City of Veils (13 page)

“Let me give you our address.”

He fumbled for a pen, couldn’t find one, and tried desperately to memorize what she was saying, all the while remaining stuck on that single word
our
. Our address. Me and my father. The gatekeeper.

He was too embarrassed to ask if she had found out anything more about Samir’s friend Qadhi, and she hadn’t offered the information. It remained unspoken, but he imagined the words:
Come and I’ll tell you. Don’t come and you’ll never find out.

Once the phone call was over, he spun a U-turn on the road and went straight back to the marina. He wasn’t sure exactly why he was heading home. He had a whole day before he had to be at her apartment, and getting ready might take as much as fifteen minutes. He just knew that he had to get back to the boat.

Pulling into the parking lot, he saw it at once. The Land Rover was parked just where it had been that morning. His stomach did a simultaneous plunge and whooping leap.
How could they possibly have had the nerve to return it?
And,
Allah, they returned it!

He parked the Jeep beside it and walked around the Rover, peeking in the rear windows. It was indeed the same car. The key was in the ignition, so he took it out and slid it into his pocket, telling himself that he would make at least one more attempt to return it, but not this afternoon. He knew that he would return the Rover again, and he saw just as clearly that they would bring it straight back, at which point it would become a war of attrition. He could not keep giving it back to them without risking offense, and their continued insistence was all the proof he needed that they meant for him to keep it. If he felt guilty about it later, he could always remind himself
They practically forced me to take it
. He wondered if he would feel guilty.

M
iriam sat at the kitchen table, phone at her ear. The consulate was on the other end of the line. They had switched her from one bureaucrat to another, and now she was on hold. On the floor beside her feet, the broken sink disposal was lying in pieces. About that, she wasn’t sure whom to call.

Eric hadn’t been missing for twenty-four hours yet, but with every hour that slipped by, Miriam’s panic grew worse. She hoped that calling the consulate would soothe her nerves.

“Hello?”

It was a woman’s voice, which relieved her. She sounded American, unlike the first two people Miriam had spoken with. She introduced herself and explained her situation.
My husband is missing.

The woman gave a sympathetic mew. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Mrs. Walker. Are you in a dangerous situation right now?”

“Errr, no. I’m at home.”

“Good.” It sounded as if the woman was riffling through paperwork. “First of all, I want to assure you that we’ll do everything we can to help you find your husband.”

“Thank you.” Although skeptical, Miriam felt a small implosion of relief.

“It’s not uncommon for Americans to be picked up by the religious police, even here in Jeddah. Most of the time they don’t know the rules of proper conduct, or they don’t understand the importance of dressing modestly. I’m trying to pull up your file right now, but let me ask you, how long have you and your husband been here?”

“Six months.”

“Ah.” The woman sounded somehow disappointed by this. “And you say that your husband went out to buy groceries when he disappeared?”

“Well, dinner actually. He came back with it—it was takeout from a local
shawarma
place. He left it on the kitchen table and then… I don’t know, I was on the roof. When I came downstairs a few minutes later, he was gone.” This was the part Miriam had dreaded; she could almost hear the woman’s thoughts coming down the line.
Maybe he just walked out on you. That’s not uncommon either.

“I see,” the woman said. Then her voice turned sympathetic. “Tell me something, does your husband own a car?”

“Yes, a truck.”

“Ah. Well, did he take the truck when he went to buy dinner?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think he went to a local place. I recognized the food, and he could easily have walked there.”

“Okay,” the woman said. “Do you know if his car is gone as well?”

“Ah, I’m not sure,” Miriam replied, embarrassed. “He had parked it a couple blocks away, and I can’t remember where that was.”

“I see.” The woman’s voice was kind and reassuring. “Mrs. Walker, it would help us to know if anything like this has ever happened before.” Hearing Miriam’s silence, the woman went on: “I mean, have there been unexplained absences —”

“Yes,” Miriam blurted, “he’s gone missing before, but he always managed to get in touch with me. One time he was picked up by the religious police. Another time he got stuck in the desert.” A childish panic was rising in her throat as she spoke.

