Florence of Arabia

by Christopher Buckley

  And so Maliq found himself in a foul temper, sitting on a beast he loathed, having to play figurehead at an idiotic Wasabi ritual that would leave his subjects' mouths tasting—as the expression goes—like shit. Allah be praised.

  following dawn prayers. Maliq suffered himself to be hoisted onto the hump of Shem, the current Camel Royal. Shem was gorgeously caparisoned in gold and silver and jewel-colored tassels. Maliq wore the ceremonial robes of a high sharif of Matar, as well as the distinctive farfeesh of a grand imam of the Bukka. Into his waistband was tucked the na'q’all, the lustrously bejeweled ceremonial dagger that, legend had it, had been used by Sheik Alik "The Righteous" Makmeh to castrate five hundred English crusaders. (In deference to Matar's new ally France, the dagger used to castrate 150 French knights was not on display.)

  As Maliq was lowered onto the saddle. Shem uttered a long, low, pained moan followed by a noxious emission of colonic gas that continued for nearly a full minute.

  Maliq waved with annoyance at his nostrils and barked down at Yassim, the attendant to the Camel Royal. "By the Prophet, what have you fed this accursed beast?!"

  "Aashaah eshowkiya, Holy One!" Yassim cringed. "The finest!"

  "Next time give the lucking thing an enema before I am put on it! It is highly unpleasant!"

  "Yes, Great One! May Allah bless—"

  "Shut up. Let's get this over with."

  Maliq and Shem, the latter still groaning and issuing a mephitic Jetstream behind him, were led out of the courtyard onto Abgullah Avenue, where the sullen crowd of Mataris awaited. Mukfelleen were going down the line dispensing small lumps of dried camel excreta.

  "This surely will make them love me," Maliq grumbled under his breath. "Urrrrnnnfninnnwim'ooooooooooorrrrrrahhhhh!" Shem groaned. "If he farts," Maliq hissed at the now trembling Yassim, who was leading the animal, "it's your head." "But Magnificence—" "Shut up. Pick up the pace."

  Maliq waved noncommittally at the crowd. The crowd reciprocated. Ahead, a squad of mukfelleen was beating a man who was refusing to put the ceremonial dung on his tongue.

  Oh, Maliq thought, let this day he over.

  Maliq's royal court walked behind, their faces puckered from Shem's exhaust. Yassim tried to hide himself beneath his own robes. As Maliq passed a group of young men. Shem issued forth an epic gust that caused convulsions of hilarity. Since laughter was forbidden from dawn to dusk on the Feast of the Perfidy of Raliq—and, according to Wasabi precepts, discouraged on all other days—mukfelleen were quickly upon them, dealing vigorous bastinadoes with their rattan canes. These particular howls of pain Maliq enjoyed, inasmuch as he did not enjoy being the object of their amusement, he was certainly the most miserable emir in the Middle East at this moment. Never had he felt more absurd. He was not a great drinker of alcohol, but once this ghastly ordeal was over, he was going to drink an entire bottle of brandy. Possibly two.

  It was while Maliq was entertaining this palliative fantasy that the event happened, the event that became known (and is still known to this day) among Mataris—and a good many - Wasabis—as the Revenge of Raliq. It would take days of intense forensic investigation to determine what exactly had happened. But from the point of view of Maliq, what happened was as follows:

  One moment he was scowling in the direction of the youths being beaten by the muks; in the next there was a very loud noise coming from directly beneath him, and he became aware of being propelled upward into the fierce morning sky at a rate similar to that experienced by astronauts launched into space, escaping—how does the poem go?—the surly bonds of earth. His ascent became dreamlike, understandable since at this point he had lost actual consciousness. He found himself happily swinging from star to star, like a delighted young child. Alas, this innocent, carefree slate of mind did not last. and as Maliq regained consciousness, he was still a hundred feet or so up in the air and—alas again—earthbound at a rate commensurate with the implacable laws of gravity.

