Finding Nouf

by Zoë Ferraris

  He'd spent his morning prayers meditating. The Shrawis were too modest, too private to appreciate a display of condolence. It had to be something useful and quiet. As he packed up his equipment, loaded his Jeep, and drove back into the city, he rummaged his thoughts for the perfect gesture, but the exhaustion of the past weeks was taking its toll. It was only when Jeddah came into view that his energy began to return, and with it a tentative idea. Nouf's body might still be at the coroner's. The Shrawi sons would have just returned from the desert themselves; they would be distraught and exhausted. They would probably send servants to pick up the body, or perhaps someone from the mosque. How degrading to think of the parade of strangers' hands and eyes that had already swept over her corpse. Would the family not prefer to have someone close to them handle Nouf's final trip home?

  From the Jeep he phoned Othman and fumbled through the question: Would you need—would it be all right—I thought I might help, if she's still at the coroner's...?

  "Thank you so much," Othman said quietly. "It would be an enormous help."

  The relief in his voice prompted Nayir to say, "Just tell me what to do."

  Now staring at the bay window's intricate latticework, his body weary but his mind perversely growing sharper as the minutes ticked by, Nayir confronted the less pleasant reasons he'd come. Morbid curiosity. The need for a sense of closure. A desire to prove himself capable of something. It was the selfishness of this last reason that weighed on him most.

  The family is waiting.

  Flicking his miswak in the gutter, he marshaled himself and entered the building only to find another set of stairs. He descended these with both hands pressed firmly to the wall. After the nuclear white of the day, the darkness was sudden and total.

  Once his eyes adjusted, he saw a security guard reading at his desk. The sight of the plain brown uniform and the surly face above it unsettled him. This was the building's real security. Slicing and prodding a dead human body was forbidden by law, and while the government quietly sanctioned autopsies, there would always be vigilantes hunting for un-Muslim behavior.

  Seeing Nayir, the guard narrowed his eyes. Nayir approached the desk and looked behind the guard, down a single long hallway that was dimly lit with fluorescent lights. "I'm here to pick up a body." He fished in his pocket for the official release form he'd received from one of the Shrawi servants that afternoon. He handed it to the guard.

  The guard studied the paper carefully, folded it, and handed it back. "She's down the hall," he said.

  "Which...?"

  The man raised an eyebrow and pointed behind him to the only corridor in view. Nayir nodded. He tried to relax. He wiped the sweat from his neck and approached a pair of swing doors at the end of the hall. When he opened them, the smell hit him like a slap: ammonia, death, and blood, and something else just as foul. Forcing a swallow, he thought he could taste sulfur from the brimstone that the Bedouin sometimes used to purify departing souls. No, he thought, that's my imagination. The room was sterile and bright. In the center stood a medical examiner bent over a body on the table. He was a lanky man with a cap of gray hair a shade darker than his lab coat. He looked up. "Salaam aleikum'.'

  "W'aleikum as-salaam." Nayir felt dizzy and tried not to look at the body. He turned his gaze to the cabinets, packed with textbooks, gauze, empty glass jars.

  "Can I help you?" the examiner asked.

  "I understand you have the girl who—"

  "Are you family?"

  "No, I'm not. No." Irrationally, Nayir felt like a pervert. He had the urge to explain that he was here out of duty, not desire. The air was hot and close; he could smell the corpse and it was making him sick. The edges of his vision flickered with darkness. He took a deep breath and turned to see a blood-smeared smock hanging on the wall.

  "Then you're not allowed in here," the examiner said.

  "I have permission to see the body. I have to see—I mean, I have to pick it up." He ran a hand down his face. "I'm here to pick up the body."

  The examiner dropped his scalpel in a silver tray and regarded Nayir with frustration. "We're not done with it. You're just going to have to wait."

  Nayir was vaguely relieved. "Before I take her, I'd like to make sure that it's really her."

  "It's her." The examiner, seeing Nayir's reluctance, came around the table. "Let me see your papers. Nouf Ash-Shrawi, right?" He took the papers from Nayir and read them carefully. "Yes, she's the one." He motioned to the table behind him.

  Nayir hesitated, uncomfortable with his next remark. "I'd like to see her face."

