Finding Nouf (8 page)

She hated having these thoughts. Inevitably, they led her to wonder if she was doing the right thing, marrying a man she'd chosen herself. A man her father didn't like.

Katya looked up and saw two young women about to leave a nearby store. Seeing Ahmad on the sidewalk, they stopped and retreated from the shop's glass door, perhaps afraid that he was one of those men who, seeing a woman after performing his ablutions, would have to do them again. Katya wanted to tell them that Ahmad wouldn't mind them walking past and that anyway he was the blindest man on the planet—he had the special talent of being able to look at a woman and not see her face at all. But she couldn't motion to the women; they were behind a curtain now, and the darktinted windows were impenetrable from without. So she watched
Ahmad pray, watched him turn his head and whisper his
tasleem,
"Peace be upon you and the mercy of God," while she admired the serenity that stole over his face.

It was that same look of goodness, of calm and security, that made her father trust him. The two men had been childhood friends back in Lebanon and had emigrated to Saudi when they were both twenty-one. It was Ahmad's wife, a long-dead but once beautiful Russian émigré, whom Katya had been named for. Katya had never met her, but there was a picture of her in the glove compartment, an old snapshot taken in the mountains of Syria. The snow on her hat, the bushy scarf around her neck, were the perfect accessories for the pale, blond, wintry woman. Katya couldn't imagine her in any other setting, and, it seemed, neither could Ahmad. He started every story about her with "I remember the vacation we took to Syria. How much she loved the cold..." Occasionally Katya reminded herself that Ahmad's wife had lived in Jeddah too. She had died here of cancer in the summer of 1968.

But whereas Abu had gone on to a successful career as a chemist, Ahmad had been content to be a taxi driver and, eventually, a woman's escort, arguing that his chosen profession, while it didn't always pay the bills, at least gave him the satisfaction of protecting young virgins from wily men, the religious police included. Being with Ahmad felt a bit like being with a watered-down version of her father, someone who was reliably concerned for her safety but whose worry lacked the bite of parental anxiety. Most of the time he treated her like royalty, but for all his display of servitude and kindness, Katya knew that in her own small world, Ahmad was king. If not for him, she wouldn't be able to get around at all. There were taxis for women, with nice immigrant drivers, but her father would never allow it.

Far down the street, she saw men coming out of their homes, answering the call to prayer. It was time to roll up the window. Turning, she looked up one last time at the blushing sky, hoping for a taste of the awe that had struck her, but all she felt was guilt. Guilt for lying to Abu, for not having done her Fajr prayer, for making Ahmad come to work before the light hit the sky. Guilt for doubting Othman. There was only one thing she was determined not to feel guilty about, and that was her work on Nouf's case. Her mother used to say that
salat
was a generous verb. It meant to pray, to bless, to honor, to magnify, but its underlying meaning was "to turn toward." So when she was unable to pray—because of sickness or menstruation—she was still obliged to turn her thoughts to Allah. And wasn't that what she was doing now, turning her mind toward the mysteries of his creation? Especially as they pertained to prayer times and Nouf ? Allah, at least, was with her on that, for in the Quran it said,
If there be but the weight of a mustard seed, and it were hidden in a rock, or anywhere in the heavens or on earth, Allah will bring it forth: for Allah understands the finest mysteries, and is well acquainted with them.

Still, she knew that it was cheating. She had missed her prayers.

Ahmad rolled up his prayer rug and brushed the dirt from its fringes. He got back into the car and they sat, waiting for the prayers to be done. Down the street, men were crowding into a mosque. Some were praying on the sidewalk in front of their stores. Ahmad picked up his mug and resumed his sipping. She watched his comforting face in the rearview mirror, wishing she could confide all her doubts about Othman and his family. But inevitably he would tell her father, and she didn't want Abu to know that there was any doubt in her mind. They waited until the prayers were done and the men came pouring back out of the mosque.

