Bitter Paradise

by Ross Pennie

  Once the cop had run out of questions, he told Zol that Max and Travis could go. He’d noted their names and contact details and said that someone from headquarters at Hamilton City Police Service might be in touch. Zol reassured the cop he was driving the boys straight to Emergency.

  Before leaving the shop, Zol clapped an arm around Hosam’s shoulder and pressed firmly. “Thanks for taking such good care of the boys, Hosam. You’re the best.” Zol ran a hand through his hair. Max was surprised to see his father’s cheeks redden a little. “And I don’t just mean at cutting hair.”

  “It was nothing, doctor,” Hosam said. There was almost no light in his eyes.

  “No, I mean it. I’m incredibly grateful to you.”

  Hosam gave a faint smile and handed Zol a clean cloth to take with them.

  As the boys followed Zol to the front door, they edged past the dark-haired cop, who was still grilling Ibrahim. Max looked back and saw Hosam standing motionless at his sink, the sweat pouring off his chin. It was obvious he was straining to hear every word his nervous-looking boss was saying to the cop. As the door started to close behind the boys, Max heard Ibrahim swear to the cop that he had never seen either of the suspects before and had no idea who they were.

  Travis and Max looked at each other. If it was true the slasher was Ghazwan, why was Ibrahim misleading the officer? Was he more afraid of ratting on a former employee than bullshitting the police?

  Chapter 2

  “I’ll get to it, Mummyji.”

  Natasha’s mother phoned her health-unit office every weekday morning at eleven thirty and fretted over the same subject. It took an effort to limit the calls to ten minutes. Today, she’d have to end it at three.

  “You keep saying that, Tasha. But when are you actually going to do it? Time is of the essence.”

  “There’s heaps of time.” To be fair, June 30th was approaching pretty quickly, and there were tons of details still needing attention. But for now, her mind was riveted not on her wedding but on the outbreak of poliomyelitis that had spilled out of North Hamilton two weeks ago. Eight cases of polio across the city so far: two dead, two recovering at home, four still in hospital — three of them paralyzed from the neck down and on life support. That’s what poliomyelitis did to you: it gave you fever and flu-like symptoms, then killed the muscle-controlling cells in your spinal cord. Polio left you paralyzed but awake with your mind intact, letting you feel every bit of the horror. She watched the wall clock’s second hand sweep its relentless advance. Every minute that passed without her team of epidemic investigators finding and eliminating the source of the virus was another minute the next victim could become infected. And they would have to live, or die, with the consequences.

  “Are you out of your mind, daughter of mine? There are only fifty-seven days left until your wedding, and today is half over. Dinesh Ramsay is no magician. He cannot be designing and producing three wedding outfits for you at the wave of a wand. I insist you telephone today to make your appointment.”

  Her mother would have a fit if she knew Natasha had already picked out her wedding saree from an online website. She’d found the perfect garment in bridal scarlet at an excellent price on Indianweddingsarees.com. The saree’s fabrics were Bemberg and Georgette — silky to the touch but not the authentic, overly pricey silk her mother would be counting on. But who was wearing it anyway? The Mumbai manufacturer guaranteed delivery by international courier within five days, so there was plenty of time to finalize the online transaction.

  “I don’t need three outfits. One saree and one going-away dress will be fine.”

  “Do not be ridiculous. Three is absolute minimum you will require. A saree for the service — while exquisite, it should suggest innocence, even if that is no longer the case.”

  “Mother!”

  “Next, a lehenga for the reception. It must be nothing short of sensational. Skirt must flare and positively dazzle when you dance with your father. And for the going away, salwar kameez is only choice — modest from distance, but of highest quality on close inspection. And everyone will be watching. Especially the Patels and the Shankars.”

