Finding Nouf (2 page)

Inside, Nayir lit a lamp, offered his guest a floor cushion, and began preparing tea. He refrained from asking questions, but he hurried through the tea because he was eager to hear the news. Once it was ready, Nayir sat cross-legged beside his guest and waited for him to drink first.

Once the second cup had been poured, Ibrahim leaned forward and balanced his teacup on his knee. "They found her," he said, his eyes lowered.

"They did?" The tension drained out of Nayir so suddenly that it hurt. "Where?"

"About two kilometers south of the Shrawi campsite. She was in a wadi."

"They've had men there for a week. Are they certain it's her?"

"Yes."

"Who found her?"

"We're not sure. Someone who wasn't working for the family. Travelers."

"How do you know this?"

"Tahsin's cousin Majid came to our camp and delivered the news. He'd spoken to the coroner." Ibrahim took another sip of his tea. "He said that the travelers took her back to Jeddah. She was already dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes." Ibrahim sat back. "The travelers took her to the coroner's office in Jeddah. They had no idea who she was."

It was over. He thought about his men outside, wondered if they would feel relief or disappointment. Probably relief. He wasn't sure what to tell them about the girl. It was odd that the family's own search party had been stationed near the wadi. A group of cousins and servants must have been right on top of her, yet they had missed her completely. They had also missed whoever had been traveling through the area. The travelers must have returned her body to the city before the Shrawis had even figured out that they'd passed through. All of this made Nayir uneasy, but he would have to double-check the information; it wasn't exactly reliable.

"How did the family find out about it?" he asked.

"Someone at the coroner's office knows the family and called them to break the news."

Nayir nodded, still feeling numb. The teapot was empty. Slowly he stood and went to the stove. He poured more water into the pot and lit the match for the stove with a clumsy twitch, burning the tip of his thumb. The sharpness of the pain lit a spark inside him, a quick, fierce anger. The urge to find her was still strong.
Forgive me for my pride,
he thought.
I should think about the family now.
But he couldn't.

He went back and sat down. "Do you know how she died?"

"No." There was a sad acceptance in the boy's eyes. "Heat stroke, I imagine."

"It's a terrible way to die," Nayir said. "I can't help thinking there's something we could have done."

"I doubt it."

"Why?" Nayir asked. "What do you think happened to her?"

The Bedouin looked him straight in the eye. "Same thing that happens to any girl, I think."

"And what's that?" Nayir asked.
Love? Sex? What do you know about it?
Ibrahim's face told him that it had been wrong to ask; the boy was blushing. Nayir wanted to know more, to pry the answers out of him, but he knew too that if Nouf's death had happened because of love or sex, then any truthful reply would be less proper still. Modestly, he waited for an elaboration, but Ibrahim merely sipped his tea, resolute in his silence.

D
ANK AND GRUBBY
, Rawashin Alley could not have less resembled a depot to Paradise, a terminal for bodies on their way to Allah. Yet the coroner's building was there, tucked between two ugly office buildings and looking rather like a cousin of both. The upper part of the seventies-era structure was gray and boxy, with round concrete protrusions that partially shielded a column of tinted windows. Iron bars crisscrossed the facade. The effect was like viewing cracked eggshells in a cage. The lower floor was windowless, a sheer slab of concrete interrupted only by a pair of metal doors and a security code panel. Nayir had tried the doors already, spoken to an elderly guard, and been directed to a stairway at the side of the building.

Incongruously, the basement exterior was like an advertisement for the Old Jeddah Restoration Society. It ran the length of the building and contained some of the famous bay windows for which
the street was named. The
rawashin
displayed teak latticework and shallow arched headings. Peeling paint curled from the stone walls beneath them. At the bottom of the stairs, a single wooden door was propped open, revealing folds of darkness within.

Loitering at the bottom of the stairway, Nayir gathered his wits by chewing a peppery miswak and spitting its bristles onto the ground. He told himself that he had to go inside—there was no way around it. The sun beat down, and he was sweating in a painful way, as if his skin were oozing nails. This visit wasn't just a favor for the Shrawis, which was what he had been telling himself the whole way there—this was, he now realized, an invasion of privacy. Nouf's corpse was inside, and it was his job to take her home.

