ARAB (14 page)

Chapter Eleven

The sun was still a few degrees above the warehouses when Bashir asked the farmer to stop the cart. “Here,” he said, tapping the farmer’s ragged sleeve. “I’ll get off here.”

They were outside a row of small houses on a dirt road in Abu Qir, a fishing village east of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast. His friend, Foad Kishk, an engineer at the nearby naval shipyard, lived in a two-story house just down a narrow lane. Bashir had been here many times, lived with Foad briefly while attending college.

“Your companionship has been a pleasure, friend,” the farmer said, wiping sweat off his face, grinning.

“Thank you. You have been very kind.”

“Take care of that foot.”

“I will.”

“
Es
Salaam Aleiku.”

“And peace be with you,” Bashir responded.

He felt baked. The earth was an oven.

He looked around disheartened at trash and garbage littering the road. The air smelled of chemical odors from fertilizer plants up wind. Although home to several famous seafood restaurants, this was a filthy village. He remembered bringing a girl from the university to the beach here, hoping for a beautiful afternoon, only to find the storied white beach stinking of sewage that flowed openly over the sand.

He hoped to find Foad at home. He dreaded spending time with Foad’s mother, a toothless old lady who mumbled and moped around the small cluttered apartment, suffering some kind of dementia. She would sit in the corner of the room mumbling incoherently, occasionally breaking into laughter. When Foad had tried to move her out of this squalid village, she had screamed and banged her head on the wall and refused to budge. Both Foad’s sisters had moved out. His father had died years ago. There was only Foad to look after her.

Bashir found his friend in an empty lot, head and chest under the raised hood of a pickup truck.

“What gives?” he said in English, a greeting from the old days.

Foad raised a hand to the underside of the hood and backed out, not smiling, not laughing, his face gleaming with sweat. Foad was a robust man, usually playful. But not now. “Get in the house!” he said, taking Bashir’s arm, hurrying him across the street into the narrow doorway of his building.

“What’s wrong?” Bashir said.

“The police. They’re looking for you,” pushing Bashir ahead of him past a staircase into a room in back—a shop that smelled of oil and burnt rubber. A grimy window looked out onto a stained fence. Walls were crammed with tools and shelves of supplies, the floor crowded with pipes and pumps.

Foad closed the door, his eyes wide with distress. “What have you done?”

“Nothing!”

“The police were here.”

“The police?”

“They think you’re in the area. What have you done?”

“Nothing! I swear. I’ve done nothing! How would they know I am here?”

“You’ll have to hide. You’ll have to get away. You can’t stay here.”

“You sure it was the police?”

“They were in uniform. They came in a cruiser. Of course I’m sure.”

He had grown a beard and mustache. Although they hadn’t met in more than a year, they had kept in touch by phone. He looked older, the hair above his forehead thinner. But the chemistry was the same, the feelings of affection.

“Can you get me something to eat? I’m starved,” Bashir said.

Foad pointed at Bashir’s foot. “You’ve been hurt?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Here, sit, sit,” He pulled a chair from under the workbench. “I just baked a chicken. Beer all right?”

“I would love it,” Bashir said. He held onto Foad’s arm. “What did they say?”

“You know how they are. They explained nothing. They asked for you. That’s all. Have you been here? Stuff like that. Why are they looking for you?”

He was a generous, unselfish man. The worry on his face was for Bashir, not for himself. They had met years ago at a United Nations camp for refugees where Foad was a volunteer counselor. They had been friends ever since. It was Foad who had helped him become a mechanic.

“I swear, Foad. I’ll leave. I don’t want to give you trouble.”

“I can hide you until tonight,” Foad said. “We’ll get you away.”

He made Bashir promise not to leave while he went upstairs for food.

“Do you have some heavy socks. I hate to ask.”

“How did that happen?”

“I’ll tell you when you come back.”

And later, while eating chicken and drinking cold beer, he told Foad what he had gone through.

“But I thought Faisal Ibrahim liked you.”

“I’ve been kidding myself. I wanted to believe he had given up all that criminal stuff. He’s a dying man. I thought he wanted to make peace.”

