Empire of Mud

by James Suriano

  When death visited our village, a protocol went into action. There were certain words spoken, traditional dishes made, arrangements organized, and ceremonial traditions brought to life. Here, it was me, the small room, and the murderer somewhere in the house. I shut the door. Think, Shula. Who can you call? Who can you trust so this man is caught? How can you get out to tell them? Minrada came to mind first. Out of anyone, she would be able to get Maryam to the right person. I looked at the small clock on the wall; they wouldn’t meet in the park for more than an hour. I tried not to think about being in this room all that time, with each minute feeling like an hour. I needed to stay out of the house—I didn’t want to run into Mohamed. He might target me next since I knew what he had done. I went into my bathroom, stripped off my uniform, got into the shower, and let the hot water run over my head. I hummed with the beat of the water, trying to clear my mind of the sickening images taking up space there. A thumping outside the bathroom started. Then Mohamed’s voice. It didn’t sound like it was coming from my room. Was he watching me on the other side of the wall? Would there only be a picture of me to send home to my dear Ruka and Mewan when all this was over?

  I turned off the water and let it chill on my skin. An irrational feeling of safety surrounded me as I stood wrapped in the tiles and tub. I was one foot out, my hand reached for a fluffy cotton towel, and I wrapped myself in it. Maryam’s face, swaddled in this towel, was in front of me. I dried quickly. The thumping had stopped; he was quiet. I’m not sure what happened next because now I was standing in front of Minrada under the sunshades and misting fans at the park. She was snapping her fingers in my face.

  “Where is the baby? Where? What did you do?” She clapped loudly next to my ear.

  The other women were watching, waiting for something to happen. Minrada was in green today, with green earrings and a green streak in her hair. I thought I was staring at the grass when my eyes came into focus.

  “I’ve seen this before,” she told the other women. “She’s snapped. The stress was too much. It takes a strong woman to do what we do year after year,” she said knowingly.

  “I haven’t snapped. Stop saying that.” Though I wasn’t sure this was really the case.

  Minrada took me seriously, because she shushed the rest of them and looked squarely at me.

  “The baby is …” I wasn’t sure if I should tell her the whole truth. Minrada was a woman of favors and information, trading each one for the other. “I need to go to Kumzar.”

  She shook her head as soon as I said it, as if she were trying to avoid the information coming into her ears. “The baby? What have you done?”

  “I haven’t done anything.” Why was Minrada accusing me?

  “Look who’s coming.” She glanced behind me.

  I turned; it was Mohamed’s car, accelerating, until it zoomed by us, blasting us with hot air. He didn’t look at us; I don’t know if he even knew I was here.

  “Kumzar. What do I have to do?”

  “I need evidence of”—Minrada walked me to the edge of the artificial grass. She got close to me—“his friends.”

  “There is a book. I can get it to you.” The reality of going back into his office made me clearheaded. “That’s it?”

  “More if you don’t have your passport. To pay the Kumzar fee.”

  “How much?”

  She looked around, “You’ll see. Bring me something of value and I’ll let you know if it will be enough.”

  There were plenty of small valuable things in the house, but I couldn’t give them away until I left.

  “I’m so worried they’re going to arrest me, when the police find out about—”

  Minrada waved a hand. “No one cares about that baby. Mohamed and Ousha told everyone it was yours. A baby of no one is no one. They’ll be glad she’s gone.”

  As I folded my arms together like thin paper, I realized I’d been sent here for an illusion. My dream of provisions for my family was tightly wrapped in the dream of honor for Mohamed—the illusion that I should be the sacrifice to restore his family. But there were two lives here, two very different tellings of the same story. In my story, a child had been lost, a great potential of life the world would never know. In Mohamed’s telling, a stain had been erased, the failed result of the grinding vicissitudes that everyone, rich or poor, was dealing with and better without.

  “I’ll do that.” When I put my foot in the road to cross, a horn blasted.

  “At midnight, meet me under the small bridge to our island,” Minrada said softly. “There’s something more to see.”

