Strangers (5 page)

O’Neill had observed her reaction. ‘It’s part of what this place is,’ he said. ‘I give it a wide berth. Some Westerners go. For them it’s the nearest thing we’ve got to a tourist attraction.’

Joe’s voice cut into the exchange before she could respond. ‘Have you seen that, Roisin?’

She leaned across the car to look out at the building they were passing. A tower of reflective glass rose hundreds of feet above them, ending in a parabolic curve beneath a fragile arch where the structure had been cut away forming a needle reaching up into the sky. She twisted round in amazement as the road swooped away.

‘It’s called the Kingdom Centre,’ O’Neill said. ‘Office space, conference centres, hotel, stuff like that. After 9/11, a bad joke went round Riyadh that they used it to train the hijackers. There’s a mall.’ He switched lanes and pulled away as a car drew level with them, almost boxing them in. ‘With a floor for women. You don’t need to wear a veil. A lot of the wives go there.’

No one spoke for a while. She watched the traffic as they sped along the six-lane highway. The cars were all moving at high speed, and the drivers wove recklessly from lane to lane with little apparent regard for the danger. She looked at O’Neill’s profile, watched the way his hidden eyes observed the traffic, watched the way he anticipated the actions of the other drivers with the coolness of a chess player studying the board. He was a man who would fit in here. He was someone who knew how to become part of the background, who knew how to camouflage himself from the edginess and the tension that she could feel in the air around her.

He swung the car along the road that ran through the outskirts of the city, further away
from the lights and the noise and the bustle. Roisin had seen maps of Saudi–a vast desert that would swallow up western Europe, with cities emerging from the wilderness almost at random, a country created in a brief space of time from disparate groups of nomadic people, a country where the beliefs and alliances were complex and alien to outsiders like her and Joe.

The road vanished into a hazy distance. It was lined with apartment blocks, stark and ugly after the beauty of the old city and the futuristic spires of the modern. They were on the outskirts now, with car parks, shacks and industrial complexes. Then a fence appeared on the horizon, dancing slightly in the heat haze. Roisin watched it as it emerged from the urban wasteland through which they were driving. It looked high and formidable, like a prison camp or a high-security installation. She found herself looking for the watch towers.

But she could see trees and buildings behind the fence, and O’Neill was turning the car towards a gate protected by chicanes, towards a kiosk where two uniformed men stood with their guns held ready. ‘Security’s heavy. Got your documents?’

O’Neill spoke to the guards, his Arabic sounding fluent and easy. There was a quick, unsmiling exchange. Roisin reminded herself that the promiscuous smiles of the West were not universal, that the severe faces did not denote hostility. O’Neill showed a security pass to the first guard, while
the other one came round to the passenger side of the car and held his hand out for Joe to pass him their documents. The man didn’t indicate by word or gesture that he was aware of Roisin’s silent presence. She felt suddenly that she had ceased to exist.

Then the car was waved past. She read the notices that hung on the gates as O’Neill waited for the barrier to lift. They were written in Arabic and English: Checkpoint. Stop at the barrier. Have your documents ready.

Keep out. Sheer drop. Danger of death
.

Damien O’Neill leaned back in the reclining chair and watched the sky. His house was in the old part of the city, a part that had been largely abandoned by the Saudis, who had moved out to the wealthy suburbs. When Damien had first arrived, more years ago than he cared to count, foreign workers were housed here, and he had never joined the exodus to what was seen as more luxurious, more suitable accommodation.

The house, old and shabby, was traditionally Arabic. There was little furniture. Cupboards were built into the walls, but otherwise the furniture was sparse and portable, designed to be moved to the shadier parts of the house as the seasons progressed. It was far too big for him, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon the cool, high-ceilinged rooms.

‘You have no wife,’ his friend Majid said, by way of excusing Damien’s eccentricity. Majid chided him regularly about the lack of order in
his life. He was concerned for his friend’s welfare. ‘You should marry,’ he added with the zeal of the convert. Majid had recently married and he and his young wife were expecting their first child.

Damien knew too much about marriage. His own, embarked on with the careless optimism of his youth, had come to a catastrophic conclusion. If he let himself, he could still see Catherine’s face twisted with misery and a love that had rotted into hatred.
You don’t care about anyone! No one matters to you!
But no one could have filled the void that was Catherine’s need, or that was what he told himself. ‘One day,’ he said to Majid, unwilling to explain the complexities of his past, complexities that Majid would not understand anyway.

‘When you go home, maybe,’ Majid had said.

But this was Damien’s home. He had nowhere else he wanted to go.

He was feeling hungry. He stretched and headed down the stairs. The hallway was dim and cool, and the stone flags felt cold under his feet. It was shadowy down here. At street level, the house had no windows, just air holes to channel the breezes from the narrow streets. The kitchen smelled of coffee and spices.

There was a pot of stew simmering on the cooker, and bread under a net. His houseboy, Rai, must have been to market, because there was a dish full of fresh, sticky dates. Damien had planned to go to the market himself. He liked to spend
time drinking coffee in the cafés, talking to the men, catching up on the local news and gossip. This was part of his work: integrate, blend in, become part of the community.

