Layan welcomed Tamara, introduced her mother, and then, waving vaguely at the children, reeled off four names that Tamara immediately forgot. ‘All your children?’ Tamara said, and Layan nodded.
There was no sign of a man.
This was not at all how Tamara had imagined Layan’s home.
The mother gave Tamara a glass of a lemony drink that was refreshing. ‘Dinner’s almost ready,’ Layan said.
They sat cross-legged on a rug in the main room of the house, with the bowls of food in front of them. Layan had made a vegetable stew called daraba, flavoured with peanut paste; a dish of red beans in a spicy tomato sauce; and a bowl of lemon-tinged rice. The children sat apart from the grown-ups. Everything was delicious and Tamara ate heartily.
‘I know why Dexter gave Karim back to you,’ Layan said, speaking French so that her mother and the children would not understand.
‘Do you?’ Tamara was intrigued: she had not yet worked this out.
‘Dexter had to tell the ambassador, and Nick told me.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said that Karim didn’t like him and wouldn’t give him any information.’
Tamara smiled. So that was it. She was not surprised. She had worked hard at charming Karim. Dexter probably had not troubled to be nice, but had simply taken Karim’s cooperation for granted. ‘So Karim wouldn’t give Dexter the speech.’
‘Karim said there was no such speech.’
‘Well, well.’
‘Dexter told Nick that Karim would talk only to you because he had a thing for white girls.’
‘Dexter will say anything except that he made an error of judgement.’
‘That’s what I think.’
Layan’s mother brought coffee and took the children away, presumably to their bedroom.
Layan said: ‘I want to thank you for being friendly to me. It means a lot.’
‘We talk,’ Tamara said. ‘It’s not a big thing.’
‘My husband left me four years ago,’ Layan said. ‘He took all the money and the car. I had to leave the house because I couldn’t pay the rent. My youngest was a year old.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘The worst of it was that I thought it was my fault, but I couldn’t understand what I’d done wrong. I had kept his house spotless and beautiful. I did everything he wanted in bed, and I gave him four beautiful children. How had I failed?’
‘You didn’t fail.’
‘I know that now. But when it happens . . . you cast about for reasons.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I moved in here with my mother. She was a poor widow living alone. She was pleased to have us, but she couldn’t afford to feed and clothe six people. So I had to get a job.’ She looked directly at Tamara and repeated with emphasis: ‘I had to get a job.’
‘I understand.’
‘It was difficult. I’m educated, I can read and write in English and French and Arabic. But Chadian employers don’t like to hire a divorcee. They think she must be a scarlet woman who will cause trouble. I was at my wits’ end. But my husband was American and he gave me one thing he couldn’t take back: my American citizenship. And so I got a job at the embassy. A good job, with American wages, enough even for me to send the children to school.’
‘That’s a heck of a story,’ said Tamara.
Layan smiled. ‘With a happy ending.’
*
Next day, there was a major sandstorm at Abéché. Such storms sometimes lasted only a few minutes, but this one went on longer. The airport was closed and the press tour of refugee camps was postponed.
The day after, Tamara had a rendezvous with Karim, but she suggested they meet somewhere other than the Lamy Hotel, for fear that people would begin to notice how often they were there together. Karim said they were unlikely to be seen at the Café de Cairo, and gave her an address outside the city centre.
It was a clean but basic coffee house patronized entirely by local people. The chairs were plastic and the tables were covered with a wipe-clean laminate. On the walls were unframed posters of the sights of Egypt: the Nile, the pyramids, the mosque of Muhammad Ali and the necropolis. A waiter in a spotless apron welcomed Tamara effusively and showed her to the corner table at the back where Karim was waiting. As usual he was immaculately dressed in a business suit and an expensive tie.
‘This isn’t the kind of place where I’d expect to see you, my friend,’ Tamara said with a smile as she sat down.