Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  Sheep Dog waited a full hour before making the inevitable conclusion that he had been abandoned. The issue now for him was whether he had been seriously betrayed. He decided that it was beyond mere probability that he had, and he formulated a plan as he returned to the farm truck and drove out of town as fast as the decrepit old farm vehicle could go. It was well for him that he had not waited even five minutes longer, because security forces moved in from the east and began cordoning off the town. Several police and military vehicles passed him on their way in but paid him no mind. It did not occur to any minion of the law that a vehicle puttering along at thirty miles per hour could harbor a terrorist band.

  Once out of the vicinity of Ad Dummam, the nerve-wrackingly ponderous pace of his getaway truck wore on his nerves to the point that Sheep Dog had to find something better. He passed a truck stop where more than a dozen semis were parked while their drivers availed themselves of the chance to nap through the most oppressively hot two hours of the day. All of the trucks were left running, a requirement of the trucking companies to save diesel fuel which was expended in large amounts with restarting, and because the poorly maintained trucks often would not restart until they cooled down for several hours.

  Sheep Dog parked in a far corner of the ill-tended parking lot among a cluster of oil drums, overflowing trash cans, and four semis which were polluting the atmosphere with a collective dispersal of vaporized diesel fuel and smoke. He left his old farm truck and zigzagged through the trucks to the line of vehicles nearest the main road. He selected the newest and most powerful looking truck and unobtrusively walked up to the cab steps. He climbed up and quickly took a peek inside. The driver was unconscious. His snoring rattled the half open driver’s side window. The man had a tranquil expression of complete rest. Sheep Dog clipped him on the back of his bent neck with a hard side fist, and the driver gained the opportunity for a much extended nap. He was still alive, and his neck did not make any excessive movements as Sheep Dog moved him over to the passenger side of the seat. He checked the tool box behind the seat, found some duct tape, and bound the driver’s wrists and ankles, and gagged the simple Arab citizen, who was not aware that his sleep was now a real unconsciousness. Sheep Dog taped over the man’s eyes.

  Confident that the sleeping driver was not a threat, Sheep Dog looked all around and saw no one in the parking lot. A few men sat relaxing on the stoop of the convenience store and on a pair of benches on either side of door leading inside. He reached over and removed the driver’s turban and placed it on his own head. After a hurried trip back to the farm truck to fetch his gear, Sheep Dog pushed the driver well down into the seat, and put the truck into gear. He jerked the truck a few times as he began his exit from the parking lot, but no one seemed to pay him any mind. In five minutes, he was on his way to Da’ir at seventy miles per hour.

  Da’ir was even smaller than Rohm as Sufla. Everyone knew everyone else. Families were large—the Yemeni birth rate is one of the largest in the world—and they were intertwined. An offhand conversation, a telephone call to a friend who has a friend, a religious confession to an imam who numbers in his flock one with ties to al Qaeda, and attention leads to the Sheep Dog. And the Sheep Dog now wondered about Selah’s ties. He had left his fare alone in the blistering heat and had driven back to his home and hearth. And his telephone?

  Sheep Dog drove through the town, past the Ruhm al ‘Ulya Hotel and stopped half a block from the Jabal an-Nabi Shu’ayb Mountain Transport Service office. The sun was within a quarter of an hour of setting, and the streets contained only a few people scurrying home from work. Cooking fires were being lilt, and the day was winding to a close. The town was preparing to go back to sleep.

  He tried the office door. It was not locked. He took one last look around then slipped into the waiting room. Selah’s inner office door was open. Sheep Dog could hear the whir of the ceiling fan, the shuffling of papers…and the dialing of the old European Sultan rotary phone Sheep Dog had seen as he and Selah haggled over the cost of the trip to the mountain.

  He took three long, extremely rapid steps into the office. The stricken look on Selah’s ashen face answered all of Sheep Dog’s lingering questions. He pulled out the black Taurus from the rear waistband of his pants. Selah’s mouth opened.

  “Eff…Eff… Effendi! This is.”

