Kingdom of Strangers

by Zoë Ferraris

  “It’s a hexagon,” Katya said.

  “Yes, well, if it had a stem, it would be an apple.”

  Katya gave a half smile and went back to eating but something flitted at the edges of her consciousness. Apple. She looked at the maps hanging there. They did look like apples. Three apples.

  She set down her carrot.

  “What is it?” Charlie asked.

  “Ya majnoun. I…” She spun to the computer, opened the browser, and ran a search. “The Tale of Three Apples” popped up immediately. “Alhamdulillah!” she cried. The Internet censors weren’t fast enough to catch every version that appeared on the Web.

  It was one of the stories from One Thousand and One Nights. She had read it as a child. It was complicated, but she remembered the beginning well enough. The caliph Harun al-Rashid, who suffered from the worst insomnia known to man, was traveling the streets one night when he stumbled upon a fisherman who caught his fancy. He told the fisherman that he’d give him two hundred dinars in exchange for whatever he happened to catch that night. The fisherman gleefully agreed and threw out his net and came up with a monstrously large trunk. The caliph brought it back to his palace. When he opened it, he discovered the body of a woman.

  As far as she remembered, the story stood alone among all of the tales. It was the only one in which a woman was killed and someone actually went out to look for her killer.

  She read the story while Charlie watched with impatience. A few paragraphs into it, Katya clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “What is it?” Charlie asked.

  Katya explained about the story. “I will show you what the caliph finds in his box. Just a moment.” She turned back to the computer and found the story in English. She scanned through it until she found the right part. “Somewhere here.”

  Charlie leaned over and read:

  They found therein a basket of palm leaves corded with red worsted. This they cut open and saw within it a piece of carpet, which they lifted out, and under it was a woman’s mantilla folded in four, which they pulled out, and at the bottom of the chest they came upon a young lady, fair as a silver ingot, slain and cut into nineteen pieces.

  Charlie gasped. “Are you kidding me?” She read the passage again. “They cut her into nineteen pieces?”

  “Yes,” Katya said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this.”

  Charlie slumped back into her chair. “This changes everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he’s not just a religious fanatic anymore. We thought that nineteen meant some magic number from the Quran, remember?”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Now it means something else. Nineteen could be a reference to this story. I mean, how many women get chopped into nineteen pieces in your folktales around here? Is this common?”

  “No. I can’t think of any. In fact, this is the only murder case in the One Thousand and One Nights. Yes, people die, but in this story, it is due to a crime. And there is an investigator. I think it is the only story in the book like that.”

  “Good Lord.” Charlie looked dumbfounded.

  “This is the reference to the Osiris case,” Katya said.

  “Yes.”

  “I think it means that there are three apples. And we have only found two.”

  Charlie nodded. “What else happens in the story?”

  Each read it in her own language. It was, as Katya remembered, a bit winding and archaic. Essentially a man travels for thirty days to find three apples to please his sickly, beloved wife. After a long saga, he kills her in jealousy and then discovers tragically that his wife had been faithful, Desdemona-like, and that he had been misled by a deceitful slave.

  Katya and Charlie sat in silence for a while.

  “I don’t think we should ignore the religious component completely,” Charlie said finally.

  “I agree. In both of the two cases, the killer left a religious quote.”

  “This just changes how we think about him,” Charlie said. “Let me ask you, is it acceptable to read the Arabian Nights here? I mean, how do religious people feel about this book? It is kind of racy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has been forbidden here.”

  “It’s banned?”

  Katya nodded. “We are not allowed to read it, but we do anyway. Many people are proud of it. It is part of our history. Like Shakespeare for you.”

  “The religious authorities have banned it, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it doesn’t make sense that our killer would be a religious fanatic but also someone who reads the Arabian Nights,” Charlie said.