  Her mother’s acquisitive friends could gawk all they wanted. Natasha had already warned her parents that she and Zol were keeping things simple. A maximum of one hundred guests instead of the thousand her mother had in mind. The same bridal saree for the marriage service and the reception immediately following it. No need to make a spectacle of herself by carrying out an elaborate change of outfits. She hadn’t decided whether to go with a salwar kameez or a cocktail dress as her going-away outfit. What image did she want to leave with the guests as she started her new life with Zol and Max? The modern but demure Indian-ancestry housewife or the confident international professional? (No contest there.) She’d thought about the crisp white blouse and killer jeans that drove Zol wild when she wore them with her Jimmy Choo latticework stilettos. No, those would not be for going away. The blouse, jeans, and heels would make up the third outfit, the one only Zol would see. Though, she wasn’t sure about the jeans; she’d have to try them on to be sure they still fit.

  “And what about Zoltan? What has he done about his sherwani and turban? His height makes him difficult to fit, so he cannot be leaving it until last minute.”

  “He’ll be wearing a business suit.” Zol would look ridiculous in brocade and a turban. Her mother was still pretending to herself that Natasha was marrying a Punjabi, not a Hungarian. It was the only way Mummyji could bring herself to accept the marriage. Her father had the greatest respect for Zol — as a man and as a fellow physician — and had told Natasha she’d made an excellent choice in a husband. In a quiet moment away from her mother, he had asked her how confident she was in taking on a teenager as a stepson. Natasha had no difficulty in reassuring him on that score. She loved Max as if he were her own. And she had no doubts about him loving her too. His occasional outbursts of temper, mostly about the hours he and Travis spent playing video games in their computer room, were only ever directed at Zol.

  “And what about that hairdresser of yours? What has she decided? Will it be extensions or a wig?”

  “She’s thinking about it.”

  “She will have to do great deal more than think, especially with your hair.” Her mother had been appalled when Natasha transformed her long, traditional tresses into a pixie cut a few years back. Mummyji mentioned it almost every time they talked. “For that small head of yours, wig will have to be specially ordered. And that takes —”

  “Time. Yes, Mummyji. I know. And speaking of time, I have to go.”

  She’d barely put down the phone when it rang again. Call display told her it was Zol. On his mobile. He’d be calling from his car on his way to Cathcart Street Elementary. The school’s principal, Mrs. Simon, was about to lose it completely. She’d been haranguing Zol every day this week. And using local TV newscasts to tearfully lobby her board and its superintendent to close the schools until the polio epidemic was brought under control. Short and petite, Muriel Simon oozed vulnerability and embodied the fears of the entire city. Zol had emphasized the panic that would ensue if every school in the district shut its doors. What would follow? Daycare centres? Libraries? Banks? Supermarkets?

  Natasha conceded it was hard to blame the woman for losing her nerve. The epidemic’s first three cases came from her school. Two pupils and a teacher’s aide. The pupils were recovering, but the aide had died while on life support in the intensive care unit at Caledonian University Medical Centre. And earlier this week, twelve of Mrs. Simon’s students had presented with flu-like symptoms. They were being tested for the strange little virus that had shown up in the stools of the hospitalized cases. How many would test positive was anyone’s guess.

  “Tasha, it’s me.”

  “Bracing yourself for Mrs. Simon?”

  “On my way to Emerg at Caledonian. With Max.”

&nb
sp; A chill gripped her heart. She closed her eyes and was barely able to get out the words: “Is it . . . fever and headache?”

  “Just a forehead laceration. At the barbershop. He’s fine but it’s going to need stitches.”

  She opened her eyes. “What happened?”

  “A couple of lunatics rushed in and sliced up one of the young barbers.” She heard a catch in his voice that he covered with a cough. “Right in front of Max and Travis, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh my God, Zol. At that Arabic-speaking shop they like?”

  “Yeah, Paradise Barbers. Max ran for cover and slipped — cut his head. Could have been a lot worse for him. It’s still touch and go for the barber.”

  She closed her eyes and twisted the fly-away curls at the nape of her neck. A cold shiver passed across her shoulder blades. “Who —” She glanced at the clock. “I’ll call Cathcart Elementary and cancel your meeting.”

