Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

“My apologies for taking so long to arrive,” Ali said. “But your father’s arrest necessitated stronger measures and more careful preparation. I thank you, Laleh, for keeping Mr. Keller safe in the meantime. I know that your father would thank you as well, even though he would blanch at the whole idea of your involvement.”

“Is he all right?” Laleh asked.

“All I have been able to find out is that he has been arrested. I know he is not being held at police headquarters, and he is not at the courthouse. That troubles me.”

It troubled Sam, too. He hoped Sharaf didn’t become Daoud’s latest find.

“Let us go, then, before they find you as well,” Ali said. “I will drive you myself.”

“I’m coming, too,” Laleh announced.

“Really, my child, there is no need. And you know that your father would not permit it.”

“But my father is not here. And although you’re his friend, I am still acting on his behalf.”

Ali seemed genuinely affronted.

“Do you not trust me? Can you not do that on your father’s behalf as well?”

“Of course I trust you. But don’t you think it’s safer if more than one of us knows where Mr. Keller is being taken? What if something happens to you?”

Ali examined her carefully. He slowly shook his head, and with a measure of apparent affection said, “You are too much like your father. He, too, believes that everything will fall apart unless he is there to personally supervise. So on his behalf I will indulge you.”

“Where am I going?” Sam asked.

“We’re taking you off the grid. Not just Dubai’s. The world’s.”

Sam envisioned some Bedouin encampment deep in the dunes, a shadeless purgatory among goats and sand fleas.

“The desert?” he asked.

“What, to live with the Bedouin?” Ali laughed, a bit too heartily under the circumstances, Sam thought. “I would not even consider entrusting you to them. I could pay one of them to protect you, of course. But the moment another one learned you were being hidden he would turn you in for a bounty. And it is far easier to find one isolated man in all that emptiness than here in the city. Safety in numbers is better. You will be hiding among a hundred and fifty thousand people, at the Sonapur Labor Camp.”

Laleh put a hand to her mouth.

“Labor camp?” Sam said. “Like a prison?”

“Worse, I’m afraid. In prison, your confinement has a limit. Serve your sentence and go free. At Sonapur everyone is supposedly free from the moment he arrives. But in practical terms it is a life sentence. All those men you see in hard hats, building everything? There are half a million of them in Dubai, and they are all living in camps like Sonapur. Entire cities without a single woman. They rise before the sun and return after nightfall. And when they die, no one even bothers to count them sometimes. So you see? It is the perfect place for you to be lost for a while, and you will be one of the lucky few with a prospect for departure. A speedy one, I hope.”

“Will I have to work?”

“Of course. All the better for keeping you camouflaged. You will be high up on some new tower, where the only way someone can reach you is by industrial elevator or by climbing onto the arm of a crane.”

Sam felt queasy thinking about it. He may have been a daredevil on the water, but he had never been comfortable with heights. Ali slapped him companionably on the back.

“Come. Best to get you settled before dark.”

They piled into Ali’s roomy Mercedes with tinted windows. Sam sat up front next to Ali, with Laleh in the back. They headed south and east, and soon were driving through industrial parks and freshly graded tracts awaiting development. The traffic was heavy, with a preponderance of dump trucks, cement mixers, and flatbeds carrying backhoes and bulldozers. Sam also noticed battered buses filled with men in hard hats. He saw Laleh watching them as well.

“Won’t there be people at Sonapur who would want to turn him in?” she asked.

“Not likely,” Ali said, glancing at her reflection in the mirror. “They’re too busy and too tired. And none of them are local. They’re from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. Besides, Mr. Keller will have far more to worry about than exposure, I am sorry to say.”

“They aren’t big on safety rules, huh?” Sam asked.

“Just be glad it is not summer, when a building slab is like a skillet. Still, on balance it is much safer than leaving you at the mercy of Lieutenant Assad.”

Ali exited onto a potholed two-lane road clogged with trucks and buses. They made their way slowly toward a smudge of low-slung buildings on the near horizon and turned onto a rutted dirt lane. A thunderstorm had recently passed, one of those cloudbursts that never seemed to reach Dubai’s coastline. Craters as big as compact cars were filled with water, and the whole area stank of mud and raw sewage.

They were surrounded now by complexes of grimy buildings, two and three stories high. Each looked like a cheap motel, with rows of doorways along breezeways. Brightly colored laundry hung from the railings. Some rooms had windows, and most were mounted with air-conditioning units. Other rooms had neither. The complexes were separated by iron fencing and low plaster walls. Each had an entrance gate that displayed the name of a contracting firm. Buses were unloading workers from the day shift. Weary-looking men in jumpsuits shuffled toward their dormitories. The only other vehicles in sight were the lumbering “honey wagons,” tanker trucks that worked around the clock to pump out septic tanks.

Sam could already tell from the preponderance of dark faces that he wasn’t exactly going to blend in with the crowd.

“I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb.”

“In here, yes. Although at least you’re on the darker side of Caucasian. That will help. So will a beard. But the more important thing is that the moment you put on your uniform and leave these gates you will become invisible. In Dubai these workers are everywhere and nowhere. No one sees them, because no one wants to. You must trust me on this. It has worked before, even with someone whiter than you. What is it they say in your country? ‘Hidden in plain sight.’ Here we are.”

Ali parked the car next to a whitewashed plaster wall, which was spattered a rusty brown by hundreds of spittings of paan , the local chewing tobacco. A cinder-block hut sat next to an entrance gate, where a security man stood guard with a holstered weapon. The sign out front said the site belonged to the Al Mumtaz Engineering Co.

“Free room and board?” Sam asked.

“Rooms, yes, but the meals will be up to you. Laleh, give him the envelope.”

She handed it across the seat.

“Three hundred dirhams,” Ali said. About eighty bucks. “Keep it with you at all times. If you need more, tell the foreman. His name is Zafar. You will meet him shortly. He is your link to me. He will always know how to reach me, but don’t mention my name around the others. It is best if you do not contact me at all. As soon as it is safe for you on the outside, I will come for you myself. Don’t leave with anyone else. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Ali turned toward Laleh.

“I am taking him inside. You must not leave the car under any circumstances, and you must not open the window. Even in an abaya, your presence here would be a provocation.”

He turned back toward Sam.

“Come with me to the blockhouse. There will be some papers to sign.”

“Good-bye, Sam,” Laleh said.

“Good-bye,” he said, glancing back at her. Just as Ali was climbing out the door she furtively thrust forward her right hand with a small square of folded paper. She nodded quickly, as if to say, “Please, take it before he sees us.” So Sam snatched it away and nodded in reply. More forbidden behavior, he supposed, which made the gesture all the more touching. He stuck the paper in his pocket so Ali wouldn’t see it, and then opened his door to follow.