  “No,” Katya said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Okay, here’s an idea,” Charlie said. “We don’t know who the Osiris victim was—and chances were that the Angel killer wasn’t the one who killed her. He just placed her body parts around the city. It was probably satisfying for him; it fulfilled some urge. He only started killing later. He killed the nineteen women.

  “If he was in his teens or early twenties back in 1989, then he would have been about thirty when he started killing the desert victims, which fits the classic profile of a serial killer. They start in their thirties. Over the past ten years, he’s been killing women. We can assume he’d be about forty now. That’s one piece of information we didn’t have yesterday.”

  “Okay,” Katya said.

  “What was the quote from the Osiris case?” Charlie asked.

  “It said, We have created all things in order.”

  Charlie nodded. “That is his fundamental preoccupation—order. I think it’s a way of controlling himself and justifying his actions. Tell me, is there anything about Islam that encourages structure?”

  Katya shrugged. “It is not… it is not preoccupied with it.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said. “What about all your artwork? I’m thinking of elaborate mosaics and stuff. That’s very geometrical.”

  “Yes, you’re right. There is also a structure to the day with the five prayers based on the movement of the sun.”

  “Right,” Charlie said. “Let’s assume that he scattered the Osiris body parts because he recognized the box as a reference to the One Thousand and One Nights. That just means he’s relatively well educated. He knew the story. He thought he was being clever spreading the parts in an apple pattern. God, he’s probably been waiting for decades for someone to recognize it. Anyway, later, when he starts his own killings, he repeats the pattern with the victims in the desert. Only now he is really expressing himself. He’s trying to impose a certain order on the world. Not just on his victims and the way they’re buried. I think he may also be trying to impose some kind of moral order—and that’s where the religious component comes in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s targeting mostly foreign women. If you view them through the eyes of a strict Muslim, you might argue that these women are acting inappropriately. They are living in houses, living intimately with strange men. Most of them aren’t Muslims, right? They’re from the Philippines and Sri Lanka.”

  “Some of them may be Muslim,” Katya said. “But most are probably not.”

  “They probably even help raise children here, don’t they? They’re having some influence on Muslim children, but they’re not Muslims and they probably don’t follow the rules of society as well as Saudi women.”

  “Yes.” Katya nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  “Are there any organizations here that protest the use of all these foreigners in menial-labor positions? I’m thinking that in America we have the Ku Klux Klan, which is a group of people who want society to be a certain way and who are often willing to commit racist acts to achieve their goals. These sorts of secret societies might draw people like our killer. Do you have anything like that here?”

  “No.” Katya frowned. “Most people feel that these workers should be here. Saudis don’t think of work as necessary for them. It is for someone else
to do.”

  Charlie sighed. “Right. I think I knew that.”

  “Then what about Amina?” Katya asked.

  Charlie sat back. “I think we both believe the killer is writing a new message. We just don’t know what it is.”

  Katya was trying to imagine what it would be. He was a madman driven by his own perverse sense of meaning. He was an executioner. An angel guarding hell. The only thing that all of his murders and the Osiris case had in common was that he was writing messages. He wasn’t just obsessed with order; his madness found its expression in words and letters. He was obviously literary—perhaps even a calligrapher. But what did it mean? That they should hunt down every artist and writer in Jeddah?

  She was exasperated. The case was growing more bloated by the day, always dangling a new lead that would mean weeks of tedious work.

  “Don’t give up,” Charlie said. “We’ll find him. We just need to narrow down who had access to the Osiris box the day it was stolen.”

  “Yeah,” Katya said. “But it could have been anyone who was at the marina.”

  “Yes.” Charlie gave a grim smile. “But chances are, it was one of the boys who were on the boat with Colonel Sa’ud.”

  40

  Katya was wretchedly tired. Three hours of sleep the night before and even that had been broken by worries. When she did sleep, it was no reprieve, only a dark space in which her fears were allowed to proliferate. She got up before the first call to prayer and drank coffee in the car with Ayman while they were stuck in traffic, choking on the fumes of a diesel truck that they couldn’t seem to pass. She was grateful that he was quiet.