  Sheep Dog put three rounds in the T Zone of Mohammed Abdullah Selah’s face. The man fell face forward on his desk without another sound. Sheep Dog made a sharp about-face and left the inner office, the waiting room, and the town of Da’ir in less than three minutes. He was as innocuous as a puff of smoke as he did so. Driving the semi, he was one of Hedy Lamarick’s invisible people, there but unseen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Sheep Dog checked into the Sheraton Sana’a Hotel on Nashwah Al-Himyarst mainly because he wanted to be within walking distance of the American Embassy. He wanted to see the damage to America first-hand. The embassy was a short walk to the north and east of the hotel. He checked in wearing the full disguise that made him Svein Magnus Thorsteinsson. He called room service and asked to have his suit cleaned in time to be able to attend the lecture by Dr. Fahd Ayman al-Wuhayshi from the Faculty of Science of the University of Sana’a entitled “Is Darwinism Still Viable in the Twenty-First Century?”

  He took a long muscle easing hot shower and a nap which brought him back to full function. When he was dry and dressed, he called Neal Dastrup on his secure line to find out the flight arrangements for his flight back to the states. It was to be late the next evening. He ordered a steak dinner with all the trimmings from room service and a nice bottle of merlot, of which he drank half and went back to bed.

  The following morning, he got up early and walked to the embassy. He was shocked and dismayed by the extent of the destruction. The front half of the main building lay in a pile of blocks in a huge crater where the front steps had once been. The handsome façade was gone; the tenderly maintained plants on the porch were gone; only marine guards were left to patrol the gutted building. A few marchers paraded along the street occasionally shouting Arabic slogans which Sheep Dog did not understand, but could catch the drift. Placards read, “Death to the Great Satan”, “Yankee Go Home”, “Imperialist Pigs”, and “Allah Protect the Freedom Fighters”, “Our Al Qaeda Forever!”, all in clearly printed English and all manned by young people who were obviously university students.

  Sheep Dog caught a gypsy taxi and spoke to the driver, “Sabáh al-Kháyr.”

  “As-salám aláykum, Sabáh al-Kháyr.”

  “Waláykum as-salám. Mutaásif, ma kan tkellemichi Arbia. Tkellem Inglisia?”

  “But of, course kind sir. I speak English. Many people in Yemen do, you will be pleased to know. There is no need to be sorry. It is most pleasing that you have made an effort to speak the language of Allah and the Qur’an.”

  Sheep Dog laughed and said, “Shukran. You have now heard all the Arabic I know.”

  “Where to?”

  “A little sightseeing. First I’d like see the Old Sana’a Suq in Bab al-Yaman. I would like to start in al-Fulayhi Quarter and then see all around the Suq. I wish to hire your services for the entire day.”

  “I will be happy to be at your service. But you know that the bread market was the sight of an insurgent attack but a few days ago, Effendi. Perhaps another area of our city?”

  “Thank you, my new friend, but no, I very much wish to see the old suq and the damage that was done there.”

  “That is a common enough reason for the adventurous tourist. I will let you know a small secret. I have been into the Suq and have not personally seen a great deal of destruction in the major corridors and alleys. I personally believe it is not so bad as the authorities suggest but serves as a good tool to use against the al Qaeda in the government crack-down.”

  “And what would be a fair price for such a day-long tour?”

  There followed a lengthy bargaining process wherein Sheep Dog learned the driver
’s name—Bahman Ali Rumi—and that the man’s last name was the same as the famous Persian poet, that he was Shi’ite in a country that was half Shi’ite. He learned more about Bahman’s financial woes in carrying for his family of three wives and sixteen children than he wanted to know, and more about government corruption, inefficiency, and the need to expand Islam than he cared to know. Finally, the two men arrived at a price of 7,000 YRLs, more than Sheep Dog thought was appropriate, but he had met his match in Bahman and wore out from the haggling.

  It was a pleasant sunny day with the sky free of clouds and pollution. The taxi lacked air conditioning—no surprise—and the automobile’s windows were left down to let in the cacophonous noise, pungent odors, and the rhythms of the city. The new town was sprawling and monotonous with nothing to be said for it as a tourist destination; but the old town was vibrant, varied, compelling, and worth preserving. Sheep Dog enjoyed the bustle of the al-Fulayhi Quarter—a residential section—but it did not seem worth a stop.

