She needed Ben.
Nora shrugged. “You know what, habibi? It’s not a very good story. We were training up in Bucks County, and they were trying to toughen us up. I was riding a zip line, and didn’t get out of the way of a tree. It was so humiliating!”
Ahmad stared at her. “Seriously? You want me to believe that you were that stupid?”
She smiled, for the first time grateful that Ahmad avoided looking at anything resembling news on the Internet. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Her brother frowned. “I think you’re not telling me so you don’t worry me.”
He’d seen right through her. He always did. “Well, if that were the case, then I guess you’d have to realize I am an awesome sister.”
He shook his head, and reached out a hand to gently touch her swollen cheek. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Nora,” he said.
“Look at me, ya Ahmad. If you end up having to find that out, I will have failed you altogether, okay?” she said, leaning forward to kiss the top of his head.
He stood to leave, and then Nora remembered she needed to talk to him about Baba.
“Hammudi, there’s one more thing.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“I’m thinking about moving out. How would you feel about that?”
He sat down again on the edge of her bed. “What happened?”
She swallowed, choosing her words carefully. “Baba is … Well, I don’t want to live under Baba’s rule anymore. And I think it’s time for me to go.”
“What about Baba?”
“Well, he and I just…” She groped for words in the dimness that would express how much she loved her father and how badly he had let her down.
He leaned down, searching her face. “You know, don’t you?”
She frowned, alarmed. “What are you talking about?”
“You tell me, then I’ll tell you.”
“No, you first,” she insisted, her heart thumping in her chest.
“About Baba and the woman, the dentist or something.”
Nora shifted onto her knees, her breath becoming shallow. “How do you know about this?” she demanded.
Ahmad was laughing. “I’ve always known. I caught him on the phone with her in the basement of the restaurant—I heard stuff that made me wanna puke. It’s like my earliest, clearest memory of Baba.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Nora was furious.
“I didn’t want to upset you, ya Nora, wallahi. And then Mama got sick, and then when she died, it was like, well, there’s no point in bringing it up now…”
Nora shook her head. “I’ve been going crazy since I found out, not wanting to tell you, but wanting to tell you, and being so angry with Baba that I just didn’t know what to do! And you knew all along! That must have been killing you.” She threw her arms around him. “What a terrible thing to have to deal with all alone…”
But he was disentangling himself from her arms and wiping at her tears. “Nora, it was okay, I swear. Easy, easy … come on. It’s okay. Plus, you know, I was storing up. I figured I’d play that card one day and at least get a decent car out of it. Maybe a Nissan Xterra, right? But now that you know all about it, I’ve got no more leverage.” He shook his head in disgust, then added, “Way to mess up my life, Nora.”
She hit him, hard. “I’ll buy you a car, in sha Allah. Just get that scholarship. Now go to sleep, it’s late.”
Now it was Ahmad who kissed her on the head. “And you don’t move too far away. I gotta be able to get to you to protect you from trees.”
* * *
Ragab sat smoking and reading his paper, his chef’s jacket hanging open to expose a plaid button-down shirt.
Nora knew she wasn’t ready to have this conversation. But she also knew that she was sick of carrying it around with her. Besides, Ahmad had given her an idea.
“Sabah al-khayr, ya Baba.” Good morning …
“Sabah al-nuur, habibti. Hamdellah ala-l-salama!” Thank God you’re home safely. He stubbed out his cigarette quickly. “You look thin, habibti. Let me make you a foule sandwich. Maybe some helawa?”
Nora shook her head. “Not right now. Baba, I want to talk to you.”
“Khayr, habibti, what is it?” Then he saw her face. “Nora! What happened?” He reached across the table, trying to touch her, but she pulled away. “Do you—Do you need some ice? Did you fall?”
She nodded. “I ran into a tree while at the training retreat…” she said slowly.
Ragab was shaking his head, peering across the table at her cheek. “I don’t think this task force job is right for you, ya Noora. This traveling now, and now you are getting hurt. How can you make ‘safe streets’ if you yourself aren’t safe? It just isn’t right.”
She worked her still-aching jaw back and forth, regarding him with irritation. “So … I should quit?”
“Or you should make sure that they put you just in the computers, you know?”
“This is my job. I like it. I won’t change one thing about it.”
He tilted his head, trying to figure out what was behind the sharp tone in her voice.
Nora ran a finger along the dinner fork at the place where she was sitting. She rested her finger on the tines. Her father regarded her, found her looking very serious, and closed his newspaper. “Is this because you are still angry that I talked to you about the doctor from Dallas and the young man you were riding with?”
“Yes, I’m still angry, but no, it’s not about all that.”
He continued, as though he hadn’t heard her at all, “Because it’s not wrong for me to want to protect you. You have to take the possible bridegrooms in your future into consideration…”
“Baba,” her voice was sharp.
“Eih, ya Noora—what’s wrong?”
She regarded him steadily, tapping the fork she was holding against the table as she spoke. “We won’t be talking about bridegrooms anymore.”
Ragab stared at her, the seriousness in her voice setting him on edge.
