Florence of Arabia

by Christopher Buckley

  "Have they found out anything?"

  "You must understand, the Matari police are known around the world—for incompetence. There isn't much crime to speak of. They're out of practice. They have a description of some kind, but it was dark."

  "Do they know what the"—Florence forced the word out—"murderer was after?"

  "Maliq's insisting it was some kind of assassination gone awry. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would bother assassinating him, unless"— Laila lowered her voice—"it was a relative of one of the drivers he beat."

  "That had crossed my mind," Florence said, trying to give the theory a nudge.

  "But we can't say that on TV."

  "No," Florence said. "Of course not, Maliq seems quite ... changed since his accident."

  "You have no idea. He came to see Gazzy yesterday at the palace and in front of people began lecturing him on the Koran. Can you believe—Maliq! Gazzy wasn't at all amused. He said, 'My dear brother, 1 think you must have bumped your head against the steering wheel.' Maliq became very demonstrative and began denouncing Gazzy for selling the country out to infidels. His exact words. Gazzy was livid. He ordered Maliq out of the palace. And now some of the moolahs are making an enormous to-do out of it all, encouraging pilgrimages to Maliq's garage. To touch the miraculous vehicle. It's straight out of a TV Matar soap opera. One of the moolahs has even issued a fatwa saying it's a religious duty! Do you believe? It has been a very long time since any fatwa was issued in Matar, Gazzy called in the moolah who issued it and gave him what-for."

  "Laila." Florence said. "Is it possible that Maliq is up to something?" "It's more likely that he's down to something. But what do you mean?" "Is it possible that Maliq is trying to mount some kind of coup against the emir?"

  Laila stared at Florence. "Do you know something?"

  "No. But sudden religiosity always makes my antenna go ping. And why are the moolahs suddenly so exercised? They've been pretty quiet up till now."

  "Gazzv thinks thev just want new Mercedeses. I le's instructed the imam to tell them to behave or they'll find themselves walking to Mecca on their next hajj. Do them good. As for Maliq, who knows, maybe he found God on the final lap. Who can fathom the mind of Maliq. Who would want to? So how's the new episode of Chop-Chop Square? I'm dying to see it."

  "We were discussing whether to kill off Princess Mahnaz or have Tafas rescue her in time. What do you think?"

  "I myself love a neat happy ending, lots of ribbons, but then Mummy brought me up on Dickens. Is Bobby here?"

  "Bobby?"

  "Mr. Thibodeaux."

  "He had to go back to the States."

  "Oh? When?"

  "Earlier in the week." Florence said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.

  "Pity."

  "Why?"

  "I wanted to ask him something."

  "I'll probably be speaking to him. Anything I can pass on?" Laila looked at Florence. "He's coming back? "Of course."

  "When?"

  "As soon as he can."

  "Ah. It can ... wail," Laila said, though her look had turned into a stare that was making Florence squirm.

  FLORENCE PHONED UNCLE SAM on the secure satellite phone, the one Bobby had said to use only "once we start taking mortar fire."

  'How's mv girl? Hew 1 love the new show. I'm betting on Tafas to swoop down at the last minute and rescue Fatima."

  "Mahnaz."

  "1 thought they were all named Falima. Hard to tell them apart with those veils."

  "That's what we're trying to change. It may not be Mahnaz who needs rescuing. Have you spoken to our friend?"

  "Oh yes, oh yes. He called in this morning. He's in—we're on the secure phone, I see—Paris."

  "Paris?"

  "I le's finding out all sorts of interesting things. Have you been gelling any knocks on your door in the middle of the night? They're notoriously incompetent, the cops there."

  "No. I had to tell George and Rick. And Laila just dropped by and seemed kind of curious about our friend's absence."

  "She's a sharp one. the sheika. It's that British education. Well, you're doing God's work over there, young lady, keep it up. Uncle is proud, darn proud. Don't speak to any strangers. And keep that phone handy, remember, it's your lifeline."

  Florence hung up. She fell paranoid. She wished Bobby were here, but if he was on to something fruitful in Paris, good.

  George was off pouting somewhere, so she sought out Renard, who always managed to cheer her up with his unabashed venality and outrageous schemes.

