Finding Nouf

by Zoë Ferraris

  "Isn't your escort coming?" Nayir asked.

  She hesitated. "There's no reason for it. Not while you're with me," she said, although something about the tone of her voice implied Unless I'm mistaken about you.

  The club was empty except for a sprinkling of tired customers. Dim overhead lamps cast a shellacked light. The stillness of the clientele and the odd way the lighting bisected their bodies gave the room a depressing vacuity, like the parts depot of a waxworks. A stale smell pervaded the air. They passed a table where three women sat talking. One woman shot him a smile, but he looked away.

  Miss Hijazi seemed subdued, perhaps a little nervous. With a casual movement, she lifted her burqa. Nayir tried not to look at her face, but he couldn't help it; it glowed like the moon. He noticed she was pretty in a quirky way—her nose a little long, her lips a bit crooked. If she had a speck of modesty she'd lower her veil in front of all these strangers, but then he noticed that no one stared.

  They went through a sliding glass door to an outdoor patio. Iron café tables were scattered about. There was a border of grass here, a heap of unrecognizable plants, and—folly of follies—a swimming pool. The water shone with a cool aqua light, but the air was thick with its chlorine stench.

  Beside the pool, two women were sunbathing. Nayir was hardly able to ignore them, so he squinted and raised a hand to his eyes, pretending that the sun was overwhelming him. In the corner a bronzed, wrinkled man sat on a lawn chair. He was sipping ice water and studying the newspaper on the table before him. He saw them and lowered his paper.

  On instinct, Nayir approached the man and asked about Eric Scarsberry.

  "You mean Scarberry," the man said. "Yeah, I know him. He lives here."

  "Do you know the address?" Nayir asked. "We're investigating a crime and we need to ask him a few questions."

  "Sure. He's on Peachtree." The man gave him the directions and the house number. "I haven't seen him in a while. Is he in some kind of trouble?"

  "No, but he may be able to help us." Nayir saw that Miss Hijazi had hung back by the door. Her burqa was down again.

  Nayir thanked the man and excused himself. He went back to Miss Hijazi. "I think I've got it," he said. "You can wait with your escort if you like."

  She didn't reply but followed him as he went around the pool and crossed a very green lawn. The grass felt like rubber. Reaching a white fence, they ducked through an arbor and popped out on a sidewalk on a quiet, residential street. They walked along, looking at the buildings.

  "The guy said it was down here," Nayir said, motioning to the left. They turned down a side street. Nayir wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. Miss Hijazi seemed calmer now, strolling easily along, unalarmed that she was alone with Nayir. Perhaps it was the effect of the Americanness around them that made her relax. He was still on edge.

  "I'm curious about something," she said. "Why is it you never took Nouf to the desert?"

  "Her father wouldn't allow it. He didn't think it was safe."

  "Would it have been safe?"

  For some reason—perhaps the wind gentled the air around them—her smell drifted into his nose. It was warm and clean, and as it flooded through him, his whole body tingled. She might have felt it too, because he noticed a sudden drawing back, an awkwardness, a not knowing what to do with her hands.

  "She would have been safe with me," he said. He studied the street around them. This wasn't a Saudi street; there were no religious police here, no one to stop them and demand proof of marriage, yet he felt the skin prickle on his neck.

  They found the street sign for Peachtree and cut to the left, into a housing complex that shone a crisp white. It was quiet here, and the clack of their footsteps on the sidewalk made them step onto the grass.

  They approached a row of buildings and found apartment 229B, hidden by a high stone wall. Henna vines struggled in the cracks, and a lonely lizard clung to the wall, its body stiller than stone. They crept through another arbor. The house was a duplex, and both sides were quiet. The apartment on the right had a small backyard patio littered with oddments: a baseball, a plastic swimming pool, a shattered plate. They made for the left-hand apartment. Through a sliding glass door they saw an empty room. Nayir knocked, but no one responded, so he tried the door, and it opened.

  They entered the house. There was a brown recliner in the corner and a little TV on top of a box.

  "Stinky," he remarked. "What is that smell?"

  "Animal." She sniffed the air. "A house pet, maybe?"

