Layover in Dubai

15

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.

The latter possibility reminded him uncomfortably of the woman in blue sequins, but he quickly dismissed the idea that he might meet a similar fate, if only because it was probably what Assad wanted him to think. Sowing fear and doubt were among the best possible ways to lubricate an interrogation. Establishing trust was even more effective, of course, but Assad must have known that was out of the question.

Assad, dressed impeccably as always, waited more than a minute before speaking. Sharaf figured it was supposed to make him lose his cool. Instead he used the time to marshal his defenses.

“We know you’re hiding him,” Assad finally began. It was the first of many small tricks he would attempt. A quick denial would have been an admission of guilt.

“Hiding who?”

Sharaf wrinkled his brow in what he hoped was convincing bewilderment.

“Oh, come on. The American. You were the last officer seen with him.”

“Ah, so that is why I’m here. You still haven’t found him, and you need a scapegoat to explain his escape. There must be pressure from upstairs. Have they threatened a suspension? I don’t envy you, Assad. Who is it you’re trying to impress? Someone in the cabinet?”

“We searched your house. The guest bedroom had been slept in.”

Meaning they hadn’t found Keller. A pleasant surprise. He wondered how the young man had gotten away. Assad’s choice of words also told him they hadn’t found Keller’s clothes, passport, and wallet out in the washtub in the shed. He supposed he might have overlooked those items as well, because who in their right mind would have placed such things in a tub of water, leaving them to soak? Dumb luck on his part, although he certainly had his reasons.

“My son Salim has been sleeping in the guest room. Would you like me to enumerate his embarrassing marital difficulties for you, or must you trouble the rest of my family with prying questions as well?”

Even if Assad checked the story with Salim, a contradiction wouldn’t necessarily be damning. There wasn’t an Emirati male alive who would admit to being kicked out of the marital bed—or, in Salim’s case, both of them.

“Seriously, go and check. You’ll even find some of Salim’s clothes hanging in the guest room closet. Unless he has already moved back home, of course.”

The search must have found the clothes—the very ones Sharaf had taken from Salim’s house for Keller to borrow—with their non-American look and their local store labels, because now Assad didn’t seem so sure of himself. It convinced Sharaf that the lieutenant had nothing more on that front.

“Our search also determined that the American had recently been in your daughter’s bedroom. Ah, I see from your face that this is a surprise to you, and no doubt an unpleasant one.”

Sharaf inwardly cursed himself for betraying his emotions. Had he raised an eyebrow? Drawn a sudden breath? Damn that Laleh. What had she been doing after hours? And God only knows what she would be doing in his absence, especially if Ali had recruited her help in keeping Keller out of harm’s way. Or was Assad bluffing, by probing his best-known weak spot? Sharaf bit his tongue and stared back, trying to look as impassive as possible.

“Yes, he was in her bedroom,” Assad continued. “Her computer had been used not long before we arrived. The screen saver had not even had time to come back on. Keller was familiar with your daughter, wasn’t he? What is her name? Laleh, that’s it. I’ve heard things about her. Her social carelessness, for lack of a better term.”

Sharaf hoped the color wasn’t rising in his cheeks. He wasn’t sure who was upsetting him more—Assad, with this line of inquiry, or Laleh, for providing such a handy tool to lever his emotions.

“I’ll wager you weren’t very pleased by their behavior together. And under your own roof, no less. So save yourself a future ulcer, Sharaf, not to mention lots of embarrassing stories that would be needlessly spread around the city. Just tell me where you’ve stashed this hopelessly uncouth American. Leave him to my team, and this whole affair will be closed cleanly and quickly, with minimal embarrassment and upset to all those parties whom we least want to embarrass and upset. Even his own people wish for this outcome. His embassy is quite up in arms about his disappearance. Or were you not aware of that?”

Another little trap, which he quickly sidestepped.

“Can’t a young lady’s older brother visit his sister’s room without some sort of rumor being attached? Especially an older brother who is currently not welcome in his own home? I’m sure Laleh wouldn’t begrudge Salim a few minutes’ use of her desktop computer, even if he didn’t bother to ask her permission.”

“Very well, Sharaf. Stick with that story for as long as you like.”

