The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  He began looking at other women, not in a sexual way (well, not only in a sexual way), but as emissaries from that other world. He tried not to be completely selfish about it: If he got to walk a different path, so did Fadwa, and so he always gave her a husband who was loving and patient and kind and who, most of all, had the wisdom Mustafa lacked, the knowledge of how to make her happy. That being stipulated, his most detailed fantasies all focused on his half of the equation.

  A woman in line at the post office; the secretaries at Halal; a mother at the supermarket wrangling three healthy children . . . What if, what if. Or a woman he spied waiting for a bus, sixty if she were a day and obviously plain-looking even in youth, but just as obviously content with her life. What would it be like to be married to such contentment, to see it every morning and every evening, to share a bed with it? What if, what if. And as the fantasy continued to take shape: I wish, I wish.

  Such wishing was harmless, he told himself, so long as he remembered it wasn’t reality. He had the wife he had and not another. He wasn’t going to leave Fadwa; he’d sworn that oath a thousand times already and he meant it, even if she didn’t believe him. Nor would he become like Samir, who’d broken off two wedding engagements because of his freely confessed inability to stop womanizing.

  But maybe he wasn’t careful enough about keeping his fantasies to himself. Or maybe God wanted to test his resolve. One morning at breakfast Fadwa started telling him about the previous night’s homily in church, which had concerned the prophet Ibrahim’s wife Sarah and her servant, Hagar . . .

  Mustafa was only pretending to pay attention, so it was the silence that followed Fadwa’s words rather than the words themselves that caused him to look up. Fadwa was at the kitchen sink with her back to him, standing rigid as though awaiting a physical blow.

  “What did you just say?” Mustafa asked.

  “I said, maybe you should take a second wife. Then you could have children, and I—”

  “My God,” said Mustafa, his bewilderment turning instantly to rage. “My God, Fadwa, what sort of madness are those Christians filling your head with?”

  He stormed out of the house. Fadwa followed, calling his name, but he was through the front door and into his car before she could catch him.

  But he couldn’t outrace the knowledge of who he was really angry at. Not Fadwa, for making the suggestion. Himself, for being tempted by it.

  The dead man’s name was Ghazi al Tikriti. He was a mid-level Baathist who managed a string of rat cellars and a semi-legitimate nightclub in Rusafa. On the evening in question he’d left his car in a no-parking zone for an hour while he went to have dinner; he returned to find a ticket on his windshield and a surprise package wired to his ignition.

  Mustafa was dropping Fadwa off at Umm Isa’s church when he got the call. “It’s a murder,” he told Fadwa. “I’ll be home late. Can you—”

  “I’ll find a ride.” She got out without kissing him goodbye.

  Samir and a homicide detective named Zagros were already at the crime scene. A group of Baghdad PD uniforms stood by the rope line, ogling the car—a brand-new Afrit Turbo—and holding a high-spirited debate about how much the corpse would affect its blue-book value.

  Mustafa was surprised that the vehicle was still intact. “I thought you said he got blown up.”

  “He did,” Samir replied. “Somebody replaced the air bag in the steering column with a pack of ball bearings and some extra propellant. Think shotgun.”

  “Clever piece of work,” said Zagros, who was crouched by the open driver’s door. “It looks like they unscrewed the dome light to keep him from noticing the tampering. Or maybe that was to get him to lean in closer when he put his key in . . .”

  “What about the parking ticket? Have you tracked down the cop who issued it?”

  Samir pointed to one of the smugger-looking bystanders. “He claims he didn’t see anything suspicious. But wouldn’t you know, he’s also from Tikrit. We’re running him through the computer now, to see how close a relative he is of Saddam’s. And whether he’s got any auto shop experience.”

  “Here’s the victim’s wallet,” Zagros said, standing up. “The driver’s license matches the registration, but we’ll need to check fingerprints to be absolutely sure.”

  A slip of paper with a woman’s name and phone number was tucked into the billfold. “Noor,” Mustafa read. The paper smelled faintly of perfume. “What do you think, a girlfriend?”

