Hoda and Jake Page 17

  “What did they say, meningitis?” Abdul went on. Jake nodded.

  “Very possible. The womb is a safe place, by Allah’s design. But once the water breaks, it can be a foul place: the atmosphere, even here as we sit, can be filled with countless microorganisms. And the dark, moist world of the birth canal is a fine place if that is your species. The baby could have contracted the disease—whichever one it is—right there. That’s one reason we doctors keep a census of what’s going around.”

  Jake realized first what Abdul was saying, but also another reason the doctor pulled him from the women: this explanation was man-to-man, sparing his precious daughter from having to explain to her husband. It’s wasn’t lady-like. Jake didn’t know for sure if that was a real reason, but it almost made him smile: crazy Arabs. How very nineteenth century.

  They’d finished eating, made some small talk, at which Jake was unusually inept. Looking around the room, Abdul checked his watch.

  “They rushed the blood work,” he said. “They might be ready to change the drug.”

  “Samaritan does its lab work on-site?” Jake asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Abdul said. “It’s a good hospital. Do you think Habiba would work at a second-rate one?”

  “Habiba? Dr. Noamany?”

  “Yes. I’ve known her since she was a little girl. She and Hoda went to private school together. She was an outstanding student. Nearly as good as Hoda.”

  Jake remembered Hoda saying it was the other way around—in nearly the exact same words. He kept his smile to himself. Then he remembered what this day was about, and wondered why he had any kind of smile, inside or out.

  Dr. Hassan paid the bill, and they drove back to Samaritan, where they found the women still standing vigil. Dr. Noamany was with them.

  “Salaam alaikum,” she greeted Dr. Hassan, nodding at Jake.

  “Alaikum salaam,” said Abdul. “Any news?”

  “Yes. We were right. Meningitis. It’s good that we acted quickly. I had a patient, a five-year-old, who lost his hearing not long ago.” Jake felt an electric charge surge through him, the kind he got when danger lurked. He quickly calmed it down.

  “We’ve got the strain,” Noamany said, and named it for the two physicians. “So we’re switching to something specific for it.” And she named the antibiotic, again gibberish to Jake’s untrained ear.

  “Now what?” Jake asked. He couldn’t resist.

  “Now, we wait,” Habiba Noamany said.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Jake asked.

  Noamany didn’t blink. In an even voice, she said, “She could die.”

  Jake got another jolt, and it must have showed.

  “I think,” said Dr. Noamany, “that we were in time. The signs are getting better gradually. If we’ve got everything right, it won’t be long until she’s out of the woods.”

  “How long?”

  “We should be able to make an assessment in four or five hours. Not before then.”

  That would make it sometime in the late evening. Asr, the afternoon prayer, was in the offing. Jake accompanied Dr. Hassan to the chapel for that, then returned the favor of his lunch invitation with another, of a different kind.

  “I have to do something,” Jake said. “If you’ll permit me, I think you might like it.”

  Jake was playing a hunch. When he’d met Hoda, on their first mission together arranged by her Army superiors and Jake’s CIA, she had displayed facility with firearms that impressed Jake mightily. When he asked its source, she’d said her father.

  Excusing themselves from the women, Jake and Abdul Hassan drove about thirty minutes in the doctor’s car to a nondescript building in an industrial park. Jake led the way to the door, where he showed a membership card—he was well-known—and signed his father-in-law in as his guest.

  “Welcome to the Metropolitan Handgun Club,” Jake said, and introduced Dr. Hassan to the range officer. Then, for the next two hours, the two men bonded over guns and shooting, trying out many of the seemingly countless weapons owned by the club.

  Shooting effectively, and in complete safety, requires considerable concentration, and as Jake suspected the range time completely took his mind off his troubles. Or, as he shame-facedly admitted, off little Marwa’s troubles: it wasn’t “all about him” as Hoda liked to remind him. Jake didn’t like it when she did, but that didn’t mean he didn’t realize the truth of it much of the time.

  Though not always. Jake and Hoda might disagree, but they never fought pitched battles. Not once.