  This part of Maliq's wild ride did not endure for long. He was saved—God be praised—from even more terrible injury by landing on what remained of the Camel Royal. If it was an inglorious cushion, it was at least softer than the unforgiving asphalt of Abgullah Avenue. Such of the emir's bones as remained unbroken were, doctors agreed, the result of his having landed on the lower torso of the formerly whole Shem.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Common as explosions are in the Middle East, it's not every day that the ruler of a nation is blown up by his own camel. Word traveled quickly around the globe, despite Matar’s official news blackout.

  Someone had covertly filmed the event. Indeed, the episode was so completely captured on tape that the authorities concluded that whoever made the film must have been involved. Within hours, footage of the emir lofting into the sky was being viewed avidly in Internet cafes, in airport waiting areas, in bars, on lens of millions of television screens—everywhere. Headlines ranged from the subdued (MATAR’S NEW RULER IS GRAVELY WOUNDED IN SUSPECTED BOMB ATTACK) to the less restrained (THREE – TWO – ONE – IGNITION - CAMEL!).

  Undignified as it is to be blown up by your own Camel Royal, Maliq was more focused on the fact that his legs—legs that once controlled the fastest race cars in the world—now terminated stumpily above the knees. A team of crack French orthopedic surgeons had done what they could, but inasmuch as the legs had landed hundreds of yards apart, and much the worse for wear, there was only so much that could be done.

  On a more positive note, the ceremonial silver saddle—used hundreds of years before by the emir Achmed bin Ulala’am—had protected the imams vital parts, at least for the most part. A team of crack French urologists announced that Maliq might, in time, be able to sire a successor with some prosthetic assistance. The royal digestive organs, on the other hand, had undergone great trauma. There would be no more royal feasting on spicy foods, or on any food that required much chewing. Also encouraging was the news that a spleen, though nice to have, is not a necessity medically speaking; meanwhile, some minimal hearing had returned in the emir's remaining ear.

  Expressions of sympathy poured in from world leaders, along with assurances of friendship and offers of assistance with the investigation. The United States, whose relations with Matar had deteriorated, volunteered a forensic explosives team, as did Russia, England, Italy and, oddly, Bulgaria. The U.S. offer was, of course, coldly spurned; the others were more or less politely declined. It was announced from the palace that Matar itself would conduct the investigation, by which it was understood perfectly that the matter would be handled by the Wasabis and the French.

  THUS IT WAS that Major Bertrand Matteoli-Picquet of the Bureau d'investigation Criminel National, found himself picking through the frankly unpleasant remains of the Camel Royal with an ultraviolet spectrometer and uttering the most useful word in the French language: "Merde." "What's the matter, chief?" his assistant said.

  Matteoli-Picquet handed him the instrument. The assistant peered through it. His eyes widened. "Oof." he said. "What now?"

  "Make the report. What else?"

  The French technicians swiftly concluded their business so that they could proceed to the more important matter of lunch.

  Twenty yards away, a man wearing the uniform of the Matar Department of Public Health—Crime Search Scene was hunched over yet more remains of Shem, including a piece of the ceremonial silver saddle and part of the emir's left shoe. These he diligently placed into a plastic container, which he duly sealed and marked. The French team paid him no attention; nor did the police who had cordoned off the scene. The man was just another technician poking through the appalling detritus.

  The French team e-mailed its report—classified VRAIMENT SECRET (Really Secret)—up the chain of command. The first slop was the Onzieme Bureau, in the person of Delame-Noir. The French spymaster had immediately flown back to Amo-Amas from Kaffa to supervise the investigation.

  When his eyes fell upon the word "Exuperine" in the first line of the report.
Delame-Noir stopped breathing for several seconds. He was an unflappable man, yet it look a good quarter hour of pacing and sweating and cursing before he was able to compose himself enough to place the necessary call to Paris.

  QUEER STREET IS the name of Washington. D.C.'s gayest bar. It was not a place that George normally frequented. Bobby had suggested it as a good venue for George to receive cell-phone calls. Bobby's reasoning was that U.S. government agents are reluctant to follow people into gay bars, especially really gay bars, for fear of being pinched.

  George looked out the front window and saw the black sedan with two crew cuts inside. Precisely at three minutes past eight, the cell phone rang.

  Bobby conveyed the information with the efficiency of his tradecraft. It took under three minutes. With all the efficiency of his trade, George memorized it verbatim. He hung up and went to one of the pay phones near the men's room and dialed a number at the New York Times Washington bureau belonging to Thomas Lowell.