  "Rick." she said, "what did you want to be when you were growing up?"

  He looked up from his editing machine. "You mean, did I always want to be a sleazy PR hack?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Gosh. Frenzy"—Frenzy was his nickname for Florence, a corruption of George's Firenze—"all I wanted to do was help people."

  "Really?"

  "I remember clearly as a young boy of seven or eight, dreaming of one day helping rich Florida citrus growers get sweeter tax breaks out of the Appropriations Committee at the expense of California melon growers."

  "You're very cynical, you know."

  "I'm not saying I don't have standards. I turned down Michael Jackson as a client."

  "You did?"

  "I wasn't sure he had the money. But look at me now, Renard of Arabia, helping to liberate nearly a billion veiled women, to create lasting peace in the Middle East, a region that has known nothing but strife and sectarian haired for thousands of years. Look." He pointed to his forearm. "Goose bumps."

  "That's sunburn."

  "You step outside here for thirty seconds and—zap—skin cancer. It's like walking around inside a microwave oven. No wonder they dress like Casper the Ghost. It's a very strange place, this."

  "Why are you here? 'The money?"

  "Why not?"

  "I'm not sure I believe that." "There might be another reason." "Oh?"

  "I'm not sure you want to hear it. At least right now, what with everything going on."

  Florence stared, mute, inarticulate, lie was attractive, Rick, lean and wolfish, and had circumstances been different, who knows.

  "No." He smiled. "Don't ruin the exquisite awkwardness of the moment by saying something nice. Anyway, at Renard Strategic Communications, we never get emotionally involved with the client. It almost always ends with them wanting a discount."

  Rick turned back to his editing machine. "I've got a killer idea for a new-show. I've been kicking myself in the ass that I didn't think of it sooner."

  Georges reaction was "You can't be .serious." This persuaded Florence that it was exactly the way to go. George was still in many ways a creature of the State Department, and if it made him blanch, the idea was certifiably bold.

  The three of them presented it lo Laila, who kept saying as Rick laid out the plots of the first three episodes, "Oh my," "Oh my my" and "Jesus." When he was finished, she said, "This will go down like a pound of bacon in the middle of Ramadan."

  "Do you want to give the emir a heads-up?" Florence asked.

  "Good God. no." Laila laughed. "No. I think we'll make this a surprise for the emir. He's so busy these days. The hectic pace of Um-beseir. How he survives, I don't know."

  Florence and Rick got up to leave. Laila said, "And how is Mr. Bobby?"

  "Fine. Busy."

  "Will he be rejoining us soon?" "Yes." Florence said. "I'm sure."

  "Oh, good." Laila smiled. "It's so very dull here without him."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The knock on the door came not quite in the middle of the night, hut close enough for dramatic purposes: 11:35 by Florence's digital wall clock.

  Looking out her peephole. Florence counted three men. Even in the ambiguous sterility of their white thobes, they looked like police—either police or members of a death squad. They identified themselves over the intercom as "Inspectors Muhammed, Rama and Azbekir from the Division of Internal Services, madame."


  Florence pressed the redial button on the secure cell phone that Bobby had given her. This theoretically alerted the cavalry.

  "Gentlemen," she said through the intercom, "it is late, and I was asleep." She spoke in English rather than her fluent Arabic.

  "It is most urgent, madame."

  "What does it concern?"

  "Your colleague, Mr. Thee-thi-boo."

  "He's not here."

  "Yes, madame, this is the precise urgency."

  "If it's urgent, you should speak to him directly."

  "But he is not here."

  "Then how can it be urgent?"

  But... madame, you must admit us. We are the police."

  She wondered how long she could weave this conversational Mobius strip. Suddenly, her phone chirruped. When she answered it, a gruff American voice sounding like the personification of the 101st Airborne Division said. "You all right, ma'am?"

  "There appear to be policemen outside mv door."

  "Did they say what they want?"

  "Questions about our friend."

  "We're nearby."

  "What should I do if they take me with them?"

  "Remain calm. Keep your head down."

  "Who are you, anyway?"

  "Not quite sure at this point, ma'am."

  "I can handle them. I don't want any more shooting."

