by Zoë Ferraris
“Let me know what you find,” Ibrahim said. He thanked the major and left.
The house was empty. Everyone had gone to a neighbor’s wedding and he was supposed to be there himself, but the groom, the son of a man who had never had a kind word for Ibrahim, Omar, or any Zahrani in a twenty-block radius, was just as much a donkey as his father, and Ibrahim decided he would feel no guilt for staying at home.
He stood in the kitchen brewing tea and waiting for his hookah coals to heat. The kitchen was a boxy room that always felt too dark and large. Women never congregated joyfully here. They took their chopping and peeling to the living room just outside the door. A half-dead potted mint sat on the window, leaves curling in the heat.
He wandered into the living room. Through the bathroom door he caught sight of his granddaughter’s Barbie dolls having a Jacuzzi session in the bidet. The bedroom was overflowing with dirty laundry.
He went into the sewing room, a forbidden space. Jamila had claimed it like he’d claimed the men’s sitting room. Here was her sewing machine—a black monster with a treadle—and her overflowing closet. It contained a mind-boggling array of outfits, each ill fitted to her present bulk. She attended to the clothes regularly; they were cherished symbols of the kind of woman she would never be but had wanted to become: artist, businesswoman, traveler. She would sit at the sewing machine for hours adjusting seams to perfection, but in the end, she always put on the gorilla dress.
The building was choking him. It was dark and steamy, and the desert crept in, blowing sand beneath the doors and filtering sunlight through cracks in the walls. He had thought for years that they should get a nicer place, but Omar was next door, his cousin Essam lived at the end of the block, and it just didn’t seem worth it to move everyone away for the sake of a nicer living room, a better view.
He took the tea and coals to the roof, but there was still no escaping Jamila. Over the past twenty-four years, she had lodged in every crack in the concrete walls. They had married at eighteen, by parental arrangement, just like Zaki. Through the latter part of secondary school he’d been in love with someone else: Maidan. She was a Filipina whom he’d met on the street as they were walking home from school one day. He could never remember exactly how it had happened, but after a while he was borrowing Omar’s car to pick her up from school. How he had managed to pose as her brother made no sense to him now. They couldn’t have been more different. He had his family’s classic Bedouin features—the long nose, swarthy skin, and deep brown almond-shaped eyes—passed down from his mother’s side. Maidan was short, pale, and round, all soft curves. They had spent their afternoons at the beach, at funfairs, and simply driving through the desert. He had wanted to kiss her but never had the nerve to make the first move. She had asked him to once, and he had done it, but it scared them and they never did it again. They had had plans to marry.
For six months they saw each other almost every day but the weekends, when his family demanded that he stay at home. And then one day he’d gone to pick her up from school and the headmistress had come out to speak to him. She’d stood by the metal gate at the school’s entrance and called over to his car. “Maidan has left Saudi Arabia. I expect, as her brother, you might know that already.” She’d given him a final glare, turned around, and gone back into the girls’ academy. The gates had shut and he had never seen Maidan again.
He had never met her family. He didn’t even know which apartment she lived in, just the building. He went there, desperate, and a downstairs neighbor confirmed that the Filipino family had moved out.
He spent months reliving their relationship. Every word, every gesture, every offhand remark took on new meaning as he prized back the delicate skin of appearance in search of the core. Why hadn’t she told him she was moving? Had she planned to leave him from the start? She had lied, he saw now, but how much? And when?
And at the bottom of it all: Had she ever really loved him?
In the end, he’d come to see that she was a coward, and what he wanted in a woman was strength, like the best women always had, the ability to tell you just where to shove it. That’s what he’d told his mother when she brought up the subject of arranging his marriage.
“I want a woman who can stand up to me.”
He had no idea what he was saying at the time. He only knew the dark heart of it: I want a woman who would never leave me without an explanation.
Half of his mother’s face curled into a sly grin; the other half eyed him suspiciously. “Only a strong man says something like that,” she said with a certain pride. “But I’ll tell you honestly, Jamila is the strongest woman I know.”
