It struck him that she was gone, maybe for good. It would be
awkward to contact her now. Just when she'd been liberated from Othman, she was less available than ever.
A sleepless night was followed by a vacuous day. He was too tired to go out, but at lunchtime he walked to the parking lot and bought a shawarma from the marina's vendor. He managed to avoid seeing Majid, but the quiet return to the boat and the stifling isolation that met him there only made the day stretch emptier than before. He had never felt quite so purposeless and dull, and it took him a while to realize that he was experiencing the vast, weighty, immobilizing dread of knowing that he had to talk to Othman but feeling he'd rather throw himself into the sea. Yet until he saw Othman, he would accomplish nothing else.
Later that afternoon he drove to the estate. A butler met him at the door and took him to the sitting room, where Tahsin was sitting in state with a nervous-looking Qazi. It was curious that Qazi was there. Was he close to the brothers? He had told Nayir that he had come to the estate only once during his courtship with Nouf. Othman never talked about him, in fact had never mentioned him until Nouf's disappearance.
Sitting across from Tahsin's bulk, Qazi looked like a reedy boy. He held a shaking teacup on his lap but was too nervous to drink, and his forehead glistened with sweat. When he saw Nayir, his face became eloquent with relief. Perhaps he had come to pay personal condolences to the family.
Tahsin greeted Nayir and invited him in. Nayir shook Qazi's hand and sat beside him, wondering at the cause of his distress.
"We were just discussing the future," Tahsin said.
Qazi smiled nervously, sloshing his tea. Nayir was inclined to believe what he'd said about his reasons for loving Nouf—that she wasn't stiff or formal. In the sitting room, he seemed uniquely out of place.
"We can continue this later," Tahsin remarked.
Just then the door opened and Othman appeared with Fahad, the two of them escorting their father, Abu Tahsin.
Tahsin got up to clear the pillows from the floor. With steps as slow as a clock's minute hand, the three men shuffled into the room. Abu Tahsin's decrepitude was painful to see. In the course
of a few weeks, this lissome and gregarious man had withered like a dried plum. His chest and arms were shrunken, and a host of new wrinkles netted his face. He could hardly stand on his own, and with each step his expression grew tauter. He didn't notice his guest until he was practically beside him.
"It's Nayir, Father," Tahsin said. "Nayir ash-Sharqi."
Abu Tahsin's voice climbed out of the depths of his throat. "Ahhmm."
Nayir was shocked. "Abu Tahsin, I'm at your service."
"Hahhhhmmm."
Nayir stood back to let him pass. He cherished a memory of Abu Tahsin standing above Wadi Jawwah near Abu Arish, aiming his rifle at a flock of white storks with a gleam in his eye. It was late afternoon, and the sun fell on him in a golden haze, deepening the sable color of his skin. Nayir remembered the sudden crack of the shot, the storks' unearthly skirl, the powder floating in the air like lines of white silk. Abu Tahsin had turned to him and said, his voice deep like a rumor, "The birds in the sky are not to be counted, and yet every one of them follows a pattern. Do you think this is a sign for prudent men?"
Nayir had said yes, it was probably a sign. At the time he thought only of the obvious meaning, as it says in the Quran: that Allah's existence can be known by His signs, the mysterious structures of the universe. Yet here in the sitting room was another sign of sorts: the decrepitude of age, as dark and predictable as night.
Othman glanced at Nayir, his gaze inscrutable, and he whispered in passing, "The doctor says he has to walk around the house three times a day. It keeps the blood from clotting."
Nayir nodded sadly. The man's spirit was gone.
Tahsin motioned for Fahad to let go of Abu Tahsin, and he took his father's arm. The two brothers led him through the terrace door.
A moment later Othman came back. Everyone turned, expecting perhaps that Abu Tahsin was coming behind him. Othman regarded them awkwardly and to distract from their obvious discomfort begged them to sit. Othman's gesture of hospitality felt too formal. It made Nayir nervous, and he realized that—for himself at least—their friendship was vanishing, replaced by the cold, frightening propriety of the sitting room. Othman seemed to sense it too. He avoided Nayir's gaze, and everyone sat.
