The Mahboob Chaudri Mystery

by Josh Pachter

  It seemed like no time at all before he reached the Tree of Life, its squat black outline sharp against the burning blue of the sky. He switched off the Land Rover’s engine, and an overwhelming silence settled across the desert. From the top of the Jebel ad-Dukhan only a few miles to the north, one could see how small Bahrain truly was. But here, with nothing but a blanket of sand stretching out to the horizon in every direction, the country seemed infinite. Chaudri felt himself no more than the merest speck in the unthinkable vastness of the cosmos.

  Why had he come back to this place? To look for more bones, hoping to learn at last the truth of the means of Hassan al-Shama’s death? No. The area had been thoroughly searched already—there were no more bones to be found. And besides, he knew, he could feel it in his bones, that the man had indeed been strangled.

  Had he come, then, expecting the murderer to return to the scene of his crime, as they often did in the detective novels he was fond of reading during his off-duty hours? No. This was reality, not a work of fiction, and it was the Middle East, not the decadent West. And it was 20 years after the fact. There would be no return—not now.

  Why, then, was he here, surrounded by emptiness, not a bird in flight, not a clump of scrub brush to be seen, not a sound except the noiseless whisper of the heat?

  He had come to visit the Tree of Life, to stand before it and ask it for guidance.

  They say that it was God who put you here, he began. He spoke the words in his mind, not aloud, and realized with interest that he was thinking them in Arabic rather than his own native language. He was actually talking to the Tree, he knew then, and not only to himself. They say that a beautiful garden was built around you, and that you are the Mother of life and death.

  Tell me, then, about the death of Hassan al-Shama. Tell me the truth of what happened here a score of years ago.

  And there, alone in the desert, the Tree answered him.

  * * * *

  Chaudri left his Land Rover and plunged into the maze of narrow streets. He went past dozens of the identical coral houses, their wooden shutters closed against the afternoon’s blazing heat, their wind towers pointing like miniature minarets at the sun overhead.

  Just outside an open doorway, he stopped. He peered into the room beyond, and, when his eyes at last adjusted to the dimness within, he saw her. She sat cross-legged on the floor, a plump satin pillow on the ground before her. A large round aluminum tray lay on the pillow. There was rice on the tray, and she was cleaning the rice to prepare it for cooking.

  Her hands, he noticed then, were very strong.

  To the Bedouin, Chaudri thought, loyalty to the clan is all-important. More important, even, than loyalty to a devoted husband. More important even than that.

  It had had to be that way, of course, in the days when the nomads had roamed the desert. The life, the harmony, the efficiency of the qawm must always be preserved, even at the expense of single individuals within the clan.

  Still, it made an incredible motive for murder: to kill a man, not because he treated you badly, but because he treated you better than he did someone else.

  Yet the Quran insisted that all a man’s wives must be treated equally, and it was a disgrace to violate the Messenger’s commands.

  Ask not what your qawm can do for you. Ask rather what you can do for your qawm. It was a philosophy that applied no longer, now that the Bedouins had been settled into the relative security of the villages. But 20 years ago, in the Aiyamu’l Arab, in the desert, it had been logical and obvious—and right.

  In spite of the heat, a sudden chill ran down the Pakistani’s spine. He had been five years in Bahrain now, and he was becoming an Arab at last. He did not disturb the old woman at her work. He walked back to his Land Rover and sat there for several minutes, thinking.

  Then he turned the key in the ignition and drove away.

  Afterword

  This is perhaps the most Arabic of the Chaudri stories, and it features the most Arabic motive for any of the crimes committed throughout the series. Rereading it now, some 30 years after I wrote it, I’m surprised at how intensely it takes me back to the thoughts and feelings I experienced while I lived in Bahrain.

