“That’s correct.”
“For instance, if a female slave is acquired, the proper uterine examination is made to determine if any pregnancy exists that would preclude sexual activity with the her male acquirer.”
“Of course,” Qattan said. “In strict accordance with Eurabian law.”
“Or, if an infant or a child were acquired, a basic assessment of overall health—”
“Whatever you may think of my personal integrity, I can assure you that where our professional standards are concerned …”
“I have no doubt. Your office has a pristine reputation. I need the records of all female slaves examined during a certain time period, the results of those examinations, and the known names and addresses of all the females in question.”
Elise handed him a note with the relevant years listed.
This was the moment when a calm man might realize Elise’s inquiry didn’t make sense, because the Eurabian Caliphate had access to all medical records of all its citizens. An officer of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice didn’t need Qattan or any doctor to get the records Elise had just requested. She merely had to go through her superior. But few men remained calm when they faced the death penalty for a crime they knew they’d committed, or had the balls to follow through with any conclusions that might endanger them if they were wrong.
“Those records are protected by doctor-patient confidentiality,” Qattan said. “In this case, there’s dual protection, with the slaves in question, and with their owners.”
“Based on that, I take it you’ve changed your mind, the Commission should seek help elsewhere, and I should proceed with your prosecution?”
Elise stood up to leave.
Qattan jumped to his feet. “No, please don’t go. I’m sorry. Force of habit. Our patients. We’re so protective of them. Please forgive me. Please.”
Qattan sat back down, turned to his computer and worked on it for a minute.
“Where would you like me to send the results?” he said.
“I need a hard copy.”
He pressed a button on his keyboard. “Done.”
He wheeled toward Elise and gave her a blank look as though asking what else he could do for her.
“Where are the pages that you printed for me?” she said.
Qattan’s eyebrows shot up for a split second, and then a look of confidence slowly spread across his face. As if that weren’t bad enough, it was accompanied by a certain smug sense of male superiority that a woman was more likely than a man to detect.
Under other circumstances, Elise might have welcomed that look because it would have obliterated any guilt she harbored for ruining the man’s life. But these circumstances had just turned dire. Qattan appeared to have experienced an epiphany of some kind. She’d given herself away somehow—unknowingly and unbelievably—and now it was he who was going to try to ruin her life.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to print this at your own computer?” Qattan said. “I’m sure the Commission has access to all Eurabian state files. Am I wrong?”
“You’re not wrong. You’re impertinent. And I’m starting to think I misjudged you. Perhaps you don’t deserve—”
“Perhaps you’d like to remove your burqa and make yourself more comfortable. I’m not your relative but I am a physician and this is a private office so there’s no need to concern yourself with matters of morality. I see many a female face every day. I even see a dhimmi now and then. Sort of, pro bono work.”
A hot flash seized Elise.
Qattan intertwined his fingers and placed them on his desk. His countenance relaxed, his gaze bordering on condescension. “You’re from Egypt, yes?”
“I learned Arabic in Egypt,” she said, “but I’m not from Egypt.”
“Where then?” Qattan narrowed his eyes and studied her. “Amsterdam? London?”
These days Elise lived in Montevideo, in the country formerly known as Uruguay. And she was no more the morality police than Qattan was the singer of that non-existent boy band. Qattan realized this now, but he couldn’t know if Elise had a back-up plan. They sat frozen in their seats, eyes fixed on each other with stone faces.
“How did I give myself away?” Elise said.
“In Arabic, we include the pronoun in relative clauses. In English, you omit it. In English, you would say, ‘where are the pages that you printed for me?’ But in Arabic we say …”
“‘Where are the pages that you printed them for me?’”
Qattan nodded with genuine-looking admiration. “Your language is truly excellent. I’ve never heard a non-native Arabian speak it better.” He lifted a gun out of nowhere and pointed it at Elise. “Is that ID real? If I call the Commission of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, will they even know your name?”
