The Ruins of Us (26 page)

The voices did not resume their hum, and a minute later, a car engine tripped on. Faisal listened as it grew fainter. He waited to hear his mother walk upstairs to her bedroom. When he heard her door shut, he went to the garage. From the recreation shelves he grabbed his swimsuit. For a moment, he thought about the driving ban that his father had issued, but then put it out of his mind. In a family that seemed to be breaking every rule, a quick drive across town almost deserved a medal, it seemed so valiantly harmless. And besides, who was there to remark on his absence? He ducked into the cool, dark interior of the car, waited for the garage door to lift, then coasted down the driveway and drove straight for Majid’s.

From the curb outside Majid’s house, Faisal called him.

“I’m outside. Get your swimsuit and get out here.”

After a few minutes, Majid appeared outside the gate, a baffled look on his face. He got in the car.

“Ibrahim gets arrested and you want to swim laps?” Majid asked.

“This day,” Faisal said. He paused, took a deep breath. “I need some relief. We’re going to Prairie Vista.”

“What’s wrong with your pool?”

“I can’t stand to be in that house for another second.”

Faisal was quiet. He put the car in drive and they rumbled away over the potholed road.

“You should have let me come in the house with you,” Majid said. “It was Coleman, wasn’t it?”

Faisal felt like a small, ragged flag snapping in the middle of nowhere, a flag whose colors were gone, its armies deserted.

“Was it or wasn’t it Coleman?” Majid said. “Come on, why are you protecting them?”

Faisal closed his hands tighter around the steering wheel. Finally, he said, “It was him, all right? It was Dan Coleman. I got angry. I sent my mother to her room and told her I was in charge when Baba wasn’t around. She looked like a little puppy, all ashamed.” He was breathing hard, like he had just finished the last leg of a swim relay. “I took care of it.”

Majid sat in silence. After a moment, he asked, “Were they doing anything?” He sounded excited, like he wanted the answer to be yes. Faisal weighed what to say. They
could
have been doing something. At this point, he wasn’t sure what his mother was capable of.

“They
could
have been. Before I got there,” he said. “That’s why I got so mad. That’s why I took care of things.”

He felt good about this answer. Majid seemed to accept it with a disgusted huff, like it was exactly what he’d expected from Rosalie and Dan. Really, Faisal just wanted to swim and forget about the whole thing.

At Prairie Vista, he pulled past the guard booth, pointing to the B-Corp decal as the guard looked on. He parked in the visitors’ section. Inside the car, he pulled his suit on underneath his thobe. Majid did the same, his knees banging against the dashboard. The pool was empty, its surface glassy save the gentle movements of a few frangipani leaves floating across. It promised weightlessness and cool forgetfulness. They pulled off their thobes and eased down the steps. Faisal felt the rush of the water against his legs and stomach, relishing the slow immersion as his swim shorts ballooned around his thighs. The filter gurgled. The night was pure stillness. Faisal ducked his head underwater and sank to the bottom, until he was sitting cross-legged listening to the muffled sounds of Majid’s slow movements through the water beside him. When he could hold his breath no longer, he surfaced. He let his feet rise in front of him until his toes poked through. He floated on his back, his ears half submerged. He looked straight up into the doming darkness. It was too dusty for stars, but he could see the sky’s black, and that it did not end. Standing, he brushed his wet hair out of his face and looked at his friend.

“Thank God for swimming pools,” he said.

“Don’t worry, brother,” Majid said. “I have an idea.”

“About what?”

“Coleman. Ibrahim.”

“I told you, I handled it.”

“You did well. But I think we can use what happened to get some good results.”

“OK.” Faisal waited, nervous about what his friend might suggest. With the sheikh in prison, his mother with that idiot American, and his father probably getting drunk somewhere, Faisal felt as if his whole world were sliding into the foaming sea.

“Trust in God,” Majid said. “Which apartment is Coleman’s?”

Faisal drew his hand out of the water and pointed:
118
.

“Good. Very good. I think he’ll be able to do us a favor. Help us save Ibrahim. Considering what you saw tonight, it won’t be difficult to convince him to help us with our plan.”

Faisal tilted his head and shook it hard until the water came out of his ears.

“Go on,” he said.

His mother could be a fool if she chose to be. What really mattered at that moment was the sheikh.