Assad surprised him by not pressing the point. Nor did he follow up with brutality or deprivation. He didn’t even shout. When Sharaf asked to use the bathroom, Assad let him, albeit with a police escort. And when Sharaf returned to the room a bottle of cool water and a clean glass were waiting on the floor by his chair. After a half hour more of desultory questioning, Assad ordered him back into the van, this time not bothering with the blindfold. When the panel doors opened an hour later, Sharaf had found himself here, out in the desert at the Dubai Central Jail in Al Aweer. The message seemed clear enough: This was where Sharaf would remain until he decided to talk.

Everything about his arrival at the prison had been unorthodox. Most inmates came on big buses, and were unloaded in an underground garage at the entrance to a holding cell in the intake area. The new arrivals then stood in various lines where their paperwork was processed while guards constantly shouted at them. Each of them got a strip search and a color-coded uniform.

Sharaf was processed upstairs with no waiting and no paperwork, but he did get a strip search. Some goon probed his buttocks with the cool smooth end of a varnished black baton. A guard then handed him the strange white uniform and a pair of slippers before marching him to his cell. On this day, at least, the guards seemed to be dividing the newcomers by nationality. The Indians and Pakistanis went one way, the Westerners another. All the fellow newbies in Sharaf’s cell seemed to be Emiratis.

Sharaf had been freezing cold since his arrival, thanks to the prison’s relentless air-conditioning. He had no underwear and no socks, and on his bunk there was only a top sheet and a thin wool blanket. The way they cranked cold air into the place you’d have thought it was a dairy. Cold or not, it was time to rise. He threw off the flimsy blanket, shivering as he swung his slippered feet onto the chilly floor.

The prison was practically new. As with much of Dubai’s recent construction, no expense had been spared. The rulers had insisted on the best penitentiary money could buy, and at first glance they seemed to have gotten their wish. The bright lights, the stainless steel, the acres of whitewashed concrete, and the glassed-in security hub, with long cellblocks extending from it like the legs of an octopus, made the Central Jail seem like the very model of spotless efficiency.

Look closer, however, and the underlying shoddiness of quick-buck construction was already in evidence. Cracked linoleum. Crumbling concrete. Balky electrical locks that refused to open on demand. Often the intercom failed. When it did, a fellow patrolled the wings with a bullhorn to announce the next mealtime or prayer. The place seemed clean enough, but there was that cockroach Sharaf had spotted, plus a steady stream of ants. And any way you looked at it, it was still a prison, with the usual pecking order of such places—the bullying and the savvy at the top, the timid and the weak at the bottom. Fortunately none of Sharaf’s cellmates seemed to know he was a cop. And on his one visit to the dining hall he had kept his head down, lest any old adversaries spot him.

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.”

Not long after dinner on the second day, when everyone had been locked down for the night, Sharaf settled into his bunk to read. The book was the worst sort of pulp, a high-action thriller that described weapons more lovingly than people. But it must have passed the time, because the next thing Sharaf knew he was awakening in the dark to strange noises overhead.

The bunks in his cell were silent, but the ceiling trembled as if cattle were stampeding on the floor above. Thundering footsteps receded, only to be replaced by a frantic howl, and then another. The distant noise of barking dogs chilled him enough to want to pull the blanket tighter. Then came more footsteps, a hoot of laughter, and silence.

Someone in the next bunk moaned and rolled over in his sleep. The cell door buzzed ominously. The lock clicked loudly and the door swung free, as if opened by a spirit. Sharaf quickly pulled on his slippers and slid from the bunk. Already he heard the mutter of voices from the unseen end of the corridor, low and conspiratorial, people up to no good.

He leaned forward for a glance. The first thing he saw was the clock—4 a.m. Then he saw the guards, maybe fifteen of them. Or he supposed they were guards, because they weren’t clad in their usual forest green. These fellows were dressed like burglars—black T-shirts, black pants, black balaclavas with holes for their mouths and eyes, and long black batons, like the one that had probed him during the strip search.

Sharaf pulled the door shut, but the lock wouldn’t catch. The guards began to shout. The men in black were rousting prisoners from their beds in the cells at the far end.

“Wake up!” Sharaf said. “They’re coming!”

“Shit!” Nabil said, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I’ve heard about these raids. Not good.”

Obaid must have, too. He was already kneeling on the floor, offering a plaintive prayer of fear and woe.

“Deliver us, inshallah, most holy God our protector!”

“Out of your beds and into the hall!” It was a guard. His mouth, visible through the hole in his balaclava, moved like a pink sea creature. The inmates complied, but for good measure he whacked each passing man on the rump with his baton.