  Silently they wandered from room to room. There was little to see. The only room with signs of activity was the bedroom. Laundry lay scattered about; the linens were rumpled; empty water bottles crowded the top of the armoire. There were no pictures on the walls.

  "I have to say," Miss Hijazi whispered, "I don't see a woman's touch."

  They made their way to the study, where a quick scan of the desk revealed paperwork belonging to Eric Scarberry: a pay stub, an insurance form. There were no books or computers, no evidence that he'd spent more than a cursory afternoon there, paying his bills.

  "Do you think someone else has been here already?" she asked.

  "No. He probably made this mess himself."

  They moved into the kitchen, where paper plates and plastic silverware were the utensils of choice. The trash can was empty. Peeking into the refrigerator, they found a plate of moldy cheese and a month-old carton of milk. Miss Hijazi went into the living room.

  Giving the kitchen a final scan, Nayir found a book wedged between the refrigerator and a cabinet. He pried it out: 1,001 Recipes from Arabia, published by the American Ladies of Jeddah. Flipping through the pages, he noticed a few grease stains. Someone had used it, but judging from the dust, that had been a sultan's age ago.

  "I found the smell," Miss Hijazi called out.

  He went into the living room. She was squatting by a birdcage on the coffee table. The bird inside was dead. Judging from its size, it was a parakeet. The water bowl was empty. Nayir inspected the food bowl and found that the seeds had all been eaten; only their shells remained.

  "I guess he's been a gone for a while," he said. "It seems strange that a guy this messy would keep a bird."

  "It's the latest thing. Birds are supposed to warn you of a chemical attack. They die first. I've heard that Americans keep them, especially in the compound."

  He looked around. "Did you see a gas mask anywhere?"

  She frowned.

  Squeezing his hand through the cage door, he pulled out a section of the newspaper that lined the bottom. He shook off the feces and flipped the page over. It was the front section of the Arab News, dated one full month before Nouf disappeared.

  He set the paper down. "Eric left here before she disappeared?"

  She glanced at the paper. "Well, maybe he's been back and just forgot to change the paper. He doesn't seem to care about his house very much."

  Miss Hijazi scooped the parakeet into the paper and took it to the bathroom. Nayir stared at the cage, wondering if Eric had run away or if he'd ended up like his bird. In either case, there had to be a way to track him down.

  15

  HER DRIVER was still waiting when they returned to the parking lot. Nayir half imagined that he would be upset, or bored, or dead of heat stroke, but he was sitting in the car, leisurely reading the Quran. The Toyota was running. The air conditioning must have been at full blast, because when Nayir opened the door to let Miss Hijazi in, a cold burst of air blew over his chest. It gave him a moment's chill.

  She didn't climb into the car right away. She seemed reluctant to say goodbye, and it surprised him to realize that his perceptions of her had altered slightly. She was not exactly modest, but not brazen either. She was something in between, shifting like a mirage. Remembering that this was Othman's fiancée, a wall went up in his mind, and he motioned her into the car.

  "There's one more thing I wanted to do before heading back to work," she said. "My driver has ano
ther appointment, so he's going to drop me off, and I don't think I can do this alone."

  "What is it?"

  "Um Tahsin told me that she received a phone call from an optometrist. Nouf ordered a pair of glasses before she ran away. Um Tahsin had no idea. She was going to send one of the servants to pick them up, but I offered to do it. I felt that it would mean something to her if I did. I think she wants to have the glasses."

  It struck Nayir as terribly sad that Um Tahsin would want to keep a pair of glasses that Nouf would have worn if she had lived.

  "I can escort you," he said.

  She nodded gratefully and climbed into her car.

  As Nayir followed the Toyota downtown, he told himself that he was doing Othman a favor, escorting his fiancée, but a small part of him knew that he wasn't doing any favors, he was committing a sin of zina, being in the company of an unmarried woman, and he was committing a sin against a friend who trusted him.

  Even though Miss Hijazi's visit was highly inappropriate, he had to admit that it presented an opportunity. She might be able to tell him things about Nouf that he would otherwise never find out—things even Othman didn't know. She might also know something about the autopsy that the examiner had kept shrouded in the secrecy of the cover-up. And, he admitted to himself, he wanted to escort her. He couldn't say exactly why.

