“Ya’ll see the old snake charmer in the white diaper and head rag,” Tex pointed a rough meat-hook of a finger across the camel yard, “over there, sitting cross-legged by the ragman’s cart. He’s your paper man.”
Snake charmer?! Could it get any worse, Jack wondered.
Tex’s voice lowered, its tone only slightly less tipsy. “The old geezer’s also an informant in the pay of the Yemen’s PSO as well as the Americans, so careful what’cha say.”
“PSO?” Jack asked.
“Yemen's most feared internal security and intelligence-gathering force,” Yasmin explained at Jack’s side. “The Political Security Organization, led by military officers.”
“Just great,” Janet said.
What wasn’t so great, Jack thought, was the way Sam was tailing Janet. From the moment she and Yasmin had shown up at the hotel, Sam seemed to have eyes only for Janet. He was like a cub intent on raiding honey from a hive. Jack’s hive! At least, for now, until he decided otherwise. Problem was, Janet didn’t appear to view it even slightly that way.
“And we get to Marib how?” he asked.
“Ya’ll are on your own now,” Tex said, tipping his disreputable Stetson. “If you should make it to Marib, look up a friend of mine, the owner of the Bilquis Restaurant. Take care, ya’ll hear?” At that, he swerved off in a none too steady gait.
Over the rim of her black veil, Yasmin’s kohl-rimmed eyes glared at Sam accusingly. “I think our professor here has led us on what you Americans call a wild goose chase.”
“I am most happy to tell you that I can take care of that small transportation issue,” Sam said, his teeth sparkling white, straight out of Bollywood. “My mother’s sister-in-law’s son has a pickup we can use. They live just the other side of the Suq. The pickup is old, still it’ll get us as far as Marib with any kind of -- ”
Janet’s head swiveled in Sam’s direction. “Us?”
Sam looked affronted. “But, yes. You need someone who speaks Arabic.” He glanced at Yasmin with deprecating apology. “And for her, a woman, to translate – well, that will draw unwanted attention to her and to you as a result.”
Jack shrugged. “First things first – our travel papers.”
Drawing a fortifying breath, he dodged both camels and dung to cross the large yard in the direction of the snake charmer. The brown old man sat on a prayer mat, and his bony fingers were playing a flute made out of some kind of gourd. Up close, the skeletal man’s loincloth and turban were as dirty as the dung. His half-naked frame was stained with indigo dye. Along with necklaces of shells and beads, sand goggles draped the old man’s bare, bony chest.
After Jack’s harrowing experience in Hotevilla’s viper-filled plaza six weeks earlier, he had gained new respect for the slithering, highly venomous serpents. Obviously, the snake charmer was seated out of biting range, and the hooded, olive-brown cobra swaying up out of the woven bamboo basket was sluggish. Even so the forked tongue darting from its slit of a mouth, sewn almost shut, made Jack shudder. The afternoon wasn’t hot enough to produce the sweat that popped out on his temples.
Sam, Yasmin, and Janet had caught up with him, and she must have noted his repulsion. She made a move to act in his behalf. He shook his head. The spitfire had trouble remembering that in Yemen women were mute in public. “You have our travel papers?” he asked.
The old man took the flute from his mouth and blinked with confusion. Craziness, or maybe craftiness, glazed his eyes. So, he didn’t speak English. Now what?
Sam said, “In olden days, snake charmers were considered healers and magicians.”
“How about making our papers magically appear,” Jack said.
Sam stepped forward to translate, squatting before the old man but just out of range of the puffing and hissing cobra.
The snake charmer held out his palm. Sam looked up to Jack.
He was beginning to understand Sam’s wheedling look. “How much?”
“Twelve thousand riyals.”
With exasperation, he dug his wallet from his back jeans pocket and crossed the old man’s palm with the money.
Whoosh – from beneath his prayer mat, the old man extracted a sheath of photocopied sheets and passed them to a grinning Sam.
Disgusted, Jack folded and jammed the papers in his windbreaker’s inside pocket. He was about to pivot away, but for the commanded, “Wait!” The old man tugged the sand goggles off from his gaunt neck and with a jack-o-lantern grin handed them up to Jack. “For thee, mi lord,” the snake charmer said in flawless Shakespearean English.
