Finding Nouf

by Zoë Ferraris

  The sarcasm in her voice surprised him. "You think it is a cover-up?" he asked. She shrugged.

  If it was true, then the family would have to be behind it. They were the only people powerful enough. He could think of a few reasons the Shrawis would want to hide the truth, but the biggest reason of all was right in front of him.

  He hesitated before asking. "She wasn't a virgin?"

  Miss Hijazi finished the fingerprints and packed up the kit. She stood and returned the kit to the wall. Nayir waited, hoping she would give him something, but when she turned back in his direction, he quickly looked away. He wished he could persuade her to trust him, but she was right not to. He was a stranger, and a man. Grudgingly, he acknowledged the decency of her silence, rebellious though it seemed.

  He looked at his watch. It was three-fifteen. Nouf had to be in the ground by sunset. He had less than an hour to get the body to the Shrawi estate; the family would need another hour to prepare it for burial.

  Maamoon came bustling in with a glass of water. It tasted like soap, but Nayir didn't complain. The old man clapped him on the back and gave a sympathetic frown. "It's not that bad when they're alive, you know—don't let it spoil you."

  The best of women, the Prophet said, is the one who is pleasing to look at, who carries out your instructions when you ask her. The phrase ran through his mind as he pulled his Jeep from the cargo bay at the back of the building and took a left into traffic. Although the Prophet was right, it seemed there was also a way of being righteous without being obedient. Miss Hijazi's silence at the end of the visit weighed on him.

  He thought back on her earlier behavior, which he still considered brazen, although he wondered if that too was conducted in the spirit of protecting Nouf. Miss Hijazi had argued with Maamoon about how Nouf had died, about her camel, about the cause of the wound on her head. Nayir couldn't be sure whether her boldness was in Nouf's best interests or whether it was carried out because of professional egotism or because that's simply the sort of person she was. His instincts told him that the former was the case, and that she was guarding secrets for Nouf's sake.

  Anyway, she was right about one thing. Defensive wounds, head trauma, drowning, no camel—it sounded strange. The camel part was especially troubling, because if he knew anything, he knew that no one lost a camel in the desert.

  3

  DRIVING SOUTH along the beachfront road, Nayir watched the city's skyscrapers and jumbled urban scabbing give way to a lazy desert sprawl. To the left, tiny cottages dotted fields that lay barren in the afternoon sun, and to the right, the sea fluttered like a blue satin scarf. Keeping his eyes on the landscape, he was hoping to forget that Nouf's body was in the back. But he couldn't ignore it. He drove slowly, took turns carefully, and obeyed every traffic light despite an absence of traffic, for though it might not be possible to upset the dead, it would certainly be horrible to upset the living by injuring or mauling a beloved daughter's corpse.

  He left the freeway and turned onto an access road that followed the shoreline south. Here a magnificent mosque stood alone by the beach, its dome pure white, its minaret slim. The road turned into a private drive marked by a wooden no trespassing sign, and he drove until he reached the tower gates, two white concrete sentinels with an iron fence between them. An ancient, broken video camera hung askew from one of the gates.

  Nayir took a few deep breaths and tried to focus. A two-kilometer bridge stretched out before him. It was narrow—barely wide enough for a pickup truck—and from the shoreline it appeared to be made of rubber. Maybe it was only the heat, but the macadam rippled like a roller coaster. The chainlink railing gave him no comfort—in some places it had been ripped apart, exactly as if a car had blown through it. This was the only motor access to the estate. Over the years he'd crossed this bridge a hundred times, but it still made him uneasy.

  He drove forward slowly, eyes fixed on the road, taking one breath after another until he picked up a rhythm. He tried to suppress his usual image—blowing a tire, crashing through the fence, dropping into the murky sea—and soon the Shrawis' island grew larger. Glancing up, he could see the soft contours of the whitewashed palace set among the jagged rocks.

