THE WOMAN IN THE SCORPION ABAYA

A WOMAN with a large sequin scorpion on the back of her flowing black abaya started coming to the Lagoon, the mall on Amwaj Island in Bahrain.

Ishaq Rahman was a swarthy American of Pakistani descent, tall, with lightly tattooed arms, who lived in al-Firdaws Towers and spent a great deal of time at the mall. He went by the name of Aesch. He became intrigued by the woman in the scorpion abaya.

As he sat outside the Tea Club, drinking a brew of Silver Peony, Aesch watched the woman walking around the artificial lagoon. She kept the front of her abaya fully open, stepping forward in tight black leggings and silver heels. Her torso was slim, but her hips were big and full and sat on legs so thin that the knees were persistently knocking together from the weight they supported. (This was a popular body type along the Persian Gulf). Her face was round, with a pointy chin, and she wore heavy foundation to make herself appear plaster white, ceramic.

I have to find a way to talk to her, Aesch said to himself. A lawyer turned painter, in his early thirties, twice divorced, he had come to the Gulf after his first and only exhibition in New York—a series of surrealist selfportraits juxtaposed with the faces of suicide bombers—had gotten reviewed by the papers not on the basis of artistic merit but whether they might be “useful” in reducing the radicalization of Muslim males. None of the paintings sold. The final straw came when the State Department offered to take him to “at-risk” Muslims around the world. Shamed and broke, he fled America and took a job with the Bahrain Foundation for the Arts. If he was going to be a state-sponsored artist, it would be for a foreign country.

One evening at the Tea Club, Aesch was sitting and enjoying a glass of mint lemonade when the woman in the scorpion abaya sat down diagonal to him and ordered a notoriously sticky basbousa. He noticed that after normally going bare-faced, today she had come in wearing a niqab—a gauzy veil across her nose and mouth. He wondered if its sudden appearance meant that she was inciting in the onlookers a desire to discover her. If so, he was glad, because such duplicity was usually the work of the lonely.

“Ana ma atakallum arabi,” he said after weighing his words.

She looked up at him. “Law samaht?

“I said, I don’t speak Arabic,” he repeated in English, smiling a little.

The joke made her laugh and she lowered her eyes. “But you have good pronouncement.” Her voice was deeper than he had expected, coming out of a clear throat.

“Thank you. I am new here. But I am trying to learn.” “You’re American, yes? How do you enjoy Bahrain?”

“It beats Doha.” “This is right,” she said, laughing. “Please, I do not understand how Qatar get the World Cup. What will anyone do? Ride down up down on the escalator maybe?” She covered her mouth with her hand and then realized there was cloth over it. “Also, we have the Shi’a protests. That is always exciting!”

“I have not seen you in a niqab before.”

“Sorry,” she said while removing it. “I do not normally wear, but I just come back from Saudi Arabia.”

“I am sorry to hear that. That place is hell. Bahrain should’ve never built that causeway.”

“Bahrain didn’t. Saudi gave it to us. So they can send their party boys. Or their tanks.”

“I won’t ever go to Saudi,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I’ve seen how the Saudis drive their cars!”

This also made her laugh. Aesch grew silent. On account of the mystery that she gave off through her walk, through her clothes, through the way she pushed her hair back under the shayla, he had not expected their first conversation to be so casual. Soon, however, their silence grew awkward, as a pair of Bahraini men in starched white dishdashas passed by and sat down near them, lighting up cigarettes with cupped hands. Their presence made Aesch’s heart beat hard. He imagined them commenting to each other about how an outsider was trying to talk to one of their women. Had they already classified him among the Pakistanis and Indians of the world? Or could they tell he was an American and therefore outside the ambit of their revulsion?

“You always walk around the lagoon,” Aesch said loudly, so his New York accent was nice and apparent.

“I like it too, that lagoon.”

“So you notice?” she said.

“Your scorpion. It is hard to miss.”

“Do you know the scorpion? It is the one animal that kills itself instead of letting another kill it.”

“You have taught me something! Do you live nearby?”

She shook her head, not offering anything further, regretting the somewhat revealing comment she had just made. He noticed her hesitation and pointed to alFirdaws Towers.

“I live there,” he said. “That is my balcony, second highest, facing the water.” He dropped his hand as quickly as he raised it because the two onlookers had followed his finger and now knew where he lived.

“That is very close,” she said. “You may be here very much.” There was hope in her voice.