  When the Toyota pulled over on a busy downtown street, he pulled behind it and parked. He climbed out of the Jeep, glancing quickly around for religious police. There were a few men on the street, but no one looked suspicious. They were only a few blocks from the coroner's office.

  Miss Hijazi watched her car pull away. "I think it's that way," she said as she started to fish in her purse. It was a cavernous bag, the size of a small tugboat, and it took her a few minutes to navigate through all of the smaller purses, the keys, the calendars, a freak upswell of change. Annoyed, she flipped up her burqa and went back to searching. In an effort to keep his eyes from her face, he switched his gaze to the purse and saw a cell phone charger, a prayer schedule, an extra burqa, and, surprise of surprises, a bottle of nail polish.

  "You paint your nails?" he blurted.

  She looked at him, forcing him to look away. She went back to fishing.

  Just then someone laid a sweaty hand on his shoulder. Nayir spun around.

  "Excuse me," the man said, fixing Nayir with a stare and motioning to Miss Hijazi with a tilt of his head. "In the name of Allah and Allah's peace be upon you. Sir, pardon me, but your wife is not properly veiled."

  Nayir felt a stab of panic, but he gazed coolly at the man. He was clean-cut, with short hair, pleated trousers, and a necktie printed with the ninety-nine names of Allah. He looked entirely too Western to be a religious policeman, yet the man's black eyes, seen through thick glasses, blazed with self-righteous indignation.

  Nayir frowned. "Are you looking at my wife?" he asked. The man opened his mouth, but Nayir interrupted. "She's my wife," he shouted. "You'd better have a good excuse for staring at her!"

  The man took a step back. "Apologies, brother, but you understand it's a matter of decency."

  "That's no excuse." Nayir moved closer with a menacing squint. "Don't you have your own wife to worry about?"

  Blushing, the man turned and walked away, ducking around the next corner. Guilt flooded through Nayir, and he quickly asked forgiveness for the sin of lying. It wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been committing a sin of zina in the first place. He turned and saw that Miss Hijazi had lowered her burqa.

  "Is he gone?" she whispered.

  "Yes." He laid a hand on his chest to still his heart. "Yes, he's gone."

  "Was he religious police?"

  "No. Vigilante."

  "How can you be sure?" she asked.

  "He was wearing Armani."

  "Ah." Relief flooded her eyes. She held up a small business card. "I found it."

  "Al-hamdulillah." He snatched the card, read the address, and took off.

  ***

  Dr. Ahed Jahiz was once the finest optometrist in Egypt. His business, which began as a microscopic boutique in an alley in downtown Cairo, had blossomed into a three-story, glass-walled emporium through years and years of persistent labor and his utter devotion to the optical arts. He had his own machines for studying the eye, for cutting lenses and polishing frames. He sold Italian bifocals that cost more than the average automobile. He even offered a scholarship program to send country yokels to the finest optical academies in Europe, provided they worked for him when they returned.

  But as militant Islamism spread like a plague of sand fleas through the Muslim world, Cairo, that loose-kneed, sluttish sister, became the victim of frequent outbursts of violence, resulting in, among other things, a Chevy sedan driving through the front windows of Jahiz & Co. and blowing twelve customers, five staff members, and three German tourists to Paradise.

  Dr. Jahiz, who was in Mali delivering a truckload of cast-off reading glasses to the permanently poor, returned to Cairo to find his building in ruins, gutted the way a pack of hungry children might plunder a birthday cake if left unchecked by adults. The sum of his life's work was strewn over three square blocks of the town. (They found frames in the Nile.) People were dead. Good Muslims were angry, bad Muslims vengeful, and Jahiz decided that it was time to begin life anew. He collected the insurance and set off for Saudi, home of the Prophet—peace be upon him—and site of the holiest city in Islam, a country which he hoped would not prove as nearsighted as his blessed Egypt.

