Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

Above him, the mattress creaked. In another bunk a man began to snore. The sounds of deep, heavy breathing seemed to come from all directions. They must have been exhausted, and he supposed that by this time tomorrow he would be, too. He wondered if he would be able to meet the demands of the workday.

Sam reached toward the foot of the bed, groping in the dark for his jacket. He folded it to use as a pillow, then closed his eyes and tried to relax.

Just as he was drifting off he heard bare feet hit the floor, like the sound of a small animal dropping from a tree. Something gripped his bed frame, making it quiver, and he heard quickened breathing. He smelled onions. Ramesh. He tensed, ready to defend himself. There was a low mutter, like an incantation, and sudden movement to his left. The smell of onions was stronger, and when Ramesh spoke next his mouth was only a few inches from his face.

The words were rushed, emphatic, and incomprehensible, some Bengali curse or imprecation. Then the man was gone, the bed trembling as he released his grip. Sam let out a deep breath and unclenched his fists. Now what had that been? A warning? A threat? Some sort of superstitious spell, to ward off Sam’s influence? Whatever it was, it certainly hadn’t sounded like an apology.

There was a creak of springs from across the room as Ramesh climbed back into his bunk, and the room was again at peace. But for the next half hour Sam didn’t close his eyes. He kept wondering whether Ramesh would pay him another visit, this time with more violent intent. The air conditioner droned on, changing in tone from time to time like a truck shifting gears on an uphill grade. Gradually, without realizing it, Sam slipped from wakefulness. And just as quickly, it seemed, he was being jostled awake.

He opened his eyes and felt the bed shake as the man in the overhead bunk jumped to the floor. All around him in the dimness men were rising, pulling on jumpsuits and boots, the scene lit by a lantern in the courtyard that shone through the room’s open door. The air conditioner was off.

“Hurry, or you will not have time to eat,” Vikram said, bending to his side, then quickly rising back out of sight. Sam wrenched himself upright and swung his feet onto the floor. He was groggy, ravenous, and thirsty all at once, and he was already worrying about how high he would have to climb on whatever site the bus took them to.

The workday had begun.

Waking up in the Dubai Central Jail wasn’t how Anwar Sharaf had hoped to begin his day, especially when he opened his eyes to see a cockroach eating crumbs from the beard of the inmate in the opposite bunk.

Sharaf reached across the narrow aisle to flick at the big brown bug. It scurried away. With four other cellmates to choose from, the roach had plenty of options for breakfast.

Already Sharaf missed the comforts of nuzzling Amina’s back, his usual harbor on a drowsy morning. He had grown accustomed to her welcoming shift and sigh as he glided against her, hand on her shoulder while his waist bumped her soft curves below. Except, of course, on mornings like the previous one, when she had still been angry from the night before.

Even with only one wife, Sharaf reflected, marriage was complicated. As he slumbered on the jailhouse bunk he recalled their early years, when she hadn’t yet trusted his stated intention to never take a second wife. She’d been convinced that his monogamy was merely a phase, fueled by a desire for rebellion that would fade over time, and she had always said so at the end of every argument.

“When you are done pissing off your father, you will want another wife, and then another after that,” she said. “I am sure of it.”

But when three years passed after his father’s death and Sharaf still made no move in that direction, Amina had at last believed him. She had even accepted the basis of his explanation-that she was more than enough woman for him, not only in bed, but also in the artful ways she ran their home.

Sharaf was wise enough to keep the real reason to himself: He simply never could have endured the extra aggravation, complication, and political finesse that would have been required to maintain peace and sanity in a household of multiple spouses. From early in boyhood he had known that when he sailed into middle age and beyond, he wanted to do so on a tidy ship with clean lines, an uncluttered deck, and all hands pulling together. And that would be possible only with one captain and one mate. The crew of children could mutiny all it wanted as long as the hands at the wheel remained steady.

Yet, here in jail, awakening among hundreds in shared misery, he realized in a moment of morning clarity that thirty-four years of marriage had produced something quite unexpected. The words of his long-uttered rationale had actually come to pass. Amina really was all the woman he needed, and he missed her terribly.

A loud fart from across the room jolted him further awake. Then the call to prayer sounded over the intercom. Even the muezzin sounded institutional, as blandly uninspired as the food. On the bunk just behind him, an inmate that Sharaf already despised sat up quickly and announced to the cell, “It is time for everyone to rise and wash so that we may pray, inshallah. Prayer is better than sleep, inshallah.”

The man was apparently incapable of speaking without tacking the word “inshallah”-God willing-onto every phrase, a verbal tic of piety as maddening as a dripping faucet. Sharaf had noticed this tendency in other devout locals of late, as if invoking God’s name at every turn might help ward off the growing erosion of morals by the incoming tide from the West. But he had never heard anyone as persistent as this fellow.

Sharaf wasn’t the only person irritated by the repetition. The fellow with crumbs in his beard sat up and said loudly, “Can you please shut up, inshallah? Or will we be forced to pin you to the floor, inshallah , so that we can all drop our drawers and pee into your Godly little mouth, inshallah.”

There were snickers from every bunk but one. Sharaf turned his face toward the wall to hide his smile. No sense making an enemy in a place where someone could attack you while you slept. Especially when the man in question wore a red stripe across his white tunic and down the legs of his drawstring pants. The color signified that he was a lifer, meaning he had probably committed a crime of unspeakable violence.

The markings were for the benefit of the guards. It made it easier for them to know who to keep an eye on. A yellow stripe meant a sentence of up to six years. Blue was for up to two. Green was for the lightest sentences of a few months. Sharaf’s uniform was the only one with no stripes at all. Just plain white, as if everything about him was yet to be determined. Appropriate enough, he supposed, since he hadn’t yet been charged with any crime, much less tried and sentenced. For all anyone knew, he wasn’t even here.

“You speak blasphemies only to mock me,” the offended fellow said, ironically forgetting to add “inshallah” now that he was angry. “That is even more sinful than uttering a blasphemy in complete sincerity. Did you know that your soul is in peril?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself. Inshallah.”

After Sharaf’s arrest the day before, his blindfolded ride in the windowless van had lasted for nearly an hour. His hips and shoulders were still bruised from all the bumping. When the blindfold finally came off, he was facing Lieutenant Assad in a dingy room of whitewashed cinder blocks, lit by a bare bulb that dangled from a frayed wire. The room, like the van, had no windows. He had never seen the place, meaning it wasn’t at police headquarters. And he knew enough about the Interior Ministry’s new offices to know that he wasn’t there, either. They wouldn’t have tolerated such dirty walls, or the gritty floor with its crumbling tiles, stinking of cat urine and spilled motor oil. Maybe they were in some sort of garage. Judging from the length of the ride in the van-assuming they hadn’t driven him around in circles-he was either far to the east of the city, out past Jebel Ali along the road to Abu Dhabi, or well to the south, somewhere in the desert.