The woman approached the pavilion anxiously. "Hello?" she called.
A moment later a young woman in a white gown came out of the pavilion. Her feet were bare and her pale blond hair was thrown carelessly over one shoulder. She was smiling and carrying a wooden tray. "Hungry?" she asked in a friendly voice.
"Yes," said the woman.
"My name is Maryam. I've been waiting for you. I'm sorry, all I've got is bread and fresh milk. "She poured from a silver pitcher into a silver goblet.
"Thanks." The woman ate and drank greedily.
Maryam shaded her eyes with one hand. "Are you going to the fair?"
The woman shook her head. "I don't know about any fair."
Maryam laughed. "Everybody goes to the fair. Come on, I'll take you."
The woman waited while Maryam disappeared into the pavilion again with the breakfast things. She came back out a moment later. "We're all set now," she said gaily. "We can get to know each other while we walk. "
They continued around the lake until the woman saw a scattering of large peaked tents of striped canvas, all with colorful pennants snapping in the breeze. She heard many people laughing and shouting, and the sound of axes biting wood, and metal ringing on metal. She could smell bread baking, and cinnamon buns, and lamb roasting on spits turning slowly over glowing coals. Her mouth began to water, and she felt her excitement growing despite herself.
"I don’t have any money to spend, " she said.
"Money?" Maryam asked, laughing. "What is money?"
The woman spent the afternoon going from tent to tent, seeing the strange exhibits and miraculous entertainments. She sampled exotic foods and drank concoctions of unknown liquors. Now and then she remembered to be afraid. She looked over her shoulder, wondering when the pleasant face of this fantasy would fall away. "Marîd," she called, "what are you doing?"
"Who are you calling?" asked Maryam.
"I'm not sure, "said the woman.
Maryam laughed. "Look over here, " she said, pulling on the woman's sleeve, showing her a booth where a heavily muscled woman was shaping a disturbing collage from the claws, teeth, and eyes of lizards.
They listened to children playing strange music on instruments madefrom the carcasses of small animals, and then they watched several old women spin their own white hair into thread, and then weave it into napkins and scarves.
One of the toothless hags leered at Maryam and the woman. "Take, "she said in a gravelly voice.
"Thank you, Grandmother," said Maryam. She selected a pair of human-hair handkerchiefs.
The hours wore on, and at last the sun began to set. The moon rose as full as yestereve. "Is this going to go on all night?" the woman asked.
"All night and all day tomorrow," said Maryam. "Forever."
The woman shuddered.
From that moment she couldn't shake a growing dread, a sense that she'd been lured to this place and abandoned. She remembered nothing of who she'd been before she'd awakened beside the lake, but she felt shed been horribly tricked. She prayed to someone called Marîd. She wondered if that was God.
"Marîd,'' she murmured fearfully, "I wish you'd just end this already."
But Audran was not ready to end it. He watched as the woman and Maryam grew sleepy and found a large tent filled with comfortable cushions and sheets of satin and fine linen. They laid themselves down and slept.
In the morning the woman arose, dismayed to be still trapped at the eternal fair. Maryam found them a good breakfast of sausage, fried bread, broiled tomatoes, and hot tea. Maryam's enthusiasm was undiminished, and she led the woman toward still more disquieting entertainments. The woman, however, felt only a crazily mounting dread.
"You've had me here for two days, Marîd, "she pleaded. "Please kill me and let me go." Audran gave her no sign, no answer.
They passed the third day examining one dismaying thing after another: teenage girls who seemed to have living roses in place of breasts; a candlemaker whose wares would not provide light in the presence of an infidel; staged combat between a blind man and two maddened dragons; a family hammering together a scale model of the fair out of iron, a project that had occupied them for generations and that might never be completed; a cage of crickets that had been taught to chirp the Shahada, the Islamic testament of faith.
The afternoon passed, and once again night began to fall. All through the fair, men jammed blazing torches into iron sconces on tall poles. Still Maryam led the woman from tent to tent, but the woman no longer enjoyed the spectacles. She was filed with a sense of impending catastrophe. She felt an urgent need to escape, but she knew she couldn’t even find her way out of the infinite fairgrounds.