  Jake wished he had his own customized Sig-Sauer automatic, but he fired a stock one. And he tried a whole series of old Colt guns like the one he’d used to assassinate four rapists on a Caribbean island not long ago, after he’d caught them in the act.

  Dr. Hassan was more deliberate than Jake, taking his time and using less ammunition. He also preferred the smallbore guns, the 22-calibers. That was the only rifle allowed on the underground range, and the doctor fell for an old Browning automatic 22. Jake liked that gun, too, and had tried to get the club to sell it, but no-go.

  It was a good time. Neither said so, but each knew, and was grateful. They closed the range and stopped at a local café on foot for some tea. Had he not been with Baba, he might have sneaked in a taco or two, but thought better of it; strict halal diners of Islam were careful abut what and where they ate, and Jake was on his best behavior around “The Rents.”

  The men arrived to find the women still on vigil at the hospital, though Marwa had been moved to the pediatric wing, in a private room. Jake was surprised to find Dr. Noamany still on call. She was matter-of-fact and unsmiling, though what she said lifted Jake’s heart.

  “The fever’s broken. Down significantly. She responds to light, sound and touch, which are good signs.” She turned to Hoda. “Would you come with me?”

  Habiba led Hoda to the bedside, and directed Hoda to pick Marwa up. Tenderly, Hoda did, and said something as she rocked her newborn carefully. The two women looked at each other, smiling. Hoda replaced Marwa on the bed, and the two returned to the other three.

  “Marwa knew it was her mother,” Habiba said. “That’s a very good sign. We’ll keep her here a few more hours, but I think it’s safe to say the worst is over. Why don’t you all go home and get some sleep?”

  “Why don’t you go do the same?” Hoda said. Suddenly, spontaneously, the two young physicians engaged, the Egyptian way: cheek-cheek, kiss-kiss. Then Maryam joined the joy. There was babble (to Jake’s ear) in Arabic, and much Alhamdulillah.

  ***

  A month later, Marwa was thriving, by all accounts—objective and otherwise—the most beautiful baby anyone could remember. And there were opinions aplenty to be had, for it was the Aqeeqah, or traditional Arab gathering to celebrate a new arrival. The proud grandparents hosted at their home in Norwood, a suburb of Boston, and their extensive network of Arab-American friends and acquaintances jammed the spacious house.

  By custom, for a baby girl a single sheep was slaughtered ritual fashion by trained butchers, and the meat tenderly cooked and shared among the dishes Jake had come to expect and love. Contrary to what many of his friends and acquaintances thought, the gathering made every effort to make him feel at home and a part. He was, of course, the father, there was that. But there was more. Dr. Hassan had made known his approval of Jake, and the story of Jake’s bravery in the face of physical danger had thrilled more than one enthralled listener in the intervening months. Jake was something of a cause celebre. It was true: the men dreamed of being him, while the women—very secretly—dreamed of being with him. Who knew the wanderings of a heart?

  Jake’s heart didn’t wander. It did expand, though: he’d begun with the gorgeous Muslima who’d capture his heart and won him for Islam, and only lately found his love could expand and grow, reaching to encompass another beauty, the wondrous Marwa. Her eyes, Her cheeks. Her nose. Her lips. Her hair. Her chubby legs. There was nothing that didn’t thrill
him. Unbelievably, she responded to him as well as to her mother, and Jake was able to relieve Hoda when Marwa was, on rare occasions, cranky. For she was a marvelous baby.

  He didn’t get much chance to see Marwa on Aqeeqah, though; as usual in Arab gatherings, men were with men and women with women, and small children with the women. Jake did get a chance to discuss politics in the Middle East, and elsewhere, and held his own with the men, many of whom were educated, and some of whom decidedly were not. It was an eclectic group. Jake’s wide knowledge of things mechanical, electrical, hydraulic and pyrotechnic made him in demand as a conversation partner at such gatherings. He was slowly beginning to integrate, no less so than when the men prayed and Jake joined in, in Arabic. By rote, but still.