  Normally I would have minded the intrusion into my sleep. Tonight, however, with Maryam silent and Mohamed in the house, I would be wide awake.

  The Bridge’s Secrets

  I wasn’t sure if Mohamed had come home. At 11:30, I felt my way through the darkness, into the laundry room, and through the door into the passageways in the walls. The moment I stepped into the passage, I smelled something foul—whiffs of where death had passed through. It reminded me of the time of year hunting happened in our village, when the group of men returned and dragged their wild boars through the center street, leaving trails of blood in the dirt. I’d pulled a bath towel from the laundry to wedge the exterior door open. I felt for the wires near the top. They were still disconnected from the door sensor. This had been done long before I arrived. Presumably, Mohamed had brought in his men this way.

  The night air in Dubai cooled down like at home, but here it picked up a tinge of wetness. It made the air less choking, though tonight it felt like even the stars were pressing down on me, threatening to flatten me against the earth and extinguish my breath. As I walked along the road, where no others were treading, it felt like the eyes of every house gazed at me. I arrived at the bridge, my only greeting was silence. Had Minrada played me this time? The breakwater rocks and boulder-size coral stacked from the side of the road to the water didn’t reveal an obvious path to get underneath the bridge. I stepped a few paces off the road until I was at the water. The way the rocks were stacked had pushed me even farther from the bridge. I saw tiny lights tucked in the underbelly of steel girder supports. A moment later, a light flashed quickly in my direction and illuminated the water closest to me.

  It had to be Minrada. I couldn’t know at the time, but I would look back at this moment as the precipice before the long slide, when the pain of my situation became so great that it blossomed into an anesthetic that would numb me from the soul-piercing barbs that sliced me all the way down. Whatever crazy scheme she had concocted would play out. My fate pushed me to the lessons I needed to learn, complete with the pain and pleasure stored up for this incarnation. I left my shoes on the shore, rolled up my uniform pants, and waded into the water. Back at home, this was an invitation to be snatched by a constrictor or crocodile that waited for an unwise animal to wander in too closely. But I only felt a purpose about me, driving me. I knew the fears of nature were nothing compared to what people could bring about for us.

  The water was still and warm, the silty smoothness sliding underfoot. I was up to my thighs, my pants soaked, until I stood directly under the bridge where the light had appeared. It flashed again, this time to show me a path, a human-size space where I could climb between the rocks. I followed dutifully until I smelled wisps of burning herbs.

  A leg dropped down from the girders and touched the ground. Minrada’s thick body followed; she wore an abaya I’d never seen.

  She pressed her palms together. “Can you believe it?”

  “Believe what?”

  “That this exists right under the nose of the Emiratis?”

  I wasn’t clear what this she was referring to.

  “Come. You’ll see.” She pointed up to where she had come from. A small opening in the boards created a floor or ceiling, depending on which side you were looking from. When I didn’t move, she gave me a light push. I reached into the space and stuck my head inside. At first I wasn’t sure what I was lo
oking at. The strung lights, through the heavy sweet-tinged smoke, took the shape of colored butterflies. Then sets of hazy eyes looked back at me from the closed-in space. After a nudge from Minrada, I climbed into the roomy hideaway.

  “Welcome.” It was a deep voice from my country. I realized how much I had missed someone who might have been my father. The strong certainty in his tone.

  Behind him, the others paid no attention. Some were in uniforms, while others had changed into the flowy traditional clothes of my home. They were reclined on woven pillows, the sweet and musky smell of opium drifting from their lips. My brother, Sahan, if he had come to Dubai to work, might have ended up here.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  He handed me a pipe. I took it and puffed lightly. I didn’t like the way smoke of any kind made my mouth feel, but he was generously offering me something of value to him, which made the smoke sweeter.

  “This is Chamara,” Minrada said. She held out her fingers, asking for the pipe.

  His hair glowed white under the strung lights and against his dark creased skin. When he turned to talk to me, I saw his hair was pulled into a bun at the base of his neck.

