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LITTLE BERBER GIRL /ES. Creamer SOME COUPLES GROW APART instead of together until eventuaUy they separate as naturally as chUdren grow apart and flee their home sweet homes. Other couples grow apart together, the rift palpable yet unapparent. So it was with Jonathan and me—except that I saw our end coming. It seemed our ultimate destiny as surely as Zagora, that arid outpost on the edge of the Sahara, was our immediate one. Over the previous months Td found consolation in elegant uptown apartments, Jonathan by my side ever ready to Ught my cigarette or continue the anecdote when my storytelling faltered. I stored those moments up—nuggets of reminiscence, a kind of sustenance for the cold winter ahead. I came to beUeve that this was how the perenniaUy unhappy got by, sustained by recollection. To keep the memories fonder I chose to ignore Jonathan's ever-wandering eye. I wouldn't be the first wife to be gravely disappointed, to be cheated on; but at least I would Uve to remember. Or so ran my thinking at the time. But that was before we passed through uncharted regions, before our path crossed the path of the little Berber girl. The Moroccan landscape was the color of a faded national flag covered with a thin film of dust like the gray of a snake's second skin. The earth was a deep smoky red, the grass—what grass there was—American army green. And dozens of flags—whole consteUations of single green stars on a sky of dusty red—Uned the streets of the small towns we passed through on the drive south. The day I became the Uttle Berber girl, Jonathan and I saw not a single moving car besides our own. Not a single truck. Ours might have been the only operative vehicle in the country, certainly the only one on the road. Were we violating a Sabbath, some holy day the guidebooks had neglected to mention? If we had transgressed custom, the natives' faces gave no sign. Turbaned men prodding donkeys loaded with crates piled yards high only nodded if they acknowledged our presence at aU. The women's eyes, above discreet and somber veUs, flashed neither warning The Missouri Review · 79 nor shock at our sudden passing. But this I hold as the seed of what happened later: our sin only lay beyond acknowledgement, but not beyond retribution. In the time it took to pass from one town to the next Jonathan became disgruntled with my driving. He didn't quite say so, but I could tell from the way he fumed with exasperation every time I slowed to get a better look at the scenery: a herd of taU camels, a rutted field speckled with gray goats. And when I braked at the road's frequent bends I saw him in the corner of my eye shaking his head in mock-weary disapproval. Before long he would be back behind the wheel; it was just as weU with me. Some time ago I'd learned to prefer the passenger's to the driver's seat: from there I had no duty but to witness and stow away detaUs for later use in cultivating the fragüe envy of our cocktaU crowd back home. Besides, Jonathan never put me in the driver's seat except as a final test I was sure to faU. When he tired of complaining about my hair because it was too mousey or because it was too blonde, or my opinions or lack of them, or that I said too much or too Uttle, weU, he could just put me behind the wheel and see that no, he hadn't misjudged: I was as incompetent as ever. Nothing had changed and neither should his worsening opinion of me. If it had been up to me, I would never have taken the wheel at aU. But, instead of quitting, for some perverse reason I decided to try to measure up. As the mountain road before us curved, then straightened only to curve again, I kept my foot steady on the accelerator and ever off the brake. ChUdren herding kid goats and...

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