Welcome to Dubai (The Traveler) (18 page)

Hamda explained, “I would never ask you to stop living your life, only that you would be more thoughtful about
everything
you choose to do. So as I choose to remain at the house for safety, so should you.”

Instantly, Abdul thought about all of the whispers he had heard concerning his wife’s control over him and her speaking out beyond her place—and he snapped.

“That is ridiculous! You are my
wife!
You do not have to leave for work. But if I were to remain at home, hiding inside of my study, can you imagine what they would say and think of me then?”

“I do not
care
what they think,” Hamda lied in their heated argument.

“Well, I do!” Abdul yelled. “If I did that, I would never be able to leave my
house
again. They already think of me as too liberal of a man. But I will
prove
to them that I am afraid of
no one
and
nothing!”

“Well, then, meet Mohd and his men with yours and settle it,” Hamda challenged her husband.

Abdul contained himself before he said another word or reacted too hastily. He paused and responded, “Maybe I will.”

Hamda was stunned. She did not expect that answer from him, so she stood speechless. Then she heard their son crying from the commotion, and her motherly instincts kicked in.

“Now we’ve disturbed our son from his sleep.”

As soon as Hamda opened their bedroom door to attend to their son in his room, Rafi ran and jumped onto her legs from out in the hallway.

She picked him up and cried, “Oh, I am so sorry, my son. Your father and I were too excited in our discussion.”

Abdul spotted his son and smiled to camouflage the intensity of their argument.

“Yes, I am sorry,” Abdul told them both. He reached out and rubbed his son’s head as Hamda eyed him and smiled back.

“You are forgiven,” she said.

Abdul leaned forward and kissed them both on the forehead. “It will not happen again,” he said.

Nevertheless, he continued to insist,
But I will not agree to be a prisoner inside my own house.

Chapter 18

Ramia looked out of her cousin’s Palm Deira apartment window for about the twentieth time in the past two hours, trying desperately to see what was going on out in the streets that night.

“You did hear those gunshots, right? You heard them?” she asked Basim, who stood behind her in the dark. He had turned off his lights because of Ramia’s insistence upon looking out of the window at the gathered crowd of men, who were out in front of the crime scene building directly up the street from them. He did not want anyone to finger his young cousin as an eyewitness from the window. But there were plenty of people who stared down into the streets that night. It was only natural human curiosity.

“Yes, I heard them,” Basim responded curtly. He would rather she not be so entranced by it all, but she was.

Ramia was more astounded than fearful, though. She couldn’t believe that they were that close to chaos. But while positioned a block away and several stories up from the turmoil on the streets, she felt safe from it all. However, Basim did not feel the same way. He stood inside of his dark apartment behind her and was stone-faced.

“We have to move out of here
next week,”
he promised. “I can no longer have you in this area. I will have to speak to my boss about the necessary move.”

Ramia heard him but did not respond. She remained thrilled by the wonders of her day, including a fun new job, where she had met a very sexy American man staying at the Hilton downtown. She had secretly taken a peek at his drop-off point from the desert tour that evening.

“And where would we move to?” she asked her cousin.

Basim did not know yet. “Maybe the Palm Jumeirah Islands or the city of Sharjah. But I want to remain close to Dubai for work.”

“Yes,” Ramia agreed with an eager nod. She wanted to remain close to Dubai as well. She planned to do much more exploring on her own there. She had been inspired by a new fascination: an American tourist. She even thought of sneaking downtown to the Hilton Dubai Creek that weekend to see if she could accidentally bump into the man.

I know he had an interest in me. I could tell by how many times he looked and attempted to speak to me,
she had told herself a dozen times after leaving her first day of work that evening.

Her youthful thoughts of infatuation with the American and all of the adventures of downtown Dubai became more compelling than the chaos outside of the window, so she broke away from her staring.

“Do you think I will receive a call from the International Suites to work there as well?” she asked Basim breathlessly. “We could both use the extra money.”

Ramia also knew that the International Suites was not that far from the Hilton.

Knowing Ramia well, Basim read her excitement with a pause.

“They could call you, but I may not like you working a night shift there. I like the tourist position much better.”

Basim realized that there were only so many hours in a day, and he considered the hotel positions more degrading for a young woman, particularly with the beauty and intelligence of his cousin. She could learn so much more about international life in her desert tour position, as well as have more to offer people in her daily interactions there.

“I would rather you work the night shifts at the convenience store behind me than at the hotels.”

Ramia frowned and shook it off immediately. Whether they needed the money or not, the last place she wanted to work was behind her cousin at the gas station. So far, after asking his boss several times to hire her, he had not been able to get her a job. But Basim had no idea how nervous his boss would be at having such a young and beautiful woman to work in a store with him during the late hours. Ramia’s stunning beauty could be more of a curse than a blessing in that way.

Nevertheless, she was a young woman, and she had a life to live. So she ignored her cousin’s sarcastic offering and told him, “I want to go ask the hotel management if they would consider me in the early mornings for a part-time job until lunch hour then.”

“What? And how will you get back home? I can take you there, but I have to work tomorrow. I won’t have time to drive you back home and get back to work on time.”

Ramia frowned again and barked, “Basim, I will catch a
cab.
I am not a
child.
Stop treating me like one.”

Basim snapped, “No, you will
not
catch a cab!” He pointed back to his window and asked her, “Do you realize what is going on out there? People have been
murdered.
This is not a game
or
a place for a young woman to travel back and forth alone.”

Ramia blurted, “The United Arab Emirates is one of the safest countries in the Middle East.”

“Not in
this
area,” Basim argued. “We are not the protected
tourists.”

Ramia countered, “Well, I see other women my age who live here every day. And they all do just fine.”