  Once on the island, he followed the gravel road that led to a small, seldom-used service entrance on the estate's west side. Two men were waiting there. They took Nouf's body out of his Jeep, thanked him curtly, and told him to drive around to the front. Watching the body disappear through the gate, Nayir felt a surprising sense of loss.

  He thought of calling Othman to let him know that the body had arrived, but he hesitated, wondering what the family already knew about the cause of her death. It occurred to him that he might be asked to explain what he'd learned at the coroner's office. The examiner had said that someone from the family had already identified the body and come to collect Nouf's belongings, but that could have been a servant or an escort, not someone who would press for sensitive information. Nayir wasn't sure what he would say to them. He might explain that Nouf had died in a flood, but he was wary of saying anything that implied she was murdered, in case they had been responsible for the cover-up, if that's what it was. Looking up at the house, he felt disoriented. He'd never really studied it from this perspective before; the outside walls were the same shiny white, but the windows were smaller, their screens a solid black, nothing like the elaborate wooden screens at the front of the house, through which it was possible to view certain things if one looked carefully. This, he thought, must be the women's part of the house.

  He got into the Jeep and drove away from the service gate. It occurred to him that Nouf would have driven down this road. Othman said she had stolen an old Toyota pickup from the parking lot in front of the house, although Nayir had to imagine the rest himself. There were dozens of cars in the lot that the family owned but seldom used. It would have taken days for anyone to notice the absence of a single truck. All of the car keys hung in the cloakroom by the front door. They were meticulously labeled. Nayir often fetched them himself while preparing trucks for the men's desert trips. When no one was looking, Nouf could have stolen the keys from the cloakroom, sneaked outside, and taken the truck.

  From there she had to drive down the access road past the small service entrance to the rear gate, a large wooden door that was usually open. She would hardly have been noticed on the road. It was bordered by hedges and trees. The house itself sat so high above, and was surrounded by such steep cliffs, that most of the time it was difficult to see the road even from the terraces. The stables were just inside the rear gate. He imagined that she drove right up to the stable door, took the camel out of her stall, and encouraged—forced?—her into the back of the truck. How that happened was a mystery to him. Once it was done, she would have driven back along the service road and past the front parking lot, where she could have gotten onto the bridge with very little chance of being seen. It wasn't a foolproof plan for running away, but she'd left while most of the men were at work. The women seldom ventured outside and so probably hadn't noticed anything. Only the servants might have seen her, but Othman had already told him that no one had.

  Nayir pulled into the marble-topped parking lot near the estate's front entrance. A multitude of Town Cars, Cadillacs, and Rovers crowded the lot, forcing him to circle back toward the bridge for a spot. He didn't mind parking so far from the house—there was less chance that people would notice his ugly, rusted-out Jeep—but as he walked across the lot, shoes clacking loudly, he began to wish there'd been a spot by the door. The heat was intense, and in his suit it was excruciating. He wondered for the millionth time how much the family had paid to construct a polished marble parking lot. The glare was so bright that Nayir, who prided himself on never needing sunglasses, was forced to place his hand across the bridge of his nose to shield his eyes.

  Othman's mother, Nusra, met him at the door. Like many older women, she had relinquished a face veil and wore a simple black scarf to cover her hair—hers fastened s
o tightly that it looked like a skullcap. Her deeply lined face posed no threat to strange men, was certainly no cause for erotic alarm, but her sons complained anyway, fussing over the impropriety of exposing herself in public. Nayir suspected that their protests were not about propriety; he believed they were repulsed by her eyes.

  Inexplicably blinded while giving birth to her first child, Nusra refused to wear sunglasses. She liked to feel the light on her face and claimed it could illuminate the darkness in her head. One day, she said, her vision would snap on as abruptly as it had snapped off thirty-three years ago, and when that day came, how would she notice the miraculous change if her eyes were hidden?

  When she opened the door, Nayir looked away out of respect and because the sight of those enameled, blue-rimmed eyes made his spine seize up. He was surprised that she would answer the door. She should have been surrounded by comforting women, suffering paroxysms of silent grief.

