City of Veils

by Zoë Ferraris

  “Of course not!”

  “I think I know this type of woman,” Osama said. “Liberated. Working on some scheme to start her own business, but it never comes to anything. Meanwhile, they need money all the time, and suddenly there’s no time for housework, or cooking, or raising kids. And if you try to confront them, they have some pious thing to say that makes you feel guilty. And you wake up one morning and realize that you married a child.”

  Bashir let out a dry, heartless laugh. “That’s exactly what it was like. I mean, was it too much to ask that she do the laundry once in a while?”

  “She never did laundry?”

  “Not once,” Bashir said.

  At this point, Osama had clearly won Bashir’s sympathy. It hadn’t taken very much. Osama gave a look of dismay. “At least mine does the laundry every once in a while.”

  “She never did a damn thing,” Bashir said. “Except spend my money. And after the first few nights, she stopped everything, if you know what I mean. She said she just didn’t feel like it.”

  “You think she ever went out with another man?”

  “Nah.” Bashir’s lips wrinkled in a scowl, and he sat forward. “Here’s the thing—she was so self-absorbed that men only served one purpose for her.”

  “Money,” Osama supplied.

  “Yes.”

  Osama knew he ought to be pleased with himself for the little coup he’d just pulled off. It had always been one of Rafiq’s favorite maneuvers, sympathizing with the beleaguered husband on the subject of selfish wives. But instead, the whole thing left him feeling uneasy. Bashir and Leila had been a terrible match. Leila wanted an independence that Bashir was clearly not able to give her. Sure, he wasn’t the sort who would mind if she worked outside the home. In fact, he would probably have appreciated the second income. But everything he had just revealed about Leila now had to be seen in the light of their incompatibility. Leila must have been disappointed to have married such a poor man when her own family was better off. She would have expected more generosity. She wouldn’t have been truthful with him—about herself or her feelings, or perhaps even her real plans.

  Osama bent over the folder he’d brought in—a prop, nothing more—and pretended to look for something, to deflect an image that had just assailed him: Nuha raising her burqa on their first night together, the way his whole body had jolted with excitement. She had remained unperturbed. She had even given him a playful smile. She didn’t normally wear a burqa, and she hadn’t during most of the wedding, or even before. She was one of those determined women who insisted that one didn’t need to wear a burqa in Jeddah; it was an open city, it was not Riyadh. Headscarf, yes; but a burqa? Ridiculous. Only she was wearing it in the bedroom that night, their first night, and when she lifted it, he had nearly exploded. It was the feeling that she had just opened herself to him completely, which was crazy because by then he knew her. He already loved her. Theirs hadn’t been a traditional courtship, no parents involved. They had met through friends and chosen each other. They had gone on dates, gotten to know each other, made the decision themselves. And there she was in a burqa. It was such a simple gesture, like taking off a shoe. She could have stripped off her dress and stockings first, and it wouldn’t have come close to having that kind of effect. Now I’ll show you my true self, it said. And I want to give it all to you.

  He closed the folder and looked up at Bashir. “It’s never what you think it is, is it?”

  Bashir shook his head grimly.

  At this point, Osama was supposed to go in for the kill. Didn’t you ever just want to put her in her place? Show her who was the boss? Looking across at Bashir, he saw a downtrodden soul. Then he remembered what they’d learned from Farooha; she had painted a very different picture of Bashir.

  “Leila had typhus during your marriage,” Osama said.

  Bashir nodded, for the first time looking anxious.

  “How did you handle that?”

  “Not very well,” he said, his discomfort growing with every second. “I didn’t realize how sick she was until her brother showed up and started threatening to kill me.” Bashir sighed and shut his eyes. “Look, I was working three jobs and barely paying the bills. Leila was spending all of my money on stupid stuff. I just thought she had the flu…” He went quiet. Osama could see that he was torturing himself with the memory. “I may not be the best husband, but it turned out her brother wasn’t any better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s ironic that she went to him for protection when he was the one who beat the shit out of her.”

