“Am I dreaming, or is it all true?” he asked, tickling her. Only when she laughed out loud and almost fell off the bed did he stop.
“It’s a strange thing, but I long for you even though you’re here sleeping with me,” he whispered, bending over her.
“You’re beside me, but not at this precise moment sleeping with me,” she said mischievously. Burning with desire, she sat astride his thighs and pressed him gently down on the bed. Then she made ardent love to him, and thought of their first meeting at the Sabunis’ house. It was his first touch that had gone to her heart. Here in this comfortable bed, Rana felt it again. Every touch of his hands set off electric currents under her skin. She felt it tickling so that she was always on the point of laughter.
Outside, the gulls swooped and cried, and a fire flared up in her, streaming through her veins. Farid trembled, and held her close.
Rana slid off the bed, slipped her shirt on and went to the window. The clock on the tower of a nearby church struck ten. Rana flung the double window open and saw the wind crinkling the surface of the sea. The waves foamed on the stones of the breakwater. A young mother and her son were feeding the gulls with stale bread, and the birds were screaming as they fought for it. When the two sides of the window struck the wall, two pigeons flew up in alarm.
A passenger plane was cutting through the sky at a great height, leaving a white trail behind it. It looked like the first line of chalk that Rana used to draw on the asphalt as a child to mark out the spaces of her favourite hopscotch game, “Heaven and Hell”.
She closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh breeze caressing her face. Then, at the top of her voice, she cried out, “Yes!”
Farid, still lying in bed exhausted with his eyes closed, and enjoying the pleasure of drowsing briefly off, woke with a start. Rana turned and looked at him. He gazed back at her, surprised.
How was he to know that her “Yes!” was an answer to the question he had asked her nine and a half years before?
BOOK OF DEATH II
Truth is a jewel whose owner is rich and lives dangerously.
DAMASCUS, MEDITERRANEAN COAST, SPRING — AUTUMN 1970
301. Rumours
Colonel Badran was a passionate movie buff, and loved thrillers. He had written three screenplays himself, but they were now gathering dust in a drawer. Today he was wearing civilian clothes and sunglasses as he walked beside the widow Said, following her murdered husband’s coffin and filming the whole occasion with his new Super-Eight camera.
When the little party of mourners left the widow Said’s apartment later, the colonel stayed on. He confided to her that her husband’s ambition had led him to join a conspiracy. Several high-ranking officers, he said, had been planning a coup, and they had promised Mahdi the job of Interior Minister. At first her husband had gone along with them, but then he had scruples, and tried to back out.
The widow couldn’t help giggling. “Scruples!” she said, spluttering with laughter. “Mahdi and scruples? You must be joking!” The colonel hesitated, but when the widow fell backward on the couch because she was laughing so hard, it was too much for him. He sat down beside her and laid a hand on the knee she had bared. It was as soft as if she had no bones. She didn’t flinch away. He pressed harder, and the widow lay still, closed her eyes, and opened her legs.
Badran caressed her tenderly and carefully, and was surprised to find what sexy lingerie she was wearing under her mourning. She was willing and ardent. Badran enjoyed their love-play on the couch, and when the widow was almost beside herself in her longing for the release of orgasm, he carried her into the bedroom, where he laid her carefully on the bed and made passionate love to her. When they had finished, the widow felt happy for the first time in what seemed an eternity.
Badran lay in her arms, laughing and shaking his head.
“What is it?”
“I don’t even know your first name, madame, and I’ve already slept with you!”
She smiled. “I’m Balkis, and I don’t want to be called anything else.” And then she told him how cold Mahdi Said had been. “Just the opposite of you, brutal with his hands, but he was useless further down.”
Their relationship didn’t remain a secret for long, and soon there was an ugly rumour going around that Mahdi had to die because the colonel was having an affair with his wife, and the two of them had strangled him for fear of scandal.
302. Persistence
Commissioner Barudi didn’t believe that Badran had anything to do with the murder. The man had too many mistresses in Damascus for that. Barudi had tracked down four of them.
For a long time he thought it possible that there was a political motive for Mahdi’s death, but the evidence of the fingerprints failed to reinforce his suspicion. Paper is one of the few materials from which fingerprints do not disappear. So he had prints lifted from the note found with the murdered major, and in secret he also obtained the prints of the condemned officers from the army files. None of them resembled those on the scrap of wrapping paper at all.
Was Badran covering up for something? And if so, why?
After a few days the widow could be disregarded as a source of information, because she was the colonel’s lover. Commissioner Barudi put all his information into a folder and carefully kept it with him.
Old Adjutant Mansur, who shared the room with him, noticed that the commissioner had a secret, but he was unable to find out what it was. Since the “Mahdi” case, the young first lieutenant was no longer as hard-working as before. He arrived late for work, and often didn’t seem to have his mind on it.
“You wait, you peasant fool, Mansur will get the better of you yet,” whispered the adjutant, with a smile playing around his mouth.
In summer Barudi launched out on a new line of research. He decided to discover where the paper found in the murdered man’s pocket came from. The answer was easy. Five souvenir shops in the Christian quarter used the pale grey paper in question, another ten used a yellowish wrapping paper. He wrote down the names of the owners and their staff, but this track led nowhere.
At the end of August Barudi took two weeks’ vacation, for he noticed how the murder was obsessing him so much that it kept him from working on other cases. He wanted to find out exactly what had happened once and for all, and either chalk up a huge success or forget the entire thing for ever.
Who was this man Mahdi Said?
All Barudi knew was that he came from the small town of Safita in the north of the country, and had originally been a Christian by the name of Said Bustani.
Was it, he wondered as he boarded the bus to Safita, a case of revenge by some religious Christian group?
He arrived in Safita four hours later. The town was beautiful, which made him feel optimistic, and suddenly he felt he was very close to his goal. After two hours his presentiments were confirmed. The Bustani family was well known in town. The murdered man’s mother, Rihane Bustani, was a severe elderly widow who bore the marks of her hard life. She was withdrawn, and wouldn’t say a word to the commissioner, but suddenly her daughter Mona appeared in the doorway and invited the commissioner to her house. She thought well of his efforts, because he didn’t seemed impressed by the idea that her brother was supposed to have taken part in the political plot.
“I’m here in a private capacity; I just want to know the truth,” said the commissioner, suddenly feeling ravenous. “You don’t have to answer any of my questions.” For he realized that he had no means of making her.