They sipped their drinks with purposive slowness, hoping to elongate an encounter that had begun so well and yet seemed condemned to end in estrangement. They were rescued, temporarily, by the capitalist zealotry of the Filipino waiter, who came and asked if they wanted another drink. The joint affirmation of the refill felt like a conspiracy and they smiled at one another. They talked about the lights in the lagoon, the way it looked like a bowl of dark milk, or mystical wine. She said it was her first time visiting Amwaj. This admission allowed him to inquire about her person. He learned that she had attended the top schools in Bahrain and gone west to study in Paris, but circumstances had brought her back a few years before. Her name was Maryam bint Mudatthir 

“Do you miss Paris?”

“Very much,” she said.

Aesch wanted to hear more but didn’t press her. The men were staring quite intently now. Were it not for his latent fear of Arab mystique—which led him to think that any man in a dishdasha could cancel his visa at any time—he would have confronted them. But then Maryam asked him a question that sank his heart because it seemed to suggest that the endless staring by the two Bahrainis had gotten to her.

“Are you American, basically?”

“Basically?” “Yes,” she said. “I mean, asli.. .”

He shifted in his seat. It was one of the first Arabic words he had learned. Asli meant “originally”. It was a favourite question of the Bahrainis. Whenever previously confronted with it, he had lied, having been everything from an Iranian to a Turk to an anglicized Saudi—everything but what he was. However, he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.

“Originally, I am from Pakistan. I moved to America when I was ten.”

She laughed. “You had to think! But it is good you did not pretend to be something. Some Pakistanis, they say they are Arab. They even begin wearing the ghutra and dishdasha. And they become so Islamic, like Wahhabi! Ukh!”

“Maybe they are ashamed,” he said, not looking at her.

“Pakistanis are very smart,” she said. “They make the nuclear bomb.”

They spoke some more, and then she called for the bill. He longed for the moment when he might see her again—the disapproval of strangers be damned. But then, just as quickly as she had enlivened his lust, she trampled it.

“It was nice to meet you! I must go and make prepare for my husband.”

“Likewise,” he said.

“Not my husband I mean, I don’t have one. Never mind.”

“The villas,” she said, with red spots of shame drifting in her cheeks like buoys in the Gulf. “We are renting a villa for winter.”

Aesch watched her go and thought how he would have to avoid her in the future when she would be out with her husband, who was no doubt a wealthy and powerful Bahraini if he could afford one of the villas for the entire winter.

And yet, the distance he would have to keep from this woman—a separation that was imposed by the protocols of convention and modesty and morality—suddenly heightened his feelings for her in every way. It would be quite an achievement to be with such a woman, he thought—and fell asleep.

***

For a week Aesch watched her from his balcony. She strolled around the lagoon with her husband—always in the afternoon, when the air was still warm and tinged with the orange and gold of the Gulf during winter.

Her husband was a bulky man, more muscular than chubby, who wore dark T-shirts and shorts and goldrimmed sunglasses. She, meanwhile, persisted with that scorpion abaya, left open at the front, though lately her tights only reached mid-calf. Her husband’s presence allowed her to be freer with her body.

Aesch started noticing certain patterns in the couple’s daily excursion: the way she watched the sunset from the bridge over the lagoon while he withdrew to a bench and smoked; the way she slowed down to inspect the bougainvillea vines that the gardeners in their blue overalls were always curating; the way the couple took their tea at the Lebanese shisha bar on the courtyard above the Tea Club. There was a repetition, a ritual, in

 

A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

IN ABU DHABI an Indian woman called Auntie worked for a man named Bhavan.

He was a chubby middle-aged watch repairman who had lost his legs in his previous job working at Mina Zayed port. His Emirati sponsor had shown him mercy and, rather than sending him back to India, moved him into a shop in Fakhruddin Market. Once a cruel and chaotic man, Bhavan was so moved by the sponsor’s generosity that he turned to doing good deeds. Now his face smouldered with the certitude of the compassionate. He became like a timepiece—a fixed thing trafficking in omnipresence. From within the confine of his dark shop he dangled a hand of generosity over Abu Dhabi, under which he shaded countless expat labourers and workers and shopkeepers—the group of lower-income men otherwise known as the Bachelors. And since he couldn’t walk, he hired Auntie to expand his influence.

“You are my emissary,” he would say. “My ambassador, my mouthpiece. If it wasn’t blasphemous I’d call you my angel Gabriel.” Bhavan was respectful of her Islam.

