Date with a Sheesha (28 page)

“Neil was my friend,” I said. “He told me before he died that he really needed to find you. Can you tell me why?”

“Of course. The merchandise. He made a promise. And now Quant will keep his promise. As I will keep mine.”

The Zinko. That darn old carpet. This was still about the Zinko. Neil was anxious to get his hands on it. Maybe someone had been just as anxious to ensure he didn’t.

“I will keep any promise Neil made.” A lie. I just wanted to take this a little further. “What promise did you make?”

The beady eyes toured my face, then: “You understand the dollars for the merchandise?”

Husain in Salalah had told me how this would work. Once I was satisfied with the merchandise, I’d instruct my bank to elec-tronically transfer the agreed-upon funds to another bank account I would be told about only when the negotiations were complete.

I had no intention of spending my money—or Pranav’s—on some mythical carpet. But something was telling me the Zinko carpet was the key to finding out what happened to Neil Gupta. I’d thought Saffron might be the key. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

“I do. May I see it now?”

“No. We will go tonight.”

“Tonight? Go where? Where is the carpet?”

“No! You must not speak so loud, Quant!” the boy admon-ished me. I did not like it. He was ten frigging years old for Puff-the-Magic-Dragon’s sake!

“Okay, okay, just give me the address.”

“I will take you and your friend,” he said, nodding towards but never looking at Alastair. “Now. We go now.”

191

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

D a t e w i t h a S h e e s h a

And then he disappeared in the dark hurly-burly of the old town.

“I’m not quite sure what all that was about,” Alastair said with an impish grin meant for Sereena. “But I’d say you’re not invited.”

Alastair was too late. For Sereena was long gone, chasing after Saffron, black robes fluttering in the wind of her wake.

192

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

Chapter 14

The four-wheel drive truck spiriting us out of Jeddah was driven by a man I understood to be ten-year-old Saffron’s father. He did not speak. Saffron sat in the front with him, Alastair and I in the seat behind them, and Sereena, seemingly invisible to the men, in the seat behind us.

“Where exactly are we going?” I asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as the lights of Jeddah faded away at the far end of the strip of highway.

“I have already told you,” Saffron proclaimed, unhappy to be disturbed by me. Unhappier still that we’d allowed Sereena to accompany us. But, too bad, buddy. Without her oddly superb tracking skills, we’d never have kept up with him, as he raced through the souk like a cat with a burning tail. Maybe it was just that he hadn’t quite come to know and love her yet, as I did. “To see the Bedouin,” he said.

“But where? Where is the Bedouin?”

“At the Bedouin camp, of course.”

193

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

D a t e w i t h a S h e e s h a

Stupid me.

“This is his home we’re going to?”

The boy scoffed. Little bugger. “Of course not. He lives in a big house in the city. Just like most of the Bedouin do now. He is a Jeddan. But for you people, he also keeps this camp. To show how it once was for the Bedouin.”

We were going to a tourist attraction? In the middle of the night?

“Why are we going there?”

The boy only shrugged.

I thought I understood. At night there would be no tourists.

Only us. And the Zinko. If Saffron was any indication, everything about the rug, this mysterious piece of “merchandise,” had to be kept on the down low. I suppose, if I were a rogue Bedouin who had decided to sell off a slice of my cultural heritage for a tidy profit, I’d want to keep it a secret too. I, however, was more interested in what the Bedouin might know about Neil Gupta and his death.

I took another glance out the back window of the truck.

Jeddah had disappeared. “How far?”

“Not much further. You will see.”

Although the highway was wide and modern, obviously a major thoroughfare during the day, at night it was nearly abandoned. About fifteen minutes out of the city, traffic had dropped to nearly nil. The wind was stronger out here, away from the protection of the city buildings and dwellings. Sand blew across the pavement like brown wisps of snow, gathering in banks, like fingers attempting to reclaim what had once been desert.

