Relative Danger

by Charles Benoit

“And you’ll just sit there and take it? You won’t say anything? You won’t get a lawyer?”

  “Maleesh, sadeeq. It’ll all work out. Nothing happens from the inside. My family is no doubt making all the right calls, finding the baksheesh—the bribe money—like I said, maleesh. And you? They don’t get many Americans in here, well, non-Arab Americans anyway. What are you in here for?”

  “They found drugs in my suitcase at the airport.”

  Abe looked at him. He made a low, long whistling sound as he leaned his head back against the wall. “That, Doug, is deep shit.”

  “It wasn’t mine, really,” Doug said.

  “Sure, and you didn’t inhale.”

  “No really,” Doug insisted, “somebody planted it on me.”

  “Like who?” Abe was smiling again. “Come on Doug, listen to yourself. This jail is full of people who were framed, who are innocent.”

  “You are, aren’t you?”

  “Touché, touché,” Abe said, holding up a finger as if he was conceding a point. “Okay, Sherlock, if it’s not yours, whose is it?”

  From the moment the twins at the airport wrestled his arms behind his back and clamped on the cuffs, Doug had struggled with that question. It had to be cocaine, a drug Doug had never even tried, and it could only have come from one place. He had tried to imagine a dozen different scenarios explaining its appearance in his bag—slipped in by an airline steward who knew the police were on to him, stashed by an Islamic fundamentalist eager to see the godless American suffer, spontaneously created by a bizarre combination of shaving cream, aspirin, and the increased cabin pressure. He wanted to believe anything other than what he knew was the truth.

  “Some girl I met in Morocco put it in my bag. She has ‘business connections’ here in Cairo and I assume they would have stopped by my hotel to pick it up.” It didn’t feel any better saying it out loud.

  Again Abe whistled, it sounding more like a bomb dropping from a great height. “Well sadeeqakee, you know what that means?”

  “Yeah, maleesh.”

  “Doug, maleesh means no problem,” Abe said. “What you have here is mushkila kabeer.”

  “Mushkila kabeer?”

  “Right. A big problem.”

  ***

  The gray meat looked out from under the flat bread.

  “If you’re not going to eat it,” Abe said, making a thick, gray sandwich, “give it to Yasser over there. He loves the stuff.”

  It had been eight days since Doug arrived in the cell. Many of the faces had changed but the cell stayed as crowded. Abe’s cousin had managed a visit to let him know that the family was working to get him out and, insha’ Allah, he’d be home by Friday. Doug sat with his back against the cold wall, his spot strategically selected to be as far from the porcelain hole as possible, looking forward to another day of watching the ceiling.

  Despite the crowded conditions, five times a day Doug’s cellmates, including Abe, answered the call to prayer. In shifts of four, they lined up, shoulder to shoulder, and faced one of the walls. They stood, they knelt, they placed their foreheads to the floor, repeating the movements three times.

  “The Quibla,” Abe explained as he started into his sandwich, “is the direction to Mecca. We face that way since that’s where the Ka’ba is located. The bowing and gestures are all quite symbolic, but basically it reminds us what Islam is all about, submission to the will of God. We’re Muslims,” he said, pointing around the room, “those who submit. But really everything is Muslim, everything submits to the will of God. Muslims just do it willingly.”

  Doug pulled the flat bread apart into small pieces, trying to stretch out his noon meal. He was uncomfortable with the topic. “I don’t think about religion much.”

  “Me either,” Abe said.

  “What are you talking about? You’re up there praying every few hours. And with all your salama lakums and your Al Hamdu Allahs, you’re thinking about religion all the time.”

  “I’m not thinking about religion, I’m thinking about God.”

  “Same difference,” Doug said, eager to end the discussion.

  “Religions are fucked up, every one of them. But we all still submit to God’s will, even you, my little atheist friend.”

  “I never said I was an atheist, but since you don’t see me up there,” Doug said, pointing to the last group of men finishing up their prayers, “how can you say I submit?”

  “I see you sitting here, next to me, in this jail cell. Like it or not, this is where God wants you.”

  “I wish God’d get me the hell outta here.”