  She was sitting at her desk staring dumbly at her computer when Zainab came in. Her boss was a severe and commanding woman, the sort who would never cover her face at work. The other women in the lab sometimes whispered that with a face like that, her husband didn’t have to worry that another man might snatch her away. Katya hated that they were probably right. This morning, her expression was darker than usual, furrowing her already prominent brow so that her small eyes were almost lost in the folds of skin.

  Two of Katya’s lab mates had just arrived and were hanging their purses at the back of the large room and discussing their work. Zainab approached Katya’s desk.

  “The department is cutting its budget,” she said in a quiet voice, “and I’m afraid they’re going to have to let you go.”

  Katya stared at her. She was having trouble absorbing this news.

  “I’ve managed to convince them to make this temporary, so it’s only a suspension—”

  “Why?” Katya asked, her voice angrier than she’d expected.

  “It’s just until they can sort out the budget.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Katya said. Her hands felt cold and she could hear her voice shaking. Inside she felt a strange numbness about it all, but her body was reacting. “I’m the head pathologist in this lab. I have seniority. Are they letting everybody go?”

  Zainab frowned at her. Please don’t make me reprimand you. “As I said, this is just until the budget gets sorted out. Please don’t take it personally.”

  But it was personal. Deeply. She watched Zainab talking, heard her mention details about the shifting of workloads. The continued discussion at the back of the room told her that her lab mates hadn’t overheard anything. But Katya was certain they would see it on her face. She stood up, pushed past Zainab, and left.

  A march down the hall. The women’s restroom. No paper towels. She wiped her face on her cloak and went straight to Chief Riyadh’s office. The door was closed, the light off. Even his secretary’s desk was abandoned. It was probably too early, but the building was alive with voices laughing and elevators dinging. She went straight down to the first floor to find Majdi. Coming out of the elevator, she bumped into Adara.

  “There you are,” Adara said. “I heard about the suspension.” She pulled Katya into a nook beside the water fountains. “Abu-Musa told me.”

  “How does he know about it?” Katya asked. She was aware that she sounded contemptuous, but she didn’t care.

  “I don’t know, but he used it to warn me. If I don’t stay in line, as he put it, I may be next.”

  “Bastard.”

  Adara raised an eyebrow. Obviously. “I suspect this wasn’t Chief Riyadh’s doing. It was probably Mu’tazz. He knows about your involvement with the Zahrani affair and he’s dismissing you, politely, for improper behavior.”

  “I’m not letting this happen,” Katya said.

  Adara glanced down the hall at Mu’tazz’s office door. It was shut but a light was glowing inside. “Just put on your burqa,” she said.

  Katya pushed past her. Marched off down the hall. She didn’t put on her burqa and she didn’t bother to knock on the door. She simply opened it and walked in.

  Mu’tazz was sitting at his desk writing a report with a long, elegant pen. His attention to the task, his careful posture, and the apparent enjoyment he took from the work all collapsed in an instant when he looked up and saw Katya. He laid the pen down.

  “I want to know why I’m being suspended,” she said.

  “You’re going to have to talk to Chief Riyadh,” he replied. His voice was even. His gaze remained pinned to her face.

  “No,” she replied. “He’s not here and I want to know now. This was your doing.”

  He blinked and looked down at the desk. “We know you’ve been overstepping your bounds,” he said, “and not doing the work you were actually hired to do.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  A faint smile was on his lips.

  “I was the one who found the first pattern,” she said. “I am the one who has been looking through all the files, night and day, to find another pattern. I found out about the Osiris case when you hadn’t told Inspector Zahrani anything about it, and I now believe that the cases are connected.”

  His cool expression began to slip. She explained about the connection to “The Tale of the Three Apples.”

