18th Arrondissement
12:35 p.m.
HAJA HAMID SLIPPED in among the other women retrieving their shoes and sandals. She fell in behind three women leaving the mosque, and followed their lead, removing her veil before she passed through the door. She wanted none of the attention she’d received the day before.
But when she stepped down onto the sidewalk, she noticed that same young man-he couldn’t have been more than seventeen-standing across the street, holding his camera. He spotted her, came her way. She tried to duck behind some other women, but he was relentless and came right up beside her.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
Haja said nothing, increased her pace.
“Please. My name is Alain Du Champs, and I am doing a project where I am taking pictures of Muslim women without their veil on, showing the world what it and they have been missing. Can I take your picture, please?”
“No. Never,” she said, and hurried on.
Hurrying up beside her, the photographer began to sing to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.”
“Wake up, Fatima, don’t let me wait. You Muslim girls start much too late. Aw, but sooner or later it comes down to fate. I might as well be the one!”
Haja picked up her pace, trying to get away, but he kept after her, still singing. Three men were coming at her down the sidewalk: an older one with longish iron-gray hair, smoking a cigarette; a younger, athletic, blond, hazel-eyed guy; and an even younger Arab man wearing a black leather jacket and jeans.
Something about the trio triggered fear in Haja. For a moment she thought they were police. But then they stood aside. The Arab guy said, “Accept my apologies, mademoiselle. Not all Frenchmen are assholes like the kid with the camera and the voice of an ass.”
Haja smiled, nodded at the men uncertainly, and then hurried on toward Epée and the car.
Chapter 34
WE WATCHED HER hurry away with her head down. The kid who’d been singing to her held tight to his camera as he tried to get around us.
Ali Farad stopped him and said, “That’s enough. Leave her alone.”
The photographer scowled and said, “Makmood, in case you hadn’t noticed, France is still a free country. We don’t do Sharia law here.”
“It is a free country, and she has the right not to be harassed.”
“You a cop?”
“No.”
“Then fuck yourself, and eat pork while you’re doing it,” the kid said. But he did not pursue the woman, instead crossing the street and walking away from us.
“He was right about something,” Louis said when we moved on.
“What’s that?” Farad said, clearly still pissed at the kid.
“She was beautiful. Did you see her face? And those eyes? In my opinion, it is a waste of the feminine mystique to have her covered up like that.”
Farad seemed unimpressed and said, “People have a right to their culture.”
“Sans doute,” Louis replied. “As long as it does not infringe on my right to my culture, and men of my culture enjoy the female form.”
We walked on past several young men putting a coat of paint on top of a coat of paint on top of an AB-16 tag, which had bled through. An older man in a long white tunic was watching with his arms crossed.
“Imam,” Farad said, his face falling. “They’ve defaced the mosque.”
The imam nodded grimly. “Do you know what this means? AB-16?”
“No,” Farad said, and then introduced us.
Imam Ibrahim Al-Moustapha was one of those men who beam with kindness. He shook our hands, looked deeply into our eyes, repeated our names, and said how happy he was to meet us.
“When was this done?” I asked, gesturing to the tag.
“Two nights ago,” Al-Moustapha replied. “The police chased him but he caused two police cars to collide up the street as he made his escape.”
“Imam?” one of the painters said.
Al-Moustapha excused himself and went over to him.
We continued on, and Farad said, “The imam is a great man. He stands for a moderate, progressive, and inclusive Islam. And he speaks up for it, and against the radicals.”
“A rare man, then,” Louis said.
With heat in his voice, Farad replied, “With all due respect, Louis, no, he’s not. There are many of us who think this way, who want to build communities, not destroy them.”
He gestured to a storefront just beyond the mosque.
The FEZ Couriers sign in the window featured a large Moroccan hat with a gold tassel hanging off the top. There were several men smoking out front and wearing jackets featuring the FEZ logo as well.
“Firmus Massi built this business from nothing,” Farad said. “His parents came from Algiers, as mine did. He saw a need for a messenger service and started it on a credit card. Now he employs twenty messengers in Paris. A builder. Not a destroyer.”
“An entrepreneur in France,” Louis said, impressed. “A rarer thing than a moderate Muslim.”
Farad ignored him and gestured to the store next to the messenger service. “This is where the hijab and veil were made.”
“Al-Jumaa Custom Tailor and Embroidery” was written above the door in French and Arabic. Farad went in first and we followed. The interior was crowded with bolts of fabric stacked in cubbies, several women working on sewing machines, and racks of robes, tunics, and veils on the far wall.
Farad was soon talking to Monsieur Al-Jumaa, a gaunt man in a white tunic and black pants. His wife, who stood beside him, was dressed the same as the woman we’d seen running from the kid with the camera: long dark robes and a hijab that surrounded her face like a frame. For some reason she had been staring hostilely at me from the get-go. Maybe she didn’t like blonds.
Farad did the talking in Arabic, and then in French, with Louis translating for me. We showed the tailor our Private badges. He seemed unimpressed. His wife, a pudgy-faced woman with the constant threat of a snarl on her upper lip, looked at the badges, flung her hands in the air, and chattered something in Arabic. Her husband chattered back.
“She thinks we’re here to persecute them,” Farad said. “He agrees.”
“Tell them Private doesn’t do persecution,” I said. “We just ask questions. They’re under no obligation to answer, but we could use their help.”
Farad rattled that off, and we got grudging harrumphs in return.
“Show them the picture, Jack,” Louis said.
I did, and the Al-Jumaas studied it. Immediately the tailor turned suspicious and said, “Why do you have this picture to show me?”
“It’s part of a murder investigation,” Louis said. “I’m sure the police will be by at some point to talk to you about it. We’re looking into it for the victim’s wife.”
“We know nothing about a murder,” the tailor’s wife said, on the defensive now. “We are good people. We work hard.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said. “And you keep records, yes?”
“What kind of records?” Al-Jumaa asked, the suspicion returning.
“Orders,” Louis said. “Measurements. Addresses. Phone numbers. Who bought that hijab and that veil and when.”
Madame Al-Jumaa clucked sharply at her husband in Arabic and threw her hands up in surrender. Al-Jumaa shrugged and asked to see the picture again.
The tailor enlarged the photo and stared at the label for a moment, and then shook his head and said, “Ready-to-wear. No records of this.”
“Explain that,” Farad said.
Al-Jumaa pointed to two short, thin, black lines in the corner of the label and then gestured at the racks along the far wall.
“All the premades carry these two lines,” he said. “The custom hijabs and robes carry a crescent.”
“So you don’t keep a record of who bought ready-to-wear?” Louis asked.
“Just that a robe was sold. No names. No addresses. We are not required to keep them.”