  Osama tried to hide his surprise. “When was this?”

  “No one told you, did they? That’s because Leila never told anyone. It only happened once. I forget what she did—something about going out when she wasn’t supposed to. But in general they were always fighting.”

  “How often did he hit her?”

  “Only the once, as far as I know, but it was a bad one. She wound up in the hospital with a broken leg. See, Abdulrahman is the kind of guy who’s trying really hard to pretend that he’s a Saudi. He keeps his wife locked up in that prison of a house and he would have kept Leila locked up, too, but she wasn’t afraid of him. I’m pretty sure she went out one day when he told her not to, and he went crazy when he found out. I know—she had lost her camera that day, that’s what happened. Someone had attacked her at the beach.”

  “Her brother said that that’s how she broke her leg.”

  “That’s not what she said.”

  “But if she wasn’t afraid of him, why didn’t she report it to the police?” Osama asked.

  “Because she knew he could make her life miserable. He could send her back to Syria, have her visa revoked. She didn’t want to go back there.”

  “Do you think she married you to be free from him? Because of the visa?”

  “Not really,” Bashir said, “because he could have had my visa revoked at any time. He was my sponsor, too.”

  Osama let this information sink in. Leila had married a man who was dependent on her brother. It was not strange that Abdulrahman should have sponsored Bashir—their parents had been friends for so long that they were practically family—but it made Osama realize just how dependent on her brother Leila had been.

  “Is he the reason you’re having visa problems now?” Osama asked.

  “Yeah. After the divorce, Abdulrahman refused to keep sponsoring me,” Bashir said. “I don’t know what Leila told him about me, but I have the feeling she blamed me for everything, and he was still angry at me because of the typhus. He cut me off. I moved in with my brother, and I’ve been looking for a sponsor ever since.”

  Osama nodded. He had to confirm that Abdulrahman had indeed attacked Leila, but he had the feeling that despite Bashir’s obvious bias against his brother-in-law, the man was telling the truth. “All right,” he said, opening his notebook. “For the record, I’m going to need to know where you were on the day Leila disappeared.”

  28

  Osama remembered shopping for Nuha’s trousseau. His mother had taken him to a lingerie store, and they’d spent three hours in the place. They’d come away with six bags of bras and underwear. If he’d gone home right now and opened Nuha’s dresser drawer, he wouldn’t have been able to tell which of the garments he had bought her. The only thing he remembered about that day was the conversation with his mother. She had explained to him how important lingerie was, how women spent so much time hiding their beauty, and for most of them, marriage made them feel that they were finally getting the chance to show what they’d been hiding. To be sure, they would come to the marriage with their own truckloads of clothing, but it was important to set the tone, his mother said. Let his fiancée know what sort of styles he liked in the bedroom. And yet they’d spent the entire three hours befuddled by choices. What would Nuha prefer? Blue or red? Leather or satin? What kind of woman was she? He hadn’t been entirely sure, but he had made decisions anyway. And later, Nuh
a had been so pleased that she cried. Then she threw a party for her friends to come over and look at all the goods. For a long time he had secretly congratulated himself on tailoring the trousseau so closely to her tastes. Now it crossed his mind that she didn’t wear much of anything to bed, and the lingerie occupied its own dresser in a forgotten corner of the bedroom.

  He was driving back to Abdulrahman’s store. Katya sat in the passenger seat, no doubt wondering why he’d asked her to come along when he was obviously in such an ill-tempered state. But to her credit, she kept quiet and didn’t gaze out the window like some poor banished child. He couldn’t have handled the guilt.

  They pulled into the parking lot in front of the store. Katya made to leave the vehicle but he told her to wait—the first words he’d said to her since they’d gotten into the car. So she nodded and sat back against the seat.

  “By the way,” he said, “do you have a copy of the medical report for Leila’s broken leg?”

  “No.” Katya looked slightly embarrassed. “I never went looking for it. Adara said that Leila’s fractured tibia hadn’t healed properly, so she’d probably never made it to a decent doctor.”

