The Godless One (32 page)

"You don't seem to be able to help
anyone," the irate traveler carped without turning. "Here, see the
map? Can't you just point?"

"
Assalam alaikum
," said
Ari.

Joe raised one brow, but
that was all. Without sounding familiar, or very pleased, he
responded, "
Valaikum-salam
."

"Oh, great, you don't speak English,"
the customer said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Shell station, just down the road,"
was Joe's gruff answer. "Maybe help."

"How far down the road? Why should I
have to go all over the place to find a place?" The man turned to
Ari, as though to confirm the legitimacy of his question, but one
look at his battered face convinced him it was time to move on. "I
guess you're the owner of this dump, so there's no one to complain
to," the man said to Joe, crumpling his road map into an unwieldy
ball. As he stormed away from the counter, Ari noticed the
cigarette display. One panel held nothing but DJ's, the
much-belabored brand sold in Baghdad to smokers low on cash. In
fact, he noted a variety of items that would have been common to
any shop on Palestine Street. Canned Persian barley soup, spicy
walnut spread, rambutan, toddy palm seed, dried lotus seeds, Beit
Hashita cucumbers, sharbat and quite a bit more.

"I wish him luck," Joe said in Arabic,
cocking his head at the car squealing out of his lot. "The Shell is
run by Buddy Nguyen, from Ho Chi Minh City. His English is 'hello'
and 'get out of my store'."

Ari chuckled, revealing his
not-so-perfect grin. The cuts in his mouth had broken open again,
leaving blood on his teeth.

"The nearest hospital is in Farmville,"
Joe said, wanting him out before he collapsed and stained his
floor. "Take a left about a mile up the road. Route 45 goes
straight to it."

Ari suppressed a guffaw, knowing it
would be painful.

"Listen, I've got gauze and
aspirin—"

"I'm just looking for..." Ari's eye
fell on the serving counter against the back wall. "...a bite to
eat."

Joe looked doubtful for a moment, then
yelled, "Fatimah! Customer!"

As Ari shuffled over to the
glass-enclosed steam table, a girl in her late teens dragged
herself out from a back room. She almost ran back when she saw Ari,
but a grumble from her father kept her in place. She was wearing a
plaid shirt and old jeans. Ari supposed it was a concession to
local couture. The sight of a hijab would have left Joe with no
customers at all.

Or would it? Ari, already stooped, did
not have to lean much further for a close look at the prepared
food. The revolting mountain of deep-fat fried chicken was a
quick-stop commonplace. But the adjoining trays of long-grain rice,
mujaddara and biryani looked fresh and warm. He savored the aroma,
but biting into any of these delights would cause exquisite pain to
the cuts in his mouth. He could have cried.

"This is a remarkable selection," he
said to Fatimah.

"Made fresh every day," she said
timidly, with due caution.

Ari understood her, but barely. She
spoke in one of the many Madan dialects of Arabic. She was a Marsh
Arab. Ari sensed difficulty ahead. Saddam Hussein had set his
sights against the Madan people in 1991, draining the Mesopotamian
marshes, resorting to mass displacement, forgiving some massacres
and inflicting the rest himself, via his sons and their chief
officers. Most of those who escaped fled to Iran, but a trickle had
gone to Germany, England and the U.S.A. Joe and Fatimah must have
taken a very twisted trail indeed to reach this spot in the
Virginia countryside. They were a tough breed, very conservative.
Ari's plan to draw the girl outside and scare her into doing what
they wanted was not only losing viability, but also its appeal. The
fact that her father allowed her to work in public like this,
without covering her head, showed what lengths Joe was willing to
go to do immerse himself in his new land. But it was still quite
possible that, if Ari tried to lure the girl to the van, Joe would
take up that carving knife on the counter and attack him—and in his
present state Ari could hardly defend himself against a
gnat.