  The examiner stared at him, and Nayir realized that he'd crossed a line, that the examiner now thought he was a pervert even if he did have the right papers.

  "Only because it's a matter of principle," Nayir said.

  "She's already been identified."

  Nayir read the man's nametag: Abdullah Maamoon, Medical Examiner. He was just about to speak again when the door opened behind them and a woman entered the room. There would of course be female examiners to handle the female corpses, but seeing one in the flesh was a shock. She wore a white lab coat and a hijab, a black scarf, on her hair. Because her face was exposed, he averted his gaze, blushing as he did so. Uncertain where to rest his eyes, he let them fall on the plastic ID tag that hung around her neck: Katya Hijazi, Laboratory Technician. He was surprised to see her first name on the tag—it should have been as private as her hair or the shape of her body—and it made her seem defiant.

  Worried that the older man might think he was staring at her breasts, Nayir dropped his gaze to the floor, catching sight of two shapely feet ensconced in bright blue sandals. He blushed again and turned away from her, trying not to turn completely but just enough to indicate that he wouldn't look at her.

  The woman's shoulders drooped slightly, which seemed to indicate that she'd noticed Nayir's discomfort and was disappointed by it. Reaching into her pocket, she took out a burqa, draped it over her face, and fastened the Velcro at the back of her head. Pleased by the action but still uncomfortable with her presence in the room, Nayir watched her from the periphery of his vision. Once the burqa was on and it was all right to glance at her, he dared a peek, but a slit in the burqa showed her eyes, and she looked right at him. He quickly glanced away, disturbed by her forwardness.

  "Salaam aleikum, Dr. Maamoon," she said, approaching the examiner. Her voice was challenging. "You haven't been giving Mr. Sharqi a hard time, have you?"

  Nayir hoped his confusion didn't show. How did she know his name? And what sort of woman wielded a strange man's name so confidently? The guard must have told her. But why?

  The examiner was piqued by her forwardness and grumbled unintelligibly. She must be a new employee, not yet used to dealing with the more traditional old man.

  "Oh, good," the woman said, "because he's here to pick up the body."

  Maamoon shot Nayir a suspicious look. "So he said."

  Miss Hijazi turned to Nayir. She was standing right next to him, a little closer than was appropriate, he thought. "How are you going to transport her?" she asked.

  He hesitated, unwilling to speak directly to her. He glanced down and caught a glimpse of her hand. She was wearing a wedding band, or perhaps an engagement ring; he couldn't tell. The fact that she had a husband made her presence here slightly easier to take—but only slightly.

  Nayir spoke to the examiner. "I have a Jeep parked outside, but I'd like to identify the body before I leave with it."

  "All right," Miss Hijazi answered. Nayir thought it was brazen of her to talk when she was not being spoken to, but her professional manner surprised him. Women, even the forward ones, usually regarded him as an animal of some sort—his tall and hulking frame, his deep, rough voice. But this one, although she stepped carefully around him, seemed at ease. "We've already identified her, you know."

  Nayir's stomach flopped. She seemed determined to start a conversation with him, but he kept his eyes on Maamoon, wishing th
e old man would talk to him. Instead he stood there looking suspicious. "I want to see the body myself," Nayir said, thinking, At this point, all I really want to do is leave.

  "She's on the table now. You can have a look."

  Miss Hijazi led him to the metal table where Nouf's body lay and pulled the sheet from her face. When Nayir looked down, he felt another wave of dizziness but remembered to breathe. At first he didn't see any resemblance to Nouf, but as he studied the contours of her face, he began to see it—the small, careful mouth, the high Shrawi cheekbones.

  "I think it's her." He coughed as the smell rose up and engulfed him. Poor girl. Her face was half charred from the sun, and the other half was a ghastly gray. She must have been lying on her side for days; the burns were extreme. The gray side, however, was spattered with mud. "Thank you," he said, stepping back.

  Miss Hijazi inspected Nouf's head. Nayir noticed something sticky in her hair just above the left ear. He turned to Maamoon and asked, "Is that blood?"

  Maamoon simply shrugged while Miss Hijazi continued inspecting the wound. "Yes," she answered finally. "There's bruising. It looks like someone hit her pretty hard. And there's something else..." With tweezers, she plucked a tiny sliver from the wound and held it up. "Looks like a wood chip."