And then a shrill, buzzing alarm sounded. "What's that?" she asked, startled. All around her, people had begun to flee. "Yallah!" cried Maryam, her face stricken with horror. "Run! Run and save your life!"
"What is it?" the woman shouted. "Tell me what it is!"
Maryam had collapsed to the ground, weeping and moaning. "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful," she muttered over and over again. The woman could get nothing more sensible from her.
The woman left her there, and she followed the stream of terrified people as they ran among the tents. And then the woman saw them: two immense giants, impossibly huge, hundreds of feet tall, crushing the landscape as they came nearer. They loaded among the distant mountains, and then the shocks from their jolting footsteps began to churn the water in the lake. The ground heaved as they came nearer. The woman raised a hand to her breast, then staggered backward a few steps.
One of the giants turned his head slowly and looked straight at her. He was horribly ugly, with a great scar across one empty eye socket and a mouthful of rotten, snaggled fangs. He lifted an arm and pointed to her.
''No,'' she said, her voice hoarse with fear, ' 'not me!'' She wanted to run but she couldn’t move. The giant stooped toward her, fierce and glowering. He bent to capture her in his enormous hand.
"Marîd!" the woman screamed. "Please!" Nothing happened. The giant's fist began to close around her.
The woman (tied to reach up and unplug the moddy link, but her arms were frozen. She wouldn't escape that easily. The woman shrieked as she realized she couldn’t even jack out.
The disfigured giant lifted her off the ground and drew her close to his single eye. His hoirrd grin spread and he laughed at her tenor. His stinking breath sickened the woman. She struggled again to lift her hands, to pull the moddy link free. Her arms were held fast. She screamed and screamed, and then at last she fainted.
My eyes were bleary for a moment, and I could hear Chiri panting for breath beside me. I didn't think she'd be so upset. After all, it was only a Transpex game, and it wasn't the first time she'd ever played. She knew what to expect.
"You're a sick motherfucker, Marîd," she said at last.
"Listen, Chiri, I was just—"
She waved a hand at me. "I know, I know. You won the game and the bet. I'm still just a little shook, that's all. I'll have your money for you tonight."
"Forget the money, Chiri, I—"
I shouldn't have said that. "Hey, you son of a bitch, when I lose a bet I pay up. You're gonna take the money or I'm gonna cram it down your throat. But, God, you've got some kind of twisted imagination."
"That last part," said Courane, "where she couldn't raise her hands to pop the moddy link, that was real cold." He said it approvingly.
"Hell of a sadistic thing to do," said Chiri, shivering. "Last time I ever touch a Transpex with you."
"A few extra points, that's all, Chiri. I didn't know what my score was. I might have needed a couple more points."
"You finished with 941," said Shaknahyi. He was looking at me oddly, as if he were impressed by my score and repelled at the same time. "We got to go." He stood up and tossed down the last slug of his soft drink.
I stood up too. "You all right now, Chiri?" I put my hand on her shoulder.
"I'm fine. I'm s
till shaking off the game. It was like a nightmare." She took a deep breath and let it out. "I got to get back to the club so Indihar can go home."
"Give you a ride?" asked Shaknahyi.
"Thanks," said Chiri, "but I got my own transportation."
"See you later then," I said.
"Kwa heri, you bastard." At least she was smiling when she called me that. I thought maybe things were okay between us again. I was real glad about that.
Outside, Shaknahyi shook his head and grinned. "She was right, you know. That was a hell of a sadistic thing. Like unnecessary torture. You are a sick son of a bitch."
"Maybe."
"And I got to ride around the city with you."
I was tired of talking about it. "Time to check out yet?" I asked.
"Just about. Let's pass by the station house, and then why don't you come home with me for dinner? You got plans already? You think Friedlander Bey can get along without you for one night?"
I'm not a very sociable person, and I always feel uncomfortable in other people's homes. Still, the idea of spending an evening away from Papa and his Circus of Thrills was immensely attractive. "Sure," I said.