The gun startled Elise. She hadn’t seen it coming. Perhaps it had been enclosed in a casing beneath his desk for emergency purposes. After all, a doctor never knew when a local lunatic would appear in disguise to deliver some frontier-style justice to a health care professional who’d treated a rape and near murder victim even though she’d arrived unescorted by a man in violation of Sharia.
“The Commission will most surely know my name,” Elise said, “but you’ll just be putting yourself in unnecessary danger.”
“Really?” Qattan grinned, the invulnerable pillar of the medical community once again. “How so?”
“Nothing has changed. You’re still guilty of promoting Christianity. And my friend from Cairo—who swears he loves me more than life itself—will deliver the pictures personally to the General of the Eurabian police if I die or disappear. And they’ll be supplemented by a very willing shopkeeper’s testimony in exchange for leniency.”
“I don’t believe you,” Qattan said. “There are no such pictures.”
Elise stood up, pulled an envelope from a pocket, removed copies of the pictures and tossed them onto his desk. Qattan turned increasingly darker shades of red as he rifled through them with his free hand.
“Fine,” he said. “Maybe you took pictures.”
“Maybe? Maybe you need a new ophthalmologist.“
“But there’s no such lover. You’re bluffing about that part. Wait, don’t tell me. You’re going to suggest that I can’t take that chance. That the smart move is to just go along with you.”
“You caught up. Finally.”
Qattan swore at her. He called her a bitch, a whore, and a prostitute.
Redundant bastard, she thought.
Then he aimed the gun at Elise’s chest, pursed his lips, and tensed his shoulders.
A surge of euphoria shot through Elise. If he killed her, all her pain would be gone. There would be no need for her to suffer any more. The world was fucked and there was nothing she could do about. She had no one and nothing and no real reason to live. And then she pictured her sister as she imagined her today, healthy, curious and misguided in the hands of some wretched Muslim couple with medieval Islamic minds who’d bought her to be their slave.
Jesus, Elise thought, please don’t take me yet.
Qattan lowered his gun, walked over to a closet and retrieved the papers he’d printed. When he approached Elise, his expression remained remarkably calm.
“They were just chocolates and trinkets,” he said.
“You’re preaching to the unconverted,” Elise said.
She took the papers and left.
Having conducted her personal business during her lunch hour, Elise rode her bicycle back to the parliament building located along the Danube River. Before entering, she hid the badge that had been stolen from a morality policewoman named Kawlah Ahmed in the country formerly known as Portugal by a Christian spy. In its place she brandished her official credentials for the Intertheocratic Conference that accurately identified her as a translator and member of the delegation from Christendom.
But, of course, her real objective in Budapest, like the personal one which she’d j
ust pursued, involved far more than translating Arabic into Spanish.
CHAPTER 3
Ali rushed to the holding cells at the central police station. His boss had every incentive to make the dhimmi witness disappear as quickly as possible if they wanted to suppress news of the murder during the Intertheocratic Conference. But it was just one murder, and a dhimmi child at that. Ali understood that the Caliph—Eurabia’s religious and civic leader—wanted to portray a glorious picture of a pure Islamic society. But why did one murder matter so much?
Jalal, the desk sergeant in charge of the holding cells, enjoyed a forbidden sandwich and a fine lager, now and then. No one knew this besides Ali, who’d spotted him disguised as a Cuban-looking stonemason in Dhimmi Town one evening pounding pork sausage as though the apocalypse were imminent. He wasn’t the only cop with a taste for haram—the forbidden—but he was the only one that mattered to Ali right now.
“I want to see the dhimmi from Matthias,” Ali said. “The one that arrived this morning, probably within the hour.”
Jalal frowned. “The who, the what, and the where?”
“Don’t even start with me, Jalal,” Ali said. “I have enough dirt on you to … I want to see him. I want to see him now. Let me in and give him to me.”
