At a Crossroads
by Laurie King
Appeared in the award-winning Lonely Planet anthology The Kindness of Strangers
I didn't know whether I was being kidnapped or rescued-that was what made my one big decision so difficult. That and the fact that I was young and foolish, and more than a little anxious about being stranded in the North African desert.
It all began quite innocently. Our bus had deposited Alan, my affable traveling companion, and myself at the door of a small, clean hotel in a dusty Tunisian village. The buildings were two stories high at most, covered with plaster, and whitewashed against the powdery red dust that enveloped the town and seemed to stretch forever. In the desperate heat of late afternoon, the place appeared to be completely deserted. Not a single shop was open and the dirt streets were empty: no vehicles, no pedestrians, not even a stray dog.
Inside, the 1940s-era hotel was as empty as the street. There were no brochures advertising nearby at-tractions (I suspected there were no nearby attractions); there was no "We accept VISA, MasterCard, and American Express" sign. That was okay; I had travelers' checks. There was no bouquet of silk flowers, no table, no couch on which weary travelers could rest. A lone white straight-backed chair stood sentry on the floor of exquisitely patterned blue and red ceramic tiles. The reception desk held a silver tray filled with Christmas mints -the round green kind with a red Christmas tree in the middle-like my grandmother used to put out every year. It was August, and they looked old.
I had only just met Alan, a wandering college student like myself, that morning. But I quickly decided he'd be great to travel with: he seemed friendly, calm and reasonable-not the type to freak out if a bus schedule changed or a train was delayed. Plus he spoke a little French, which I did not. Alan had a quick, cryptic conversation with the hotel clerk, and then translated for me. The clerk had suggested that he hitch a ride to the local bar/restaurant-six miles out of town-for a beer and a bite to eat. It didn't occur to either of us that a woman shouldn't also venture out, and I was eager to see some sights, meet the locals, and have dinner. Of course I went along.
In retrospect, I realize I should have known better. We were in Tunisia, a country where women stay indoors and cover up like caterpillars in cocoons. The guidebooks had warned me to cover my shoulders and legs, and I felt quite modest and accommodating in a button-up shirt and baggy jeans.
When we arrived, I found that the place was more bar than restaurant, and that I was the only female pre-sent. Even the waiters were all men. But these details didn't seem important. After all, I had dressed conservatively, and decided to take the precaution-again, recommended by my guidebook-of avoiding direct eye contact with men. What could possibly go wrong?
Since I spoke neither French nor Arabic-and was assiduously avoiding eye contact-it was quite impossible for me to converse with anyone but Alan, who was busy putting his first-year college language skills to dubious use. I was bored. This was a plain-as-bread sort of establishment; there was no big screen TV soccer game, no video arcade, not even a friendly game of cards or a good-natured bar fight for me to watch. Just a lot of dark men in white robes, sitting in mismatched wooden chairs, speaking softly in a language I could not understand and drinking tiny cups of strong coffee. The bitter, familiar aroma was a meager comfort.
Then the music began; it sounded off-key and was startlingly loud and foreign-a little frightening, even. Next the belly dancers appeared: twelve gorgeous women, one after another, with long, dark hair, burnished skin, flowing diaphanous skirts in brilliant vermilion and aqua and emerald, gold necklaces, belts, bracelets, anklets. Gold everywhere: tangled cords jangling against long brown necks; fine, weightless strands decorating the swirling fabrics; heavy gold chains slapping in a satisfying way against ample abdominal flesh. They were a remarkable contrast to the stark room and simple furnishings, and I began to realize that things in Tunisia were not entirely as they first appeared.
The music quickened, and the dancers floated across the bar-which had somehow been converted into a stage-and around the room, weaving in and out among tables, lingering occasionally for a long glance at a pleased patron. Soon they were at our table, looking not at Alan but at me, urging me, with their universal body language, to join them.
Did I dare? My stomach clenched momentarily. I knew my dancing would be clumsy and ugly next to theirs, my short-cropped hair and lack of makeup un-attractively boyish, my clothing shapeless and without style or significant color. I wore no jewelry-as the guidebook suggested-just my glasses, which were not particularly flattering.
Of course I was relatively unattractive and clumsy in this foreign environment, I thought, but there was no need to be priggish as well. And the women were by now insistent, actually taking me by both hands and pulling me up to dance with them. Flushed with embarrassment, I did my best to follow their swaying hips and graceful arm movements as we made our way around the room once again. Even with the aid of the two beers, I was not foolish enough to attempt to duplicate their astonishing abdominal undulations.
As soon as I thought these exotic, insistent beauties would allow it, I broke the line and resumed my place-plain, awkward, very white, and completely out of my element-next to Alan. Thereafter, it was excruciatingly embarrassing for me to watch the dancers, and Alan agreed to accompany me back to the hotel. He, too, had had enough excitement for the evening and was ready to retire, so he asked the bartender to call us a cab. A fellow bar patron overheard the conversation and was kind enough to offer us a lift. The man wore Western-style clothing, understood Alan's French, and seemed safe enough; we felt fortunate to have arranged the ride in spite of our limited linguistic abilities and the fact that the night was still young.
