The building was in the early stages of destruction. While a door to the right led to a functioning apartment, from which the music drifted, as he looked toward the back of the building he saw that walls had been smashed out, creating a rough cavernous space. “Redecorating?” Omar asked.
Qasim laughed nervously. “I just live in the apartment. I don’t know what they’re doing with the rest of it.”
“But it’s a big space,” Omar pointed out.
“Yes, it is.”
“Big enough for a hundred men. Big enough, too, for their weapons.”
Silence. He turned to see Qasim’s mouth clamp shut, eyes big.
“Come,” Omar said to him, touching his shoulder. “Let’s sit down.”
They went into the small, dirty apartment and settled on chairs coated in concrete dust. The man was shaking. Omar walked over to the old transistor radio and switched it off. He said, “Where are they?”
Qasim shook his head, almost frantic.
“Where,” Omar said, “are Yousef al-Juwali, Waled Belhadj, Abdel Jalil, Mohammed el-Keib, and Abdurrahim Zargoun?”
The man’s mouth was hanging open, his head swiveling back and forth, but slowly now, a quiet no.
“If they’re not here,” Omar said, “then where would they be? Was the collection point changed?”
“No,” Qasim finally got out, a whisper. “It wasn’t changed. But I’ve seen no one.”
“What did Jibril talk to you about?”
The man blinked, confused.
“The man you met in that café down the street. Three days ago. Thursday.”
“Haddad,” the man said. “Akram Haddad. He asked the same thing. He asked where they were. I said I didn’t know. No one’s spoken to me for years. I’ve heard nothing.”
Omar nodded, accepting this. The poor man was terrified. He got up, ready to leave, then noticed an old electric clock on the wall. “Is that time right?”
Qasim looked at it. “Yes.”
“Would you like to pray together?”
The man blinked rapidly, then shrugged. “Okay,” he said and went to find a large mat he kept rolled up beside the refrigerator. It had been a long time since Omar had prayed, but he thought he could remember it well enough.
Later, once he’d returned to Fouada and they were drinking tea under an umbrella, he puzzled over Qasim’s story. If Stumbler was in motion, then why hadn’t the exiles arrived? Had they switched the entry point to Tunisia? That made no sense, for the Egyptian side of Libya was almost entirely in rebel hands.
Fouada smiled at him. “Did you ever think of retiring here?”
He blinked, suddenly ripped from his thoughts. “Retire?” Though he’d thought of retiring last night, it had been a passing idea. What did a man do when he retired?
“You can swim here,” she told him. “The water’s clean, nothing like the Nile.”
He opened his mouth, unsure what to say, and was surprised by his own words: “I just prayed with a man I’ve never met before.”
His wife’s face creased; she was struck as much by the non sequitur as by the act he had admitted to. “I’m happy to hear it. You should pray more often.”
“I think you’re right.”
“What’s changed?”
He frowned, considering this. “What hasn’t changed?”
She smiled at that wisdom; then they were both startled by the ringing of his phone. He looked at the number—he didn’t know it, but he did recognize the country code. Who would be calling from America? Unsure, he answered it, watching Fouada turn to gaze up the quaint, sun-cracked street, imagining a new life in Marsa Matrouh.
A woman’s voice: “Omar Halawi?”
“Yes.”
She continued in English: “My name is Inaya Aziz. We’ve never met, but you know my husband, Jibril.”
As he listened with trembling hands to this woman’s story, he gradually felt that he was being cornered by wives. Fouada was in front of him, asking him to change his entire life, and in his ear the wife of Jibril Aziz was asking if he had any news of Jibril’s health. Omar gave Fouada an apologetic smile, then rose, bringing the phone with him to the edge of the street, where the sun caught him again as old cars rattled by, spewing smoke.
He told Inaya Aziz that, as of Thursday, Jibril was in excellent health. “Then why hasn’t he called?” she asked, and he tried to reassure her. He doubted his success, but she let it go and asked if he would please help a friend of hers named Sophie Kohl, whose husband had recently been killed. “I believe her, Mr. Halawi. She needs the help of people who care about Jibril. From what he’s told me, I believe you care for Jibril.”
“This is true, Mrs. Aziz, but I’m not sure you understand my position here. There’s not much I can do. Not much I’m allowed to do.”
“Talk to her. Just talk to her. How would you feel if your wife was killed in a restaurant, and no one would give you any answers?”
As she said those words, he swiveled to get a look at Fouada at their table, smiling at him. He gave her a little wave.
“Listen, Mr. Halawi. It’s up to you. I’ve already given her your number, and she’s going to call soon. You can answer it or not. As a favor to Jibril, and to me, I ask that you help her.”
She hung up on him, and he stared a moment at the dead phone, then returned to his chair. Fouada stared questioningly at him. She looked so curious that he couldn’t help himself. He said, “I just had the strangest conversation.”
“Really? Who was it? That bastard Busiri?”
He waved that away—she’d never forgiven Ali for taking the job that had rightfully been her husband’s. “It was Jibril Aziz’s wife, Inaya.”
Her face brightened. “Inaya! I’ve dreamed of that girl! How does she sound? Very clever? I’ll bet—it’s Jibril’s woman, after all.”
“She sounds very intelligent. She—”
He stopped as, on the table, his phone began to ring again. It was a Cairo number.
“Is that her calling back?”
He just stared at the phone.
“Well, if you’re not going to answer it I will.”
She reached out a hand, and he snapped up the phone. On the fifth ring, he answered it.
Sophie
1
1991
Zora’s friends were numerous and varied, and none of them, as far as Sophie could tell, were criminals. They were artists and writers and students of various disciplines, intelligent people who wore their intelligence loosely, never afraid to slip off of their high chairs and laugh at themselves. After the self-conscious intellectuals of Harvard, this impressed her deeply. They seemed attracted to Sophie and Emmett’s exoticism, but they had also been presented with a challenge the moment Zora introduced them: These my educated friends from America, who have come for to learn everything. Her friends took this seriously.
On that first day a gaunt medical student named Viktor gave them a lecture on the geography of socialist Yugoslavia: the plains of Vojvodina (of which Novi Sad was the capital), the genteel mountains of Slovenia, the great valleys of Macedonia, the Adriatic beaches of Croatia, and the wild crags of Bosnia and Montenegro and Kosovo—the birthplace of Serbian Orthodoxy. “What you have to understand is that, since the end of the Second World War, we’ve had every natural advantage right here in our borders. Lakes, mountains, sea—everything except deserts, as you have in America. We’ve always been able to travel, but going to other countries is a little depressing because of what we have at home. Everyone here has their own reasons for wanting to keep Yugoslavia together, but this is mine—I want to be able to see everything without having to leave my home.” He turned to Zora. “Did that make sense?”