Sarai
Page 27
“I told you that she is not for sale. She is worth far more than any amount you could afford to pay. Besides, the deal has not changed, Mr. Khalif. As I explained to you already, the woman would be on loan to you. She remains mine. I sent that message with your courier and was firm about that from the start. Perhaps, you misunderstood.”
The man stood to leave. His size seemed to have more impact than when he walked in behind his exquisite delivery. Beauty and the Beast, thought Aswad. He jumped to his feet.
“Wait. Wait, please. I am a businessman. I simply thought that you might be willing to compromise.”
There was the faintest crack in Aswad’s voice, in spite of trying his best not to appear weak. The sight of the woman had nearly brought him to his knees. It wasn’t lost on the big man.
“How do I know she will be worth what you profess?” Aswad picked up a piece of fruit from the bowl behind him. “Just like this mango. It looks perfect on the outside but if I were to peel back the skin, it could be sour and tasteless.”
“First, Mr. Kahlif, I do not bargain. Second, I am not a street peddler. If you think I am, then you do not need what I have offered you. I do very well in business. I do well in business because I do not promise what I can’t deliver.” He paused to let that sink in.
Aswad answered quickly before the man could walk out on him. “How do you know that she will not run away while I am asleep?”
The man stared at Aswad. His gaze was cold and threatening. “She knows that it would not be in her best interest.”
“I will take your offer, as a loan, for one year as you stipulated.”
“I am also a man of my word.” The seller’s face hardened to resemble stone. “Before I agree to leave the woman with you, and just so we understand one another, let me restate the terms. The woman will be able to please you in ways you have never experienced. Or imagined. She will submit to you as often as you desire. She will prepare your baths and make your meals. You will not lay a hand on her that will injure her in any way. Her skin will be unblemished as it is today. You will not abuse her verbally or in any physical and unnatural way. You will not share her with anyone else. I will know, without you knowing, if she is damaged. You will protect her from any harm because remember, she is my property. And I am very protective of my property, Mr. Kahlif.”
Aswad was accustomed to being the aggressor. The tormentor. The one in charge. For the first time ever, perhaps, he was actually intimidated. The man’s demeanor was commanding and uncompromising. He added one last warning. “I am a powerful man, Mr. Kahlif. I know from where you believe your power comes. I know when, where, and how to diffuse it. You do not know the depths of where mine lurks and the extent of its reach. That puts me at an advantage. Don’t you agree? I guarantee that you wouldn’t know what hit you.”
The man had sufficiently warned Aswad of the consequences if he laid a finger on Suma. He made no restrictions about those things which could humiliate and degrade her as long as he left no marks. Her bed became the hard marble floor in a corner of Aswad’s bedroom. No pillow, no mattress, not even a blanket to lay upon. He summoned her to his bed to please him. And when he was done with her, she’d be commanded back to her corner.
There was only one servant they called N’iam, who took care of the interior and cooking when necessary. Kafele rarely ate at the compound any more. Omar and Saib weren’t there often enough to require more help than the middle aged woman who had been with them for almost two decades. She took instantly to Suma. A daughter she wished she had but never did. Never would. N’iam would prepare food for Suma to eat while she prepared Aswad’s meals.
The only time Suma was allowed to leave Aswad’s room was to cook his meal and then serve him as he desired. She saw to it that his glass was kept generously filled with bourbon. Then he’d throw scraps to her on the floor from his plate. She’d wait until he passed out from too much alcohol before scooping them up and throwing them away.
Today she made an extra effort to satiate his appetite for her. She steadied herself to keep from getting sick. This would be the last time, she decided. It was sooner than she had been directed but the encounters with Aswad were becoming unbearable. Suma tried to keep him liquored up so he would be too drunk or passed out to demand sex from her. Sometimes the alcohol did neither and it just made him meaner than he already was. She was afraid that he would forget his agreement with her master and hurt her in a way that she couldn’t prove before she had a chance to carry out her master’s orders. She got permission from Aswad to leave the room and prepare his meal. For the last time, she thought.
The hemlock leaves were where she was told they had been hidden, tucked into a small crevice in the kitchen behind a small table. It scared her to think that N’iam could easily have found them.
Before she was brought to the compound, Suma was given instruction on how to keep from poisoning herself while handling the leaves and how to disguise the hemlock in her cooking. She must crush all of the leaves with a mortar and pestle until only fine pieces and juice remained. To that, she would add some spices, carrots, and chicken. As little as seven leaves could be fatal. Suma wasn’t going to take any chances and used all of the leaves. When she left Aswad earlier, she made sure to fill a glass with his favorite bourbon and left the bottle next to his chair. Hopefully, the alcohol and the time she spent in his bed that afternoon would make him more restrained. All he had to do was eat his dinner.
CHAPTER 43
SUMA PUT ON her best performance yet. She set the tray down on his table and assumed her place on the floor. She picked up her needlework so she didn’t have to look at him. Aswad took the first bite and she held her breath. He made a face. Could he taste that something was not right? No one had ever survived to be sure of what it tasted like. He choked back a cough and she jumped to refill his glass. He took a deep swallow and let the burn slide down his throat.
