Kingdom of Strangers

by Zoë Ferraris

  Omar had escorted them back to Ibrahim’s house and led them to the roof. They waited in the stairwell. Omar went back downstairs. They heard him arguing with the guards to let Ibrahim sit on the roof. Just for an hour. He needed some air. Even prisoners got to walk in the open once a day.

  After arguments and phone calls and tedious bureaucracy, Ibrahim came around the turn in the stairs with a young woman beside him. She was completely veiled.

  “This is my daughter-in-law Saffanah,” he said. “She needs some air too.”

  When they opened the roof door, they were hit by the noise of thirty children—his grandchildren and their cousins and second cousins. All the children whose parents were downstairs comforting the wife and deciding Ibrahim’s fate. The children briefly registered their arrival. The boys were furiously engaged in a game of soccer, and the girls were jumping rope, squealing, or clumped in secret corners.

  The adults sat on a carpet by the southern wall. There were floor pillows and dirty tea sets and ashtrays stacked beside a cold hookah. Ibrahim sat with his back to the wall. Nayir and Katya were across from him. Saffanah knelt, picked up the tea set, and carried it downstairs.

  The children weren’t curious about Ibrahim, but they were struck by his guests. The minute Nayir and Katya sat down, the girls began to sneak closer. There were four of them at first. Ibrahim invited the youngest one to sit on his lap. His other granddaughters sat beside him, ages two, three, and four, staring up at Nayir. Ibrahim explained that their mother—his daughter Farrah—was staying at the house for a few weeks. Saffanah returned with a lit hookah, and Ibrahim took it gratefully. She went back downstairs.

  Nayir studied Ibrahim. It seemed impossible that a man with such bounty—this enormous extended family, all these wonderful grandchildren, the joy of this scene—would turn his back on his wife and cheat with a woman from his work. Yes, perhaps the marriage had gone sour and he’d fallen for a younger beauty. But had it been worth committing one of the greatest sins—and one of the most serious crimes? Nayir chalked it up to selfishness, a foolish dissatisfaction with all that he had here, and not a little cruelty. And yet in Ibrahim, he sensed no foolishness or selfishness, just tragic despair.

  Saffanah came back with tea for the adults, and biscuits for the girls. Katya seemed uncomfortable. She wanted to talk to Ibrahim but couldn’t bring herself to say anything important in front of the children. While she attempted to make small talk, Nayir watched the kids play. It wasn’t often that he could sit somewhere and stare at children without appearing creepy or improper, but children were all he thought about these days. He saw them everywhere, whole flocks racing through grocery stores, picnicking on the Corniche, piling into minivans, and screeching at the funfairs. It had come to feel like God was inviting him into this world, saying, This is what you shall have.

  The excitement and anticipation had been a glowing core inside him. He imagined his own children, how they would look, what their names would be, their personalities. And he wondered how they were going to raise those children. It had become clear to him over the past few days that he was going to have to do a lot of the work. Katya would be at the station all the time. He’d be the one to pick the kids up from school, cook their dinners, and put them to bed. That was not the setup God had intended, but it was going to be the thing that actually worked, and he suddenly wanted to tell her that: I’ll do whatever it takes, if you’ll give me this.

  Ibrahim began to smoke. His granddaughters slipped around, fidgeting, and one of the girls slid into Nayir’s space. The others followed. The smoke from the hookah was blowing in their faces. Two planted themselves at Nayir’s knees, one of them holding a Barbie, the other holding a plastic toy cell phone, which she used to touch the sole of his sandal probingly, to see if he would react. Finally, one plucked up the courage to slide into his lap. Ibrahim frowned at her, and she ducked her face in her hands. Then she looked up at Nayir, saw that he was fine, and settled in. He was afraid to touch her at first, but when she slid backward into his arm, he had no choice.

  “Their father is in Dhahran,” Ibrahim said. Nayir understood what he meant: They miss the comforts of a man.