  Thomas Lowell had spent much of his career covering the Middle East for the Times. In fact, it was he who had coined the phrase "the Arab Street." (His first metonymic term for Arab public opinion was "Sesame Street." but the producers of the children's television program by the same name protested.) Lowell had then tried to coin the term "the Jewish Street." but it had not caught on. Still, he kept putting it in. and New York kept taking it out. He was currently back in Washington after being expelled from Wasabia. allegedly for having a bottle of Scotch in his hotel room: True enough, but the expulsion really had come after he wrote a column pointing out that Crown Prince Bahbar had had a Jewish girlfriend while attending the University of Southern California. Inasmuch as Bahbar was currently the deputy minister for anti-Semitism, this did not go down well in Kaffa's Arab Street, though it played rather well in the Jewish Street.

  Lowell and George had known each other for years. They were able to converse in fluent Arabic. Lowell was most interested in what George had to say.

  FLORENCE H AD BEEN in a completely dark cell for almost three days with a decomposing body, no food and half a cup of water, now gone. But for discovering that the body wasn't Bobby's, there was little pleasant about her situation. She had rationed the water, which she'd found under the cot in a cup that her jailers had probably neglected to remove. Her thirst raged. Though she was beginning to starve, the thought of food had no appeal. She kept thinking of the Ugolino scene in Dante's Inferno—the nobleman imprisoned in a lower with his beloved children, driven finally to cannibalism. Perhaps this was the particular madness toward which her tormentors were attempting to compel her.

  She spent the time praying to any god passing overhead. When the terror crept closer, she tried to ward it off by translating every poem she could remember from English into Arabic, then into Italian, then into French and back into English. As the third day drew to a close, she knew that she was beginning to go mad.

  It came as a blessing, then, when the door to her cell burst open and a furious guard—gagging at the stench—waded in and pulled her out. She sucked in lungful after lungful of non-fetid air as if it were pure oxygen. Two guards dragged her down the corridor. No manacles this lime. Florence prayed—she couldn't help it—that they were taking her to her execution. She fell guilty about asking the Blessed Mother (Florence had been brought up Catholic) to grant this wish.

  Her grandfather had written an unpublished memoir of fighting in North Africa in the 1930s. As part of Mussolini's attempt to style himself as a latter-day Caesar, Il Duce had sent his army across the Mediterranean to reconquer what had belonged, two thousand years before, to his forebears. Idiotic, to be sure, but all the same the one adventure of her grandfather's life, which up to then had consisted of being a traffic policeman in Florence.

  Florence had found the manuscript when she was a young girl and had read it. There was an episode that came to her now. as she was being dragged along these corridors. Her grandfather's unit had been surrounded by Omar Mukhtar's forces. They faced death or certain capture and God knows what after that. Two of the young soldiers under her grandfather's command put their rifles in each other's mouths and simultaneously pulled the triggers. Her grandfather didn't try to stop them. Terrible things were done to captured soldiers, on both sides.

  Moments later, an Italian armored column rolled over the hill and dispersed the attackers. Everyone in her grandfather's unit survived except the two who'd killed themselves. He wrote letters to their families saying that the boys had died glorious deaths in the service of the New Rome.

  The guards heaved her into a room. She lay on the stone floor, gasping and trembling, her brain a kiln and her throat an oven, praying—no longer guiltily—for death. Surely Our Lady would understand.

  A door opened, footsteps. She felt arms lifting her onto a chair. And heard a voice speaking Arabic: "Give her something to drink." Another voice said. "No." but then a cup was shoved at her. She grabbed it and drank. She drained it at a gulp.

  A voice barked at her, "I want the names of the plotters. Or you won't leave this room."

  Plotters? What was he talking about? What she did know was that the prospect of not leaving this room was preferable to returning to her cell. She summoned the strength to focus on the man asking her these questions. She looked. Yes, this much made sense, it was Salim bin-Judar, head of" the royal bodyguard. Next to him was another man. Her eyes were going in and out of focus. Crisp uniform ... Colonel... Nebkir? Yes, that was it, Nebkir, from the Special Prefecture, a purposely obscure branch of the police set up by the British back in the 1920s. Ostensibly part of the Royal Police, only these men reported directly to the British governor. Florence had seen Nebkir once or twice during her visits to the palace. He usually hovered in the background. A curtain man. Forbidding-looking, yet he had always returned Florence's glance with a nod and sometimes even a smile.

