Finding Nouf

by Zoë Ferraris

  But her father did. She had awoken to a quiet house and managed to tiptoe out without waking Abu, but just as soon as the car reached the corner of her street, her cell phone rang and she spent five minutes explaining to her father that she had to be at work early, that she would be paid overtime, and that her boss wouldn't make a habit of placing such inhumane demands on her time. Lie piled upon lie, and even then Abu would worry. His concern, however remote, now hung in the car and made her guilt even heavier.

  She didn't want him to know just how much she was working on Nouf's case. He supported her pursuit of the truth about Nouf's death, but she didn't want to have to explain that she was going to be sneaking around the laboratory and hiding things from her boss and coworkers. Abu wouldn't like it—both because he didn't like the idea of Katya's breaking the rules and because he didn't approve of the way the examiner had closed Nouf's case without looking carefully at all the facts. Either way he would have something negative to say, and the less criticism he directed at her job, the better.

  She had stashed the biological samples from Nouf's body in her purse, and she wanted to process them, which she could do only when no one else was in the lab. But she had never been to work so early and wasn't sure that the women's entrance to the building would even be open, or that the security guard would let her pass. She had the skin sample from beneath Nouf's fingernails, the wood chips from her head wound, the mud from her wrist, and some mud traces from her skin and hair. She also had a blood sample from the fetus. Processing it all surreptitiously would take a few days. The women's section of the lab didn't open until eight, but it might give her enough time to prepare the evidence.

  If her boss found out that she was running samples from a case that had been closed, she would lose her job. It didn't matter that it was the family who had asked them to close the case and that she was in fact working for the family, at Othman's request. There were too many problems with the situation. Could the examiner admit that he had been bribed? Could Tahsin admit to paying him? Could the family admit that they'd hired a woman? There was no discussing any of it.

  Ahmad crept along, the Toyota's headlights glowing weakly. As they left the old town, the streets grew wider and felt emptier, the buildings newer and less friendly. The comforting sight of old wooden window screens and elaborately ornamented doors gave way to the travesty of rusty iron grilles and decayed air conditioners hanging from windows like crooked teeth dripping with saliva. There were streetlamps here, but they gave off a dull gray light.

  "Everything all right?" Ahmad asked.

  "Yes, Ahmad. Thank you."

  At once he turned left and they entered what felt like a women's street. All the storefronts displayed perfumes and sweet oils, abaayas, jewelry and baubles. Lights filled the shop windows, but as the Toyota crept past, they flickered off here and there in preparation for morning prayers. The only other movement came from black shapes flitting through the streets. Normally men inhabited these sidewalks, but this early in the morning there were women, as quiet and alert as deer, stealing the opportunity to wander unmolested. A man would be a blot on the picture, his robe glowing whiter than the moon, chasing away the dark shapes of night.

  Ahmad stopped at a corner. Katya asked him to inch into the intersection and wait. Down the length of the cross street she could see the palest foam of light rising up like a wave on the horizon. She watched it, waiting for the translucent, ghostly glow that would mark the technical first point of dawn. Thanks to college astronomy, everything she knew about the universe had some relevance to the calculation of prayer times. It was a monumental task, that calculation. For such things one had to understand latitudes, solar declinations, azimuths, apparent solar times, and equations of time. Armies of men spent their lives observing the heavens just to calculate and predict the exact moment of dawn and the precise number of minutes and seconds that would elapse between dawn and sunrise, for it was in those minutes that Fajr prayers were performed. She held her breath, still staring at the horizon, curious to see if the muezzin's call would synchronize with the break of dawn.

  Indeed, the distant glimmer of light appeared just as the first Allahu akbar rang from the speakers of a nearby mosque. God is great. The simultaneity of events sent a chill through her.

  Then, less happily, she thought that while those armies of men had turned their eyes toward the heavens, the great sky was only ever visible to her from her rooftop or through the slit of an open car window.

