Americana

 

Kareem’s real name was Jackson Smith. He was tall and thin with skin the color of an oak tree’s bark. He had a habit of touching all the time – a shoulder, an arm, my back. It made me uncomfortable, but for awhile I still had hope that the military’s housing arrangement would work out. He seemed nice enough, at first.

Sand and heat were the only two constants in Riyadh. The floors of all the buildings on the military base were marble and almost always coated with a very thin layer of sand. I paid a Filipino man (who makes his living cleaning houses on base) to mop the floors every couple of days, but still the arid grains drifted inexorably through the windows and doors to spread across any flat surface. The air smelled of it, and we breathed it, along with the fumes of the oil refineries on the outskirts of Riyadh. 

I taught for an American university contracted to offer classes on military bases across the world. It was just after the first Gulf War, and the American/Saudi relationship was pretty good, so the university thought it was time to capitalize on the new strong relations between our countries and try to get a visa and send in a woman, alone, there. I volunteered for the job, thinking it would be a great adventure, but you know the cliche: be careful what you wish for. At first it worked out okay, though the logistics were a bit more complicated since women can’t drive or go places on our own. Getting to the base from the airport brought some difficult moments, but the director of all the Education Services Offices (ESO) picked me up at the airport, drove me to the base, and made sure I was settled in. He introduced me to the man who ran the Riyadh ESO. “Call me Kareem,” he said, “I don’t like my real name.”

I had to share a house with Kareem. The Air Force didn’t know where else to put a single, female contractor. The ESO employees were all civilians, too, so I guess the military thought it would be best to put us together. With hindsight, I can’t help thinking that someone should have thought that through better. I wasn’t in a position to say yes or no, so we ended up together in a three bedroom house in Eskan Village, a large American military base outside of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  A large wall and fence as well as a lot of security systems, including Saudi and American armed guards, protected the base. The ground was all sand and dust framed in concrete sidewalks and black asphalt roads. Beyond the base’s fence was just flat desert with some sparse grasses growing among the gravel and dirt, interrupted by sand dunes, other gated housing complexes, a modern freeway, and in the distance, what little could be seen of the buildings of Riyadh. In the other direction, the freeway went on and on towards the distant towers of oil refineries.

He talked a lot when our paths crossed. He even offered to drive me around if I needed a ride. The military gave him a truck for while he was there. The university, however, paid a driver to chauffeur me around since most of my classes were off base in the evenings at places like the hospital on the other side of the city.  He seemed okay with the potpourri or incense I sometimes burned to cover the smells of sand and refineries that seeped into the house. “I use a lot of it myself,” he said when I asked him if he minded it, giving me an odd look. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time.

One weekend I’d been off-base visiting one of the university’s part-time instructors, Marni, whose day job was working at the hospital in Riyadh as an administrator. Marni decided to help me out and gave me a tour of Riyadh on her day off, then at the end of the day, sent me home with several bottles of her homemade wine as a birthday gift. It was my 30th birthday, but she was the only one I told. I didn’t want any extra attention from anyone. Like many Americans and Brits who lived and worked in Riyadh, she had a small room in the back of her house with small barrels, bottles, and other items that she used to make wine and beer since it was almost impossible to get it any other way there in Saudi Arabia, where alcohol is illegal. She bottled the wine in grape juice bottles so no one could distinguish them from a popular, local grape juice drink. This saved me since the Saudi guards stopped the car I was in and searched it. My driver, Carlos, was a very nice, friendly Filipino with an unwavering sense of humor. We weren’t usually searched when we came and went from base, but it was something the Saudis did randomly, and that was the night they chose to do it.

Instead of waving us through, the guards opened the door and looked inside. Then they made Carlos open the trunk. They took all the items in my shopping bags out and looked at them, then put them back in the bags. They looked under the car with large mirrors on sticks that curve. Finally, they waved us through. As we drove onto base and I could breathe again, I told Carlos what I’d just done. He laughed and said, “Next time, tell me. I have a special space under the floor. I smuggle things on base all the time. It’s a good business,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, breathing in and out, slowly. When he pulled over and let me out, he pulled back the rug on the floor by the back seat and showed me the small compartment. He seemed rather proud of it. ”Good to know,” I said. I really didn’t want to know though. I did not want to get involved in anything illegal, especially after that near-catastrophe.

