Arab

by Jim Ingraham

  “But he was here.”

  The woman bowed her head and said nothing.

  Nick studied the old woman’s face. She had risen to the defense of a friend. She had harbored him. He had not forced himself on her.

  “I’m not looking for Faisal Ibrahim. I need to find Diab,” he said.

  “Why would he tell me where he goes? He knows you would come here.”

  Nick took another look at the defiant Salima who was making little spirals of potato skins that fell into her lap. Perhaps Habib had seen her at the police station but that didn’t interest him.

  The captain reminded the two women that Faisal Ibrahim was a fugitive. “Sheltering him is a crime.”

  “He forced his way in here,” Salima said. “He had guards outside. What could we do?”

  The captain gave that some thought, glanced at Nick who followed him into the little courtyard. “She’s right.” The captain said. “He wouldn’t tell her where he was going.”

  “You taking them in?”

  “A waste of time,” the captain said. “We’ll work on the boy.”

  “Do you think it’s possible Jaradat could be involved in this?”

  “I’m sure she was reaching for a star. What the hell would he want with Faisal Ibrahim?”

  Inside the car on their way out of the cemetery, Habib said, “I know a place where some people might know this Diab.”

  “I have to get back to the city,” the captain said. “If you find him, let me know. I’ll send a squad in. I’d love to get credit for locating Faisal Ibrahim.”

  *

  They had left the police van on the sidewalk outside a mosque and were walking with two uniformed men in near darkness along the Qasabah in Al-Qahirah, the old section of Cairo.

  “Did you know Al-Qahirah is the real name of this city?” Habib said. “Cairo was how Italian merchants said the name.”

  “Why is this called High Street?” Nick asked.

  “Because of the low life that hangs out here,” Habib said, glancing at an old man curled up in a rug in the doorway of an abandoned house.

  “I love this part of the city,” Habib said. “Even now, at night when the shops are closed, the air floats with the fragrance of sandalwood and cinnamon and coriander.”

  “And garbage and animal sweat and urine,” Nick said.

  “You have no romance.”

  They had entered a narrow alley that was lighted only by high windows in three-story houses and, down at the end, a splash of light outside Lamine’s, a small café where Diab and his driver were thought to be holed up.

  “Maybe he once lived here,” Habib said, raising a hand toward windows above the shops.

  “This old girlfriend of Diab’s—Tahani? Is that the name?”

  “I believe so,” Habib said.

  “I noticed a look on your face when Nuha told us. Do you know her?”

  Habib laughed. “I don’t know every whore in Cairo, Nick.”

  “I thought you did,” Nick said.

  “Do you realize that this is the largest city on the continent of Africa?”

  “And home,” Nick said, “to a zillion vagabonds and subversives.”

  They stopped outside a barbershop. Nick told the two uniformed men to wait there. “If he comes rushing out, one of you fall in front of him, trip him up. Then the two of you hold him down until I come out. Knock him out with a baton if you have to. But don’t kill him. We need him for questioning.”

  The door to the café had been left open. Even from the sidewalk they smelled cigarette smoke and wine. They found only three men and a woman inside. The three men, elderly, smoking cigarettes, were watching the screen of an old television set perched on the lid of an ancient player piano in the corner of the room.

  The woman, with long stringy gray hair, was sitting near a cash register at the bar. In her sixties, probably.

  “We are looking for Tahani,” Nick said.

  “Why? What’s she done?” It apparently wasn’t necessary for Nick to identify himself. She clearly thought that he and Habib were the police.

  “We have a few questions.”

  “She’s busy.”

  “And you’re going to be very unbusy if we close this place down,” Habib said.

  Her face paled. “I meant no offense, sir. This is just a neighborhood café. We do nothing wrong here.”

  “If you have a little warning button under the bar,” Nick said, “don’t use it. Now where is Tahani?”

  The woman flattened both hands on the greasy wooden surface. “Why would I need a warning bell?”

  The evasiveness, Nick believed, was for the benefit of the men—a deliberate tactic to assure them that she did not toady to police demands.