  The details about Bedouin life—about the concept of qawmiya and the sedentarization of the tribes—were carefully researched and are accurate. There is some historical evidence to suggest that the original Tree of Life as described in the Old Testament may in fact have been located in what is today Bahrain, but the Shajarat-al-Hayat—the tree beneath which Mahboob takes refuge from the desert sandstorm in this story—is apparently only about 400 years old … and is today a tourist attraction which draws some 50,000 visitors a year. Here is a lovely photograph of it by Harold Laudeus:

  All of the camels in Bahrain are (or at least were at the time the story was written) the property of the emir, and photographs of JFK are (or were) often found in Bahraini homes. The “cold store” is the Bahraini equivalent of what we would call a 7-Eleven, and Pocari Sweat, as disgusting as the name sounds, is indeed a popular Japanese soft drink.

  Egyptian scientist Emad Rezk is named after my Egyptian (now ex) brother-in-law, Mohammed Rezk, and the scene in which he plays Watson to Mahboob’s Sherlock Holmes was great fun to write.

  In her introduction to the story for the Mid-December 1985 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, editor Eleanor Sullivan wrote: “The third in Josh Pachter’s appealing new series about Mahboob Ahmed Chaudri, officer on the Bahraini police force, a sensitive man who takes his responsibilities very seriously indeed.”

  Over the years, some readers have questioned whether or not Mahboob takes his responsibility as a police officer seriously enough at the end of the tale.

  I think he does.

  The Qatar Causeway

  Sinterklaas, kapoentje,

  Gooi wat in m’n schoentje!

  Gooi wat in m’n laarsje!

  Dank je, Sinterklaasje!

  The tall, thin man in the long red robe and cotton beard was circled by a ring of gaily dressed children who sang and giggled as they skipped around him hand in hand. His merry eyes sparkled behind the small round lenses of his wire-rimmed spectacles, his bishop’s mitre sat snugly on his head, his golden staff glittered cheerfully in the bright fluorescent lighting of the mess room. Outside the ring of children stood half a dozen gangly youths in gaudy pantaloons and floppy felt hats, their faces glistening with coal-black greasepaint, their lips daubed a rich crimson. Each of them held a bulky burlap sack in his ebony hands.

  The bearded figure in the robe was not the only adult present. The parents of the dancers were there, too, clustered in groups of three and four around the walls of the room, sipping strong coffee and watching their sons and daughters enjoy the party. And off in a corner stood a small-framed Pakistani in the olive-green uniform of Bahrain’s Public Security Force, listening earnestly to the explanations of the stocky business-suited man at his side.

  The stocky man in the business suit was not a businessman. He was Roelof Smit, a detective lieutenant with the Amsterdam police, and he was visiting Bahrain to observe the workings of the emirate’s law-enforcement machinery. Since the abortive coup attempt in 1978, fully two-thirds of the island’s security troops were Pakistanis, fiercely loyal to the Arab government that employed them. Mahboob Chaudri, originally from Karachi, was the mahsool who had been assigned to work with the Dutchman during the two weeks of his stay.

  Today was December 5th, Sinterklaas, and Smit had brought his host out to al-Qalat—the housing compound of the Dutch construction company Nederbild—for the festivities.

  “What are they singing?” asked Chaudri, his English careful and lightly accented.

  Smit’s walrus mustache shivered with pleasure. “It’s a simple little song,” he chuckled, “and typical of the spirit of the holiday. Let’s see if l can translate it for you: Sinterkla
as, you little elf—because, you see, the tje or je at the end of every line is our way of saying little or cute—Sinterklaas, you little elf, leave some goodies on my shelf! Leave some candy in my shoe. Thank you, Sinterklaas, thank you! That’s not a literal translation, you understand, but it gives you the general idea of the thing—and at least it rhymes.”

  “And, lieutenant, is it typical of the spirit of the holiday?”