  "Nayir," she crowed. (How did she know? She always knew.) "Ahlan wa'Sahlan. Please come in."

  He stepped through the giant doorway and remembered himself. "Many blessings on you, Um Tahsin. I'm deeply sorry for your loss."

  "Thank you." She fumbled for his hand, took it in her own, and stroked the flat of his palm, her rough, dry fingers catching his skin. "Thank you for everything. Your search for Nouf brought us hope when we had none."

  "It was an honor."

  "Please come in." She led Nayir down the hallway, her steps as confident as a child's. "I always know when it's you because the air in the house becomes fresher, happier. And I can smell the desert on your skin."

  "What does it smell like?" he asked.

  "Sunlight." She opened a door and motioned him into the sitting room. "And dust."

  He looked around. The crowd was thinning, and he didn't see Othman among the men. Small groups of cousins and uncles, most wearing headscarves and long white thobes, were wandering onto the terrace that surrounded the house, whispering to one another, their faces stoic and respectful. Nayir had half expected to find the brothers sitting quietly with tear-stained faces, but that was ridiculous. Of course they wouldn't let their feelings show.

  "The ceremony begins soon," Nusra said. "But meanwhile, rest."

  Nayir turned to thank her, but she'd slipped away.

  The Shrawi women had cleaned Nouf's body and wrapped it in the kafan she'd worn on the hajj the summer before. The white sheet, long and unbroken by stitching or seams, circled her slender body in three tight bands. The women placed the body on a wooden board in the central courtyard of the family's mosque, the cleanest room on the island.

  Nouf's head was facing Mecca by the precise calculations of the GPS system that the builders had used to construct the mosque. The entire room jutted at an awkward northeasterly angle from the house, but the builders had promised that the room was in perfect alignment with the Kaaba in the Holy Mosque, some hundred kilometers distant.

  The right side of the room was closest to Jeddah, to the mountains and the desert beyond that. This was where Nayir stood, waiting for the prayers to begin. Just ahead of him, the Shrawi brothers formed a dignified crowd. Nayir was the only non–family member in the group—at least among the men—and this distinction pleased him almost too much on so grim an occasion. Behind them the women stood in a cluster. From the corner of his eyes, Nayir noticed that some were not veiled completely—their eyes were showing—and he kept his gaze firmly on the men.

  Suddenly the imam put his hands to his ears and invoked one of the ninety-nine names of Allah: Al-Haseeb, the Reckoner. As his prayers began, all the members of the congregation placed their hands on their bellies, right over left, and began to whisper their own versions of the prayer. As the prayer expanded, the chanting grew fiercer and the women grew louder, some even breaking from traditional prayers to utter spontaneous pleas. Above the ruckus Nayir heard Nusra repeating the prayer "Oh Allah, make the end of my life the best of my life, and the best of my deeds their conclusion, and the best of my days the day on which I shall meet Thee." Her voice was so powerful that the men began to hush. It reverberated through the open room and overcame the crashing waves on the rocks below.

  When she was finished, she called out one last thing, her voice rising to the roof like a scurrilous wind: "Works are accomplished according to intentions. A man receives only what he intends."

  It was not clear why she uttered this phrase; surely Nusra would never send her daughter to the gates of Paradise with a thought as cynical as that one. It must have been meant for somebody else. Unable to turn around and look at her face without humiliating himself, Nayir made assumptions about her meaning by studying the faces of her sons, who stood nearby in a militant row. Even from the side they projected the same anger that had shocked Nayir in their mother's voice, and in that precise moment he realized that the family must know that someone killed Nouf and that the killer was still at large.

  Othman caught his eye, and Nayir quickly returned to his prayers. Once they were finished, he followed the procession out to the burial grounds. Nouf was the first Shrawi to be laid in the earth on that Red Sea isle, but the family had constructed a spacious graveyard fenced by a black stone wall. A thick layer of cedar chips covered the earth except where the diggers had opened her grave.