But what else could he do?
He might revise the plan, but he couldn't do away with it
completely. So he lifted one arm and moaned as he pointed at some
lamb-stuffed
manti
. "I would like—" He interrupted himself with another moan,
which was not entirely faked. "Pardon me...I can scarcely move. He
beats me so thoroughly.... I hope you don't mind if I speak Arabic.
My English is deracinated."

"Who...who..." Fatimah swallowed, once
again drawing back.

"Fatimah!"

She looked at her father,
who gave a curt nod in the direction of the state forest. Ari
immediately interpreted this to mean:
Don't ask questions. He's from the group down the
road.
...

That explained the high percentage of
Middle Eastern fare, all the foreign treats arranged along the
counter. This was a veritable commissary for 'the group'.
Considering who the members of that group might consist of, it was
quite possible the pair had escaped the frying pan and landed in
the fire.

There was something wrong with Fatimah.
She returned to the steam table and lifted the lids off trays that
were not already uncovered. Her hands shook—in fear, yes. But Ari
now realized she had been shaking ever since she came out from the
back room, before she even saw him. Some form of palsy? And there
was a strange hue to her skin, aside from the nicotine stains on
her fingers. One hell of a smoker. That was another anomaly. Good
Muslim fathers did not let their daughters choke on cancer sticks.
Was her mind intact? Officer Jackson had said she smoked around the
gas pumps, a not very bright thing to do.

"I don't mind if you speak Arabic," she
said, her pronunciation abruptly improving. Was this the diction of
fear? "Please, take your time in making your selection."

She was not being sarcastic. She was
behaving as she would normally behave in front of anyone from the
dreaded group. Ari decided that her mind was all right, but
depression was wearing her to the ground. It was not uncommon to
see immigrants slowly die on their feet, unable to adapt to their
new country, unable to return to the old one. Ari felt like a cad,
which was not an unusual feeling, though it was rare for it to
affect his actions.

"I have to hurry," he told her. "The
Boss is waiting outside. He can't stand me being out of his sight
for five minutes straight."

"Is he the one who beats
you?"

"Fatimah!" Joe stormed over to the
steam table. "If you can't serve our customers, I guess I'll have
to." He glared at Ari. "If you're in a hurry, you'd better choose
in a hurry."

It wasn't going to happen—Ari would not
be able to get this girl outside. The father would have to be
included in the scenario. The plan had been to shock Fatimah into
playing a critical part in his scheme, which Ari had been adjusting
and readjusting for days, and which took its final form when they
discovered the Lexus in the woods. Joe's behavior was threatening
to bring it all to a crashing halt.

"Listen, let me go out and ask the Boss
for a few extra minutes." Ari needed to alert Abu Jasim of the new
player, that the satanic jack-in-the-box they were planning to
spring on Fatimah might no longer be appropriate.

But Joe had basked in hard times and
was already deeply suspicious. What if Ari was not part of 'the
group'? What if he was going outside to get help to rob the Stop-N?
It struck Ari that Joe was scrutinizing his coat, searching for the
telltale bulge of a firearm. But there was none. Ari, for once, was
unarmed. Instead of being reassured, Joe's doubts grew. If Ari
didn't have a gun, he must be waiting for someone who
did.

"I only want a sandwich,"
Ari said plaintively, turning back to the steam table and pointing
through the glass at
shawarma
in pita bread.

This did not calm Joe, but stalled his
wrath long enough for him to reflect on consequences. He flattened
his hands against a blue-striped bib apron and stroked downwards.
It looked like a habitual gesture that helped him focus his
thoughts. The apron was perfectly clean. Why wasn't Fatimah wearing
one?

"May I ask how you came to be here?"
Ari asked in a tone that deferred to the man's anger. "As I
understand it, most of the tribes moved to Iran."

"What do you know about my tribe?" Joe
said, becoming charier. He was not as adaptable as his daughter.
His Madan accent was ineradicable. Ari missed some words, but
caught the gist.