“Okay, Mrs. Walker,” the woman said kindly. “We’ll look into this immediately. But bear in mind, it’s entirely possible that the religious police have picked him up again, and they’re just holding him longer than they did the last time. I know this must be very frustrating for you, but believe me, the best course of action is for us to locate him through official channels. And I’m confident that we will. The best thing you can do is try not to panic.”

The woman was speaking to her as if she were a child, but Miriam was grateful anyway.

“Meanwhile,” the woman went on, “is there anything you need—money? food? a ride somewhere?”

Miriam hesitated. “No. No, thanks. I’ve got some cash and there’s a store nearby.”

The woman continued asking questions about Eric’s job, his schedule, and the people he spent time with. It was comforting to answer questions, as if somehow the simple acknowledgment of facts would bring Eric back, a cozy delusion that was reinforced when the woman said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Walker, we take disappearances very seriously. Most of the time it turns out to be a misunderstanding. I’m sure we’ll get your husband back.”

M
iriam spent the rest of the afternoon washing the shirts that Eric hadn’t managed to clean himself and hanging them on the clothesline on the roof. With a flicker of guilt, she remembered the new shirt he’d worn at the airport: he had run through so much laundry that he was forced to wear something one of his clients had given him.

The conversation with the consulate had improved her mood for a few hours, but now in the silence, the doubt was creeping back in. She was determined to stay busy. When she finished the shirts, she went downstairs, bundled up the garbage, and dumped it out the kitchen window, into the alley where most of the neighbors dumped their trash. Women were discouraged from making the short trip to the dumpster at the end of the street. According to Sabria, she and her sisters were the only ones in the building who took their trash to the dumpster. She listened, waiting for the inevitable clatter, but when her bag hit the junk pile, it sounded flat, as if it had hit a mattress.

She stuck her head out the window. The smell was enough to fur her tongue, but she held her breath and leaned farther out, craning to see past the stairs’ metal railing to the bed of garbage below. As far as she could tell, it looked the same as always, yellow plastic shopping bags spilling with leftovers, empty cans and bottles, orange rinds.

The refrigerator was empty. She’d eaten the last can of fava beans for breakfast, and she knew better than to drink the desalinated seawater that came out of the tap—sometimes it was the color of apple juice. She crept to the front room and put her ear to the door. She listened for a long time but heard only the distant sound of mothers screaming at their children and the muted roar of the occasional car.

It was getting harder to ignore her anger. Without Eric, the apartment became nearly intolerable. They really ought to have moved into the American compound, and right now their excuses for not doing so seemed ridiculously flimsy. It was too expensive and they’d come here to
save
money. It was a high-value terrorist target—but there hadn’t been an attack there yet. Most of all, it was not the “real” Saudi Arabia. It was, Miriam reflected, a place Eric would have enjoyed, but that didn’t suit Abdullah at all. Unfortunately, Abdullah was still married to Miriam.

More than that, their whole reason for being in Jeddah seemed flimsy. Eric’s job was not unique to Saudi Arabia, although perhaps the paycheck was. He could be a bodyguard anywhere. They were here because he wanted to be here. Maybe he didn’t really know why, but considering how much she’d put up with, he’d better not have walked out on her.

She picked up her cell phone and called the taxi service. She and Eric had an agreement that they wouldn’t spend money on taxis, but fifteen minutes later, it felt devilishly good to slip into the air-conditioned car.
I had to find you!
she would probably blather later with tears in her eyes. Or, if she was feeling tougher,
You weren’t home.
With a shrug.
I had to get groceries.
But it wasn’t to the grocery store that they were headed. The driver knew the compound she requested—Arabian Gates—and half an hour later, they were approaching the front entrance. The rebelliousness of being in a taxi felt so good that it quelled her anger.

