City of Veils Read online

  The religious police, known as mutaween, have the same powers as normal police. To ensure that conservative standards of conduct are observed, the mutaween harass and arrest women for the following infractions:

  – drinking alcohol

  – wearing trousers or other Western clothing

  – eating in public restaurants

  – driving a car or riding a bicycle

  – dancing, listening to music, or watching movies in public

  – associating with a man who is not a husband or family member

  Women mingling in public with unrelated men may be charged with prostitution, which can be penalized by arrest and death.

  The penalty for drug trafficking is death. Saudis make no exceptions. U.S. officials have NO POWER in Saudi courts to obtain leniency for American citizens in any circumstances.

  When she’d first read this note, she’d been chilled by its severity. She remembered with a sting that when they’d decided to come to Jeddah she’d dreamt about nomads and dark men on horses, swords sheathed in leather, and hawks soaring above their white-turbaned heads. Saudi was romantic, if you were a man.

  She crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash. Now she was back—officially back—and although she’d been home for only twenty minutes, she was already waiting for Eric to return, to come back from the store, back from work, from a world she was afraid to enter without him. Wait, wait some more. Her suitcase was jammed with distractions she’d never engaged in back in the States: cross-stitching, embroidery, knitting needles. She was going to knit in the desert. Someday she’d laugh, but right now it wasn’t funny. Look at that, she thought, I’m even waiting to laugh.

  From the bottom of her purse, she scooped out the remaining handful of junk, and a small piece of plastic appeared on her palm. She threw the junk aside and inspected the thing. It looked like the memory card from a digital camera, but it wasn’t hers. Distractedly, she put the card in her pocket and decided to ask Eric about it when he got back.

  Heavy with dread, Miriam opened the back door and clattered up the staircase to the roof. At least here she could pretend that she was still in the States, in a world that granted her fresh air, sunshine, and her own set of keys. To the east, a pair of stars sparkled blue on the horizon. She leaned against the wall and took a whiff of a night that was heavy with jasmine and the frankincense smoke rolling up from a neighbor’s window. It was a comforting smell. She thought instantly of Sabria, her downstairs neighbor, and how much she enjoyed sitting with her in the smoke-filled room, drinking coffee and talking.

  But as the minutes ticked by, the suffocating heat wove itself around her. She thought again of the American compound—swimming pools sounded like paradise now.

  Five more months.

  She noticed that Eric had hung out his laundry—days ago, judging from the stiffness of the fabrics and the fact that the sun had bleached the top of his shirts. A thump on the other side of the roof made her turn. She saw the neighbor’s roof-access door swing open and a girl’s face peeked out.

  “Sabria!” she said.

  The girl grinned and came rushing over to embrace her. Miriam went forward, stumbling on a clothesline and cursing with a laugh. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  Sabria kissed her cheeks, squeezed her shoulders, and frowned. “You were gone too long! What am I going to do when you leave for good?”

  “You’ll have to come with me.”

  “And leave my family? Are you kidding?” She smirked. Precisely how her family drove her crazy was one of their favorite topics of discussion. Sabria lived downstairs with her parents, six sisters, and a profoundly devout older brother. She was the oldest of the girls, and much of the burden of housework and child-rearing fell on her shoulders, but a few months ago she had cast it off when she took a job working in her aunt’s beauty boutique. Her parents did not approve.

  “We’re just about to leave for my cousin’s wedding,” Sabria said. “Everyone’s going. My parents already left, but I forced my cousin Abdullah to stay behind because I wanted to see you. I thought you’d be home earlier.”

  “That’s so sweet.” Miriam felt an irrational swelling of tears. “We were held up at the airport. Don’t hold up your plans on my account. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes, but I wanted to let you know: I’m getting married next month.”

  “What? To whom?”

  “My cousin Omar.”

  “Congratulations.” Miriam felt her throat constrict. “Is he the one who lives in Riyadh?”