“You thought he had gone religious?” Foad laughed, skin wrinkling outside his eyes. “Faisal Ibrahim? We talking about the same guy?”

Bashir shrugged. Foad watched him remove two socks and a soiled bandage from his foot, bathe his foot and wrap it in a clean towel. Foad secured the towel with duct tape.

“You ought to have a doctor look at that.”

“I’ll be all right,” Bashir said. He shook a pill from the vial of antibiotics, swallowed it with cold beer.

Later over cigarettes and coffee, they talked about Faisal and Bashir’s now shattered plan to take over the arms trading.

“I see him now as an embittered old man. He never respected me. I was never anything special to him. I know he wants me to kill someone. It’s how they do it. They try to break your spirit.” He gave the implausibility of that a sheepish giggle.

“Assassin? You?”

“What else?”

“It can’t be that,” Foad said, laughing. “He probably just wants to punish you for that Istanbul fiasco.” He was perched on a stool at the workbench, dragging on a cigarette. “You’re the last man on earth anyone would pick to do a killing. You won’t even step on cockroaches,” amusement lingering in his eyes. “I can’t picture you in Istanbul trying to sneak one past some British agents. You’re a
geda,
a regular guy, not one of these crazies!”

“I thought they were Germans,” Bashir said, joining in the laughter, feeling better now that he had eaten, now that he was with his friend.

“But none of that explains what the police want,” Foad said. “Maybe just a follow-up on that other stuff—about the girl. Do they know you worked for Faisal Ibrahim? Do they know he’s in the country?”

“That has to be it. Maybe they think I can lead them to him. But why come here?”

“They came here before, remember? About the daughter of Aziz al-Khalid. Can’t Uthman al-Ajani protect you? He has big connections, you said.”

“He’s too vulnerable. I’m nothing to him. He can get other pilots.”

“You take too many chances, Bashir.”

“Maybe they’ve found out that Faisal Ibrahim is in Cairo. Maybe they think I know where he is.”

“You should avoid people like that, Bashir. The police could hold you in custody for months. They don’t have to prove anything anymore, ever since Sadat.”

“So what can I do?”

Foad suddenly got up. “Wait here a minute. I just thought of something.”

He left the shop and was gone ten minutes. He came back carrying a wooden crutch. “This will help,” he said.

It was old. The padding on the arm piece was worn.

“Thanks. Where’d you get this?”

“A guy down the street.”

“He doesn’t need it?”

“Not any more. He’s dead.” He lowered himself onto the stool at the bench, got a cigarette from a pack and put flame to it. “I’ll call this guy who owes me. I just remembered he’s going down the coast, I think to Algeria.”

“I don’t want to go there.”

“No, no. He’ll drop you off.”

“I don’t have a passport.”

“You won’t need it. You won’t leave the country.”

He lifted his Vodafone from a drawer and went outside.

When Foad stepped back into the shop, he said, “It’s done. He’ll pick you up tonight. He’s a shrimper. It’s a good-sized boat.”

“And what will this cost you?”

“Nothing. I told you, he owes me.”

“Tonight?” with sinking heart. “I don’t know, Foad. How can I trust this man? Why not take me somewhere in your truck. I could find a hotel room.”

“The truck’s not running. The engine froze up. You got money? I could give you some.”

“I have some cash. I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

Sitting there watching his friend, Bashir realized that, although Foad was worried for him, he was also concerned about himself. If the police found him harboring Bashir, he could lose his job. He could go to jail. Who would look after his mother?

“You know how many old woman sitting in windows watching what goes on around here?” Foad said. “There’s any one of them would call the cops. They’d love to give me trouble. They think my mother’s a witch.” That brought a spasm of giggles. “So do I,” and the two of them rocked in laughter. “So we’ll sit here a while and shoot the shit. But it’s too dangerous to stay here. He shook his head and laughed. “An assassin? You?”

“I never should have told that lie,” Bashir said.

*

That evening, long after nightfall, the two friends were on the beach dragging a dingy down the sand under softly illuminated clouds that hovered over the distant city. The air smelled of sewage and dead fish and the salty sea.

Bashir had put the crutch into the small boat and was limping in dry sand, then in wet sand, then in warm sea water.