Now it was Jack’s turn to blink – first at the illusory old man and then at the dusty old sand goggles dangling from the old man’s deeply lined palm. They had to be of World War II vintage or maybe even World War I. What the hell! Refusal might just well cause a riot there in the suq. Jack took the goggles and pulled them over his head to dangle around his own neck.
Sam was tugging the group away to plow through the press of people into the suq’s maze. “Time to blend, old man.”
Old man?!
Sana’a must still smell the same since the Great Flood. Camel manure. Tobacco smoke. Roasting lamb. The Suq was comprised of various markets lining both cobblestoned and dirt alleys, one after another. Spices, fabrics, jambiya daggers, gold, perfumes, dates, coffees, qat, fish – each market occupied blocks. And all were perfumed with the scents of the East – ginger, cinnamon, cumin, and, of course, the fragrant resin of frankincense.
He passed blacksmiths hammering out steel blades over hot charcoal furnaces and harnessed camels with blinders over their eyes, walking around and around a pole to mill sesame seeds. Skinny old women plied through bins of fruit. Skinny men zipped through the crowd on old Italian motorcycles left over from Mussolini’s invasion of East Africa. Skinny teenagers stood in music cassette stalls, listening to bootleg copies.
Weapons were a fashion statement. Nearly every male was casually armed. Some sported jambiya at their waists. Others cradled German Mausers, Italian Vetteri-Vitali, and French Gras cavalry carbines. Even boys wore miniature, yet definitely real, curved daggers. Weapons. Weapons. Weapons everywhere. And the Yemenis seemed cool with it. No wonder Yemen had the largest open arms market on the globe.
At one shop-stall sporting an assortment of western junk, more like the crap found in a dollar store in the U.S., Janet paused to try on a pair of sunglasses. “I’m always losing them,” she complained. “I could use a cell phone, too.”
“I don’t think Sprint has a stall in the Suq,” he said drily. “If it did, I would be in line for tech support along with a charger.”
Yasmin was buying a diet Coke and Sam a bag of Fritos. Jack seriously doubted Sam would pay for either the Coke or the Fritos. A pair of cheap sunglasses in hand, Janet was still rifling a bin of knick-knacks. He would never had pegged her for a shopper, but she was smoking hot, unfortunately not only to him but also Bollywood, so whatever delighted her Native American’s imaginative soul was all right by him.
That was when he spotted it. What Bollywood needed to complete his impeccable wardrobe. Plinking out a couple of twenty riyal coins, Jack purchased the item and, turning to Sam, jammed it on his head like a crown.
“Mickey Mouse ears!” Sam exclaimed effusively with obviously delight.
Delight was not the effect a disgruntled Jack had had in mind.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The airy mafraj occupied the top floor of the tall, family house. A reception room, it had large windows on three sides, providing magnificent views of the surrounding mountains, which were best that time of day, at sunset. An abundance of black and red cushions on the floor and against the walls made sitting and lounging around the low, center table comfortable.
Most often the mafraj was used by men who smoked the traditional hookahs and chewed qat. Since the son of Sam’s mother’s sister-in-law had taken Sam and Jack to see a pickup, parked on the ground level in one of the stalls used for sheep and goats, Janet and Y
asmin had been relegated to the mafraj, along with Sam’s mother’s sister-in-law, Khadi. The middle-aged woman was dutifully hidden from sight under the tent-like black hijab and abaya. Once alone with Janet and Yasmin, Khadi had lowered her veil to expose a large hooked nose that rivaled a parrot’s.
She began an obligatory ‘welcome to my home’ in Arabic, with Yasmin translating while passing Janet a plate of chromatic figs, oranges, mangoes, and dates. “The Star of David qamaria above the central window confirms that their home was built by Jews more than 350 years ago.”
Janet nodded with feigned interest. She would have preferred to be below, checking out the pickup. How did women in the Middle East endure all the restrictions? Since Khadi spoke no English, the conversation was less that stimulating . . . until Yasmin turn to Janet and said, “You shave your head. Why?”
Irritability bubbled in her. “It’s a tradition of my people.”
Yasmin’s lips twitched. “I think not. I do think you are out of sorts this evening.”