  Her mind was wandering. She wasn't thinking clearly. Her head was on fire. It was coming off. Focus, focus—

  "Who ... are... the other... plotters?" Salim demanded.

  They were going through the motions, she knew, so they could cut off her head. She wanted to speed up the process. Anything but being sent back to an airless tomb with a rotting corpse. She saw that bin-Judar was wearing a pistol.

  "Why don't vou." she said quietly, "shove the Koran up your ass? In your case, it would fit." There, that should do it.

  Salim bin-Judar bolted from his chair and drew his pistol. Good, Florence thought. She closed her eyes and waited for the bullet. She heard male voices, loud and arguing.

  "Don't you see," a voice said, "she's trying to provoke you."

  "Infidel bitch!"

  Florence opened her eyes and looked into Nebkir's. He was a sturdy, block-laced man with a pencil mustache and a neat goatee. A fastidious man, al peace with the world, but a killer when required. He spoke softly.

  "Madame. There has been an attempt on the life of the emir. So you will perhaps understand that we are curious professionally to know what you know:"

  Salim bin-Judar murmured to Nebkir that he was giving away too much information. Florence wondered whether all this was planned. She decided to play her own game of counter-deception.

  "The only plotter," she said, trying to summon what moisture remained in her body, "was Mr. Thibodeaux, the man you killed and put into my cell."

  Nebkir said in a not unkind way, "His death, that could not be helped. Putting him in there with you... I assure you this was not my idea. But madame, I must speak plainly—there are people within these very walls standing ready, eager, even, to perform... unimaginable things upon you." He leaned forward and said with apparent sincerity. "Help me and 1 will try to help you. But 1 must tell you, before Allah, that 1 do not think you will leave this place alive."

  "Then before Allah." Florence said, "I will tell you that I know nothing of any attempt upon the emir."

  "Lies!" Salim al-Judar exploded, he lunged forward with the pistol, Nebkir pulling at him. Salim put
the muzzle against Florence's forehead. How pleasantly cool it was to the touch, she thought. Yes, she thought, pull the trigger—pull the trigger.

  "Tell!" he commanded. "Salim!" Nebkir shouted.

  It would all be over in a second, she thought. She closed her eyes and took a breath, perhaps the last she ever would. "Tell!"

  Then Florence felt a bolt of lightning inside her skull, and all went dark.

  "Idiot! What fucking good did that do?" Nebkir seethed at Salim, who stood over Florence's body. Her temple was gushing blood. Nebkir took out his pocket handkerchief and pressed il against the wound.

  "Let her bleed to death and give the body to the dogs," Salim growled.

  Nebkir rose and thrust his face into Salim's. "Rebi! Fool! Did it occur to you that with all that is now happening, the Americans might intervene? And if the Americans come, do you think that I will take the blame for killing their woman? Do you want to spend the rest of your life in Guantanamo, jerking off to the sound of monkeys?"

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  By some miracle understandable only to Allah the Wise, the All-Knowing. Yassim, attendant to the Camel Royal, was not killed in the blast, though it was not likely he would be leading any more royal parades.

  he lay on his bed in King Nadir Hospital, encased head to toe in a body cast, tubes running in and out, connected to an array of machines that emitted so many cheeps and squeaks that the room sounded like an electronic aviary.

  Keeping vigil over him were two stern-raced officers of the royal bodyguard—Salim bin-Judar's men—and an agent of the Ministry of Public Health, as well as the obligatory mukfellah, wearing the trademark scowl of his ilk. his lips moving joylessly as he read from his worn copy of the Book of Hamooj. It was into this cheery scene that Delame-Noir, a shade paler than normal, uncertainly strode, accompanied by a French woman of efficient aspect wearing the white smock of a doctor and carrying an attaché case. Delame-Noir did not bother to identify himself to the Mataris. He was well known lo them.