“Was he right?”
“Absolutely. Water’s too bloody cold in Ireland. No, I’m going to fly instead. I need to be up in the air. But first I need the little plane.” They laughed, but Thea didn’t much feel like laughing. Bewildered and overwhelmed by the turn she had taken with Sachiv, she couldn’t help blurting, “Kim, this thing with Sach—”
“Isn’t a thing. That’s how you have to think. He’s married. A no-go area, period.”
“Nothing’s that simple, is it?”
“Come on, Thea. He’s cute, no denying, but seriously? Three kids? You don’t want to get in the middle of that.”
Disaster crept up in an insidious manner. It tapped her on the shoulder, but when she turned—no one there. A flutter of nausea. There. Gone. Had it been there? They were in a line for gasoline. Sitting on some of the wealthiest oil reserves in the world, they were in a long line to buy gas on their way to a St. Patrick’s Day party at the house of a German expatriate. Thea thought she felt sick, and dread swept through her as she imagined her evening spoiled: a night spent on the tiles—the bathroom tiles. It passed. They reached the forecourt of the gas station, edging ever closer to the pump. Reggie fiddled with the radio, from the dolorous voice of a newsreader to cheerful Arab tunes and back again.
By the time they drove out with a full tank, there was no doubt: Thea did feel sick. Love, probably. Yes, that was it. Her body was all in a pother.
And it continued to be so at the party, the nausea sliding around inside her like an oil slick until she was eventually forced to retreat to a bedroom, in the stranger’s house, where she lay down among a pile of coats. Kim came to check on her. She had probably eaten something, they agreed. Probably a dose of Baghdad belly. They’d been lucky so far. In almost three months neither of them had got sick. It struck Thea as strange that she didn’t feel like throwing up; that delight probably lay ahead. When Reggie brought her a glass of whiskey, saying it would settle her stomach, she sipped it, though it was the last thing she felt like, and she did improve enough to join the party, which brought such relief—she was not sick, after all—that she ended up dancing for hours.
In the middle of a small living room, in a slightly shabby house, Reggie took center-stage, swinging about with his hands over his head, and Thea jived away with him, elbowing Germans and Swiss and Scottish engineers out of the way, giddy with relief. Not sick, after all.
The next morning, when they stepped into their office building, the woman who swept the floor, already hunkered down, caught Thea’s eye and let out a little cry, then scurried away along the corridor.
When Alia came in behind them, the old woman ranted at her.
“What’s she saying?” Thea asked, one foot on the bottom step. “She seemed to take fright when she saw me.”
Alia spoke to the woman, glanced at Thea, and went on up, saying, “Don’t worry. She is . . . a little crazy.”
“No, but, please. Tell me what she said. Have I offended her in some way?”
“No.” Alia stopped. “Not at all. Nothing like that.”
“What then?” asked Kim, behind her.
“She. . . . It’s nothing.”
“It’s clearly something. She ran away as if I was about to kick her.”
Her hand on the banister, Alia glanced from one to the other. “She saw a shadow, that’s all. Like a . . .”
“Ghost?”
“Some would call it jinn.”
Kim looked nonplussed. “She saw a jinn on Thea?”
“Really, it means nothing.”
It meant something. Thea had no sooner sat behind her typewriter than the nausea returned, along with a withering weakness. As the morning went on, she could barely hold herself upright, as if her inner frame had stepped outside her body and gone on a break, leaving her languishing at the desk. Perhaps that was what the old woman had seen—her skeleton taking flight. She hesitated to leave the office: she had only twenty sick days available and those were best saved for whatever nasty surprises the Iraqi summer might deliver. But after several hours of encroaching misery, she conceded defeat and allowed Reggie to drive her back to the hotel.
There, time and days blurred into one immutable image: the dim bedroom, the tossed sheets, loneliness from early morning until mid-afternoon, and long nights. Very long nights.
At some point she had started vomiting—signs of food poisoning at last, or a stomach virus, something that would clean itself out. . . . Except for this other thing—the acute listlessness. And worse than that, worse even than being unable to eat, she was unable to drink. No matter what she ordered from room service—tea, water, juice—she could not swallow it because her stomach didn’t want it. Desperate to get well, she became the midnight prankster, calling room service several times a night, ordering whatever seemed palatable, and when it came, so did the inevitable letdown: she could not eat. Nonetheless, the menu obsessed her. Food would make her better. This weakness, this jelly-limbed sensation, was the result of having taken no sustenance, so she would look at the menu, day and night, and call the kitchens, asking for chicken and ice cream, salads and cake, yoghurt and toast. . . . In the small hours of morning, the friendly old waiter from Kirkuk would arrive with a veritable cornucopia, leave the tray on the table and take another away. Ever hopeful, Thea would lift the tin lid and stare at the meal, disenfranchised from her own appetite, unable to bargain with it. If she did not eat soon, her health would be dangerously compromised, but more important than that, she needed to drink.
Coke. That was the one drink she craved. She asked for it, repeatedly. “No Coke, madam. Because of