She wouldn’t be drawn into a defense of her emotional state. “My shaved head is an expedient solution to a recent medical procedure. And you?” she challenged. “Why do you cover your hair?”
A glimmer of humor sparkled in Yasmin’s eyes. “It’s a tradition of my people.”
At that, Janet’s tense jaws eased.
Then, more seriously, Yasmin said, “It is not stated in my religion, Islam, that women are required to cover their hair, so I often take off the hijab.” She did so now, freeing her luxurious hair with a proud shake.
So, besides wariness of testosterone, Janet and Yasmin had in common pride of hair. That was a start, considering they also had a common goal – taking down Nuke. “You know, Yasmin, if we ever synced our periods, Jack and Sam would think it was the Apocalypse.”
The responsive grin in the narrow face made the young woman absolutely beautiful. “Who would have thought it . . . two women from opposite sides of the world?”
Glancing at Yasmin’s bandaged hands, she murmured, “Was the Arab Spring, the revolution, worth what you have had to go through?”
Yasmin’s ample lips folded in a hard line. “Nothing has changed. In a law-and-order vacuum, religious fanaticism always steps in.”
“As an activist for feminine rights, you seriously believe you can – ”
“Please, not for feminine rights,” Yasmin interrupted. “For animal rights. Because that’s what we are. To be a woman in Yemen is to be the property of a man. Every step we take is delineated by rules and restraints established by men.”
As though watching a tennis match, Khadi’s head swung from Janet to Yasmin and back to Janet. The older woman might not understand English yet her furrowed brow indicated she could clearly detect in the exchanges of the younger two a shared cynicism.
With a conciliatory smile, Janet said, “We could always ditch the two men with us.”
Yasmin laughed shortly. “In Yemen, without the help of these men, we won’t get the one we do want. Besides, I think your Jack – ”
“He’s not mine.”
“I think he would like to be.”
“I doubt that. Jack might want me but on his terms, which would mean to be free to come and go – and without according me the same right. Besides, he’s still caught up in the living drama of a dead wife.” And I am still caught up in distrust of the City Slicker Dudes of the world who seem to locate me so easily, as if they have female-sucker radar chips implanted in their penis.
“Do you think Jack could cut through the barbed wire erected around your heart?” Yasmin asked softly.
Her eyes flared. “What would you know – ”
“Ahhh, but life’s bruising experiences have caused each of us to erect the protective fence, have they not?”
A new respect for the Arab woman unfolded. “What about your Sam?”
Yasmin shook her head negligently. “He is a peacock. Barely as tall as I and with no substance. Like all Yemen males.”
She started to interject that she thought there was more to Sam than met the eye, that he wasn’t showing all his cards but thought better of it, at least for the present until she had a better feel for his game. “Sam is half American.”
“Which means, like your Jack, here today, gone tomorrow. There is nothing in Yemen to hold Sam once he is no longer needed to care for his mother.” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, I could not bring myself to trust any man who wears a Mickey Mouse watch.”
Neither can I.
* * * * *
The Mickey Mouse ears jammed in his back pocket, Sam steered the rusty, faded green Toyota pickup along a two-lane road. The ribbon of asphalt spooled its way upward toward the savage beauty of Jabal an-Nabi Su-ayb’s summit. Behind and below, Sana’a lights sparkled in the darkness like a million South African diamonds; above, awaited the first checkpoint.
Marib, though only a hundred miles northeast of Sana’a, was a four-hour drive minimum. The road followed an ancient camel caravan trail over the jagged black mountains and down through scrubby flats to Marib and from there into the sandy vastness of the Empty Quarter.
The old Toyota was one of three vehicles of foreign tourists in a convoy flanked by pickup trucks of young armed men in military gear. The escort was required by the government for those tourists still willing to risk travelling the isolated road east between Sana’a and Marib. Parts that boiled with unrest. Maybe, he thought, the Mormon missionaries in the black Land Cruiser at the head of the convoy should send up a prayer of protection for something safer than their current armed escort.
In the old Peugeot behind him, two German couples were probably drinking jovially with the bootleg case of Heineken they had bought at a tiny unmarked shed plastered with enormous photos glorifying Osama Bin Laden. The Hashish most likely added to their festivity.