  “Yes, the one I told you about.” Sabria glanced nervously at the clothesline.

  “Are you happy about the wedding?”

  “Yes, I am, it’s just…” She shrugged. “It’s happening so fast.”

  Miriam nodded. She took a dim view of how anxious Sabria’s parents were to marry off their girls.

  She heard a clatter in the kitchen below. “Listen, Eric’s home,” she said. “Can you come down for a few minutes? He brought dinner, and I’m starving.”

  “No, Abdullah’s going to leave without me if I don’t get down there.”

  “Oh, right.” Miriam hugged her again. “Come up when you get back.”

  “I will.” As Sabria trotted back to the door, Miriam was reminded how young she was. Seventeen on the outside and—most of the time, at least—twelve on the inside, with rare and beautiful flashes of maturity.

  “Have a safe trip!” Miriam cried, and a muffled response came up from the stairwell. She smiled and grabbed the laundry bucket. They didn’t have a washer. She cleaned their clothes by hand, and although she complained about the constant housework, deep down she was grateful. It gave her something to do.

  She hastily collected Eric’s laundry—cursing at the clothespins, which had somehow ruined one of his white shirts—and then made her way downstairs.

  The smell of hummus and shawarma wafted out the kitchen door. She dropped the bucket on the counter and went straight to the table, peeling the tinfoil from a take-out tray and dipping her finger in. She tore a slice of pita from a giant round and shoved it in her mouth.

  “Errrk?” She swallowed. “Honey, come eat!”

  She heard no response. “Eric?” A hard swallow. The bug zapper crackled like rounds from a machine gun and she jumped, dropping her bread on the floor. She stooped to retrieve it and took a deep breath. It was probably a lizard; they fried longer than mosquitoes.

  She unwrapped a shawarma and sat down to eat, pleased that the meat was still hot. “I’m eating without you!” She opened a water bottle and took a long drink.

  She heard a noise echoing up the hallway, then the distinctive shuddering of the windows in the kitchen as the building’s front door slammed shut. She set the sandwich on the table and went to the living room.

  The front door was open.

  She crossed the room and peeked out, but the hallway was dark.

  “You left the door open!” She shut the door and headed back to the kitchen but paused to listen. No sound from the bathroom. She went to investigate and found the bathroom door open, the light off. She switched it on and tore back the shower curtain, exposing a meadow of mildew.

  “Eric?” The narrow hallway muted her voice. In the bedroom, her suitcase lay undisturbed on the bed. The table lamp glowed, but a sudden confusion gave her the shivers. She flipped on the overhead light. Checking behind the door, she almost laughed at herself: when was the last time Eric hid behind a door to surprise her—their honeymoon?

  “Eric, are you here?”

  No response. Heading back to the front door, she heard a car starting but decided that the engine was too loud to be theirs. It was probably Abdullah and Sabria leaving for the wedding. She went out the front door and into the men’s sitting room, which overlooked the street. Except for the lamplight filtering in through the shutters, the room was dark. She fumbled for the lights, found a table lamp, and switched it on. The bulb was ancient but it shed enough light for he
r to navigate around the coffee table, over the embroidered pillows and moldy teacups. She peeked out the window. There was no one on the street.

  Don’t panic, she told herself, trying to believe that her anxiety was really about herself, her fears, her claustrophobia. She’d been this way before—edgy, even paranoid, like the time his car had broken down on the freeway and she thought he’d abandoned her for another woman. He’d come home in a taxi to find her sprawled on the sofa, weeping. Miriam Walker, MusD—hear her roar.

  She went back to the kitchen and forced herself to fold his laundry. The shawarma blessed her with an immediate food coma that beat back her panic. He must have gone back to the restaurant for some reason. It was within walking distance. Perhaps he’d left his wallet there. His keys weren’t on the table where he usually left them. He would have taken them to unlock the door—except that he’d forgotten to shut the door. She was going to tease him mercilessly when he got back.