  "Madame!" Inspector Muhammed said insistently over the intercom, sounding plaintive, "you must admit us! It is official business. Please be putting on decent clothing."

  Florence opened her door and faced the three men with the appropriately furious air of a chaste and blameless Arab woman rousted from prayers at an uncomely hour. "What is the meaning of this?"

  "We must speak to you about your colleague Mr. Tee-boo—Thce-bo—"

  "Mr. Bobby. What about him?"

  "He has departed the kingdom." Inspector Muhammed said with alarm. "So do hundreds, thousands, of people every day." "But there is an irregularity." "What irregularity?"

  "He was witnessed severally here in Amo-Amas, in this city, by many persons, on the fifteenth of this month."

  "So?"

  "But we are told by his office here that he departed on the fourteenth. This cannot be true."

  "I don't remember when he left. I think, yes, it was the day before the big auto race."

  "No, madame. this cannot be." "What is the problem?"

  "The problem is that he is desired for questioning." "Why?"

  "We are doing the questioning, madame. We have spoken with him by the cell telephone, and he is informing us that he departed Amo-Amas bv Air France on the fourteenth, but there is no such record of his ticket with Air France."

  "What does your Immigration Department say? He would have been checked out of the country by the proper authorities at the airport."

  Inspector Muhammed frowned. "That is very correct. What you say is precisely the case, yes."

  "So?"

  "There is an irregularity. The information of the Immigration Department and Air France is not in accordance."

  "Who are you going to believe?" Florence said with disdain. "Your own government or some French airline?"

  "The problem is remaining, madame," Inspector Muhammed said.

  "Not here and not at this hour. But I'll tell you what. 1 will personally bring it up with the emir, may Allah keep him safe for a thousand years."

  "The emir?"

  "Yes. I have an audience with His Majesty tomorrow at nine o'clock. Assuming I am allowed to have any sleep before then."

  "Thank you, madame." Inspector Muhammed said unhappily.

  THE NEXT MORNING.. precisely at nine o'clock, Florence and Laila presented themselves before the emir. On the agenda were the latest (eye-popping) advertising revenue figures for TV Matar.

  Florence managed to slip in a coy reference to the fact that Matar's answer to the secret police had banged on her door at a late hour. She watched the emir's and sheika's faces closely for a reaction, Laila appeared surprised and displeased.

  "The Lions of Matar." she snorted. "That's their motto. Lions! An ostrich could defeat them in battle."

  "Laila." the emir said, "you must not speak of them that way. They are thoroughly professional and vigilant."

  "What about that assassination squad sent from Iraq three years ago to kill you? Who warned you of it? The CIA. Where was the vigilance of the 'Lions of Matar'?"

  "Our people knew all about the Iraqi assassins. They work in concert with the CIA."

  "Darling, they're imbeciles. Starting with their chief, your cousin Fahim." Laila turned to Florence. "The emir has, as you know, seventeen half brothers, all of them half-witted, for a total of eight and a half brains among them."

  "Laila!"

  "Praise God that my dear husband was endowed so well. In all respects." "Why do you speak so disrespectfully, and in front of Florence? You embarrass her."

  "No. darling. I embarrass you."

  The emir's face was a prune of displeasure. "Truly, I am out of patience. Show me the advertising figures." As he studied them, the prune was transformed into an apricot, tender and Smooth. "Um ... hm ... God be praised... Well, well, I must saw this is most satisfactory."

  "I am gratified that my lord finds our humble work so worthy," Laila said.

  "My wife." the emir languidly said to Florence, "has developed what you in the West call an enormous 'attitude' since she started working with you. Some might call it a Western infection."

  "The only infection to be found around here," Laila said, "has not been brought to Matar by Florence."

  "I will not be spoken to in this manner!" Gazzy exploded. "Is the emir of Matar to have no peace in his own tent?"

  "You do push him," Florence said when they were alone.

  "1 might as well have some fun. I assure you, it's just an act on his part It's so he can fly off in a swirl of self-justification to Um-beseir and his huge bed and his Russian hotsy-totsies. If he ever gets around to writing his autobiography, it should be titled 'The Seven Pillows of Wisdom.'"

  "Maybe we should do a show called that." Florence smiled.