Upon later reflection, he had to admit that she was right. Jamila was strong, but only on the outside.
At the time he had shot off the sofa and stormed into the living room shouting, “For the last and final time, I will not marry Jamila al-Brehm. Goddamn it!” He’d slid into his sandals and left the house, slamming the door behind him.
Two months later, they were married.
The real problem was that they’d been promised to each other since birth. Their mothers were best friends. It was a little unusual that such promises should be made among friends instead of family, but the women had had a lifelong bond. For eighteen years they’d kept their promise alive. The marriage between their children would make the two women legitimate family to each other, as if their magnificent bond needed further cementing.
And, just like Zaki, he had taken three months to realize that he’d made a horrible mistake. By then, however, Jamila was pregnant with Aqmar, and there was nothing to be done.
He laid the pipe down. Smoking alone made him miserable. He had hoped being at home would keep him from fixating on Sabria, but he’d only fallen into older memories instead. It was all leading up to the single idea, not particularly original, that Sabria had been the best woman he’d ever known. Not Jamila, not Maidan. She was the woman he’d chosen, and one who would never simply disappear.
He dumped the rest of the tea on the coals and left the house.
23
Katya’s mother had taught her about three kinds of dreams: Nafsani, dreams that came from fear and desire. Rahmani, truthful dreams that came from God and that would often bring you visions of the future. And shaytani, dreams inspired by the devil.
As a child she had asked her mother if it was blasphemous to have dreams of prophecy, and her mother replied that interpreting dreams was not the same as prophecy. It was not against Islam. Hadn’t Joseph, son of Jacob, successfully interpreted the dreams of the nameless king? And what was Katya’s dream, she asked, the one that was making her so unhappy?
Katya said that the Hadith instructed that it was important not to speak about your bad dreams, in case they came from the devil. But her mother replied with a counter Hadith that said that you should only tell one person, the person you were closest to and whom you trusted the most. Katya thought this sounded better than her own Hadith.
So they sat down and determined that Katya’s recurring dream about losing her tooth was in fact a bad omen. Teeth represented the family, “all of them packed in a neat little mouth,” as her mother said, and when one falls out, it means that someone will leave, or die.
“Was it a scary dream?” her mother asked.
“No, I wasn’t scared. It was just disgusting.”
“And which tooth was it?”
“The back one.”
Sure enough, a few weeks later, her uncle Ramzi died in Lebanon, and the dreams stopped.
Over the years, Katya had forgotten about it. It stood alone among her dreams as a successful prediction. Or perhaps, with her mother gone, she no longer knew how to interpret things.
She was at home, sitting at the kitchen table, an old Formica-topped thing on metal legs, left over from her childhood. The television, on but muted, was on the counter in front of her. It was Saturday, and Abu had finally left to go to evening prayers with his friends. The minute he’d shut the do
or, she’d pulled the folder from her knapsack and slid out the pictures.
Just before leaving the office, she had worked up the nerve to sneak into Majdi’s lab and make copies of the gravesite photos. They were Xeroxed, but good enough. She had also made copies of the map that showed where each of the bodies had been found at the site. Now she cleared the kitchen table and laid the photos out as they might have appeared from a bird’s-eye view of the desert.
The table wasn’t big enough. She was going to need five times the amount of space. Ideally, she would have liked to hang them on the wall. She would have done it in the lab, but there was not enough space there either—too many shelves and AC vents. Her bedroom had a similar problem. There was a huge wall in the living room, but she didn’t want to display the bodies when there was the chance that her father would bring his friends back from the mosque. They had never had a women’s sitting room, just the kitchen, which was too small and cluttered.
What was the difference between a fantasy and a dream? When Charlie talked about the killer’s fantasy, she meant it almost as if it were a dream—a shaytani, of course. Katya had had plenty of those herself. But Charlie described it as something much bigger, a kind of epic, recurring shaytani that existed in waking life as well, the different parts of which were heavy with individual meaning. Look for patterns, Charlie had said to her at lunch. With an organized killer like this one, there will be patterns.