  The shops of the Baba-Yaman Suq area itself—however—were well worth parking the cab in a series of courtyards known to Bahman and paid for by Sheep Dog. The two men ambled along narrow winding tiled alleys, none of which could support a motorized vehicle except a motorcycle. Their stops took them to an assortment of separate suqs set aside for a wide variety of goods and services: tin, gold, silver, meat, poultry, bread, pottery, wicker and basket ware, jewelry, spice and perfume which cast off vapors so pungent that Sheep Dog had a sneezing fit. Other shops purveyed plastic ware, copper, and clothing. The goods were displayed in cloth bags, wicker and plastic baskets, on open tables, and hanging from racks. At each shop they met good-natured banter and importuning. Money changers were scattered throughout the many suqs. The men and women who made the currency transactions were multilingual and multiethnic, able to slide through ten or even twelve languages with a facility that astonished and amused Sheep Dog.

  They stopped for lunch from a street vendor in the Bread Suq, which showed evidence of the recent bombing, but makeshift repairs covered much of the damage, and crews had worked feverishly to return the Suq—as much as possible—to a state of Islamic cleanliness. Sheep Dog took time to appreciate the slender, tall, irregular, mud brick buildings with their assortment of round, square, rectangular, and arched windows topped and often covered by a white lattice-work. The top portion of the walls of all of the buildings carried white decorations that were in harmony with the window dressings. Unlike the new city, Old Sana’a had a captivating charm and clean streets.

  There was a kind of linguistic music floating along the alleys and streets and in and out of the shops. Sheep Dog gradually came to appreciate that he was hearing rapidly spoken classical Arabic of the Qur’an and the academics intermingled with the multiple dialects, regional nuances, local idioms, and colorful accents spoken by the more than 700 million adherents to the faith. Even those speakers would require a talented local translator to understand and to be understood. The language—like the exotic suq itself—was flowery and over drawn, full of evocative imagery, flattery, and exaggeration. He knew he would never be able to speak Arabic fluently, let alone like a native. There was too much simile, metaphor, and inferential meaning, too much subtlety and hedging about a subject without openly speaking one’s mind, and too many meanings for a Westerner to cope with. For Sheep Dog, it would have to remain the music of the streets.

  During their languid lunch of Moroccan and Yemeni food influenced by Southern Europe—olives and olive oil, assorted fresh fruits, and tomatoes; the French—pastries, light fish dishes and heavy sauces; Americans—hamburgers made of goat meat and lamb; and Moroccan proper—spicy sausages called merquez, lamb and liver kebabs, and kefka, a minced lamb molded into small cakes served with a pepper sauce. For dessert, they shared baklava served with Turkish coffee thick enough that a small spoon could stand in it.

  Completely surfeited, Sheep Dog languidly observed the colors and sounds of life passing by him and gained an appreciation for the slow pace of Arabic life and the pleasant smiling faces that swirled by. Donkeys drank at ceramic barrels dotted along the alleys between suqs and in the aisles of the various suqs. Old men gossiped on the stoops of buildings. Gaggles of women—some in full cover, some in Western dress—chattered and laughed as they walked along enjoying life. Uniformed school children—like troupes of performers—marched gaily along behind their teachers. It was a scene from a hundred or even a thousand or more years of history; and despite all of its bloody history, life was good there, at least at that pleasant moment in time.

  The first stop of the afternoon was the Old Sana’a Palace Hotel. Sheep Dog and Bahman wandered about the handsome ornate reception hall of the grand old hotel; then, avoiding the rickety open-cage elevator, they climbed the stairs to the top floor and walked out onto the roof top patio, found themselves surrounded with a desert scene of palm trees, potted plants, a spa and an azure swimming pool, and gained a dramatic panoramic view of the Old City. They looked down on the minaret of the Tin Suq mosque, the Street of a Thousand Lights, the hotel’s own handsome gardens which were an oasis of green in a desert of beige, the grand walled Moutana Ali Mosque, and a large square facing a gated entrance into a series of suqs. The square was packed with people picking at the tables in a flea market that had been held on the same day of the week for over 1600 years, pre-dating the advent of The Prophet. In the far distance, Sheep Dog and Bahman could just make out the huge open city cemetery.