“Faster!” he shouted. “Unless you want more of that. Faster!”

Only Obaid remained in the cell, still kneeling. In a spasm of rage, the guard elbowed quickly through the doorway and struck a savage blow to the back of his bowed head. It resounded almost musically, as if the baton had struck hollowed wood. Sharaf cringed. Obaid went silent, and slumped sideways, still in a kneeling position. Blood trickled from his nostrils.

“That’s what the rest of you will get if you don’t move when I say. I don’t care what colors you’re wearing. Down the hallway, now!”

The men stepped briskly. No one said a word. Every other cell was in similar chaos—cries of pain and anguish mixed with the thumps of batons, although none were as gruesome as the blow to Obaid’s head.

Doors opened at the end of the corridor. Waiting on the other side was a receiving line of perhaps a dozen more men in black, except each held a German shepherd straining at a leash.

“Run!” their escort shouted. “Run past them if you can, all the way to the yard!”

A man ahead of Sharaf tripped. The nearest guard released his dog, which pounced as if someone had just flung a steak to the floor. The poor fellow shouted in terror and covered his head with his hands. Nabil, just ahead, nearly lost his balance as he slowed to dodge the fallen man. Sharaf grabbed his tunic in the nick of time and shoved him forward. A dog’s snout flashed out from the right, teeth snapping. Sharaf veered left and ran hard, finally reaching the far door just behind Nabil. They spilled into the yard, nearly collapsing onto the others who had already reached safety. No one had turned on the outdoor lighting, and it was eerily dark beneath the pale glow of a half-moon. From cellblocks all over the prison you could hear shouts and screams, and lots of barking. Sharaf’s tunic was soaked with sweat, and he was heaving for breath.

“My cousin, Khalifa!” he heard Nabil say. “There he is!”

Indeed, nearly every cellblock on their side of the prison was emptying into the yard. The space was filling rapidly. There must have already been two hundred men there, and more were coming every second from doors at both ends. Some were bleeding. Others were doubled over in pain. No guards seemed to be among them. Looking back through a large window on the side, Sharaf saw several of the prison’s ranking officers in khaki uniforms with gaudy stripes and epaulets. They were laughing uproariously and taking flash photos with their cell phones.

When Sharaf turned back around, Nabil had disappeared. Sharaf finally spotted him in a far corner chatting rapidly with a man who must be Khalifa. As shaken as he was, Sharaf realized this might be his one chance to ask about the doorman Patel. The problem was that he still needed to play it cool, even though he was buzzing with adrenaline, and the cousin would be as well.

He shoved his way through the crowd. Fortunately Nabil saw him coming.

“There he is!” Nabil said loudly, pointing at Sharaf. The earlier stunned silence of most of the prisoners had given way to relieved yammering and shouting, a collective release of emotions. “This is the fellow Anwar I was telling you about. He’s here for the same reason, except they didn’t even bother to charge him. Anwar, this is my cousin, Khalifa.”

Figuring time was limited, Sharaf got to the point.

“I think I know the policeman who is looking for your friend, Rajpal Patel,” Sharaf said. “I also believe I know why they are after him. And I know this because I am a policeman myself. If you will tell me where to find him, then I may even be able to help him, if and when I get out of here. My name is Sharaf, Anwar Sharaf, and I give you my word as an honorable man.”

Sharaf knew immediately he had miscalculated. Khalifa backed away and gave Nabil a puzzled look.

“Why have you told him about Rajpal?”

Nabil’s answer was swallowed by the cries of the mob. Guards were pouring in from both doors, some with dogs, others with raised batons. The men howled and shoved toward the center of the yard, raising their hands to their heads as the guards threshed their way through as if harvesting crops.

Sharaf held his ground as the guards moved closer. Nabil and his cousin did the same. One reared up a few feet away, raising his baton and then swinging it down like a saber toward Sharaf’s right shoulder. He was just able to deflect the baton with his right hand, knuckles smarting as the wood struck them in a glancing blow. He staggered back into Nabil and the second blow came too fast to avoid, smashing into his collarbone. As he lost his balance the baton then struck his head, a thump near the hairline that sent him to his knees as Nabil cried out in protest.

The last thing Sharaf felt was a boot pressing into his back as he collapsed forward, and then a ringing blow to the back of his head, which reverberated like a bell through every bone in his body.

After that, nothing. Nothing at all.