hani who arranged the ride, with the hotel. How was I supposed to know?”
Adil beamed at them from the front seat. “Today? Today we visit the Bedu, inshallah. God willing.”
“No inshallah!” Rachel snapped back. “This has to happen today.”
“Calm down!” Ariana patted her arm. “It’s just a saying. A habit.”
“It is okay, my friends,” Adil said as he turned the key in the ignition. “They are waiting for us. In their home in the desert.”
“What? More dune bashing?” Rachel turned to Ariana. “Please tell me this isn’t happening.”
“Actually?” Adil said. “No dune bashing today.”
“That’s a relief.”
“No sand today. Maybe just a little.”
Rachel sighed and pulled the seatbelt across her torso.
In truth, Adil had been accurate. The dirt road leading from the highway wasn’t too bad. They drove across the sand and past a barbed-wire pen holding a pair of raggedy camels with tightly rolled blankets strapped onto their single humps, until the car came to a stop outside a metal gate.
A blast of hot air greeted them when they opened the car doors. “Come, my friends,” Adil urged. “It will be cool inside. The house? It is made of palm,” he explained as they followed him through a small courtyard. “So that the breezes can come through.”
“What breeze?” Rachel wiped the dampness from her cheeks. And things seemed no better on the other side of the low doorway. Adil removed his sandals and gestured for Rachel and Ariana to do the same. He nodded respectfully to the old woman in a long blue dress who sat kneeling next to a pillar in the center of the square room, her fingers flying as she knotted colored threads into a flat, broad band. Sh
e, in turn, pointed with her chin to one of the dozen rugs covering the sand below, each topped with a silver tray holding cups, a plastic bowl, and a covered dish.
“What is this place?” Rachel whispered to Ariana. “I’m not here for a fucking tea party you know.”
“Shhh.” Ariana took Rachel’s elbow and turned her away from Adil and the woman. “Don’t worry. Just look at all these beautiful things. We’ll get you what you need. I promise.” She gestured with her arm around the stuffy hut, its corners piled high with shiny pillows, its walls sagging with bright fabrics and straw bags and beaded jewelry.
“And now?” Adil called out to them. “First we sit. For coffee.” He smoothed his pale yellow dishdasha and lowered his knees to the floor, carefully tucking his feet underneath him. Slivers of sunlight slipped through the palm branches above, landing on his long sleeves in thin white stripes. Ariana kneeled down across from him and patted the floor beside her. Rachel dropped down with a groan.
Adil dipped his fingertips into the water in the plastic bowl and passed it to Rachel, then uncovered the silver dish and offered dates.
“Thanks. Not hungry.” She shook her head.
“Please,” he urged. “It is a custom.”
Rachel’s hand emerged from the dish with two brown lumps stuck together like glue.
“Actually? At first you should only take one date. But that is okay.” He then passed the dish to Ariana, who took care to extract only one. The two women watched as Adil deftly pinched the seed from the center of the sticky fruit and popped the flesh into his mouth. He turned back to Rachel. “Now you must take one more. Usually it is customary to take an odd number, like one or three. But for women it is considered rude to take more than three.”
Next he poured a thick black brew into three tiny cups, the smell of cardamom rising with the steam. Rachel threw back the coffee in one shot, anxious to get up for a closer look at the woman and her wares, to ask where the people who designed and wove and stitched all this stuff were. But no sooner had she swallowed than the cup was filled again.
“Let me tell you about how we drink our coffee,” Adil offered. “Usually? We only fill the cup halfway. This is an invitation to drink slowly, and enjoy your time visiting. If the cup is full to the top, it means that the heart of the host is full of hate toward the one visiting, and that they should drink their coffee and leave.”
Again Rachel swallowed and rested her cup on the rug. Again Adil picked up the thermos.
“No, I’m good,” she protested, the sweat rolling down the front of her chest.
“Actually?” he said as he continued to pour. “When you are finished, you must signal to your host that you are done by moving your cup, like this.” He shook his cup back and forth, as if readying a pair of dice for a throw.
Rachel drained the cup and shook it wildly at Adil, then stood and stretched, her legs tingling from the lack of circulation. She circled the hut in her socks, picking at the piles of goods on display until she caught sight of the professionally printed price tags attached with a plastic fastener. Shit.
She turned to see a group entering through the doorway, their T-shirts damp with perspiration and their voices ringing with laughter. A tour guide followed behind, greeting the old woman with a familiar smile.
“Look, Rachel! Aren’t these adorable?” Across the room Ariana was crouched over a row of straw bowls resting by the old woman’s side. She held out a fistful of bracelets and key chains made from the string in the old woman’s hands. “Good gifts for the nieces,” she said as she continued to comb through the bowls. “Would you like me to buy you one? Oh, and here, Rachel, here are your masks!”
At the bottom of a bowl sat a pair of flimsy satin masks like the one the old woman in the souk had worn only smaller, plain black, nothing more than the kind of blindfold you’d find in one of those sex shops in the Village. “Photo?” Ariana pleaded eagerly to the old woman, who nodded and slipped on the mask. “Come on, Rachel, here’s your chance.”
“It is okay,” Adil urged from behind. “She will allow this, with the mask on, for the tourists.”