  Then, as they surveyed the placid scene below—like two gigantic claps of thunder—simultaneous explosions erupted from the open square below hurling body parts and debris in every direction, and causing a major desecration in the sacred cemetery. The on-lookers on the roof top of the hotel were stunned into a horrified silence.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Bahman Ali Rumi was frightened, and he was not in good aerobic condition. He trailed behind Sheep Dog who was moving towards the smoke and noise, not away. That was crazy. The European had to be crazy.

  “Wrong way, Effendi,” he yelled.

  Sheep Dog looked back to indicate that he had heard the driver, but he ran on towards the square. When Bahman caught up with him, the man was standing stock still looking at a scene of carnage beyond anything Bahman had ever even fantasized in his worst nightmares.

  He moved up behind Sheep Dog and vomited. The center of the square—or more precisely, where the center of the square had been—was now a crater with tiled edges. It was like looking into the maw of a volcano spewing flames and smoke, and the acrid, nauseating smell of burned flesh. Body parts were strewn about the edges of the square, on the sidewalks, and plastered on the brick walls of partially destroyed buildings. Glass shards, flea market goods, pieces of tables and chairs, and garbage that had until very recently been the best fare the nearby restaurants could provide, lay in kaleidoscopic disarray.

  Sheep Dog stared intently at a woman in a torn and bloody blue burqa. Her covering was askew, almost shredded off her body. The jilbab body covering was missing a section so that her legs, previously unseen by anyone, even her husband, were bared. The hijab lay in the dirt behind her, and the nigab lay over a child which appeared to be about two years old. The child had been eviscerated, and the mother was trying to cover the little belly with her veil. The obscenity of that tableau was not lost on either Sheep Dog or Bahman. The head scarf lay under the arm of a boy who appeared no more than seven. For Bahman, it was spell binding and dreadful. For Sheep Dog it was Donna and Camille and Genevieve and Daniel. It was what he had not seen in reality when his family was murdered, but it was what he saw in his frequent nightmares. Something inside of him snapped. His face became a mask of hatred.

  A woman wailed something in Arabic that stood out over the keening of several women seeing their family members dead and dismembered.

  “What is she saying?” he asked Bahman.

  The frightened Arab had never seen such a frightening specter of a face on a man befor
e. If anything, he was more frightened of Sheep Dog than he was of the Stygian scene spread out before him. At least the dead were no threat.

  “Ah… Effendi…she, aah, she says that ‘It is the Saudis. They came here and brought Shaytaan, the Whisperer and his evil Jinns. They did this. They did this.’”

  “Ask her what she means.”

  Bahman would rather have eaten broken glass. He balked.

  “Ask her. I will give you 2000 YRLs right now if you will be quick about it.”

  The promise of more money overcame his qualms. He gently asked the woman why she had said that about the Saudis. She told him that she had seen two bearded rich men dressed in expensive white silk thobes and beautiful kaffiyehs escorting a poor young man wearing a robe and turban of a mountain clansman and a suicide vest. The young man stood in the center of the square, and the Saudis left. When they were out of sight, the young man pulled something on his vest, and Shaytaan’s fire burst out of hell.

  Sheep Dog nodded his understanding—his profound understanding.

  Ambulance and mortuary crews and police began streaming in. The scene was all too familiar and commonplace to them. The ambulance crews began treating the walking wounded; the severely wounded were all dead. The mortuary crews produced shrouds for the corpses and the dismembered body parts. For all their self protective hardened firewall exterior to yet another disaster ‘facilitated’ by members of their own religion who took a different view about the sanctity of innocent life, these men—something akin to the Sheep Dogs of William J. Bennett’s analogy—were eminently compassionate. They gently—even reverently—wrapped the bodies and the parts in white linen, the color of mourning. A young woman police sergeant wrapped her arms around a grief-stricken keening young mother and extracted a mutilated baby from the mother’s protective arms. The mother collapsed onto the dirt.