  Nick slammed his palm on the bar, startling the woman. She said nothing but gave a hurried, nervous glance at a door near the piano.

  “Don’t warn her,” Nick said, striding toward the door.

  It led into a short hall lighted by a yellowish bulb above a doorway that took them, not surprisingly, into the back section of the barbershop next door. The hall was saturated with odors of hashish.

  In the first of two rooms there was nothing, no furniture, no carpet, one shuttered window. Habib turned off his flashlight. They opened the door of the third room and caught a man hurriedly pulling pants up his legs and a woman cowering against the wall wrapped in a sheet. Her hair was dyed a dull orange and it hung in shreds about her face. She was more than forty.

  “Take Tahani into the hall,” Nick said, wincing from the heat and the sickening odors in this airless room.

  To convince the man he was from the police, Nick grabbed his hair, lifting him off the bed, slamming his face into the wall. He removed a wallet from the man’s hip and found a picture on a driver permit. The name was Farouk Qassis.

  “What’s this all about?” Farouk whined, holding a hand over his bleeding nose.

  “I’m looking for Diab. You know him?”

  “Diab? No. Why should I know a Diab?”

  “Just thought you might,” Nick said. Turning to Habib, he said. “Take him outside.” He watched Habib hustle the barefoot man toward the saloon.

  “And,” Nick said, turning to the woman, “I suppose you’ve never heard of Diab.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “I see. And you’re so in love you’d go to prison to protect him.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “You are obstructing the judicial process by harboring a criminal,” Nick said. “That could get you hanged.”

  Even in the dim light of the room Nick saw her face blanch.

  “If you answer my questions honestly, Tahani, I won’t arrest you. You’re not the one I’m after.”

  “Let me get dressed,” she said.

  Before he could turn to leave the room, probably intending the move as a gift, she dropped the sheet. He looked her over with indifference and again told her to get dressed. A few moments later she opened the door wearing a bright red dress that hung loosely to her ankles.

  A little smile played at her mouth as she watched him. Without waiting for a question, she said, “He’s asleep out back in his car.”

  “Out back?”

  “There’s a driveway at the end of the alley that circles around. But don’t tell him I told you, he’ll kill me.”

  Out on the sidewalk he met Habib and a man in uniform striding down the alley toward him.

  “Farouk’s in the truck. Our man’s guarding him.”

  “We don’t need him,” Nick said. “Let him go.” He didn’t want to be bothered with all the explanations bringing him in would require.

  Using Habib’s flashlight, the three followed a narrow unpaved driveway around back of a small house where they found two cars on a patch of gravel. The rear door of one of them, a green Pontiac, was open.

  “Someone’s been sleeping in here,” Habib said. “It stinks.”

  They flashed Habib’s light acros
s doorways down an alley. They saw no one.

  “Somebody must’ve tipped him off,” Nick said.

  “We’ll find him,” Habib said. “That kid we rescued. He must know where Faisal Ibrahim’s soldiers are. They’ll know how to find Diab.”

  *

  Nick dropped Habib off at the corner of the one-way street where his girlfriend lived. He drove across town through heavy traffic, anxious to be in his suite, to shower, to put on fresh underwear and crawl into bed. What he really wanted was to fly out of Cairo, go to London, go to the States. But what would he do in the States? He had no family. His father was an only child. He hardly knew his mother’s people in that little town in New Jersey, hadn’t seen them since he walked away from the cemetery with his father, feeling lost even then—his father crying at the kitchen table, ghosts of his mother in every room. And who would he spend time with in London? Friends from school? He had kept up with none of them. His only real friends were here—Aziz and Sana.

  He would be with friends in uniform until he picked up an eagle upon retirement. Then what? That job he’d been offered in Quantico? How about that small ranch in Texas with a wife and kids he had dreamed about on lonely nights in the hills of Afghanistan?

  He was smiling over that when he heard footsteps coming toward him, long strides, a clearing of a throat. He recognized the face in the glow of a red ceiling light. And the voice.

