In January, Alexandra was transferred to another unit, to Achilles. My pulse beat faster: was this where her life intersected with Chad’s? I didn’t see any mention of his name. Her family, calls to her mother, e-mails to Nadia, Allie’s own private wrestling over her friendship with Amani. My desire is for my Desideria, she wrote more than once, and then crossed out and recrossed out the sentence.
The men in Tintrey’s operation outnumbered women by about ten to one, so there was constant pressure on Alexandra to date. After her Thanksgiving date with Jerry, she avoided, or tried to avoid, being alone with any of the men after work hours.
Perhaps Father Vicente is right, that all sex outside marriage is sinful and therefore without pleasure. But my roommates both have male lovers and seem to have no unhappiness. They tease me and call me the Ice Queen. As long as I do my job well and give no cause for complaint at work, surely all will be well.
February 2
Amani came to find me this afternoon. She was waiting in the shadows of the building until she found me alone in the supply room.
“A’lia, how have I offended you?” she asked, her beautiful dark eyes full of tears.
“Desideria, mi corazón, how could you ever offend me?” I said. “It is only because of my boss. He ordered me to stay away from you.”
Then she asked what my words meant, not “boss,” my Spanish.
“My heart,” I said. “We call our sisters that. It’s a pet name.”
I was terrified she would think I was making an improper gesture to her.
“My heart?” She smiled and told me the words in Arabic.
And then, somehow, we were holding each other. And my own heart felt at peace.
And then began their trysts, the secret meetings in a bombed-out flat near the art-gallery district.
I took a picture through the broken window to send to Nadia. A date palm, which somehow survived bombs and lack of water. Its crown is level with the roof of the building, and in the summer, Amani tells me, boys climb to the roof and jump to the tree to harvest what fruit the tree still produces. I asked Nadia to make a painting of it, and when she did, I was able to present it to my corazón.
Allie wrote of the pleasure they had in each other’s bodies, the delight in hiding from the bosses, from the soldiers, the drunkenness, the violence of the war itself. But she was always tormenting herself over her sin and wondering if she should confess it to the base priest.
But he is such a soldier, such a military man. How could he counsel me except with more military advice, to find a soldier and have the children I want to share only with my heart’s desire.
And then the inevitable happened: someone started spying on them. Allie found a crude drawing on her desk, heard snickers from her coworkers. Her roommates asked her to move out: they didn’t want to live with a traitor. Mr. Mossbach, the boss, told her no one trusted her because she wasn’t a team player.
“My work is always properly done, perfectly done. Even now when someone on the team sabotages it, I stay late and get it all together. How can you make this accusation?”
He laughed, suggested they have a drink after work, he’d help make it all right for her. A drink led to attempted sex; she fought him off, and then her life became hell indeed.
May 2
The weather here is as hot and difficult as my own poor life. I go, when I can find a way to leave unwatched, to the little room Amani found for us. But it has been many weeks now since I saw her.
May 14
Today, I finally saw my Desideria. She also has had to stay away—too many people are watching her. Someone, maybe even the Americans, warned her cousins that she is keeping “undesirable company.” It is easy for her family to keep her almost as a prisoner after work hours. She says she may have to quit her job, that someone in our office has suggested to her cousins and her mother that she is secretly seeing an American. Only the poverty of her family, their need for the money Tintrey pays her, lets her keep the job for now. “But my noble one, my exalted A’lia, we must be so careful. No one must see us together in the office. Do you understand?”
My joy with her is great. And yet my sorrow is great, too. Why is it wrong for us to meet? Because we are of different religions? Or because we are two women? Jesus, if you are the God of Love, then why is my love to be punished with so much sorrow?
That was the last entry. I flipped through the remaining pages, which were blank. And then I came upon a letter printed in black ink on a thin piece of onionskin. The ink had bled through, making it hard to read.
Dear Nadia,
I hope I may address you by your name without offense. You are the beloved sister of my beloved friend, now dead. When I heard of her death, I made my way to our room. Perhaps she told you of our room, with the date tree outside the window that told us life was still possible.