The Mahboob Chaudri Mystery

by Josh Pachter

  All of the background information about Ramadan and Lailat al Qadr is accurate—if memory serves, I did more research before writing this story than for any of the others. The Presidential Hotel doesn’t really exist, but there were quite a few American-owned hotels like it in Manama when I was there.

  In preparing this collection of the Chaudri stories, I reread them all, some for the first time since their original publication. It was tempting at times to polish them for this new incarnation, but for the most part I’ve left them as they originally appeared. Here, though, I’ve made one change I’d like to explain.

  In the version of this story that was published in the September 1986 issue of EQMM, Mahboob Chaudri and Abdulaziz Shaheen drink coffee at one point from what I referred to as “a fluted qraisheih.” In preparing this volume for publication, to make sure I had the unusual spelling correct, I checked it online—and came up completely empty. Perhaps it’s a term that has fallen out of fashion, or perhaps my original use of it was simply a mistake. In any case, I’ve replaced it with the word dallah, which seems to be the contemporary name for the fluted metal Arabic coffee pot I meant to include in the story. Here, to give you the idea, is a photograph of the one I bought a quarter of a century later, when what was by then renamed the University of Maryland University College sent me back overseas to spend a summer teaching on a US Army base in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert:

  I don’t think I ever actually knew anyone named Gillian until I came to work at my present position at Northern Virginia Community College, where Gillian Backus is a member of the biology department, but I note that, in the 1980s when I was originally writing these stories, it seems to have been a name I considered typically British, since I used it both for Gillian Messenger in this story and—as you’ll see—for Gillian Steele in the next one, “Sheikh’s Beach.”

  “The Night of Power” was one of the 13 stories Ed Hoch selected for inclusion in his 1987 volume, The Year’s Best Mystery and Suspense Stories (Walker and Company), where he introduced it like this: “The exotic area of Bahrain on the Persian Gulf is well known to Josh Pachter, who lived and worked there before moving to his present home in West Germany. Pachter’s name can be found these days in all the American mystery magazines, and I think his most successful stories to date have been those involving his sleuth Mahboob Chaudri in the mysteries of a region still too little known and understood by the Western world.”

  Sheikh’s Beach

  “Look, Mum, bang ahead there!” Jeremy Steele stabbed excitedly at the windscreen. “It’s a camera tree, see it?”

  “Cama tee,” baby Adam echoed from the rear of the battered old canary-yellow station wagon, waving his stubby forefinger in eager imitation of his older brother.

  Gillian Steele hunched forward over the steering wheel and peered through the dusty glass. A magnificent date palm marked the end of the road some 50 yards on, and its broad trunk seemed indeed to be overgrown with a lush crop of cameras of assorted shapes and sizes. “Odd,” she murmured, more to herself than her children. “Perhaps it is a camera tree, at that.”

  “Cama tee, cama tee!” Adam bounced gleefully in his car seat. At 24 months, he was thoroughly entranced with the sound of his own voice, a development which thrilled his father but often left his mother exhausted by day’s end.

  “Cameras don’t really grow on trees, Mum, do they?” asked Jeremy.

  “I’m quite sure they don’t. We’ll see what this soldier says, then, shall we?”

  A small-framed dark man in an olive-green uniform and peaked black cap stood by the side of the tree, and as they approached him he held up a hand and signaled Gillian to stop. Now that they were closer, they could see that the cameras had been hung by their straps from nails driven into the trunk of the palm.

  Gillian rolled down her window and switched off the noisy air conditioning. “I still haven’t gotten used to driving on this side of the car,” she announced, as if the man had asked her a question.

  He smiled at her, and his nut-brown skin made his teeth seem dazzlingly white. “You are from England, then, madam?” he deduced.

  “Yes, London, actually. We’ve only just arrived this week and our own car won’t be here for ages, so my husband hired this wagon from a place called Darwish Rent-a-Dent. What a lovely name, don’t you think? Well, anyway, it was quite cheap, really, nothing at all like one would have to pay in London.” She blushed prettily. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I? We haven’t met anyone yet, you see, and with Jeffrey at work all day that leaves me alone with the children. I’m afraid I’m rather desperate for conversation.”

