“What?”
“They never say a word. They don’t moan. They don’t call your name. You never know when they’re finished.”
“Why?” asked Jane. “Why are they so quiet?”
“I think it is because they are ashamed. Arab men are very clean, you see. They get it from the Koran, which goes on and on about how to wash yourself. And maybe they think sex with women is dirty.”
“Dirty?”
“Yes. Because as soon as they are done, they go wash themselves.”
“They do?” Jane was more astonished with every word of the conversation.
“Yes.”
“And what about, you know, before…?”
“Foreplay?” volunteered Solange. “They’ve never heard of it. It doesn’t even occur to them.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No,” said Solange.
“Well, then, excuse me for asking this, but why does any woman in her right mind take an Arab for a lover? It doesn’t sound like much fun.”
Solange smiled. It was the look of secret warmth and pleasure that cats have when they are purring.
“There are a few Arab men who are different,” said Solange.
“And what are they like?”
“Aaah, my dear,” said Solange. “How can I tell you? They are God’s apology for the shortcomings of all the rest. They are like men and women at once. Hard and soft, strong bodies and gentle hands. They have dark eyes the color of the sky on a night when there is no moon. And they are tireless. They will sleep all day to have energy for the night.”
Solange closed her eyes, and her voice trailed off. She is thinking of last night, Jane thought. For the first time she could remember, she felt a touch of envy for another woman.
The food arrived. The two women were both ravenous. Jane, normally a light and dainty eater, found that she was picking the white grapes off the sole with her fingers and dropping them, one by one, in her mouth. Solange devoured the lobster, a morsel at a time, cracking each claw, extracting the meat delicately with her fork, dipping it in a silver cup of clarified butter. The waiter tied a large red napkin around her neck to protect the silk dress, which only made her look more exotic and abandoned.
“Do you know what bothers me about Arab men?” said Jane. “They are crazy about sex, but they are afraid of women.”
“It is possible,” said Solange. She was sucking on one of the thin spiny legs of the lobster.
“I was thinking about it the other day,” said Jane. “I was watching some men on Hamra Street who were swooning over a Western woman. She was wearing a fitted blouse and a tight dress. I think she was an airline stewardess. But it was the longing on the faces of the men that frightened me.”
“Why?” said Solange. She had put down the lobster and was patting her mouth with her napkin.
“Because I thought to myself: This is what the Arabs want from us. From the West, I mean. They want to have sex with us. That’s why they are so eager for the modern world. Smoking our Marlboros and drinking our whisky. Because they think they’ll have more sex that way.”
“They are right,” said Solange. “They probably will.”
“Yes. But what happens when Arab culture becomes modern enough that the women have more sex, too? Or at least begin to think about it. I’m not sure that Arab men will be able to handle that part of modern life very well, because they’re so afraid of women to begin with. What will happen then?”
“They will go the other way,” said Solange.
“What do you mean?”
“Back into the dark ages,” said Madame Jezzine. “The Arabs will embrace just enough of the modern world to become terrified by it, and then they’ll run the other way.”
Jane finished the last bites of her sole. The busboy arrived from nowhere and cleared away the dishes. Solange offered Jane a cigarette. She took it and inhaled deeply and pleasurably.
“Tell me about your husband,” said Solange.
“Oh my goodness,” said Jane. “What can I tell you? It will sound so sentimental. He is a good man. A strong man. He loves his work. He adores the Middle East, but he also loves his family.”
What am I saying? thought Jane. Am I going too far?
“And do you think,” asked Madame Jezzine delicately, “that your husband has ever had an affair?”
Jane put her hand to her forehead. She had said too much. She had drunk too much wine. She had allowed the conversation to stray into the forbidden zone.
“No,” said Jane brightly, raising her head and smiling. “I don’t think that he ever has.”
“Lucky girl,” said Solange Jezzine. “Lucky girl.”
Jane excused herself and went to the bathroom. She tidied herself up, applied new lipstick, brushed her hair, and returned to the table. When she got back, Solange had gone. Jane peered down the room and saw that she was seated in one of the other booths, talking to a handsome Frenchman. Though the Frenchman was seated across from a younger blonde, he had his arm around Madame Jezzine.
Solange returned in a few minutes. They talked some more, about less exotic topics, and eventually drank their coffee and paid the bill. Solange insisted that they should meet again in several weeks.
“Next time,” she said, “I want to hear more about your husband. He is the only attractive man in Beirut.”
Jane felt flattered at this praise of her husband and nodded politely. Later that day, she wondered if there was anything in Madame Jezzine’s manner that should cause concern. Anything that she should mention to her husband. No, she concluded. She is simply a charming, gossipy Lebanese woman who is mad for sex.
27
Beirut; April 1971
As the Deuxieme Bureau crumbled, the CIA station tried to pick up useful pieces of the debris. There were so many angry and frustrated officers that the hardest problem for Hoffman and his colleagues was deciding which of them was worth trying to recruit.
Hoffman ignored most of them. He had a rule about buying members of another intelligence service: Don’t recruit the ten people in the field who are gathering information. Recruit the one man at the top who runs the network. With the surge of walk-ins, Hoffman added another rule: No more Lebanese agents at all, unless they had vital information or access to it.
For Rogers, the top priority was getting access to the Christian militias. He focused his attention on a bright young army officer named Samir Fares. Though only in his mid-thirties, Fares had gained a reputation as one of the Deuxieme Bureau’s ablest intelligence officers. He had the look of an intellectual: balding, smoking a pipe rather than the ubiquitous Lebanese cigarettes. But he was a tough operator. His current assignment, Rogers had learned, was to recruit agents from among the militias and secret political organizations of Christian East Beirut.
Rogers decided to set up a meeting with Fares. He asked Elias Arslani, a retired history professor who had been Fares’s mentor at AUB, to arrange a meeting at his country home in the mountains near Jezzine, in southern Lebanon. Dr. Arslani was the sort of person the American Embassy called on to make discreet introductions: a distinguished academic, a pillar of the Greek Orthodox community, a man who believed in the establishment of a modern and liberal Arab world. He was not an agent, not even an “asset.” He was simply and forthrightly a friend of the United States.
Rogers drove south on a spring day, navigating the hairpin turns that looped up and down the steep hills like thin strands of yarn, till he reached the village of Watani and the professor’s large, red-roofed villa. The professor, known to the villagers as “Sheik Elias,” greeted Rogers at the door. He was a gaunt, erect old man, dressed in the uniform of a Levantine gentleman: a crisp white shirt, a well-tailored gray suit, and a red fez. Standing next to him was Samir Fares, dressed in a baggy seersucker suit and looking more than a little uncomfortable.