  Ahmad drove through the intersection, pulled over to the curb, and grabbed his prayer rug from the passenger seat. He got out and spread his rug on the pavement, standing to begin his prayers. Katya watched, feeling uneasy. She hadn't stopped thinking of Nouf all night, and now, like the flickering of storefront lights, she felt illumination dying inside her. The day before, she'd been certain that Nouf had been murdered, but what if the scratches on her arms and the wound on her head had happened during the drowning? Or been caused by an accident? Katya had also felt certain that she understood the family. They wanted to handle the investigation quietly; she respected their need for privacy. But what if they were hiding something?

  They might never have told her about the cover-up if she had not called Othman to warn him that the examiner had done a shoddy job. Othman quickly asked for her help. She agreed, of course, but technically it was too late to collect evidence—Nouf's body was already being returned to the house. Surreptitiously, Katya had saved samples from the examination, but Othman didn't know she was going to do that. He didn't even know she was stepping in for the regular examiner. Did he just assume that she was all-powerful at work?

  She hated having these thoughts. Inevitably, they led her to wonder if she was doing the right thing, marrying a man she'd chosen herself. A man her father didn't like.

  Katya looked up and saw two young women about to leave a nearby store. Seeing Ahmad on the sidewalk, they stopped and retreated from the shop's glass door, perhaps afraid that he was one of those men who, seeing a woman after performing his ablutions, would have to do them again. Katya wanted to tell them that Ahmad wouldn't mind them walking past and that anyway he was the blindest man on the planet—he had the special talent of being able to look at a woman and not see her face at all. But she couldn't motion to the women; they were behind a curtain now, and the darktinted windows were impenetrable from without. So she watched Ahmad pray, watched him turn his head and whisper his tasleem, "Peace be upon you and the mercy of God," while she admired the serenity that stole over his face.

  It was that same look of goodness, of calm and security, that made her father trust him. The two men had been childhood friends back in Lebanon and had emigrated to Saudi when they were both twenty-one. It was Ahmad's wife, a long-dead but once beautiful Russian émigré, whom Katya had been named for. Katya had never met her, but there was a picture of her in the glove compartment, an old snapshot taken in the mountains of Syria. The snow on her hat, the bushy scarf around her neck, were the perfect accessories for the pale, blond, wintry woman. Katya couldn't imagine her in any other setting, and, it seemed, neither could Ahmad. He started every story about her with "I remember the vacation we took to Syria. How much she loved the cold..." Occasionally Katya reminded herself that Ahmad's wife had lived in Jeddah too. She had died here of cancer in the summer of 1968.

  But whereas Abu had gone on to a successful career as a chemist, Ahmad had been content to be a taxi driver and, eventually, a woman's escort, arguing that his chosen profession, while it didn't always pay the bills, at least gave him the satisfaction of protecting young virgins from wily men, the religious police included. Being with Ahmad felt a bit like being with a watered-down version of her father, someone who was reliably concerned for her safety but whose worry lacked the bite of parental anxiety. Most of the time he treated her like royalty, but for all his display of servitude and kindness, Katya knew that in her own small world, Ahmad was king. If not for him, she wouldn't be able to get around at all.
There were taxis for women, with nice immigrant drivers, but her father would never allow it.

  Far down the street, she saw men coming out of their homes, answering the call to prayer. It was time to roll up the window. Turning, she looked up one last time at the blushing sky, hoping for a taste of the awe that had struck her, but all she felt was guilt. Guilt for lying to Abu, for not having done her Fajr prayer, for making Ahmad come to work before the light hit the sky. Guilt for doubting Othman. There was only one thing she was determined not to feel guilty about, and that was her work on Nouf's case. Her mother used to say that salat was a generous verb. It meant to pray, to bless, to honor, to magnify, but its underlying meaning was "to turn toward." So when she was unable to pray—because of sickness or menstruation—she was still obliged to turn her thoughts to Allah. And wasn't that what she was doing now, turning her mind toward the mysteries of his creation? Especially as they pertained to prayer times and Nouf ? Allah, at least, was with her on that, for in the Quran it said, If there be but the weight of a mustard seed, and it were hidden in a rock, or anywhere in the heavens or on earth, Allah will bring it forth: for Allah understands the finest mysteries, and is well acquainted with them.