Back in the house, Kareem was just washing up some dishes. Even though we mostly ate at the DiFac (Dining Facility, where the military and everyone living on base are served meals, free), we had a small kitchen we could use, too. I showed him one of the bottles and offered to share it. He was delighted and got two water glasses from the cabinets. We sat around the small kitchen table and drank. It was potent red wine though somewhat bitter.  “Wow,” he said. “I wondered which one of us would be the first to get some alcohol. Good work! I guess you’ve got connections?”

“No, it was a gift from a friend,” I said, not really sure what he meant by “connections.” “We wandered through the gold souk and market today,” I said.

Kareem said, “I just hung out here and watched TV. One of the soldiers said he’d take me to see parts of the city one of these weekends, but he hasn’t done it yet. I’m feeling kind of lonely. I tried calling my sister back in Virginia today, but I couldn’t get through. I could really use a hug right about now.”

I put the cap on the bottle and put it in the ‘fridge. I had no idea how to respond to that. While I felt kind of sorry for him, I most certainly wasn’t going to hug him. I didn’t know him very well. I’d only been there for about three weeks, and because of our schedules, we weren’t in the house at the same time during waking hours much. ‘Well,” I said. “I’m going to email my boyfriend who’s still on Okinawa, and then get to sleep. See you tomorrow,” I lied, hoping he’d take the hint and back off, though there really was no boyfriend. We’d broken up right before I left Okinawa for Saudi Arabia. He was returning to the US to his new post at the Pentagon.

“He’s black, isn’t he?” Kareem said. “Angela mentioned you have a black boyfriend – a white girl who likes black men.” He smiled at me. I had no idea why Angela, the administrative assistant who ran the Education Services Office on base, would have said something like that to him. To be fair, the university’s gossip grapevine was extensive and thorough, especially since the Internet was now available on most bases and our staff were usually spouses of US military members who have been stationed at a number of bases and know a lot of people. The military community is a very large, wide, scattered network. And it is true that my boyfriend had been African American though I am a white, Irish American. I didn’t see how or why that was any of his business.

I probably stared at him too long, shocked that he would say something like that. “Good night,” I said. I went to my room and locked the door. I told myself I was reading too much into it. He’d just had a bad day. I locked my bedroom door instinctively, I guess. I didn’t think about it. I just did it. Then I realized I had locked it and stared at the door knob, feeling a bit guilty, thinking that was insulting to him and over reacting. I didn’t think I was being racist. He made me uncomfortable because of what he said, I assured myself. And he would never notice unless he tried to open the door while I was in there, which of course he wouldn’t do. Still, I locked the door every night, after that.

The next day I asked Angela why she had told that to Kareem. I didn’t even want to know how she knew it. She apologized and admitted that she had wanted to make him feel comfortable around me. She thought I made him nervous, though she didn’t explain why she thought that. She laughed when I told her he had tried to call his sister but didn’t get through. I didn’t tell her about his hints that he wanted me to hug him. I was curious if the phone lines sometimes didn’t work. “That was his therapist he called, not his sister, and he got through alright,” she said. “I could hear his conversation through the door. He was going on and on about how he didn’t fit in here because he’s black. The guy is paranoid,” she said with no remorse. “It’s a frickin’ foreign country,” she said. “None of us fit in. What did he expect when he volunteered to come here?” She went back to typing whatever it was she was typing. I suspected Kareem had meant he didn’t fit in on base. If Angela’s attitude was typical, he probably did have a hard time of it, though he seemed to have made a few friends among the officers and high ranking sergeants. I sometimes saw him eating and joking around with a few of them in the DiFac at lunch. I usually just grabbed a sandwich or something and brought it back to the house so I could eat it while preparing for that evening’s class. I felt kind of sorry for him.