Basim looked at his cousin and suddenly held his tongue. He considered her to be above the other young women who lived there in his district of Palm Deira. He did not honor the work that some of them had chosen to do, but he did not know how to say it without degrading them all.

“Well then, I can remain downtown in Dubai and look for jobs at the malls and shops until you are ready to pick me back up from work.”

Her young and adventurous mind was working fast with counterarguments already prepared.

Basim took the bait and responded, “But you would be there alone for
hours.”

“Yes, in very public places that are even more crowded on the weekends. Or would you have me remain here in this apartment in Deira all day, where three men were killed last night and two in their own apartment.”

The horrific news had quickly spread to everyone in the area.

Basim paused again, acknowledging his cousin’s checkmate of an argument. She actually could be safer while job hunting in downtown Dubai, and since Basim was determined to move them out of the area in less than a week—Allah willing—he
did
feel more comfortable about her spending less time there.

Painstakingly, Basim exhaled and agreed to it with a contemplative nod. “But you are only to remain in the best areas. And you stay inside the malls more than on the streets.”

Ramia grinned. “Of course.”

Her plan had worked beautifully! Then she began to think about what she would wear downtown and to the malls—classy but daring, sexy but respectable, colorful but not loud.

As Basim watched his young cousin smiling away inside the dark room, he knew that he had been duped into something that she wanted very badly. But what could he do about it? He would feel nervous about her either way. However, Ramia was not nervous at all; she was cunning and resilient. Life was life, and people would find ways to live it however they wanted to.

*****

Mohd found his way back to safety and away from Palm Deira. It was only a matter of time before he had worn out his welcome there, and his next location was already prepared and waiting for him.

After midnight, Mohd and seven of his armed men arrived at a warehouse near the industrial park of Jebel Ali on the far side of Dubai, and they pulled into a large garage. They waited inside the van for the garage door to close completely before climbing out.

The warehouse was filled with supply trucks and more than a dozen other armed men, who stood at alert as soon as Mohd appeared before them. They seemed awkward, as if they were confused and did not know what to say. Some of the men were in awe and had never met Mohd.

He nodded and greeted them in Arabic,
“Ahlan wa sahlan.”

Those who spoke Arabic greeted him back, and those who did not nodded back to him.

Mohd looked around the large barren room and spotted a massive dark-green tarp in the far left corner.

As he eyed the tarp with curiosity, one of the men responded to him in English, “Yes, it is all here.” He assumed Mohd wanted to see the supplies that they had gathered there for their mission. So he led the Egyptian leader over to the tarp, where several of the men pulled it back to reveal a collection of updated assault weapons and devices of technology, including several communications system jammers.

Mohd inspected the small black box of antennas in his hands. “Do they work?” he asked the men casually.

They nodded and responded eagerly, “Yes, they do.”

Mohd pulled out a cell phone from his pocket and challenged them. “Let me see it.”

As the wise old man dialed a number, one of the young men in the room worked the electronic jammer, immediately sending his phone into a constant roaming signal. Mohd attempted to dial a second and third number, but it was no use. The phone would not connect. Finally, he read a “no signal” message.

Impressed by it, he grinned, but only slightly. “Good,” he commented with a slow nod. He seemed to be distracted by something else on his mind.

He looked around the large room again and toward an upstairs area that he assumed was for him.

“Yes, your bed and office is there,” the same eager soldier informed him. He then led the wise Egyptian to it.

Before they reached the steps and railing to the room upstairs, Mohd looked around again, absentmindedly.

“Where is Heru?” he asked all of the men.

The room froze for a second, as if no one wanted to speak. Then the lead soldier answered him.

“He went to prepare the location.”

Mohd remained there at the foot of the stairs.

“Will he be returning tonight?”

Again, there was a pause and a dead silence across the room.

The lead soldier took a deep breath, as if he was tortured by his own answer. “I don’t believe so. He wanted to make sure on his own that nothing would go wrong.”

Mohd took a deep breath too and nodded.

Then it is too late,
he told himself. They walked up the stairs to the room in silence. There was a small desk there with two chairs and a computer. Behind the desk and chairs, against the far wall, was a small cot and a pillow to rest, the same as he had in Deira. It was how Mohd liked it—simple.

“Is there anything else you need?” the soldier asked him.

Mohd turned slowly to face him. “I need to be alone to pray.”

“Yes,” the soldier agreed with a nod. He then walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

Mohd proceeded to take off his shoes before he sunk to the floor and crossed his legs with his hands down at his sides, not in the ways of a Muslim, but of Ancient Egypt, where he could meditate with discipline and focus to alleviate his mind and body from stress.

Chapter 19

As all of the facts and new tips began to surface on the murder cases in Deira, Tariq spoke with the UAE police chief about what he knew, including the name of the respected Egyptian immigrant and engineer Mohd Ahmed Nasir.

Many of the police and investigators were still up after midnight, attempting to piece together the events of the evening, particularly after the police had shot and killed the poor laborer from Laos. That caused the heavy hitters to be called back onto the scene.

“Mohd? Did you say Mohd? The Egyptian last lived in this area,” the UAE police chief commented factually. Ali Youssef was a gray-bearded man in his late sixties who looked forward to retiring soon, but only after a solid apprentice with enough wisdom and experience could take over. So he remained sharply dressed in business attire to appear younger and fresher in his tiresome work.

Tariq confirmed his tip. “Yes, but my most recent information was that he lived in Sharjah.”

Ali shook it off. “No, he lives here now. My men thanked Mohd one night a few years ago when he settled another heated dispute in this area. That’s how I know. But what about him? You think Mohd had something to do with these atrocities?”

The chief was doubtful. Mohd had been known as a man of peace.

Tariq grinned and did not want to say more around so many ill-equipped men. He did not want them all to know Abdul Khalif Hassan’s personal business.