Kingdom of Strangers

by Zoë Ferraris

  “I’m sure you have an excellent record,” Ibrahim said. “I’d just like to know exactly what happened when Miss Reyes disappeared.”

  “Ah, well.” Dimzon sat back. He was a compact man with a lively face and bright eyes that were shining now with an old frustration. “The women at the shopping center were all covered except for their faces. You see, we want to be able to identify them in public, so we ask them to please keep their faces showing. If any of them have a problem with that, we give them a little ribbon that they can pin to the shoulder here.” He pointed to his left shoulder. “That way we can identify who is in our group and who is not. Maria was wearing one of the pins. I was keeping an eye on her myself, and furthermore, she was standing very close to me. I turned to talk to one of the cashiers and when I turned back, she was gone.”

  “And you noticed right away?”

  “Yes. I thought she had moved into the crowd of women. They were all standing in line, waiting for the cashier. But I went down the line and she wasn’t there. She must have taken off her ribbon and sneaked away. She must have been planning it.”

  Ibrahim felt that the man was telling the truth.

  Dimzon went on. “I immediately asked everyone: Have you seen Maria? Nobody had noticed her walk away. One woman said maybe she saw her heading for the back of the line, but it could have been someone else, because Maria’s face was covered. But the women were talking, looking at the things in the checkout line. Should they buy this? Isn’t that cute? You know how it is. Nobody really noticed.”

  “Was anyone else around? I mean, were there any strangers nearby? Anyone you remember who didn’t belong to the group?”

  “Nobody in particular. There were a lot of people at the mall. It was crowded.”

  It was as easy as that. All she would have had to do was cover her face and her hands; the abaaya and headscarf would cover the rest. A woman cloaked in black could disappear like a shadow blending into the darkness of an alley. Even if Dimzon had spotted her, it would have been hard for him to chase her down. He might mistake someone else for her, and if anyone believed that he was harassing strange women in public, there would be a furor.

  From the moment Maria Reyes left the mall, she became anonymous and free. Was it liberating? Did she seize it greedily? She could transform into any other overseas Filipino worker, albeit an illegal one; OFWs were in huge demand. Or was the sudden break fraught with fear and desperation? According to the medical examiner, Reyes had died roughly six to eight months after her disappearance. It didn’t seem likely that she’d been kidnapped on the same day she’d disappeared, but it was possible. The killer could have nabbed her and held on to her for months before killing her. The mall itself was nowhere near the area where Cortez, the other ID’d victim, had disappeared. Ibrahim knew it would be difficult to find a connection between the two cases. The only thing that was clear was that they needed more information.

  12

  Maybe because she had just agreed to marry Nayir, Katya felt absolutely paranoid getting into the SUV with Ibrahim. The fear had a different tang than before when she’d climbed into taxis or in the rare instance when she’d been in a patrol car with Osama. It was no longer just What if my father finds out? but now also What if my fiancé finds out? What if he gets angry or suspicious and calls off the marriage? And there was the added bonus of What if Ibrahim finds out that I’m not really married? What if he reports me to Chief Riyadh? Will I lose my job like Faiza did last month?

  So she kept her veil down and climbed into the backseat before Ibrahim could protest. She would have considered that behavior ridiculous a week before, not least because she was relegating herself to an inferior status and permitting segregation of a sort. But now it was necessary. If anyone caught her, at least she could say she was in the backseat and properly covered.

  Ibrahim looked surprised when he got in the car. He spun around and stared at her. “I don’t mind if you sit in the front,” he said.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  He motioned to the parking garage around them. “No one’s watching.”

  “It’s all right.”

  She could tell that it upset him. It figured that the person she pulled this stunt with would be the most liberal-minded man in the department. He started the car and drove out of the garage.

  “I worked with women in Undercover,” he said. “It’s hard to find women to hire. They need to have police experience, and most women who do also happen to have husbands who don’t like the idea of their wives pretending to be someone else for a few months and putting themselves in danger. Plus, the husbands get stuck with the kids. We actually had to pull a woman off an assignment one time because her husband couldn’t handle taking his son to the doctor.”

  Katya gave a soft snort. “Is that how you met Sabria—in Undercover?”

  “Yes.” He studied Katya in the rearview mirror, stared straight into her eyes. “We worked together. Our relationship developed later, after she quit.”

  Ibrahim had called Katya early that morning to ask if she would be willing to lift whatever forensic evidence she could find from Sabria’s apartment. It was Wednesday, and he was eager to do it before Thursday, the beginning of the weekend, when most of Sabria’s neighbors would be home.

  She told herself she was going along because if something bad had happened to Sabria, she would feel terrible knowing that she’d done nothing to help. But she was really doing this because Ibrahim was in charge of the serial-killer case, and if this was what it took to get in on the investigation, then she’d do it.

  On the seat beside her was a duffel bag that held a mobile forensics kit. She’d tended to the black bag lovingly for weeks, filling it with new stackable plastic containers, baggies, syringes, all the gear she could pilfer from the lab. She’d been anticipating using it for an urgent situation when the department finally called her into the field. Instead, this morning was its debutante ball.