  Osama nodded.

  “Why are you asking?” Katya asked.

  “I think it may have been her brother who attacked her when he discovered she’d gone out that day and lost her camera. Her ex-husband said that she’d told him that.”

  They waited until the call to ‘Asr prayer rang out over the street before going in. When Osama pushed open the front door, one of the clerks saw him and came rushing out from behind the island of cash registers. He went to the front doors in an effort to look as if he were actually going to lock the doors for prayer time. Osama watched the man draw down a metal grate and flip over a sign in the window that said Closed for prayers, Allah Akbar. The man looked around nervously, uncertain what to do next. There were still shoppers lingering among the racks. The clerk looked as if he would like to stay and continue his surveillance of the possible shoplifters; instead, he headed to the back of the store, no doubt to perform his ablutions for Osama’s benefit. Osama said nothing and followed him, Katya trailing quietly behind.

  When they reached the back room, he realized that Katya hadn’t lowered her burqa, and that she was looking around with a confidence that could rival Faiza’s. The thought of Faiza sent him into a black mood, and he pushed through the swinging double doors.

  The back room was quiet. It looked as if Abdulrahman gave his workers prayer breaks. One of the side doors was open, and a faint wisp of cigarette smoke drifted into the room. In the office, Fuad was sitting at the computer typing. Seeing Osama, he nodded nervously and rose to greet him, but when his eyes fell on Katya, he scowled.

  “Detective,” he said, inclining his head slightly and glancing out at the studio floor. He ignored Katya completely. “Please come in. Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “What can I do for you?” Fuad asked.

  “We were hoping to catch Mr. Nawar,” Osama said. “Did I interrupt —” Just then a door against the wall opened and Abdulrahman stepped out from what looked like a bathroom. He was wiping his hands on a towel. The fresh-washed look on his face and forearms suggested that he’d just performed ablutions.

  With surprising speed, Fuad stepped in front of Katya, blocking her from Abdulrahman’s view. He said loudly, “The detective and his assistant are here to see you again.”

  Two thoughts hit Osama at once. First, that Fuad didn’t realize that Katya was not Faiza. And second, that his seeming hostility to her had really been nervousness: he knew his boss was preparing for prayers and would probably be offended, or made “impure,” by the sight of a woman. Osama watched with curiosity. Just how religious was Abdulrahman? Would the glimpse of Katya’s cloak be enough to send him back to perform his ablutions again?

  Abdulrahman faltered. His eyes flickered quickly from Katya’s cloak to Fuad’s face with a look of reproach, as if it were the assistant’s fault for letting a woman into the studio. Then he turned to Osama.

  “Yes, Detective?” he asked curtly. “Is there a problem?”

  “We’d like to ask some more questions,” Osama said, matching his cold tone.

  “Then I trust it can wait until after prayer time?”

  Osama didn’t like this man and would have had no trouble interrupting his schedule, but Abdulrahman was also the sort who would do what he liked, whether it was convenient for anyone else or not.

  In the end, Katya decided the situation. She stepped out from behind Fuad and gazed Abdulrahman square in the face. The man looked back and for a moment seemed prepared to say something sharp, but instead he dropped his towel on a cutting table and ushered them stiffly into the office.

  * * *

  Katya sat on a desk chair to the left of Osama, just behind him, where she could keep an eye on both subjects. She’d had to pull up the chair herself because apparently the assistant, Fuad, expected her to stand. He’d motioned Osama into a seat and then cast a dirty look in her direction, a look that said Why don’t you get out of here, since you’re useless anyway? She’d ignored him. Osama was too focused on Abdulrahman to pay attention, so she sat quietly, still reeling from the suggestion that Abdulrahman had attacked his sister. With all the hostility radiating off him now, he seemed capable of violence.

  She wondered why Osama had even brought her along. He probably knew that bringing a woman would make the men uncomfortable. She dismissed her anger. This was an opportunity she’d said she wanted.