He had spent all night in the desert wrestling with his failure. While his body sought much-needed sleep, his mind gnawed stubbornly on the myriad decisions he could have made, commands he could have issued, instincts he could have followed that might have saved her life. He'd finally fallen asleep around 5
A.M.,
only to wake abruptly an hour later to find that his frustration had dissolved into pity and guilt. There was nothing he could do for Nouf now, but however unlikely it was that he could still assist her family, he felt compelled to try.

He'd spent his morning prayers meditating. The Shrawis were too modest, too private to appreciate a display of condolence. It had to be something useful and quiet. As he packed up his equipment, loaded his Jeep, and drove back into the city, he rummaged his thoughts for the perfect gesture, but the exhaustion of the past weeks was taking its toll. It was only when Jeddah came into view that his energy began to return, and with it a tentative idea. Nouf's body might still be at the coroner's. The Shrawi sons would have just returned from the desert themselves; they would be distraught and exhausted. They would probably send servants to pick up the body, or perhaps someone from the mosque. How degrading to think of the parade of strangers' hands and eyes that had already swept over her corpse. Would the family not prefer to have someone close to them handle Nouf's final trip home?

From the Jeep he phoned Othman and fumbled through the question:
Would you need—would it be all right—
I
thought I might help, if she's still at the coroner's...?

"Thank you so much," Othman said quietly. "It would be an enormous help."

The relief in his voice prompted Nayir to say, "Just tell me what to do."

Now staring at the bay window's intricate latticework, his body weary but his mind perversely growing sharper as the minutes ticked by, Nayir confronted the less pleasant reasons he'd come. Morbid curiosity. The need for a sense of closure. A desire to prove himself capable of
something.
It was the selfishness of this last reason that weighed on him most.

The family is waiting.

Flicking his miswak in the gutter, he marshaled himself and entered the building only to find another set of stairs. He descended these with both hands pressed firmly to the wall. After the nuclear white of the day, the darkness was sudden and total.

Once his eyes adjusted, he saw a security guard reading at his desk. The sight of the plain brown uniform and the surly face above it unsettled him. This was the building's real security. Slicing and prodding a dead human body was forbidden by law, and while the government quietly sanctioned autopsies, there would always be vigilantes hunting for un-Muslim behavior.

Seeing Nayir, the guard narrowed his eyes. Nayir approached the desk and looked behind the guard, down a single long hallway that was dimly lit with fluorescent lights. "I'm here to pick up a body." He fished in his pocket for the official release form he'd received from one of the Shrawi servants that afternoon. He handed it to the guard.

The guard studied the paper carefully, folded it, and handed it back. "She's down the hall," he said.

"Which...?"

The man raised an eyebrow and pointed behind him to the only corridor in view. Nayir nodded. He tried to relax. He wiped the sweat from his neck and approached a pair of swing doors at the end of the hall. When he opened them, the smell hit him like a slap: ammonia, death, and blood, and something else just as foul.
Forcing a swallow, he thought he could taste sulfur from the brimstone that the Bedouin sometimes used to purify departing souls.
No,
he thought,
that's my imagination.
The room was sterile and bright. In the center stood a medical examiner bent over a body on the table. He was a lanky man with a cap of gray hair a shade darker than his lab coat. He looked up. "
Salaam aleikum'.'

"
W'aleikum as-salaam.
" Nayir felt dizzy and tried not to look at the body. He turned his gaze to the cabinets, packed with textbooks, gauze, empty glass jars.

"Can I help you?" the examiner asked.

"I understand you have the girl who—"

"Are you family?"

"No, I'm not. No." Irrationally, Nayir felt like a pervert. He had the urge to explain that he was here out of duty, not desire. The air was hot and close; he could smell the corpse and it was making him sick. The edges of his vision flickered with darkness. He took a deep breath and turned to see a blood-smeared smock hanging on the wall.

"Then you're not allowed in here," the examiner said.

"I have permission to see the body. I have to see—I mean, I have to pick it up." He ran a hand down his face. "I'm here to pick up the body."