She continued, “I found something out at work. Something about … about what happened to you.”
He swallowed, and she watched his features grow increasingly concerned. “What? What did you find?”
“There was a woman. You—”
He held up a hand. “Bas, ya Noora, let’s not talk about this.”
“We will talk about it. Right now. Mama, Ahmad, and I, we were the victims, then. Not you. You brought what happened on yourself.”
His face looked at turns both angry and pain-stricken. Finally he rubbed his open palms across his face, saying, “All of this is—Who will benefit from talking about this now?” She knew he was really asking her if she was going to tell Ahmad.
“You and Ahmad will have to talk about this one day. But, for now, I need you to know that I know. And you have nothing to say to me anymore about men or marriage … It’s all been nothing but lies and hypocrisy.”
“What do you mean, what do you mean I have nothing to say?” he demanded, suddenly on high alert. “I am still your father!”
“You weren’t my father when you went to that woman’s apartment. You weren’t my father when you cheated on my mother.”
“That had nothing to do with you!” he sputtered.
“That had everything to do with me. You broke all the rules, all of them.”
“I am different. I am a man—”
“Yes, you are different. Different than what I thought. And your rules don’t apply to me anymore.”
“Nora, these are not just my rules—this is our religion…”
“Not the way I understand it. And I matter. My opinion matters.”
He was shaking his head, not looking at her, tsk-tsking.
She stared at him fiercely. “There’s something else … I’m moving out. I’m getting my own place.”
“What? What are you talking about?” He stood up, unable to contain himself any longer, gesturi
ng with his hands. “How are these things even related?”
“My mother didn’t leave you. For me, for my sake. Now I’m leaving you. For her … And for me.” She stood up, then headed for the door. She felt his shocked eyes following her as he struggled to find the right response. Finally, uncharacteristically, he fell silent.
When she reached the sidewalk, she stopped to relace her shoes. Two days in recovery would have to be plenty. Carefully, she shouldered her drawstring backpack and broke into a slow jog that seemed to make her whole body groan in protest.
As she tucked the earbuds into her ears, she realized that at no time in their conversation had her father tried to apologize.
* * *
The 12th District of the Philadelphia Police Department was housed in a squat, nondescript structure located at 65th and Woodland Streets. The building was utterly unremarkable save for the bold mural painted onto the tan bricks. As she descended from the creaking trolley, Nora paused a moment, staring at the massive blue angels, their wings sheltering the city. She took a deep breath, then entered.
Mike Cook had been swiveling in his desk chair, and he sprang to his feet as soon as he saw her. He came to stand in front of her, wordlessly studying her with a frown.
“It looks worse than it actually is,” she said, reassuring him.
He tilted his head, thinking, then said, “I’m not sure this gig with the feds is all it’s cracked up to be.”
“You know, you’re the second person to tell me that just this morning,” she confessed.
“I heard about it. I’m sorry I wasn’t on duty when that call came in.”
Nora shrugged. “Thanks, Mike.”
“One more good story for the bar. Or in your case, the tea house.” He led her to his desk. “You’re here about Kevin Baker’s bodyguard, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. She carefully picked up the pile of files that occupied the rickety folding chair. Mike reached for them and added them to another pile on the corner of his desk as Nora sank into the chair. She was happy to be sitting. Everything ached.
Mike thought for a moment, then said, “There’s not too much to tell on this.”
“Any forensics yet?”
Cook chuckled. “This murder was night before last. Don’t get confused about the address here now. On this side of the Schuylkill things take some time.”
Nora smiled. “You got an estimate?”
He rolled his gray eyes, then said, simply, “No.”
“Can I see the report?”
Mike rearranged still more file folders before handing her a slim one. “I can give you the summary, though.”
Nora glanced up, then back at the file. “Listening,” she said as she skimmed through it.
“Bullet to the back of the head. Execution. The hooded body was found in the parking lot not far from the Kingsessing Recreation Center.”
“Hole look .22 caliber to you? We’re having a special this week.”
Mike Cook sighed. “I try not to look.”
“Can you send him to Monty?”
Mike shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Nora traced her finger along the dense text on the page for a while in silence. When her finger reached the bottom edge of the page she looked up. “Where are his things?”
“Sorry?”
“His stuff. What he was wearing.”
“What are you after?” Mike asked.
“The hood. They put one on Kevin Baker too. I guess it’d be the one thing they left behind, right?”
Mike blinked, then abruptly rose. He gestured for her to follow him, then stopped and regarded her with renewed interest. “I guess when the feds aren’t letting you get mauled, they must be teaching you a few solid tricks.”
Nora grinned. “One or two.”
* * *
When her phone rang, she had just handed Monty Watt what looked like a coarse burlap sack, so bloodstained that only a few portions of it still appeared tan. Monty promised to examine it and figure out what it had contained before it had covered the head of Big G, whose actual name Nora realized that she did not know. John Wansbrough got to the point. “Nora, we’ve been trying to find you, where are you?”
“John, I found something important at the twelfth District…”
“Well, it’s going to have to wait. You have a visitor.”