Rachel sighed and lifted the viewfinder toward her eye. As she pressed the shutter, the old woman shot her a two-fingered peace sign. Rachel could only imagine how many times that exact pose showed up in a batch of “My Omani Vacation” snapshots.
Outside the heat seemed even worse than before. Yet another group of tourists had gathered, haggling with a tall skinny man over the cost of a camel ride.
“I’m so sorry. I truly thought we might have been in luck with that place,” Ariana said as they headed back to the car. “But as long as we’re here we really should do a camel ride, shouldn’t we, Rachel?” Ariana approached the pen, snapping photos with her phone as she walked.
Rachel shook her head.
“Come on, it’ll be fun!”
“Absolutely not,” Rachel growled back. One of the camels stood stock still under the sun, his front legs manacled together by a thick metal chain. The other, resting on the dirt with his long legs bent under him as if he were a collapsible table, let out a loud moan as Ariana neared.
“I’ve never heard them make a noise quite like that!” Ariana laughed. “What do you say, Rachel? Let’s at least get some camel selfies.”
“Jesus,” Rachel muttered to herself. “Doesn’t she ever know when to stop?” She stood and watched with Adil as Ariana cocked her head and pursed her lips at the phone she held high on a stick in the air, the standing beast obliging her by lowering its own head toward her shoulder.
“Seriously, Adil,” Rachel pleaded, “do you have any clue about where the real artists are? The ones who do the silver, who make the cloths and blankets? Anything?” Rachel could feel her spirits plunging to a new low, and sinking along with them any hint of energy and enthusiasm she’d managed to drum up to get this damn job done.
Adil seemed to be pondering her question, his brow furrowing into a deep V. “Actually, my friend?” he finally answered. “If you are looking for the art, I can take you somewhere where the most beautiful thing in the world has been made. Yes.”
“And what would that be?” Rachel asked, her faith in Adil only slightly greater than her faith in Ariana.
“It is okay,” Adil assured her. “We will go.”
They drove in silence, Adil concentrating on the road and Ariana busy on her phone, no doubt sharing her stupid camel selfies with the rest of the world.
Rachel had almost nodded off when she was suddenly bounced up into the air and back down again, as if she’d just dropped over the apex of a roller coaster. The 4x4 began to vibrate in an uneven rumble as the tires passed over rock and stone.
Ariana gripped the looped strap above the window beside her and shot an apologetic look toward Rachel, whose teeth had begun to clatter like one of those wind-up toys as the road became even bumpier.
“It is okay.” Adil grinned into the rear-view. “It is only until the other road.”
“How far?” Rachel asked, her voice coming out in a stutter.
“In fact, it is about seven kilometers.”
Rachel did the math. Over four miles. She closed her eyes as Adil steered around a steep curve, but still couldn’t keep herself from seeing the cartoon image of the four wheels clinging to the road as the rest of the car swung out over the deep ravine below. Fuck this, she thought, reaching for the water bottle that was rolling endlessly around under the seat. It was clearly time to call it quits, pack up her camera, and go. Which she would do as soon as they got back to the hotel. She’d book the first flight out. It had been a rookie mistake to let herself get talked into this stupid assignment in the first place. What had she been thinking? In this nowhere of a place where nothing ever happened, this fantasyland of relentlessly cheery people who got their kicks from driving cars where no car was meant to be driven. And with Ariana, who was no more of a fixer than that groaning camel back there in the desert. No. She would go home. And she’d get a job.
A normal job. Any job. And she would just keep on keeping on, as her mother always said.
They continued straight up the twisting road with no end in sight, Rachel’s resolve stiffening with every gut-churning turn. A few minutes after the car leveled out, they came to a stop.
“We are here.” Adil said no more as Rachel tumbled out the door, her legs still vibrating from the long, rocky journey up. And for a moment, what she saw before her literally took her breath away. She picked her way cautiously across a flat rock surface that seemed to lead to nowhere, until she stood a mere foot away from the rim and looked down sheer cliffs plunging straight into the valley below. It was the top of the world.
Rachel grabbed for her camera.
“We call it the Omani Grand Canyon.” Adil continued to talk as Rachel’s shutter began to click. “And the mountain, it is called Jebel Shams. The highest mountain in our country. ‘The Mountain of the Sun’, as it is the first to greet it in the morning and the last to say goodnight.”
Rachel’s shutter clicked again and again, over and over. She stood at the very edge of the abyss with her camera to her face, capturing the spectacle from every angle, the light gifting her with endless variations on a glorious theme as the shadows from the clouds drifted gracefully across the peaks. It was as if her eye had been taken over by another, very different type of photographer, she thought as she zoomed in on the goats in the distance grazing blissfully among the tiny terraced villages dotting the mountainsides. She’d never been into taking shots like this before. “Picture postcards” was how she’d always written off landscape photography. But this place practically throbbed with a vibe that she just couldn’t seem to resist.
Perhaps, it occurred to her as she stood in the embrace of the soft breeze drifting up from the gorge below, she’d been wrong. It was possible, she thought, hurrying to get in the last shots before the mountain would bid goodnight to the sun, that she’d spent so much time focusing on the ugly that she had never allowed the beautiful to find its way through her lens.