  “Insha’ Allah. If God wills it, it’ll happen.”

  “So I suppose God willed that girl to put the drugs in my bag?” He didn’t want to come across too sarcastic but it came out that way.

  “Somebody say amen, brothers,” Abe said, now in the voice of a TV evangelist. “The Lord,” he continued, stretching the word out to four syllables, “works in strange and mysterious ways.”

  “No offense, Abe, but I think it had less to do with the Lord than it did with….”

  “Satan!” Abe shouted as he stood, warmed up to his role now, but trying hard not to laugh. “Yes, Satan had you by the very balls, sinner. Your very balls! The devil in the shape of a woman, sinner! And she lured you—oh Lord did she lure you—into her den where you made the beast with two backs!” Abe gyrated his hips, driving home the image. “And now, sinner,” he said, dodging a pillow thrown from the bed and ignoring the Arabic jokes, “now you reap what you have sown. But it is not too late, sinner! No, not too late! Tell Satan to get behind you, sinner. Shout it out: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ And when the Devil is behind thee, for God’s sake, sinner,” he said, eyes wild and pointing at Doug, “don’t drop the soap.”

  For the first time since he got off the plane in Cairo, Doug was laughing. And so were the other men in the cell, Abe’s broad theatrics entertaining despite the language barrier. The laughter stretched out, led to other imitations, these in Arabic, which led to singing and, cramped and crowded, traditional Arabic dancing. Several of the men tried to teach Doug an Arabic line dance Abe called a debka, but with little success. For half an hour Doug forgot all about Edna, all about the jewel, all about the drugs, all about Aisha.

  But that night, like every night in the cell, he squatted, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of it all. He quit, that he decided in the police van as it pin-balled through the streets of Cairo. Sorry, Edna. Sorry I didn’t find your jewel, sorry I didn’t clear Charley’s name, sorry I spent all your money, sorry…but I quit. He decided to be polite about it and had been mentally drafting his Final Report that he’d mail from Pottsville. “Dear Ms. Bowers,” it would read. “I quit.” He’d explain why, of course, and, as the professional detective that he was, he’d send along a summary of his findings. A short summary, since he hadn’t found much.

  “First,” it would start, “I believe that the jewel really does, or did, exist. It may have been a very famous diamond with a long history, or it may have been just a hundred years old, I’m not sure, as my sources—a washed-up museum director and a drug-dealing tramp—are divided on this point.

  “Second, it was indeed stolen in Morocco. If my source in the Moroccan police force, a sadistic egotist and an admitted embezzler, is to be believed, it was a violent and bloody robbery, masterminded by the one relative I had foolishly thought was interesting, but who was nothing but a punk.”

  All those years I pestered my father with those questions. That had to be painful. At what point, he wondered, did Russ turn bad? He couldn’t have always been like that. He played baseball, for God’s sake.

  “Third, the jewel was taken from Morocco to Egypt, which you already know because you typed out the notes and paid for the ticket. Fourth, ….” Here is where he was stuck since he had no fourth—and, given his first, second and third were all things Edna had already known—he didn’t even have a summary.

  How about expenses?
Every good detective submitted an expense report. Edna had paid for everything, but Doug still felt there were some unexpected costs, costs he had picked up but felt justified to pass on to his employer. His questions had cost Mr. Ahmed/Fahad his life. How you going pay for that one, Edna? No, that’s cruel, he thought, and unfair, too. Besides, it may have been a coincidence. What could the old man possibly have known that got him killed? And why wait until that day to kill him? Okay, so he’s off the expense list for now.

  How about those two pimps he beat up? In a just world they should get something. But it had been Doug’s idea to cruise the red light district and it would be stretching it to pin that on Edna. Unless of course they were not pimps and were hired thugs, out to get him off the trail. If that were the case, he thought, they were pretty lame tough guys. Doug had been in enough fights to know his abilities and, while he’d been in a few with worse odds, and done all right too, it was strange how easy it had been. Even if they were just pimps, they should have been able to beat the crap out of him. He thought about the incident for a while, deciding in the end to leave them off the list as well. Maybe he’d cryptically footnote them, “two incompetent assassins, soundly beaten by an out-of-shape former bottle washer: no charge.”

