by Zoë Ferraris
They stopped at the first shoe store they could find. Ahmad got out to buy her a pair of sandals and came back twice to ask about price and size. The sandals he bought were flat and sturdy with Velcro straps—and perhaps the ugliest shoes she had ever worn—but she suspected they would survive a trip to the sun. Gratefully, she put them on.
The freeways were crowded. It was lunchtime, and everyone had left work but no one was going to leave the cool comfort of a car. It took Ahmad and Katya nearly an hour to navigate their way out of the city, and when they finally reached the road to the estate, Katya leaned back against the seat and shut her eyes.
Work had been taxing. She'd gone to the lab early every day that week, but Salwa was always there, expecting her to do everything, so that in going in early, Katya had managed only to create more work for herself. Right now she was supposed to be analyzing traces for a spousal abuse case. A wife had killed her husband by setting his bed on fire. Katya knew little about the wife, but she suspected that this was like most husband-abuse cases: the woman had feared for her life.
She wished she could be more involved in the investigation—at least learn a little more about the murder—but her job was to analyze evidence, not uncover clues. On most cases she was lucky to find out anything about the killers' motivations at all. The division kept promising that someday it would send women to conduct investigations. After all, there were female suspects, and shouldn't women interrogate them? But there were always excuses to keep the women cloistered. The division lacked funding. The government wouldn't approve it. These days everyone was watching the new team of female police officers, recently sent into the field for the first time. They weren't remarkable officers, but what could be expected from a group of women who couldn't drive cars or ride bicycles and who didn't even have the power to stop a man on the street?
The car gave a gentle bump and Katya opened her eyes. To the right, the Red Sea glittered a brilliant blue, and she had the sudden, choking impulse to stop the car, run down the beach, and throw herself into the water, abaaya and all.
"Any chance we could stop for a minute?" she asked.
Ahmad shrugged nervously. "I have another appointment in the city at two o'clock."
Katya checked her watch. They didn't have enough time. Just wait, she thought. And then: Wait for what? A day off. A day when the temperature was below 100 degrees. A day when her father was in a good enough mood to take her to the beach. Before meeting Othman, she had waited years for a husband. He would be the one to take her to the beach. He would drive her to work and escort her shopping. And now, a new twist: she had a fiancé, but she was waiting for the marriage. They still hadn't set a new date for the wedding.
Ahmad opened the cooler in the passenger seat and took out an ice-cold bottle of water. He handed it back to her. She flipped up her burqa, revealing a smile. "Thank you, Ahmad."
"Have you learned anything new about the Shrawi girl's death?" he asked.
She glanced at his eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, and tried to gauge whether her father had put him up to this line of questioning. "One or two things," she said. "Nothing conclusive."
"I was just wondering if you were bringing some news to the family."
"No, this is just a visit." She knew he was wondering why she hadn't waited until after work, but by evening the men would be home from work as well, and chances were the women would be occupied. "I haven't seen them since the funeral," she said. "I just want to make sure they're doing all right."
Ahmad nodded, apparently satisfied, and Katya cursed herself for lying. She wanted to check on the women, of course, but another quest loomed larger in her mind.
Over the past few days she had been able to determine that the DNA from the skin beneath Nouf's fingernails matched the DNA of the baby's father. So Nouf had seen the father before she died. Maybe she'd gone to him with the news of her pregnancy and he'd been horrified. They'd fought...
But from there the story went in a dozen directions. Did they fight because he was ashamed of the pregnancy? Because he was married and unwilling to take on a second wife? Or because he knew she was engaged to another man? Nouf wouldn't have needed to have him marry her. She was going to be with Qazi soon enough. She could have pretended the baby was Qazi's—unless, of course, the baby belonged to a different race. Blond-haired, perhaps. Black-skinned or Asian. And what if she didn't want to marry Qazi? What if she wanted to marry the baby's father, and he said no? That might have created enough anguish to drive her away. A fight would explain the skin beneath her nails and the defensive cuts on her arms, but it didn't explain the head wound. That hadn't killed her, but it had been enough to knock her out. Could she even have run away after being hit like that?
