Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [45]
The doctor had concocted a plan: He’d pick me up on my last day in town, take me for a tour of the hospital where he worked, and then drop me at the airport. If we got caught together, we’d say he had offered me a lift to the airport. The idea that we’d elude the notice of the government was quixotic, even semi-delusional, but it was all we had.
“So what is this friendship association exactly?” I asked him, studying his calling card. It was red, white, blue, and, of course, green. We were sitting over cappuccino in the café off the hotel lobby.
“Some of the American wives here, like my wife,” he said. “They just like to get together. We celebrate, like, the Fourth of July.”
“So your wife is American?” I was intrigued. “How does she get along here?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, she is very happy,” he said. “It’s better here than where she comes from.”
“How so?”
His wife, he explained, had been a local teenager from a hardscrabble background in West Virginia, where he’d been sent for medical training.
“I met her when she was nineteen. We got married when she was twenty-one,” he said. “We live in a farm outside Tripoli. She has freedom here. She has whatever she needs. We have two daughters and a son.
“She’s happy here,” he said again. “She’d be very interested to meet you, if you ever come back to Libya.”
We had finished our coffee. Shall we? We shall.
The car was an aging sedan, rusted and streaked, sagging wearily down on its wheels. With a grunt, the doctor gallantly hoisted my suitcase into the trunk. The car bounced and settled, taken aback by the weight. We arranged ourselves in the front seat, slammed the doors, and began to bake like a pair of hams.
“Let’s see,” he muttered nervously.
He turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. He clenched his jaw and tried again, throwing a little shoulder into it. The car sat, implacable.
“Heh, heh. I don’t know why I brought this car. I have other cars at home,” he said. His embarrassment was palpable. I caught it like a yawn.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him lamely. “I’m just so grateful that you’re trying to help me.”
Finally, with a wheeze, the engine rolled reluctantly over. “There we are,” my host said briskly. We eased out of the hotel parking lot, toward the coast. The entire city was frozen in a swoon of heat. Even the waves seemed exhausted, as if the water had grown heavier, straining to heave themselves onto the sands. Sun glinted evilly on the sea, tinting the Mediterranean a sickly turquoise.
The car rattled, shuddered, then found its gear again, jolting like a child’s toy car sent skittering along a racetrack. The other cars screamed past, wild and fearless, swerving around our limping rattletrap. The windows opened just a crack. My cotton blouse was as wet as a used washcloth; I pushed damp tendrils of hair behind ringing ears.
“Is it far to the hospital?” I ran my eyes over the dashboard in search of a clock.
“No, no, no,” he said. “We have plenty of time.”
“That’s good.”
Then, right out in the middle of the reckless veins of Libyan traffic, the car died. Horns and squeals rang in circles around us; my host managed to force the car onto the shoulder. He hopped out and I did too, drowning for a breath of stultifying air. “I don’t understand this. What’s happening?” he said, and disappeared under the hood. I watched the traffic thunder past. There were cabs.
“You know what,” I leaned into the hood with him. “I think I’m just going to grab a taxi to the airport. It’s getting late, and I’m starting to worry about my flight. Will you be all right here?”
“Yes of course,” he said. “But I’ll take you to the airport! Just wait one minute while I see what’s happened.”
But we were out of time. A slick, black sedan with tinted windows shot onto the shoulder, and all of