LATER THAT NIGHT,
back in his room, Faisal removed his thobe and ghutra and lay down on the bed. He said a prayer for Sheikh Ibrahim. He said a prayer for his father. He said a prayer for his mother and one for Dan Coleman, that they might not be as foolish as they seemed. He prayed for Majid. He prayed for Mariam. After nearly a week of sleeplessness, he prayed for sleep. Faisal closed his eyes and saw all the electric lines of his life crisscrossing like neon in the darkness. He slept.

Chapter Eight

QUIETLY, ABDULLAH OPENED
the French doors leading out to the balcony and stepped outside. He didn’t want to wake Isra, who was sprawled inelegantly across their bed. On the balcony, the young morning was soft against his face. Later, the humidity would be oppressive—entire watery sheets of the Gulf made airborne. From where he stood, Abdullah could see the upper stories of the big house down the block. Was Rosalie awake and shuffling around the kitchen? Were the diamond earrings blinking beneath her hair? Occasionally, she prepared American breakfasts for the children—pancakes and beef sausages and fried potatoes. She joked that they needed a big farmer’s breakfast to make it through their days in the Saudi school system. Out of habit, he would shush her. What? She would ask. Who’s listening?
The maids. The drivers,
he would say.

Despite her years in the Kingdom, she still had that American naiveté, that belief that governments existed to serve the people. The al-Saud served themselves first, and then their people, and there was no room for criticism, no matter how hushed or private it seemed. After seeing his father lose contracts by failing to attend the prince’s kabsa, Abdullah made sure to keep his thoughts to himself. On his watch, the Baylanis had hurdled the Sa’ads, the Gosaibis, the Zamils, and others to gain a position so close to the royals that Abdullah could count their bright gold fillings. B-Corp had gotten the Pepsi contract, and Abdullah had laughed to himself as he left the meeting, triumphant, for what better way to be rich in the desert? He would never do anything to jeopardize his position. He would never take the royal names in vain. The prince had long wanted an excuse to hobble B-Corp, to seize some of its holdings and claim them for the Family. It was the largest company in the Eastern Province, and the fourth largest in the Kingdom, and the al-Saud could not stand that an unrelated merchant family had become so powerful.

After the disastrous events at Gold City, Abdullah had decided to stay at Isra’s house for a few days. He needed to be well rested before his meeting with Prince Abdul Aziz, and he could not imagine finding much peace with Rosalie. She moved now like a coiled spring, and because he didn’t want to face that kind of hurt and fury in another person, particularly not in Rose, he felt avoidance to be the best tactic.

The day’s meeting with the prince would be casual, tea and dates, perhaps a card game or backgammon. There would be some talk of business, and millions of dollars would hang in the balance, so that with each roll of the dice, with each joke that passed between them, Abdullah would be advancing B-Corp’s agenda. Frequently, he found himself wishing that Abdul Latif could be there to see how the company had flourished. His father would hardly recognize Al Dawoun, with its carefully tended Corniche and restaurants glittering from man-made islands. In a lifetime, Saudi Arabia had undergone centuries of change, and the Baylanis had played a significant role in that modernization. Abdullah pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and closed his eyes. The thought brought a pride so fierce that he had to pause and catch his breath. Yes, sometimes the Kingdom’s feet were too big for its shoes, or the other way around, but it was to be expected in any teenaged nation.

Abdullah had already decided that he would invite Dan to join him at the meeting. Not as apology, necessarily. He found apologies useless, self-indulgent—a scramble to rewrite the past when all that really mattered was the future. They’d go to the palace, laugh about its extravagance, and then move forward. He wasn’t actually threatened by Dan. Inviting him to the palace would be a distraction, but it would also serve as a reminder: I am Abdullah al-Baylani, the friend of kings, and you are Dan Coleman.

Of course, the invitation would also serve Abdullah in other ways. He needed Dan there to mitigate the prince’s anger when Abdullah began his negotiations for a smaller royal cut of the Pepsi profits. With a third party looking on, the prince wouldn’t dare fly into one of his storied black rages, fits that had once left a prominent businessman with nothing but a single segmented tangerine to show for his decades of striving. The man, formerly a host to dignitaries from around the world, had gone back to his village in the Najd and not been heard from in years. Abdullah was mildly afraid of Abdul Aziz. After all, the man’s forefathers had managed to subdue an entire fractious peninsula. This taste for domination had not grown dormant in their grandson. Beneath Abu Turki’s substantial flesh beat the heart of a warrior, except now he fought for money rather than land.