  “I don’t think the Angel killer killed the woman in the box,” she said, “but he was probably the one who dispersed her body parts in a hexagon pattern throughout the city. He was educated enough to recognize the tale from the forbidden book, and he decided, at some later point, to make two more apples to fit the story. It shouldn’t be too hard to narrow down the suspects who were on the boat with Colonel Sa’ud that day. I know you’ve interviewed them already.”

  “Last time I checked,” Mu’tazz said coldly, “you were not an investigator.”

  “I would like some more time to look through all the files,” she went on. “I want to find out if there’s a third hexagon of city killings. It may have been going on for some time now, and those files are our only clue. I think figuring out this pattern is our best chance of finding Amina al-Fouad.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mu’tazz said, picking up his pen. “You’re going to have to talk to Chief Riyadh.”

  “I’m not leaving until we catch this killer.”

  What was that look on his face? Was he grudgingly impressed? Catlike, he said, “You have two days to clear out your desk.”

  Katya went upstairs with a violent, shuddering feeling in her chest. She took refuge in the women’s restroom and locked the door. She sat on a toilet, which flushed automatically every time she moved, and put her face in her hands. Breathe.

  A pounding headache was forming. She went to the sink and splashed water on her face, wiped her face on her cloak, and marched into the hallway. She went back into the lab, sat at her desk. Opened a report on her computer. Stared at the screen. It took a few minutes for the decision to arrive, but when it did, she grabbed her purse from its hook and strode out the door.

  41

  The security guard at the front desk had an annoying habit of spooling out an entire formal greeting every time Mu’tazz went past. “Salaam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu. Good to see you’re back from lunch, Lieutenant Colonel.”

 
Yasser Mu’tazz did not like greetings any more than he liked all the other fluff of language: please, thank you, thanks be to God. He didn’t bother replying to the guard; he simply strode into his office and shut the door.

  He had long ago realized that he worked best alone, quietly researching away on a computer or in a library or pawing through old files in forgotten corners of records rooms. He had never liked the human component of his job. It was surprising what you could find out from a small sheaf of papers. He had become quite good at drawing conclusions about people from the barest facts. It was extremely satisfying, almost artistic.

  In a similar way, you could sum up the entire emotional content of a word in the shape of the letters that formed it. Just last night he had spent two whole hours drawing the word fitna. It used to be a metallurgic term referring to the removal of dross, but now it meant “chaos, tribulation.” At some point it had evolved into a description of the destructive charms of a woman. It was one of those words that didn’t have spaces, where one single line flowed together, its bumps and grooves uniform. All of the dots that indicated letters were clustered on top like sprinkles on a cupcake. It was so easy to make words like that look elegant. But it wanted destruction. He had drawn a thick, ugly word in blackest ink on white parchment. The dots looked like smallpox, the line itself a scar. He’d cut into the paper and let the ink bleed onto the desk, staining the rest of the parchment and a nearby book. And he’d left the whole thing there. His only dissatisfaction was that there was no one to appreciate his art.

  After talking to Colonel Sa’ud that day three weeks ago, Mu’tazz had gone looking for the boys from the boat. He had found and interviewed all but two of them: Ali Dossari and Mohammed Wissam.

  The ones he had interviewed had solid alibis for the day that Amina al-Fouad disappeared, so he had ruled them out. But it seemed Dossari and Wissam didn’t exist anymore. There was nothing on either man since the early nineties. No passports, no IDs, no driver’s licenses (of course, the last was not exactly a requirement in this country). No marriage or death certificates. The last known photos of the boys were from juvenile detention—Wissam with a small ratlike face, and Dossari with a strange melon-shaped head and a pair of flapping ears. According to the visa office, employment records showed that Wissam, who was Egyptian, had worked in Jeddah as an assistant chef in a small restaurant for three years in the late eighties. Mu’tazz managed to track down the restaurant owner and discover that Wissam had gone back to Alexandria fifteen years ago. The owner had never seen him again.