She frowned into the BlackBerry. “Me? Personally?”
“Yes, well, it took her a while to explain who she needed. But we were pretty sure where it was all going as soon as she walked in.”
Nora rode the elevator to the eighth floor, then followed John to the interview room and peered through the glass. There was a figure in full niqab swiveling back and forth nervously in the roller chair. “I assume she had to give a name to get in here?”
John checked the stub from her visitor’s pass. “Fatma al-Bakry.”
Nora nodded slowly, summoning her energies, hoping for a break. She pulled her notebook from her backpack and handed the pack to John, then smoothed her button-down shirt. “You’ll need to tape it, of course. She doesn’t speak English.”
John said, “Already set up.”
“Madame Fatma?” Nora asked, entering the room.
The veiled woman looked up.
“As-salaam alaykum,” Nora said, pulling the other chair around to join Fatma al-Bakry on her side of the table.
“Wa alaykum as-salaam,” came the response, and Nora recognized the Egyptian woman’s voice, remembered her as one of the women who had initially gone to Hafsa’s classes to learn some English.
“What can I get you to drink?” Nora asked in Arabic. “Tea? Tea with milk?”
But Fatma al-Bakry was shaking her head vigorously. “No, no, nothing.”
Nora tried to insist, falling into the prescribed patter of hospitality, but the visitor would not be persuaded. “I’m so glad you came to see me, Madame Fatma,” Nora said finally. “I know how difficult it must be—it took great courage for you to come here.”
“I wish I didn’t have to,” came the answer. “But I … they buried Basheera yesterday. All of the women were too frightened to attend the funeral service. It was … it was my husband, actually, who insisted I come, he—we rode the bus here together. Because giving false witness is a deadly sin, he reminded me. And because I am the mother of a little girl.”
Nora looked deeply into the woman’s wide brown eyes. They were red-rimmed, the lids swollen. “Please, Madame Fatma. Can you—will you uncover your face?”
“There are—I know there are cameras…”
Nora related the knowledge she’d gleaned from her mother about the face veil and witnessing.
Fatma al-Bakry was silent for a moment. “You sound like Hafsa, may God have mercy on her.”
“I think we would have been good friends,” Nora said earnestly, holding Fatma’s gaze.
The woman extended two small, gloved hands and pulled back the long strip of cloth, letting it rest atop her head to expose her caramel skin. Her nose was slightly pink. It looked as though she’d been crying for the better part of the week.
“Thank you,” Nora said sincerely. “Can you please talk to me about what happened on the last day that Hafsa came to the mosque?”
Fatma nodded. “We were sitting with Hafsa in the women’s section, reading Qur’an together, waiting for the imam to begin the lesson, when the door swung open, and this skinny girl came in, dressed so … inappropriately—”
“How?” Nora asked, perfectly able to guess what that meant.
“Just a thin slip, so see-through it showed her skin. She was very black. We all just stared at her for the longest time, not knowing really what to do.” Fatma stopped for a moment, remembering. “She crossed over to us, stumbling a little, and then she just sank down, just laid down with her head on the carpet.”
“And then?”
“Hafsa went to her, talked to her. She spoke to her in English, nothing—she knew nothing. The girl was bla
ck, but Somali—she could speak Arabic, not very well, but enough…”
“What did she want?”
Fatma looked at the ground. “She was running away. I guess she saw the mosque and thought—She thought that she would be safe there. She said her name was Rahma. She had … she had gotten away from a man.”
“A man who was hurting her?”
She nodded. “Who was … having sex with her. For money. She was … she was part of a group. Not like a prostitute, more like…” Fatma’s voice trailed off, and she kneaded her hands in frustration.
“A slave?” Nora suggested.
“Yes, yes. More like a slave. There was a group, a gang, that kept them all in a house. And used them, let men visit them, and then kept the money.”
“All? How many?”
She trembled, “She said six. Her and five others. She said she was the oldest.” Tears collected in her eyes, threatening to spill over. “And then, even as the girl was still talking to Hafsa, two men—” Fatma al-Bakry shook her head, then took a deep breath, trying to master the shaking of her voice. “We heard the squeal of brakes and doors slamming, like a car had been driven right up to the entrance of the women’s section. Then two men burst in—right into the women’s prayer area, no shame, nothing. They had … they had guns. They had come for the girl and they wanted her back.”
Fatma continued, her voice low. “The girl was weeping, begging, hiding behind Hafsa, clinging to her, and Hafsa was determined not to give her up. We—the rest of us women were terrified, cowering, but the men told us that no one was to move—their Arabic was harsh, ugly, but we understood. Even the black women understood what they wanted, all it took was for them to wave their guns.”
Now the Egyptian woman gave up and began to sob, tears careening down her face. “Only Hafsa stood up for the girl, talked back to those men. She started to call the police on her cell phone, and one man—the tall one, the one with the sunglasses—he was on her right away. He bent her arm backward, and took the phone and crushed it with his boot, but then she swung at him with her other arm and hit him in the face.” Fatma shivered. “That is when things got very, very bad…”
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