  “No, it’s too important. You go.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Take a taxi. Parking down there may be tricky.”

  “But . . .” Natasha had a million other things to do. Any calls she didn’t get done this afternoon would have to wait until offices reopened on Monday. The prospect of more time wasted made her feel physically ill. “You sure?”

  “You’re the hawk-eyed one. I would’ve dealt only with the politics. I can see you turning up some crucial piece of evidence down there. It’s your forte.”

  She ignored the compliment, though she couldn’t deny how wonderful it was he always had her back. That their marriage was going to complicate, or even terminate, their working relationship niggled at the back of her mind like grit in an oyster. Leaving this job for a position elsewhere was something she wasn’t prepared to contemplate. Not now, anyway. “What am I going to say to her?”

  “Don’t worry, she’ll do most of the talking.”

  In her experience, school principals were good at that. And from what Natasha had seen of Muriel Simon on TV, the woman was particularly gifted.

  “Today’s a PA day,” Zol continued. “With no kids at the school and the teachers offsite, you can have a good look through the place. And then hear Mrs. Simon out. Make her feel supported. If she feels she’s out there alone in North Hamilton, knee-deep in polio, she’ll close down her school no matter what anyone has to say about it. And then the shit will really hit the fan.”

  “Hi Max,” she called, knowing he’d be listening to every word on the minivan’s speakerphone. He was fascinated by the details of his dad’s investigations and had become the polio epidemic’s unofficial silent partner. “So sorry about your head.” She was far more sorry about what must have been those terrifying minutes of the knife attack. She’d talk to Max in person about it this evening. He still seemed to like their bedtime chats, though they’d become shorter and later now that he was approaching high school. And he usually had one eye on his phone. “Uncle Hamish will make sure they take good care of you.”

  “We’re not jumping the queue, Tasha,” Zol said. “Even if Hamish offers to arrange it.”

  Zol would be careful not to ask for expedited care from any of the city’s cash-strapped hospitals. It wouldn’t look good for the director of the Health Unit to use his doctor friends to bypass the notorious eight-hour waits in Emerg. Especially during the current polio crisis. More than ever, concerned citizens were scrutinizing the health-care system with a cynical microscope.

  “Hi, Tasha,” Max said. “I’ll be fine. Trav is here too. He says hello.”

  They said their goodbyes, and she hung up the phone. She’d almost rather be getting stitches in her forehead than making a trip to the principal’s office and facing the feisty Mrs. Simon.

  Chapter 3

  “Here, drink this,” Hosam told Ibrahim, extending a steaming mug to him across their table at the Paramount Restaurant. “My mother cured everything with lemon, ginger, and turmeric.”

  It was a relief to be speaking Arabic after their shattering morning. Years of private English lessons as a teenager had given Hosam reasonable confidence talking sports, weather, and weekend plans with his barbershop clients, but conversing with Dr. Szabo and the police in the aftermath of today’s attack had demanded a higher level of proficiency. The concentration had left him exhausted.

  Ibrahim’s face was ashen. The police had taken the keys to Paradise Barbers and secured the shop with yellow crime-scene tape. They had refused to estimate how long business would be suspended.

  Ibrahim’s grilling by the officers had been measured and respectful. Compared to the brutality of Hosam’s own interrogation by the Syrian secret police back home in Damascus, Ibrahim’s chat with Hamilton’s men in uniform had been a gentle stroll along a sunny Mediterranean promenade.

  It was three years ago now that a powerful IED exploded in the lobby of the city-council building in Aleppo, Hosam’s hometown and Syria’s largest city. The blast, only blocks from his hospital, rumbled through his operating theatre at about eleven o’clock one morning. Dusty tiles dropped from the ceiling while he did his damnedest to save the mangled arm of the young woman on the operating table. She had been injured during a mortar attack on the Al-Madina Souq, the city’s famous market.