  It was a spectacular gathering, but all such things had to end. While the women cleaned up and the men made their goodbyes, Jake and Hoda came together to bid farewell. Marwa was long since down for most of the night.

  Hours later, Marwa roused her exhausted parents on the bed next to her crib, letting them know her needs were going unmet.

  “Honestly,” Hoda said in mock despair, “you are the hungriest baby ever born!”

  “Lucky for her you’re the mother with the most milk,” Jake said.

  “James Holman!” Hoda hissed, picking Marwa up and sitting on the bed to tend to her baby. She looked tenderly first at Marwa, then across at her husband with equal tenderness. Her free hand wandered.

  Pretty soon Marwa wandered herself, no longer interested in the offered bounty. But Jake was. Hoda put Marwa carefully back in the crib, covering her. Then she returned to her own warm spot on the bed. She held out her arms, and the other love of her life gladly slid over and into them.

  Hoda’s Crisis

  At one year, Marwa Johnsen Holman’s life was perfect in every way. She had parents who doted on her, both available every day, and she responded by thriving developmentally. Her father, Jake, made her his queen, supplanting in a way his sublime wife, Hoda—much to her secret delight and mirth, for she knew Jake’s devotion diminished his toward her not at all. Marwa scampered to and fro in the condo, wreaking havoc by handling everything in her ever-increasing focus. Incapable of putting what she had retrieved down by conventional means, Marwa simply dropped or threw it—often as not repeatedly. Hoda was saved from distraction only by the accidental discovery of Tupperware as a favorite toy. She kept all hers in a cupboard under the sink board, the only one not sealed with child-proof locks. Marwa discovered the treasures within, and spent hours sitting inside, throwing things out and then, eventually, throwing them back in, flailing each as she went.

  Jake played peek-a-boo with Marwa endlessly. His energy never seemed to drain. Neither did his willingness to change, feed, or put Marwa down for a nap. Like as not he slept next to her, on the bed, an arm curled around her to keep her close. Marwa quickly came to prefer this, and Jake sometimes regretted the precedent when he needed her in the crib for some other duty on his part.

  It was an idyll: occasional weekends with Hoda’s parents, who of course doted on Marwa like their own; and routine duties at their respective work, Hoda in her final psychiatry residency at Johns Hopkins and Jake in CIA analysis work which kept him out of the field and home. He was more than just fine with that.

  It was all too perfect. And given their work, it all had to come crashing down.

  When Jake fell in love with Hoda, she was a major in the US Army Intelligence Corps. Fresh from medical school at Tufts, she was destined for a “utilization tour” with the Medical Corps branch when Intelligence discovered her Arabic language skills, acquired as the daughter of an Egyptian-American doctor and his wife, though Hoda was American-born and educated.

  Through Jake’s job at the Central Intelligence Agency, he had convinced his boss, Assistant Director of Operations John Robinson, to pull strings and acquire Hoda for her language and intelligence skills interrogating subjects, as well as a chance for her to do a psychiatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she had been accepted. Though the Department of the Army was furious, Congressional pressure had pushed the switch through. Except.

  Except that Major Abdelal, as she then was, had to retain her commission in the Army Reserve, and transfer from Intelligence to Medical Corps. She agreed, knowing that like Jake, who was also a Reservist, she would have to do two weeks of active duty a year, and drill once a month, which for her consisted of medical office hours.

  That was all well and fine, and her life with Jake proceeded apace. But as they say in the armed services and elsewhere, “the Big Wheel may grind slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine.” The Army’s Big Wheel found Hoda almost exactly on Marwa’s first birthday. And it was not kind.

  Jake found out from his boss, John Robinson. Sitting in Robinson’s office, the senior man asked about Jake’s life lately, and received the expected answer, that it as halcyon. Jake thoroughly expected the perfection to end, that he would be called for a field mission. What Robinson told him was anything but that—and struck Jake numb with terror.

  “It’s not you, Jake. It’s Hoda. The Army’s getting payback for when we stole her, and there’s nothing I can do about it. They did their homework this time, and the letter from her detailer’s in the mail. She should get it today.”

