Finding Nouf (23 page)

He'd reached a dead end.

I
T WAS THE WORST KIND
of noon, overbright and muggy and seared by a sun that had expanded to fill every bit of the sky. A steamy, breathless, penetrating air poured like liquid lava onto every surface, causing ripples of heat, sharp glints of light, and such mirages as might have misled an entire army into the very hottest part of hell. Katya waited for Ahmad in her usual spot behind the coroner's building, but in the five minutes she stood there the soles of her new sandals melted, sticking like warm gum to the pavement.

When the Toyota pulled up, Ahmad saw her dancing on her toes like a yogi trying to cross a bed of hot coals. He scrambled from the car and tore strips of his cherished newspaper and laid them down one by one, testing them with his own bare foot to make sure they were thick enough for her to walk safely to the car. There was a stranger nearby, a Yemeni man in a long gray robe and a suit coat on top. He rushed over to help, ripping his own newspaper and cursing the heat strongly enough to bring a rare smile to Ahmad's face. There was a friendliness in the stranger's gestures that made Katya feel it would be all right to thank him directly, and when she did, he smiled broadly and gave a generous bow.

Ahmad kept a potholder in his glove box for days like this, when touching the car door would cause a third-degree burn, when handling the steering wheel required fierce determination. He had the potholder in his pocket now—a large blue plastic glove modeled on something created by the Russian space program—and with it he gently opened the door for her, cautioning her not to touch the door frame or the window.

The Yemeni man laughed at the glove. "It looks like something you'd use to deliver sheep."

Ahmad smiled delicately. "This potholder belonged to my wife," he said. "I'm afraid she only cooked sheep with it."

"Ah." The Yemeni raised his eyebrows knowingly. "I'm sorry," he said.

Katya suddenly felt as if the exchange had happened on a distant world. It wasn't odd that such a casual conversation had led straight to the question of a woman's fertility, but she wondered how many such conversations she had heard over the years and failed to recognize for what they were.

She climbed into the Toyota. Ahmad had left it running, and the air conditioner was at full blast. On especially hot days he also kept a stack of towels in a cooler full of ice, and one of them was lying across the back seat now. But despite these luxuries, in the five minutes she'd stood waiting for him the heat had managed to penetrate her whole body, and the relative coolness of the car did not reverse the tide of sweat but merely seemed to stay the condition.

They stopped at the first shoe store they could find. Ahmad got out to buy her a pair of sandals and came back twice to ask about price and size. The sandals he bought were flat and sturdy with Velcro straps—and perhaps the ugliest shoes she had ever worn—but she suspected they would survive a trip to the sun. Gratefully, she put them on.

The freeways were crowded. It was lunchtime, and everyone had left work but no one was going to leave the cool comfort of a car. It took Ahmad and Katya nearly an hour to navigate their way out of the city, and when they finally reached the road to the estate, Katya leaned back against the seat and shut her eyes.

Work had been taxing. She'd gone to the lab early every day that week, but Salwa was always there, expecting her to do everything, so that in going in early, Katya had managed only to create more work for herself. Right now she was supposed to be analyzing traces for a spousal abuse case. A wife had killed her husband by setting his bed on fire. Katya knew little about the wife, but she suspected that this was like most husband-abuse cases: the woman had feared for her life.

She wished she could be more involved in the investigation—at least learn a little more about the murder—but her job was to analyze evidence, not uncover clues. On most cases she was lucky to find out anything about the killers' motivations at all. The division kept promising that someday it would send women to conduct investigations. After all, there were female suspects, and shouldn't women interrogate them? But there were always excuses to keep the women cloistered. The division lacked funding. The government wouldn't approve it. These days everyone was watching the new team of female police officers, recently sent into the field for the first time. They weren't remarkable officers, but what could be expected from a group of women who couldn't drive cars or ride bicycles and who didn't even have the power to stop a man on the street?

The car gave a gentle bump and Katya opened her eyes. To the right, the Red Sea glittered a brilliant blue, and she had the sudden, choking impulse to stop the car, run down the beach, and throw herself into the water,
abaaya
and all.