  “Where do you want to go?” he asked me in my language.

  “Home. Balapitiya.”

  “That’s a difficult journey. Some don’t make it.” He squinted at me.

  “I won’t make it if I stay here. My boss will kill me.” I surprised myself by verbalizing this.

  “In that case, can you be at the place Minrada tells you at eleven thirty tomorrow morning? There’s no turning back once we start. She tells me you don’t have your passport?”

  “No. Mohamed, my boss, has locked it in a safe,”

  He waved a hand at me. “No names, no names.”

  “But I have a US passport. It’s not mine but close enough.”

  Minrada’s eyebrows lifted, and she leaned in so her arm pressed against mine. “You never told me this.”

  I shook my head, not willing to offer any more information.

  “Oh, I see how it is. You think now you’re going to keep this train moving without me,” she said, laughing.

  Chamara ignored her. He seemed, at best, to tolerate her self-importance. “If you have that, life will be much easier. But you still need something of value. Jewelry, cash, a piece of gold. Things your boss hides from you.”

  “Yes. I’ll bring something.”

  “Okay. Go now, and if for some reason eleven thirty doesn’t happen tomorrow, be patient.” He turned away from me and spoke to someone behind him.

  Those last words were the most frightening, because I knew Mohamed wouldn’t let me be patient.

  As I approached the house, I saw a light on in Ousha’s room upstairs and Mohamed’s car in the driveway. I stopped on the sidewalk and couldn’t look away. The shades were pulled down, but I spotted erratic shadows moving behind it. I went to the back door and let myself in; the towel was still in place. As soon as I entered the laundry room, yelling reverberated through the house. I closed the door and pushed the containers into place in front of it. The kitchen lights were on too, but it was quiet. I looked out and saw several alcohol bottles and a mess of food from a takeaway vendor.

  I listened at the kitchen door. No Ousha, only men. And they weren’t fighting; it was more of a raucous party, the way all men get when they drink too much and are together. The voices came closer now, down the stairs. I scurried out of view and into my room, closing the door tightly behind me before I turned on the light. My eyes immediately darted to the crib. I went to the side and looked down at the sweet girl. Tears welled in my eyes and rained down on her. I touched her shoulder. A moment later, I went to my bathroom to retrieve some scented oil from behind my bathroom mirror. I thought, like in my country, I might put some on her forehead. When I pulled open the mirror, leaning against my tube of toothpaste was a picture. Me holding Maryam, who was clearly dead.

  To Kumzar

  It was 4:00 a.m. before I found the courage to walk upstairs toward Ousha’s bedroom. At the top of the staircase, a young man was passed out against the wall, a drink next to him. I stepped over his legs and kept moving slowly. The door to her room was open, but I felt the presence of someone else inside. I hoped it wasn’t Mohamed, though I knew he was up here. I moved inside; a small lamp next to the bed was on, and I saw several lumps under the blankets on the bed. Heavy breaths. They were asleep.

  I precisely remembered the placement of the suitcases inside the closet, and I quietly unlatched them, holding my hand over the shiny metal so it wouldn’t click and wake the sleeping men. I slipped my hand inside and felt around until my fingers brushed the small book. I was rounding the corner of the sitting room before I realized the suitcase was still open, but it didn’t matter now. I put the book in one of my interior pockets. In the kitchen, high in a glass cabinet, were three ornamental eggs. They were decorated with gold and gems and held in gold stands. I stood on a barstool and reached for them. There were more in the cabinet than I could see from standing on the floor, and I only took the eggs in the back so that at a casual glance nothing would appear missing.

  When I had them, I placed them in a cloth bag and went back to my room to add the sari I had arrived in a few months ago. I felt I needed to return in the clothes I left in. Four thirty a.m. Seven hours. I wouldn’t move. I pushed my bed in front of the door and went to Maryam.

  “Sweet girl, I hope you’re with someone who loves you very much.”

