Out of Control (20 page)

“So contacting the crown prince, or the even the king, won’t do us any good?”

“Maybe they’d listen and jump right on it. More likely, they’d have us taken into
custody, which could stretch into weeks. It’s not a risk we can take.”

But how could we hope to stop Hakeem and Tim without any help from the authorities?
“If we can’t be seen in Yanbu, what can we do?”

We regarded each other for several moments.

“We’ll have to go in disguise,” Robichaud said at length. “You can be an Arab man,
and I’ll be your wife.”

“Seriously?” I eyed his beard and square jaw. “You think we could pull that off?”

He nodded. “I can hide everything under an
abaya
, scarf, and veil. We’ll ask Nawaf to fix us up with identification and get us to
Najran, where we can catch a flight to Yanbu.”

The disguises sounded dicey, but I couldn’t think of anything better. “Will he loan
us some money? We’ve got nothing.”

“For the Woman Sent by Allah, yeah, I’m sure he’ll be glad to.” He leaned over and
gently pushed me backward, until I was lying down. He unwrapped the fabric and smoothed
it across my body and I tingled all over. “But that can all wait for tomorrow. Rest
a while, and if you’re up to it this evening, we’ll have dinner with them.”

Bending further, he kissed me, then got to his feet and left the tent.

I stared up at the ceiling and smiled before I drifted off to sleep. I couldn’t wait
for Vegas. I just hoped we’d both live that long.

…

According to Nick, it was a feast of epic proportions for a Bedouin camp, even a pseudo-Bedouin-camp-cum-arms-dealer-stronghold.
They were Bedouin, but not nomadic in the purest sense. They didn’t move from summer
to winter camping grounds, taking their livestock to fresh grazing land. They actually
had very little livestock—a half dozen camels and a small herd of goats, and those,
I suspected, were more for show than anything else. Supplies were purchased in Al-Sharawrah,
a town some fifty miles west of the camp. That was also where the men went to meet
contacts and buyers, but I was never clear about where they actually got their merchandise.
No doubt, not an accident. We were honored guests, but outsiders.

Because the people in the camp didn’t depend on livestock or meager crops for their
food, and the arms trade was apparently a booming business, they ate very well, but
Nick assured me the feast in our honor was extravagant, an offering to us as a way
of exhibiting their great hospitality, as well as their admiration of me.

What this meant was, I was supposed to eat some of every dish—the more, the better.
We sat on rugs outside Nawaf’s tent, where I’d been convalescing, gathered around
an open area of ground equipped with a campfire in the middle and a multitude of small
coffeepots.

There were a dozen men and ten women, including Nawaf’s two daughters, who looked
to be in their late teens. The remaining women were wives, and I counted eleven children
who all appeared to be under twelve.

When I thought I’d explode if they offered one more bite of anything, we were passed
plates of sweets and dates, which I somehow managed to eat, along with several tiny
cups of strong coffee. I was very careful not to pass anything from my left hand.
It’s considered unclean, and therefore an insult to hand something to someone with
the left hand.

While we drank endless coffee, Nawaf asked me to tell my story. Many of them didn’t
speak English, so Nick translated. Before I began, he whispered to leave off the details
of why I jumped from the plane into the Empty Quarter, suggesting I say there were
robbers on board. So I told the story and when I was done, they all spoke at once,
telling Nick to convey to me how much they admired my courage, and that I was welcome
to return any time.

I was flat out exhausted, and felt like a glutton for having eaten so much, but I
offered to help clean up. Nawaf’s wife insisted I not, and hustled me off to bed,
telling the group I needed to rest because I was still not well.

When we were inside the tent, I thanked her in Arabic, one of the few phrases I knew,
and she embraced me. I was dressed in one of her daughter’s robes, which she managed
to tell me I was expected to sleep in, so I lay down on my pillows and closed my eyes
to make her happy. But my mind was already on tomorrow, and the dangerous journey
ahead.

…

The following day, after morning prayers and a breakfast of yogurt and cracked wheat,
we started our preparations.