  Then there was Aisha.

  On one hand was the fact that she had used him as her delivery man, was responsible for him landing in an Egyptian jail, and, if Abe was right, might be ultimately responsible for his unexplained and unfortunate death, or his formal state-sponsored execution.

  On the other was the sex. Doug thought about this for a while, careful to focus on the concept of the sex and not the actual sex itself as he wanted to avoid any hint of arousal while in this tightly packed, all male environment. No reason to give anybody any ideas. It was difficult since just the concept of sex with Aisha was better than most of the real sex in his life. After what he thought was an hour of analysis, but was really less than ten minutes, he decided that, for now, Aisha was off the list.

  But there was the cocaine. Or was it heroin? No one had ever mentioned what it was, specifically, that he was carrying, but Doug doubted it made any real difference. ‘Oh, it’s only cocaine? We’re so sorry to have detained you, Mr. Pearce, please enjoy your stay in Cairo.’ More likely it would be ‘Oh it’s only cocaine? Then just ninety-nine years for you, Mr. Pearce.’ What could it have weighed? If a can of beer weighed twelve ounces—was liquid measure the same as dry weight?—then it had to weigh a lot less than a pound, probably less than three ounces. Assuming cocaine costs about four hundred dollars an ounce, then he had brought in only around eight hundred dollars worth of cocaine. Aisha had set him up for less than the cost of one of those designer LBDs she made look so sexy. It didn’t seem worth the trouble. Doug thought about this as he tried not to watch one of his cellmates piss down the porcelain hole. Drug dealers dealt in huge quantities, or at least he assumed they did, so why would Aisha need to transport about a quarter of a pound—a pound was less than a kilo, right?—all the way from Morocco to Egypt? The plane ticket cost more than that.

  The man stumbled back to his quarter of the upper bunk. In the semi-darkness of the cell, Doug watched as he tried to climb over his sleeping bedmates, curling up between the wall and someone’s backside. Doug sat up, stretched, and leaned back against the wall. Was a pound more than a kilo? In an algebraic equation, did one night of great sex cancel out ninety-nine years in jail? How many questions do you have to ask an old man before he gets hit by a car? If two pimps left the train station at the same time, how long would it be before they would get beaten up? Did an ounce of beer weigh the same as an ounce of cocaine? What if it was light beer? A freakin’ C+ in eleventh grade math, he thought, and I can’t add this up.

  Somewhere down the hall, the loudspeaker began blasting the early morning call to prayer. Several of his cellmates woke up and began washing their feet, arms, and hands, the ablutions required before prayers. Doug rested his head back on his raised knees and somehow managed to drift to sleep.

  Chapter 14

  “What’s your last name again?” Abe asked as they stacked the breakfast dishes on the plastic tray by the door. It was gray meat and rice, the breakfast of champions.

  “Pearce. Why?”

  Abe held up his hand to quiet Doug and turned his ear to the barred window as he listened to the voices in the hall.

  “They’re coming for you, Doug.”

  For a moment Doug had no idea what Abe meant, then, as the voices drew nearer and he heard his own name in the middle of a long Arabic sentence, Doug remembered. He had lost count of the number of men who had passed through the cell over the last two weeks. Some came back, eyes blackened, maybe a thin trail of blood snaking out of their ears. Some didn’t come back. “Were they released?” Doug had asked. “One way or another,” Abe had said.

  “Abe,” he said, his voice shaky, all the fear that he had swallowed over the days and nights suddenly bubbling up. “Abe…I… I don’t know….”

  Abe walked over and put his hands on Doug’s shoulders, and Humphrey Bogart spoke. “Doug, the lives of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Where you gotta go, I can’t follow. What you gotta do, I don’t want any part of. But if you don’t go outta that door, you’re going to regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. We’ll always have this cell.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, you crazy Arab?” Doug said, trying to laugh but too scared now to do more than manage a weak smile.

  Abe pulled Doug in and gave him a hug, and, before Doug could react, kissed him on both cheeks.

  “You’re fucking crazy, Abe.”

  “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

  “Douglas Pearce? Hal anta Douglas Pearce?” the guard said through the bars.