  Still, she knew that it was cheating. She had missed her prayers.

  Ahmad rolled up his prayer rug and brushed the dirt from its fringes. He got back into the car and they sat, waiting for the prayers to be done. Down the street, men were crowding into a mosque. Some were praying on the sidewalk in front of their stores. Ahmad picked up his mug and resumed his sipping. She watched his comforting face in the rearview mirror, wishing she could confide all her doubts about Othman and his family. But inevitably he would tell her father, and she didn't want Abu to know that there was any doubt in her mind. They waited until the prayers were done and the men came pouring back out of the mosque.

  Ahmad started the car and took a turn at the next corner. Every day he took a different route to the lab to show her something new. Even though there were a finite number of ways to get to work, the streets changed so quickly that each trip seemed fresh. Not two weeks before, they had gone down this street, the one with the palm trees, both plastic and real, the real ones chattering with one another over the smaller ones' heads. It had been bustling with construction workers, mostly Yemenis and Asians. A concrete mixing truck had been churning loudly by an empty lot, and across the street a wrecking ball was tearing down a gutted apartment building. Now nothing was left but a gaping lot and a huge drum with electricity cables coiled around it. The workers had sprayed the ground with oil to keep the sand from encroaching on the street.

  Ten minutes later Ahmad pulled up to a small metal door that looked like an old service entrance but was actually the women's entrance to the lab. She thanked him, checked that her burqa was securely fastened, and quickly got out of the car. Glancing around just long enough to see that the parking lot was empty, she descended the stairs to the doorway and swiped her ID tag. A green light flashed and the door swung open. She let out a sigh of relief.

  There was no security guard—or perhaps he was sleeping somewhere—and she tiptoed past his desk into a hallway lit with its usual gray fluorescence. Her new sandals squeaked on the floor as she scurried down the corridor to the laboratory door. Inside, she switched on the lights and went quickly to her primary workstation, a small white desk in the corner which she kept meticulously clean. She set her purse on the desk and fumbled inside for the baggies containing skin and trace substances and two small vials with samples from the fetus. She stuffed the baggie with the skin samples into the pocket of her skirt.

  Her hands were shaking as she hastily opened the desk drawer and put the remaining items inside, tucking them beneath a neat stack of tissues so they wouldn't roll around. She had taken the precaution of labeling them all with false ID numbers and names from the other cases she was working on. At-Talib, Ibrahim. A construction worker who'd been poisoned. Roderigo, Thelma. A housemaid who'd died of blunt-force trauma to the head. She shut the drawer and locked it.

  It took a few minutes to prepare the skin sample from Nouf's fingernails, but just as she was sliding it into the microscope, there was a noise behind her.

  "Sabaah al-khayr!"

  It was a simple good morning, but the shock of it, the loudness and sharpness of the voice, nearly made her cry out. She managed to keep from dropping the sample. Turning, she saw her coworker Salwa.

  Katya let out a strangled reply: "Sabaah an-nur"' The light of morning to you.

  "Who is it?" Salwa demanded. The loudness of her voice always made Katya feel caught, even when she wasn't guilty.

  Katya realized that she hadn't removed her burqa. She lifted it now, showing Salwa her face.

  Salwa frowned. Self-appointed chief of the women's section of the lab, she was a short, quick, sturdy woman who strode about with a pencil behind her ear and her burqa flipped up. It rested on her crown like a coronet, and she wore it just as imperiously. In the rare event that a man peered in at the door, the other women always scrambled to find their burqas and fasten them on, whispering apologies and hiding their faces in fear. But Salwa, whose burqa was always at the ready, would stare defiantly at the intruder. If she determined that the man was someone who might report back to her boss, she would grudgingly draw the pencil from behind her ear and use it to roll the burqa down, just as a medieval mullah might unscroll a parchment for an illiterate king.

