Layover in Dubai (25 page)

Sharaf wasn’t the only person irritated by the repetition. The fellow with crumbs in his beard sat up and said loudly, “Can you please shut up,
inshallah?
Or will we be forced to pin you to the floor,
inshallah
, so that we can all drop our drawers and pee into your Godly little mouth,
inshallah.”

There were snickers from every bunk but one. Sharaf turned his face toward the wall to hide his smile. No sense making an enemy in a place where someone could attack you while you slept. Especially when the man in question wore a red stripe across his white tunic and down the legs of his drawstring pants. The color signified that he was a lifer, meaning he had probably committed a crime of unspeakable violence.

The markings were for the benefit of the guards. It made it easier for them to know who to keep an eye on. A yellow stripe meant a sentence of up to six years. Blue was for up to two. Green was for the lightest sentences of a few months. Sharaf’s uniform was the only one with no stripes at all. Just plain white, as if everything about him was yet to be determined. Appropriate enough, he supposed, since he hadn’t yet been charged with any crime, much less tried and sentenced. For all anyone knew, he wasn’t even here.

“You speak blasphemies only to mock me,” the offended fellow said, ironically forgetting to add “inshallah” now that he was angry. “That is even more sinful than uttering a blasphemy in complete sincerity. Did you know that your soul is in peril?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself. Inshallah.”

After Sharaf’s arrest the day before, his blindfolded ride in the windowless van had lasted for nearly an hour. His hips and shoulders were still bruised from all the bumping. When the blindfold finally came off, he was facing Lieutenant Assad in a dingy room of whitewashed cinder blocks, lit by a bare bulb that dangled from a frayed wire. The room, like the van, had no windows. He had never seen the place, meaning it wasn’t at police headquarters. And he knew enough about the Interior Ministry’s new offices to know that he wasn’t there, either. They wouldn’t have tolerated such dirty walls, or the gritty floor with its crumbling tiles, stinking of cat urine and spilled motor oil. Maybe they were in some sort of garage. Judging from the length of the ride in the van—assuming they hadn’t driven him around in circles—he was either far to the east of the city, out past Jebel Ali along the road to Abu Dhabi, or well to the south, somewhere in the desert.

The latter possibility reminded him uncomfortably of the woman in blue sequins, but he quickly dismissed the idea that he might meet a similar fate, if only because it was probably what Assad wanted him to think. Sowing fear and doubt were among the best possible ways to lubricate an interrogation. Establishing trust was even more effective, of course, but Assad must have known that was out of the question.

Assad, dressed impeccably as always, waited more than a minute before speaking. Sharaf figured it was supposed to make him lose his cool. Instead he used the time to marshal his defenses.

“We know you’re hiding him,” Assad finally began. It was the first of many small tricks he would attempt. A quick denial would have been an admission of guilt.

“Hiding who?”

Sharaf wrinkled his brow in what he hoped was convincing bewilderment.

“Oh, come on. The American. You were the last officer seen with him.”

“Ah, so that is why I’m here. You still haven’t found him, and you need a scapegoat to explain his escape. There must be pressure from upstairs. Have they threatened a suspension? I don’t envy you, Assad. Who is it you’re trying to impress? Someone in the cabinet?”

“We searched your house. The guest bedroom had been slept in.”

Meaning they hadn’t found Keller. A pleasant surprise. He wondered how the young man had gotten away. Assad’s choice of words also told him they hadn’t found Keller’s clothes, passport, and wallet out in the washtub in the shed. He supposed he might have overlooked those items as well, because who in their right mind would have placed such things in a tub of water, leaving them to soak? Dumb luck on his part, although he certainly had his reasons.

“My son Salim has been sleeping in the guest room. Would you like me to enumerate his embarrassing marital difficulties for you, or must you trouble the rest of my family with prying questions as well?”

Even if Assad checked the story with Salim, a contradiction wouldn’t necessarily be damning. There wasn’t an Emirati male alive who would admit to being kicked out of the marital bed—or, in Salim’s case, both of them.

“Seriously, go and check. You’ll even find some of Salim’s clothes hanging in the guest room closet. Unless he has already moved back home, of course.”

