Finding Nouf (11 page)

On the other side of the desk, Samir sat smoking a Western pipe,
a stubby brown artifact that a British archaeologist had given him in 1968. He blew a smoke stream toward the ceiling fan—which blew it back down toward Nayir—and tapped the pipe's mouthpiece on his carbuncular nose.

"How was the desert?" he asked.

"Good," Nayir said, and they fell into one of the comfortable silences they often shared.

After Nayir's parents had died in an accident when he was a baby, Samir had raised him. He was Nayir's father's brother, and the only family member wealthy enough to take in a young boy. Samir had fought the state for the privilege of raising Nayir. The only other option was to let him grow up in Palestine with Samir's sister, Aisha, who already had seven children but had no husband and no money. Samir liked to remind Nayir that Palestine was a terrible place to raise a child, and that if he had grown up there, he would likely be dead or imprisoned by the Israelis today.

Samir had long ago found a niche for himself working with archaeologists all over the Middle East, analyzing artifacts and training archaeologists to use the latest chemical analysis equipment. Nayir remembered his childhood as a series of digs. They typically lasted for months at a time, and he often missed school to accompany Samir to the desert. As Samir had always been preoccupied with work, Nayir had been left to take care of himself. He became a loner but also an adventurer, even as a boy sneaking off on his own to explore the desert.

Despite the independence, or perhaps because he had too much of it, his childhood had provoked an intense longing for a family, a longing that lasted well into adulthood and that he was certain would never be satisfied. His deepest fear was that he'd never marry. Parents arranged marriages. Parents had brothers and sisters who had children who needed to be married. They organized the complicated social visits in which a man got to meet a prospective bride—veiled, of course, but the groom could at least study her fingers and feet (unless she was socked and gloved as well) and learn what he could from those extraneous parts. (The best insight, of course, was a thorough study of her brother's face.) Samir could provide him with none of these things—there were no cousins to marry, not in Saudi at least—and even if he could have arranged a marriage for Nayir, Samir felt strongly that a man should "do some living" before settling down. Samir himself, now sixty-five, was still doing some living.

Nayir often remarked that the Quran encouraged marriage, in fact made it imperative, saying,
Marry those among you who are single.
But Samir always replied with another verse:
Let those who find not the wherewithal for marriage keep themselves chaste until Allah gives them means out of His grace.
And Nayir couldn't argue with that.

He sometimes felt that what his childhood had most lacked was the presence of a woman. A mother or an aunt, even a sister. Samir had known one or two women in his time—foreign women who didn't think it was inappropriate to befriend a nonfamily man—but those relationships had been brief. The archaeology digs were almost completely male; it was rare to meet a woman in the desert, even rarer than meeting one in Jeddah. Nayir joked with his friends that everything he knew about women had been gleaned from rumor, the Quran, and an assortment of bootleg television videos:
Happy Days, Columbo,
and
WKRP in Cincinnati.
Although his friends laughed, it was sadly true, and Nayir was left with the depressing sense that the world of women was one that he would never be allowed to enter.

It was Samir who had first set him up as a desert guide, arranging for him to take the Shrawis to the desert. Samir had met the Shrawis because the family donated huge sums of money to archaeological research. Soon other families began to request Nayir's services, and now he was involved in the business full-time, escorting tourists and wealthy Saudis to all corners of the map. Being a desert guide was satisfying—it gave him a sense of community and allowed him to live well, even if he chose to live on a boat, which was, in Samir's oft-stated opinion, "living like a teenager in a tin can." Nayir's job with the Shrawis had been intended as recreation, not a career, and however much he was enjoying himself now, there was the future to think about. Once he realized that he was no longer sixteen, he would have to get a proper house and a job that involved books, desks, and framed diplomas. Nayir would rather have suffered lifelong hiccups
and
an embolism than gone into a "legitimate" career, but he never said so to his uncle.

That afternoon Nayir had brought some samples from Nouf's body that he had managed to obtain, hoping that Samir could help him analyze the finds in his basement laboratory.

Samir broke the silence with a gentle cough. "So you think the Shrawi girl didn't run away?" he asked. They had discussed Nouf at dinner, but only briefly.

