Girls of Yellow

by Orest Stelmach

  “What will you do?”

  “Go about my business. Other than the rare meeting with someone such as yourself, this is, in fact, a dentist’s office. There’s no black marketeering going on here, no illegal shenanigans with scavengers from the other theocracies. Speaking of scavengers, how was the man in the wheelchair?”

  “Handsome as ever,” Elise said.

  Darby nodded. Elise’s description confirmed that she’d met with the right man. This let Darby know that he’d completed his mission on behalf of Christendom. The acquisition of the location of the supposed proof of God was entirely Elise’s responsibility.

  “And the dressmaking school?” Darby said.

  “Has exceeded all expectations,” Elise said. “I owe you a debt of gratitude there. Which makes it all the more difficult to ask for help with that extraction—”

  “Stop.” Darby raised his hand. A look of contentment spread across his face. “Anything … Anything I can do to help a young Christian avoid a life of servitude to these soulless savages … ‘No food for them save bitter thorn-fruit.’”

  “I expect the asset to be compliant.”

  “When do you want this to happen?”

  Elise told him when and where she was meeting Valerie.

  “There’ll be two cars,” Darby said. “Four men. All Christians of Arabian descent. All soldiers, all reliable. I trust them with my soul. They’ll take her off road over the border to the countries formerly known as Slovakia and Germany and to a ship along the Dutch coastline. Once she’s out of BP, she should be safe. The Eurabian authorities are not nearly as concerned about cars leaving Eurabia as they are about the ones coming in.”

  “How will I connect with the asset once she’s safe?”

  “The ship is a bulk container vessel returning home to the country formerly known as Argentina. The captain is our connection. He’ll have your contact information and you’ll have his before you leave here today.”

  “Then I think we’re good.”

  As Elise started to rise, she heard a vaguely familiar male voice behind her.

  “Blanca got called in to help with an emergency,” the man said. “I can stand in for her, Doctor Darby.”

  The voice belonged to the young man whom Darby suspected of being a community infiltrator. In the time it took for Elise to recognize it, Darby was already pressing her shoulders back down into the dental chair.

  “Excellent,” Darby said. “You’re becoming indispensable to me.”

  Elise tried to rise again and this time Darby pushed her down more forcefully. Appearances, he mouthed, without making a noise.

  “I’m very optimistic, Miss Kawlah,” Darby said. “Very optimistic about the outcome of this procedure.”

  A minute later the needle was in her gums.

  Twenty minutes later the drilling began. Elise’s horror yielded to her priorities.

  A tooth for a sister, she thought. Seemed like a bargain.

  She had thirty-one others if that one wasn’t enough.

  CHAPTER 19

  Two of the Caliph’s guards drove Ali home from the General’s house. To Ali’s surprise, Sabida was waiting for him in the doorway with a sympathetic look on her face. At first her expression buoyed his spirits, but when she sniffed his breath and glanced at his stomach he knew that her father had called her again. Sabida looked like she knew that the General and Ali had shared a glass of port, and that Ali had been beaten, though probably not who had given the order.

  “Oh, my beloved,” she said. “What have they done to you?”

  “And how do you know anyone’s done anything?”

  “A wife knows.”

  Ali was too sore and tired to complain that she’d spoken to her father about him again. So he washed, changed clothes and returned to the kitchen where Sabida had cooked up some Arabic home remedies.

  “I mixed a teaspoon of black seed with honey,” she said. Black seed came from fennel flower and had been found in Tutankhamen’s tomb. “Good for abdominal pain and depression.”

  “Who said I’m depressed?”

  “I did. A wife always knows. Eat it and drink some of this tea. I simmered it with a teaspoon of aniseed.”

  Ali frowned. “I thought anise is used to force gas out of the system.”

  “It is. I want you to drink the entire cup, and then when you’re done, I have a surprise for you.”

  “I’ve had enough surprises for the day.”

  “This one will do you good. Trust me, my beloved.”

  Ali groaned as he sat down. His stomach felt like a giant bruise. He remembered his instructors in the police academy preaching that the soreness they experienced the day after physical training was “good pain.” And they’d been right. It really had felt good. His muscles had been properly stimulated and were in the process of becoming stronger. But if that was good pain, what Ali was experiencing now was most definitely bad pain. He was hurting inside. Still, he didn’t dare lose face and ask to see a doctor.

  Sabida worked on a grocery list while he ate his black seed and honey, and drank his tea. The liquid warmed his insides while the herbs settled his mind a bit, or at least so he imagined.

  “Better?” she said.

  “A bit. Thank you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I live for you, husband. You know that.” She touched his shoulder. “Now, it’s time for your surprise.”

  After she left the room, Ali sipped more tea and wondered what she could have possibly bought him. He had no material vices to speak of except for cannabis and an occasional swim, and he doubted a gift certificate to the hookah bar or the gymnasium was on the way. Perhaps she’d acquired a copy of one of those old cowboy films they’d made in the country formerly known as Italy more than a century ago. They were haram, of course, but he loved to watch them with a plate of pasta.

  But Sabida returned with empty hands.

  “Your daughter would like to speak with you,” she said.