“Sorry, Ali. Strict orders from Zaman.” Zaman was Ali’s boss. “No one can see the witness.”
“I’m not no one. I’m the lead investigator on the case.”
Jalal burst out laughing. “The great Dhimmi Lover on the case, right? That’s pretty funny.”
“Do I look like I’m laughing to you?”
No one doubted Ali’s ability with his fists or his willingness to use them if provoked.
Jalal swallowed air. “Look, Zaman said that if I let anyone into that holding cell he’d have me digging ditches in Transylvania by the end of the week.”
“Do they have pork in Transylvania?”
“Your threats won’t work, Ali. Say what you want, do as you must. I’ll get forty lashes and lose rank if you rat on me. But if I let you in I’ll lose my job or worse.”
“Then give me something, Jalal. You’ve got to give me something.”
Jalal breathed hard as he contemplated a solution. Then he leaned over the front desk and whispered into Ali’s ear. “The dhimmi didn’t look good when he came in. He looked hard-up. Like he hadn’t eaten in a long time. Zaman took pity on him and ordered a meal for him after he processed him.”
Ali hurried to his office and called the kitchen. The cook was a disgraced Hungarian chef from a top Dubai restaurant who’d been caught dipping into a bottle of the owner’s Chateau Petrus. The owner replenished his stock and continued serving the forbidden nectar to the Muslim elite who came to town to pretend they weren’t Muslims. The chef ended up cooking for dhimmi prisoners in Budapest.
He would know that it was Ali who was calling him because the appropriate extension would appear on his phone’s display. This was essential because Ali needed the cook to speak first before they conversed. Sharia precluded a Muslim from initiating a greeting with a dhimmi. Knowing this, the cook sometimes picked up and didn’t say a word on purpose just to drive Ali mad. He did this because they were friends.
“Major,” the cook said, without hesitation.
“Florence,” Ali said. “I need a favor.”
“I cook to serve.”
“Not that kind of favor. A bigger favor.”
“Why do I get the feeling this is the kind of favor that could earn me forty lashes?”
“And a bottle of that Tuscan wine you love so much.”
“That’s not necessary. A favor is a favor. What do you need?”
“There’s a witness in the holding cells,” Ali said. “They brought him in this morning. He would have come in dehydrated, probably hungry, too.”
“A call came in about an hour ago for a dhimmi tray. They said to make sure he got dessert, so I added some sour cherries. Since they insisted on dessert, I figured either he was a valuable asset or this was his last meal.”
“This is for your ears only. Get the large trolley prepared. The one where a flexible man can hide himself if he curls into a ball. I’ll be right down.”
“Too late,” Florence said.
“What?”
“It was a rush order.”
“Why?”
Florence didn’t answer.
“What have you heard, my friend?”
Florence remained mute.
“We’re not having this conversation,” Ali said. “Now tell me, in the name of all that is holy in your religion and mine. What have you heard?”
Florence sighed. “When they took his picture and ran it through the system, it came back with a match. The dhimmi witness is a convicted terrorist. He was awaiting execution when he escaped prison.”
Ali cursed Zaman. The odds this random witness was truly a convicted terrorist were too low to contemplate. He was a caretaker at a dhimmi church who’d seen a murder at a time when the government didn’t want any murders taking place. And to silence him forever, Zaman had fabricated crimes in the man’s past. It was clear to Ali Zaman was doing whatever was necessary to eliminate the witness immediately. And if Zaman was comfortable planting such false information, there was no telling what he would do when he found out that Ali was actually investigating the murder.
“So they fed him quickly because what,” Ali said, “they scheduled him for an afternoon court appearance? Imminent threat to the safety of the Eurabian Caliphate?”
“He was already convicted, remember?”
Ali swore under his breath. “They’re executing him now.”
Florence’s silence confirmed Ali’s conclusion.
“Where?” Ali said.
“Heroes’ Square.”
“What method?”