A few nights later, Carlos dropped me off in front of the house. I’d been teaching over at the hospital, and it was close to 11:00 p.m. I was wearing the long, black abaya over my clothes along with a black head veil. When I wore them, I looked like a moving, tiny black tent with a face. Wearing them when I went off base was important to prevent any unwanted attention from the muttawa, a kind of religious police force, and other Saudi men. It had been a long day, I was tired, and I just wanted to get into my pajamas and go to bed.

The houses were all similar: one floor, three or four bedrooms, and stairs to the flat roof which could be used as a bedroom in the relatively cool summer nights, or as a porch, or even a place to grow potted plants. All were surrounded by high, metal fences with strong gates. The lock on ours was broken, and it could only be locked or unlocked from the inside with a bolt, though sometimes it locked on its own when it was shut. I had asked Kareem several times to make sure the gate was not bolted and to please leave it ajar– there was a big rock on the ground we used to keep it slightly propped open – and we kept it like that all the time. We both had keys to the front door so there was no real need for the gate to be locked.

That night the gate was locked shut. I banged on it and called for Kareem, but he didn’t answer though we kept the windows open at night for the cool air. He must have just forgotten that I can’t open it from this side, I assured myself. Surely it was an accident. He must have accidentally dislodged the rock when he came through the gate. Finally I gave up trying to get his attention and walked across base along dark streets to the military police quarters, hoping they might have a master key to all the gates or something. They didn’t, but one them drove me back and banged on the gate. He eventually climbed up on the hood of his truck and then hauled himself over the top of the gate. He opened it from the other side. Then he walked me to the door and came in to make sure everything was okay. Kareem was watching TV in the den, a room right off of the front hallway. The window was open. “Excuse me sir,” said the MP. “Did you realize the gate was locked with no way to open it from the other side? I had to climb over it so your housemate here could get in. We banged on the gate and called for you. How did you miss all that noise?”

“I’m sorry,” Kareem said, looking up from the TV. He was scrawled lengthwise across the couch in shorts and a t-shirt. ”I guess the TV was too loud. I didn’t hear anything. I thought the gate was open.”

“Please make sure it stays open,” the MP said. “I don’t want to have to climb it again ‘Bye ma’m,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said to him for about the sixth time. He left. I went to my room without saying anything. I lay in the dark, trying to think of nothing, but of course thinking about everything that had happened that day that irritated me, when I heard the door handle turn. It tended to rattle because it was a little loose, even when locked. I could swear I heard someone push against the door. “Hello?” I said out loud. I heard only silence. I lay awake for a long time, listening, breathing slowly and softly, but I must have finally drifted off because the alarm woke me up from a deep dream I couldn’t remember. Angela assured me later in the office that I must have imagined it all.

 A week later, I found the gate locked again. When I left for class that afternoon, I had made sure the rock was in place and the gate was solidly open enough to keep it from locking. Someone had removed the rock. This time Kareem was apparently in his bedroom or out. The house was dark. The same MP jumped the gate, opened it, and saw me inside the front door. He muttered about talking to Kareem tomorrow and then left. I went to bed angry, sure that this time the locked gate could not have been an accident. But how could I prove that? Why would he do that? In the morning, he was gone when I finally felt comfortable enough to confront him and left my room. I never had a chance to ask him about it after that.

           *

7:00 a.m. and already the heat was probably close to 90F. That it was a dry heat didn’t help. All day, every day, the hot air sucked the moisture from my sinuses so I got nosebleeds. It sucked the moisture from my body so I was always thirsty.

I was late. I’d promised Angela that I would grade a pile of English placement tests. The university got permission to teach in the country by agreeing to let local people, but not actual Saudis, take classes. The students were mostly from foreign diplomats’ families. Angela’s assistant had been fired a month ago for accepting bribes to place students into classes they didn’t have the English skills to pass.

On this particular morning, I opened my bedroom door and heard the soft murmur of the television set from down the hall. That was unusual, but I was in a hurry and didn’t think much about it. I walked to the front door, trying to stuff papers into the backpack I used to carry around books and things. I wanted to stop at the DiFac and eat breakfast before heading over to the Education Center.