What if Qazi was the father? Would he have become angry? Probably not. They were about to get married—what difference would it have made?
Despite Katya's efforts to be fair-minded, one potential situation loomed larger than the others. What if Nouf had told the baby's father about her plans to move to America and the baby's father had tried to stop her? That would have angered any man, Qazi included. Would she have told him something like that?
Katya sighed in frustration. She hadn't known Nouf well. Most of the time they had met in the women's sitting room, which was a public and slightly formal space. She'd spoken privately with Nouf on a few occasions, enough to realize that she was more vivacious than most of the Shrawi sisters. She had laughed easily and talked with excitement about her saluki dogs. One day she had confided that she loved animals more than children and that if she could, she would have a family of dogs.
But as with the other women in the family, Nouf had a strange reserve and would grow abruptly silent in the middle of a conversation, often just when she was beginning to open up. Katya never knew what to make of those moments—they usually prefaced a polite leave-taking, Nouf saying that she had things to do. Katya always felt slightly jilted. She had been drawn to Nouf, perhaps because she was Othman's favorite. Katya had never had a sister of her own, and she longed to be a part of Nouf's daily life, to be allowed into her bedroom just one time, to see the books she read, her trinkets or artwork or favorite stuffed animals. Was she sloppy? Neat? What sort of bed did she sleep in? What color was the room? Did she have her own servant? Katya sensed that Nouf would be more relaxed in her bedroom, and she hoped that once she married Othman, the barriers of awkwardness or propriety would come down and she could get to know her better.
As they turned onto the bridge leading to the estate, her throat constricted. From the beginning she had been eager to talk to the women, to ask them what they knew about Nouf's life. But since that horrible morning when she had identified the body at the morgue, she'd been unable to broach the subject without meeting a wall of silence and tears. Hopefully, now enough time had passed.
Ahmad rolled down the front windows, letting in a slightly cooler breeze. They were over the water now, and the estate was just coming into view. It still thrilled her to see the building's white walls rise up in the distance and to think that someday she would belong there. That is, if she didn't wear out her welcome today.
She had spent enough time with the women to understand that they lived in the sitting room. They didn't cook, do dishes or laundry, didn't attend to anything but their society visitors, their prayers, and their comforts. The younger children played in distant rooms with two Filipino nurses while the mothers and the older children spent the greater part of their lives in the air-conditioned sitting room, a white, well-lit space with cushioned sofas, screened windows, a television, and Quranic scriptures hanging on the walls. On the far side of the room, a row of windows looked out over the family's mosque. On the room's other side, double doors led to a high-walled garden patio. The outdoor space was made lively by a fountain that seemed to have grown out of the rocky wall. Vines hung on a pergola above cushioned chairs and benches, and a neat row of potted lemon trees gave the air a cheery fragrance, but despite the f
ountain and the shade, it was often too hot to sit there, and the women remained indoors.
Nusra was in perpetual motion, always coming in with visitors and running off again to attend to the details of her household. Her sons' wives more often inhabited the room with their cousins or friends. When Nouf was alive, she and her younger sister Abir had spent most of their time there. The servants never left for long; they were always back to refill the coffeepots, take away the bowls or replace them with new ones. Abir would torment the maids by setting herself up at the coffee table and playing with the food while the maids stood by trying to decide whether or not to interfere.
It had taken Katya a while to become familiar with her in-laws' names, but it helped that they always sat in the same positions. There were four couches set in a square. The sisters-in-law occupied the side couches, Fahad's wife, Zahra, to the left, and usually her sister Fatimah beside her, either combing her hair or inspecting her fingernails or reading a book. The right-side couch was reserved for Nusra and her younger daughters. Muruj, Nouf's oldest sister, sat with her back to the door, while Tahsin's wife, Fadilah, sat across from her, taking the central sofa for herself.