Ahmad started the car and took a turn at the next corner. Every day he took a different route to the lab to show her something new. Even though there were a finite number of ways to get to work, the streets changed so quickly that each trip seemed fresh. Not two weeks before, they had gone down this street, the one with the palm trees, both plastic and real, the real ones chattering with one another over the smaller ones' heads. It had been bustling with construction workers, mostly Yemenis and Asians. A concrete mixing truck had been churning loudly by an empty lot, and across the street a wrecking ball was tearing down a gutted apartment building. Now nothing was left but a gaping lot and a huge drum with electricity cables coiled around it. The workers had sprayed the ground with oil to keep the sand from encroaching on the street.

Ten minutes later Ahmad pulled up to a small metal door that looked like an old service entrance but was actually the women's entrance to the lab. She thanked him, checked that her
burqa
was
securely fastened, and quickly got out of the car. Glancing around just long enough to see that the parking lot was empty, she descended the stairs to the doorway and swiped her ID tag. A green light flashed and the door swung open. She let out a sigh of relief.

There was no security guard—or perhaps he was sleeping somewhere—and she tiptoed past his desk into a hallway lit with its usual gray fluorescence. Her new sandals squeaked on the floor as she scurried down the corridor to the laboratory door. Inside, she switched on the lights and went quickly to her primary workstation, a small white desk in the corner which she kept meticulously clean. She set her purse on the desk and fumbled inside for the baggies containing skin and trace substances and two small vials with samples from the fetus. She stuffed the baggie with the skin samples into the pocket of her skirt.

Her hands were shaking as she hastily opened the desk drawer and put the remaining items inside, tucking them beneath a neat stack of tissues so they wouldn't roll around. She had taken the precaution of labeling them all with false ID numbers and names from the other cases she was working on.
At-Talib, Ibrahim.
A construction worker who'd been poisoned.
Roderigo, Thelma.
A housemaid who'd died of blunt-force trauma to the head. She shut the drawer and locked it.

It took a few minutes to prepare the skin sample from Nouf's fingernails, but just as she was sliding it into the microscope, there was a noise behind her.

"
Sabaah al-khayr!
"

It was a simple good morning, but the shock of it, the loudness and sharpness of the voice, nearly made her cry out. She managed to keep from dropping the sample. Turning, she saw her coworker Salwa.

Katya let out a strangled reply: "
Sabaah an-nur"' The light of morning to you.

"Who is it?" Salwa demanded. The loudness of her voice always made Katya feel caught, even when she wasn't guilty.

Katya realized that she hadn't removed her
burqa.
She lifted it now, showing Salwa her face.

Salwa frowned. Self-appointed chief of the women's section of
the lab, she was a short, quick, sturdy woman who strode about with a pencil behind her ear and her
burqa
flipped up. It rested on her crown like a coronet, and she wore it just as imperiously. In the rare event that a man peered in at the door, the other women always scrambled to find their
burqas
and fasten them on, whispering apologies and hiding their faces in fear. But Salwa, whose
burqa
was always at the ready, would stare defiantly at the intruder. If she determined that the man was someone who might report back to her boss, she would grudgingly draw the pencil from behind her ear and use it to roll the
burqa
down, just as a medieval mullah might unscroll a parchment for an illiterate king.

Even when her
burqa
was down, there was no sequestering the mighty voice with which Allah had blessed her. It was a voice to shake the tables and make the beakers sing. It was in constant use, its resonant power augmented by the building's clean lines and plain surfaces. Once it had even interfered with the muezzin's call to prayer. Half the time Katya suspected that Salwa got her way because so many people around her were so eager to keep her quiet.

"What are you doing here so early?" Salwa asked, drawing closer to Katya with a look of frank suspicion on her face. "Take off your
abaaya.
Let me see your arms and shoulders."

Katya felt irrationally panicked. "My
abaaya?
"

"Yes. Do it."

She unzipped the front of the black cloak and slid out of the garment, revealing a white button-down shirt and a long black skirt. Salwa came closer, unbuttoned Katya's cuffs, and used her pencil to raise the sleeves. Katya realized she was looking for bruises.

"I'm fine," she assured her.

Salwa dropped her arm and looked straight into Katya's eyes. "The only reason women come here early is to escape their husbands or fathers."

Katya felt her cheeks flush. Despite the gloss of concern, Salwa had managed to make her feel like an abused woman anyway. "Nobody hits me," she said.