"It's confusing," Nayir said. "All of the evidence points to a kidnapping. She was hit on the head. The family thinks that she overpowered the camel keeper's daughter on the estate, but I caught a glimpse of the daughter..." He pressed a finger to his cheek to control a sudden twitch. "She was as tall as me, maybe even as strong, and Nouf was short. And how could she have driven off on her own? She would have had to navigate a whole network of freeways to reach the desert road. She could drive a jet-ski, but a truck? Honestly..." He shook his head.

"Have they found the truck?"

"No, not yet. Then there's the camel. She wouldn't have let it go—that camel meant the difference between life and death." He leaned back and sighed. "Maybe she was kidnapped with the camel to make it look like she ran away. The kidnapper dropped her in the wadi, hit her on the head, and the camel wandered off"

"And then what?" Samir asked.

"Then the kidnapper drove back to Jeddah? I don't know. I discovered the sign of the evil eye on her camel's leg. It looked about two weeks old, maybe less. It's possible that Nouf made those lines in the desert, but that would mean that she wasn't alone. She would have wanted to protect herself, and the five lines don't protect you from the desert or the sun—they only safeguard against the human eye."

"That's not strictly true," Samir said. "Recite the Two Takings of Refuge for me."

Nayir sighed. As far back as he could remember, Samir had asked him to recite the last two suras of the Quran in a situation of need. "I know the verses," he said.

Samir began to recite. "'I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn,
from the mischief of created things; from the mischief of Darkness as it overspreads; from the mischief of those who practice Secret Arts; and from the mischief of the envious one as he practices envy.' Do you hear that? 'From the mischief of Darkness as it overspreads.'" He ignored Nayir's sigh of annoyance and carried on. "'I seek refuge with the Lord and Cherisher of Mankind, the Ruler of Mankind, the Judge of Mankind, from the mischief of the Whisperer of Evil who withdraws, after his whisper, who whispers into the hearts of Mankind, among Djinns and among Men.' And djinns can take other forms, not just human. Remember, they are invisible forces of evil."

Nayir suppressed his exasperation. They were indeed two beautiful suras; they were also the only true wards against the evil eye, because they were the only charms that directly invoked Allah's assistance. "So why didn't Nouf just recite the Two Takings of Refuge?" he asked. "And for that matter, why would anyone use a symbol or an amulet when the Two Takings are always with them?"

Samir sighed and sat back, a sign that he was about to launch into a lecture. Nayir sat up. "The short version, please."

Samir chuckled. "Most symbols of protection rely on the number five. Five fingers. Five words. Some people even recite the Two Takings five times."

"I know that." Nayir waved his hand. "Five pillars of Islam. Five prayer times a day."

"The perfect Kaaba in heaven is made of stones from the five sacred mountains: Sinai, al-Judi, Hire, Olivet, and Lebanon." Samir looked as if he were preparing to discharge the longest list—or at least round it off to five examples—but Nayir was impatient.

"All right," he said snappishly, "I know the magic meaning of the number. It doesn't answer my question."

"You can only whisper the prayer during a moment in time, but a visual symbol is always with you, on guard even when you are not."

"Isn't that Allah's job?" Nayir asked.

"Yes, it is. But symbols are comforting too. So perhaps your Shrawi girl wanted that comfort. Perhaps she was afraid. It's even possible that she was trying to protect herself from a human eye. I think the question you want to ask is, who was with her in the desert?"

"A kidnapper, a stranger, or someone not from the family. It would have to mean she was with someone she didn't trust. Or didn't know she could trust. If she did run away, then it was with someone she trusted enough to be alone with in the desert but didn't trust entirely. She could have made the lines just in case."

"So you think she wasn't kidnapped," Samir said.

"I don't know."

"Why would someone kidnap her?" Samir asked. "There was no ransom demand."

"Possibly to silence her. She was pregnant."

Samir nodded. "Don't you find the cover-up suspicious?"

"They want to solve this one alone. That makes them just like every other rich family—it doesn't mean they're guilty."