  Four hours later the anxiety returned. By then, she had tried calling his cell phone a dozen times, but it went straight to voice mail, and the frustration of not being able to reach him was only ratcheting up her panic. It was too late to call his friends. She was certain anyway that if he had gone to see them, he would have told her. She kept thinking back to their conversation in the car on the way home, analyzing it for unusual behavior, something that would make it obvious that he had run away. The longer she thought about it, the more her imagination began twisting his words, his expressions, even the meaning of his new blue shirt.

  At one in the morning, she realized she was too exhausted to worry anymore. She sat down on the sofa, where she eventually slept, eyes flicking open every once in a while to gaze at the unlocked, unopened door.

  7

  Every afternoon at around a quarter to five the downtown streets died in the stifling air. Heat rose in waves from the oily pavement and hung, gray and putrid, in the diesel-choked sky. On a quiet side street notable for the proliferation of dry-goods stores that had collected there, jumbling atop one another like honeybees, only the distant sound of a flushing toilet indicated life behind the shuttered windows and closed shop doors. The street, long and narrow, tapered to an ignominious end, where a decaying, lime green grocery store came face to face with a public fountain. Right now, the storefront was completely covered by a large iron grille. The metal bars were black, hot to the touch and sticky with moisture. Behind them stood Nayir Sharqi, waiting to be set free.

  ‘Asr prayers had rung from rooftop speakers twenty minutes ago, and like all good shop owners, this one had promptly pulled down his gates and locked them. Unlike most owners, however, he had then hurried off to the mosque, leaving Nayir in the darkness holding two cans of fava beans and a tin of coffee.

  Normally, Nayir would have avoided such a predicament by being more attentive to the call to prayer, but ‘Asr had sneaked up on him today. And the shop owner had done what he needed to do, locking the store at once in case the religious police should catch him doing business during prayer time. And in case Nayir should be the sort of man who would leave without paying.

  Nayir had used the time to do his own devotion, opening a bottle of Evian and performing his ablutions behind the cash register, where the carpet would soak up his runoff. Then he’d knelt on the hard stone floor right next to a low shelf of packaged tobacco and tried very urgently to turn his mind to prayer, but today his body was only going through the motions while his mind, like a bat, flitted silently and swiftly through a dark cave of thought.

  If there was one thing he’d learned in the past eight months, it was that there was no use trying to conquer his guilt. He had tested every strategy he could think of, but no matter how often he sought guidance from Allah, no matter how fully he felt his convictions, the guilt remained full and fierce.

  Close the door, lower the veil, shut the mouth. His own thoughts about women echoed back to him. Wasn’t that what he had been doing all these months? Shutting himself out? For a blinding second, his eight months of guilt crystallized in this brilliant revelation. His justifications for not calling her were flimsy excuses. His reasoning was reduced to nothing more than an outward show of religiosity, empty of meaning. Wasn’t true Islam about showing love to others? About giving generously and fully, even when it meant giving the last of yourself? Wasn’t true Islam about showing respect? And how was he respecting Katya by never explaining why he had let her drift away? By leaving her to guess? It had been an indecent thing to do.

  But the argument disintegrated right before his eyes, because what would happen if every man took the liberty of “showing love to others” every time he met a woman? What would happen if every man abandoned the dictates of courtesy and respect to a woman’s family just because he could argue that Islam was about charity, and he needed to give love? That was about as stupid as you could get.

  He finished the prayer and his mind returned to his surroundings. A locked cage. A hard stone floor. He pushed himself up and, leaving a bill on the counter for the Evian, the beans, and the coffee, went to the front of the store and stood at the grille. Nothing moved on the street. He tried rattling the cage but there was no one to hear it. Ten minutes later the shop owner returned, looking pleased with himself as he unlocked the gate and lifted the grille with a screech. Nayir left without explanation.