  After the diggers laid the body in the hole and climbed back up to join the living, the family lined up to pay their final respects. From the back of the hand, each person tossed a portion of sand onto her body, which was still wrapped in the kafan. A coffin would be vanity.

  From a white ceramic bowl, Nayir scooped out a teaspoon of sand and spread it on the back of his hand. It was a very finegrained sand, a shade lighter than his skin. The diggers must have carried it up from the beach. The sand's touch brought back memories of the desert when he'd still believed that Nouf was alive, when he imagined she might be in hiding.

  Reaching the grave, he noticed something odd. The sand had not obscured the position of the body. She was wrapped completely in the kafan, but a slight bend in the knees indicated which way she was facing. He tossed his sand into the hole and fumbled in his pocket for his compass. A quick glance at it determined that he was right: Nouf's back was turned to Mecca. Not her feet, but her back. He mumbled a blessing and turned away.

  The image disturbed him. If what he suspected was true, why hadn't Miss Hijazi told him?

  A family buries a woman with her back to Mecca only when she carries a baby in her belly, a baby whose face, in death, must be turned in the direction of the Holy Mosque.

  4

  NAYIR ENTERED the men's sitting room and stood for a moment facing the courtyard. A network of hand-carved mahogany screens laced the room, and through their geometric web flowed the sound of gurgling fountains. In the center of each screen was a religious phrase carved in the shape of a spinning hawk. The letters and diacritics wrapped around one another like wings and feathers, clouds and sun. For most men who entered the room, the screen's picture was simply a hawk, but a searching, patient eye would find the phrase that Nayir had deciphered long ago: Whoever pays the tax on his wealth will have its evil removed from him.

  It was a reference to the Shrawi business, the First Muslim International Cooperative, a network of charitable organizations whose income flowed from the ancient principle of zakat, religious almsgiving. Saudis gave 2.5 percent of all monthly earnings as alms, a practice enforced by law. Every year some $10 billion passed from rich to poor. It was money for needy Muslims, not for hospitals or mosques or religious schools, and so, under law, the cooperative could accept donations only for the poor.

  And accept it did. The Shrawis acquired nearly a quarter of the cash and assets that the citizens of Jeddah donated. Over the years the Shrawi cooperative had become so renowned, the family so respected, that donors began to heap money on the Shrawis themselves, which enabled them to live very well.

  But in honor of their Bedouin ancestry, their furnishings were elegant and plain. Except for a gl
ass globe that hung from the ceiling, the sitting rooms where they welcomed guests had none of the typically ostentatious decor of the wealthy. The carpets were flat and white, the sofas well used. Even the water tray was simple: white ceramic mugs, a bamboo tray. God Himself is graceful, the Prophet said, and elegance pleases Him.

  The Shrawi sons lived by this code, which their father taught them with unrelenting drive. Abu Tahsin was a Bedouin who'd grown up in the desert, where a man kept only what he could carry. He believed that nothing material was worth having. "You can't take it with you when you die," he would say. "Remember that! No baggage on the final journey." He was well known for giving things away, not just money but cars and boats and purebred horses. The sons too gave their belongings away, so that the family was in effect a channel through which vast treasures flowed but never quite rested.

  And that, thought Nayir, is why I can stand them.

  He heard shuffling in the hallway. The door opened and the Shrawi brothers entered the room with two other men, whom Nayir vaguely recognized as cousins. The brothers greeted him with hugs and a kiss on each cheek. Had he been blind, he could have identified them by their colognes alone—Tahsin wore Gucci, Fahad wore Giorgio. But when he cheeked Othman, he smelled a musk that suggested a sweaty sleep.

  The eldest brother, Tahsin, introduced the cousins, one of whom shook Nayir's hand with a jerk and said, "You're the Bedouin I'm always hearing about!"