He had come to the Kingdom as a civil servant, working for the British government, but realized soon enough that the rigid hierarchies, the red-tape and bureaucracy that tied up the diplomatic service were going to prevent him from doing anything he really wanted to do, and that, if the local people were to trust him, he would have to cut all visible ties with Western government organizations. As soon as he made it known he was available, an agency that recruited professionals to work in the Kingdom had snapped him up.

He worked at the interface between the ex-pat community and the Saudis, a precarious seesaw of mutual and often wilful miscomprehension. It was a difficult time just now. Ex-pat workers were leaving in droves as the insurgent campaign against them had been stepped up. Things were quieter after a clampdown by the security services, but Damien was still aware of the edginess on the streets, something in the atmosphere that said trouble had not gone but simply changed its face, biding its time until it was ready to strike.

He’d spent the morning with two new recruits: Joe Massey, who had taken a post at the hospital, and his wife Roisin, who would be working at the university. He thought about the couple as he stood in the kitchen. Joe Massey had worked in the
Kingdom before, but he was the one who’d been anxious, who’d been tense and uncommunicative during their brief tour of the city.

Damien thought about it and corrected his impression. Massey had been tense and edgy from the time that his wife had got separated from them in the crowd. OK, that was fair enough, though Roisin Massey seemed well able to look after herself. She was a small, determined woman whose fair hair would have been a beacon on the streets of Riyadh if she hadn’t had the sense to keep it tucked firmly away under her scarf. He suspected that she was going to have trouble accepting the restrictions of life for a woman in Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh could be a hard place for new arrivals. It was the centre of the lands known as the Nadj, the crucible of Wahhabi Islam. According to prophecy, the Nadj had been condemned by God as a place of earthquakes and sedition, the place where the devil’s horn would rise up. It was the heart of the deepest and most rigid interpretation of the faith.

The day had faded, and he could see the city lights sparkling in the distance. He’d been invited to spend the evening with Majid’s family and he’d need to set off soon if he wasn’t going to be late. He had planned to phone and make his apologies–he had reports to complete that he’d left unfinished because of the Masseys, but now he made a snap decision. Work could wait. He wanted to
get the feel of the city, take in its mood as he drove through the streets. The talk at Majid’s, leisurely and convoluted though it would be, would tell him something about what was going on. And he would enjoy the hospitality.

Majid was an officer in the city police force–not the Mutawa’ah, the notorious protectors of virtue and opponents of vice, but the police who dealt with the more secular law breakers, and who were responsible for imposing one of the harshest and most rigid penal codes on the planet. He lived in the sprawling family compound in the suburbs to the west of the city, a cluster of houses that Majid’s father had bought as his family expanded. Abu Abdulaziz Karim ibn Ahmad al-Amin was a traditional Saudi patriarch. He had two wives, five sons and three daughters. The daughters lived in their father’s house, the brothers, all married, each had a house of their own.

In all the years Damien had known the family, he had never met the women, had only been aware sometimes of a veiled presence in the car, or waiting in the background. All he knew about Majid’s mother, the second wife, was the name she had started using once she had given birth to a son:
Um Majid
–the mother of Majid.

The relationship between the brothers was complex and sometimes difficult but they never showed the internal rifts to him, the outsider. Family was all. Majid had once told him of a Saudi saying: ‘Me and my brother against the cousin.’
Damien already knew the saying, and he knew what came next:
Me and my cousin against the stranger
.

Majid’s marriage had caused some ripples in the family. In most ways it was a very suitable marriage; his wife, Yasmin, was the daughter of a wealthy businessman, but she was an only child and though she had been brought up in Riyadh, she had travelled in Europe and had been educated at a Parisian university. And she wasn’t a true Saudi. Her mother was European and her father was the son of a Saudi mother and Armenian father. He was one of the few foreigners who had been allowed to take Saudi citizenship, but the insular Saudi culture still held him an outsider. He had brought his daughter back from Europe to marry Majid, no doubt hoping that his daughter’s marriage into a Saudi family of the reputation and longevity of Majid’s would help to integrate him more closely. Yasmin worked as a teaching assistant at Riyadh’s King Saud University, and she was independent and opinionated by Saudi standards.

His phone rang as he was preparing to leave. He waited to see who was calling. ‘Damien? It’s Amy. Are you there?’ He moved to answer it, then stopped. He was late, and conversations with Amy tended to lead into deeper water than he felt able to cope with at the moment. He let his hand drop as he heard her impatient sigh. ‘Call me.’

Amy. The quick instruction was typical.
Call me
.
He would, but later. As he negotiated the car through the hazardous traffic, he couldn’t stop himself thinking of her as he’d last seen her, her red hair springing up round her head, her towel slipping casually down as she leaned forward so he could light her cigarette, beautiful in the lamplight. And then they’d had a pointless row about

—what? He couldn’t remember. It had been one of many that had been not so much reconciled as forgotten in his bed.

