THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER21, 2020 57
then, when she turned to reach for a
hairpin behind her, I saw the purple
bruise on her throat.
And yet I never really doubted her
strength. Never doubted that she was
in control and doing what she wanted.
Playing a game according to rules she
had agreed to, if not invented. Only
looking back do I realize how much I
wanted to see her that way: strong-
willed and free, invulnerable and under
her own command. From my walks
alone in Geneva, I already understood
that the power to attract men, when it
comes, arrives with a terrifying vulner-
ability. But I wanted to believe that the
balance of power could be tipped in
one’s favor by strength or fearlessness
or something I couldn’t name. Soraya
told us that soon after things began with
the banker his wife had called on the
hotel phone, and he’d instructed Soraya
to go into the bathroom, but she’d re-
fused and instead lay listening on the
bed. The naked banker turned his back
but had no choice other than to go on
talking to his wife, whose call he hadn’t
expected. He spoke to her in Dutch,
Soraya said, but in the same tone that
the men in her own family spoke to
their mothers: gravely, with a touch of
fear. And, as she listened, she knew
something had been exposed that he
had not wished to expose, and which
shifted the balance between them. I pre-
ferred that story to trying to understand
the bruise on Soraya’s neck.
It was the first week of May when
she didn’t return home. Mrs. Elderfield
woke us at dawn, demanding that we
tell her whatever we knew about Soraya’s
whereabouts. Marie shrugged and looked
at her chipped nail polish, and I tried
to follow her cue until Mrs. Elderfield
said that she was going to call both
Soraya’s parents and the police, and that
if something had happened to her, if
she was in danger and we were with-
holding any information, we wouldn’t
be forgiven or be able to forgive our-
selves. Marie looked scared, and, seeing
her face, I began to cry. A few hours
later, the police arrived. Alone with the
detective and his partner in the kitchen,
I told them everything I knew, which,
I realized as I spoke—losing the thread,confusing myself—was not so much.
Once they had interrogated Marie, they
went to the back bedroom and combed
through Soraya’s things. Afterward, it
looked as if the bedroom had been ran-
sacked: everything, even her underwear,
strewn across the floor and her bed with
an air of violation.
That night, the second one that
Soraya was missing, there was a huge
storm. Marie and I lay awake in my bed,
neither one of us speaking of the things
we feared. In the morning, the crunch
of gravel under the wheels of a car woke
us, and we jumped out of bed to look
out the window. But, when the door of
the taxi opened, it was a man who
emerged, his lips drawn tight below his
heavy black mustache. In the familiar
features of Soraya’s father, some truth
about her origins was revealed, expos-
ing the illusion of her autonomy.
Mrs. Elderfield made us repeat to
Mr. Sassani the things we’d already told
the police. He was a tall and intimidat-
ing man, his face knotted in anger, and
I think she wasn’t brave enough to do
it herself. In the end, Marie—embold-
ened by her new authority and the sen-
sational quality of the news she had to
deliver—did most of the talking. Mr.
Sassani listened in silence, and it was
impossible to say whether what he felt
was fear or fury. Both, it must have been.
He turned toward the door. He wanted
to go to the Hôtel Royal immediately.
Mrs. Elderfield tried to calm him. She
repeated what was already known: that
the banker had checked out two days
before, the room had been searched,
nothing had turned up. The police were
doing everything they could. The banker
had rented a car that they were work-
ing to track down. The only thing to do
was stay here and wait until there was
some news.
In the hours that followed, Mr. Sas-
sani paced grimly in front of the win-
dows of the living room. As the royal
engineer to the Shah, he must have in-
sured against all kinds of collapse. But
then the Shah himself had fallen, and
the vast and intricate structure of Mr.
Sassani’s life had crumbled, making a
mockery of the physics of safety. He’d
sent his daughter to Switzerland be-
cause of its promise to restore order
and safety, but even Switzerland hadn’t
kept Soraya safe, and this betrayalThe boy who asks waveringly if this is his fear if this is his sleeping
in a dreamless nightThe artist calls them clocks and here another problem to consider
for the art to know time like any other, ordinary thing and we may ask
of the knowing can we wear it on our wrists can it pulse with the secondsOne more question from the crowdCan the artist perhaps tell us something of the futureAnd here the artist politely demursThank you and good night everyone may exit to the leftAnd when the gift shop is closed we’re saddened to leave empty-handed
but consider it a comfort the pressure
we feel when we press our palms togetherThat night we dream of a bounty of images every color at onceThe artist dreams of something like god but completely the opposite—Maya Phillips