"Let me call my wife and find out if tonight's okay."
"I didn't even know you were married, Jirji."
He just raised his eyebrows at me and spoke his commcode into the phone. He had a brief conversation with his wife, and then clipped the phone back on his belt. "She says it's okay," he said. "Now she's got to run around cleaning and cooking. She always goes crazy when I bring somebody home."
"She don't have to do that just for me," I said.
Shaknahyi shook his head. "It's not for you, believe me. She comes from this old-fashioned family, and she's all the time got to prove she's the perfect Muslim wife."
We stopped at the station house, turned the patrol car over to the guys on the night shift, and checked in briefly with Hajjar. Finally we logged out and headed back downstairs to the street. "I usually walk home unless it's pouring rain," said Shaknahyi.
"How far is it?" I asked. It was a pleasant evening, but I wasn't looking forward to a long walk.
"Maybe three, three-and-a-half miles."
"Forget it," I said. "I'll spring for a cab." There are always seven or eight taxis waiting for fares on the Boulevard il-Jameel, near the Budayeen's eastern gate. I looked for my friend Bill, but I didn't see him. We got into another cab, and Shaknahyi gave the driver his address.
It was an apartment house in the part of town called Haffe al-Khala, the Edge of the Wilderness. Shaknahyi and his family lived about as far south as you could go in the city, so near the desert that mounds of sand like infant dunes had crept up against the walls of the buildings. There were no trees or flowers on these streets. It was bare and quiet and dead, as cheerless as any place I've ever seen.
Shaknahyi must have guessed what I was thinking. "This is all I can afford," he said sourly. "Come on, though. It's better inside."
I followed him into the foyer of the apartment house, and then upstairs to his flat on the third floor. He unlocked the front door and was immediately tackled by two small children. They clung to his legs as he came into the parlor. Shaknahyi bent down laughing, and rested his hands on the boys' heads. "My sons," he said to me proudly. "This is Little Jirji, he's eight, and Hakim, he's four. Zahra's six. She's probably getting in her mother's way in the kitchen."
Well, I don't have much patience with kids. I suppose they're fine for other people, but I've never really understood what they're for. I can be polite about them when I have to, though. "Your sons are very handsome," I said. "They do you honor."
"It is as Allah pleases," said Shaknahyi. He was beaming like a goddamn searchlight.
He dislodged Little Jirji and Hakim and, to my dismay, left me alone with them while he went in to see how supper was progressing. I didn't actually bear these children any ill will, but my philosophy of raising kids is kind of extreme. I think you should keep a baby around for a few days after it's born—until the novelty wears off—and then you put it in a big cardboard box with all the best books of Eastern and Western civilization. Then you bury the box and dig it up again when the kid's eighteen.
I watched uneasily as first Little Jirji and then Hakim realized I was sitting on the couch. Hakim lurched toward me, a bright red toy figure in his right hand, another in his mouth. "What do I do now?" I muttered.
"How you boys getting along out here?" said Shaknahyi. I was saved. He came back into the parlor and sat beside me in an old, shabby armchair.
"Great," I said. I said a little prayer to Allah. This looked like it could be a long night.
A very pretty, very serious-faced girl came into the room, carrying a china plate of hummus and bread. Shaknahyi took the plate from her and kissed her on both cheeks. "This is Zahra, my little princess," he said. "Zahra, this is Uncle Marîd."
Uncle Marîd! I'd never heard anything so grotesque in my entire life.
Zahra looked up at me, blushed furiously, and ran back into the kitchen while her father laughed. I've always had that effect on women.
Shaknahyi indicated the plate of hummus. "Please," he said, "refresh yourself."
"May your prosperity increase, Jirji," I said.
"May God lengthen your life. I'm gonna get us some tea." He got up again and went back into the kitchen.
I wished he'd stop fussing. It made me nervous, and it left me outnumbered by the kids. I tore off some bread and dipped it in the hummus, keeping a careful eye on Little Jirji and Hakim. They seemed to be playing together peacefully, apparently paying no attention to me at all; but I wasn't going to be lulled so easily.