  I let her be; my time to leave was coming. The layers of sleep deprivation were piling on top of me, asking me to shut my eyes, but I resisted. I would sit for one minute on the bed then continue.

  …

  Footsteps and craggy talking. I had fallen asleep; the clock said 11:02 a.m. I jumped off my bed, my bag still on my arm. I ran to the bathroom and pushed the bed aside. I listened, but there was no time now. I went. Three shirtless men stood around the bar, drinking tea. They looked up at me when I was in the hallway, then returned to their conversation. I walked past them, thinking the blood in my head might explode. But I kept going until I was at the front door.

  “Shula?” It was Mohamed; he was at the top of the stairs. He didn’t sound mad, as I imagined he would be. Rather, his tone sounded surprised. I had my hand on the door handle. “Shula?” This time he was more insistent, but nothing approaching angry. I turned to face him, nodded, then fled. I walked as fast as I could, worried that if I ran, one of the other residents might stop me or call the police. The entire time, I glanced over my shoulder but saw no one following me.

  Minrada was at the park with the usual group of ladies. There was one I didn’t recognize. She looked nervous and guilty, wearing a white turban and a sari with orange threads. She looked so thin the wind might blow her away. As I stood waiting to cross the street, the van I knew was there for us slowed its approach. I crossed in front of it. Minrada stood in front of the passenger-side door with her hand out.

  “Don’t forget who set this up for you,” she said.

  I reached into the bag and handed her an egg.

  “What is this? Where is the album?” She scowled at me.

  In my panic, I’d forgotten about my promise of delivering the album to her.

  “Go get it.” She pointed toward the house.

  “I can’t. He’s home. I’ll never be able to—”

  The door behind her opened, and she allowed the woman in the white turban to board. I saw other women inside.

  “Well, then you can go next time.” She handed the egg back to me. The gems caught the sunlight. Behind her I saw the driver staring at the egg.

  The driver said something to Minrada in Mohamed’s language. Then they began to argue. He pointed to me and beckoned me into the van. Minrada tried to stop me, throwing an elbow at me. But the tiger rose within me, and I snarled, then forced her out of my way. I was inside the van now, and Minrada lunged for me, but the driver automatically closed the door and accelerated away from her.
Through the window, I saw her shake her fist. We were on our way.

  “Lady …” The driver looked in the rearview mirror at me and held his hand out. I knew he wanted the egg, and I was more than happy to give it to him. I wondered what the repercussions of angering Minrada would be. I hoped I’d never see her again.

  I handed him the egg and he stashed it away under his seat. He raised his voice. “Get comfortable,” he said. “We’ll drive for two hours, and then you’ll board a boat to Kumzar from Al Rams. I won’t come with you.”

  We were on highway E-11 heading north. The woman next to me smiled. “Are you going back to India?”

  “Sri Lanka,” I answered.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two months.”

  She scoffed at me. “That was all you lasted? You must have made no money at all.”

  “You’re right. A few dinars.” I always felt money wasn’t a good topic to discuss.

  “It’s all so horrible, isn’t it?” she said. “What they do to us?”

  When we pulled into the parking lot, I saw a dock with boats. I was heading home, or so I hoped.

  Sea Tight

  There were seven of us in the van. The driver opened the door and let us out. When I stepped off, he pulled me aside and made me stand behind him. He smelled like wood smoke. He pulled the egg from his pocket and spun it close to his face. His eyes darted between the gem-encrusted bauble and me.

  “Where did you find such a piece?”

  “I have many,” I lied.

  “You can have anything you desire if you pay with these. Call me if you ever find yourself in need. I owe you.” He slipped me a piece of paper with a phone number on it and then pointed me to the line forming at the gangplank.

  The ship had been painted red at one time, but was so rusty that it appeared brown. I stepped foot on the top deck. The ship held still in the calm blue water. In front of me there was an enclosed space where I could see the crew and helm. The line of people was disappearing into a hole in the deck down a white metal ladder.