  Nayir felt a strange agitation. He kept his eyes on the examiner. "Was that wound the cause of death?"

  "No," Maamoon said. "She drowned."

  A silence ensued, but Maamoon, his eyes flashing with professional delight, pointed to an x-ray on the wall that showed Nouf's chest. Nayir studied the x-ray, not sure what to make of it. "She drowned?"

  "That's what I said. A classic case. Foam in the mouth. Her lungs and stomach were filled with water."

  The simplicity of "drowning" cracked open a complexity of prospects. At least, when a woman drowns in the largest sand desert in the world, there ought to be an equally remarkable explanation. "If she drowned," Nayir said, "then how do you explain the wound on her head?"

  The examiner bristled. "She must have bumped it."

  "While she was drowning?"

  "Yes, while she was drowning."

  During this exchange Miss Hijazi continued to probe Nouf's scalp. Nayir noticed that her hands were unsteady. He dared a look at her eyes and saw a frown. "If this wound is from the drowning," she said finally, "then there must be other wounds like it on her body."

  Nayir marveled at her audacity and wondered how the examiner could put up with it. He glanced at her nametag again, noticing this time that she was a lab technician, not a medical examiner. What exactly was the difference?

  "It rained a week ago, did it not?" Maamoon asked.

  "Almost two weeks ago," Nayir answered. "The day she disappeared there was rain. How long has she been dead?"

  "It's difficult to say."

  Nayir could feel the woman's gaze on his face, but he kept his attention on Maamoon. "Is it possible to say whether the bump on her head occurred when she was still alive?"

  "Yes," the woman said.

  Nayir waited for an elaboration, but she didn't provide one. A silence ensued, and Miss Hijazi gently moved the sheet from Nouf's arms. When she turned her attention to a series of bruises on Nouf's wrists and hands, Nayir allowed himself to watch. She swabbed one of the lesions. "Looks like sand," she said. "There's something beneath her fingernails too. These look like defensive wounds."

  "No, no, no," Maamoon clucked, pushing her aside and pointing to one of Nouf's wrists. "Those marks are from a camel's reins. Don't you see the pattern?"

  Nayir studied the wounds more closely. They weren't uniform, and Nouf had scratches on her fingertips as well. "They look like defensive wounds to me."

  Maamoon grew stern. "I said they're from leather straps."

  Miss Hijazi placed a swab in a glass tube and set it gently on the counter. Turning back to the body, she paused for a moment and then gingerly lifted the edge of the gray sheet that covered Nouf's legs. She held it in the air and studied the body for a long time. Nayir watched her eyes move over it, as carefully and sensitively as her hands, and it surprised him to see that she was touched by this death. There was a sadness in her eyes that spoke of personal loss, and he wondered if she had known the family and if she was the one who had informed them.

  Finally she laid down the sheet. When she spoke, her voice was questioning, reluctant, a sharp contrast to her words. "I see no evidence that she touched a camel. No hairs on the body, no abrasions on her thighs." Maamoon tried to interrupt her, but she continued. "I don't have much experience estimating time of death, but I'd guess she's been dead at least a week."

  "Of course!" Maamoon snapped. "Considering how often it rains in the desert, I'd say she died when it rained. Here's what happened. The wadis filled up, she was crossing the desert through one of those wadis, and shack! it started to rain. She tried to swim, but a flash flood carried her away. She banged her head; she hurt her wrists. Yanni, she drowned."

  Nayir studied the examiner. "But she had a camel."

  "So what?" he cried. "Camels can't swim!"

  Which was completely untrue. Gorillas were the only animals incapable of swimming. Camels, despite infrequent contact with water, happened to excel at the sport. Nayir had seen it himself at the Dromedary Rehabilitation Center in Dubai, where the therapists encouraged their patients into pools to heal broken bones and soothe arthritic joints. Once in the water, the camels frolicked like children and even grew angry when the sessions ended. Why, they seemed to ask, did Allah craft our bodies to live out of water?