“How you doing?” Foad yelled as they pushed the boat into shallow waves.

“No problem,” Bashir said.

“Get in,” Foad said, suddenly alarmed. “Look out there! It’s them!”

Bashir saw several fixed red and white lights with one blue light coming toward them. The blue light was blinking on and off.

“Get in, get in!” Foad yelled. “They won’t wait!”

As Bashir pulled himself over the rail of the boat, he saw a flash of headlights way down the road near a graveyard of abandoned fellucas. A spotlight swept the sand. Foad rammed the dingy stern first into the waves, pitching Bashir to his knees, banging his head on the rowing thwart.

“Go!” Foad yelled.

“It’s the police!”

“Never mind! Grab the oars! Get out there! They won’t wait for you!”

Up to his waist in water, Foad pulled the dingy around, heading it outward, giving it a shove just as Bashir was changing seats. Bashir teetered in the rocking boat, nearly going over the side. Foad rushed to grab his leg and steady him onto the rower’s seat. He told him to push the oars, blades first, out through the thole pins.

“Go!” Foad yelled, giving the boat a final shove.

The automobile headlights now were shining directly down the beach. Someone was running toward them yelling and waving arms.

As Bashir pulled on the oars, he watched Foad wade ashore, then run from the lights. The yelling man told him to halt. Foad came back into the lights, hands in the air. They were now no more than shadows moving slowly up the sand into the glare of the headlights.

Bashir hated himself for bringing this on his friend. But it was more important now than before that he get away. If he were caught and the police were looking for Faisal Ibrahim or something worse, they would put Foad in jail for obstruction.

His arms ached as he pulled on the heavy oars, his good foot braced against the stern seat. The trawler was coming close. He thought he heard someone from the darkness yelling at him.

Now he could make out only distant images on the beach, shadows moving in front of the headlights. He saw a red flash and heard a snapping sound like a firecracker. He couldn’t tell who was shooting, but he knew Foad didn’t have a gun.

His oar struck something. A light shined on him. Behind the light someone yelled in Arabic.

“Stand up! Reach up!”

Two men grabbed his arms and lifted him out of the dingy.

“My crutch!” he yelled, falling against the deckhouse. He scrambled to the rail but could see nothing. The dingy had drifted off. He saw red flashes on the beach, shadows moving across the headlights.

As the trawler surged forward, Bashir’s weight went onto his bandaged foot. He grabbed the rail. Worried about Foad, he looked back at the beach, two columns of light from headlights shined across the sand toward the water.

“What’s happening in there?” one of the crewmen asked.

Bashir was too frightened to answer.

The men tugged him into the open doorway of the deckhouse, an air-conditioned cabin ten by twenty feet made mostly of plywood.

When he told the crewmen he couldn’t walk without his crutch, they carried him forward and up a step into a small wheelhouse where a man in a Greek sailor’s cap, presumably the captain, was perched on a stool at the ship’s wheel.

“I couldn’t see nothing back there,” he said. “What the hell was going on? Somebody shooting?”

“I don’t know,” Bashir said. “It had nothing to do with me.”

The man didn’t believe him but wasn’t greatly interested. He was a clone of Anwar Sadat—the same brown face, the same eyes, the same slanty forehead, everything but the famed prayer callous.

“How much money d’you bring me?”

“I lost everything back there,” Bashir said, staring at dirt under the man’s fingernails, a smudged tattoo on his forearm. “He told me you were paid.”

The trawler was rolling on ground swells and he had to grab the wheel to steady himself.

“See what’s in his pockets, Ahmed,” the captain told one of the men.

The man found a wallet, removed cash and handed it to the captain. In another pocket he found the vial of antibiotics.

The captain didn’t hesitate. “Throw that shit overboard.”

“Wait! It’s my medicine!”

But in five long steps Ahmed was outside the cabin.

“Drugs!” the captain roared. “You bring drugs on my boat?”

“It’s medicine for my foot! I have an infection!”

The captain didn’t even glance at the bandaged foot.

“You’re a naughty boy,” Ahmed said, standing below the step looking up at Bashir, grinning.

“You got a gun?” the captain asked.

“I don’t have anything,” Bashir said. What kind of morons was he dealing with?