Nawaf and his wife helped us transform into the opposite sex. When she rewrapped my
ribs with a long strip of an old
abaya
, she went further up and bound my breasts, squashing them as flat as possible. I
slipped into a
thobe
that belonged to one of the older boys, braided my hair to hang down my back and
out of sight, and folded a red and white
ghutra
beneath the black cords of an
agal
. She looked me up and down, then went out and came back with a handful of black goat
hair. She and Nawaf tried several different methods to fashion the hairs into a mustache,
but none of them looked real enough. Finally, she pulled one end of the
ghutra
forward and wrapped it across my mouth and chin.

Nawaf nodded approval. “Many men cover their mouth with the
ghutra
to protect from wind and sand and sun. No one will question. But your eyes, they
are too feminine. Perhaps look fierce?”

I scowled.

He shook his head. “Now you are an angry woman.”

Concentrating, I gave him a hard stare.

“Yes, better.”

My sex change was complete; my manly Arab name, Majed.

Robichaud was another matter. Turning Mister Macho into a girl was like turning an
elephant into a mouse. We needed some real magic. Nawaf had a little too much fun
stuffing my camisole with goat hair to make fake breasts for him, and I know his wife
giggled when she applied dark kohl to his eyelids. She sewed an extension to the bottom
of a black
abaya
so that it would cover his big feet.

Nawaf took a look at him, hidden behind a veil, and shook his head with mock sympathy.
“Poor Majed. He is to be pitied that he married such an unsightly wife.”

Nick batted his eyelashes at him and struck what was supposed to be a seductive pose,
but looked more like a huddle stance in football.

“Never mind,” I said. “People will just have to assume you’re a mannish woman. Speaking
of women, how are we going to work this? You’re the one who speaks Arabic, but isn’t
it going to look funny when my wife is speaking for me?”

“I’ll tell them you have a disease of the throat, which will add to your reason for
covering the lower half of your face.”

After I said goodbye to Nawaf’s wife and thanked her again and again for taking care
of me and Nick, we set out in Nawaf’s Land Rover. The rest of the camp weren’t privy
to what we were doing, only because Nawaf didn’t want them to have to lie if they
were ever questioned, so we skirted the camp and waved from a distance as we drove
away.

…

Three hours later we were outside the regional airport in Najran, accepting money
and false identifications from Nawaf. He wished us well and extracted a promise that
we would return to see him someday and tell him all.

Inside, we booked an afternoon flight to Yanbu without a hitch, the counter clerk
barely looking up from the computer. Then we went to make a series of phone calls
that would set our plan in motion.

We killed an hour in an isolated corner of the airport café, drinking sweet ginger
tea and discussing what we would do once we arrived in Yanbu.

Time for afternoon prayers came before our flight time, and in keeping with our identities,
we joined the rest of the waiting travelers and went to our knees. If we did it wrong,
which was highly likely despite having seen prayers many times, no one noticed.

Surprisingly, security wasn’t strong, and we went through with no hassle at all, other
than the checkpoint guy giving Robichaud a look that bordered on disgust.

“Ouch,” he whispered as we walked away. “Am I that unattractive?”

“As a guy, you’re very hot. Don’t be greedy.”

That appeared to mollify him, and we boarded the plane without speaking again. We
both fell asleep on the way and by the time we landed in Yanbu, I felt rested and
ready for what lay ahead—a cab ride.

It was actually worse than I’d imagined, but I was manly and didn’t flinch when we
nearly took out a compact car that darted in front of us. I didn’t move a muscle when
the cabbie got frustrated with traffic and jumped the median to drive on the opposite
side of the road and bypass the line. Even when he knocked the side mirror off of
a parked car, I managed to sit still and look bored.

But I couldn’t help thinking of the irony if we were to die here in a taxi cab, after
all our near misses.

We did survive, and went to the Yanbu Al-Higgi Hotel, a square box of a place with
seven floors of uninspired rooms. But it suited our purposes. Unlike the Holiday Inn
and the Radisson, the Al-Higgi wasn’t a western hotel and didn’t cater to western
travelers and businessmen. It was in the heart of Yanbu, less than ten minutes from
the airport and a short walk to the seaport.