Coming into the room this afternoon, Katya lifted her burqa and returned the multiple greetings that came her way. From the silence she could tell that she'd arrived between conversations. As all eyes turned to watch her, she imagined tripping on the hem of her robe or stumbling over Abir before she could reach the safety of a sofa. Moving carefully, she managed to seat herself beside Zahra. Coffee was being served, and she was grateful; it gave her something to do with her hands. She glanced around and saw that, as usual, the television in the corner was flickering with silent images of Mecca.
"Not working today?" Zahra asked.
"I took the afternoon off," Katya said.
"You'll be doing a lot more of that once you get married," Zahra replied with a wink.
Katya gave a soft smile, but nobody spoke. She couldn't tell if they were embarrassed by Zahra's comment or if she ought to have said something funny in return. She had nothing to say.
"So, Miss Future Wife of Little Othman," said Fadilah, "have you chosen a dress yet?"
Katya regarded her future sister-in-law. Fadilah was so similar to her husband in build and manner that she seemed like a parody of him. They had the same round, jowled faces and succulent lips, the same languid eyes. They each wore well-tailored, impeccable robes and sat in a watchful and imperious way, regarding their company as if they were courtiers.
She was asking about a wedding dress, and Katya hadn't even come close. The truth was, every dress that suited her style seemed either too boring or too cheap. Although it was her wedding, she felt a deep need to please her future in-laws, or at least not disgust them. A few weeks ago Nusra had arranged for a professional dressmaker to come to the house, and the woman had arrived with twenty dresses, every one of them gaudy and overpriced, bedizened with sequins and Byzantine embroidery, gold lamé and tassels, heavy layers of satin and lace. Some had real bone corsets, and others had monstrous hoop skirts, which made her feel like a roundabout statue, something to gawk at. Worst of all, the colors were appalling—mustards and hot pinks, chile greens and a hazardous, painful orange. She wanted to explain to Nusra just how garish the dresses were, but she didn't want to embarrass her or seem ungrateful. Katya would have preferred a quiet tamarind, or the simple red of a Bedouin blanket.
When Katya had turned the dresses down, Nusra had been apologetic. "I'm certainly not one to recommend a dressmaker," she'd quipped, motioning to her blind eyes. Katya apologized, saying that she needed some time to decide what she really wanted.
"I still haven't decided," she told Fadilah. "I was hoping to find something simple and elegant."
Fadilah shifted uneasily, the nonverbal equivalent of a harrumph. "My sister is a dressmaker," she said. "Tell me what color you like, and I'll have her make you a dress."
Katya couldn't imagine anything worse than being obliged to wear a dress made by Fadilah's sister, a woman she'd never met. But something in the way the other women looked at her indicated that the offer was not the sort Fadilah made every day and was certainly not to be refused.
"Thank you," Katya said. "I've actually got a dressmaker coming over this weekend. She's an old friend of my mother's. But I'll keep your offer in mind."
Fadilah looked uncertain—perhaps she sensed it was a lie—but she nodded graciously and the conversation died.
As the tension lulled into one of the room's long silences, Katya felt more and more like a failure. She was not interesting enough to rouse any enthusiasm from these women. She sought desperately for a way to break the ice, to raise the subject of Nouf without being awkward, but her mind had stalled. Things were only made worse when the door opened again and young Huda came in. She was a Shrawi cousin who had come from Dhahran to perform the hajj. In the two years since she'd arrived, she had done hajj a dozen times. Far from growing sick of her perpetual visit, the Shrawi women spoke of her with superlatives, calling her the greatest pilgrim on earth and the right hand of Allah, while Huda, modest ever, never stopped thanking them for putting Mecca within her reach.