  “Or a prostitute,” said Zagros.

  “I recognize the phone exchange. It’s the BU campus.”

  “So? A whore can’t seek higher education? This is the city of the future, my friend.”

  Mustafa turned to Samir. “We should get an address and go talk to her.”

  “What for?” Samir looked over at the rope line. “Ten to one our killer’s right here.”

  “Yes, and a thousand to one he never talks.”

  “You think the girl will?”

  No, thought Mustafa, but it’s a more diverting waste of time. And it will take longer. “Indulge me.”

  “My mother had one of these,” Mustafa said, lifting the statue of Bastet—black kitty-cat with an ankh on its collar—from the knickknack shelf on which it sat. “She brought it back from her honeymoon.”

  “Mine was a gift from my father,” Noor said. “He told me he’d stolen it for me from Cleopatra’s tomb.” She smiled. “I was eleven before I realized the gold was painted on.”

  “Your father was an archaeologist?”

  “An amateur treasure-hunter. Not a very successful one. He did better with abandoned storage lockers than ancient tombs.”

  “And you?” Mustafa said, returning Bastet to her shelf. “What are you studying at university?”

  “Ah, nothing,” said Noor, with the coy look of revealing a naughty secret. “I’m not a student.”

  “No? I thought this was student housing.”

  “It’s cheap housing,” Noor said. “I couldn’t afford such a view off-campus.” The apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up, had an unobstructed view across the river. Mustafa could see the twin towers in the distance, rising towards a full moon. “It’s supposed to be a student apartment,” Noor conceded, “but I have a special arrangement with Umm Banat.”

  “Your landlady?” Mustafa pictured the old crone who’d answered the buzzer downstairs. The building was not just student-only but women-only, and Umm Banat had looked upon Mustafa and Samir as potential despoilers of virtue; their Halal badges had only barely sufficed to gain them admittance. “If you convinced that woman to break the rules for you, you must be quite the charmer.”

  “Oh, I can be,” Noor said. “When I want to.”

  She was tall. In heels she would have been as tall as Mustafa, and even in the silk slippers she was currently wearing, she had to tilt her head up only slightly to look him in the eye. She did look him in the eye, her gaze frank and open and relaxed, unintimidated by the presence, at this late hour, of two strangers in her home, policemen who had yet to state their business.

  She wasn’t a great beauty. Her face, a mix (he would later learn) of Egyptian, Berber, and Spanish features, was off somehow, but off in an interesting way. Returning her gaze, he had to struggle not to become distracted—by her look, her manner, and by rogue thoughts about what it would be like to embrace a woman nearly his size. Fadwa was short.

  “So,” he asked next, “where do you work?”

  “Al Jazeera,” she said, smiling again—either at his visible effort to stay focused or simply because she liked smiling. “I do story research for Mesopotamia This Week. And once in a while I freelance for FOX, if they have an out-of-town crew that needs a guide or a translator.”

  “Jazeera and FOX,” Mustafa said. “I didn’t know it was possible to work for both at once.”

  “Ah, it’s like juggling two boyfriends,” Noor replied. “You just have to be careful not to let them in the same room together.”

  �
��You have experience juggling boyfriends, do you?” said Samir—the first words he had spoken since their arrival. While Mustafa bantered with Noor, he’d made a slow circuit of the apartment, touching things at random, looking for incriminating evidence or some other antidote to his boredom. Now in the kitchen, less a separate room than an extension of the living area, he reached into the open cabinet above the gas range and brought down a pair of champagne glasses.

  “Uh-oh,” Noor said. “Now I’m in trouble. You’ve found my drug paraphernalia.” A bit of current-events humor: Earlier that year, a junior POG House member had introduced legislation to ban drinking vessels “designed specifically for the consumption of illegal beverages.” Although the bill had never made it out of committee, the press had gotten wind of it, and it had since become a running gag.

  Samir, trying to come off as though it were no laughing matter: “If I keep looking, will I find a bottle to go with these?”

