“That’s when I happened to walk by carrying the donkey. It must have looked pretty weird, upside down on my back with its hooves waving in the air. I was told later that the shaykh’s beautiful daughter stared at me and the donkey for a few seconds, and then burst out into a helpless fit of laughter. She recovered her speech then too, because she called loudly for her father to come look. The shaykh was so grateful, he ran out into the road to meet me.”
“Did he give you his daughter?” asked Indihar.
“You bet,” said Fuad.
“How romantic,” she said.
“And when I married her, I became the richest man in the city after the shaykh himself. And my mother was quite pleased, and didn’t mind that she had no chickens left at all. She came to live with my wife and me in the shaykh’s palace.”
I sighed. “How much of that was true, Fuad?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, “I forgot a part. It turns out that the shaykh was really the poultry dresser, who went to the souk every morning. I don’t remember the reason why. And so the veiled girl was just as beautiful as I thought she’d be.”
Indihar reached over and grabbed Fuad’s half-full mug of beer. She raised it to her lips and finished it off. “I thought the poultry dresser was dying,” she said.
Fuad frowned in serious thought. “Yeah, well, he was, see, but when he heard his daughter laughing and calling his name, he was miraculously healed.”
“All praise to Allah, Fount of blessings,” I said.
“I made up that part about Shaykh Salman and his beautiful daughter,” said Fuad.
“Uh huh,” said Indihar. “You and your mama really raise chickens?”
“Oh sure,” he said eagerly, “but we don’t got any right at the moment.”
“Because you traded them?”
“I told my mama we should start again with younger chickens that still got their teeth.”
“Thank God, I have to go mop up the spilled beer,” said Indihar. She went back behind the bar.
I drained the last of my White Death. After Fuad’s story, I wanted three or four more drinks. “Another beer?” I asked him.
He stood up. “Thanks, Marid, but I got to make some money. I want to buy a gold chain for this girl.”
“Why don’t you give her one of the ones you try selling to the tourists?”
He looked horrified. “She’d scratch my eyes out!” he said. It sounded like he’d found another hot-blooded sweetheart. “By the way, the Half-Hajj said I should show you this.” He pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it in front of me.
I picked it up. It was heavy, shiny, and made of steel, about six inches long. I’d never held one in my hand before, but I knew what it was: an empty clip from an automatic pistol.
Not many people used the old projectile weapons anymore, but Paul Jawarski used a .45 caliber gun. That’s what this came from.
“Where’d you get this, Fuad?” I asked casually, turning the clip over in my hands.
“Oh, in the alley behind Gay Che’s. Sometimes you can find money there, it falls out of their pockets when they go out into the alley. I showed it to Saied first, and he said you’d like to see it.”
“Uh huh. I never heard of Gay Che’s.”
“You wouldn’t like it. It’s a tough place. I don’t ever go in there. I just hang around in the alley.”
“Sounds smart. Where is it?”
Fuad closed one eye and looked thoughtful. “Hamidiyya. On Aknouli Street.”
Hamidiyya. Reda Abu Adil’s little kingdom. “Now, why did Saied think I’d want to know about this?” I asked.
Fuad shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. Did you? Want to see it, I mean?”
“Yeah, thanks, Fuad. I owe you one.”
“Really? Then maybe—”
“Another time, Fuad.” I made a distracted, dismissing motion with my hand. I guess he took the hint, because in a little while I noticed he was gone. I had a lot to think about: Was this a clue? Was Paul Jawarski hiding out in one of Abu Adil’s crummier enterprises? Or was it some kind of a trap baited by Saied the Half-Hajj, who couldn’t know that I no longer trusted him?
I didn’t have any choice. Trap or not, I was going to follow it up. But not just yet waited until the next morning before I followed up on Fuad’s information. I had the disconcerting feeling that I was being set up, but at the same time I felt I might as well live dangerously. I sure wasn’t getting any closer to finding Jawarski using more conventional methods. Maybe sticking my head on the block would tempt the executioner to make an appearance.
And then maybe the clip didn’t belong to Jawarski, after all, and there wasn’t anything at Gay Che’s but a lot of guys in exquisitely tailored caftans.
I thought about this as I walked back on the Street, past Frenchy Benoit’s club to the cemetery. I had a sense that events were moving quickly to their conclusion, although I couldn’t yet tell if that ending would be tragic or happy for me. I wished I had Shaknahyi to advise me, and I wished I had made better use of his experience while he was still alive. It was his grave I wanted to visit first.
There were several people at the entrance to the cemetery, sitting or squatting on the uneven, broken slabs of concrete. They all jumped to their feet when they saw me, the old men selling Coca-Cola and Sharab from battered coolers on tricycles, the toothless old women grinning and shoving bundles of dead, drooping flowers in my face, the children crying “O Generous! O Compassionate!” and blocking my way. Sometimes I don’t respond well to organized, clamorous begging. I lose a lot of my sympathy. I pushed through the crowd, stopping only to trade a couple of kiam for a wilted bouquet. Then I passed beneath the brick arch, into the cemetery.
Shaknahyi’s grave was across the way, near the wall on the western side. The dirt was still bare, although a little grass had begun to poke through. I bent down and placed the meager bouquet at the grave’s head, which in accordance with Muslim tradition pointed toward Mecca.
I stood up and looked back toward Sixteenth Street, over the many graves thrown haphazardly together. The Muslim tombs were each marked with a crescent and star, but there were also a few Christian crosses, a few Stars of David, and many unmarked at all. Shaknahyi’s final resting place had only an upended flat rock with his name and the date of his death scratched on. Someday soon that rock would topple over, and no doubt it would be stolen by another mourner too poor to afford a proper marker. Shaknahyi’s name would be removed with a little sandpaper or steel wool, and the rock would serve as someone else’s headstone until it was stolen again. I made a mental note to pay for a permanent grave marker. He deserved that much, at least.
A young boy in a robe and turban tugged on my sleeve. “O Father of sadness,” he said in a high-pitched voice, “I can recite.”
This was one of the young shaykhs who’d committed the entire Qur’an to memory. He probably supported his family by reciting verses in the cemetery. “I will give you ten kiam to pray for my friend,” I said. He’d caught me in a weak moment.