The Cipher
A man in a suit greeted us immediately outside of the gate and pushed us impatiently through an empty “UN official” customs line. “From America,” he told various airport security members near-giddily. (“How do they feel about Obama here?” someone asked at lunch. The former ambassador shook his head a bit and made a strange face: “They loved Bush.” We could not believe it. “Because of how he handled Syria,” he added.)
Only one person actually looked at my passport from the moment I stepped off the plane until the moment I got back on.
*
From around his cigar, an American man spoke to me.
“I don’t know Arabic,” I said and his inscrutable sunglassed face stared back. He lost interest immediately, almost robotically, like he’d mentally deleted a file.
A different American demanded to know where I was from with false joviality, laying back in his chair with his expansive, soft torso on display in a parody of hedonistic laxity. I hated him from the first moment I heard his voice, no matter how hard he tried to spark a conversation. He reminded me too much of a certain client. So I held the hand of who I’d come with and kept asking if he wanted any food, although all I only could summon the wait staff to get it. It was scandal if we tried to fetch our own soda from the refrigerator, in this home we’d slept in the night before. I felt angry at everyone and intimidated by the handsome men at the far table. Only one other woman was in attendance. It was too hot outside of the shade.
“How are you feeling?” the bodyguard asked from his spot in what had become the guard’s alcove, making a move to stand when I came inside.
“Fine, I’m fine.”
“I can come back and get you in the morning,” he offered.
“We’ll see,” I said. “I think he’s better. Did you eat?” I doubted he was allowed.
When we left, I saw more security scattered around the gleaming cars and SUVS downstairs, some with coiled wire laying by their necks and down their collars, and a strange air of eagerness and anxiousness in the daylight. I can imagine the feeling: you want something to happen because your entire being is prepared for it happen, and yet for something to happen would be hell.
When our car pulled out, Mr. X smacked the back like it were the ass of a woman. He crossed the street to escort someone else to their ride, and we waved.
*
“You see, we are not in Hezbollah land now,” Mr. X said proudly the afternoon before as a gold girl in a silver bikini strutted past our table, twice. I tried not to eye her ass but it was very hard. Comparing, always comparing. The pool DJ played Lain pop and young people stumbled out of the water and onto the terrace where they all knew Mr.X—”everyone knows Mr. X,” we were told and shown many times—and the women, with their beautiful hair ruined by chlorine and sun, smiled with self-satisfaction when introduced to us as though they were holding court. The radio promised them “90 seconds to orgasm” in the latest In Style magazine and posters by the highway offered maternity lingerie. “Fuck me, I’m famous” read fliers handed out near the airport door.
*
In international thrillers, in action movies, at least as I remember from the few I’ve watched recently and those I saw growing up, there’s always a scene where the “bad guys” relax with their wives or mistresses or larger harems of female entertainment, useless bodyguards nearby, as “the good guys” spy on them and coordinate their attack. (They used those phrases there, “bad guys” and “good guys,” unironically: “We have to support Mr. X, because he is a good guy.”) I had this thought a year ago, maybe longer, while I was reading an article in Harpers about oil barons or arms dealers or some type of shady cash lenders who met two nameless Russian beauties at a cafe where they (the men) were interviewed by the journalist. It was a thought for the ciphers, for those story-less female bodies that end up in proximity to dangerous power because of how they look, and whose eventual loss is less than a causality, the equivalence of destroyed furniture or perhaps a wrecked Porsche. Of course they don’t always die, but they never have futures. I know I am not like those women. Perversely, there is a shame in not being like them, in being almost poised to play the part but not endowed with whatever sad gifts make it fully possible.
*
“You want to go?” The driver asked as we stood with a self-appointed tour guide jabbing his narrow cane, stuttering about Aphrodite from under his ragged baseball cap. I smiled with gratitude and nodded. The murals nearby were a collage beyond my comprehension: the Seal of Solomon, un-launched missiles, a man who was probably an ayatollah. I’d been told “you should be well-covered.” Yet some women wandered momentarily alone here, head bare, and even asked me to take their picture as they posed against the backdrop. (“Do you like your driver?” Mr. X asked. Craftiness crept over him when we answered in the affirmative. “He’s a bodyguard. Former military.” “But he’s so gentle,” I said, remembering how aware and kind he’d been at the ruins. It was not the right thing to say.)
*
Before midnight the three of us were almost alone. “We’re full,” we protested as more and more food arrived, “Just taste it,” Mr. X said. (“You’re indulgent,” he would tell my guy when I went to the restroom to wash my hands, referring to the meat and cheese I snuck from his plates to feed the scrawny cat. When Mr. X caught me doing it, I asked, “Am I embarrassing you?” Even though we had the huge, open-air space to ourselves, with only a few staff members nearby. With people like that, carriage and etiquette aren’t about being seen. It’s the principle.)
It was the happiest I was for the entire trip, there in the fuzzy dark with the quiet and the hungry cat, staccato lights on the slopes. Mr. X insisted on bringing several of his own sweaters for me in case I got cold there on the mountain. “This one’s blue,” he said in a nod to what I was already wearing.
During our last dinner, he said, “You look very elegant tonight, my madam.”
In many ways, it was an unforgettable country.