  The night sky emerged faintly, while beneath it the city shone. As the neighborhood darkened and the hookah coals burned out, the children grew tired and began, finally, to listen to their mothers, who had come upstairs intermittently, stood inside the rooftop door, and called to them: Come in, it’s time to leave. The children had blithely ignored them, knowing the women wouldn’t come out while Nayir was there (although Nayir suspected, from Ibrahim’s disturbed face, that they were avoiding him as well).

  The girls went down first, sliding out of his lap, saying good night and nodding when their grandfather told them to listen to their mothers. The boys went with much more prodding. Finally, the rooftop was empty and Ibrahim put the hookah rope aside and said, “Whatever you’ve come to tell me, you can say it.”

  Katya glanced at Saffanah.

  “She’s fine,” Ibrahim said. “I take it this isn’t good news, or you would have spoken up before now.”

  “It’s not horrible news,” Katya said. She explained what she’d discovered at the women’s prison. Ibrahim, who until then had seemed resigned to defeat, sat up with more interest.

  “Did you go to the website and look at the videos?”

  “Yes,” she said, glancing at Nayir. She hadn’t given much detail about the videos in the car, and she seemed embarrassed now, from which he gathered that they were obscene. “The problem is,” she went on, “I don’t recognize any of the men.”

  “I need to see them.”

  She took out her cell phone. It had a touch screen and she fiddled with it for a moment before handing it to Ibrahim. He sat up, fumbled automatically for reading glasses that weren’t in his pocket, then held the phone at a distance, squinting.

  Horrible screams shot out of the little speaker. Katya leaned over to turn the volume down. Ibrahim barely noticed. His attention was riveted on the screen. Nayir couldn’t help glancing at the screen himself, but the angle made it difficult for him to see, and anyway all he could think about was Katya watching the video. Katya seeing a woman being raped by a stranger. He realized then that this was the cold reality of her job.

  Ibrahim set the phone on his lap. Saffanah, who had sat this whole time in the corner so no one would be tempted to drag her into the conversation, was now staring intently at Ibrahim through a very narrow slit in her burqa.

  “Do you recognize any of those men?” Katya asked.

  “Yes,” Ibrahim said. His hands were shaking. He looked brutally amazed. “Yes, I do.”

  34

  Fouz Ubaid, the hypocrite who had spent so much time persecuting Inspector Zahrani, sat rigidly, his shoulders square, his hands folded neatly on the table in front of him. The interrogation room was quiet. He’d been alone since the guard had brought him in two hours ago.

  They didn’t have to charge him or give him access to a lawyer, but through the one-way mirror, Katya could see that he was already preparing his own defense. Something happened to a person’s face when he began to justify his worst behavior, a complex arrangement of righteousness and defiance, calculation, and a tinge of fear. It wasn’t impossible that he would defend himself. Yes, they had him on film raping a young housemaid. She’d been restrained with ropes. When she began screaming for help, he’d taped her mouth. It seemed obvious that the woman was not a willing participant.

  Yet the first thing Ubaid had said when they’d brought him into the room was “She wanted me to do that. It was a mutual arrangement.”

  That was all it had taken to stop the legal machinery.

  The woman’s complicity was a crucial question. If he was telling the truth and this had been a consensual, if violent, act, then the toughest sentence Ubaid faced was ten years in prison and a thousand lashes. He wasn’t married, so it wasn’t a matter of adultery. He would only be charged with the crime of illegal s
ex.

  But if it could be shown that he had forced himself on this woman, then he’d be facing a charge of rape, which would be punished by public beheading.

  It was going to take a lot to prove rape, especially after the notorious Qatif case. A woman who had been gang-raped in the city of Qatif had been punished along with her rapists because a judge had decided that she’d gone willingly to meet the men who raped her and had thereby broken one of the tenets of civilized society: that women do not interact with strange men. All of them had been punished for illegal sex, although the men had not been prosecuted for rape. Because of the exposure that case had brought, it was easier for men to feel confident in claiming consensual sex, knowing how hard it would be to prove rape—and how difficult it was for a woman claiming she’d been raped to avoid punishment herself.