Nayir tried not to stare but couldn't help it. Othman hadn't shaved; his clothing was rumpled, his skin dull from lack of sleep. Fahad asked Qazi about his father's business, and Qazi began to talk about shoes, account books, employees, and foreign trade. Nayir waited, growing more anxious as the minutes went by. He felt ridiculously inferior, unable to participate in the conversation or even to understand it. He had to keep reminding himself that Othman was the fraud, the one who had lied, the one who should be ashamed of himself.
Abruptly Othman reached forward, picked up a box of dates, and extended it to Nayir. "Please have a date."
"No, thank you." Nayir touched his stomach.
"No, please. Just one."
Nayir raised his hand. "Really, I'd better not." Beside him, Qazi and Fahad were absorbed in their conversation.
"You're looking pale," Othman said.
Nayir plucked the front of his shirt from his chest. "It must be the heat."
"Would you believe, in heat like this, I found my coat?"
"Where was it?"
"At the back of the closet."
"Had you checked there before?" Nayir asked.
"I thought I did." Othman seemed to lose interest. He took a handful of dates and stood up with a grunt. "Anyway, you're hot. Shall we walk?"
Appalled by the indiscretion of having admitted that he, Nayir ash-Sharqi, desert tour guide extraordinaire, was actually hot, he mumbled a vague protest as he followed Othman into the hallway. Silently they traversed dark passageways and cut across vast, empty rooms until they reached a terrace door. Othman led him out onto a narrow loggia that overlooked the sea. Disorientation hit Nayir. He'd never been to this part of the house before. The ground sloped dangerously toward the cliff. Only a stone wall at the patio's edge protected them from a hundred-meter drop to the rocky beach below.
Othman motioned him along the loggia and through a narrow doorway. "Watch the stairs."
They descended a dank metal staircase barely wide enough for Nayir's shoulders. The air had a tacky, industrial stench. Eventually the stairs became shiny glass steps, and a blue light filtered up from below. Nayir walked carefully, fighting dread. Suddenly he spotted movement beneath his feet, the undulating rhythms of kelp and sea anemones, the sudden flicker of a brightly colored fish. At the bottom of the stairs, they stepped into an aquarium.
They were standing in the center of an enormous glass cavern, easily as large as the house itself and glowing in a phosphorescent halo of light. On all sides the ocean stirred with luminous creatures sunk in sad isolation. It was cooler here, but Nayir still felt clammy, and the undersea pressure seemed to weigh on his chest. He felt as if he'd entered a dungeon.
"It's impressive," he murmured. "Did your family build this?"
Othman shook his head and began to walk. They wandered in silence, studying the vast assortment of fish. Nayir recognized a masked butterfly fish. Othman called his attention to a blue-spotted stingray. He watched politely as it glided away, but his mind returned to an image of Othman from Nouf's journal, rescuing her at sea. Then it switched to the opposite images: Othman grabbing her by the wrists, smashing her over the head, dumping her body at the bottom of a wadi. It was horrifying, and selfishly, Nayir felt betrayed. A man doesn't know a friend until he knows his friend's anger.
Could Othman, with his strict sense of tradition and family honor, really have done it? Fornicating, kidnapping, possibly killing? The man standing in the aquarium looked as if he'd been kidnapped himself.
"Have a seat." Othman motioned to a metal bench that faced the widest glass panel. They both sat down. A school of black-spotted sweetlips shifted nervously in the glittering light. Othman watched them but seemed to retreat into himself, brooding.
Nayir crossed his arms to hide his unsteady hands. "I thought only the king had an underground aquarium."
"This used to be a royal house."
"Ah, yes." He smoothed down his shirt. He could feel a confession coming on.
"Brother, I'm sorry to have involved you in any of this," Othman said. He sounded sincere, but something in his tone made Nayir turn his head. "I talked to Katya this morning. She told me..."
Nayir hesitated. "I'm sorry. I meant to tell you that I'd seen her." Othman eyed him strangely. "We had lunch," Nayir said, which wasn't as difficult as his next admission: "And we went to the zoo."
"Ah. The zoo."
"I realize I should have told you earlier."
Othman gave a sad laugh. "You don't owe me any apologies. My sins are so much greater than yours."
Nayir agreed but felt the urge to console him anyway. "A sin is a sin."
"I appreciate everything you've done, Nayir." The words sounded remote, empty, as if he were profoundly tired of formality. Nayir sensed that something was about to break, that it would take only a nudge to shatter the wall of restraint.