  Even when her burqa was down, there was no sequestering the mighty voice with which Allah had blessed her. It was a voice to shake the tables and make the beakers sing. It was in constant use, its resonant power augmented by the building's clean lines and plain surfaces. Once it had even interfered with the muezzin's call to prayer. Half the time Katya suspected that Salwa got her way because so many people around her were so eager to keep her quiet.

  "What are you doing here so early?" Salwa asked, drawing closer to Katya with a look of frank suspicion on her face. "Take off your abaaya. Let me see your arms and shoulders."

  Katya felt irrationally panicked. "My abaaya?"

  "Yes. Do it."

  She unzipped the front of the black cloak and slid out of the garment, revealing a white button-down shirt and a long black skirt. Salwa came closer, unbuttoned Katya's cuffs, and used her pencil to raise the sleeves. Katya realized she was looking for bruises.

  "I'm fine," she assured her.

  Salwa dropped her arm and looked straight into Katya's eyes. "The only reason women come here early is to escape their husbands or fathers."

  Katya felt her cheeks flush. Despite the gloss of concern, Salwa had managed to make her feel like an abused woman anyway. "Nobody hits me," she said.

  "So what are you doing here?"

  Katya rolled down her sleeves and slid back into her abaaya. "I couldn't sleep."

  Salwa eyed her with a satisfaction more maternal than penal. "Ah. Is this about your upcoming wedding?"

  Katya knew better than to trust her with personal information. Now that their boss, Adara, was on maternity leave—for the second time in a year—Salwa seemed to think that she was permanently in charge. She had been there longer than any of the other women, but she didn't actually do anything except bully the other workers. Her real power was the fact that the division chief, Abdul-Aziz, was her brother-in-law. And because he was family, Salwa could talk to him in person, an advantage that no one else shared. If someone did her job well, Salwa took the credit. If she was sloppy, she made sure that someone else took the blame. With Abdul-Aziz, she was obsequious, rushing to his office whenever he called, attending to his dry cleaning, his lunches, his meeting schedule, and bringing presents for his children at least once a week, but that subservience swung a pendulum of compensation when, returning to the female section of the lab, she subjected the women to her tyrannical demands. Segregated in the building's smallest wing, the female technicians lived in the dark air of her recycled moods. Frustration. Cloying kindness. Privately they called her t
he Daughter of Saddam.

  But right now Katya had to say something. "I am nervous," she admitted. "Honestly, I can't sleep. I think work is the best remedy for me right now."

  Salwa stuck her pencil back behind her ear and cogitated. Finding this excuse plausible enough, if not wholly satisfying, she drew herself up and said, "Fine. I've got plenty for you to do. But you're not being paid overtime, I hope you understand that."

  "Of course," Katya said, biting back her resentment. As if she expected overtime. As if money were her only concern.

  "What are you working on now?" Salwa asked.

  "Skin cells from the Roderigo case."

  Salwa glanced down at the microscope as if it were a dirty dog. "All right, put that aside. I've got two other cases that have a rush priority."

  Katya nodded, sat down at the microscope, and slid the tray out and set it on the table. She cursed her bad luck and wondered sud denly why Salwa was here so early. It wasn't as if she ever did any work herself. Maybe she was avoiding an abusive man. Or, more likely, avoiding her responsibilities at home—a disabled husband, three young children, and, according to Salwa at least, the most impudent Indonesian housemaid on the planet. Maybe for her work really was an escape.

  Still, Katya couldn't help admiring certain of Salwa's qualities. She was strong enough to demand raises for the women. When Abdul-Aziz was absent and she could get away with it, she assigned men's jobs to her charges. She had sent Katya to fill in for Adara on Nouf's case. And it was Salwa who, in the spirit of making women strong in the workplace, had encouraged her not to wear her burqa. "Men don't respect you when you follow the rules all the time. Sometimes you have to address them directly and show them your face, even if you put your burqa down later."

  Then Katya wondered what Salwa would have done with her if she had discovered bruises on her arms. Would she have fired her? Consoled her? Sent her to a clinic? Most likely she would have reported it to Abdul-Aziz, and there was no telling what he would have done. He existed as a cold, distant authority whose professional decisions—if they were truly his—occasionally angered her.