"I just…" Ari’s social gyro had tilted
unnaturally. If he said he assumed Joe was from the marshes, it
would be tantamount to calling him a peasant to his face. Under the
circumstances, this could be a catastrophic misstep. He hoped a
non-response would mend the error.

"You're not part of that gang on Sugar
Loaf?" Joe asked.

Ari paid the price for shaking his
head, pain flaring through his neck.

Joe reversed his hands, bringing them
up the apron to his chest. There was something purposeful to the
gesture that went beyond use as a personal mnemonic.

"You're from the Hawizeh?" Ari
carefully inquired. He needed to know more, whatever the
risk.

"We stick out, don’t we?" said Joe.
"The Americans, Buddy Nguyen, other Iraqis…that’s where you’re
from, isn’t it?"

"Yes."

"There’s plenty of Indians, too. But
it’s Fatimah and I that stick out. We were made for one place only,
and now it’s gone. Poisoned forever."

"Poisoned?" Ari asked, knowing full
well what Joe was talking about.

"Saddam dumped every poison available
to him into the rivers feeding the marshlands. Wheat smut,
botulism, anthrax, aflatoxin, gas gangrene, ricin…. The barbel was
poisoned, but there was little else to eat. The water was poisoned,
but it was all we had to drink. I guess you couldn’t blame him for
doing it. Both of my brothers joined the Badr Brigade to fight the
Baathists. Most of the others took off for Khuzestan. But my wife
and daughter fell ill before we could leave…"

"Your wife?" Ari asked
gently.

"Allah gave her an easy and pleasant
journey and showered blessings on her grave."

Ari offered heartfelt
commiseration.

"Our home was destroyed.
We were living in the village
mudhif
. There was no one else
around, no one to chase us out. But I should have known better. You
know
mudhifs
can
be very large, and when a group of American Army engineers arrived
they camped inside. They put up a wall of curtains to give us
privacy, but they were very noisy. They were very happy, too,
always laughing and shouting. But they had come to blow up the
dikes Saddam had built to starve the delta, so I did not complain.
They fed us, and then someone named ‘Doc’ insisted on looking at
Fatimah. He did not like the way she was shaking..."

Ari guessed the medic had done some
smooth talking to get permission to perform a cursory physical on
the girl. Madan protectiveness towards its women was legendary even
among strict Muslims. He considered giving Fatimah a knowing smile,
but decided Joe was watching too closely.

"Doc said he thought the mixture of
chemicals in the water—he used the word 'cocktail'—probably had
brought on brain disease in my daughter. He wasn't sure, though.
Most of the poison Saddam used would affect infants that way, but
not older children. Fatimah was around eleven at the time. Many of
us got sick, but most died because the fish died and we starved.
But there was something else. Doc said it might have been sarin. It
caused my wife to hallucinate. And now Fatimah is starting to
behave the same way. There was a murder nearby last year, and she
began telling the police a wild story. I stopped her before she
could do any harm."

You stopped her from
giving the license plate number of Abu Jasim's van to the police,
for which I am deeply grateful
, Ari
thought.
And when she began telling you
about seeing Saddam Hussein in the flesh pumping gas out in front
of your very own little Stop-N, you were convinced you had behaved
correctly. Because you thought it was just
possible…
.

"Doc told me about a program the
Americans had, to bring people injured in the war to the States for
medical treatment. They must have felt sorry for not helping us
during the uprising after the first war. So we came. The doctors in
Richmond gave her some pills that control the shaking, but she will
never be cured. I applied for a green card and found this station
up for sale. The American government gave me a loan. They say it's
at a very good rate. And so we came here. Around the same time, so
did the others."

Ari's expression was a request for more
information.

"Those people on Sugar Loaf Road," Joe
said, his tone going even more sour. "They're protecting someone, I
don't know who. Someone from the homeland. They bossed us around
from the beginning, telling us what to put on the shelves, taunting
my poor daughter. Sometimes a fancy car comes racing by on Main
Street, with others following. I think it's their
leader."