Huda's arrival caused a stir as Muruj leaped up to welcome her. Huda smiled faintly and announced that it was prayer time just as the call to prayer filled the room. It blared in the far window, which looked out over a steep rock wall that loomed over the family's mosque. Its loudspeakers were situated all over the island, but two of the largest ones pointed straight up at the women's sitting room, so that five times a day the room was filled with such beatific chanting that it was impossible to speak. Both Huda and Muruj went into an adjoining bathroom to perform their ablutions, while the others sat quietly, not looking at one another, slightly embarrassed to be left out and yet making no effort to join the prayer.
Katya waited too. She had been in this position before. If Nusra had been there, or if there had been nonfamily visitors in the room, then everyone would have prayed, but when it was just the younger women, they did what they liked.
Katya studied the women silently. So much of her discomfort around them came from the stiffness she was seeing right now. Thus far, her whole relationship with them had been an elegant dance of pretend, of formal thank-yous and my-pleasures and al-hamdulillahs. But she was going to be spending a lot of time with these women, without Othman around. She had never believed in marrying a man because of his mother or sisters, although her friends did it all the time. The husband didn't matter so much. He was never home anyway, and if the household was big enough, they wouldn't see him even if he was home. No, when you married, you were marrying a mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces. And Katya kept telling herself that they'd come to appreciate one another, that the relationships would grow warmer, or at least more tolerable. Yet she had so little in common with these women. This was nothing like her own family, where Abu spent all day in the kitchen, cooking, smoking, reading newspapers, and watching TV. This family never cooked or read papers; servants did it for them. Othman had promised her an apartment in the city, but he would still want her to visit the family frequently. She would spend her holidays here, bring her father here, even her children someday. She would see more of this room than she could ever imagine.
Now she wondered what Nouf had thought of them. Nouf, who'd wanted to live among dogs, to move to America, to go to college and have sex before marriage—how had she coexisted with women like Huda and Muruj? It must have been difficult having Huda move in—she was a year younger than Nouf but ten times more devout, the child any pious mother might have wished for. Or had Huda's presence been a blessing—a distraction that enabled Nouf to get on with her plans?
On the floor across from Katya, Abir was sitting cross-legged with a cold look on her face. She looked so much like Nouf that they might have been twins. Her house robe was a simple black; her hands were clasped on her lap in an unconscious attitude of modesty. There was an air of disgruntlement about her t
hat Nouf hadn't had, or perhaps had done a better job of concealing. Abir was most like Nouf, not in temperament exactly, but in position. Young. Eligible. The family looked to these girls with a certain degree of suspense: How would they act? Who would they marry?
But whereas the women had treated Nouf as an adult, Abir was still the girl whose mother chastised her for playing with the food tray. Right now she was eyeing the bathroom strangely, perhaps feeling pressure to join her sister and cousin, or perhaps silently scorning them for more cryptic reasons.
When Muruj and Huda emerged, they went to the corner window, unrolled two of the prayer rugs that were stacked there, and began their prayers. Katya watched them from behind, thinking how funny it was that Huda had come for a visit and never left. The family had practically adopted her, just as they'd adopted Othman years before, although his story was far more dramatic than Huda's. It was, Katya recalled, one of the first things he'd ever told her about himself.
The Shrawis had not really known Othman's father, but they knew that his name was Hussein and that he was a guest worker from southern Iraq. He'd been in Jeddah for only six months when the construction company that hired him had stopped paying his wages. Without the company's support, he couldn't renew his work permit, yet he didn't have the money to return to Iraq. Within a month he'd taken to begging on the streets of Jeddah with his six-year-old son.
On his way to work one day, Abu Tahsin saw them from the window of his limousine and called for the driver to stop the car. He led Hussein and his son to one of the family's charity homes, where he made sure they were fed and outfitted with new clothes. He sent Othman to the local elementary school and even arranged to renew Hussein's work permit. He gave them enough cash to get by for a few days and left them to their luck.