Suma sat again and went back to her work, fearfully waiting for him to accuse her of poisoning him. He hungrily continued to eat in silence. She gave a start when there was suddenly a knock on the door. Suma let out an inward sigh when N’iam was told to enter. The man was sitting there naked and unashamed.
“This just arrived for you,” she said, averting her eyes from him. “I was told to give it to you immediately.” N’iam handed him an envelope, glancing at Suma as she turned to leave. Suma looked up to catch a quick wink. Misunderstanding, a feeling of shame washed over Suma.
Did she think I was pleasing him? Or did she know what I had done?
No sooner did the thought cross her mind than the letter dropped from Aswad’s trembling hands. He tried to get up from the chair. Arms and hands, legs and feet all looked as though they had a mind of their own and held him captive where he was. His breathing became abnormally rapid with the realization that he had lost all coordination.
Before the violent convulsions began to rack his body, he strained to train his eyes on Suma. She sat motionless on the floor, unable to unlock the stare into the set of dilating pupils just a few feet away. Within minutes, that seemed like hours, Aswad’s body became still and he stopped breathing.
Suma sat there, not having thought out this part beforehand. She crawled on her knees over to the letter. It said something about the girl not being dead. She had been adopted by an American family. The importance of the letter didn’t make sense to her but a voice told her not to leave it there. She folded it and hid it under her garment. While Suma gathered her strength to stand, the door slowly swung open. She froze. N’iam stood in the doorway with what looked like pieces of cloth rolled up under her arm.
N’iam stepped inside and closed the door.
“Can you trust me?” she asked the younger woman. Suma nodded her head. “You must leave before the man who brought you here returns for you.”
“I can’t! I must wait for him to see that I did what he asked so he will free me,” Suma said in a frantic voice. “He will track me down and –”
“He does not plan to free you. Even if he decided to keep you alive, your hell would be worse than the one you’ve had here. I’ve heard much inside these walls and I hear much outside them. You must get away from here right now. You said you trusted me. You must trust me on this.
“When I found the hemlock, I guessed what was going to happen and I knew you had to get away. I sent word to my cousin in Berenice on the Red Sea and he has come to Cairo to take you back to Berenice. No one will know where you went and finding you will be difficult, if not impossible. My cousin is a good man who will find you honest work there. You can have a life, maybe find a husband. Say you will go – please, you must leave right away!”
“What will happen to you when my master returns for me?” asked Suma.
“Nothing, my daughter. I’ll say that you ran away – that when I had not seen you preparing the evening meal, I came to check. Aswad was dead and you were gone. The police will not care about someone like Aswad who spent twenty years in prison. They will think he died of natural causes. No one will bother to find out otherwise. As for his sons, I have worked for them nearly twenty years and they wouldn’t suspect me. They hated him. Will you go, Suma?”
“Yes.”
“Here.” N’iam handed her a dark galabeya and a black hijab to cover her head and face. “I hoped you would say yes.” Now change quickly. My cousin is waiting and we must hurry.”
Suma looked past the dead man in the chair. “I must clean–”
N’iam nodded. “I will make sure that everything is disposed of while you get ready. Now hurry.”
N’iam kissed her on the cheek and began cleaning up the evidence in the room. Suma was on her way to a new life.
N’iam checked and rechecked to make sure that she had picked up every trace of anything that might have aroused foul play, including Aswad’s dinner dishes. The last thing were the clothes Suma had been wearing. Underneath her garments was an envelope. It was the envelope N’iam had brought to Aswad shortly before he died. Suma must have picked it up and left it to be destroyed with the other things. The older woman gathered everything up and suddenly changed her mind about the envelope. She wondered what secret could be held inside. There was no time to read it now, so she hid it under her own bulky clothing and would decide what to do with it later. She hurried outside the compound to dispose of Suma’s clothing into a barrel where refuse was being burned.
Back in the kitchen, she filled a clean dish with food that she had prepared earlier then she scraped it off into the trash. The dirty dish and fork were returned to Aswad’s room and laid on the table next to his glass, making it appear that he had eaten his dinner. With one last sweeping glance, she assured herself that everything looked as it should. An hour or more had passed. Suma and her cousin were well on their way out of Cairo.
N’iam could see a light on in Kafele’s villa. She took a deep breath and ran out of the main house, through the garden and breezeway, screaming at the top of her lungs. Kafele came running out of his villa, chasing the hysterical woman until he was able to catch her. It was all he could do to calm her down enough to understand what she was saying.
Shortly after his brothers had returned to the U.S., N’iam told Kafele that his father had started keeping a young woman. She wanted him to know that Aswad had ordered her not to disturb him. If there was one person who had come to know everything that went on at the compound, it was N’iam. Not only was she very good at collecting information, she was very perceptive in discerning what information was best kept to herself.
With N’iam on his heels, Kafele burst into his father’s room and stopped cold in his tracks. Kafele and Aswad had managed to stay out of each other’s way since the old man was released from prison. There was no love lost between them but the permanency of this departure was something he had never felt before. He would never see his father again. Not even in the next life.
“Where’s the girl?”