Eventually the truck slowed and made a right turn off the highway onto a rough, rutted road. We came to a stop, some time later, in a gravelled parking lot, home to a solitary building. A bare bulb hanging from a pole provided scant lighting.

“Is this it?” I asked, even though the place looked nothing like what I’d expect from a nomad’s camp.

“No. We must stop here to relieve the tires. Wait here, please.”

And with that, Saffron and his father stepped out of the truck.

“We’re going into the desert.” Alastair’s strained voice made 194

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

A n t h o ny B i d u l k a

the words sound ominous. Worried eyes scanned our surroundings.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“They’re letting air out of the tires. They do that so they can travel on the sand, up and down the dunes.”

“At night? They can do that?” I’d always wanted to take a desert safari, doing the dune-buggy-roller-coaster thing. Right about then, though, it wasn’t at the top of my list.

Alastair sniggered. “You know, they’d say the same about you Canadians, heading out on one of your snow machines; what do you call them?”

I suppose he was right about that. Even so, I wasn’t convinced that heading out into the Saudi Arabian desert at night to meet a carpet salesman was such a good idea any more. “You okay back there?” I asked Sereena who was unnaturally quiet.

“It’s perfectly safe,” she responded. “Just hold on to something and enjoy the ride.”

Saffron and his father returned. Without a word, we were off. The four-wheel drive, now with minimal tire pressure, pulled out of the parking lot and ploughed into the dark heart of the desert.

For what seemed like the next several years, I did what Sereena advised: held on to something and enjoyed the ride. Well, actually I only did half of it. I surely held on to something, every tendon strained to the max. The enjoyment bit was a little harder to come by. Especially given how dark it was. I’m generally okay with wild rides, but I like to see where I’m going. The driver had obviously been down this road many times before and (I hoped) could have driven it blindfolded. But even with the vehicle’s headlights on bright, I don’t know how he did it. The relentless ups and downs, ups with curves, and downs with greater curves, came at us without warning. My stomach began to feel as if I’d just consumed my weight in corn dogs, elephant ears, and root beer, then decided to jump up and down on a trampoline for a couple of hours. And to think, at the end of this there wasn’t even the faint hope of a stiff gin and tonic.

195

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

D a t e w i t h a S h e e s h a

I was heartened when, having humped over one last doozy of a sand dune, I saw a muted light in the foreground. By this point I didn’t care if it was a Bedouin camp, alien spaceship, or a fallen star, I was getting off.

The truck came to a halt. We all poured out, grateful to feel solid ground beneath our feet.

I felt like one of those coin-operated bubble gum machines—

filled with bowling balls. “How long was that? An hour?”

“Ten minutes, would you say?” Alastair asked Sereena.

“Eight,” she answered, unruffled and still, somehow, looking fresh and fabulous in her
abeyya
.

“Two for each camel,” came the dizzyingly unappealing words from the boy’s mouth.

“What? We’re not there yet?” I blurted out. “And what’s this about a camel?”

“Nadidah keeps his camels here to bring tourists down into the camp at the bottom of this hill.”

There were many things very wrong with that statement.

First, I couldn’t believe people actually paid to go through what we’d just been through—and
then
wanted to ride a camel. Second, did he say hill? Another one? Third, why camels? Why couldn’t we just finish off the trip in the damn truck? This wasn’t a tour. It was an endurance test.

“Marvellous,” came Sereena’s considerably less hesitant opinion. “Russell, why don’t you and I take this one, with the green and orange?”

Indeed, one of the camels nearby—there were about thirty wandering the small encampment—wore what looked like a green and orange knit cap over its snout.

“It keeps the spitting to a minimum,” Sereena said as she approached the animal and petted its elongated neck. “And the biting.”

Nice.

Saffron’s father pulled a rein on the animal, which caused it to obediently lower itself, in a rather ungainly manner, to its knees.

Sereena scooted up top, looking for all the world as if she scaled a camel’s back every day, despite the added complication of her
abeyya
.