“I am a maid on a scooter,” she’d crack. “A short one.”

In fact, Auntie was very short. Her legs, swollen much of the time, were crooked like clumpy kebabs on a skewer. Spine too. Her neck was thick, with inflammation at the base. Her chest was broad, in the shape of a shield, and there were no breasts to speak of. Her forehead protruded a little and her furry hairline came down conspicuously, nearly touching her eyebrows. Her ears, meanwhile—shaped like pegs—were set high, almost at her temples. She liked to smile. But it had gotten harder to do that since she started spitting pink. She was forty.

When she came to the shop in the morning and tickled the chimes, she would go to her high-backed stool near the tall teal tea thermos and sit amidst the cardboard boxes, swinging her legs, while Bhavan tinkered in the backroom. Eventually, some supplicant would come, asking for Bhavan, and that would be Auntie’s time to glow. She would spring forward, either to provide verbal instructions, or to go out as an escort, a fixer. Her range was vast. She could bob and duck through the car deregistration lines; she could harass a recalcitrant Emirati employer to provide a No Objection Letter so a worker could switch employers; she could negotiate a truce in a gang war between Indians and Pakistanis running moonshine. Her lack of stature gave her status.

One morning, Auntie arrived and saw that Bhavan was wearing dark slacks with a brown sweater, and the collar of his polo shirt sprouted out wide.

“Aren’t we looking heroic!”

“Expecting the journalist,” he said, telling her to steep some tea.

A few minutes later a middle-aged blonde woman came in. She wore a gauzy white dress, which reached just past mid-calf, and had a pink scarf dangling from her neck. Her breasts were small and from an angle she looked like a skinny boy. With her, she had a young Indian translator who looked extremely nervous.

Auntie brought stools for the visitors, and tea. The journalist took the cup and set it on the counter without taking a sip, as she was busy studying the shop: the withered brown calendar on the wall, the faint brass smell of the clocks, the dusting of spice and sweat on the counter. Looking at the clocks reminded the journalist of all her time in the UAE. She had come years ago, seduced by an Arab’s promises of marriage, only to be forgotten a few months later, when he met a paler woman. She had written about yacht shows and corporate product launches, but after the betrayal she channelled her heartbreak into the woe of the guest worker, writing moralistic paeans in Western magazines, saving up other stories to write a muckraking memoir, tentatively entitled: The Handbook of Property Development in the Persian Gulf 1980-2010.

The journalist came to Bhavan for gossip. He helped her because it increased his status to have an attractive white woman passing through his shop.

“Did you learn anything about the debit card scandal?” she asked.

“Ask my little investigator,” Bhavan replied.

Auntie nodded in response and cleared her throat. “I saw what you wanted, madam, that at the beginning of the month, very early in the morning, some of the sponsors take their workers to ATM machines and make them withdraw money.”

There was a yelp from the translator as he finished. He appeared embarrassed by this.

“So, it is happening!” The journalist hit the table. “Did any of the workers try to resist?”

“Why would they resist?” Bhavan said.

“Because it’s illegal! For God’s sake! That’s why the government issued them cards in the first place, so the sponsors couldn’t take a cut of their salary!” The journalist knew better than to continue her outrage. She pointed at Auntie. “I always see you! Do you have a name?”

“Her name is Samia Khan,” Bhavan said. “But do not put her name in the paper.”

The journalist seemed to ignore Bhavan’s warning. Her eyes shone with discovery.

“Samia—that’s a Muslim name, isn’t it?” She picked her pen off her pad and leaned in. “How interesting! A female Muslim social justice activist! Tell me,  is this your jihad? Helping the workers of the world?”

A LAWYER IN ISLAMISTAN

MR. EBLIS, a first year defence attorney in the country of Islamistan, sat in his office in the old part of Muhammadiya District and wondered if his solo practice was doomed to fail. Most people avoided criminal law like it was heresy. The trials were complicated and messy, and took an eternity.

He had wanted a high status job. Government. Academia. Morality. Anything that kept him out of court. He had hoped that, upon the completion of his twelve-year program, he would be installed as a lecturer at Jurist’s Inn or invited to become an analyst at the Guardian Council. However, he had not done well in school, getting through year after year with barely passing marks. His situation was so embarrassing that he was not even willing to apply anywhere, lest the interviewer see his grades and laugh at him. “It is not that I am stupid,” he liked to explain. “I just don’t like the law.” In the end, though, criminal law was the only way for him to make a living so, financed by a loan from his father, he set up his practice atop a seedy hookah bar.