Katya continued to lay out the photos. She had no other idea how to begin a search for patterns but guessed that the first step was understanding the mind of the killer, and for that, she wanted a map.
Ayman came into the kitchen looking sleepy. He took the teapot from the sink and began filling it with water.
“I thought you were supposed to go shopping,” he said.
Katya shot out of her chair. “Allah, I forgot!” She shoved the pictures back into their folder and looked at her watch. She was supposed to have met Nayir half an hour ago. “Oh God, I’m so late!”
“Do you need a ride?”
“Yes!”
Ayman put down the teapot and headed for the door.
The news segment was appalling. Everyone watched in frozen disbelief. Not that they hadn’t seen violence before, or seen a woman’s smashed and burned and beaten face. It got to everyone, of course, but what really disturbed them was the neat little interview with the woman who was accused of committing the crime. She was sitting in a quiet, sunlit room with her two sons on either side of her, looking for all the world like the perfect Saudi housewife, her niqab draped elegantly over her face, dark eyes lowered from the invasive camera. In a soft voice she explained that she would never hurt her housemaid. The woman had been like a sister to her. The housemaid—that smashed and burned and beaten woman who would never look like a whole human again—that housemaid had done those things to herself.
Katya was standing in the changing room of the bridal store in a gown of pale ivory. Two Filipino women had been fussing at her back, and another—the store owner, whose name was Jo—was holding the train.
“You disgusting whore,” Jo muttered to the TV. The women had already taken Katya into their confidence, but one of the younger girls glanced at her, worried that she might be offended by the cursing.
“Pin this on.” Jo shoved the train at one of the girls and marched out of the room.
The atmosphere relaxed somewhat, and the girls’ hands stayed busy. Katya hadn’t watched the news in days. Between investigating Sabria and the Angel killer, work had taken up every waking thought, probably because she’d been avoiding thinking about the wedding. Even the time she and Nayir had spent in the Rover driving out to the desert had been filled with talk about her job.
If this were a real Saudi wedding, she thought, the first thing they’d do was find the banquet halls. One for the men, and a bigger one for the women. Hers would be lavish: a stage and catwalk, tables for a thousand people. There’d be pink carpets, gold chandeliers, massive white bouquets on every surface. She had no idea what the men’s hall would look like—she’d never actually seen one—but assumed it would be a duplicate of the women’s. She had met her first fiancé at a wedding. Othman had told her all about the Bedouin warriors dancing with their swords, the prodigious amounts of incense and coffee and dates, and the way the groom sat on his throne, a bit stuffy, receiving the same blessing from every mouth: “From you comes the money, from her the kids.”
The women’s section was less formal. Everyone greeted the bride, but the mothers and older women swept through the hall inspecting the single girls. Their sons weren’t allowed to see these women before marriage, but the mothers were, and they were going to conduct a thorough study and hopefully find good matches for their sons—or, truthfully, good matches for themselves. If the household was segregated, the women would spend more time with one another than with their husbands. Katya never passed these inspections. She was too quiet and plain. She was never interested in the sumptuous ball gowns, and she didn’t have the time or desire to spend a whole day grooming. She didn’t own enough makeup to fill a shoe.
She and Nayir had agreed to a small, unadorned wedding. Neither one of them had the enormous families it would take to fill a banquet hall. Nayir preferred to arrange the locations anyway. Katya’s main job was to choose the dress.
If this were a real Saudi wedding, she thought, my family would be here right now. Mother, sisters, cousins. They’d be helping me choose what to wear for the biggest day of my life.
Five minutes later Jo came back into the room. To Katya she said, “I’m sorry. I just can’t stand this.” She motioned to the television. “It never stops.”