The search must have found the clothes—the very ones Sharaf had taken from Salim’s house for Keller to borrow—with their non-American look and their local store labels, because now Assad didn’t seem so sure of himself. It convinced Sharaf that the lieutenant had nothing more on that front.

“Our search also determined that the American had recently been in your daughter’s bedroom. Ah, I see from your face that this is a surprise to you, and no doubt an unpleasant one.”

Sharaf inwardly cursed himself for betraying his emotions. Had he raised an eyebrow? Drawn a sudden breath? Damn that Laleh. What had she been doing after hours? And God only knows what she would be doing in his absence, especially if Ali had recruited her help in keeping Keller out of harm’s way. Or was Assad bluffing, by probing his best-known weak spot? Sharaf bit his tongue and stared back, trying to look as impassive as possible.

“Yes, he was in her bedroom,” Assad continued. “Her computer had been used not long before we arrived. The screen saver had not even had time to come back on. Keller was familiar with your daughter, wasn’t he? What is her name? Laleh, that’s it. I’ve heard things about her. Her social carelessness, for lack of a better term.”

Sharaf hoped the color wasn’t rising in his cheeks. He wasn’t sure who was upsetting him more—Assad, with this line of inquiry, or Laleh, for providing such a handy tool to lever his emotions.

“I’ll wager you weren’t very pleased by their behavior together. And under your own roof, no less. So save yourself a future ulcer, Sharaf, not to mention lots of embarrassing stories that would be needlessly spread around the city. Just tell me where you’ve stashed this hopelessly uncouth American. Leave him to my team, and this whole affair will be closed cleanly and quickly, with minimal embarrassment and upset to all those parties whom we least want to embarrass and upset. Even his own people wish for this outcome. His embassy is quite up in arms about his disappearance. Or were you not aware of that?”

Another little trap, which he quickly sidestepped.

“Can’t a young lady’s older brother visit his sister’s room without some sort of rumor being attached? Especially an older brother who is currently not welcome in his own home? I’m sure Laleh wouldn’t begrudge Salim a few minutes’ use of her desktop computer, even if he didn’t bother to ask her permission.”

“Very well, Sharaf. Stick with that story for as long as you like.”

Assad surprised him by not pressing the point. Nor did he follow up with brutality or deprivation. He didn’t even shout. When Sharaf asked to use the bathroom, Assad let him, albeit with a police escort. And when Sharaf returned to the room a bottle of cool water and a clean glass were waiting on the floor by his chair. After a half hour more of desultory questioning, Assad ordered him back into the van, this time not bothering with the blindfold. When the panel doors opened an hour later, Sharaf had found himself here, out in the desert at the Dubai Central Jail in Al Aweer. The message seemed clear enough: This was where Sharaf would remain until he decided to talk.

Everything about his arrival at the prison had been unorthodox. Most inmates came on big buses, and were unloaded in an underground garage at the entrance to a holding cell in the intake area. The new arrivals then stood in various lines where their paperwork was processed while guards constantly shouted at them. Each of them got a strip search and a color-coded uniform.

Sharaf was processed upstairs with no waiting and no paperwork, but he did get a strip search. Some goon probed his buttocks with the cool smooth end of a varnished black baton. A guard then handed him the strange white uniform and a pair of slippers before marching him to his cell. On this day, at least, the guards seemed to be dividing the newcomers by nationality. The Indians and Pakistanis went one way, the Westerners another. All the fellow newbies in Sharaf’s cell seemed to be Emiratis.

Sharaf had been freezing cold since his arrival, thanks to the prison’s relentless air-conditioning. He had no underwear and no socks, and on his bunk there was only a top sheet and a thin wool blanket. The way they cranked cold air into the place you’d have thought it was a dairy. Cold or not, it was time to rise. He threw off the flimsy blanket, shivering as he swung his slippered feet onto the chilly floor.

The prison was practically new. As with much of Dubai’s recent construction, no expense had been spared. The rulers had insisted on the best penitentiary money could buy, and at first glance they seemed to have gotten their wish. The bright lights, the stainless steel, the acres of whitewashed concrete, and the glassed-in security hub, with long cellblocks extending from it like the legs of an octopus, made the Central Jail seem like the very model of spotless efficiency.