  “Did you have a chance to look at Sabria’s employment application? The one I left in your box?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It looks like her handwriting.”

  “So she filled out the form,” Katya said, “but someone else took the position?”

  “That’s my best guess,” he replied, “although I couldn’t tell you why.”

  From the way he pulled into the spot beneath Sabria’s building, Katya had the feeling he’d done it a thousand times before. He offered to carry the kit but she held on to it herself, and they took the elevator to the fourth floor.

  “I still think you should report her missing,” Katya said. “Anonymously, that is.”

  “The police won’t do anything I can’t do.”

  “Why not get some help with it then?”

  “I am getting help,” he said.

  Ibrahim let them in with his own key. Sabria’s apartment was small, with bright white carpets and simple furnishings. The first thing Katya noticed was an almost complete lack of anything that seemed personal or nostalgic. No photos of family members or friends. No books or knickknacks. Nothing but a pair of two-seater sofas and a television on a cabinet. Some empty cups littered the coffee table. Katya wandered into the kitchen, the bedroom, and bathroom. That was the extent of the household, and aside from a few toiletries and the clothing in the closet, there was nothing distinct about the apartment at all. Anyone could have lived there.

  “Didn’t she have any photographs or personal items?” Katya asked.

  They were standing in the kitchen. Ibrahim looked around as if the absence of these items had only just occurred to him. “She doesn’t own a lot of things,” he said. “She keeps all of her photos on her computer.”

  “And where is that?”

  He led Katya back to the living room and opened the doors on the cabinet beneath the television. There was a folded-up prayer rug, a bottle of perfume, and some old videocassettes.

  “It’s gone.”

  “Was it a laptop?”


  “Yes.” He stood up, looking shaken.

  Katya sat on the sofa and began dusting the coffee table for fingerprints.

  “Sabria didn’t come to Jeddah with a lot of stuff,” Ibrahim said. “And everything she did have was lost when she left her first employer.”

  “Who was that?”

  “She worked as a housemaid for a year. It was an abusive situation, so she ran away.”

  “But that was a few years ago, yes?”

  “About five years ago.”

  “She’s had plenty of time to accumulate more stuff since then,” Katya said.

  “She wasn’t much of a shopper.”

  “How was she paying for the apartment?”

  “I pay for it,” Ibrahim said. “I pay for everything. Including the phone and food and… whatever she wants, which isn’t much.”

  Katya nodded.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked. “Why was she working if I was taking care of her?”

  “Something like that. The problem is, she wasn’t working. At least not where she said she was. But you assumed it was true, so what did you think she was doing with the money she was supposedly making? She never spent it on anything. Didn’t that make you wonder?”

  He shrugged. “I just assumed she was saving it.”

  “Did you ever ask her about it?”

  “Not really.” He went back into the kitchen. Katya dusted some of the cups on the coffee table for fingerprints and thought of her father, whose signature move when confronted with difficult questions was to retreat to the kitchen and find something to eat.

  “There’s still milk in the refrigerator,” he said, coming back into the room.

  She looked up.

  “A whole liter of it. She drank it every day. If she were planning on leaving, she wouldn’t have bought milk.”

  “Nobody in your family had any idea you were seeing her?” Katya asked.

  She saw a flicker of hesitation. “That’s right.”

  “Are you absolutely certain?”

  “Yes.” Now he put on a look of paternal agitation. “Believe me, if anyone knew about it, the rest of my life would have fallen apart by now.”

  “What about friends or coworkers?”

  “We were incredibly careful to hide this from everyone.” He gave her a dour look. “It’s not exactly legal, you know.”

  “What about the neighbors?” Katya asked.

  “They don’t care in the least.”

  “How long had you been seeing her?”

  “Two years.”

  “Why didn’t you marry her?”

  “Because she’s already married, to a man who used to rape her and whom she never wants to see again.”

  Katya nodded slowly.

  Ibrahim sat down on the sofa. “I know you’re thinking, What if she just walked away?”

  “You have to admit, it’s possible, even with the milk. Sometimes people make spontaneous decisions.”

  “Sure.” He couldn’t seem to get comfortable on the couch, so he stood up and went to the front window. He stood at the very edge and peeked through the gap where the wooden screen didn’t quite make it to the window frame. “We never even opened the windows,” he said, motioning to the screen. “We had these installed and they stayed shut all the time. We almost never went out to eat, but sometimes we’d go to a private beach. We tried not to call each other too much, and we used aliases when we did. On my phone, she’s listed as Muhammed. Not even a last name. We were careful.”

  To Katya, it sounded claustrophobic.

  “So yes,” he went on, “maybe she got sick of it. She never liked Saudi anyway. She couldn’t understand why anyone here did what they did. She was raised as a Muslim. She thought she was a good Muslim, until she came here. ‘This place has Mecca,’ she used to say, ‘but these people don’t practice the same religion that I do.’ It upset her.”

  Katya finished dusting and got up. “I’m going to check the bedroom.”