  “Colonel? May I have a moment?”

  “Sure. What’s up?” It was Lieutenant Qantara. Had he been waiting here? Was it something urgent this time of night, for chrissakes?

  “Perhaps we can go upstairs to your suite?”

  “We’re fine here,” Nick said.

  Qantara flinched. “Yes, yes of course. Then, can we sit in your car? Voices carry, and I don’t want….”

  Nick reluctantly clicked his truck doors open and climbed in behind the wheel, watching the lieutenant glide around front and get into the passenger side.

  “I just happened to be here. It’s better than asking you to my office,” he said.

  “That’s in the Mugamaa building?”

  “Temporarily,” Yousef said. “Only temporarily.” Settling into the seat, taking a few breaths, he said, “You are a CIA operative, Colonel. Perhaps, as you say, you are looking for this Diab because he may point you to Bashir Yassin. But that doesn’t explain why you went with the city police to help rescue a boy who had run away from Faisal Ibrahim’s camp. You even went to a cemetery where the notorious Ibrahim had been hiding. Why? Why were you interested in Ibrahim?”

  “I wasn’t, and I’m not. Nor am I interested in your Colonel Jaradat.”

  “Jaradat?” The name puzzled him. “What’s he have to do with this?”

  The reaction didn’t go unnoticed. The surprise seemed genuine. “I have no idea,” Nick said. “A woman named Salima, who apparently lives where Ibrahim was hiding, said it was Jaradat’s men who picked Ibrahim up.”

  “Jaradat? That’s nonsense. What would he want with Faisal Ibrahim?”

  “I have no idea. It’s what the woman said.”

  “A reliable woman?”

  Nick smiled. “A woman of the streets.”

  “A whore,” and that appeared to end Yousef’s interest in her. He switched subjects. “This Nuha Za’im. How did you know about her?”

  “Something Habib picked up,” Nick said.

  “And she told you that Bashir had been abducted?”

  “That’s how I found out about Diab.”

  “Who has to be well known to Habib Rahal,” Yousef said. “He was twenty years with the Cairo police.”

  “Habib may have heard of him. But look, I don’t give a shit about Faisal Ibrahim or what he does for a living. All I want is Bashir Yassin and not because he works for a gun dealer. That’s all I care about. I want to capture him and complete my assignment and get back to Afghanistan. That’s all I want.”

  “Of course. If I locate him, I’ll let you know. And please, Colonel, keep me informed. I hate having to rely upon other people to let me know what you’re doing.” And what “other people” did he mean?

  Nick sat in his truck for a long time watching the man stride away in the dim light of the garage. Why is he trying to weaken my trust in Habib?

  Chapter Nine

  After watching Faisal place the small yellow pill on his tongue, the nurse handed him the half-filled glass of juice and stepped back from the bed, waiting until he had swallowed.

  “The fluttering is nothing to worry about,” she said.

  “This pill will cure it?”

  “It slows down the heart beat. As the doctor told you, Mr. Marfouz, you have atrial fibrillation. That’s what the blood thinner is for. And you must take it every day. Next Tuesday I’ll do another blood test to make sure everything is all right.”

  “What else do you have in that bag, embalming fluid?”

  “Now, now, Mr. Marfouz,” she said, laughing. “You mustn’t say things like that. You have a lot of years ahead of you.”

  He watched her lift things off the bedside table and set them into a carrying tray. He enjoyed looking at her small, delicate hands. Everything about her was small except her eyes, which were large for her face and seemed to look right through him.

  “This ‘atrial,’” he asked. “What is it?” He didn’t really care. He had no love for the words of medicine. He just wanted her to stay. He enjoyed having a woman in his room.

  “The atrium is a chamber in the upper part of your heart, Mr. Marfouz.”

  “And this medicine will fix it?”

  “It’s good for you,” she said.

  “How long do I have to stay in bed?”

  “You can get up. Just don’t do anything strenuous. Let that big man out there….”

  “Yes,” Faisal said, rolling back onto the pillow, closing his eyes. “I forgot about him. Tell him to come in.”