  The burden was now on the investigators to prove that Ubaid had been actively stalking his victim with the intent of raping her. Katya’s first thought was that it would be possible to do this by proving that someone had used the tapes to blackmail him and that he had paid the blackmailer. It suggested an acknowledgment of his guilt. But looking at him now, she saw how squirrelly he was. He could claim that he’d paid a blackmailer merely because the footage was embarrassing, because it might have interfered with his career, and because it was, after all, illegal sex. It still didn’t mean he had committed rape.

  Anyway, the case wasn’t going to be handled by Homicide. They were far too busy with the Angel murders to spend time searching for an unidentified Filipina while trying to build a rape case against a senior officer from Undercover. Even if they did find the girl and she had the nerve to say that Ubaid had raped her, she would still have to justify what she had been doing alone with him in the first place. If she claimed that he had abducted her, she would have to prove it—with tangible evidence. And that was nearly impossible. With no evidence, it would come down to her word against his.

  Perhaps Ubaid had thought this through already, but it didn’t appear so. He looked to be working it out. So Katya was here now, watching expectantly, hoping that for the short while that Homicide still had possession of him, they might be able to squeeze out a little agony.

  A few minutes later, the door opened and Inspector Mu’tazz came into the room.

  The women in Katya’s lab always said that Detective Khouri, the one they called Abu-Haitham, was the most devout man in the department. He had earned the designation after repeatedly refusing to get into a squad car as long as any woman was inside, no matter how veiled and proper she was. He also had a preference for carrying a short camel whip like some of the more fanatical religious police used. The whip hung from his belt next to his holster and had actually become so fashionable that a few of the other officers, including Mu’tazz, had taken to wearing one as well, a silent pledge of allegiance to Abu-Haitham’s strict beliefs.

  Mu’tazz was just as determined to prove that he was the purest of Muslim men, but unlike Abu-Haitham, he had a nasty edge. He had never spoken to Katya. She only knew what she had picked up from the gossip in the lab. Watching him now, she felt a quiet repulsion. He had a broad, square face; eyes that were jammed too tightly to his brow, and a large mouth that lacked all delicacy. When he opened his mouth, he could not avoid revealing a prominent set of teeth. They were ugly, yellow, widely spaced, with black around their edges. He wore a trimmed beard around his lips and jawline but it only served to highlight the bare cavity at its center.

  He set a folder on the table and looked down at Ubaid.

  “No matter what the judges eventually decide about the rape charges,” Mu’tazz said, “they’re going to give you a lighter sentence if it looks like you’ve been cooperating with us.

  “We know you were linked to a woman named Sabria Gampon. We know she was blackmailing you. She’s been missing for over three weeks and, as you know, Undercover is anxious to find her.”

  Ubaid was staring stubbornly at the one-way mirror.

  “We think you might have some idea what happened to her.” Mu’tazz was now circling Ubaid’s seat, studying him from every angle. “If you know anything, we’d appreciate hearing it now.”

  “I know nothing.”

  With a speed that startled Katya, Mu’tazz smacked Ubaid on the back of the head. It humiliated him; you could tell from the fierce blush creeping up his cheeks. Mu’tazz continued pacing behind him. “What did you say?”

  “I know nothing,” Ubaid said.

  Mu’tazz smacked him again, harder this time. It knocked Ubaid’s head halfway down to the table.

  “What did you say?”

  Ubaid was quiet.

  Smack! Mu’tazz hit him harder. Smack! Each time Ubaid raised his head, he looked more humiliated. There were tears in his eyes from the sting of each blow.

  “Did you say you know where to find Sabria Gampon?”

  “No, I—” Smack!

  “I don’t know!”

  Mu’tazz’s face was expressionless. He even looked a little bored, as if he’d done this before, knew how it would evolve, and didn’t much care what came of it.

  Smack-smack!

  Katya suddenly felt scared. Why had no one else come into the viewing room? People must have known this was going to happen. She probably shouldn’t have been there herself, just in case someone started asking questions later. This was how it happened: the torture of men was surrounded by complicit silence. And she found that, as much as she wanted to see Ubaid suffer, in reality she was horrified by it, and by the cold apathy on Mu’tazz’s face.