  In the ensuing weeks, the Syrian secret police, under the direction of the country’s dictator-president, Bashar al-Assad, decided Hosam’s family was responsible for the bombing. Late one night, the Mukhabarat tore Hosam from his bed. They blindfolded him, threw him into the back of a truck, and drove him to an overcrowded prison. There, they put their violent squeeze on him — boots, batons, chains, a cattle prod. He endured weeks shackled in a living hell until his hospital’s chief administrator rescued him with a wad of bills stuffed in an envelope. Later, the Mukhabarat extracted a false confession from Hosam’s cousin, an accountant with no political leanings. The mild-mannered father of four was never seen again. After that, Hosam’s entire family was marked by al-Assad’s regime, determined to incarcerate perceived opponents on falsified charges. Hosam’s only choice had been to flee the country with his wife and son via the sometimes porous border with Turkey.

  Ibrahim’s flight from his bombed-out Christian enclave in Iraq a decade earlier had probably occurred under similar circumstances, but the two men had never traded stories. There was an unwritten rule that such tales did not get shared. It could turn out that your esteemed colleague in Canada had been allied with your sworn enemy back in the Middle East.

  Ibrahim’s lips quivered as he sipped his turmeric tea. The prospect of a formal interview in Hamilton’s central police station was scaring him almost shitless.

  Hosam had suggested that he and Ibrahim come to the Paramount to debrief, knowing the lunch crowd would be gone. He had hoped the restaurant’s famous hummus, falafel, and fattoush would provide the comfort of the familiar. But as he looked around, he realized the place had been a bad choice for a frank discussion. It was full of ears and eyes from back home. They should have gone for Thai or Chinese.

  Ibrahim took another sip of the tea and swallowed hard. “I don’t know when they’re going to give me the keys back. It’s going to take some work to make that blood disappear.”

  “They have companies that specialize in that sort of thing. Your insurance will cover it.”

  “Insurance? You must be dreaming.” Ibrahim set his mug on the table and cleared his throat. “Look, Hosam, if we stay closed for more than a few days, we’ll start losing our clients to other shops. Business will get slow. And . . .” He shrugged and raised his palms to show that the consequences were beyond his control.

  Hosam pictured himself spending full days on his ass at the shop and bringing home a near-empty wallet. He had to face it — no matter how quickly the shop reopened, some clients were going to jump ship the moment they got word of the knifing. He was proud of the diversity of his clientele — he did not cut only Muslim ha
ir. But an incident like this was bound to bring out people’s hidden prejudices.

  Ibrahim looked around, checking for prying ears. “I’m worried about Mr. Smith. He’s picky about that weekly Friday appointment of his.”

  “Will the shop not be cleaned up and reopened by then?”

  “That gives us only seven days. It’s crucial we look after him on time or he’ll find another shop. Mr. Smith is loyal, but I’ve seen him flare up in seconds and explode like a Scud missile.”

  “Can he not skip a week? It is only a haircut.”

  Ibrahim’s face hardened. “You know he gets more than a simple haircut.”

  Mr. Smith’s needs were anything but simple. His appointments lasted an hour and a half. Sometimes longer.

  Ibrahim toyed with his mug. “Our Mr. Smith exerts a certain influence among his associates.” He leaned into the table and added, “More than you might think.”

  “Are you saying that if Mr. Smith leaves, many of our other clients will too?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  Hosam had no idea what other sorts of influence Ibrahim was implying, but he knew this was neither the time or place to ask him directly.

  Ibrahim finished his tea then studied the dregs at the bottom of the mug. Was he reading the leaves? And if so, what was he seeing? “Our problem right now,” Ibrahim said, “is Ghazwan. I knew he was bad news from the moment the boss told me to hire him. As a barber, he wasn’t worth a dog’s ass.”

  Ghazwan had stopped working at Paradise Barbers shortly after Hosam started there, so they barely knew each other. But when Hosam saw it was Ghazwan slashing Marwan with the bowie knife, it was all he could do to keep it together. Violation was an overused word these days. But that was exactly how he felt — violated by a countryman and former colleague.