  Jake was sitting bolt upright, unable to control himself despite long years of practice. “What’s it say?” he asked, calm in that detail, at least.

  “It’s Afghanistan,” Robinson said evenly. “She’s being assigned as a staff psychiatrist in the Tenth Mountain Division. They’re beefing up their in-country services, to keep from having to rotate personnel stateside.”

  So that was that. Robinson wouldn’t have had Jake in here if there wasn’t the need to keep him, Jake, from trying something to prevent this. “How long?” Jake asked.

  “Don’t know for sure,” Robinson replied. “But the usual tour is a year, assuming she’s not extended.”

  “You’re joking,” Jake said. But he knew Robinson was not, and his whole being, his world, began to shimmer and crumble. He had an idea. “Her residency’s not even over.”

  “They’re giving her an early out on that. Johns Hopkins is notifying her today, at her work. She’s also been promoted to oh-five.”

  Jake knew that was coming; her year group was due to make lieutenant colonel about now.

  Jake was emotionally pole-axed, and the thought occurred to him, in a flash of resentment, that he never used to be vulnerable to such attacks before he met Hoda. Then in the next second, he chastised himself; Hoda was his whole world. Looking back, from the moment he had seen her in this very office the rest of his life was, and could only be, inevitably different. He was in love. And he wouldn’t trade that for anything.

  “Jake?”

  “Yes?”

  “Hoda needs you. Marwa, too, let’s not forget. You’re the home front now. That we do control. I control. And you will be here as an analyst while she’s gone. No field work for you, no late nights, no road trips. I’ll keep you and Marwa together. But you cannot let Hoda down. I know this will be difficult—”

  Jake snorted. “You think?” Jake said.

  Robinson’s face hardened, as it could. He and Jake were close, but there was never any doubt in either’s mind who worked for whom. “Jake, I brought you in here because I thought this might happen. You’re a passionate man, and this is a passionate time. But you needed advance warning, to get yourself squared away and meet this thing. Get ahead of it. And as an older man to a younger one—one I frankly like—you had better do that. Understand?”

  Discipline kicked in. “Yes, sir,” Jake said softly.

  “Now, go forth and play dumb until you hear from Hoda. Then have your plan in place. You have a role to play. I know it’s not a natural one for a man like you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Failure is not an option. Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  Robinson picked up a packet of papers on his desk, shuffli
ng them. It was Jake’s dismissal. Jake Holman rose and left Robinson’s office, heading out past the dragon who was Robison’s admin and toward the elevator that took him to his own tiny office downstairs in the massive CIA headquarters. There he had a long, hard think on both what Robinson had said, and the specifics of what his life would be like in the coming months. And Hoda’s too. It disturbed him.

  ***

  Hoda Abdelal stared at the document, disbelieving. No! No, it couldn’t be! Not that! Not when everything was so perfect. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. That only made things worse. But she couldn’t stop them. She rose, closed the door to her office, and began to cry in earnest. It was the only thing that made sense, at least for a few minutes.

  But it didn’t last very long. Hoda was strong, and regained control. Wiping her face, she quickly checked it in her compact. She wore no makeup, as devout Muslim women often do not, but that didn’t mean appearance wasn’t important. There was a spot or two on her hijab, her head scarf. They would quickly dry.

  Afghanistan! The Tenth Mountain Division! Who thought this up? Hoda spoke Arabic, not Pashtun or the other dialects common in Afghanistan, though she was of course Muslim, the majority faith. And she had heard about the trials of other women, a distinct Army minority in a world dominated by men—men separated from everything feminine for months on end. She remembered a story about a female helicopter pilot who, whenever she landed at forward bases, attracted a crowd in the operations room just to hear a female’s voice on the radio. That was insane!

  Then the psychiatrist in her answered: no, it wasn’t. It was normal, or as normal as could be expected in the insanity of war.

  She looked at the report date: ten days. There was so much to do! Including new devices for all her uniforms, she knew, for official news of her promotion to lieutenant colonel had come through. Well, at least the extra money for that, and the combat and subsistence pay, would come in handy for Marwa and Jake.