The taxi inched forward, and she glanced at the street. The backseat windows were heavily tinted. In fact the taxi service sold itself as a company for “decent” women, its motto
Our windows are darker
. Peering through the filmy shield, Miriam saw that they were approaching the compound gates. Like the others she had seen, it looked like a prison, with its street blockades, blast walls, concertina wire, video cameras dangling from every post, and armed guards patrolling the gates. It took them fifteen minutes to get clearance from security and another fifteen minutes before Patty showed up, looking concerned. Miriam paid the taxi driver and followed Patty to her villa.

C
onversations with Patty had always been awkward. Miriam blamed Eric for this. He was the one who’d told her about Jacob’s philandering. She and Eric had just moved to Saudi, and Eric had only just met the Marxes when Jacob confessed that he preferred Arab women, virgins if he could get them, although any prostitute would do. Back then, it had disgusted Eric as well, but it hadn’t stopped him from hanging out with Jacob. Miriam, on the other hand, had found it impossible to face Patty.

She recognized the irony of coming to Patty now for information, and she had to beat down an upsurge of guilt. Miriam entered the kitchen and saw a plate of fresh fried doughnuts on the kitchen table. The air smelled of warm cooking grease and powdered sugar. “Have one!” Patty said nonchalantly. Miriam wanted to stuff the whole plate into her mouth. While Patty bustled around making coffee, Miriam seated herself carefully at the table and took a delicate bite of pastry. It was scrumptious. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Trying as hard as she could to keep up a light conversation, she ate three more doughnuts in quick succession.

“You poor thing,” Patty finally said. “When was the last time you ate?” Not waiting for an answer, she began pulling plates of food from the refrigerator, offering up a buffet of leftovers, and Miriam, ravenous, began to eat.

“Miriam, I’m sure it’s
nothing
.” Patty was not quite the panicked woman she had been on the phone, but her attempts to calm Miriam’s fears were, perversely, stoking them. “He’s probably just been picked up by the religious police. I’m sure they’ll let him go.” Patty poured her a cup of coffee and set it on the table. “You know, this happens to me all the time,” she said brightly. Miriam stopped chewing. “Okay, well, not
all
the time, but it
has
happened.”

“What has happened?” Miriam asked.

Patty came to the table and sat down, cradling a cup of coffee. She wore a look that she probably thought was sly but that made her seem grandmotherly and quaint. “A couple of years ago, we arranged to have our anniversary dinner at a posh new restaurant downtown. I had to talk him into it, you know, since Jacob’s idea of a nice dinner is something over a campfire. Preferably something he killed himself.” She took a sip of coffee and narrowed her eyes, obviously enjoying drawing out the suspense. “So he was supposed to come straight home from work and pick me up. We had a seven o’clock reservation, but he didn’t show up. By eight o’clock I had to call the restaurant to apologize. Meanwhile, I had called his work, his cell, half a dozen friends, and compound security on top of it, but nobody knew where he was! You know, he didn’t come home that night at all. So I know exactly how you feel. It’s horrible not knowing and fearing the worst.”

“What happened to him?” Miriam asked.

“Oh! He was fine. Turned out the police had pulled him over for running a red light. Well, you know Jacob. He hadn’t run the red light, but when he told the officer that, the officer got angry. I think Jacob lost his temper a little bit. In any event, they hauled him off to jail. He spent the night in prison for a traffic violation, can you believe it?”

Miriam nodded, mindlessly eating. She wanted to believe that something like that had happened to Eric, but somehow she couldn’t.

“How long was he gone?” she asked.

“Only a day,” Patty said. “But you know, a few months later, we found out from a guy who’s lived here for something like twenty years that at this one traffic light where Jacob was pulled over—guess what? The police can actually control the timing of the light! So they sit at the corner and switch the light whenever a foreigner drives through the intersection. I mean, they’re
targeting
Americans.”