"But you must consider that a woman of Nouf's station would not have known anyone but her brothers."

Nayir frowned deeply. "Don't be ridiculous. You
know
her brothers. They wouldn't do this."

"You're defending them as if you fear their guilt."

Nayir bristled. Of course he feared their guilt. Whoever stole the camel knew the estate well enough to steal the camel. But he hadn't known it that well—he'd stumbled across the camel keeper's daughter.

Samir's face was hard with annoyance, but slowly it resolved into a patient calm. "I have known the Shrawi men for many years, and you're right, this isn't the sort of thing they would do. But my logic stands—a woman like Nouf, who was from a good family, would have known only her brothers."

Nayir sat regarding his uncle, the pipe, the tuft of gray hair and the diplomas that hung on the wall behind it. A faint halo of smoke clung to the view. He couldn't help feeling that he was still a young boy taking lessons from a patient old man.

"Can we check on those samples now?" he asked impatiently.

The corners of Samir's mouth lifted. He laid his pipe on its stand and rose to his feet, wobbling slightly. Without the desk to shield him, he suddenly seemed frail, but he regarded his nephew with a thoughtful eye.

"I'm glad you're doing something productive with your time."

Nayir bit his tongue.

The basement was a dimly lit space with low ceilings and dusty stone walls. These days Samir spent most of his time in the cool, secluded room, conducting research into an obscure branch of chemistry that Nayir had never bothered to understand. The lab was an odd mix of old and new: a mass spectrometer stood beside a shelf of decaying books, while rows of sterile vials and pipettes shared space with an iron-plated boiling apparatus that might have been a relic from the Ottoman Empire. Above it all hung a faded poster of Jerusalem lit at night.

It was here that Samir had spent the afternoon processing the samples that Nayir had brought. There were several samples from Nouf's body: swabs of dirt from her wrist and sand and other traces from her skin and her head wound, courtesy of Benson & Hedges, who'd received them from Othman, who'd apparently received them from Miss Hijazi.

"The samples are interesting," Samir said. He handed Nayir a printout, but Nayir set it on the table.

"Just tell me what it says."

"The first one is dirt."

"Yes, thanks."

"And manure." Samir regarded his nephew with a thoughtful eye. "The sample was contaminated by blood and sand, but manure is manure."

The dark substance on Nouf's wrist had contained traces of manure? "Can you tell if it's from a camel?"

"Only if camels eat Apocynaceae. In the manure I found traces of cardiotonic glycosides, prussic acid, and rutin, the active poisons in the
Nerium
plant, commonly known as oleander."

"What?"

"It's a flowering plant. It's not indigenous to Jeddah, but I'm sure you can find them here and there."

"I know what it is. I'm just surprised."

"Ah. Well, they don't need a lot of water. They're sturdy plants—they like sand and sunshine, but you probably won't find them in the desert." He hauled a textbook down from the shelf and fluttered the pages. "This is oleander."

Politely, Nayir glanced at the black-and-white sketch. "So whatever ate this plant probably ate the sample in Jeddah."

"Yes. In a sandy place with little water."

"That should narrow it down."

Samir disliked sarcasm, and he frowned deeply. "It's a poisonous plant. Highly toxic."

Nayir registered this piece of information with mild interest.

"The second sample may be more helpful," Samir went on. "I looked at the sand from her head wound. It was rough, almost like gravel, and dark orange in color."

"I didn't see any dark sand in the wadi," Nayir said. "How dark was it?"

"Well, I only had a small sample, but it was darker than most sand. There were traces of clay in the mixture as well."

"So sand and dirt?"

"It seems that way." One by one, Samir began shutting down his machines, and as he traversed the room, he also began collecting items for Nayir: a box of plastic gloves, sterile swabs, baggies and hard plastic containers. "You'll need these," he said, piling the items into Nayir's arms. "There's more work to be done."

Distractedly, Nayir let Samir stuff the goods into any pocket that would take them. "Thanks, that's enough. I really don't need all this."

"What's wrong?" his uncle asked, studying his face.

"What kind of animal eats a poisonous plant?" Samir gave the question some thought. "It must have been a desperate act."