  "I've seen it," Laila said.

  Mukfellahs, TV matar’s new sitcom about an inept, though ruthless, squad of Wasabi-type religious police, caused an immediate sensation throughout the region. A prominent Cairo television critic dubbed it Friends from Hell

  The opening episode showed the six regulars all relaxing at the office after a hard day of whipping women for a variety of offenses, complaining about how their arms hurt and passing around ibuprofen tablets.

  "That last one put up a struggle. But that'll teach her to walk on the sidewalk without a male escort."

  "We live in a shameful world, brothers. If it were not for us, hell would be full to bursting."

  "My arm, how it aches! Five hundred lashes I dealt today. And three stonings tomorrow."

  "Listen to Mansour! he whimpers like that woman at the mall today!"

  'God's mercy upon us!" declared another. He was reading the label on the bottle of ibuprofen. "These pills are manufactured by a company named Pfitzer!"

  "So?"

  "It's Jewish, you fool!" "German. Surely."

  "Do you want to take that chance?" 'The man thrust his linger down his throat and ran off-camera, making terrible sounds.

  'The others exchanged a glance and then plunged their lingers down their throats and ran off-camera.

  "Clever." Florence said, "the way it deals so subtly with the issue of anti-Semitism."

  "Yeah." Rick said, "I was sort of pleased with that, too."

  THE GRAND IMAN of Muk, the highest religious authority in all Wasabia, issued a fatwa calling for the assassination—"the more bloody, the more pleasing in the eyes of God"—of the entire staff of TV Matar. The fatwa, published in Al Kuk, Wasabia s leading newspaper, further slated that anyone who performed this holy deed would be guaranteed not only eternity in the nectar gardens of paradise but also twice the usual number of kohl-eyed virg
ins, for a total of— here religious scholars differed, but—more than 140, enough to keep most men, even the stoutest, busy for eternity.

  The reaction to the show from the Wasabi Royal Ministry for foreign Matters was equally furious. They denounced the broadcasts as "an act of gross interference in the internal affairs of Wasabia" and as "a severe provocation."

  The Wasabi Ministry for the Enforcement of Chaste Technology was tasked with jamming TV Matar's satellite broadcasts into Wasabia. This they managed to accomplish, for a few hours. All at once their jamming was counter-jammed by an apparently superior technology, originating, as it turned out. in Tel Aviv, where the broadcasts of Mukfellahs had developed an early and enthusiastic following, even among the ultra-Orthodox, who did not even believe in television. The Wasabi Ministry for the General and Permanent Disapproval of Israel promptly look its case to the United Nations Security Council. For several days, soft clucking noises could be heard around the table as Wasabia's indignation was simultaneously translated into 196 languages, at which point the United States delegate pointed out that there were not that many countries in the world. The United States permanent representative to the Security Council, a bald pate set in a sea of frowns, raised his pen high in the air and vetoed whatever it was that needed to be vetoed, and everyone went off lo the Henry Kissinger book party at the Four Seasons Grill Room. The situation in Amo-Amas, on the other hand, was more and more becoming less and less placid.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Explosions are not, alas, unusual events in the Middle East, hut until now Matar ("Switzerland of the Gulf") had been spared the ambient blast of gelignite.

  The last time there had been any explosion worth noting was in 1936, during an official visit by H.M.S. Indubitable, earning the duke of York, filling in for his brother. Fdward VIII, who had jumped ship in Cap d'Antibes when he learned that Mrs. Simpson was there attending Verbena Goughsborough-Pong's masked ball. He simply announced to his aide-de-camp that he had no intention of continuing on to Matar to "swat flies and be surrounded by a lot of frightful smelly wogs," leaving the Foreign Office to explain to a naturally disappointed emirate that His Majesty had been stricken with shingles.

  The poor duke of York, who in a few years would be thrust unwillingly upon the throne of England after his older brother succumbed to the mysterious charms of the Baltimore divorcee—some said it had to do with ice cubes— was dragged twitching and stuttering down the Indubitable's gangway to convey the crown's "d-d-deep f-f-f-feelings of f-f-f-f-f-friendship for the p-p-p-people of Muh-muh-muh ..."