“I don’t know. I heard… noises…loud noises… coming from the room. They weren’t….uh, the normal noises. It was not my business. I went back to the kitchen and Suma never came out like she always did… to wash. I waited a while longer and went to the door. I was ordered not to disturb them but…I was afraid. I knocked on the door and no one answered. I knocked again and waited. Still there was no sound. That’s when I opened the door and –”
Kafele walked over to his father’s body. A whitish froth was visible around his mouth, mixed with what looked like vomit. He looked from the corpse to the floor and swept the immediate area with his eyes, trying to reconstruct what might have happened. There was nothing that suggested foul play. The girl must have fled, fearing she’d be blamed. His father had always been a heavy drinker. There was an empty bottle of bourbon on the floor and one less than a quarter full on the table next to him. A glass with a trace of amber liquid at the bottom sat next to a dirty dinner plate.
He turned and left the room. N’iam was close behind. It was hard to know what he was thinking. “What do you want me to do?” she asked hesitantly.
He looked over his shoulder toward his father’s room and said to N’iam, “We prepare him for burial. Go now to the mosque and bring the imam. I will call Omar and Saib.”
Even though Omar was the oldest, Kafele tried calling Saib first. He thought he’d find Saib’s reaction to the news a little more provocative. It was mildly disappointing when the phone just rang and rang. He hadn’t even thought about the time difference in Connecticut when he picked up the phone to call Omar.
Omar was in a deep sleep when Kafele called him. The sun wasn’t up yet. “He’s dead? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. That’s a stupid question, Omar.”
“It’s still the middle of the night here and the first thing you say is that Aswad is dead. You don’t say hello, you don’t ask me if I was awake. You just tell me he’s dead. What do you expect me to say? So, tell me. Did you kill him?”
Kafele ignored Omar’s sarcastic jab. “It was only a matter of time before the damn fool drank himself to death. I didn’t have enough faith that it would be this soon.”
Kafele almost mentioned the girl that Aswad had been keeping and then decided it was irrelevant. He didn’t know how that arrangement had come about in the first place and really didn’t care. It was doubtful that his brothers would care either. The fact that the girl ran didn’t surprise him. Seeing Aswad die probably scared her half to death. There was nothing to suggest that she had killed him. And even if she had, so what?
The conversation with Omar was matter-of-fact and held no emotion. In their minds, they had buried Aswad many years ago.
“He was going at the bourbon really heavy, N’iam told me. She showed me all the empty bottles that had not gone to trash yet. Saib couldn’t even drink that much in a year.”
There was silence for a moment and then Kafele continued. “It’s not like there’ll be scores of people waiting to cry and mourn behind his coffin as he’s taken for burial. Really, I can’t think of anyone who would come. That’s why I’ve already arranged for him to be taken tonight and buried immediately. I only called because I thought you should know before he is buried. Would you let Saib know? He didn’t answer his phone.”
“Yes. It’s not always easy to reach him. Is it necessary for one of us to fly back there?”
“Not unless you need to or want to,” Kafele told Omar. “Things will just go back to the way they were while he was gone before.”
“I could almost guarantee that Saib won’t make the trip, but he can be unpredictable. I have too much going on here myself to leave unless I absolutely had to. I will see you, perhaps, in a month or two.”
Kafele tried calling Nahab. The one person he really needed to talk to couldn’t be reached.
CHAPTER 44
“RACHEL, FOR HEAVEN’S sake, you don’t need to run over me! The plane won’t take off while they’re still loading unless, of course, you’re just chomping at the bit to get there. In that case, I’m glad to see that you’ve mustered up some excitement for this trip.”
“Don’t be so sure of yourself, Sarah. I just want the window seat by the escape hatch in case I want to bail out while we’re over the French Riviera. We do fly over it, don’t we?”
Sarah shot her one of those looks that begged the question, and when did you turn blonde?
They settled into their seats and Sarah asked, “Why? Are you expecting to see some half naked hunk waving at you from thirty-two thousand feet below?”
“That would probably be the highlight of this vacation. I can’t believe that I let you talk me into this over, say the Cayman Islands – you know, warm sand, miles of untainted beaches, and drinks with cute umbrellas served by cabana boys with great tans, and bodies that…”
Sarah cut her off. “Earth to Rachel. You’re engaged to Russ. Remember him? The guy who made Detective nine months ago? Knock-out gorgeous, body like Hercules?”
“Mm-hmmm. He was a cabana boy once…I wonder if your guy Catello was a cabana boy in the Italian Riviera.” Rachel’s voice trailed off. Her eyelids looked like they needed a pair of toothpicks.
“No more Bloody Mary’s for you!” Rachel had already downed a couple of Bloody Marys before they boarded. When she looked over at Rachel only seconds later, she was out like a light.
Sarah remembered that Rachel had fallen in love with Russ in sixth grade. From that day forward, there was never any question about who she would marry. There was no need to emphasize the fact to Rachel, her best friend forever, that she would indeed be smack dab in the middle of lots of warm sand. As far as untainted pristine beaches, well that was, perhaps, arguable to a point. Cabana boys? Mmmm…not so much.