Look closer, however, and the underlying shoddiness of quick-buck construction was already in evidence. Cracked linoleum. Crumbling concrete. Balky electrical locks that refused to open on demand. Often the intercom failed. When it did, a fellow patrolled the wings with a bullhorn to announce the next mealtime or prayer. The place seemed clean enough, but there was that cockroach Sharaf had spotted, plus a steady stream of ants. And any way you looked at it, it was still a prison, with the usual pecking order of such places—the bullying and the savvy at the top, the timid and the weak at the bottom. Fortunately none of Sharaf’s cellmates seemed to know he was a cop. And on his one visit to the dining hall he had kept his head down, lest any old adversaries spot him.

He was relieved to have made it through the first night. The guards here had a reputation for roughness, and they supposedly earned it in the wee hours. Beatings and searches were said to be routine. Foreigners sometimes complained, but that usually resulted in a longer stay, and few pursued it. Sharaf supposed that if Lieutenant Assad could engineer his incarceration, then he might also be able to arrange for a few blows to the head after midnight.

“You are not praying!”

It was the pious asshole, standing to his left.

“Why are you not washing so that you may pray?”

Sharaf avoided the man’s gaze and pushed through narrow saloon doors into the bathroom at the rear of the cell. He stood in line to wash his hands, and by the time he was done the fellow had zeroed in on another laggard. Sharaf dropped to his knees and asked God for strength and patience, and for any possible help in making sense of things. No answers were forthcoming, and he wasn’t surprised. He wondered idly if there was a library here, and whether he would have access.

“So you are also a newcomer? I am Nabil.”

It was the fellow with the beard. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. Unlike most Emirati men of that age, he had the weathered look of someone who still made a living with his hands.

“I am Anwar,” Sharaf said. He decided not to mention the cockroach. “I think we’re all new except for the one in the red stripe. Maybe they’re trying to intimidate us.”

“His name is Obaid. I made the mistake of talking to him last night at dinner. He told me he threw a prostitute out a window. She was a temptress, of course.” Sharaf glanced uneasily toward Obaid, who was kneeling with his forehead pressed to the floor. “Don’t worry. You could set off a bomb while he’s praying and he wouldn’t flinch.”

The lock buzzed and the cell door opened. A guard appeared and immediately began shouting in Arabic with a street accent from Cairo.

“Form a line for breakfast! Form a line! Single file to breakfast!”

Everyone lined up but Obaid. The guard was about to shout again when he saw the red stripe. Or maybe he was acquainted with the fellow’s violent brand of piety. Whatever the case, he waited until the praying was done before he shouted again.

“Form a line! Form a line for breakfast!”

They shuffled down the corridor with more than a hundred other men. A clock high on a wall said it was 5:30 a.m.

Breakfast was a smear of bean paste and bread, served on a partitioned tray of stainless steel, along with a cup of weak, sugary tea. Sharaf learned that Nabil was from Deira, just across the creek from where he had grown up. Nabil repaired boats, a dying art, especially among locals. The rest of his family owned shops in the souk, although most of their money came from real estate speculation. Nabil complained that his old neighborhood was now dominated by Indians and Palestinians. His father had decided years ago that he didn’t want to move to some new villa out to the west, and now all the better locations had been taken.

Sharaf warily scanned the other tables. A face a few rows over stirred vague memories of a botched robbery followed by an awkward arrest, the man spread-eagled on a sidewalk in front of his family. Sharaf looked away. He was sure there would be more. Damned Assad. How long would this go on?

“Tell me why they brought you here,” Nabil said. “Why don’t you have a stripe?”

Sharaf gave the man a closer look. Could he be a plant or informant? He certainly didn’t look the type. Even if he was, the questions were harmless enough.

“I don’t know. A policeman wanted me to tell him something that I couldn’t. The next thing I knew, he brought me here. No crime, just punishment.”

“It is the same with me! They were looking for a family friend. I truly didn’t know where he was, so I told them. So did my cousin, Khalifa. Now both of us are here, like you. Except that I have this green stripe.”