City of Veils Read online

  Someone cut him off and he honked angrily, speeding up to tailgate the reckless driver. Then he realized what he was doing and slowed down. Allah, he prayed, guide me from this anger. I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know how to cure it.

  But another voice struggled for space in his head. It said, You know exactly how to cure it. This anger is a punishment for your coldness toward Katya. You did to her exactly what Fatimah did to you!

  It wasn’t true, of course. The situation wasn’t as simple as that. Fatimah and he had been introduced through a mutual friend for the express purpose of courtship. It turned out that Fatimah was being courted by other men as well, and she chose her future husband without ever telling Nayir what she was up to. But Katya was different. They hadn’t been courting; they had been solving a crime. They had had to work together, and any closeness they experienced had been grounded in their thoughtlessness and sin.

  Then why did this separation hurt so much?

  Because I want a wife, he told himself.

  No matter which way he thought of it, nothing changed the fact that being with Katya was a zina crime. The Prophet Mohammed had said: Not one of you should meet a woman alone unless she is accompanied by a relative. Did injunctions come any clearer than that? In case there was any doubt, the Prophet had also said: Whenever a man is alone with a woman, Satan is the third among them. Thinking this, Nayir couldn’t help picturing her poor escort, Ahmad, who had sat in the Ferris-wheel cabin behind them at the Funfair on their one real date.

  Back at his boat, he had set a pot of water on the stove before he realized that hot tea was the last thing he wanted. He went into the bedroom to change and found himself staring dumbly at the porthole. He regretted telling Samir that he would go to the coroner’s. He could just as easily call and speak to an examiner. It wasn’t as if he had to be there in person.

  The past few weeks had been nothing but humid, restless nights full of longing. The worst agony came when she broke into his dreams. The days were no better, time stretching as long and empty as the desert. And no one wanted to go to the desert. The Saudis had hunkered down for the summer, taking refuge in their air-conditioned sitting rooms, their private swimming pools and cool shopping malls.

  Before going to bed, he performed istiqara, the recitation of special prayers before sleep to produce an answer in a dream. He had never tried it before, but Imam Hadi had recommended it to him once, telling Nayir, “Sometimes you have to search very seriously for the answers you need. Allah will not make it easy for you.” The istiqara was no anxious bedtime prayer, but a cleansing, altering-of-consciousness-before-falling-unconscious method of praying that could produce an answer of the highest precision. According to Imam Hadi, it was the process that had assisted Niels Bohr in his discovery of the atomic structure and that had helped René Descartes formulate the scientific method. Nayir figured that such a powerful tool ought to help him through the rather modest matter of deciding whether to go to the coroner’s office in the morning.

  Just before dawn, he dreamt he was in a gigantic room full of sweets. There were plates of baklava, Jordan almonds, Turkish delight. The more he looked, the more there was to eat: dates and nuts caked in sugar crystals and dipped in honey, glazed beignets waiting in a patient row, sherbets that never melted. Painfully hungry, Nayir sat on the stone floor and ate the sweets on every side while a dusting of powdered sugar drifted over him like snow. He ate and ate until he was sick, and then he went to the corner to vomit.

  It didn’t take Niels Bohr–level intelligence to interpret the meaning of that particular dream: he was in grave danger of indulging himself. The answer was no.

  6

  Miriam was sitting on a bench against the wall, feet pulled up, arms curled around herself. The airport air was chilly, and now she was shivering and afraid, and hating herself for it. She had no idea how much time had gone by. An hour, two hours? She couldn’t remember when they’d brought her in, and it was too much trouble to figure it out. She’d tried calling Eric on her cell phone a dozen times, but he hadn’t answered. So she waited. She couldn’t call the neighbors or her friends; Eric was the only one who could give her permission to enter the country.

  The only person who came into the room was an airport worker. He brought a bottle of water and asked if there was anything she needed. Tampons, she wanted to say. A side of pork and a bottle of wine. But she’d said no and gone back to staring at the walls, realizing only later that he hadn’t offered anything to the other women in the room.

  After a while, someone came to pick up the other women and Miriam was left alone. Now she was wondering which was worse: being worried about Eric or about herself. She felt like a child again, the one feeling she hated above all others. Everything about this country was designed to infantilize women. She’d said so a hundred times. But it hadn’t changed anything.

  She sat on the bench for what felt like another hour. But damn me to hell if I’m going to check my watch. She would not resort to an open display of waiting. To the world—even one composed of four blank walls—she was here by choice. Someone outside was waiting for her.

  Finally the door opened; the guard poked his head inside and motioned her out with a wiggle of his hand. She took her time standing up, righting her suitcase, adjusting her cloak, and making sure the burqa wasn’t going to slip off her nose. She glanced at the door and saw a sign she’d missed before. It said in English Unclaimed Women.

  When she came into the hall, Eric was standing beside the guard. He was a whole foot taller than the officer, and he stood in his typical position when dealing with shorter people, shoulders hunched, head bowed, one hand compulsively reaching up to run through his close-cropped blond hair, all of which made him seem confused and slightly lost, which was seldom truly the case. Right now he looked upset about something. She wanted to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the guard. He was also wearing a new shirt—indigo blue, not his typical color. The silky fabric reminded her of Saudi men.