  Kinza stepped out from behind her mother. As soon as he saw her, Ali’s heart fell. He remembered Sabida’s brother reminding him last night to be sure to pick up their girls after school. But he’d forgotten. In fact, not only had he forgotten, he hadn’t thought of his own daughter all day.

  “I’m so sorry, angel,” Ali said. “I got all caught up in work … How are you? Come give me a hug.”

  But Kinza would have none of him. She stood defiantly with a look of suppressed rage on her face. Sabida was off to the side, arms folded over her chest.

  “No hug?” Ali said.

  His daughter shook her head.

  “Okay,” he said. “I guess I don’t deserve one. Tell me a story instead. Tell me what you learned today.”

  “Today I learned that my father loves dhimmis more than his own family.”

  Ali cast a look of shock at Sabida, whose eyes were watering.

  “And that my father loves a dead dhimmi girl more than me.”

  Kinza ran out of the kitchen back to her bedroom.

  Her words knocked the wind out of Ali. He turned back to Sabida.

  “Happy?” he said.

  Sabida looked likely to explode any second. All of a sudden, the herbs Ali had ingested didn’t seem nearly potent enough.

  “When did you learn to be so cruel?” Ali said. “Or have you always been this way, and I’ve simply been a fool for not noticing?”

  “You think I put those ideas into her head?” Sabida said. “I can’t control what my father says to her.”

  Ali shouldn’t have been surprised that the General was using his granddaughter to help manage him. The General was a manipulative bastard. That’s how he’d become a general in the first place.

  “Maybe you didn’t put those ideas in her head,” Ali said, “but you set this all up. ‘I have a surprise for you?’ Do you have any idea how much I loathe you at this very moment?”

  “You, you, you,” Sabida said. “It’s always about you.”

  “No, it just see
ms that way. Because I’m the man of the house. Because I’m the one who provides.”

  “Are you sure about that? Are you sure you’re the man of the house?”

  Ali rose to his feet.

  Sabida stood tall.

  “Say that to me again,” Ali said.

  Sabida continued staring at him, lips trembling.

  “Say that to me one more time.”

  Ali knew that his wife understood his threat. He simply refused to be emasculated any further. Neither of them had ever uttered a word about divorce during their nine-year marriage. And yet here they were, at that juncture. Ali marveled at how quickly they’d reached that point, and realized this was further evidence of just how large a shit storm he’d caused by investigating one poor dhimmi girl’s death.

  Sabida looked away.

  Ali sat back down.

  They remained quiet for a while. Ali sipped his tea while Sabida polished an already clean countertop. Ali was grateful for the silence. But what he wanted above all was the numbness that only the hookah and the cannabis could bring.

  After Sabida had wiped the entire kitchen clean, she sat opposite him with her own cup of tea.

  “I hope you put a good dose of those herbs in your own brew,” Ali said.

  “The black seed is good for all but death.”

  “Oh, really? It’s good to know there’s something you and your father can’t control.”

  Sabida glared at him. “What’s happening to us?”

  “Nothing is happening to us. I’m having some trouble at work. That’s all. It happens.” Even as he spoke, Ali hoped his phone would ring with the General on the other end of the line. “It’ll work itself out.”

  “You’re not being honest with me. You’re making your problem at work sound trivial and it’s not. And it affects all of. Immediately, in the most dramatic way.”

  “Everything will be fine. Until I stop providing for you, you have no right to complain.”

  “If it weren’t for Father, you would have stopped providing for us when you came home today. He saved your job. What’s gotten into you? I thought you were having a crisis of conscience because this girl reminded you of your daughter, but it’s obviously something more.”

  Ali said nothing. Even if he tried to explain, she would never understand him.

  “Do you want a new slave?” Sabida said. “Is that was this is? Because Father said he would buy ours at a premium and subsidize a new one.”

  Ali pressed his eyes shut. It was bad enough that she’d spoken to her father about his career. Now this?

  “Talk to me,” Sabida said. “I beg of you.”

  Ali took a deep breath. An excruciating moment of desperation washed over him and then a shocking thought occurred to him. What if he were simply honest with her?

  “I’m a cop,” he said. “I want to take my job seriously. I want it to mean something. And I want everyone to take me seriously.”

  “You’ve always been taken seriously—”

  “Don’t,” Ali said. “You know what I mean. You know that I’ve never been taken seriously. Why do you think they call me the Dhimmi Lover? It’s a joke, don’t you understand? I’m a joke.”

  Embarrassment shone in Sabida’s eyes.

  “No more,” Ali said. “I don’t want to be a joke anymore. I want to make a difference. I want my job to matter. I want to matter.”

  “You want to be creative? Maybe you don’t want to be a cop. Maybe you want to be creative through business. Father has some ventures. Maybe there’s an opportunity in one of them—”

  “I spit on his opportunities,” Ali said. “I hate all business that is conducted for the sake of money. I want to be a cop. Why is that so hard to understand that? Why can you not see the joy in that?”

  “I thought our joy came from Islam.”

  “It does. Being the detective on this case and being a Muslim—they’re one and the same. Finding this girl’s killer—that is the essence of Islam. Islam is about justice. Don’t you see that? Doesn’t anyone see that? Has all of Eurabia gone mad?”

