City of Veils (5 page)

“Of course I’ll go,” Nayir said gruffly. “I’ll see what the coroner has to say.”

Samir nodded with satisfaction. Nayir began clearing off the table, taking away plates, even the one Samir was using. He busied himself with wrapping everything up and putting it in the refrigerator before it spoiled. It wouldn’t take long in the 45-degree heat.

“You are getting thinner,” Samir observed from behind him, oblivious to his nephew’s anger. “You know, you don’t even look like yourself anymore.”

Nayir didn’t respond, and that silenced Samir. But a little while later the words carried him out the door and into his car, where they echoed uncomfortably in the cramped space.

T
he Corniche was uncharacteristically empty. No families picnicking or strolling down the long boardwalk. Although it was dusk, it was still dangerously hot outside, and the air was so thick that it felt to Nayir as if it were actually slowing down his Jeep. He half expected to look over and see the ocean boiling.

In the last phone conversation he’d had with Katya, she’d told him that she’d been promoted to a different branch of the ministry’s forensics department, where she was going to be given more responsibility. Instead of being confined to a basement coroner’s office, she’d be working in a new police building downtown. Everything was new—the machines, the offices, all the technology was up to date. Nayir wanted to ask if the attitudes were new, too, but instead he got right to the point. “Will you be working directly with men?”

This was met by silence. “Yes,” she said finally. “I’m sure I will.” After that, she’d gone cold. The rest of the conversation had been awkward. He felt guilty, but it genuinely bothered him that she’d be working with strange men. Then again, who was he to complain? He wasn’t her husband.

She hadn’t called him since. He understood why. She had contented herself with believing how backward he was, how his religious convictions kept him from treating her the way she wanted to be treated. She had finally given up on him. At first he had simply accepted it. He had unmoored his boat and gone out on the water and lain on the deck staring at the glorious stars. He could have stayed there for days, overcome with an unrepentant laziness, away from people and their discomforts. There was no call to prayer to break his thoughts, and for once he was glad. He realized then that the thing he loved most in the world was solitude, and that perhaps he wasn’t the sort of man who should be married in the first place. But sailing back to the marina, he knew that solitude would never satisfy him. And the words of the Prophet rang in his mind:
Marry those among you who are single
.

Someone cut him off and he honked angrily, speeding up to tailgate the reckless driver. Then he realized what he was doing and slowed down.
Allah,
he prayed,
guide me from this anger. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know how to cure it.

But another voice struggled for space in his head. It said,
You know exactly how to cure it. This anger is a punishment for your coldness toward Katya. You did to her exactly what Fatimah did to you!

It wasn’t true, of course. The situation wasn’t as simple as that. Fatimah and he had been introduced through a mutual friend for the express purpose of courtship. It turned out that Fatimah was being courted by other men as well, and she chose her future husband without ever telling Nayir what she was up to. But Katya was different. They hadn’t been courting; they had been solving a crime. They had
had
to work together, and any closeness they experienced had been grounded in their thoughtlessness and sin.

Then why did this separation hurt so much?

Because I want a wife
, he told himself.

No matter which way he thought of it, nothing changed the fact that being with Katya was a
zina
crime. The Prophet Mohammed had said:
Not one of you should meet a woman alone unless she is accompanied by a relative.
Did injunctions come any clearer than that? In case there was any doubt, the Prophet had also said:
Whenever a man is alone with a woman, Satan is the third among them
. Thinking this, Nayir couldn’t help picturing her poor escort, Ahmad, who had sat in the Ferris-wheel cabin behind them at the Funfair on their one real date.

Back at his boat, he had set a pot of water on the stove before he realized that hot tea was the last thing he wanted. He went into the bedroom to change and found himself staring dumbly at the porthole. He regretted telling Samir that he would go to the coroner’s. He could just as easily call and speak to an examiner. It wasn’t as if he had to be there in person.

The past few weeks had been nothing but humid, restless nights full of longing. The worst agony came when she broke into his dreams. The days were no better, time stretching as long and empty as the desert. And no one wanted to go to the desert. The Saudis had hunkered down for the summer, taking refuge in their air-conditioned sitting rooms, their private swimming pools and cool shopping malls.

Before going to bed, he performed
istiqara,
the recitation of special prayers before sleep to produce an answer in a dream. He had never tried it before, but Imam Hadi had recommended it to him once, telling Nayir, “Sometimes you have to search very seriously for the answers you need. Allah will not make it easy for you.” The
istiqara
was no anxious bedtime prayer, but a cleansing, altering-of-consciousness-before-falling-unconscious method of praying that could produce an answer of the highest precision. According to Imam Hadi, it was the process that had assisted Niels Bohr in his discovery of the atomic structure and that had helped René Descartes formulate the scientific method. Nayir figured that such a powerful tool ought to help him through the rather modest matter of deciding whether to go to the coroner’s office in the morning.

Just before dawn, he dreamt he was in a gigantic room full of sweets. There were plates of baklava, Jordan almonds, Turkish delight. The more he looked, the more there was to eat: dates and nuts caked in sugar crystals and dipped in honey, glazed beignets waiting in a patient row, sherbets that never melted. Painfully hungry, Nayir sat on the stone floor and ate the sweets on every side while a dusting of powdered sugar drifted over him like snow. He ate and ate until he was sick, and then he went to the corner to vomit.

It didn’t take Niels Bohr–level intelligence to interpret the meaning of that particular dream: he was in grave danger of indulging himself. The answer was no.