Twenty minutes later, he pulled up outside the gated compound where the family lived, and waited for the gates to swing open. Majid came to greet him and led him through the courtyard into the large room where the men customarily sat. Two of Majid’s brothers were already there, talking to a third man, a man in Western dress who was sitting with his head turned away from the door. He looked round as Majid ushered Damien in.

Damien recognized him at once. This was Majid’s father-in-law, Arshak Nazarian. Nazarian, an attractive, debonair man, described himself as a ‘businessman’. The nature of his business–bringing cheap migrant labour into the Kingdom–made Damien wary of him. He avoided Nazarian’s company as far as he could.

Faisal, the oldest of the brothers and head of the family in the father’s absence, greeted Damien with a standard ‘Peace be upon you.’

Damien returned the greeting politely, wondering
what he had interrupted as he took the seat that Majid urged him to. Over the years, Damien had become accustomed to the Arab style of sitting, usually cross-legged on floor cushions. It had felt awkward and uncomfortable at first, but now it felt natural.

He accepted a cup of coffee, light and spiced with cardamom, that the houseboy offered him, and made his enquiries about the family and their well-being. The houseboy stood vigilant, waiting to refill the cups. The conversation was desultory and wandered around the unusual nature of the recent heat and the pious hope that God would soon relieve the drought.

Damien realized quickly that there was something wrong, even though Majid’s pleasure at seeing him had been sincere. But Nazarian’s sudden silence on his entry, the oblique references to the inclemency of the weather, which was much the same as usual, the calling down of God’s blessing that they might soon have rain, which was, in fact, unlikely, carried meaning beyond the mere facts that were being expressed. People who wanted to understand Arabic had to have an ear for metaphor, but Damien couldn’t pick up the underlying message. He decided he wouldn’t prolong the visit, but leave as soon as politeness permitted.

Nazarian said abruptly, ‘We will discuss this later.’ He stood up and held out his hand to Damien. ‘O’Neill,’ he said. ‘Good to see you. There
are things I need to talk to you about.’ He spoke in English, though all the previous exchanges had been in Arabic.

‘Call my office,’ Damien said. He had no interest in a meeting with Nazarian if he could avoid it.

Nazarian gave him a long look, then made his farewells to the brothers. Damien waited until he had gone before he said, ‘Your father-in-law is looking well.’ He was curious about the conversation his arrival had clearly interrupted.

Majid’s face darkened. ‘He is concerned about his daughter.’

Damien never asked about the women in the family in the presence of the traditional Faisal, and with Majid, he always waited until the other man introduced the topic.

‘Your wife is well?’

Majid looked frustrated. ‘She wants a holiday, before the baby is born. She wants to go to Europe, but I have decided that we will stay in the Kingdom for now.’

So Nazarian probably represented the big guns to bring Yasmin into line. Majid wouldn’t want to discuss his own inability to persuade his wife to do what he wanted, so Damien changed the subject. ‘I met the new man today. Joe Massey. He’s come to work at the hospital.’ Majid was always interested in the ex-pats that came into the country.

Majid frowned. ‘Joe Massey? A doctor? I have met him before.’

‘He’s a pathologist. He was here a few months ago. What’s he like?’

‘I did not know him at all.’ Majid’s voice was dismissive. ‘He was employed at the hospital when there was a drugs theft. Now, my friend, what do you think about the election?’

The topic of Joe Massey was firmly cut off for one that Majid’s brothers could contribute to. Damien made a mental note to ask Majid about Massey at a better time, and settled back to listen to a discussion he’d heard many times since the elections–the first ever to be held in the Kingdom–were announced. The powerful religious lobby was exercising its influence on the polls and there was tension between traditionalists and reformers. Dissent had surged through the Kingdom, casting its ripples and eddies in odd and disturbing places.

Damien murmured something anodyne and left the brothers to debate the issue while his own thoughts drifted to Amy. If he had picked up the phone, he could be with her now.

Her mouth had tasted of honey in the shaded room, and his tongue could still recapture the faint salt taste from her upper lip where the sweat had beaded. Her hair had been soft and springy under his fingers. She had had a fragrance like the sea. ‘You aren’t real,’ he’d murmured. ‘You’re one of those creatures who lures men to disaster.’

She’d laughed. ‘A siren? I don’t think so.’

‘Or a mermaid. Don’t they call men to their doom?’

Her skin had been warm under his fingers, and her face was flushed. ‘I’m no mermaid, Damien. See?’ And in the shadowed room, he could see.

Majid was saying something, and he shook his head to clear his mind. ‘I’m sorry?’ he said.

‘What is your opinion, Damien?’

Damien never commented on the politics of the Kingdom unless he was expressly invited to do so. The Saudis, like most people of the Middle East, were weary of criticism after years of outside interference. He ran the conversation quickly through his mind. The brothers had been discussing the movement among a minority of Saudi women for more rights. ‘You know my views,’ he said. ‘Give women the vote–then you will know whether they want more rights.’

‘My friend, Saudi women have their rights,’ Majid protested. ‘Women know that they are valued here, that they are cared for and protected.’

‘Sometimes they don’t know what is best for them,’ Khalil said with a meaningful look.