  “No, my beloved. All of Eurabia has not gone mad. This is life. Here as it probably is in the lands of Hindu and Buddha and Christendom, too. Nobility takes a back seat to survival. Men do what they need to do so that their families have a standard of living. So that their families survive.”

  Ali considered her comments. “That’s it then, eyes to my soul. You’ve nailed it. I don’t want to just survive. I want to live. I want my life—I want our lives—to really matter.”

  “And are they going to matter if you end up being chief of the neighborhood watch in some Transylvanian ghetto trying to figure out who stole the butter?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Ali said.

  He was too proud to admit to his wife that he’d been arrogant, that he’d assumed the General would protect his son-in-law. Ali had forged ahead with his murder investigation without worrying that he’d eventually force Zaman to defend his authority. Going forward, Ali vowed to slow down and consider his moves first.

  That assumed he could redeem himself as the General had suggested. For that to happen, Ali needed to be given a second chance.

  He sat in the kitchen staring at the phone, willing the General to call.

  CHAPTER 20

  Elise dropped the kickstand and parked her bicycle beside the front door to the house where the man in the wheelchair lived. The curtains were drawn but light spilled around their edges. She wasn’t entirely focused on her mission even though she was carrying a satchel full of investment grade diamonds, enough to buy black market passage to Australia and a comfortable retirement in Sydney. Her thoughts kept drifting to an imaginary scenario that began near the Little Princess statue on the Danube, and ended with her embracing Valerie on non-Arabian soil, where her sister wouldn’t be considered the spoil of war or relegated to a life as a slave.

  All that changed when Elise reached out to ring the doorbell to announce her arrival.

  All that changed when Elise saw that the front door was ajar.

  She respected the man in the wheelchair but that didn’t mean she believed he was in possession of the exact location of some sort of proof of God. She would have regarded it as complete hogwash were it not for his reputation. The conflict between the man’s reputed integrity and the outrageousness of his claim had left Elise ambivalent.

  But she was ambivalent no more.

  If there were evidence that the dead were rising and that they all belonged to one and only one religion, she needed to acquire it for Christendom to use as it saw fit. Proof of God would change mankind, for better or worse. It was a theocratic weapon, to be shared or revealed, as the possessor desired.

  Elise had even experienced a fleeting thought that she needed to get her hands on this proof for personal reasons. If the dead who were rising belonged to a different religion, perhaps she and Valerie would need to reconsider what and whom they worshipped. The notion had revolted and fascinated her almost as much as it had made her laugh—it was still so preposterous.

  The door was ajar but still touching the jam. Perhaps the housekeeper was about to step outside for some reason, and had doubled back because she’d forgotten something, Elise thought. Or, maybe she’d just returned from an emergency run to the store to get some medicine for her employer. And in a hurry to deliver the prescription—or Belgian chocolate—she’d failed to press the door shut.

  All of these possibilities seemed more likely to Elise than the commission of a crime by a serious criminal. A kid ransacking the house might have been so stupid as to leave the door open to attract attention, but not a professional thief. If a skilled operator had robbed the man in the wheelchair of some his valuable possessions, or heaven forbid, the location of the alleged proof of God she’d come to purchase, he would have closed the door behind him.

  The possibilities were endless.

  Elise rapped on the door lightly with her knuckles. The door inched open eno
ugh for her voice to carry inside.

  “Hello? Is anyone home?” Elise said.

  She waited three beats, glanced to both sides and to the rear to make certain she was alone and repeated her actions.

  No one answered.

  Elise rapped the door two more times, increasing the force behind her second knock such that that door swung open. She announced herself one last time, but still there was no answer.

  She cursed her luck. This was supposed to be a simple transaction. Extracting Valerie was the much more difficult task. And now she had no choice but to enter the house illegally. She could argue she had an appointment, that she’d met the housekeeper and the man in the wheelchair the day before and that she was concerned for their welfare. And if someone asked her why she didn’t call the police, she could tell them the truth. What if one or both of them were in need of immediate medical attention? What if the housekeeper couldn’t summon the necessary help because she was mute?

  Elise glanced over her shoulder one more time, saw an empty street, and slipped inside the house.

  The light she’d seen outside came from the first room on the left. It had been dark when Elise had visited last night. Now illuminated by a collection of antique desk lamps atop various tables, it appeared more warehouse and less living space. The Tiffany shades told Elise that simple robbery either hadn’t been a motive, or the thieves could only get away with what they could carry.

  A sliver of light beckoned from a familiar location further down the corridor—the room where she’d met with the man in the wheelchair, where he’d made her hot chocolate and told her the nature of the treasure that he was selling. Elise slipped down the hallway. The sconces in the walls were dark this time and the absence of light along the way sharpened her other senses.

  She detected a foreign smell. At first she thought there was a floral whiff to it, but then she realized it was more like poppy infused with vanilla. It wasn’t a perfume, she thought, but more an incense that reminded her of a Buddhist temple. Funny, Elise thought, because she hadn’t seen an incense burner in the main room and the two residents of the home were definitely not Buddhists.