Shaknahyi came back in a few minutes. "I think you know my wife," he said. I looked up. He was standing there with Indihar. He was grinning his damnfool grin, but she looked absolutely pissed.
I stood up, bewildered. "Indihar, how you doing?" I said. I felt like a fool. "I didn't even know you were married."
"Nobody's supposed to know," she said. She glared at her husband, then she turned and glared at me.
"It's all right, sweetheart," Shaknahyi said. "Marîd won't tell anybody, right?"
"Marîd is a—" Indihar began, but then she remembered that I was a guest in her home. She lowered her eyes modestly to the floor. "You honor our family with your visit, Marîd," she said.
I didn't know what to say. This was a major shock: Indihar as beautiful Budayeen dancer by day, demure Muslim wife by night. "Please," I said uncomfortably, "don't go to any trouble for me."
Indihar flicked her eyes at me before she led Zahra out of the room. I couldn't read what she was thinking.
"Have some tea," said Shaknahyi. "Have some more hummus." Hakim had at last found the courage to look me over. He grabbed my leg and drooled on my pants.
This was going to be even worse than I'd feared.
9
IT WAS SHAKNAHYI'S small brown notebook, the one he'd carried in his hip pocket. The first time I'd seen it was when we'd investigated Blanca's murder. Now I stared at its vinyl cover, smeared with bloody fingerprints, and wondered about Shaknahyi's coded entries. I supposed I was going to have to find out what they all meant.
This was a week after my visit to Jirji and Indihar's apartment. The day had started off on a low note and it never improved. I looked up to see Kmuzu standing beside my bed holding a tray of orange juice, toast, and coffee. I guess he'd been waiting for my wake-up daddy to kick in. He looked so sick that I almost felt sorry for the poor sucker. "Good morning, yaa Sidi," he said softly.
I felt like hell too. "Where are my clothes?"
Kmuzu winced. "I don't know, yaa Sidi. I don't remember what you did with them last night."
I didn't remember much either. There was nothing but sick blackness from the time I came in the front door late last night until just a moment ago. I crawled out of bed naked, my head throbbing, my stomach threatening immediate upheaval. "Help me find my jeans," I said. "My pillcase is in my jeans."<
br />
"This is why the Lord forbids drinking," said Kmuzu. I glanced at him; his eyes were closed and he was still holding the tray, but it was tilting dangerously. There was going to be coffee and orange juice all over my bed in a few seconds. That wasn't important to me right then.
My clothes weren't under the bed, which was the logical place to look. They weren't in the closet, and they weren't in the dressing room or the bathroom. I looked on the table in the dining area and in my small kitchen. No luck. I finally found my shoes and shirt rolled up in a ball in the bookcase, crammed between some paperback novels by Lutfy Gad, a Palestinian detective writer of the middle twenty-first century. My jeans had been folded neatly and hidden on my desk beneath several thick sheaves of computer printout.
I didn't even put the pants on. I just grabbed the pillcase and hurried back into the bedroom. My plan was to swallow some opiates, maybe a dozen Sonneine, with the orange juice.
Too late. Kmuzu was staring down in horror at the sticky, sweet-smelling puddle on my bedclothes. He looked up at me. "I'll clean this up," he said, gulping down a wave of nausea, "immediately." His expression said that he expected to lose his comfortable job in the Big House, and be sent out to the dusty fields with the other unskilled brutes.
"Don't worry about it right now, Kmuzu. Just hand me that cup of— "
There was a gentle scraping sound as the coffee cup and saucer slid southward and tumbled over the edge of the tray. I looked at the ruined sheets. At least you couldn't see the orange juice stain anymore.
"Yaa Sidi—"
"I want a glass of water, Kmuzu. Right now."
It had been a hell of a night. I'd had the bright idea to go to the Budayeen after work. "I haven't had a night out in a long time," I said to Kmuzu when he arrived to pick me up at the station house.
"The master of the house is pleased that you're concentrating on your work."
"Yeah, you right, but that don't mean I can't see my friends now and then." I gave him directions to Jo-Mama's Greek club.
A Fire in the Sun Page 13
