Inside the Mind of a Dictator’s Wife…
A reminder that my next book hits the shelves today June 10! This is something of a departure from my normal work… a fiction, psychological thriller, yet based on many of my experience dealing with dictatorships from around the world.
An excerpt:
Saif is just like his father–the antithesis of the contemporary leader he promised we would both be.
We drive past the amber crescents of sand along the shoreline, next to waves that do not move. Over the hill is a small hut with sepia colors, like an old photograph from when Rasa was the only spoken language of the Tucanese. It shimmers on a khaki mound of earth with a crippled fence.
But as our car approaches, it is clear that the property is anything but shimmering. Instead, the outside shell appears stripped back into the cracked, dun tones of a pistachio shell. Only it is not a shelling factory at all. We stop. And I step into the most dismal parcel of a place I have ever been. Palace officials would probably rather forget this place exists than spend a little more money on it.
Although we are not expected, a nervous caretaker–a plump older named Eva–welcomes us. We are VIPs, she has no choice but to welcome us. On the other side of the decrepit office and kitchen, a dozen women mill around in a dead garden, caged by high concrete walls, between craters in the dust and debris that no one had ever bothered to clean up.
I do not need to exchange glances with Taya to know that she is far from pleased about my choice of coming here. I can feel the burn of her perfectly shaped eyebrow, but I do not care.
Some women twirl in hitched-up, homespun skirts, their wavy bodies whizzing like the spinning of their minds, paragons of neglect. It is as though everyone is drunk on despair, neurosis, or some potent combination of the two, except for one woman. She sits alone, far from the others as possible, behind a curtain of disheveled inky hair like a child who refuses to deal with the pain of de-tangling.
“I remember her,” I whisper to nobody but myself, yet I cannot pinpoint where or how.
An official Palace photographer suddenly appears behind us, snapping away as we stand in the center of this circle of mania. Taya grouses.
“I know you are new, but I called you up last minute, and I expect you to do a decent job,” she barks to the young man. “But don’t ever photograph me again. I’m the flak; you only ever photograph the principal.”
The trembling young man lifts his long lens closer to my makeup-free cheeks.
“Stop,” I insist, motioning for him to lower the lens, uncomfortable.
“No photos today, please.”
“But Anna, we need photos of you for the press release,” Taya objects.
“It’s your duty. People need to know you care.”
“Not in here, not today,” I reply firmly. It all looked wrong, exploitative, and too dismal to allow the big world to see.
“Fine, Ans,” Taya says haughtily. “Don’t waste too much time here if you have nothing to show for it. We’ll wait for you inside.”
I tepidly approach the woman with the long black hair, hugging her dirty bare feet and rocking. Back and forth. I maintain a respectful distance, conscious of penetrating the circumference of her private space. She seems surrounded by a mist of innocence that compels me.
The young woman’s view of the world intrigues me.
She flicks her long dark eyelashes open and closed. After that, they stay closed, as if she were trying to buffer herself from the horrors of reality by escaping into imagination. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if she was in a room by herself or in a space alongside ten thousand people. This poor lady will probably always be alone.
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