The sound was coming from the TV in the large den at the front of the house. I looked into the room as I passed and stopped; I don’t know, was it just surprise or a mix of surprise and revulsion, and perhaps even a little fear?  Kareem was sleeping on top of the couch and chair cushions he’d spread out on the floor. He lay flat with his legs spread wide, one arm covering his face, and the other folded across his chest. He had nothing on but a pair of very tight briefs. The size and shape of the erection rising out of them were extremely well defined. I stood for a moment, stunned, though I couldn’t really have explained why, at that moment. It was too intimate and too careless. It implied a comfortable, close relationship with his roommate, me, that we did not have and that I did not want. I fled to the education center.

I told Angela about it. He had not been in that TV room when I went to bed at 11:30 the previous night. The house had been dark and silent. “Maybe he couldn’t sleep and got up to watch a little TV in the middle of the night, but fell asleep,” Angela said. “In his underwear?” I said. “Why wouldn’t he have put on at least a pair of shorts out of respect for me? God, I saw way more of him than I ever want to.” Angela laughed. “How big is he?” she asked, still laughing. I groaned. “Not as big as he probably thinks he is,” I said. Her laughter made me feel better. “Just ask him to cover up more when he lies around outside his bedroom,” Angela said. “If it was just thoughtlessness or an accident, he won’t do it again. If he does do something like that again, then we should probably find you somewhere else to stay. If something happens, the military isn’t going to be on your side. It’s never on the woman’s side,” she said. “It’s better to get you out before something does happen.” Now I was worried, but I was sure it couldn’t be that big of a deal. It seemed only reasonable that we could both agree on certain boundaries. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her he knew I had locked my bedroom door. How else could he have known if he hadn’t tried to open the door? I wondered if I was freaking out so much because he was black. I didn’t want to be that kind of person. I decided to not say anything to him.

That afternoon, I sat in the kitchen grading student essays. Kareem walked in.

“You told Angela you saw me in my underwear?” he shouted. “You’re mad because I was asleep on the floor in my underwear? I wanted to watch the basketball game – it was on at midnight, and I fell asleep. I live here. It’s my house. I let you live here. Just because I’m a black man, you think it’s a big deal to see my dick? I’m tired of those stupid stereotypes about black men with dicks dragging on the ground. Who the hell do you think you are, bitch? Too bad if you don’t like how I relax in my own house. You even lock your bedroom door. Why the fuck do you think you have to lock your bedroom door? You can get out.” He grabbed one of the chairs by the table and threw it. It smashed against the counter with the sink, breaking one of the chair’s legs. He kept shouting for me to get out. I sat there, stunned and incapable of interrupting his tirade. Then he left, slamming the front door behind him.

I called Marni; I suddenly didn’t trust Angela. Why did she tell him what I’d confided in her? I didn’t know who else to turn to since I couldn’t get through to the university’s main office in Germany from a base phone, and apparently some of the phone lines had melted from the heat because they were strung across the black tar of the houses’ roofs. I explained what had happened. “Call Carlos, pack your things and come here to my apartment. Stay there until the director back in Germany can sort things out. This guy sounds crazy. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him right now.” 

Carlos helped me pack up my stuff and haul it all out to his car. He drove me to Marni’s house, helped me move my stuff there, and made me promise to call him if I needed anything. Marni handed me the phone. “I got through – it’s Dr. Hichten.”

My boss, Dr. Hichten, at the university’s main office in Heidelberg, told me to write down everything, explaining what had happened, and fax it to Kareem’s boss at the ESO on the base in Dhahran. I did, and he helped us find an alternative housing arrangement in temporary female officer quarters. I had my own bedroom and shared the house with four other women. I rarely saw them since my schedule was very different from theirs, but when I did meet them, they were friendly and very nice.

Several weeks went by. Angela apologized. She had shared what I’d told her with a woman who worked part-time for Kareem, who had then shared it with him. I should have known Angela would pass it on. She clearly loved to gossip.

