Nelson Demille - The Panther

“You think?” I asked Brenner, “Is this restaurant on the ground floor with the animals and excrement?”

“No. Two floors up.” He explained, “That’s called the diwan, where guests are received.”

And no one would know if you farted.

He continued, “Above the diwan are the floors where the extended family lives, sharing a single kitchen.” He concluded, “The top floor is called the mafraj, literally, a room with a view-sort of the penthouse, and this is where honored male guests gather to chew khat and watch the sunset.”

I need a room like that. Hey, guys, let’s go up to the mafraj and stare into the sun and get wasted. Then we can bungee jump down the excrement shaft.

Anyway, Kate seemed overwhelmed by the experience, and she took lots of photos and asked Brenner lots of questions, and he was happy to share his knowledge with her, or make up answers. If he was a peacock, his tail feathers would be fully fanned out by now.

We continued our walk without seeing much evidence of the twenty-first century. There were a few other Westerners wandering around on some of the streets, so we didn’t stop traffic. But these annoying kids kept following us asking for “baksheesh, baksheesh,” which I remembered from Aden meant either alms or get-the-fuck-out-of-here money. Brenner said to ignore them, but Kate wanted to engage them in playful conversation, or take their pictures, which cost five cents.

Brenner also said, “If the kids suddenly disappear, we may be having a problem.”

Gotcha. “Hey, Abdul, you want a piggyback ride?”

Anyway, as a detective, I noticed what was missing. Women. I’d seen fewer women on the streets than I’d seen dead rats.

I asked Brenner about that and he replied, “The women do their errands in the morning, usually with male escorts, then they stay indoors to cook, clean, and take care of the kids.”

“Sounds grim,” said FBI Special Agent Kate Mayfield.

Brenner had a joke and said, “But Thursday is wet burqua night at the wadi.” He added, “Bring your laundry.”

Funny. But Kate didn’t laugh, so I didn’t either. You gotta be careful, even here.

Sunday wasn’t the Sabbath around here so everyone who had a job was at work. But what I noticed, as I’d noticed last time in Aden, were hundreds, really thousands, of young men on the streets and in the souks, obviously unemployed and killing time. Their futures would probably take one of three paths: petty crime, emigration, or Al Qaeda. Or maybe someday they’d just revolt against the government, hoping that anything that came after would be better than this. Indeed, they were a demographic time bomb waiting to explode.

Brenner said, “Here’s the restaurant.”

Kate said, “That was fascinating.”

Brenner offered, “If we don’t go to Aden tomorrow, I can show you the rest of the city.”

I thought we’d already pushed our luck. But this was the guy who did a second tour in Vietnam. But hey, you gotta die somewhere.

The restaurant was called, appropriately, “Old Sana’a,” and so was the tower guest house in which it was located.

I assumed Brenner had been here and he hadn’t died of E. coli or a gunshot wound, so we followed him through an open arch into a large, high-ceilinged space, lit only by sunlight coming through narrow windows in the stone walls. I was relieved to see that the space had been cleared of livestock and excrement, though a hint of all that remained in the air.

We climbed a spiral staircase to the diwan level, where a white-robed man sat behind a table, on which was a stack of assault rifles. I guess you had to check your guns here. The man smiled, decided we were probably English speakers, and said, “Welcome. For lunch or room?”

Brenner replied, “Restaurant, please.”

The desk clerk/maitre d’armaments stood, grabbed three menus, and we followed him through one of those Casablanca-type archways with hanging beads into a large, sunlit dining room that took up the whole floor of the tower house. He escorted us to a low round table with beanbag chairs near an open window and said, “Good looking.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the view, or if he meant me or Brenner. Kate was scarfed, so he didn’t mean her. I replied politely, “Thank you. This is a Christian Dior shirt.”

“Yes?”

So we sat cross-legged on these horrid stuffed cushions, and I looked around. It was a pleasant enough place, with ceiling fans, oil lamps on the tables, and carpets on the floor-sort of a cross between Rick’s Place and the den of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

I asked Brenner, “Come here often?”

“Now and then.” He explained, “It’s not a good idea for a Westerner to be a regular anywhere in Sana’a.”

“Right.” Except maybe the Russia Club.

I looked out the window into the backyards of several tower houses. The yards were crowded with vegetable gardens, goats, and chickens. There were no play swings or slides, but a few barefoot kids were having fun chasing the poultry. A woman in a full black balto and veil was scrubbing clothes in a copper tub. In some weird way, this scene reminded me of the tenement I grew up in-sans goats. It was such an ordinary, peaceful scene that it was hard to believe the rest of the country was descending into violence and chaos.

Brenner said, “That’s our emergency exit if we need one.”

“Right.” About a twenty-foot drop into a pile of manure. How would I phrase that in my incident report?

There was a weird, smoky smell in the air, which I commented on, and Brenner informed me, “That’s frankincense.”

“Where’s he sitting?”

“It’s an Arabic gum resin. Used in perfume or incense.”

“Yeah? How about frankin-khat chewing gum? Yes?”

Kate interjected, “Stop.”

Brenner further informed us, “The Yemenis believe it was a Yemeni wise man who brought the gift of frankincense to the baby Jesus.”

Better than fruitcake. Right?

Anyway, the place was about half full on this Sunday afternoon, mostly young Westerners, male and female, but also some weird-looking dudes wearing daggers and white robes, with dark beards and black eyes, who were glancing at us. There were no Yemeni ladies lunching.

Kate still had her scarf over her face, which limited her choices on the menu, but Brenner said to her, “You can uncover your face here, but I’d advise you to keep your hair covered.”

Kate did that, and I said to her, “I forgot how beautiful you were.”

Brenner also said to Kate, “It might be best if John or I gave your order to the waiter.” He explained, unnecessarily, “Men don’t take orders from women.”

“Incredible,” Kate said.

Brenner was right-this place could grow on you. But to show my sensitivity to women’s issues, I said, “Unbelievable.”

Brenner agreed and said, “The male guest workers who return from Europe and America have seen the twenty-first century, and they’ve been subtly influenced by what they’ve seen in the West.”

I thought about Nabeel, and also The Panther, and I wondered if this was true. Or, if they had been influenced by the West, it wasn’t in a positive way. Bottom line, the winds of change that were sweeping Islam were blowing backwards. They were happily miserable and rigid, and we should leave them alone-except for knocking off a few of them who fucked with us. Like Osama bin Laden. And The Panther.

A waiter dressed in theme costume came over, and Brenner suggested the local fruit drink or the shai, a spiced tea. Kate said to Brenner, “Shai,” and Brenner repeated it to the guy and ordered one for himself. The menu was written in Arabic and bad English, and I saw that they had non-alcoholic beer, which possibly had fermented in the bottle, so I said to Kate, “Tell Paul to tell the waiter I want a beer.” Did I get that right?