“The Khazouk.”
Ali pictured an innocent old man being impaled. He cringed and ended the call.
He ran to his car and raced to the execution site. On his way, he drove past three burned-down churches. The fires were officially deemed to have been caused by faulty electrical wiring, but most likely had been arson. None of them could be rebuilt because the Dhimmi Contract forbid the repair, reconstruction or construction of any church. This was just one of many humiliating restrictions to which the dhimmi submitted in exchange for the privilege of continuing to live in his own home and receiving the government’s protection. The exact terms of the Dhimmi Contract were first established in the Pact of Umar, an ancient treaty negotiated by Muslim conquerors and Christian subjects that listed the rights and obligations of dhimmis in Muslim lands. The Pact of Umar later had become part of Islamic law.
The throng was already growing at Heroes Square. The dhimmis in the crowd were recognizable by the yellow belts they were required to wear by law. Businesses had to let their employees attend executions so that the population was constantly reminded of the penalty for disobeying the Caliph. Although no formal announcements were ever made that one was imminent, word always spread. It never ceased to amaze Ali how quickly and large the crowds grew. Some people came to be shocked, others sought to convince themselves their circumstances could be much worse, and a few showed up simply to pay their respects to a fellow human being. But they always came.
Today’s capital punishment was no run-of-the-mill kind. Today they were coming in droves.
Ali parked beside the former Museum of Fine Arts to the left of the square. Twin colonnades flanked an empty space in the middle of Budapest’s largest gathering place. The Millennium Monument had once stood in the square, erected to commemorate the one-thousand year history of the Magyars, who’d migrated from the Ural Mountains to first populate Hungary. A statue of the Christian Archangel Gabriel had stood atop the monument, holding the holy crown and double cross of Christianity. Within a month of Sharia becoming the national rule of law, the monument had been destroyed . For good measure, the statues of other kings and key historical figures that had stood upon
the colonnades also had been destroyed.
Ali edged his way through the crowd to the front of the Square. An emaciated man lay naked on his stomach between the two colonnades where the Christian monument had once stood. A three-meter by three-meter square of gravel sat exposed amidst the granite promenade beside the dhimmi witness. His hands were tied behind his back. Gray hair covered his head, back and legs. The man’s calves looked no thicker than Ali’s wrists.
At least fifty policemen guarded the execution site. Another dozen were vaulted high in the air in tree-topping cranes, in compartments normally occupied by chainsaw-wielding laborers. They bore rifles with high-powered scopes and scanned the execution site in search of a terrorist threat from a local dhimmi, or a militant Hindu, Buddhist, or Christian insurgent.
Three executioners dressed in black stood to the dhimmi’s right. They wore hoods that rendered only their eyes visible. One of them tended to a fire. A three-meter long iron stake lay smoldering atop the flames. A second executioner examined a hammer, while a third mixed a vat of lubricant. Zaman flanked the dhimmi to his left, supervising the construction of another rung on his ladder to success.
Ali hadn’t contemplated that he’d have to get past his boss to interview the witness before his sentence was carried out. Informing Zaman that he was actually investigating the dhimmi girl’s murder was the equivalent of admitting to his wife that he was risking a charge of insubordination because he felt guilty about something that had happened twenty-five years ago. It was unimaginable.
And yet Ali found himself marching toward his boss. What propelled him forward? He wondered. Was it his commitment to his mission, or the knowledge that he held a political advantage so powerful that Zaman wouldn’t dare stop him?
Zaman looked like a schoolboy, the top-of-the-class teacher’s pet, a trait that endeared him to his superiors but made him a rat-shit, ass-kisser in the eyes of his subordinates. Still, there was no denying that Zaman was an unstoppable political rocket ship on track to land on the Caliph’s personal staff. If Islam really was the businessman’s religion because it didn’t stand in the way of a man’s ambition, here was a most pious man.
Girls of Yellow Page 2