  It took him ten minutes to reach the police building. He was halfway down the block before he noticed that women were coming out of its side entrance. He stopped, ducking into a nearby doorway, and peeked out. The women dispersed quickly, climbing into waiting cars, hustling down the street in pairs. The street was empty again.

  He was moving closer when one more woman emerged. He froze, his stomach dropping all the way to his shoes as he recognized Katya’s walk. Her burqa was down, and she was alone.

  The time was now. He had to act, but he couldn’t. Was it really her? His heart was racing and he felt dizzy. She turned to look down the street and when she saw him, she froze, too. Her eyes locked on his face. He would have given anything to see behind her burqa now, just for a second so he could know what reaction had flashed across her face upon seeing him again after so many months. Her eyes betrayed only a flicker of surprise.

  He went toward her unthinkingly. He noticed that she was clutching her purse, but the rest of her seemed relaxed.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said when he was close enough. She sounded amused, but beneath it he detected nervousness. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  There was something cold in the words, as if she’d simply put him in a drawer and locked him away. He fumbled, fishing for any response but coming up with nothing.

  “How are you, Nayir?”

  “Good.” He had to clear his throat. “I’m good.”

  “You’ve lost weight.”

  He nodded. An expectant silence went by.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” she said hesitantly, with something like a question mark at the end.

  He felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry —” He twitched. Her name had nearly slipped out. It didn’t feel right to say it anymore. “I’m sorry. I came to ask you something.”

  She kept her eyes locked on his, but they showed curiosity. She still wouldn’t lift her burqa, and he had an irrational, frightening urge to reach over and lift it himself. He tucked his hands into his pockets.

  “It’s actually about a friend,” he said. “Who died.”

  All the kindness in her eyes vanished. He felt his chest tighten.

  “I see,” she said curtly.

  The anger in her eyes was unmistakable now. He wanted to say anything to make it right again, but he was attempting to speak a language he didn’t understand, and with it came all the humiliated fumbling of the undereducated. Never had he felt so utterly dumb.

  He blurted out the first thing that came to mind: “I’m only doing this for my uncle.”

  It was clear that it had been the wrong thing to say. She seemed to be tre
mbling beneath her cloak, some low vibration of rage. She took a breath and clutched her purse more tightly, and that’s when he saw it. A ring. On her left hand.

  He looked away, but he couldn’t find anywhere to rest his gaze. The ring was everywhere—a small diamond, an ornate gold band. He saw it on the sidewalk, the buildings, the cars. The silence between them dragged on so painfully that he had no choice but to fill it.

  “You’re engaged now?” he asked, trying for casual and failing miserably. When she didn’t reply, he offered his congratulations.

  Her cell phone rang. She fumbled in her purse and answered it. “Excuse me,” she said and turned away.

  Nayir was lost in a desert memory. This often happened when something blew apart inside him. An overload of emotional currents sent him back to a world where his body was not the earth-ridden, lumbering form that crouched along the sidewalk beneath a blinding sun, but rather a kind of vessel for the expansiveness of the world. Typically, he felt this way only in the desert, where the vastness made him feel smaller than he actually was.

  Omran, his favorite desert guide as a child, had bragged once that he could make the desert sing. He took Nayir a few kilometers outside the camp, to where the dunes lay in a rippling, spotless infinity. They climbed the highest dune, which was so steep that Omran had to rope himself to Nayir to keep the boy from falling and setting off an avalanche.

  When they reached the top, they perched on a narrow swath of sand that formed the upper rim of a magnificent crescent dune. Its great amphitheater was the biggest he’d ever seen. It curved sharply down to a smooth little gully. No prints of any kind broke the wind-stroked surface.

  “No matter what happens,” Omran said, “you stay here. I’ll need you to run and get help if I don’t come back. All right?” Nayir nodded, and Omran bent closer. “You’re about to see magic, so be careful who you tell. You know the words of protection from the djinn?”