"Any chance we could stop for a minute?" she asked.

Ahmad shrugged nervously. "I have another appointment in the city at two o'clock."

Katya checked her watch. They didn't have enough time.
Just wait,
she thought. And then:
Wait for what?
A day off. A day when the temperature was below 100 degrees. A day when her father was in a good enough mood to take her to the beach. Before meeting Othman, she had waited years for a husband. He would be the one to take her to the beach. He would drive her to work and escort her shopping. And now, a new twist: she had a fiancé, but she was waiting for the marriage. They still hadn't set a new date for the wedding.

Ahmad opened the cooler in the passenger seat and took out an ice-cold bottle of water. He handed it back to her. She flipped up her
burqa,
revealing a smile. "Thank you, Ahmad."

"Have you learned anything new about the Shrawi girl's death?" he asked.

She glanced at his eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, and tried to gauge whether her father had put him up to this line of questioning. "One or two things," she said. "Nothing conclusive."

"I was just wondering if you were bringing some news to the family."

"No, this is just a visit." She knew he was wondering why she hadn't waited until after work, but by evening the men would be home from work as well, and chances were the women would be occupied. "I haven't seen them since the funeral," she said. "I just want to make sure they're doing all right."

Ahmad nodded, apparently satisfied, and Katya cursed herself for lying. She wanted to check on the women, of course, but another quest loomed larger in her mind.

Over the past few days she had been able to determine that the DNA from the skin beneath Nouf's fingernails matched the DNA of the baby's father. So Nouf had seen the father before she died. Maybe she'd gone to him with the news of her pregnancy and he'd been horrified. They'd fought...

But from there the story went in a dozen directions. Did they fight because he was ashamed of the pregnancy? Because he was married and unwilling to take on a second wife? Or because he knew she was engaged to another man? Nouf wouldn't have needed to have him marry her. She was going to be with Qazi soon enough. She could have pretended the baby was Qazi's—unless, of course, the baby belonged to a different race. Blond-haired, perhaps. Black-skinned or Asian. And what if she didn't want to marry Qazi? What if she wanted to marry the baby's father, and he said no? That might have created enough anguish to drive her away. A fight would explain the skin beneath her nails and the defensive cuts on her arms, but it didn't explain the head wound. That hadn't killed her, but it had been enough to knock her out. Could she even have run away after being hit like that?

What if Qazi was the father? Would he have become angry? Probably not. They were about to get married—what difference would it have made?

Despite Katya's efforts to be fair-minded, one potential situation loomed larger than the others. What if Nouf had told the baby's father about her plans to move to America and the baby's father had tried to stop her? That would have angered any man, Qazi included. Would she have told him something like that?

Katya sighed in frustration. She hadn't known Nouf well. Most of the time they had met in the women's sitting room, which was a public and slightly formal space. She'd spoken privately with Nouf on a few occasions, enough to realize that she was more vivacious than most of the Shrawi sisters. She had laughed easily and talked with excitement about her saluki dogs. One day she had confided that she loved animals more than children and that if she could, she would have a family of dogs.

But as with the other women in the family, Nouf had a strange reserve and would grow abruptly silent in the middle of a conversation, often just when she was beginning to open up. Katya never knew what to make of those moments—they usually prefaced a polite leave-taking, Nouf saying that she had things to do. Katya always felt slightly jilted. She had been drawn to Nouf, perhaps because she was Othman's favorite. Katya had never had a sister of her own, and she longed to be a part of Nouf's daily life, to be allowed into her bedroom just one time, to see the books she read, her trinkets or artwork or favorite stuffed animals. Was she sloppy? Neat? What sort of bed did she sleep in? What color was the room? Did she have her own servant? Katya sensed that Nouf would be more relaxed in her bedroom, and she hoped that once she married Othman, the barriers of awkwardness or propriety would come down and she could get to know her better.

As they turned onto the bridge leading to the estate, her throat constricted. From the beginning she had been eager to talk to the
women, to ask them what they knew about Nouf's life. But since that horrible morning when she had identified the body at the morgue, she'd been unable to broach the subject without meeting a wall of silence and tears. Hopefully, now enough time had passed.