196

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

A n t h o ny B i d u l k a

She patted the blanket-covered seat in front of her. I followed.

I swore I saw Saffron’s mute father crack a smile as I tried to maneuver my bulk atop the camel. It wasn’t pretty, but finally I made it.

“Lean back and tighten those abs, Russell,” Sereena warned as Saffron’s dad caused the animal to jerk back up to its feet.

At one point, as the animal was getting up, it seemed as if we were on the sheer side of a furry cliff, facing down. There was nothing to hold on to but a small, round, metal protuberance meant to keep us in our saddle. We leaned back as far as we could.

My back and stomach muscles ached with the effort. At last the camel made a jolting upwards motion, getting its front feet back up under its bulk.

The whole experience was, I must admit, totally exhilarating.

Alastair and Saffron had already mounted their own mightily humped steed. With no instructions on what to do, we were headed off into the desert. Our camel, which I came to think of as Rosie, simply started moving, apparently requiring no urging from me.

She’d obviously been at this gig for a while. I wondered if she got double time for working after-hours. Saffron’s grim-faced father stayed behind. Maybe to guard the truck? I’d miss him.

Riding a camel is not the gentlest or most comfortable means of transportation. But, I must admit, there was something magical about it. As we made our way forward, we eventually settled into the groove of the jerky up and down, side to side motion. Tender moonlight reflected off the mounds of sand that encircled our small caravan, bathing us in a supernatural glow. The sky was a lush dark carpet, dotted with stars twinkling like gems. The air smelled of old heat. At one point I turned to glance at Sereena. I caught her face in profile, as she gazed up at the moon, breathing in the cooling night air. She’d never looked more beautiful.

“This is really something, isn’t it?” I whispered to her. I don’t know why I whispered. Alastair and Saffron were far enough ahead of us. And it wasn’t as if I was telling secrets. But something about the purple night, the starry skies above us, the faint shushing noise as breaths of wind kissed the sand dunes made it seem right.

197

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

D a t e w i t h a S h e e s h a

Her eyes fell from the moon onto me. “It certainly is. We’ll always remember this moment, you know. You and me, out here in the Arabian desert, on the back of this lovely animal, led by the light of the moon.”

She was right. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Our host, Nadidah, “the Bedouin,” was not part of the greeting party. The men, dressed in variations of the same theme—shirt-dresses and headscarves—helped us off our camels. Some looked after the animals while others escorted us into the camp. The place, in a hollow formed at the foot of three particularly mountainous sand dunes, was a large, roofless area, sealed off from the desert by walls of fabric that fluttered in the escalating wind. Only one of the men spoke any English, but it didn’t take an interpreter to tell us they wanted to corral us into the enclosure.

Inside, the camp was faintly lit by burning torches, their acrid pitch smell cloying in the still air. I could easily see how this set-up would translate into a fine tourist experience. The area was dotted with oversized examples of the traditional black, goat-hair tents the Bedouin favoured, which, after throwing up a flap or two could double as handy pavilions for buffet tables. One entire end of the space was laid with thick rugs and cushions for sitting on, in front of which a small, raised, wooden platform had been constructed. A stage perhaps? Still another, more intimate area, also littered with pillows and cushions in inviting natural colours with intricately stitched designs, was where we were taken.

We sat, cross-legged, around a small fire, next to which a sheesha pipe was ready to go. Saffron was nowhere to be seen. It was probably past his bedtime.

The main guide, the one who could manage some English, brought us coffee. Unlike Saffron and his father, this man was rev-erential and deferential toward Sereena, treating her as the most special guest.

He offered her a platter of dates, prepared several different ways.

She graciously accepted two.

198

F639BE36-0B80-4264-BA79-F0E13F235E3A

A n t h o ny B i d u l k a

When the man had left, Alastair reached for the sheesha’s mouthpiece and helped himself to a long pull.