  But if Cairo was myopic, then Saudi went blindfold. Jahiz had assumed that the richest population in the Muslim Middle East would appreciate his skill and dedication, his magnificent vision of an optical empire that would one day be able to adjust and repair every single flaw in the human eye, but his assumptions were wrong. Saudis, it turned out, went to Saudi optometrists. Perhaps, thought Jahiz, this was because only Saudi optometrists understood that the Saudis were world-renowned for their excellent vision. Few Saudis wore glasses. It had never been fashionable and it never would be. The wearing of glasses was, he discovered, a sensitive subject, since every Bedouin in creation prided himself on his superior ability to see anything, at any distance, at any stage of life. Although the age of the Bedouin had long since passed away and the sedentary Saudis had left many customs in their desert past—spitting every five minutes, traveling by night, and cleaning their babies with camel urine—they had not yet abandoned the erroneous notion that they were all blessed with perfect sight.

  So his business remained a meager empire at best, and while Jahiz never lost his pious regard for the science of the eye, he felt his passions slowly deflating like birthday balloons weeks after the fete. He was growing old. He was impatient and inclined to bursts of phlegm. Worst of all, he scorned his clientele. They were ridiculous—what else could you say about a wealthy society that consciously veiled half its population and pretended the other half could see through brick?

  This morning Jahiz entertained himself by polishing the Calvin Klein sunglasses in the display case near the front window. Sunglasses were his hottest item—a new shipment every week. They kept him from bankruptcy and from turning his miserable life to Allah, seer of all things.

  Miss Hijazi and Nayir entered the shop, stood at the edge of the great Persian rug, and greeted Jahiz, who pocketed his rag and rose to assist them, blessing them with the formal greeting he used for every client: "May Allah's peace and everlasting mercy be on you." Nayir explained what they wanted, and Jahiz, sighing, stepped into the equipment room to retrieve the order.

  "One pair of Sophia Loren frames, size twelve, mauve inlay, brass trim. Clear plastic lenses, no prescription."

  Nayir frowned. "No prescription?"

  "That's what it says." With a shaking hand, Jahiz pointed to the chart. "She called in last month and requested glasses without a prescription."

  "No prescription?" Nayir rubbed his chin and frowned at Miss Hijazi. "None?"

  She made no s
ign that she heard them. Her burqa was down, and her hands were tucked into the sleeves of her cloak.

  "Okay," Nayir said. "If that's what it says."

  "Please ask your wife to sit at the desk."

  "They're not for her," Nayir said. "They're for a friend who died."

  "Oh." Jahiz's shoulders slumped. "I'm very sorry to hear that."

  "Thank you." Nayir watched as Jahiz slid the glasses into a hard leather case. He handed them to Nayir.

  "I can see that you're squinting," Jahiz said. "Tell me, do you spend a lot of time in the desert?"

  "Ah ... yes." Nayir was taken aback.

  "You know, sir, the desert is a very bright place. The sand creates an awful lot of reflected light, which can be damaging to the eyes. Do you clean them regularly?"

  "The eyes?"

  "Yes, the eyes must be cleaned every week, especially in the desert. All that sand, it gets in the eyes, it irritates the lining, it causes bleeding, swelling, eventually infection. It can even lead to certain types of disease. Do you have trouble reading street signs?"

  "No ... well, maybe sometimes at night."

  "Night vision is the first to go. I think it would be in your best interests to have a checkup, just to make sure your eyes are in their best shape."

  "Ah, no," Nayir said. "I have perfect vision."

  "Yes," Jahiz cooed, "yes, of course. But sometimes the dust can aggravate the eyes, and you never know what the effects will be. I have the best machines. High-class machines, imported from Europe. We could do the exam now, if you'd like. It won't take half an hour."

  Nayir glanced at Miss Hijazi, who was pretending to look out the window. "I'm busy now."

  "Then maybe we can set up an appointment?"

  Nayir continued to decline, but Jahiz was persistent. Finally the doctor offered him a discount on a pair of Gucci sunglasses that had just arrived from Rome. "You know," he said, flapping his hands over his eyes, "sometimes even the falcons need a rest from the overwhelming sights of the world."

  Nayir hesitated. "I don't usually wear sunglasses," he said.