I purposely avoided going into the Education Center so I would not have to run into Kareem. But then Angela called and asked me to work with a few students who needed help to pass the placement test. I spent a couple of hours there, tutoring. As I was finishing up with the last student, I heard a banging noise from outside and looked out the window. In the small alley between the Education Center and the house next to it, Kareem was stacking chairs, pushing them over, then stacking them again. The student left, and I started packing up the books and papers. Kareem walked in and stood in the doorway.

“I hope I didn’t scare you,” he said. “I was just checking the chairs to make sure they were in good shape. I don’t want you to go sending a letter to Tim that I was trying to frighten you or something. For the record, you’re not my type – I like thin women.” Then he turned around and left.

After he left, Angela, who had been sitting at her desk and heard it all, said, laughing, “But do thin women like him? He clearly has difficulty relating to women at all. That’s probably why he acts the way he does – what do you wanna’ bet he’s actually gay but refuses to admit it?” She laughed again. “Besides, you’re not fat. You’re what, 5’7” and 135?” 

The next day I got a letter from Kareem’s boss, the director of the ESO. He had sent a copy of my letter of complaint to Kareem for him to respond to it, and enclosed a copy of Kareem’s response so I could respond to that. Essentially, Kareem claimed I was “oversensitive” and “misunderstood” his “intentions,” to the point of being “paranoid,” which was probably an effect of “all the marijuana” he claimed I had been smoking. He wrote that I had been using incense and potpourri to cover up the odor in the house, but he could still detect the scent of it. My biases toward “Black Men as a White Woman” made my “paranoia” worse, and, therefore, he, the abused “Black Man,” had become the victim of my “White Woman” hysterical delusions.

When I was done ranting and swearing to Angela, the only person around to listen, I wrote my response, denying that I had been smoking marijuana on base and pointing out that I wasn’t stupid enough to smuggle it into a country that is so rigid about Sharia law and drug smuggling. The penalty is decapitation. Why would I risk that? Apparently some Americans do risk it. I’m not a gambler, I wrote.

A few days later the ESO director called me to say he had decided to chalk it all up to “personality differences.” Since we were no longer living in the same house, he considered the problem solved.

Dr. Hichten didn’t like that, but couldn’t do anything about it. She said, “Be careful. A guy like this is volatile. Keep a record of everything he says or does to you. I’m going to tell Angela to keep a record of whatever he says to her about anything regarding you. You only have a few weeks left there, and then you move on to Germany. You will love it there, I promise!” Then she said, “Call me anytime you need to talk about all this. Sexual harassment is difficult to deal with. I know. I’ve been there.” I was grateful for her support and understanding, but the word “sexual harassment” stretched a moment between us. “Thanks,” I said. I guess I hadn’t really thought of it in that way. I’d been thinking just that Kareem was a sick, creepy, lying, kind of guy. But maybe they’re just different words for the same thing.

*

Angela needed help. The Education Center phone wasn’t working, and she thought maybe it was because the phone lines, strung across the flat roof, were melting again in the heat. Somebody had to stay at her desk to deal with the string of students wandering in to register for the next term’s classes or to take a placement test. She asked me if I would go up on the roof and check the lines. I wasn’t quite sure what she wanted me to do about it if they had melted, but she was desperate to get the phone working again. The Internet was her link to the rest of the world. She was addicted to it. She needed those phone lines back up, and the military guys who maintained them wouldn’t be able to get there for several days. She was grasping at anything and anyone whom she thought could help. So I climbed the stairs to a door that opened outward onto a small, stone landing and then the roof.  I walked around, looking at the wires. I picked up a few and shook them. I couldn’t see anything wrong, but what did I know about telephone wires? I turned around and started toward the door, then stopped. A guy I only vaguely recognized as one of the staff sergeants on the base stood there. He was tall, muscular, with broad shoulders. He looked Irish – he had blue eyes and pale, freckled skin pink from the desert sun. When I first arrived at Eskan, he’d been friendly to me in the DiFac. At that moment I couldn’t remember if his name was Murphy or Gallagher – something obviously Irish like that. He was friends with Kareem. I had seen them walking across base together or talking in the DiFac.