“Guess you’ll be a busy man now,” his father said. “I might never see you again.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he had lamented. “I don’t even have any clients.”

“In your line of work it just takes one!” `

Mr. Eblis spent the first few days after his opening sitting in his leather chair and visualizing that he was respected and affluent. He put a mirror in a chair across from him and tried to develop certain gestures with his hands and mouth that would be deemed impressive by prospective clients. He arranged his legal pads, fidgeted with his antique-style phone, filled up the fountain pens with ink and repeatedly smoothed the long brown robes he had purchased on his vacation in Shiraz.

After one week of such mirror-only conversations, Mr. Eblis’ excitement diminished considerably. A dark streak of doubt coloured his face and he spent most of his time with his calculator, typing and retyping the number 198,000. That was how many dinar his student loan amounted to.

By the end of the second week he still had no clients. He became paranoid and thought that perhaps someone had leaked his grades to the Department of News Collection, and now everyone was laughing at him, warning one another not to seek his services. Later he became convinced that something must be wrong with the calligraphic sign he had hung outside. So he went down the creaking steps to examine it. It was in fine shape, visible to the cars on the roundabout as well as to the pedestrians leaving Dahr Mall. What else could he do to get a client?

As he was using a handkerchief to rub a smudge from his name, Mr. Eblis was approached by a dark-skinned man with striking eyes, dressed in the official golden uniform of the Caliph’s Righteous Brigade. The three scimitars on the man’s lapel indicated that he was a fairly high-ranking figure within Intelligence.

“As-Salam-Alaykum,” said the officer in a pleasant baritone. “My name is Abdur Rahman, son of Ijaz ur Rahman. I am a captain in the Righteous Brigade. I am looking for Ali Eblis.”

Mr. Eblis looked at the officer and nodded. Forgetting the mandatory reply to the greeting, he grasped the officer’s wrist and yanked him upstairs. As the client sat down, Mr. Eblis exultantly ran down a long list of instructors and scholars with whom he had studied. He left out his grades. “Now tell me, Captain. How can I help you?”

The captain didn’t answer that question. “Before we can go further I must get some guarantees of confidentiality. Mine is a secret matter.”

“How can I keep a secret about something I know nothing of?” “Wouldn’t you admit that is the most potent form of confidentiality?”

Mr. Eblis took the sheet the captain gave and placed his signature on it.

Next, the captain pulled out an official piece of paper.

“This is an invoice form issued by the Ministry of Commerce and Common Good. Upon it, you will specify your retainer and list your business ID number in order to receive an immediate deposit.”

“I reiterate,” said Mr. Eblis categorically. “I can’t demand a retainer for a case about which I know no facts.”

“Make a reasonable estimate,” said the captain. “Then multiply it by seven.”

“Why seven?”

“It is a number mentioned frequently in the Quran.”

“The Ministry is paying for this? Well then it is a government matter, no? I regret to inform you that I do not do government work. This is a criminal defence practice.”

The captain glared at Mr. Eblis.

“Private … government…it’s all the same, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it the case that in Islam there is no distinction between public and private? Between sacred and secular? Don’t we shun Christian dichotomies and embrace Tawhid, that pure Unitarianism? Now stop making such arbitrary lines.”

Mr. Eblis, confused by the philosophical concepts— he was a simple man—thought the captain was a bit too esoteric to be in the military.

“What happened to the entire Ministry of Justice?” he asked. “Or the Guardian Council?

“This is a hybrid case, Mr. Eblis,” the captain replied patiently. “A personal matter for someone in the government. Does that make it clearer?” With that, the captain produced a folder bearing the insignia of the Caliph—a black-skinned woman in a golden veil—and placed it on the table.

Mr. Eblis stammered: “In the name of the Almighty! The Amir ul Momineen?”

“Indeed,” replied the captain. “The Shadow of God on Earth. Except, very shortly, you will be unable to mention his identity in any capacity whatsoever.” The captain produced a document that was 350 pages long. “Once you sign this non-disclosure agreement you will not even be able to mention the Caliph in your dreams.”

Mr. Eblis sighed and reached for a pen. It didn’t really matter what the case was about, frankly, because almost all cases in his field took forever, and at least he was lucky in landing a client that would be able to pay for the entire duration.

When the captain was satisfied, he took Mr. Eblis for a ride.