  Abdulrahman sat on the sofa opposite them. She stared blatantly at him. As long as he thought she was an officer, she would gladly play the part. She was really looking for a resemblance to Leila, but she saw only the faintest similarity, in the cast of their chins. Abdulrahman’s face was fleshier, older, and there was none of the quickness of expression she imagined Leila had had. Katya had always believed it was ridiculous for men in arranged marriages to try to determine the personalities and behaviors of their future wives by studying the girls’ brothers, but here she was scrutinizing Abdulrahman in search of a hint to what Leila might have been like.

  He was passionate in his own way. His air of intense discomfort was affecting everyone, most notably Fuad. The assistant couldn’t sit down: he stood by the door as if awaiting instructions, burning off his nervous energy by checking his cell phone, monitoring the men on the studio floor, all the while keeping a sharp eye on his boss’s mood.

  Osama was talking. “Did Leila tell you that she was working on a documentary about the Quran?”

  Instantly, Fuad stiffened. Abdulrahman glared at Osama and shook his head. “I suspect my sister did a lot of things without telling me.”

  “Perhaps she was afraid of your reaction?”

  “That would depend on what she was doing.”

  “The religious-art collection your sister was photographing was actually part of a larger project she was working on. She was interviewing a Western researcher for a documentary that claimed the Quran is not the true and complete word of Allah, rather, that it was altered by the early Muslims.”

  Abdulrahman’s nostrils flared.

  “The documentary was incomplete, but it was enough to give us a sense of what she was doing. Obviously, her work was inflammatory, and if the wrong person were to have found out about it —”

  “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “Did you do something, Mr. Nawar?”

  The silence went on for so long that it began to feel threatening. Fuad was looking at his boss, but Abdulrahman was avoiding his gaze.

  Finally Fuad said, “Leila was always looking for a controversial subject.” Katya and Osama both turned to Fuad. “It didn’t mean that she believed it.”

  Osama turned back to the brother. “I think her cousin Ra’id would disagree.”

  “Ra’id doesn’t know anything,” Abdulrahman growled.

  “So you knew about the documentary?�
�� Katya asked.

  Osama gave a slight twitch, perhaps surprised that she’d finally spoken. Abdulrahman refused to look at her, keeping his gaze on Osama. “I said I know nothing.”

  “Then perhaps Ra’id knows more than you think he does,” Katya suggested.

  Abdulrahman gave a murderous look but still wouldn’t look at her.

  “According to our sources,” Osama said, “you were fighting with Leila quite a bit before she disappeared.”

  “We weren’t fighting.”

  “We have evidence of Leila seeking refuge with friends and being”— Osama consulted his notes—“ ‘shaken’ from these fights.”

  “That had nothing to do with why she disappeared,” Abdulrahman said through clenched teeth.

  “We also have evidence that you were responsible for fracturing her leg.”

  Abdulrahman jerked with fury, nearly throwing the sofa against the wall behind him. “That’s ridiculous!” Fuad rushed over but hesitated, not certain what to do. “Who told you that?” Abdulrahman boomed.

  “Did you hit her that day she came back from the Corniche without her video camera?”

  “That is ridiculous.” The rage on Abdulrahman’s face made Katya’s heart begin to race.

  Osama had slipped into an icy calm. “Did you hit her that day?” he asked coldly.

  “I have never laid a hand on my sister!” he spat. “Never. Do you understand that?”

  “Did her ex-husband tell you that?” Fuad put in calmly. The men looked over at him.

  Abdulrahman was turning red. “That fucking bastard,” he said.

  “It’s not Bashir,” Fuad said. “It’s just that Leila would have needed to tell him that. I presume she was at his store asking for money. She would have wanted to win his sympathy, and she knew how much he hated you.”

  Abdulrahman’s expression slowly revealed a grudging acknowledgment and finally settled into something like gratitude. It was obvious why he kept Fuad around. Even Katya had to admit that it was clever of him to have concluded that about Leila. However, Osama did not seem so swayed.