  “Ask him about the camera tree, Mum,” Jeremy whispered fiercely, and baby Adam shrilled “Cama tee!” from the back seat as if on cue.

  “Quietly, please, Adam,” said Gillian. “And Jeremy, love, you are big enough to ask the gentleman yourself.”

  “Please, sir,” the boy said shyly, and the man in the green uniform drew closer to the open window, “are you a Bahrainian soldier?”

  “Not at all, my young friend. For one thing, I am a police officer, not a soldier. And for another, I am from Pakistan, not Bahrain. Now perhaps you should be telling me a bit about yourself, Master—?”

  “Steele, sir. Jeremy Steele. I’m eight years old.”

  “Jemmy,” little Adam confirmed joyously. “Jemmy, Jemmy, Jemmy!”

  “And that is—?”

  “Adam, sir. My brother. Don’t mind him, he’s just a baby. Why’s that tree got all them cameras on it?”

  Gillian Steele raised an eyebrow. “Those cameras, Jeremy.”

  “Those cameras. Why has it?”

  The Pakistani hunkered down for a better view of the station wagon’s passengers. “This is a private beach,” he explained. “It is owned by Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Yousif al-Sayed, one of the wealthiest men in Bahrain. Sheikh Abdulaziz has made the beach available for the exclusive use of Westerners—no Arabs are allowed here, except for the Sheikh himself and his family.”

  “He’s a bit eccentric, then,” said Gillian, “isn’t he?”

  “But why are all them—sorry, Mum—those cameras hanging there?” the boy insisted.

  “Sheikh Abdulaziz does not care to be photographed by his guests. And since he is quite influential in the government of Bahrain, a police officer is stationed here at the entrance to his beach during its open hours. Our job is to ensure that no Arabs violate the Sheikh’s privacy, and to see that no cameras are brought inside the grounds. Do you have a camera with you, madam?”

  “Ah, yes, we do, actually.” The woman turned around to fetch it from the back seat. “Oh, Adam, look what you’ve done! Jeremy, be a love and find the camera for the officer while I wipe this up, please?” She shook her head sadly and reached for a cloth.

  “It’s a silly rule, that’s what I think,” her older son complained, rummaging about in a canvas bag filled with diapers and packets of sandwiches and tubes of sun lotion. “I don’t see why we can’t take photos if we want to.”

  “You will find,” said the policeman kindly, “that many of the rules here in the Middle East are different from those you are used to. The customs, the traditions, the language—even the alphabet itself—all these are things you must come to understand and accept, if you are to be happy while you reside in Bahrain.”

  “Here, Jeremy, let me have that.” Gillian Steele plucked a small Kodak from the bag and handed it to the Pakistani.

  “Jemmy,” baby Adam pouted from the rear. “Jemmy, Jemmy!”

  “How will you ever remember which of them’s ours when we leave?” Jeremy demanded.

  “I will be counting on your assistance, my young friend. Though I may indeed have forgotten which of these cameras is yours by the time you are ready to leave this place, surely you will help me to remember.” He hung the camera from a vacant nail and turned back to them. “You may proceed
,” he smiled. “You will find a parking area not far ahead, and from there you will see the Gulf before you. I trust you will enjoy your visit to Sheikh’s Beach.”

  Gillian thanked him and turned the key in the ignition and rolled up her window and drove off, leaving the Pakistani alone in the morning heat.

  Some of the men enjoyed this duty, would rather stand here quietly in the shade than trudge endlessly through the sweltering maze of the suq for the eight hours of their shifts.

  Mahboob Chaudri was not one of them. He preferred the liveliness, the activity, the vitality of his regular beat. Oh, yes, he appreciated the opportunity to exchange pleasantries with charming families like the Steeles, but that was the only aspect of this assignment he valued. Otherwise, he found it a chore better suited to the talents of a hat-check girl than a policeman.

  He was a loyal member of the Public Security Force, though, and on the infrequent occasions when he was scheduled to spend a day on guard at Sheikh’s Beach he did not protest.