  The guard shifted his machine gun to the other shoulder and put a final signature on a piece of paper, which he handed to Eric along with his passport and work permit. They traded her like runners passing a baton: Now it’s yours—run! Eric grabbed her suitcase, clutched her hand. They hurried out of the building, through the glass doors and onto the street, where the Ford pickup sat parked at the curb. The air hit her like a slap. It was like opening an oven to take out a pie, except that this pie was made of diesel fumes and dust. She gagged and pressed her burqa to her nose.

  Eric heaved the suitcase into the trunk and Miriam stumbled into the passenger seat, careful not to hit her head on the frame. Once she shut the door, the climate relaxed, as if someone had drawn a curtain on the world. He started the car. The air inside was still slightly cool from his drive to the airport, and when the AC came on, she turned the vents to blow directly at her face and heaved a sigh of relief. Eric spun a lazy arc into the opposite lane, heading back to the freeway.

  “So… double-checking here.” He glanced in her direction. “You are my wife?”

  She took off her burqa. “Your Stepford wife. You know, the one you left for airport security to handle.”

  “Jesus, Miriam,” he whispered, running a hand through his hair. He took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’m really glad you’re back.”

  “What. Happened.” She knew she was about to lose her temper, but she was determined to hold off as long as she could.

  He looked abashed. It took him a moment to speak. “I got the time mixed up. Miriam, I’m —”

  “You forgot the time?”

  “I was so busy at work…” He trailed off, lamely. “Please forgive me. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

  You’re damn right it won’t, she thought. But despite herself, she couldn’t stay angry. She was too relieved to see him. She turned to the window and t
ried to calm herself down. Traffic was flowing smoothly; the streets were whizzing by.

  Taking a deep breath, she said, “So how’ve you been?”

  “The usual. How was your trip?” he asked, attempting to soften her up.

  “Good,” she said. Unable to stop herself, she added, “Too short.”

  He wasn’t going to take the bait. “I missed you. A month is too long.”

  “Mmmmh.”

  He took her hand, surprising her. “But I managed to find a second wife, so it wasn’t so bad.”

  “Oh?” She gave a half smile; she’d play along. “Hence the new shirt.”

  “Actually, one of my clients gave it to me. His wife’s family owns a fabric bazaar in Riyadh. This client is one of these hotshot princes who wants a bodyguard just so he can feel important.”

  It galled her that Eric’s work wasn’t earth-shatteringly important; that she was putting up with everything here so he could guard one of Saudi Arabia’s five hundred princes, and one who didn’t need protection in the first place.

  “Anyway, my new wife,” he went on teasingly. “The good news is, she’s Saudi, and she does all the cooking and cleaning, so now you’re off the hook.” He shot her a sly look. “I’m saving you for other things.”

  “Well, you know, I am your kept woman.”

  Eric hit the brakes, veered onto the shoulder, and cut dramatically across a rocky stretch of sand, stopping beside a row of scrub. His fists gripped the wheel, and for a moment she thought she’d gone too far.

  Leaning over, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Don’t be angry at me anymore,” he whispered. “It’s only five more months, and then we’re going back. I promise.”

  She shut her eyes. She wanted to tell him that it wasn’t her dread of the next five months, it was what had already happened in the previous six, the fear, the frustration, the constant worry. This country was slowly crippling their marriage, and she was afraid that by the time they got home, it would be too late.

  But she’d already said these things. He’d already failed to understand them. She leaned back against the seat and said the words that had been echoing in her mind for months: “I’d really just like to get home.”

  They drove the rest of the way in darkness, punctuated by the occasional pink neon sign announcing all-night shawarma parlors by the side of the road. Miriam’s stomach grumbled for food, but she didn’t want to stop.

  Disorientation gripped her as the truck turned onto the road that led to their neighborhood. From the outside, it was a stranger’s land, a man’s land. Her knowledge of it was limited to the walls of her building and the occasional brisk walk to the grocery store.

  Now she saw the view that she didn’t often get, a sprawling neighborhood teeming with immigrants from Sudan, Somalia, and other Muslim countries, men who spent their days picking trash from the streets—but not in their own part of town. There were Saudis, too, in their white robes and scarves. A young man wearing a baseball cap over his headscarf walked past their car and spit near the fender. Miriam grimaced and thought that these men spit too much to be descended from people who believed in conserving body fluids. But these weren’t Bedouin, and this wasn’t the desert. This was Jeddah, humid port, stewing in the endless moisture of the sea.

  When they’d first moved into their apartment, Eric had convinced her that it was safer than living on a Western compound. But the unspoken reason that they lived here was that he hated the segregation of Americans. He respected Muslim culture and wanted to be a part of it, at least while they were here. He spoke Arabic from his years in the military, and two tours in Iraq had taught him that there was more to the Muslim way of life than a handful of extremists and some hookah smoke. It went against everything he believed in to cloister himself in an English-speaking compound, even if it was the only place where women could wander around freely, walk their poodles, and lounge in their swimming pools.