“It’s horrible.” Katya didn’t want to tell her that there were even worse things than beatings. That among the police records, nearly 60 percent of unidentified murder victims were female housemaids. And that they had just found another nineteen.
“This color looks beautiful on you,” Jo said. “Have a look.”
Katya spun to the mirror again. “I like the color,” she said, “but the chest is too frilly.”
Jo nodded and went back to the spare fitting room, where she’d hung another dozen dresses.
In between gowns number four and five, Katya sneaked to the front window, which was blocked from the street by heavy black curtains. She drew the curtain aside and peered out.
It was dark and the shopping area outside was lit with hundreds of golden string lights and a giant star-shaped lantern. Standing directly beneath the lantern, Nayir and Ayman were sipping juice and talking. Ayman said something that made Nayir throw his head back and let out a belly laugh. Mash’allah, he was the best cousin she could hope for.
As she dropped the curtains and drew back into the store, she felt a sting of… envy? Sadness? She would never be able to make Nayir laugh like that. With her, he was always delicate, protected.
It took an hour, switching in and out of different dresses. Katya might have enjoyed it, but Jo’s anger clipped her movements. The girls had gone silent. Katya gave in to the mood and listened as Jo began to relieve herself of tormented thoughts. Earlier that year, it seemed suicide was the thing. One housemaid had tried to hang herself, another swallowed detergent, a third had jumped from the roof of her building. Not nearly as bad as the woman whose employer had hammered twenty-four hot nails into her face, hands, and arms. (That was a year ago in August.) Or the girl in Abha whose employer beat, burned, stabbed her, and then cut off her lips. (November.) Not to mention two unidentified bodies found the next month (well, the two that made the news).
In January, the story was a little different—and gave Jo cause for some hope, late though it was. A Saudi woman had been sentenced to three years in prison for her violations on the November girl. Thanks to the new laws that had been passed, this was finally possible.
But only a few weeks later, a housemaid was arrested for using “sorcery” against her employer and his family—or so the employer claimed. (February.
) Then a girl who jumped from a third-floor balcony to escape her employers was found to have been brutally beaten and burned. (March.) Jo ticked off the remaining months, rushing right up to this evening’s installment: October.
Katya had never known an unhappy housemaid. Overworked and frazzled, yes. Annoyed by loud children, definitely. But abused? No. And yet today, every housemaid she encountered was dead or badly mutilated or both. She told herself that this was because she worked for the police.
Slowly, Jo’s vitriol began to spread outward; not content to list crimes, she began to blame the entire country.
“You people let your men tell their women every little thing they can and cannot do. It’s the same with employers. They’re allowed to tell a housemaid anything, and she has to do it!”
Katya realized her silence was now being mistaken for complicity. She wanted to leave. She didn’t want to buy a dress anymore—there weren’t any good ones here anyway.
She looked at her watch. “Oh no, I’ve got to go! My cousin will be angry.”
The three women looked at her with disappointment. Was she, too, simply a woman on a leash?
Katya got dressed and slid into her abaaya. “Thank you so much for your time,” she said and scurried out the door.
Nayir was walking as slowly as possible to enjoy every single moment he could catch with her. Katya’s cousin Ayman had wandered off, talking on his phone, and for now Nayir had her to himself. The best parts of their relationship so far had occurred during walks like this on the Corniche. He had even proposed marriage in a restaurant not far from here.
It was evening, and as far as Jeddawis were concerned, the day was properly beginning. It was finally cool enough to be outside. For Nayir, the darkness added an extra layer of privacy. No sun to shine through a woman’s cloak and outline her figure. No stark illumination of the exposed faces that women seemed to prefer more and more. And those women who forsook headscarves completely—from a distance it seemed that each one’s hair was a veil. It was more common now to see families picnicking on the sidewalks with their teenage daughters romping freely, wearing jeans and T-shirts and looking as mannish as their brothers—some even with short hair. The feeling that suffused him in the presence of it all was one of inexplicable sadness and loss.