  “Aywaha,” Doug said, using one of the few Arabic words he had picked up, “I’m Douglas Pearce.”

  “Come,” the guard said as he opened the door.

  Doug looked back at the other men in the cell. The fat man, Fozan, who gave him the back rub, crazy Yasser who actually ate everything on his plate and looked for more. It was strange, he thought, I’m going to miss these guys. He looked at Abe, who was sliding back down the wall to his chosen spot. “That was an excellent Bogart,” Doug said.

  “Bogart?” he said, shaking his head. “Shit, that was my best John Wayne.”

  A hand reached in and grabbed Doug by the shoulder, pulling him from the room. The door slammed shut and Doug wished he were on the other side.

  “Come,” the guard said, exhausting his English vocabulary, pushing Doug forward down the long hall. Dozens of identical doors lined both wall, each housing another dozen men, each with their own Fozans and Yassers and Abes and maybe a Doug here and there. They passed through doors, climbed some stairs and made enough confusing turns to thoroughly disorient him. The halls became brighter, drop ceilings were added, bulletin boards on painted walls appeared, then polished floors, noisy air conditioning and plastic potted plants. He could hear phones ringing in the offices they passed, the rhythmless tap of computer keys filling in the forms that keep the headless bureaucracy breathing. The guard led him into a desk-filled work area and at the far end he saw Sergei leap up from his chair and walk toward him, accompanied by a heavily mustached officer.

  “Oh thank God you’re all right,” he said as he wrapped his thin arms around Doug’s chest. “I have been so worried.” The guard said something to him in Arabic and he released Doug, stepping back. “Yes, I’m sorry, please forgive me, it’s just I’m so happy to see my son. Are you a father yourself?” he said to the officer. “Three sons? Al Hamdu Allah, Al Hamdu Allah. But he is my only son so I’m sure you understand, don’t you?”

  The guard replied in Arabic and he and Sergei shared a laugh, no doubt about wayward sons and a father’s love. The escort guard was waved off by the father of three sons and he and Sergei continued to chat in Arabic as they sa
t at a nearby desk, passing folders of paperwork between them, pulling out forms now and then to sign or pound into submission with a rubber stamp. Doug sat on the bench near the desk trying to piece it all together. He watched as Sergei nonchalantly removed a sealed envelope from his coat pocket and slipped it into the folder he then handed to the guard, the man too polite, too proud, or too professional to notice. They shook hands again and the man checked his watch, not wanting to be late for his next appointment with another nervous father.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Doug said, as they walked through the office labyrinth.

  “Yes, well, that,” Sergei said. “I couldn’t think of anything else. I hope you’re not offended.”

  “Offended? You could have told them I was your wife, as long as it got me out of there,” Doug said. “I should explain how I got there.”

  “Certainly not here, Douglas,” Sergei said as they made their way through the crowded lobby toward the entrance. “And certainly not in the cab—all the drivers outside the police station are paid informants for this lovely organization. There will be plenty of time to talk once you get cleaned up. And speaking of that, what have your mother and I told you about playing in your church clothes?” Sergei laughed and put his arm around Doug’s shoulders as they pushed open the glass doors and entered the blinding blast furnace that was downtown Cairo.

  Chapter 15

  The felucca glided along the Nile, its triangular sail and ancient design contrasting with the triple-decked, diesel powered dinner cruise barge that plowed through the dark waters, its rows of lights multiplied by the ripples of its wake. The felucca’s pilot was dressed in the traditional galabiyya and white headscarf, not because it was part of his tourist shtick, but because that was all he ever wore. The dinner barge carried over-charged diners vacationing from London and Australia. The felucca carried six cases of Gordon’s Gin and a replacement computer modem from a downriver warehouse to the Sheraton. In his quaint costume and in his unhurried way as he guided his craft towards the shore, he was picturesque without meaning to be. In a few weeks, fuzzy and poorly lit photos of his sailboat would be passed around dinner tables in Derby and Perth, and he would be described as historical and fascinating. But at that moment he was being described as late and fucking worthless by the assistant manager who paced the edge of the riverside restaurant.