“So I hear you’ve been having some problems with Kareem,” he said. “You don’t like black guys, is that it?”

 I just stared at him. The air felt twice as hot, almost un-breathable. “What?” I said.

He walked over to me. I stepped back a couple of paces. He kept moving forward so he was only an inch or two away from me. My eyes were level with his collarbone. I had to look up to look at his face.  

“You’ve been giving him a hard time,” he said. “I should teach you what sexual harassment really is. I’d like to see you report me. There isn’t a military guy anywhere that would take you seriously or care. If it’s my word against yours, I’m going to win.”

He grabbed my left breast with his left hand, and the hair at the back of my head with his right hand. He squeezed my breast so hard the pain made me want to vomit. I tried to scream, but choked and gagged instead as he pulled my head back farther. He stuck his knee between my legs and kicked them apart. I fell backwards, but he wrenched my head to keep it from hitting the ground. Pain seared down my head along my neck, down my back. I gasped for breath and then, finally, screamed.

He kicked my legs out from under me and then he was on top of me, his hand pressing my chest down to the ground as he kept squeezing my breast, painfully.

And then Angela was there, shouting, “What the hell are you doing? I’m going to report you, you asshole! Get off of her! I’m telling my husband! You know he’ll get you!” He shoved my head a little harder onto the tarred ground of the roof.  Then he got up. I lay there, disoriented, trying just to breath normally again.

“Mind your own business,” he said. “I’m teaching her a lesson.” Angela ran to the edge of the roof and screamed, “HELP! CALL THE MP’S!” over and over. Then he was gone. Angela knelt next to me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Should I get the medics?”

“No,” I said. “Just help me up, please.” She gave me her hand and pulled me up. I couldn’t stand upright. I leaned on her arm as she helped me down the stairs. “He won’t be there,” she assured me. “He can’t be that stupid as to stick around.” No one was in the office. I was grateful for that. “I’m calling Marni to see if you can stay at her place till you leave Riyadh. You only have what, another week left here? If you can’t, then you can stay at my house. My husband, Frank, won’t mind, and too bad if he does. He’s a staff sergeant, himself, so he doesn’t have to worry about that asshole doing anything to him for it. He can protect you. But you’re better off not staying on base. Every guy will know what happened by the end of today. That asshole will tell them because he thinks he fixed things for Kareem. You can’t stay on base. Someone else will go after you next. Marni’s complex has its own security and is walled in. It’s all hospital workers. They’ll take your side.”

I didn’t say anything; I just nodded. She helped me sit in one of the chairs by her desk, then called Marni. I wasn’t listening. I was just breathing. Inhale, exhale, I thought. And swallowed, trying not to vomit. My stomach burned. I hurt everywhere. The back of my head felt as though I’d been bludgeoned. I was surprised, when I touched the spot where he’d grabbed my hair, that there was no blood. There was no blood anywhere. I thought there ought to be. It felt like I was bleeding from my head and my stomach, but there was no blood. Later there would be large, dark bruises all over my waist, chest, breast and legs, but right then all I knew was that my whole body burned. I guess I was in shock. I just kept thinking that if I focused on my breath, I wouldn’t throw up. And then I thought, what if he comes back? Angela helped me down the stairs. I was afraid to go into the office. I insisted on going outside and sitting on the sidewalk.

And then, Carlos was there to take me back to my room. Angela went with us and helped me pack everything. I had two large suitcases full of stuff. My life was condensed to two large suitcases, I thought, how pathetic.

I don’t remember much more about those few hours. Angela packed up my bags while I pointed to things that were mine. Then Carlos took me to Marni’s house. She left work early to be there. She brought a friend, a Saudi doctor, who was also a woman, who examined me. The doctor wanted me to go to the hospital, but I didn’t want to leave Marni’s house. She left Marni instructions about what to watch for. She was afraid I had a concussion and perhaps internal injuries, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t leaving Marni’s apartment. I took one of the pain pills she left. I showered. A long, hot shower. Then I curled up in Marni’s spare bed. I heard her talking on the phone. I assumed it was to Dr. Hichten. I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to sleep. I took another pain pill. I heard Marni come into the room, talking to me. I don’t really remember much else until the next day when I woke up, bruised all over.