  The Dutchman laughed again. “In most Western countries, Christmas has become so commercialized that it’s hard to remember its original religious significance. Well, we Hollanders have our spiritual side, like everyone else, and the spiritualist in us wants to keep Christmas a holy day. But we’re a practical people, too, and our practical side tells us that we can’t just ignore the commercial aspects of the Christmas season. So we invented Sinterklaas. This way, we can stay quietly religious on Kerst­mis—in fact, we’ve even added on a second Christmas Day, December 26th—because we’ve gotten all the shopping and gift-giving out of our systems three weeks earlier, on the 5th, on Sinterklaas. Like the American Santa Claus, our Christmas Man—the Kerstman—is fat and jolly. Sinterklaas is also jolly, but he’s much more, ah, netjes. ‘Distinguished,’ that’s the word. After all, he is a saint, you know—Sint Nicolaas, which is where the names Sinterklaas and Santa Claus both come from. Every year he travels all the way to Holland from Spain, by steamboat, with his band of helpers—the Zwarte Piets, or Black Peters. Foreigners sometimes misunderstand, and object to the Piets. But they’re helpers, not slaves, and there’s really nothing racist about them. Besides, the children love them, and I don’t know what would happen if we ever tried to get rid of them!”

  The children finished their song to loud applause, with Chaudri and Smit joining in wholeheartedly, then whirled away from Saint Nicholas to face the crowd of Black Peters. Burlap sacks were flung wide, black hands dug deep, and the boys and girls exploded with cries of “Piet! Piet!” as the saint’s assistants showered them with fistfuls of candy and tiny ginger cookies.

  “Strooigoed and pepernoten,” Roelof Smit informed his companion—and then a real explosion sounded from somewhere outside, and every window in the mess hall shattered inward in a horror of screams and flying glass.

  * * * *

  Sobbing children, panic-stricken adults, the floor littered with a mosaic of candy and glass, the dull reverberation of the blast shaking the walls and deafening the ears.

  When at last the first shock faded, Sinterklaas ripped off his beard and mitre and flung away his staff and raced out the back door of the building. Chaudri and Smit were close behind him, their feet slipping on shards of glass and sticking on gooey candy.

  At the door, Chaudri grabbed a bewildered father by the front of his shirt. “Sir!” he shouted into the vacant face. “Is there a hospital here on the compound?”

  There was no reaction.

  “A hospital! A doctor! Some of these children have been hurt! Is there anyone here to help them?” Chaudri shook the man violently until at last he blinked his eyes and nodded.

  “A hospital,” he repeated flatly. “Yes.” A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he licked it away absently.

  “Get someone here to look after these people!” Chaudri cried, releasing him. “Hurry!”

  Suddenly awakening, the man muttered, “Ja, natuurlijk!” and jumped for a telephone.

  With a last look back at the confusion in the room, Chaudri and Smit went out the door.

  * * * *

  Sinterklaas was standing on the narrow strip of rocky beach that lay between the mess hall and the blue-green iridescence of the gulf. A half-mile to the north, the skeleton of a bridge under construction reached across the water to a small islet not far offshore. A dense cloud of gray smoke billowed up from the point where the bridge met the islet, staining the pale blue of the sky and spreading evilly.

  “Mijn God,” Sinterklaas whispered, and when Chaudri looked at him, he saw tears in the man’s tired eyes. “O, mijn hemel.”

  “What is it?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  “My bridge,” Sinterklaas replied. “They’ve blown it up.”

  “They? Who are they?”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t know. He. She. They. Someone. It doesn’t matter who. They’ve destroyed my bridge.”

  “What do you mean, your bridge?”

  At last the man turned towards him. “Come with me,” he said, recognizing Chaudri’s uniform, “and I’ll tell you.”

  “Where are you going?”

  The man in the red robe pointed a trembling finger toward the offshore islet, where heavy gray smoke was draped across the sky like a shroud. “Out there,” he said, and his voice was dull and dead.

  * * * *

  “My name, if you can believe it,” the man introduced himself, “is Nicolaas. Nicolaas Sjollema. When I was a boy, the other children used to call me Sinterklaas. I always wanted to play the part for real, and today—today was my first chance.”

  They were in Sjollema’s car, a Japanese import with right-hand drive, barreling along a rough dirt track toward the company harbor. Chaudri, in the passenger seat on the left, found himself automatically trying to brake and steer. In the back, Roelof Smit clenched his teeth on the stem of an ornate meerschaum pipe and jounced.