  A few minutes after the nurse had left the room, Diab came in followed by an odor of wine. Faisal watched him drop into a chair by the window and lean forward, elbows on his thighs, slowly patting his hands together, restless, anxious to be doing something. For a moment Faisal looked beyond his head at palm trees in a garden outside the window wondering how much longer he would be able to sit outside in a shaded garden breathing the sweet air of the countryside.

  “The nurse said you were doing fine,” Diab said.

  “They all say that. They want you to think they’re worth what you’re paying them. It means nothing.”

  With a familiar eagerness on his face, Diab inched his chair forward. “I’ve been talking with a man at the airport. No one misses him.”

  “Why would they? He’s a mechanic.”

  “But he’s been moved up. Some planes are coming in from Jordan and he’s been assigned to work on them. That’s why he was in England, learning about these new planes. They think he’s just sitting around doing nothing, waiting.”

  “Well, I don’t want him waiting any longer,” Faisal said. “How long has he been in Mokattam?”

  “Only a week.”

  “Long enough.” When he reached for a glass of water, his hand hit the glass wrong and knocked it over. Diab got up and righted the glass. He tilted the table so that the water ran off onto the floor.

  Faisal swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat quietly in a wrinkled galabiya staring at the spilled water. Before his illness he would have yelled at Diab for that. Now he didn’t care.

  He held onto Diab’s arm as they went into the other room. Faisal, an old man in slippered feet and wrinkled robe, a look of pained defeat in his eyes, lowered himself into his lounge chair by the air-conditioner. “You still think Jaradat wanted me in one of his safe houses so he could have me killed?”

  “To turn you in or shoot you when you tried to escape, of course,” Diab said. “At heart he’s just as dirty as the rest of them, but he knows that moderation will prevail, so he pretends to be a moderate.”

  “And wher
e did you get that?”

  Diab laughed. “From the professor at Al-Azhar you sent me to. I think he’s right.”

  “He tells that to his students over there?”

  Diab laughed. “I don’t think so. But he wanted to say it to somebody. Like a lot of them he’s very unhappy with what’s going on.”

  “Well, let’s not get into that,” Faisal said, waving him off. “I don’t care about the philosophers.”

  “Because you’re a practical man, Faisal. It’s why you have been successful. And it’s your salvation that you’ve never pretended to be anything but who you are. You’re an honest man.”

  Faisal wasn’t taken in by the flattery, but he believed it was true and he enjoyed hearing it.

  “Get Yassin. Bring him here, but make sure he’s clean. I don’t need this place to smell like swine.”

  *

  Bristles on the hog’s back pricked Bashir’s mouth as he turned his face aside, half awake, wedged between the animal and a nub of timber that cut into his bruised hip. Careful not to move his leg, he worked a cramped arm from beneath his chest and pushed against the hog that farted and grunted and let out little squeals in its sleep. The stench was nauseating.

  They had replaced the chain on his ankle with a leather strap, and an old woman had picked dirt out of the cuts and washed his foot. But the entire lower half of his right leg was swollen in a dull ache, protruding from the canvas, burning in the sun.

  Yesterday he had fainted when the boy with the milky eye had prodded his ankle. He couldn’t swallow the fuul the girl had tried to spoon into his mouth. When he started crying, the tall boy snatched the bowl of mashed beans from her and pushed it into the snout of a squealing pig. They hadn’t fed him since.

  He rolled onto his back and stared through blurring tears at the underside of the canvas where urine stains were shaped like a map of Spain with little reddish lines like rivers converging in the northeast coast where Barcelona would be.

  The children were coming. They were laughing. Maybe they would hit him. Maybe they would lift the canvas and let out the trapped putrid air.

  The woman who had bathed his leg wouldn’t be with them. She had stopped coming when the diarrhea splattered her blouse. She had cursed him and flung the bucket at his head. The children wouldn’t bring the bucket to him when the cramps came. He had to let everything flow down his legs. His pants now were crusted hard, smarting his skin.