  Ibrahim came over and stood in her way. “I’ve thought about all of this. I’ve gone over it again and again. I was sure that something bad had happened. That’s what my gut was telling me, and usually when my gut tells me something, that’s it. I believe it. But now… I don’t know.”

  “There’s one thing we haven’t considered,” Katya said.

  “Trust me, I’ve considered everything.”

  “Then you’ve thought that this may be connected to the case?”

  “The serial killer?”

  “Yes.”

  Ibrahim let out a harrumph. “Okay, yes, it crossed my mind.” He shook his head. Katya could see he was getting tired, half of his mind still back on What if she walked away?

  She checked the bedroom, but it was as sparely decorated as the rest of the apartment.

  On the way out, she noticed a shiny object protruding from the hallway carpet outside the apartment door. It looked like a nail. She bent to inspect it and saw a smear of something. Quickly opening her kit, she took out a swab.

  “It’s blood,” she said. He knelt to take a look. The nail was stuck into the floor. Someone must have stabbed a foot on it. Katya pried a small shred of plastic from the underside of the nail. It looked like material of flip-flops or cheap sandals. “This has to belong to someone who came to her apartment,” she said. They were at the end of the hall; there were no other doors nearby.

  “It’s probably her blood,” he said.

  “Did she wear sandals?”

  “Yes. All the time.”

  They stood up. “Just in case,” she said, “I’m going to need your DNA.”

  He nodded and opened his mouth for a swab.

  13

  Ibrahim drove them south to the neighborhood of Kandara and parked near the bottom of the Sitteen Street Bridge, a monstrous freeway overpass that housed a busy bus station.

  Beneath the bridge, on a wide concrete walkway, there was a shantytown of the kind Katya had seen only in news footage—and even then, only in videos of impoverished, dejected places like the slums of Brazil or the lawless parts of Africa, where human life was treated as cheaper than that of an animal. But here, in one of Saudi’s wealthiest cities?

  Most of the people in Kandara were women, and judging from the faces—most of them unveiled—they were predominantly Indonesian and Filipina, although among them were Africans, other Asians, and Indians. There were at least a thousand, probably more, stretching for blocks, most sitting with their backs against concrete walls in the shady spots. Corrugated metal panels formed lean-tos in places. Some people had built shelters from old boxes, mostly to protect themselves from the sun. Mothers sat with children heaped on their laps, their men in front of them, lying on cardboard or old blankets.

  The police did not keep crime statistics on different neighborhoods, but it was well known that this was one of the worst. Thanks to the presence of the Philippine consulate a few blocks from the underpass, the masses had been gathering here for years, waiting for permission to leave.

  “They say most of the people here overstayed their Hajj visas,” Katya said.

  “Sure, that’s how some of them got into the country, but look at them as a group. What’s the first thing you notice?”

  “They’re mostly women,” Katya said.

  “Right…”

  “And it’s difficult for women to come to Hajj alone.”

  “Exactly. Most of those women are runaway housemaids,” Ibrahim said.

  He was quiet for so long that Katya felt prompted to ask: “How do you know they’re housemaids?”

  “This is where we found Sabria.”

  “This place was here five years ago?” Katya asked.

  “Yes, but not as bad.” They stared at the figures at the front of the crowd, women milling about in ratty black cloaks, their clothing plainly revealed.

  It didn’t take much to end up on the street. Housemaids, street sweepers, gardeners, many of those who had come hoping for a better life found inst
ead a system of indentured servitude. A headhunter would bring workers into the country for a fee—ten thousand riyals or more. A price high enough that, given the worker’s wages, it might take a decade to pay the debt. So the employer paid the fee, and the worker was under obligation to him until the debt was paid.

  But what if you hated your job? What if your employer stopped feeding you? What if he refused to let you leave the house or call your family or even talk to the headhunter who had brought you there? What if you were being raped or abused? There were few laws to protect you—most laws protected the employer from losing his investment, having purchased you. Your only option was to flee, and you wound up at Sitteen, begging the consulate to give you a new passport, even a temporary certificate, and a plane ticket home. You stood in line for the three paltry buses that appeared at Sitteen a few times a week and that would take you to the Saudi-sponsored Passport Department to try to straighten out the mess.

  You fought to get on the buses, and even if you couldn’t get on, you fought anyway, because if the police thought you were a problem, they’d want to send you home first. If you weren’t enough of a problem, they’d simply fine you for overstaying your visa and throw you in a prison cell from which you would not be likely to emerge without royal intervention. And you would hope to God that you didn’t wind up in a consular detention center, where you might be shoved into a room and left to rot. Five Ethiopians had died that way a few weeks ago, locked in a toilet cell without a window, asphyxiated by morning.

  Thank God for the mosques that brought daily food and water to Kandara. You couldn’t comfort yourself with the fact that the buses came back every few days. The population under the bridge was like water from a faucet you couldn’t turn off. No matter how many buckets you put beneath it, the water just kept flowing. As soon as the buses left, the place filled right back up again.