  “I’m the foreman on this phase of the construction project,” Sjollema went on. He had taken off his robe, revealing faded denims and a chambray work shirt. “I didn’t design it and I’m not paying for it, but I’m in charge of building it. That’s why I call it my bridge. I’ve been with the project for three years now—well, almost three years—and I feel as if it’s become my child, my son.”

  “An expensive son to raise,” remarked Smit from the rear.

  Sjollema smiled grimly. “The second most expensive stretch of highway in the world,” he agreed. “Concrete piles sunk into the sea floor, with four-lane slabs of roadbed the length of football fields laid on top of them. About 32 kilometers long from here to Qatar, at a total construction cost of more than half a billion dollars: that’s over fifteen thousand dollars a meter. An expensive child, inderdaad.”

  Chaudri’s right foot pumped the spot where the brake pedal should have been as the car squealed to a stop inches from a modern pier lined with launches and a long, flat-bedded barge. The only craft showing any sign of life was an old wooden fishing dhow, its mast horizontal, its canvas sail spread out as a sunscreen. A powerfully built Arab in a grimy, once-white thobe, his ghutra wrapped carelessly about his head, was standing in the stern, shaded by the sail overhead and cutting a squid into bait-sized pieces. In the prow a young boy—naked except for worn cutoff shorts, his skin charred black by the sun—sat hunched over a spool of nylon, his fingers moving swiftly as he tied a heavy barbed hook to the free end of the line. Neither of them paid the slightest attention to the dark smoke that still rose from the offshore islet. To see them at work—stolid, emotionless, completely absorbed in their tasks—it was hard to remember that, not 15 minutes earlier, not a thousand meters away, the world had been rocked by a devastating blast. They were living in their own dimension, in another century, where all that mattered was the frantic pull of a 10-pound hamour as it strained to loosen the killing barb from its cheek.

  “We need to go out there, to Umm as Hawwak,” Sjollema told the fisherman, who raised his head slowly and regarded them without interest.

  “La, la,” the Arab said tonelessly, not singing but refusing. “No, no.”

  “Police business.” Chaudri’s Arabic was crisp. “Let’s go.”

  The fisherman shrugged his shoulders and, as Chaudri and the two Dutchmen climbed aboard, put his knife aside and moved to his vessel’s primitive controls.

  Moments later the engine was growling. The weathered deck boards trembled beneath their feet as the boat pulled ponderously away from t
he dock.

  “At least there’s no one working out there today,” Sjollema sighed. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened if….”

  He left the sentence unfinished.

  “You shut down construction for Sinterklaas?” asked Smit.

  “Oh, no, not that. But this is Friday, the Muslim day of rest. We employ very few Arabs, but we observe their workweek—like all foreign companies in Bahrain. Takes a while for our people to get used to, but it seems the simplest way to schedule in the long run.”

  The water was made of emeralds, frosted with the pearly turbulence of the dhow’s wake and the reflected glitter of the late afternoon sun. Halfway across to Umm as Hawwak, the fisherman’s son stabbed a finger to port and cried, “Uthor! Look!”

  Chaudri spun around in time to see a gunmetal gray tailfin wave a greeting at them and disappear beneath the surface of the sea. “Dolphin,” he said. “Do you have them in your country, too?”

  Roelof Smit shook his head. “Not like that. Only in the seaquarium, trained to jump through hoops and balance beach balls on their noses.”

  The dhow’s engine stuttered and stopped. For a moment, as they glided the last few meters to the islet’s wooden mooring, silence engulfed them. Then they could hear the lapping of waves on the shore and the sad crackle of brush fires dying.

  Chaudri ordered the fisherman to wait, and they left the boat for the desolate islet. There was rubble everywhere, blackened clumps of shattered concrete, the ruins of what must have been supply sheds and temporary office space, machinery twisted beyond recognition.

  What little vegetation Umm as Hawwak had supported was cinders now; scattered tongues of flame licked hungrily at the last remaining morsels of green. Here and there were geckos—the small, scurrying lizards which the Arabs claimed brought luck to the home. Many of them were missing their tails or heads or limbs; all of them were dead.