Curt Colbert - Seattle Noir

Abdelaziz started coughing and sputtering. “Too strong-you squeeze too much.”

“You think I’m strong? That’s funny. I’m dying. And I wasn’t strong enough to protect…” She closed her eyes and ground the barrel deeper into the side of his head.

Abdelaziz whispered, “Please…”

Dolores cocked her head, listening; there-the approaching rumble of a southbound locomotive. “I forgot trains come through here,” she said. “We took the bus here once, just for the ride. I told Roberto we’d go someplace special for his fifth birthday, a place with so much sand that they call it Golden Gardens. He thought I meant Mexico and he’d get to meet his abuela. But I couldn’t afford that.” Her eyes began filling with tears. “So we packed lunch; he had his little blue truck. We walked right through here, right along the beach. Mamí, mamí, look at the train , he was so excited.” She gazed at a distant, moonlit embankment leading to the tracks.

“I have two child-”

She whipped the gun across his head. “I said QUIET! Now look, your turban’s all ruined.”

“Ku… faya.”

“What?”

“Not t-turban.” Abdelaziz thought his voice was broken-he hardly recognized it. “Kufaya. It is called kufaya.”

“Well, it looks like a turban.”

“But it is not-”

“It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”

“Why?” he asked.

“That’s what I want to know- why ? He was so young! Ay, mi’jo. He was on foot, just walking across a street…”

Abdelaziz groaned and felt at the side of his head.

“Don’t even think about moving!” She squeezed his throat harder, her grip lifting his eyes to the rearview mirror.

“Look at me,” she said. “Does my face look strong?”

Abdelaziz stared into the mirror as Dolores pulled back the hood of her parka, gasping at the sight of her sunken, bloodshot eyes, faded teardrop tattoo, disheveled cinnamon hair curling across the ash smudged on her forehead. He blinked and envisioned a card from the special deck another driver had spread across the hood of his cab one night. The card showed a woman in white sitting up in bed, face buried in her hands, nine swords hanging on the wall. A greater sadness the world has never known. That’s what Abdelaziz remembered the driver saying; that the cards predict the future and he’d better drive safe, he could die behind the wheel. No, no , Abdelaziz had responded, they’re from Shaitan, the Great Deceiver.

Abdelaziz squirmed. He had to urinate so badly. He wanted to reach down, pinch his member, ease the discomfort, the shame, in front of this woman who overpowered him and dared to call herself a messenger from God! Mocking the Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him). As if Allah would ever choose a woman as messenger!

A gull wheeled across the water, pale sliver against the gray marble Olympics. He thought of Mogadishu, endless golden sand, surf all the way from India, pounding the weary shoulder of East Africa. He thought of his mother and wept, tears falling on his captor’s hand and wrist.

The woman was mad, caring not that he was no Arab or Iraqi, or even from that part of the world. If only he could explain…

“Is that a prayer you’re mumbling?” asked Dolores. She had been lost in a waking dream, adrift above Baghdad on a magic carpet, searching for her son. But what she found was the glorious city of an age forgotten. The great Golden Gate Palace… an emerald dome… minaret voices across the Tigris, calling the faithful to morning prayer… a causeway with horsemen and their lances… dissolving into an American platoon on a potholed street two blocks from the Green Zone, Roberto’s desert camouflage boot descending onto the trigger of a homemade bomb. A blinding flash, bloody and terrible, quartering his body like God’s avenging sword.

“Are you praying, Abdelaziz?”

“I pray, yes.”

“That’s good,” she whispered. “Even to a different God.”

“But our God is the- oow! ”

Dolores hit him again, then wiped the gun on his shoulder. “It’s good to pray,” she said softly. “That’s all I’ve been doing. Got out in December, eight years locked up in Purdy. The doctor said the malignancy’s too advanced, I have less than six months. I couldn’t bear to tell Roberto, I’m all he had. I was going to wait till June, he had leave then…”

Was she was possessed by a djinn , Abdelaziz wondered, or could she even be one herself, a creature of smokeless fire, created by Allah? If she was a djinn , could she not, then, be bound to an object, as Süleyman once did, binding a great djinn to an oil lamp? But bind her how, and to what?

He could feel wind through the back window she’d cracked open. He should have known that no woman would be alone on this night, vigil of the resurrection of the last prophet before Mohammed (peace and blessing be upon him). But business had been slow, and he’d thought little of the hooded emptiness in her eyes when she’d asked to be taken to Golden Gardens. It wasn’t far from where he’d picked her up, the restaurant whose name someone once told him meant The Way in the language of Mexico.

“You’re mumbling again,” Dolores said. “No matter, the sun’s rising, it’s time for you to choose. You understand?”

“N-no.”

“What I mean, Mr. Farah, is that you choose when to pull the trigger. And, yes, you will pull it, not me. Now do you understand?”

“No.”

“Give me your right hand… Ah-ah, slowly.”

Abdelaziz felt her fingers tighten on his throat as she placed the gun in his right hand, wrapping her hand around his. Her iron grip made him wonder if the teardrop tattoo conferred power from Shaitan, the Great Adversary. She moved their hands till the pistol pressed against his right temple.

“Yes, like that,” he heard her say. “Now, you choose when,” she said. “Just calm your thoughts. Relax, and when you’re ready, just slowly make a fist.”

“Suicide is s-sin,” he said. “Only Allah may t-take life. I will have to repeat this on Ju-Judgment Day. Please, no.”

“Don’t be afraid, this is God’s will. I’ll help you. We’ll do it together.”

“No.” Abdelaziz watched a discarded holiday balloon bounce along the beach in the gathering light, the Easter bunny cartwheeling across tendrils of seaweed. The blasphemy of suicide! But no, she forces me… doesn’t she? Did I not struggle? Was I not beaten senseless? And does not the Qur’an say that if we kill, unless it be for murder or a just… NO! She sees this as a just killing, for the death of her son!

“So-Somali,” he said.

“Shh. No more talk.”

“I-I am shamed, I have soiled…”

“It’s all right. Anyone can have an accident…”

“Will it hurt?”

“You’ll see light,” she said.

“Light?” He was floating high above the cab; looking down, he could see right through himself. The cards were right, he was going to die behind the wheel.

Then across golden sand, streaking through the pale dawn, a rainbow rush of flashing lights. Abdelaziz felt ushered to the Garden gates.

“Do you know the Bible?” Dolores whispered.

“I know that which was written before Jesus.”

“Then you understand an eye for an eye.”

“Yes-”

“And a vengeful God.”

“Please!”

Dolores saw red and blue lights strobe in the mirror. She heard a door opening, frantic shouts, footsteps stumbling in the sand as their hands closed, voices joining, blasted apart by the gunshot, “God forgive me.”