Othman kept his eyes on the sea creatures. "I used to come here with Nouf." He laid a hand on his mouth, and for a moment he looked regretful, but when he dropped his hand, his face was bitter and closed. "Before she got engaged."
Nayir's eye twitched. "That must have been hard on you."
He didn't reply; perhaps he felt it was an obvious remark. Eventually Othman raised his chin. "She loved it when I told her about the different fish. There was one fish here, we used to see it all the time. It's a grouper of some sort, and the thing about groupers is that they're all born female, and when they get older, some of them turn into males." He gave a dry chuckle. "She loved that. She said she wanted to be just like the grouper, so when she grew up she could act like a man."
Nayir felt the same pervasive sadness he'd felt in the cabana. He sat still, waiting.
"I actually told my father about it," Othman said, giving a dry laugh. "What a mistake. I told him I wanted to marry Nouf. At first he thought I was joking, so I played along, but I think he began to suspect that it was the truth, and he was disgusted by it. So
disgusted that when Katya came along, my father didn't care that her family wasn't like us, he didn't care that she was older. He just wanted me to get married. So we made the arrangements. But with Katya I made the biggest mistake of all." He paused, struggling with his next words. "She was a friend to me, and I didn't tell her what was really in my heart."
"That you didn't love her?"
Othman shook his head. "Not like I loved Nouf."
Nayir experienced a poisonous admixture of relief, guilt, and crippling anger. The idea of Othman being in love with his sister was not so disgusting anymore; it paled in comparison to Othman's behavior with Katya. He had used her—first, to keep up appearances with his family, and second, as a comforting presence, someone to soothe his broken heart, never mind that he was going to break
her
heart. Perhaps he had even used her to punish Nouf, who had dared to get engaged to somebody else. Nayir flashed on the jacket bazaar and a heap of sad, empty wedding coats destined for a forgotten closet somewhere.
"So your father knew about your feelings for her," Nayir said.
"Sort of. I didn't tell him everything."
"He knew you were the father of her child?"
"I think he suspected it."
Nayir knew Othman's next words would answer the deeper question that disturbed him—whether Othman had actually kidnapped her. He was afraid to ask, but he had to know.
"Is that why you paid for a private investigator—to prove to them that you didn't kidnap her?"
Beside him, Othman sat immobile, as if catatonic. Nayir knew he had to say it.
"You did kidnap her."
Othman shut his eyes. The tears fell then, down his cheeks in a line on either side. Nayir looked away.
"I'm sorry," Othman said. "I know what you think." After a painful moment when even the fish seemed to slow in their world, he raised his head. "It's true that I loved her, but brother, believe me, I don't know what happened. I've been crazy,
crazy
trying to figure it out. It leads nowhere. I've found nothing..." His voice cracked, and he stopped. "I paid for the investigator because I didn't know what happened, and that's the truth."
"Nouf had bruises on her wrists."
Othman shook his head. "I didn't kidnap her."
"We found your skin cells around the bruises."
He seemed confused. Perhaps it was the word "we." But if it caused him any pain, he didn't show it. "Nouf and I fought just before she got kidnapped." He swallowed hard. "She told me she was going to run away to New York. I couldn't believe it."
"So you grabbed her?"
"No, I was thrilled. I told her I wanted to plan a life with her. I told her we could move to New York together. I'd give her anything, let her do anything, but..." He paused. "She didn't want to. She wanted to start over."
"How did you end up grabbing her wrists?"
"I begged her,
Please,
please don't go!' She'd be ripping out my soul. She was crying too. She started to hit me. I grabbed her to make her stop, but it was hard." He unbuttoned his sleeve and rolled it up, exposing a series of faint discolorations from his wrist to his elbow. They might have been from scratches that had happened two weeks before. "She got me too. I had to stop her. She was frantic. I didn't realize I'd hurt her."
"Why was she so angry?"
Othman rolled down his sleeve with a steady hand. "When I realized that she was telling the truth, that she didn't want me to go with her, I said something I shouldn't have. I told her I would stop her. I didn't mean I was going to kidnap her—I only meant that I would tell my father about her plans." He covered his face with his hands and shook his head. "I apologized. I told her I didn't mean it—and I
didn't
mean it. I just didn't want her to leave."