The examiner dropped his scalpel in a silver tray and regarded Nayir with frustration. "We're not done with it. You're just going to have to wait."

Nayir was vaguely relieved. "Before I take her, I'd like to make sure that it's really her."

"It's her." The examiner, seeing Nayir's reluctance, came around the table. "Let me see your papers. Nouf Ash-Shrawi, right?" He took the papers from Nayir and read them carefully. "Yes, she's the one." He motioned to the table behind him.

Nayir hesitated, uncomfortable with his next remark. "I'd like to see her face."

The examiner stared at him, and Nayir realized that he'd crossed a line, that the examiner now thought he was a pervert even if he did have the right papers.

"Only because it's a matter of principle," Nayir said.

"She's already been identified."

Nayir read the man's nametag:
Abdullah Maamoon, Medical Examiner.
He was just about to speak again when the door opened behind them and a woman entered the room. There would of course be female examiners to handle the female corpses, but seeing one in the flesh was a shock. She wore a white lab coat and a
hijab,
a black scarf, on her hair. Because her face was exposed, he averted his gaze, blushing as he did so. Uncertain where to rest his eyes, he let them fall on the plastic ID tag that hung around her neck:
Katya Hijazi, Laboratory Technician.
He was surprised to see her first name on the tag—it should have been as private as her hair or the shape of her body—and it made her seem defiant.

Worried that the older man might think he was staring at her breasts, Nayir dropped his gaze to the floor, catching sight of two shapely feet ensconced in bright blue sandals. He blushed again and turned away from her, trying not to turn completely but just enough to indicate that he wouldn't look at her.

The woman's shoulders drooped slightly, which seemed to indicate that she'd noticed Nayir's discomfort and was disappointed by it. Reaching into her pocket, she took out a
burqa,
draped it over her face, and fastened the Velcro at the back of her head. Pleased by the action but still uncomfortable with her presence in the room, Nayir watched her from the periphery of his vision. Once the
burqa
was on and it was all right to glance at her, he dared a peek, but a slit in the
burqa
showed her eyes, and she looked right at him. He quickly glanced away, disturbed by her forwardness.

"
Salaam aleikum,
Dr. Maamoon," she said, approaching the examiner. Her voice was challenging. "You haven't been giving Mr. Sharqi a hard time, have you?"

Nayir hoped his confusion didn't show. How did she know his name? And what sort of woman wielded a strange man's name so confidently? The guard must have told her. But why?

The examiner was piqued by her forwardness and grumbled unintelligibly. She must be a new employee, not yet used to dealing with the more traditional old man.

"Oh, good," the woman said, "because he's here to pick up the body."

Maamoon shot Nayir a suspicious look. "So he said."

Miss Hijazi turned to Nayir. She was standing right next to him, a little closer than was appropriate, he thought. "How are you going to transport her?" she asked.

He hesitated, unwilling to speak directly to her. He glanced down and caught a glimpse of her hand. She was wearing a wedding band, or perhaps an engagement ring; he couldn't tell. The fact that she had a husband made her presence here slightly easier to take—but only slightly.

Nayir spoke to the examiner. "I have a Jeep parked outside, but I'd like to identify the body before I leave with it."

"All right," Miss Hijazi answered. Nayir thought it was brazen of her to talk when she was not being spoken to, but her professional manner surprised him. Women, even the forward ones, usually regarded him as an animal of some sort—his tall and hulking frame, his deep, rough voice. But this one, although she stepped carefully around him, seemed at ease. "We've already identified her, you know."

Nayir's stomach flopped. She seemed determined to start a conversation with him, but he kept his eyes on Maamoon, wishing the old man would talk to him. Instead he stood there looking suspicious. "I want to see the body myself," Nayir said, thinking,
At this point, all I really want to do is leave.

"She's on the table now. You can have a look."

Miss Hijazi led him to the metal table where Nouf's body lay and pulled the sheet from her face. When Nayir looked down, he felt another wave of dizziness but remembered to breathe. At first he didn't see any resemblance to Nouf, but as he studied the contours of her face, he began to see it—the small, careful mouth, the high Shrawi cheekbones.