  Mu’tazz liberated the camel whip. He took a step back from his victim and said, “What do you have to say about Sabria Gampon?”

  Ubaid shook his head in despair.

  Crack! The whip tore across his back. Ubaid cried out in pain. His face was horrible to see.

  “What do you have to say?”

  “Nothing!”

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  “Please stop! I don’t know anything about her!” Those were the final words Katya heard before rushing out of the room.

  Katya spent the rest of the morning working quietly in the lab, riddled with feelings of fear and guilt. She kept telling herself that Ubaid deserved to be punished. That Mu’tazz had punished him—under a general conspiracy of silence, including her own—because everyone knew that the law was never going to do so properly. But she couldn’t stop seeing the apathy on Mu’tazz’s face as he struck another blow. She had seen men strike each other before. She had even been struck herself, in that same interrogation room during an interview. But Mu’tazz’s expression had suggested an utter lack of feeling, and frankly, it had opened a pit of fear inside her. The Angel case was his now, and as much as she wanted to find this killer, she did not want to interact with Mu’tazz.

  It was obvious that Mu’tazz was trying to keep her out of the case. He had not only moved her out of the situation room but he had also taken back all of the solved-case files. What was left was useless: two small boxes of unsolved cases from the mid-1990s. Another blow was struck when her boss, Zainab, came into the lab and cautioned Katya about the new situation.

  “They’re really cracking down,” she said. “So we can’t let anything get behind schedule. They’ve threatened to fire some of the lab workers if we do, and I have the feeling that you’re at the top of their list.”

  Katya wanted to say how ridiculous it was. They were still waiting for DNA test results, but most of the evidence from the Angel case had been processed already or was being handled by the men downstairs. The work in the lab had trickled to barely nothing, and they’d started working on the backlog of evidence from other cases.

  In frustration, she went downstairs to the forensics lab, where she found Majdi and Osama going over some evidence. She had worked with Osama on a previous case and knew him to be the sort of liberal-minded man who wouldn’t find it inappropriate that she was working on the Angel killings.

  “Hello,” Majdi said, making a
n effort to smile. It relieved her. For the past three weeks, he’d been so stressed he could barely look up from his work when she entered the room.

  Osama looked disheartened. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “I just came to see what was happening with the Angel case,” she said.

  Both men sighed in frustration. “Nothing,” Osama said. “Nothing is going on.”

  “What happened to the suspect?”

  Majdi shook his head. “It turns out that the blood and hair we found on the inside of his Red Crescent van was from a male. Then we discovered that the van had been sold because it had been in an accident. One of the paramedics had hit his head on the wall when the van turned over, and apparently Hajar had just never bothered to clean it.”

  Osama leaned against the desk. “There was nothing in the van that connected Hajar to any of the murders.”

  “Or in the taxi,” Majdi went on. “We went over every inch of his cab. The problem with taxis is that they have too many hairs and samples. So far, not a single strand matches any of the victims. And it doesn’t look like Hajar cleaned it—he doesn’t clean anything.”

  “Did they let him go?” Katya asked.

  “No, not yet,” Osama said. “Mu’tazz hasn’t made the decision. He’s in charge now.”

  “I know,” Katya said. “What do you think he’ll do next?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’ll do what he usually does,” Osama replied. “He’ll think about it for a while. He’s a pretty slow mover.”

  Majdi said rather defensively, “Some people are like that.”

  “You’re not,” Osama said.

  “No, but I respect people who take the time to think about what’s right. Sometimes it’s not obvious.”

  “Well, I think you’re wrong,” Osama said. “He needs to face the fact that we’ve reached a dead end. And the sooner he realizes that, the sooner this case will move forward.”

  On Wednesday, a man came into the lab and introduced himself as Jalal Taleb, the lawyer representing Ibrahim Zahrani. Because of the curious looks she got from her lab mates, Katya took him into the hallway to talk.