M
iriam was sitting on a bench against the wall, feet pulled up, arms curled around herself. The airport air was chilly, and now she was shivering and afraid, and hating herself for it. She had no idea how much time had gone by. An hour, two hours? She couldn’t remember when they’d brought her in, and it was too much trouble to figure it out. She’d tried calling Eric on her cell phone a dozen times, but he hadn’t answered. So she waited. She couldn’t call the neighbors or her friends; Eric was the only one who could give her permission to enter the country.

The only person who came into the room was an airport worker. He brought a bottle of water and asked if there was anything she needed.
Tampons
, she wanted to say.
A side of pork and a bottle of wine.
But she’d said no and gone back to staring at the walls, realizing only later that he hadn’t offered anything to the other women in the room.

After a while, someone came to pick up the other women and Miriam was left alone. Now she was wondering which was worse: being worried about Eric or about herself. She felt like a child again, the one feeling she hated above all others. Everything about this country was designed to infantilize women. She’d said so a hundred times. But it hadn’t changed anything.

She sat on the bench for what felt like another hour.
But damn me to hell if I’m going to check my watch
. She would not resort to an open display of waiting. To the world—even one composed of four blank walls—she was here by choice. Someone outside was waiting for
her
.

Finally the door opened; the guard poked his head inside and motioned her out with a wiggle of his hand. She took her time standing up, righting her suitcase, adjusting her cloak, and making sure the burqa wasn’t going to slip off her nose. She glanced at the door and saw a sign she’d missed before. It said in English
Unclaimed Women.

When she came into the hall, Eric was standing beside the guard. He was a whole foot taller than the officer, and he stood in his typical position when dealing with shorter people, shoulders hunched, head bowed, one hand compulsively reaching up to run through his close-cropped blond hair, all of which made him seem confused and slightly lost, which was seldom truly the case. Right now he looked upset about something. She wanted to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the guard. He was also wearing a new shirt—indigo blue, not his typical color. The silky fabric reminded her of Saudi men.

The guard shifted his machine gun to the other shoulder and put a final signature on a piece of paper, which he handed to Eric along with his passport and work permit. They traded her like runners passing a baton:
Now it’s yours—run!
Eric grabbed her suitcase, clutched her hand. They hurried out of the building, through the glass doors and onto the street, where the Ford pickup sat parked at the curb. The air hit her like a slap. It was like opening an oven to take out a pie, except that this pie was made of diesel fumes and dust. She gagged and pressed her burqa to her nose.

Eric heaved the suitcase into the trunk and Miriam stumbled into the passenger seat, careful not to hit her head on the frame. Once she shut the door, the climate relaxed, as if someone had drawn a curtain on the world. He started the car. The air inside was still slightly cool from his drive to the airport, and when the AC came on, she turned the vents to blow directly at her face and heaved a sigh of relief. Eric spun a lazy arc into the opposite lane, heading back to the freeway.

“So… double-checking here.” He glanced in her direction. “You
are
my wife?”

She took off her burqa. “Your Stepford wife. You know, the one you left for airport security to handle.”

“Jesus, Miriam,” he whispered, running a hand through his hair. He took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I’m really glad you’re back.”

“What. Happened.” She knew she was about to lose her temper, but she was determined to hold off as long as she could.

He looked abashed. It took him a moment to speak. “I got the time mixed up. Miriam, I’m —”

“You
forgot
the
time?
”

“I was so busy at work…” He trailed off, lamely. “Please forgive me. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

You’re damn right it won’t,
she thought. But despite herself, she couldn’t stay angry. She was too relieved to see him. She turned to the window and tried to calm herself down. Traffic was flowing smoothly; the streets were whizzing by.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “So how’ve you been?”

“The usual. How was your trip?” he asked, attempting to soften her up.

“Good,” she said. Unable to stop herself, she added, “Too short.”

He wasn’t going to take the bait. “I missed you. A month is too long.”

“Mmmmh.”

He took her hand, surprising her. “But I managed to find a second wife, so it wasn’t so bad.”

“Oh?” She gave a half smile; she’d play along. “Hence the new shirt.”

“Actually, one of my clients gave it to me. His wife’s family owns a fabric bazaar in Riyadh. This client is one of these hotshot princes who wants a bodyguard just so he can feel important.”

It galled her that Eric’s work wasn’t earth-shatteringly important; that she was putting up with everything here so he could guard one of Saudi Arabia’s five hundred princes, and one who didn’t need protection in the first place.

“Anyway, my new wife,” he went on teasingly. “The good news is, she’s Saudi, and she does all the cooking and cleaning, so now you’re off the hook.” He shot her a sly look. “I’m saving
you
for other things.”

“Well, you know, I
am
your kept woman.”

Eric hit the brakes, veered onto the shoulder, and cut dramatically across a rocky stretch of sand, stopping beside a row of scrub. His fists gripped the wheel, and for a moment she thought she’d gone too far.

Leaning over, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Don’t be angry at me anymore,” he whispered. “It’s only five more months, and then we’re going back. I promise.”

She shut her eyes. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t her dread of the next five months, it was what had already happened in the previous six, the fear, the frustration, the constant worry. This country was slowly crippling their marriage, and she was afraid that by the time they got home, it would be too late.

But she’d already said these things. He’d already failed to understand them. She leaned back against the seat and said the words that had been echoing in her mind for months: “I’d really just like to get home.”

T
hey drove the rest of the way in darkness, punctuated by the occasional pink neon sign announcing all-night
shawarma
parlors by the side of the road. Miriam’s stomach grumbled for food, but she didn’t want to stop.