  Not that it would do him any good if he did protest. He remembered a story Sikander Malek had told him on the very day of his arrival in Bahrain. It was not, perhaps, a true story, but it had made an impression on him all the same. It was the story of an impertinent natoor from Baluchistan who, when he was as new to the emirate as Chaudri himself, regularly challenged the orders of his commanding officer. “But, sir,” he argued hotly, when he was finally called to task for his arrogance, “surely you were not rising to your esteemed rank by meekly obeying every order ever given to you by a superior, without even pausing to question its wisdom?” The Deputy Director nodded slowly. “You are correct,” he admitted. “That is not how I rose from natoor to my current position. It is, however, how I rose from natoor to my first promotion.”

  Chaudri stepped into the shade of the camera tree and wiped his forehead with a damp white handkerchief and sighed.

  It was 10:24 AM, and the temperature was 87 degrees. It would reach 100 by noon.

  * * * *

  A cooling shadow fell across Gillian Steele’s legs, and she looked up from her book to see a man towering over her—a very brown man, browner even than the Pakistani who had taken their camera, in baggy burnt-orange trousers and a loose shirt of the same color whose absurdly long tails hung far below his knees.

  “I pray that I did not startle you,” he said, his voice deep and resonant.

  She adjusted the shoulder straps of her bathing suit and sat up, tipping back the broad brim of her straw hat so she could see him more clearly. “Yes?”

  “I fear I have interrupted your reading.”

  “What, this rubbish?” Gillian closed the book and tossed it to the sand. On its lavender cover, a blonde in a white dress was running away from an onion-domed mosque in the dead of night with a look of unspeakable terror on her lovely face; a single light gleamed mysteriously from atop the minaret which stood beside the mosque. “Interruption quite welcome, actually. I’ve never tried a romance before, but a woman at the British Club recommended this one because it’s set right here in Bahrain. I’ve read about 30 pages, and it’s really just too awful. Damn!” She slapped irritably at a loud buzzing on her arm. “If it wasn’t for these bloody flies, this place would be smashing.”

  The stranger bowed his head respectfully. “They are indeed an irritation. But perhaps I can offer you at least a temporary respite. You have noticed the golden beach house of Sheikh Abdulaziz?”

  The beach was a strip of perfectly manicured sand, sandwiched between the palm forest that concealed the parking area and the brilliant iridescence of the Gulf. Southward, it stretched beyond the horizon, but a hundred yards to the north the vista was broken by a white pier jutting out into the water and a large, square two-story structure that was more yellow than gold. Gillian had assumed it was an office building, though why anyone would locate their offices so far from the city was a question it had been too hot to ponder.

  “Yes, of course. It’s a lovely home.”

  “The Sheikh will be delighted to know that you think so. He wonders if you would care to join him for tea?”

  Gillian flushed. “Oh, my! That’s frightfully kind of him, but I—I’m afraid I really couldn’t.” She rolled onto her side and fumbled unnecessarily with Adam’s sunbonnet. “My son’s asleep, you see. I couldn’t possibly leave him alone, and I’d hate to wake him, now that he’s finally gone off.”

  “Ah, of course. The Sheikh will be most—”

  “Mum, Mum, look at this!” Jeremy came running up in a spray of sand, an open bottle of soda held tightly in his fist.

  Gillian got to her knees and brushed sand from his hair. “Not so loud, love, your brother’s in the middle of a kip. Where did you get that, then?”

  “There’s a little hut back there in the trees, and the man said I could have whatever I wanted. Shall I fetch you one? They’ve got Pepsi and strawberry and—”

  “It is quite all right,” said the stranger. “The Sheikh is pleased to provide soft drinks for the refreshment of his guests.”

  Jeremy hugged his bottle to his pale white chest and examined the man critically. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Naveen Jayasinghe. I have the honor to serve His Excellency Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Yousif al-Sayed.”

  “Are you from Pakistan, like that policeman when we came in?”

  “Oh, no, I am an Indian.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “You’re not an Indian. Where’s your tommy hawk, then?”