Behind Abdullah, the doors opened with a whisper, and he turned to see Isra, her lips still puffy from sleep.

“Isra,” he said. He took his wife’s face between his hands and kissed her eyelids.

“Sabah al-khayr. What a beautiful morning.”

She walked to the balcony railing, then leaned over and looked first to the left, then the right, assessing the day.

“Mornings are my favorite time,” Abdullah said. “Everything is new.”

“Yes, darling. You can start fresh each morning. Now, if you please, won’t you tell me what you were so angry about yesterday?”

“No, nothing of importance. Not worth bringing into your peaceful house. Would you please bring me some coffee and the newspaper?”

“Yes, my heart. Perhaps later you’ll feel like sharing what is bothering you.”

“Perhaps.”

He knew that he wouldn’t feel like it, though. To him, Isra’s house was a place of forgetting, where he could let go of his troubles like so many colored balloons disappearing into the sky. Though two years had passed, theirs still felt like a new love, and Rosalie’s discovery of Isra had only reinforced that feeling. They’d been caught like two youngsters courting in the shadows. For wasn’t love most powerful when it was new and governed by its own wildness? If Rosalie had not been so nosy, she could have gone several more years safe from the knowledge of Isra. They could have remained neighbors who nodded politely at each other as their BMWs passed along the Diamond Mile.

A few minutes later Isra returned, carrying a small brass tray of tiny porcelain cups. After setting it down on the Kuwaiti chest next to the couch, she poured a glass and handed it to him. It steamed in his hands and he inhaled the bitter smell of the soil-black coffee. They did not keep servants at Isra’s home because he worried about their chattering. Also, he did not want to share her. There was purity and simplicity to their interactions. Their love a lagoon, everything was stillness, blue with peace. He thanked her for the coffee and she smiled, resting her hand on his shoulder.

“Did you see the news?” she asked. “Hanieh announced that Hamas is boycotting the elections.”

“That surprises you?”

“No, but it worries me. I’m worried about my family, with things openly hostile now.”

“If anything happens, we’ll bring your parents here.”

“Abdi, please. They’ve stayed through everything else. They aren’t going to be pushed out by their own people. And you know my mother could hardly survive here.”

“Wearing the abaya is more tolerable than living in constant fear of war.”

“I suppose. But it’s been so quiet in Hebron lately. Umma thought they might even reopen the Old Souq.”

“Habibti, I’m sorry, but I really can’t think about these things right now. I’ve got to prepare for the meeting with Prince Abdul Aziz.”

“Fine, but we will continue talking about this later. You know people who can help. And we’ve only got six months to make this world livable for Kareem.” She laughed and rubbed her stomach.

“You know I hate that name.”

“Now you’re paying attention. How about Mahmoud?”

“Too dour.”

“Laith.”

“Hmm. How about Noor?”

“Ah, so you’re changing your bet?” She gave him a sly smile. “It’s a girl now?”

“Either way, I’m a happy man.”

“You’d better be.” She smiled, kissed his cheek. “I’ll go. You need time to think of jokes that will go over the old sultan’s head.”

“You know me so well.”

“I have to. It’s my job.”

She leaned in, wrapped a few of his curls around her finger and tugged gently. He could smell her skin, the lingering morning smell of her, before she showered. Her stomach bulged ever so slightly. For now, it was their secret. As she turned to leave him, her bathrobe caught the breeze. He watched her departing ankles, thin as a child’s, and wondered if Isra had ever gotten enough to eat as a girl in the West Bank. It had been part of her appeal, that refugee’s thinness. He’d wanted to take her back to the Kingdom to feed her fatty meat and saffron rice and fried onions and thick stews until she became plump and radiant. No matter that she’d lived for years in Paris working for the United Nations, where she’d eaten foie gras and roasted duck with prime ministers, aristocrats, starched bureaucrats; her face had retained its look of deprivation, cheeks hollow beneath the bone, full lips rising dramatically from her gaunt face. And that was the difference, really. Isra held in her heart the essence of what it meant to be an Arab after
1948
: suffering. How could he explain to Rosalie his need to be close to that?