Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

He was relieved to have made it through the first night. The guards here had a reputation for roughness, and they supposedly earned it in the wee hours. Beatings and searches were said to be routine. Foreigners sometimes complained, but that usually resulted in a longer stay, and few pursued it. Sharaf supposed that if Lieutenant Assad could engineer his incarceration, then he might also be able to arrange for a few blows to the head after midnight.

“You are not praying!”

It was the pious asshole, standing to his left.

“Why are you not washing so that you may pray?”

Sharaf avoided the man’s gaze and pushed through narrow saloon doors into the bathroom at the rear of the cell. He stood in line to wash his hands, and by the time he was done the fellow had zeroed in on another laggard. Sharaf dropped to his knees and asked God for strength and patience, and for any possible help in making sense of things. No answers were forthcoming, and he wasn’t surprised. He wondered idly if there was a library here, and whether he would have access.

“So you are also a newcomer? I am Nabil.”

It was the fellow with the beard. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. Unlike most Emirati men of that age, he had the weathered look of someone who still made a living with his hands.

“I am Anwar,” Sharaf said. He decided not to mention the cockroach. “I think we’re all new except for the one in the red stripe. Maybe they’re trying to intimidate us.”

“His name is Obaid. I made the mistake of talking to him last night at dinner. He told me he threw a prostitute out a window. She was a temptress, of course.” Sharaf glanced uneasily toward Obaid, who was kneeling with his forehead pressed to the floor. “Don’t worry. You could set off a bomb while he’s praying and he wouldn’t flinch.”

The lock buzzed and the cell door opened. A guard appeared and immediately began shouting in Arabic with a street accent from Cairo.

“Form a line for breakfast! Form a line! Single file to breakfast!”

Everyone lined up but Obaid. The guard was about to shout again when he saw the red stripe. Or maybe he was acquainted with the fellow’s violent brand of piety. Whatever the case, he waited until the praying was done before he shouted again.

“Form a line! Form a line for breakfast!”

They shuffled down the corridor with more than a hundred other men. A clock high on a wall said it was 5:30 a.m.

Breakfast was a smear of bean paste and bread, served on a partitioned tray of stainless steel, along with a cup of weak, sugary tea. Sharaf learned that Nabil was from Deira, just across the creek from where he had grown up. Nabil repaired boats, a dying art, especially among locals. The rest of his family owned shops in the souk, although most of their money came from real estate speculation. Nabil complained that his old neighborhood was now dominated by Indians and Palestinians. His father had decided years ago that he didn’t want to move to some new villa out to the west, and now all the better locations had been taken.

Sharaf warily scanned the other tables. A face a few rows over stirred vague memories of a botched robbery followed by an awkward arrest, the man spread-eagled on a sidewalk in front of his family. Sharaf looked away. He was sure there would be more. Damned Assad. How long would this go on?

“Tell me why they brought you here,” Nabil said. “Why don’t you have a stripe?”

Sharaf gave the man a closer look. Could he be a plant or informant? He certainly didn’t look the type. Even if he was, the questions were harmless enough.

“I don’t know. A policeman wanted me to tell him something that I couldn’t. The next thing I knew, he brought me here. No crime, just punishment.”

“It is the same with me! They were looking for a family friend. I truly didn’t know where he was, so I told them. So did my cousin, Khalifa. Now both of us are here, like you. Except that I have this green stripe.”

“What charge?”

“Public profanity. I guess it was the first thing that popped into the policeman’s head. So of course the judge, some ignoramus from Syria, accepted his word as if it were God’s. He listened to me for five seconds and sentenced me to four months, just like that.”

“And your cousin?”

“The same. They put him in another cellblock. So we wouldn’t be able to keep our stories straight, they said. I don’t even see him at meals, or in the yard.”

“Sounds like they think one of you really knows something. Your cousin, maybe?”

Nabil was silent. Sharaf realized his remark had made him sound like a cop. Old habits were hard to break. But Nabil soon resumed his patter.

“Actually, I think Khalifa does know where our friend has gone. But that is his business. The missing fellow is from India, and his family runs Khalifa’s shops in the Gold Souk. I guess he is worried they would all be deported, which would ruin him.”

“Deported? The fellow must have done something pretty bad.”

“The police didn’t say. But he works at the Palace Hotel, so you can imagine. Even if it was only stealing, you know how the government is about crimes against tourists, especially wealthy ones.”

“The Palace?” Sharaf tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “The hotel at the Royal Mirage?”

“Yes. He is some sort of doorman.”

The one from Charlie Hatcher’s datebook, probably, the fellow named Rajpal Patel. Up to now Sharaf had assumed the man was missing because Lieutenant Assad-or some Mafia ally-had spirited him away. Instead it sounded as if Patel had gotten wind of his pursuers and bolted. Much like Sam Keller, wherever he was.

Stumbling onto one of Patel’s neighbors was enough of a coincidence to rekindle Sharaf’s suspicion. Maybe Nabil was a plant.

But he knew from experience that no more than a dozen or so new inmates were admitted each day to the Central Jail, and of those only a handful were Emiratis. Furthermore, the new arrivals tended to be grouped by nationality. The timing of his arrest meant the odds had actually favored just this sort of meeting. The pity was that Nabil’s cousin wasn’t his cellmate, since Khalifa was apparently the one who knew the whereabouts of the doorman.

Sharaf wanted to ask more, but Nabil was already gossiping about two fellows he had spotted across the room. Apparently they were also from his neighborhood. They had been arrested for buggery several months earlier and were now sharing a table, all smiles.

“I wonder if they also share a bunk,” Nabil said with a leer. “Now that’s where they should put our friend Obaid. Give him an education in sin he would never forget.”

Sharaf decided not to ask again about the doorman, lest he raise suspicion. There would be plenty of time later for that. Far too much of it, probably.

After breakfast the guards led them outdoors onto a thirty-by-thirty-meter slab of concrete-the so-called exercise yard. As if by rote, everyone began walking counterclockwise in a crowded parade around the perimeter. Sharaf joined in. Those who merely wanted to talk retreated to the corners. One or two Europeans tried to jog, weaving clumsily through the crowd. He wished it were warmer, but the sun wasn’t yet high enough to reach over the walls.

Amina and Laleh must be up and about by now, he supposed. He wondered if they knew where he was, and, if so, if they would be allowed to visit. Did the Minister know? More to the point, was he doing anything about it?

The rest of the day was more of the same. Two more meals. Two more trips to the yard, with plenty of time for worrying as each hour passed without word from the outside. And the next day was virtually identical to his first. Maybe Assad was counting on the boredom to break him. Sharaf didn’t have a single dirham, but fortunately the kindly Nabil let him borrow enough credit from his account at the prison store to buy socks and underwear. He also picked up an American paperback from the woeful offerings in the prison library, where most of the books in Arabic were religious texts and there was nothing in Russian. Nabil made no further mention of his cousin, and Obaid continued to punctuate every remark with “inshallah.”