  Jayasinghe smiled. “I am not a cowboys-and-Indians Indian. I am an Indian from India. There is quite a large difference. Now, if you would be so good as to excuse me, I shall return to—”

  “No, wait!” The words popped out of Gillian’s mouth before she could stop them. “Jeremy, sweet, Mr. Jayasinghe came over to invite me to meet the Sheikh, but I didn’t like to leave Adam alone. Now you’re here, though, stay and look after him for me for a bit, will you, love?”

  “But, Mum, I was just going in for a swim!”

  “Yes, well, the sea will still be there in half an hour, stubborn. Do this for me, Jeremy, please? How often do you think one gets a chance to have tea with a sheikh?”

  The boy dropped to the blanket with a disgusted mutter and took a sip of his soda. “Right, then. I’ll just sit here and mind the child, shall I?”

  Gillian chucked him under the chin. “There’s my very best helper. I’ll be back before you miss me. Right with you,” she promised the Indian, and reached for her skirt and blouse.

  * * * *

  “And what are his duties there?” Sheikh Abdulaziz asked, and sipped from the delicate porcelain cup cradled protectively in his hands.

  “Well,” said Gillian, “one of the Council’s most important activities is teaching English as a second language to Arabs and other non-native speakers. There are eight lecturers at the moment, and Jeffrey’s been brought in to coordinate the entire program.”

  “It is, then, a position of great responsibility.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s frightfully important. Ever since your country became independent in—’72, was it?”

  “The 14th of August, 1971,” the Sheikh murmured.

  “Yes, of course, ’71. Well, since then, the British Consul has been England’s primary representative in Bahrain. And since the British Council’s closest contact with your people has been through its language program, the coordinator’s job carries quite a bit of weight. The previous bloke, Brian Stevens, couldn’t handle the pressure, apparently, so they demoted him to lecturer and brought Jeffrey in to replace him.”

  “And I am certain your husband will acquit himself admirably.” The Sheikh raised his index finger a fraction of an inch, and instantly a servant appeared at his side to refill his cup from an ornate brass pot with a long fluted spout. “Mrs. Steele?”

  The tea was strong and rather bitter, but Gillian
was certain it would be impolite to refuse. “Yes, please. It’s lovely tea.”

  The Sheikh had not risen from his chaise at her approach, but he had leaned forward to offer her his hand. She had thought him rude at first, then reminded herself that he was a member of the royal family and suspected that it was she who had committed a gaffe by her failure to curtsy.

  He was a tiny man, surely no more than five feet tall, and he seemed even smaller in his voluminous gold-trimmed thobe. The folds of his long white ghutra framed a friendly olive face; his nose was wide and flat, his lower lip full, his mouth kind between a thin black mustache and a graying chin beard. Framed by wire spectacles that glittered in the sun, his enormous brown eyes were intelligent and curious. Two steps behind him, an impassive Indian in a white turban stood with a broad palm frond in his hands, noiselessly fanning it up and down to produce a wonderfully cooling breeze.

  From the patio where they sat, they looked out over the calm green sea and the crowded sand. They were too far away from her blanket to see what the boys were up to. Several attractive Western women in bikinis lay much closer at hand, and Gillian wondered how she had been selected for the honor of this audience. Did Naveen Jayasinghe do the choosing, or did the Sheikh have a telescope hidden away on the upper floor of his golden beach house? She was tempted to ask, but could such a question possibly be permitted? Surely not. There must be some official protocol specifying how one was to behave in the presence of Arabic royalty, but she had no idea what it included. Perhaps Jeffrey would know.

  She realized that Sheikh Abdulaziz was speaking and managed to set her thoughts aside for the moment and return her attention to him.

  “ … being planned as a resort area,” he was saying, “with restaurants and other amenities. There is no such thing as tourism in Bahrain as yet, but I am hoping that, as we develop more of our beaches and continue with our program of archeological excavation, we will be able to—”

  A sudden noise came from behind her, and the Sheikh’s brow furrowed with surprise. Gillian turned in her chair to see her older son racing toward them across the patio, his bare feet slapping the warm yellow tiles in soft explosions.