"So what are you doing here?"

Katya rolled down her sleeves and slid back into her
abaaya.
"I couldn't sleep."

Salwa eyed her with a satisfaction more maternal than penal. "Ah. Is this about your upcoming wedding?"

Katya knew better than to trust her with personal information. Now that their boss, Adara, was on maternity leave—for the second time in a year—Salwa seemed to think that she was permanently in charge. She had been there longer than any of the other women, but she didn't actually do anything except bully the other workers. Her real power was the fact that the division chief, Abdul-Aziz, was her brother-in-law. And because he was family, Salwa could talk to him in person, an advantage that no one else shared. If someone did her job well, Salwa took the credit. If she was sloppy, she made sure that someone else took the blame. With Abdul-Aziz, she was obsequious, rushing to his office whenever he called, attending to his dry cleaning, his lunches, his meeting schedule, and bringing presents for his children at least once a week, but that subservience swung a pendulum of compensation when, returning to the female section of the lab, she subjected the women to her tyrannical demands. Segregated in the building's smallest wing, the female technicians lived in the dark air of her recycled moods. Frustration. Cloying kindness. Privately they called her the Daughter of Saddam.

But right now Katya had to say something. "I am nervous," she admitted. "Honestly, I can't sleep. I think work is the best remedy for me right now."

Salwa stuck her pencil back behind her ear and cogitated. Finding this excuse plausible enough, if not wholly satisfying, she drew herself up and said, "Fine. I've got plenty for you to do. But you're not being paid overtime, I hope you understand that."

"Of course," Katya said, biting back her resentment. As if she expected overtime. As if money were her only concern.

"What are you working on now?" Salwa asked.

"Skin cells from the Roderigo case."

Salwa glanced down at the microscope as if it were a dirty dog. "All right, put that aside. I've got two other cases that have a rush priority."

Katya nodded, sat down at the microscope, and slid the tray out and set it on the table. She cursed her bad luck and wondered sud
denly why Salwa was here so early. It wasn't as if she ever did any work herself. Maybe
she
was avoiding an abusive man. Or, more likely, avoiding her responsibilities at home—a disabled husband, three young children, and, according to Salwa at least, the most impudent Indonesian housemaid on the planet. Maybe for her work really was an escape.

Still, Katya couldn't help admiring certain of Salwa's qualities. She was strong enough to demand raises for the women. When Abdul-Aziz was absent and she could get away with it, she assigned men's jobs to her charges. She had sent Katya to fill in for Adara on Nouf's case. And it was Salwa who, in the spirit of making women strong in the workplace, had encouraged her not to wear her
burqa.
"Men don't respect you when you follow the rules all the time. Sometimes you have to address them directly and show them your face, even if you put your
burqa
down later."

Then Katya wondered what Salwa would have done with her if she
had
discovered bruises on her arms. Would she have fired her? Consoled her? Sent her to a clinic? Most likely she would have reported it to Abdul-Aziz, and there was no telling what he would have done. He existed as a cold, distant authority whose professional decisions—if they were truly his—occasionally angered her.

Salwa came back and dumped two massive folders on the table. "Process these as soon as possible." Before Katya could reply, she turned and left, muttering something about needing to dust Abdul-Aziz's office before he arrived. Katya suspected she wanted to use his Italian coffeemaker and perch herself on his thousand-riyal massage chair, where she could watch the news and maybe catch an
Oprah
rerun before the workday began. Katya and her coworker Maddawi had once peeked into his office.

Katya opened the folders and inspected their contents. She felt crushed. It would take her days to do it all. She had assured Othman that she would do everything possible. She hadn't told him about the risks to her job; he hadn't asked. But he was waiting for answers. The family was waiting. And even if it were being done in the open, the DNA analysis was going to take some time.

She glanced at the door. Salwa wasn't coming back. There were
no windows in the room, so Katya couldn't see when someone was coming, but equally, they couldn't see her. Turning back to the counter, she pushed the folders aside, took Nouf's sample from the table, and was just about to slide it under the microscope when the door opened and Salwa came back in. She bustled around, humming to herself, and came over to make sure that Katya was doing her job.