Beside him sat the exquisite Yasmin. Next to her squeezed Janet, her gaze peering beneath her billed cap in a continual sweep of the dark outside the windows. In the back beneath a green flapping tarpaulin Jack was crammed along with a load of qat. Sam had to smile. Poor Jack.
Sam counted himself most fortunate at the moment. The woman whose impassioned, intelligent face had first captivated him in an Al Jazeera TV coverage sat in bodily contact with his. It had been at the height of the Arab Spring, and thousands of security and army troops were deployed around Change Square in front of Sana'a University. Armored tanks had blocked the junctions of the main streets. This brave Muslim feminist activist had been demonstrating outside Sana’a University in her now-famous bright pink abaya with beaded cuffs and her pink flowered scarf. “The Quran does not require we wear the veil,” she had told the reporter calmly. “Only outdated patriarchal tradition requires it.”
That was moments before Sana’a’s Criminal Investigation Unit had handcuffed her and hauled her off. Before she had been locked in prison and raped. Of course, all true Arabs knew that any woman who claimed to have been raped was to blame. But then he wasn’t a true Arab. But then, neither was she. Not totally. Half French, she had been educated in Europe, receiving a full scholarship to the London School of Economics, and graduate school in Paris.
Now here she sat next to him, him, concealed from authorities in the repressive, depressive black shroud. He inhaled deeply of her perfumed Frankincense, sighed at the lowly status in which she must view him, and hoped she would never guess his adoration. To her, he must seem not a professor but a schoolboy. Like the doomed love affair of Solomon and Sheba, was his own desire for Yasmin also doomed? Legend had it that the Queen of Sheba was the daughter of a jinn, a Yemeni spirit. She had come from the sand to build and rule one of the wealthiest empires in the old world. Surely, besides him sat a daughter of a genie.
It was going to take time to win her trust. Precious time and patience. Patience he had, but he wasn’t at all sure about the time.
That high in the mountains the air was growing cold, and he switched the heater on low, then resumed his professoria
l prattle. “We are now traveling one of the Roman world’s superhighways, Janet. The Sabanean or Sheba Kingdom was fabulously enriched by the tolls charged on caravansaries of camels loaded with precious frankincense bound for the Mediterranean and Europe.”
“We will also be traveling through an area crawling with outlaws, Jihadists, and tribes unfriendly to foreigners,” Yasmin countered, her arms crossed, her expression defiant.
Clearly, he didn’t stand a chance with her. He wanted her to look at him with stars in her eyes instead of disdain. He sighed, resigning himself to continuing to disguise his unrewarded passion for her as interest in another. A ploy that wasn’t winning Jack’s friendship.
“What’s important,” Janet said with finality, “is that we’re traveling Nuke’s trail. If he went out on the convoy before ours – ” she glanced at him, “What’s the intervals between convoys?”
He crimped his mouth apologetically. “Time schedules mean nothing here. You saw how long we had to wait for the rear envoy truck to show up. This man Nuke may be five or six hours in front of us – maybe less,” he rushed to reassure her.
Sometime way after midnight, the convoy reached the first of some twenty or so checkpoints. Painted oil drums lined the way to a dimly lit toll-like booth. Beside it a tattered red-black-and white flag waved wearily. A guard in a red beret inspected the Mormon missionaries’ Tasrih papers issued by the Tourism Police, after a moment gave the nodded approval, then approached Sam’s side of the Toyota.
He could feel Yasmin’s thighs tense alongside his. He reached across her to withdraw the requisite papers from the glove box, and his arm grazed her breasts. Good God, south of his belt he suddenly was resurrected. Better maybe that Jack drive. On second thought, no. He rolled down the window, welcoming the cold air of sanity and passed the papers to the guard.
Janet had slumped against the far window as if asleep. Yasmin had tucked her bandaged hands inside her abaya’s voluminous sleeves and ducked her head in requisite modesty. It wasn’t just Yasmin who was in danger at that moment. Were the guard to do a search, discovery of the AK-47 concealed within the folds of her abaya would guarantee that the entire truck’s occupants would never see the light of day again.
Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker) Page 10