  “I think I will choose not to incriminate myself by answering that,” Noor said good-naturedly. Glancing sideways at Mustafa: “At least until I know you better . . . Now I don’t wish to be rude to such charming gentlemen, but what is it you are here for? Not to search my pantry, surely.”

  “No, we’re here about this,” Mustafa said, holding out the paper they’d found in Ghazi’s wallet. Noor’s fingertips brushed his as she took it.

  “This is my phone number,” Noor said, “and my handwriting, but I don’t remember . . . Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  She bit her lower lip. “This is about the car, isn’t it?”

  “The car?” Samir said. He set the champagne glasses on the kitchen counter and turned towards her. “What car?”

  “Well,” Noor said, focusing on Mustafa. “This man—”

  “Ghazi al Tikriti,” Mustafa said.

  “—yes, he came to Al Jazeera a few days ago to be interviewed, and while he was waiting to be called into the studio he chatted me up. While we were talking, I mentioned I was looking for a new car, something a little sporty—”

  “Why would you mention that to him?”

  She shrugged. “It just came up in the conversation. And he said, you know, he had some friends who could get cars, good cars, very cheaply . . .”

  Samir let out a rude laugh, then covered his mouth to stifle a yawn.

  “Did you know this man was a gangster?” Mustafa asked her.

  “Well,” Noor said. “He didn’t introduce himself that way of course, but—”

  “But you knew. So you must also have known, or suspected, that he was offering to get you a stolen car.”

  “I knew the deal would be no questions asked.” She sighed. “And I know it was stupid, but I do really want a car, so I gave him my number . . . But how did you get it? Did you arrest him for something?”

  Mustafa told her what had happened. Noor was taken aback—the more so when Samir jumped in with the details of just how Ghazi had met his end—but it was clear from her reaction that she’d not only had nothing to do with the murder, she was also telling the truth about having just met the man. Ghazi’s death was not a personal loss to her, the way a lover’s death would be.

  She said: “It’s a pity he got killed, of course—”

  “Not really,” said Samir.

  “—but I don’t know how I can help you.”

  “You say he came in to do an interview,” Mustafa said. “Do you know what the interview was about?”

  “No. You think it has something to do with why he was killed?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “I could give you the name and number of the producer who handled the interview.”

  “Please,” Mustafa said. He pointed to the slip with her home number on it. “Why don’t you just write it on the back of that paper?”

  “Of course.” Her lips curved in a knowing smile. “I’ll give you my work number too.”

  “That would be most helpful.”

  She jotted down the two numbers and handed the paper back to him. Then her smile faltered and she asked: “Should I be worried? About my safety, I mean.”

  Samir said: “A woman living alone, who invites criminals to call her at home? No, I’m sure you’ll live a long full life.”

  “I doubt the men who killed Ghazi would care about you,” Mustafa said. “But here, take one of my cards . . . If anyone bothers you, you can call me.” He should have stopped there—should have stopped sooner, in fact—but added: “Halal periodically holds auctions of seized property, including cars. The daughter of a treasure-hunter might find a bargain there. I could notify you of the next auction.”

  “Thank you,” Noor said. “Yes, I would like that.” Samir, now standing at the apartment door and anxious to go, cleared his throat noisily.

  “Right then,” Mustafa said. “Good night.” But as he turned to leave he paused and stared into the kitchen.

  “What is it?” Noor asked.

  “There is a baby bottle on top of your refrigerator. You have a child?”

  “Ah, no,” Noor said. “My friend Hawwa left that here.”

  “Ah,” Mustafa said. Then: “Do you want children?” The question just popped out of his mouth, and Mustafa, mortified, was aware of Samir shooting him a long strange look from the doorway.

  But Noor was amused by the query. “Not tonight,” she said laughing. “One day, certainly . . . But I am in no great hurry.” She went on laughing, looking at him in that frank way she had, and Mustafa laughed too, shaking his head, feeling like the fool that he in fact was.

  Samir cleared his throat again. “Can we go now?”