But that's when the evening turned ugly. Two well-dressed, middle-aged men left the bar immediately after we did. We saw them get into a black Mercedes, and we watched in the rear-view mirror as they trailed us, just our car and theirs, bumping along a sandy road in the empty desert. There were no buildings, streetlights or pedestrians, and we saw no other vehicles.
I looked out the window, enjoying the vast, black night sky and trying to ignore my growing sense of anxiety. When we came to an unmarked Y intersection, our driver, in a bizarrely ineffective attempt at deception, headed steadily towards the road on the right, then veered off at the last second to take the road on the left. Neither Alan nor I could remember which direction we'd come from hours earlier, when it was still light out and we were not under the spell of Tunisian music and belly dancers and beer. The strange feigning and last-second careening alarmed us both.
And it got worse. Immediately after the incident at the intersection, the men in the car behind us revved the engine, chased us down and ran us off the road and into a ditch. They stood in the road, shouting and gesticulating wildly outside our car. My hands went icy in the warm night air. Despite-or perhaps because of-an imposing language barrier, we had the impression that the men who ran our car off the road were attempting to rescue us.
But what, exactly, were they rescuing us from? Was our driver a sociopathic kidnapper bent on selling us into slavery? A rapist? A murderer? And why were our "rescuers" so insistent? Was it out of the goodness of their hearts, or did they, too, have some sinister motive? We had to make a choice. One car would probably take us safely to our hotel; the other might lead to a terrifying fate. But we had no idea which was which.
In this moment of crisis, we clenched hands and Alan looked at me-somewhat desperately, I thought-for a decision. I tried to assess his strength, and wondered whether he was a good fighter. (Probably not-he was a Yale man.) My stomach churned, but I forced myself to concentrate. We had only two options: We could remain in the long black limo, hope it could be extricated from the ditch, and hope our volunteer driver really was the kind and innocuous man he had appeared to be.
Or we could bolt from the car, scramble out of the ditch, and as quickly as possible, put our rescuers and their car between ourselves and the man who had so generously offered us a ride. The two men were still shouting, and began to pound and slap the driver's window. Even so, Alan leaned towards staying. After all, he reasoned, it was only one man, and there were two of us. Surely we could overpower him and escape if it proved necessary.
I wanted to bolt. Even though there were two men in the "rescue" car, as opposed to only one in our vehicle, I had become certain, in some wholly subjective way, that our man was crazy, and I'd heard that crazy people can be quite strong. Plus, our apparent rescuers, the men who had just run us off the road, warned Alan that we were with "un homme méchant! mauvais!"-A wicked man. But the deciding factor was that these two men had actually gone to the trouble of following us out of the bar, chasing us down, running our car off the road and into a dusty ditch, and were now expending a great deal of energy trying to convince us of something.
Surely that constellation of actions bespoke a serious purpose, such as rescuing two foolish young travelers from a lifetime of misery in the North African desert. The two men must be rescuers; kidnappers were not likely to go to so much trouble, or to risk scratching or even denting their shiny black late-model Mercedes in the process.
Alan was no help; I had to make a decision myself, and quickly. But what about the downside? In the middle of all the commotion-and with Alan sitting next to me looking more than a little uncertain-I realized that we had not yet fully considered the potential negative con-sequences of an incorrect choice. If we chose to stay, and it was the wrong choice, the man would undoubtedly drive us to some sort of central kidnapping headquarters-probably an impenetrable, fortress-like stone building with dark, echoing corridors, or perhaps a sweltering, waterless hovel cleverly hidden in remote, sand-swept dunes. In that case, he would have a knife, or a gun, or evil partners-or perhaps all of the above-and the fact that the two of us probably could have overpowered him would be moot. We would be goners.
On the other hand, if we bolted, and that was the wrong choice, we would be double-goners because the two men could also turn out to be kidnappers or murderers who could easily overpower us. Downsides being equally awful, we decided to go with our gut. Or guts. The problem was that Alan's gut said stay, and mine said bolt.
Fortunately, it didn't occur to either of us to split up. Eventually I was able to convince Alan to bolt, which we did with great vigor, clawing through weeds and rocks and dust, out of the ditch, onto the road, and into the cool, black car waiting in the darkness.
But even then we couldn't relax. As we rode off into the night-this time with two men in the front seat-my stomach was still churning; we had no way of knowing whether we had made the right decision. What if these men were also evil? Perhaps we had been unwittingly trapped in some web of rival-kidnapping-gang intrigue from which there was no hope of escape. Or perhaps it had begun even earlier, with Alan's fractured French, or with my being the 13th dancer-and in pants.
Eventually our two rescuers returned us to the Y intersection, turned onto the right-and correct-road, and delivered us to the hotel without further incident. God forgive us, I'm pretty sure Alan and I were both too dazed to thank them. Well, we thanked them for the ride, but not for saving our lives.
Inside the hotel, my stomach calmed down, and my hands returned to their normal temperature. The stress began to drain from my body; at last I could enjoy the luxury of relief! Alan and I stood at the reception desk, looking into each others' eyes. He picked up a Christmas mint from the silver bowl and ate it. I could smell it on his breath. The entrance hall was cool and quiet; no one else was around.
"Well, that was quite an evening," he finally said.
"Yes, quite an evening," I agreed.
"Well, goodnight, then."
"OK, goodnight."
I walked upstairs, puked, and went to bed.