*

 I slept. I went to class. I slept. I gave final exams. I slept. I graded the exams. I slept. I turned in the exams. I slept. Angela picked up the exams and gave them back to the students. She arranged my flight back to Germany, where our main office was, and where I was to be teaching for the next year. Carlos picked me up and drove me to the Ed Center to get the tickets, before taking me to the American military’s section of the airport. While I was there, Kareem walked in.

“I hear you’re leaving today,” he said. “I want you to know I forgive you. My therapist says I need to forgive people to let go of my anger, so I forgive you.” Then he walked into his office and closed the door.

I felt as though a furnace had gone off in my stomach, sending the fire up and outward into every cell of my body. Angela grabbed my arm and pulled me out the front door to Carlos’s car. “Don’t respond,” she said. “He’s either trying to get you to do something stupid he can get you in trouble for, or he’s just a really sick person, but either way, you need to stay away from him. He’ll get his. Frank is plotting something for both of those guys. I promise.” It took me a moment to remember that Frank was her husband and high up in the ranked chain of enlisted soldiers. I got in the car, still so angry that I was sure my face was bright red and I was breathing too fast. I spent the drive to the airport breathing slowly and deeply.

*

I got on a military flight to Ramstein, Germany. Dr. Hitchen’s staff helped me find a nice apartment there and a car. She made me write up a report about what happened. We sent it off. About a month later I got a call from a military lawyer in the JAG. He asked questions like, “What did you say to lead him on?” and, “Don’t you think that was over reacting?” His last comment was, “I’ve talked to Mr. Smith and Staff Sergeant Gallagher, as well as other witnesses. They all say you are a difficult person.”

“Excuse me?” I said. 

”I have to say, our conversation here doesn’t make me think anything different. I’ll send you a copy of the final result of our investigation.” Then he hung up. I hadn’t said much more than “That’s correct,” in response to some of his questions. A month later I received his report. The military rejected the complaint for lack of evidence. I slept a lot. I drank a lot of German wine and beer. I taught. I slept. I drank.

I got a letter from Angela saying Frank couldn’t do anything to Gallagher because of his rank, but Kareem got sent back to the US. She wrote, “I told Tim Lander what happened, everything from the locked gates and so on. I think Kareem got Gallagher to attack you. They probably knew Gallagher was pretty much immune to anything our office could do because of his rank and, frankly, because he’s white. He outranks Frank. It’s possible Kareem just wanted him to scare you. I don’t know. Tim came to Riyadh, finally, to talk to Kareem and see for himself what is going on with the guy. Several students complained about things Kareem said to them, and apparently he got caught having an affair with the wife of one of the soldiers. She worked part-time here in the Ed Center, briefly.  The military considers adultery a crime, so they are both in a lot of trouble. Tim was pretty angry after I told him what happened, especially when Kareem started ranting to Tim about how this was all because he was black. I was in the other office and overheard Tim shouting at Kareem: “I’m black too, yet I don’t have these problems! What the hell were you thinking?’ He was talking about the affair, but I think he meant it about everything. He left and Kareem’s orders came through a few days later saying he was being sent back to the US.” It didn’t make me feel better. I thought it would, but it didn’t.

I’m sitting at a table in the outside section of a café in the small, German town of Kaiserslautern, slowly drinking a glass of a local pilsner, watching the crowds of people walk along the marktplatz. It’s spring, warm, and people are out enjoying the sun. Sometimes I like to sit out here among all these strangers, people who don’t even notice my presence. The crowds wrap around me like a protective veil, hiding all my emotional bruises in the black folds of anonymity.  Other times, I’m afraid of loud noises and the words of other people, which seem to grab my hair and pull my head down, down, down. I hide in my apartment. I write things down then stare at words that have no power anymore to elicit help.