  In the beginning, she had pushed hard to live on a compound, arguing that he could see all the city he liked, while she could spend time in more familiar territory. But he wouldn’t have it. According to him, there were two types of compounds. The bigger ones were enormous, with upwards of five hundred homes and all the amenities an American could hope to have, including shopping complexes for military personnel. But why live in Saudi Arabia if you were just going to rent a slice of America? The smaller compounds had a wider variety of people, even Muslims, but they weren’t reliably safe. Ever since the bombings in Riyadh in 2003, all compounds were required to have heightened security—that is, until some of the smaller ones began evicting their Western tenants. If they got rid of the American and European residents, they didn’t have to pay for the security anymore. Two friends of Eric’s had been evicted in the past six months and been forced to move to more expensive homes across town. So that was the choice—living in mock-America, or living somewhere more integrated where you might be kicked out for being American. Miriam would have liked to live at the sprawling Arabian Gates compound, because whether it was fake or not, she wanted some freedom.

  “It’s one of the biggest al-Qaeda targets in Jeddah,” he had told her. “We can’t live there.”

  The truck turned onto a narrow street, a dusty splinter, slowing down as they approached their building. It was much like its neighbors, boxy and stucco white, except that theirs was the tallest on the block; a plaster wall enclosed the roof, adding an extra ten feet of height. Black wooden panels shuttered every window, and the front door, studded with upholstery tacks, looked as if it could resist a tank.

  They drove past. It was always difficult to find parking on the little street, but especially at night. It took an effort of will for Miriam to stop herself from griping about it. Instead she stared numbly out the window as they crept through the streets, first circling their block, then the surrounding blocks one by one. Eric approached the problem methodically, eliminating one block at a time. After only a few minutes she was utterly lost and couldn’t remember in which direction their apartment lay. All the streets ran together. Some were full of homes, others full of shops, all unfamiliar at night.

  Finally, they parked in the middle of a block. Miriam climbed out of the car and a dull, black pain spread behind her eyes. She was deeply exhausted. As they walked back to the apartment, she tried to prepare for the shock of confinement. When Eric was at work, she found it difficult to leave the house. There was a time when he’d encouraged her to get out more often—“for your own good,” he’d say—but she’d learned from experience that it was a terrible idea.

  “You’re American,” he said once. “They won’t bother you.”

  “I’m a woman. That’s all that counts.”

  Early on, every time she left the house, she drew the neighbors’ attention. Hearing footsteps in the hall, they poked their veiled faces out the door and warned her that unescorted women could be picked up by the religious police and sent to jail. They had problems with the religious police, they said; it would be twice as bad for a Western woman!

  At least that’s what she thought they said. Talking with most of the neighbors was a game of pantomime and guessing. Miriam thanked them and went out anyway. On the street, she felt safe and terrified by turns. Some days she could wander freely, going where she liked as long as she wore her cloak and headscarf, and kept her burqa at the ready in case she started to feel too exposed. Sometimes people stared blatantly, even occasionally stopping to gawk at her. Sometimes women would greet her politely. But on other days she would encounter resistance. Men would notice that she was out alone, and they would stop her by whistling and even standing in front of her, blocking her passage. They would tell her to go home. They warned her that it wasn’t safe to be out. She believed them. Even though she was never arrested as her neighbors had promised, she felt more and more unsafe as the weeks went by. She began to think that it was only a matter of time before something horrible happened.

  They finally reached the bui
lding and ascended the wide marble staircase. She stopped at the second-floor landing to listen for noises from the Assad household, but it seemed they’d gone out—probably to a relative’s wedding or funeral. The women seldom left the house at night for any other reasons.

  Miriam followed Eric up the stairs. Before turning the key, he admitted that he hadn’t had time to clean.

  “You haven’t cleaned for a month?”

  “Well, I did do some work.”

  She slid through the door and glanced around at the bare white walls, the cold stone floors. Truth was, there wasn’t much to clean. While Eric dragged her suitcase into the bedroom, she wandered into the kitchen. Except for a can of fava beans and some stale pita bread, the cupboard was emptier than she’d left it, and for a moment it seemed unfamiliar, someone else’s kitchen. Paint curled from the cabinets. The stove, thick with grease, wore a bonnet of carcinogens and barbecue scum. Eric had written “biohazard” on the dirty oven window. Jerk, she thought, forcing a smile. Once white, the linoleum looked like cauliflower mold, its tiles guttered with rivers of grime.

  Eric appeared in the doorway. “I’m going for food.”

  “That’s okay, I’m not that hungry.”

  “I always know when you’re hungry.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his keys, pointed them at her. “You start chewing your lip. Leave the door locked. I’ll be right back.”

  She watched him leave. “Hurry back,” she said, but he was already gone.

  Miriam inverted her purse on the table and sorted through the junk. Receipts, bus tickets. She tossed out candy wrappers and American pennies, and extracted a sheet of folded paper that she’d received from the consulate when they’d given her a visa. It was a State Department warning. She’d read it before, but she scanned it again to refresh her memory.

  American women should exercise extreme caution in matters concerning personal security. Maintain a low profile, reduce travel in the kingdom, and report any suspicious activity to the U.S. Embassy at once.