  "Camels swim," he said. "And the camel would have saved her life." Nayir fumbled in his pocket for another miswak and stuffed it into his mouth, grateful for the spicy taste, which took away some of the odor of death. He chewed for a while and circled the table. Nouf's right hand stuck out from under the sheet. The wrist was splattered with brownish mud. It seemed to have been baked into her skin by the heat. "What is this?" he asked.

  "It looks like mud," Miss Hijazi said. She scraped samples of the skin into a jar.

  Maamoon snatched the jar. "She drowned, my friends. Mr. Sharqi, are you convinced that it's her?"

  Nayir stopped chewing. "Yes, it's her. But that's strange about the camel."

  Maamoon shrugged. "Maybe they got separated, say, before she entered the wadi?"

  "No one loses a camel in the desert. That's suicide."

  "I did not suggest suicide!" the old man yelped.

  "Neither did I," Nayir said.

  The examiner narrowed his eyes. "Don't even say it. It's ridiculous! You think she was murdered?" Nayir raised his eyebrows.

  "How? I mean ... how?" Maamoon choked on his spit and coughed. "Someone would have to wait for the particular condition of this woman being in a wadi, alone, in the middle of the desert, without any camel, and it would have to rain and there would also have to be a flash flood at the very same time. And then this killer, who is by Allah a very patient man, would have to find a way to drown her in the flood without actually drowning himself. Who would do that? Why not just stab her and be done with it?"

  No one replied. Nayir stole a glance at Miss Hijazi's eyes and found them inscrutable. The examiner was right—murder by drowning seemed far-fetched. Had Nouf found a water source and died in her desperation to take a drink? Perhaps she'd entered a flooded wadi. The rain had been strong, and he remembered being grateful for it, thinking it might just give her a chance to survive.

  "Is there anything else?" the old man snapped, glaring at Nayir.

  "I just wondered if everything else was okay," he said. "With the body, I mean ... was she okay? "

  Maamoon grimaced. Nayir realized that the examiner felt deeply pressured by his question. It gave him an odd feeling of power, even if it was only the result of the authority conferred upon him by the family.

  "I know what you're asking," the examiner said, "and we haven't gotten that far. Although she is not actually a medical examiner, Miss Hijazi"—he said the name pe
joratively—"is here to do an ultrasound." Abruptly he whipped back the sheet to reveal Nouf's whole body. Nayir blanched and lowered his eyes, but it didn't prevent him from catching sight of everything—the hips, the legs, the pubis. Searching desperately for somewhere to rest his gaze, he caught sight of a tube of jelly, a syringe, and a metal instrument that looked dangerously like a phallus.

  "Thank you," he said abruptly. "I think I'll wait outside." As he turned to the door, he stopped. The room was spinning. He sucked in a chestful of air and bent over, hands gripping his knees, forehead pounding. His heart felt like a stone in a can. He imagined that single chasm between the girl's legs, but that moment bled strangely into the next, in which he found himself lying on the floor, head thumping.

  "Mr. Sharqi!" Maamoon was kneeling beside him, holding a bottle of camphor to his nose. "Mr. Sharqi, Allah protect you, you're an honest man."

  "Water," Nayir croaked.

  "I'll get you some!" Shaking his head, Maamoon stood up and left the room.

  Nayir struggled to his feet, pausing as he stood to make sure he wouldn't faint again.

  Miss Hijazi seemed upset. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sharqi."

  He was too embarrassed to reply, but at least she had the decency to go about her business. She took a fingerprint kit from the cabinet, and pulling a chair up to the table, she sat down and began taking Nouf's prints.

  A long silence went by and he looked down at Nouf, or what used to be Nouf. The body was now safely beneath the sheet, but he still felt nauseous and had to look away.

  "Why do you need to do an ultrasound?" he asked, keeping his eyes away from Miss Hijazi's face.

  "Maybe you'd better sit down," she suggested.

  He was too startled by her forwardness to reply.

  "You're here to pick up the body," she said, "so pick up the body and forget about the rest. The case is closed—they've decided it was an accidental death. As Maamoon said, I am not really an examiner. The real examiner is on maternity leave. I'm here only because they couldn't find a replacement and they need a woman to supervise the job. But because this is an important case, they brought Maamoon in from Riyadh, and he decided the death was caused by drowning. So drowning it is. No need to ask questions. It's done."