At the front desk, I stood as tall as possible and tried to look masculine while Robichaud,
in a falsetto voice, requested a room with a view on the top floor. The clerk looked
doubtful and Nick said something to me in Arabic. Of course I had no clue what he
was asking. Another floor was okay? A room with no view? I frowned, as if displeased
with what he said, and stared down the clerk, pointing to my throat, clearing it as
though I would try to speak.

His eyes widened and he said something to me that appeared to be acquiescence. I nodded
and waved toward Nick, giving my approval to whatever the hell he’d asked.

He pointed to my pocket and said something else. I expressed impatience and pulled
out some bills, counting them out with no clue how many to give. At some point, Robichaud
reached for the counted bills and handed them to the clerk, who then extended a piece
of paper I was supposed to sign. I scrawled something completely illegible—remembering
at the last second to write it backward in “Arabic”—laid down the pen, then turned
and swaggered away, the room key in hand. I never looked back to check on my “wife,”
or to assure myself the clerk was satisfied with my signature.

I suppose it all worked. Within five minutes, we were inside a spacious, if vanilla,
room. There was one bed with a tacky blue spread, a small desk, and a set of cabinets
with a television. The bathroom was tiny, but clean, and I eyed the shower with longing.
Nawaf’s wife had provided water to wash, but only a sponge bath. I still had sand
in places where sand should never be.

Robichaud was at the window, looking toward the Red Sea through a set of high powered
binoculars. “We’re gonna have to go to Plan B. I can’t see anything from here.”

“Bummer.” I’d taken off the
ghutra
, but still had on the small skull cap that’s worn beneath it. I stood in front of
the air conditioner and enjoyed the cool air on my face. “Wonder if Faisal’s having
any luck?”

“My money says he is. What time is it?”

“Five-thirty. Almost time for prayers. If we’re going to see about using the Internet,
we’d best get to it.”

He set the binoculars on the desk and watched me replace the headdress. “I wish I
could take a picture of you. It sure would add to all the stories I’m going to tell
our grandchildren.”

I looked at his reflection in the mirror above the desk. “Aren’t you jumping the gun
a little? There have to be children before there can be grandchildren.”

“Are you saying you don’t want children?”

I turned to face him. “Sure, I want children. Someday. Legitimate ones would be nice.”

“Well, yeah, of course. So we’ll get married, then we’ll have children, and later,
we’ll have grandchildren. Isn’t that how it usually works?”

If he hadn’t appeared dead serious, I would have laughed. Mister Macho, dressed in
an
abaya,
scarf, and veil, with only his dark eyes showing, was asking me to marry him. Sort
of. But he was serious, so I didn’t laugh. “Maybe it’s just the near death experience
talking. We don’t know each other all that well.” I glanced at the bed. “Hell, we
haven’t even had sex yet.”

He stepped closer. “Do you love me?”

I had only to remember the Empty Quarter to say without hesitation, “Yes.”

“And I love you, so it’s a no-brainer that we’ll get married, right?”

Eyeing him, I had to ask, “Why now? Why the sudden insistence?”

He stared down at me with a hesitant look in his eyes, as if he couldn’t decide what
to say. “We’re still a long way from getting home, Blair. Whatever happens, it would
mean a lot to know things are set between us.”

I got it then. He was worried one or both of us could be sent to a Saudi prison, or
we might be killed. Knowing we had a firm commitment would give us peace of mind,
something to hang on to, come what may. I thought of what it had been like in the
desert, how much I had wished I’d told him how I felt, how bitter was the regret that
we’d never have a chance to say the words, let alone live our lives together.

Now, he was handing me the chance. Was I going to go all analytical about it and say,
gee, let’s wait, and get to know each other better, and meet the families, blah, blah,
blah?

Like hell
. I swallowed and nodded. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Good.” He raised the veil and leaned down to give me a quick kiss, but I held up
my hand.

“But you have to promise that when we get back I get a nice dinner to celebrate, with
champagne and flowers and everything.”

He smiled then, and said, “Deal. Now, let’s go check the port schedule.” He turned
and headed for the door.