Ahmad rolled down the front windows, letting in a slightly cooler breeze. They were over the water now, and the estate was just coming into view. It still thrilled her to see the building's white walls rise up in the distance and to think that someday she would belong there. That is, if she didn't wear out her welcome today.

She had spent enough time with the women to understand that they lived in the sitting room. They didn't cook, do dishes or laundry, didn't attend to anything but their society visitors, their prayers, and their comforts. The younger children played in distant rooms with two Filipino nurses while the mothers and the older children spent the greater part of their lives in the air-conditioned sitting room, a white, well-lit space with cushioned sofas, screened windows, a television, and Quranic scriptures hanging on the walls. On the far side of the room, a row of windows looked out over the family's mosque. On the room's other side, double doors led to a high-walled garden patio. The outdoor space was made lively by a fountain that seemed to have grown out of the rocky wall. Vines hung on a pergola above cushioned chairs and benches, and a neat row of potted lemon trees gave the air a cheery fragrance, but despite the fountain and the shade, it was often too hot to sit there, and the women remained indoors.

Nusra was in perpetual motion, always coming in with visitors and running off again to attend to the details of her household. Her sons' wives more often inhabited the room with their cousins or friends. When Nouf was alive, she and her younger sister Abir had spent most of their time there. The servants never left for long; they were always back to refill the coffeepots, take away the bowls or replace them with new ones. Abir would torment the maids by setting herself up at the coffee table and playing with the food while the maids stood by trying to decide whether or not to interfere.

It had taken Katya a while to become familiar with her in-laws' names, but it helped that they always sat in the same positions. There were four couches set in a square. The sisters-in-law occupied the side couches, Fahad's wife, Zahra, to the left, and usually her sister Fatimah beside her, either combing her hair or inspecting her fingernails or reading a book. The right-side couch was reserved for Nusra and her younger daughters. Muruj, Nouf's oldest sister, sat with her back to the door, while Tahsin's wife, Fadilah, sat across from her, taking the central sofa for herself.

Coming into the room this afternoon, Katya lifted her
burqa
and returned the multiple greetings that came her way. From the silence she could tell that she'd arrived between conversations. As all eyes turned to watch her, she imagined tripping on the hem of her robe or stumbling over Abir before she could reach the safety of a sofa. Moving carefully, she managed to seat herself beside Zahra. Coffee was being served, and she was grateful; it gave her something to do with her hands. She glanced around and saw that, as usual, the television in the corner was flickering with silent images of Mecca.

"Not working today?" Zahra asked.

"I took the afternoon off," Katya said.

"You'll be doing a lot more of that once you get married," Zahra replied with a wink.

Katya gave a soft smile, but nobody spoke. She couldn't tell if they were embarrassed by Zahra's comment or if she ought to have said something funny in return. She had nothing to say.

"So, Miss Future Wife of Little Othman," said Fadilah, "have you chosen a dress yet?"

Katya regarded her future sister-in-law. Fadilah was so similar to her husband in build and manner that she seemed like a parody of him. They had the same round, jowled faces and succulent lips, the same languid eyes. They each wore well-tailored, impeccable robes and sat in a watchful and imperious way, regarding their company as if they were courtiers.

She was asking about a wedding dress, and Katya hadn't even come close. The truth was, every dress that suited her style seemed either too boring or too cheap. Although it was her wedding, she felt a deep need to please her future in-laws, or at least not disgust them. A few weeks ago Nusra had arranged for a professional dressmaker to come to the house, and the woman had arrived with twenty dresses, every one of them gaudy and overpriced, bedizened with sequins and Byzantine embroidery, gold lamé and tassels, heavy layers of satin and lace. Some had real bone corsets, and others had monstrous hoop skirts, which made her feel like a roundabout statue, something to gawk at. Worst of all, the colors were appalling—mustards and hot pinks, chile greens and a hazardous, painful orange. She wanted to explain to Nusra just how garish the dresses were, but she didn't want to embarrass her or seem ungrateful. Katya would have preferred a quiet tamarind, or the simple red of a Bedouin blanket.