Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: A Novel

Eric wiped his hand across his forehead. “It’s always been the same, whenever an expat has died. Whenever there has been even a suggestion of violence, they just close ranks. The one thing they don’t like is people asking questions. The one thing they don’t like is a body on their hands.” He took out his handkerchief, already soaked with sweat, and dabbed at his face. “They always think we will blame them for something.”

Unwillingly, she felt sorry for him. He had issued all the right warnings, from the beginning, and she had not heeded him. Don’t interfere, don’t speculate; she had done everything he had warned her against. And now an example had been made; but not of her.

Andrew said, “Just try again, Hasan. Tell them we don’t believe the man is praying. Tell them we want to go into the mortuary. Tell them we don’t want to identify, we just want to see. Okay?”

Hasan nodded. He trailed again across the hospital forecourt, and talked to the men behind the barrier. He was back within minutes, hitching at his clothing, patting at the little round skullcap he wore: his face impassive. “It is true the man is not praying. They are saying that to make you go away.”

“Tell them we won’t go,” Andrew said.

“They say we must go home again and wait until morning. Then they promise the man will come with the key.”

“Ins’allah?” Frances said.

“Ins’allah,” Hasan agreed.

“I don’t believe this,” Andrew said.

But he got back into the car. You cannot really argue with hospital porters. They carry guns.

They said goodnight and began the long drive back across the city. The day’s dust coated the rubbish skips, and the municipal greenery, with its raw sewage dressing, that wilted on the center divides. It lay thick on the emerald plastic grass that the restaurants laid out before their doors, the emerald grass that their headlights turned to black.

“What were you going to say to me,” Frances asked, “earlier this evening, before Eric called us the first time? I thought you were going to tell me something?”

Andrew looked at her warily, from the tail of his eye. Road signs swam through their headlights: AL KOURNAICH, JEDDAH CENTRAL, JEDDAH ISLAMIC PORT. STOP! YOU ARE FAST BUT DANGER IS FASTER! “I love you,” he said. “I don’t want you to be frightened. I wish I had never brought you here.”

“That is not what you were going to say.” She turned her head and stared out of her window, into passing cars; realizing, from the response of their occupants, from the winks and nods and leers, that she must have developed the habit of keeping her gaze lowered, of censoring her vision. She said, “Let’s go to the hotel. We might find out something if we persist. Somebody must have seen him leave.”

Andrew did not reply; but he turned the car at the first opportunity. She looked at his face, for his expression of “I shall have no peace till I do this”; but he was not wearing it.

In the foyer of the Sarabia Hotel, a fountain, impossibly blue, tinkled into a marble basin; tropical flowers, made of silk, bloomed in brass tubs. A waiter carried a tray: silver tray, crystal glasses, drinks the color of crushed strawberries. The air was icy and the sweat dried on their skins.

The desk clerk was a small dark round-faced man of some mongrel Near Eastern provenance. He gave them a respectful greeting; or he gave it to Andrew, averting his eyes from Frances with a lofty civility. She put her hands up, scooping her sticky hair from the back of her neck. The clerk’s eyes flickered over her, like some mechanical scanner, noting the slight rise of her breasts, and she saw on his face for an instant a cruel suppressed avidity, a destructive infantine greed. She dropped her eyes.

Andrew put his hands on the reception desk. “May I see the manager?”

She admired him: commanding size, cool voice, overbearing courtesy.

The clerk said, “He is praying.”

“At this time?”

The clerk said, “I regret.”

“Then I should like to see the undermanager.”

The clerk said, smiling, “He is in Kuwait.”

Andrew drew back. He folded his arms. “So who’s running the hotel?”

“Perhaps I can help you?”

And Andrew said, with a fine show of racism, “I doubt it, Ali.”

They looked around the lobby. Laundered thobes strolled to and fro, and smoked cigarettes; glass-fronted lifts carried the patrons to their suites, like prophets assumed to heaven. Frances said, “Do you usually talk like that?”

Andrew said, “I want to be Jeff Pollard when I grow up.”

The clerk fussed with some papers and forms; he seemed unwilling to leave them alone. “You have some complaints?” he asked.

“You had a guest, a Mr. Fairfax.”

The clerk looked interested. “Excuse me,” he said, “we have no guest of that name.”

“He isn’t here now.”

“No. He has left.”

“He has a suitcase somewhere. Things that belong to him.”

“You have papers to collect them?”