  That night was the beginning of it, the end of it as well really, because although there were still many moments afterwards when Mustafa could have chosen to act differently, he had, on some fundamental level, made up his mind. The devil had whispered in his ear; he’d listened; the rest was just details. Even the surprise windfall from Wajid’s IPO offering, which Mustafa would willfully interpret as evidence that God wanted him to pursue this fantasy, was just another step on a path he had already started down.

  Now, departing the House of Wisdom, he felt the old remorse tugging at him. Rather than return to headquarters with Samir and Amal, he told them to go on without him. “I’ll be back later.”

  “Where are you going?” Amal asked, and Samir said, with far too much good humor, “To see a woman about a car, I bet.”

  “You know, Samir,” Mustafa said, “you have a bigger mouth than Wajid sometimes.”

  “Mustafa . . .”

  “Bah!” Mustafa flung up his hand in a rude gesture and stalked off.

  The condominium he’d bought Noor as a bridal payment was in a building several blocks away. Mustafa had not been inside for several years. Noor had banished him, tired, she said, of being treated as an unindicted coconspirator in Fadwa’s death. Mustafa didn’t blame her, but neither could he bring himself to let her go. Instead of granting her the divorce she wanted, he’d allowed their marriage to continue on in limbo. Every now and again, when he was in the neighborhood and his conscience was preying on him, he’d come stand in her building courtyard awhile, trying to muster the words that would justify ringing the buzzer.

  Today all the curtains in Noor’s windows were drawn, a sure sign she was away—probably on assignment for FOX, which had hired her full-time.

  “Your wife is not here.”

  Idris was sitting in a shady corner of the courtyard with a full tea service arranged on a table in front of him, his casual demeanor suggesting that he’d just happened to choose this spot for some late-morning refreshment. It was a nice bit of stagecraft, Mustafa thought; he recognized the tea set as having come from a café just across the street, but even so, Idris’s people must have had to hustle to set this scene.

  “Your wife is not here,” Idris repeated. “Would you like to know where she is? And with whom?”

  The appeal to jealousy not the best opener, though. “Is Al Qaeda offering marri
age counseling now?”

  “Mock if you wish. I’ve kept all my wives.”

  “High walls help with that no doubt.” Mustafa took a seat and waited while Idris poured him a cup of tea. “I assume you are here to warn me off the investigation.”

  “We both know you can’t drop it now that the president’s involved,” Idris said. “But you would be wise not to pursue it too diligently.”

  “Speaking of things we both know, that sort of wisdom isn’t my strong point.”

  “Yes, I’d already concluded that threatening you would be counterproductive.” Idris regarded him brightly over his teacup. “What were the other options, again? Delaying tactics, bribery, and extortion?”

  Ah, thought Mustafa, now that really isn’t smart. I already suspected the office was bugged, and confirming my paranoia does not impress me. But perhaps you’re too prideful to realize that.

  He said: “Try bribery. I’m curious to hear what inducement you would offer.”

  “A return to righteousness,” Idris said instantly. “And the peace of mind that goes with it.”

  Mustafa smiled. “You can give me righteousness?”

  “Do you remember how we met, Mustafa?”

  “Yes, I remember it very well. We were in the schoolyard. You and your gang were picking on Samir and that other boy, the one with the stutter, what was his name?”

  “Abd al Rahman.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes,” Idris said, “and you stepped up to defend them.”

  “For what little good it did. You beat up all three of us, as I recall.”

  “Of course we did. We were bigger and stronger. You knew we would beat you. But you stepped up anyway, without hesitation.”

  “And you find this admirable?” Mustafa said.

  “To act without fear is an aspect of righteousness.” Idris poured himself more tea, then went on: “You know, this theory of Farouk’s, that guilt over the death of your wife has made you suicidal and reckless, I don’t think it’s true. I think you have always been reckless.”

  “I ask again: You find this admirable?”

  “You have lost your way,” Idris said. “You have taken a wrong turning and you are not now where you should be. You know this in your heart. But to return to God’s path is a simple act of will, and you have a strong will. You could be a formidable holy warrior, if you chose. We could help you.”