Mrs. Pollifax Unveiled (5 page)

“Well, thank God … but have you news?”

“There is news, yes.” The boy in the red sweater suddenly reappeared, bearing a tray with tiny glasses of tea. “Please,” said their host, gesturing them toward chairs dimly discerned near the desk. “You may call me Omar if you wish.”

Cups in hand they obediently sat down. Examining each of their faces Omar said, “You know you are being watched. From the moment your plane landed you have been followed.”

“That soon?” Farrell said, frowning. “We were expected?”

Gravely the man said, “The American Embassy here has many leaks. They employ cooks, interpreters, cleaners, workmen, all Syrian.” He shrugged. “But the boy Abdul is well trained and you can be sure you were not followed to me here. By now, of course, they will have learned you look for a missing young woman—”

Mrs. Pollifax interrupted him to say, “Yes, but there
is
news of her? She is alive?”

“There are rumors.…”

“Such as?” asked Farrell.

Omar lifted a cup of tea to his lips, blotted his lips with a napkin and replaced the cup on the tray. “Of a young woman, presumably American, in a place where no American woman should be. We hear of this because of a Bedouin whose sheep
had strayed, and in his wanderings—what he saw and heard he mentioned to a friend, who spoke of it to another man who is interested in such matters.”

You
, thought Mrs. Pollifax but did not say so.

“It was some time ago, you understand. It needed many days for news of this to pass from person to person—and there are distances.…”

“We’re here to investigate the rumor,” said Farrell. “This is the aunt”—he gestured toward Mrs. Pollifax—“of the young American who disappeared.”

“Really?” he said, amused.

“And the embassy appears to have heard nothing of this rumor.”

“Oh, they would not hear of it, no,” the man said smoothly.

“But go on, please,” said Mrs. Pollifax. “May I ask how a Bedouin looking for his sheep would know this young woman was American? And how can we find him?”

“It is you who will have to find him,” he said. “Do drink your tea, it has a delicious jasmine flavor, I assure you. As for the Bedouin I can only tell you what was told to me by … a friend,” he emphasized. “In the desert there are no—what can I say?—no water closets, no lavatories, no privies? It was night but there was a moon, and in his search for his missing sheep this man heard voices, he was curious, and kneeling behind a small hill of stones he saw the shape of two people answering … shall we say the call of nature? He heard one—a woman—say,
‘Dir balak, wuisikh Amerikâni!’
which, translated, means, ‘Pay attention, dirty American.’

“The second young woman,” he continued, “—the ‘dirty American’—spat a word at her companion the Bedouin did not know, after which her companion said angrily,
‘Khanzir, wusikh Amerikâni?’ ”

“Meaning?” asked Farrell.

“Meaning, ‘
Pig
, you dirty American?’ The so-called dirty American shouted
‘Aiwa’
—meaning yes,” he added, “and they began to fight, pulling each other’s hair and rolling on the ground. The Bedouin left, astonished by such violence and finding it very strange an American was there. So much I have heard, no more.”

“But where was this?” asked Mrs. Pollifax. “Where can we find this Bedouin?”

He shrugged. “Where sheep go astray and Bedu search. I have been … shall we say asked to help you in this small manner, but if it is a question of actually finding this woman …”

“It’s why we are here,” Farrell told him flatly.

“Then I can only … Let me think.”

They waited patiently for several minutes.

“Tomorrow,” he said abruptly, “you must be the tourists and visit Palmyra, which is several hours to the north—our famous ruins—while I make contact—” He stopped. “Let me consider.” After another silence he said, “At some point while you admire the ruins a man will speak to you. It is he who will know at what camp the Bedouin stopped for water and spoke of this American. He will know in what direction you must go, and he will know also the name of the Bedouin who heard this in the night, and which I do not know. Or want to know,” he added firmly.

“Palmyra,” repeated Mrs. Pollifax.

“Its original name is Tadmor and the town is Tadmor; the ruins are Palmyra. You will need the morning to drive there, it’s three hours from Damascus. Let’s say between one and two o’clock in the afternoon you will be approached.”

“How will we know it’s not just someone who wants to talk to Americans?” asked Mrs. Pollifax.

“There could be that,” he said thoughtfully. “Then I would suggest …” He sounded amused. “Suggest you work into your conversation the word
sheep.”
He added dryly, “How you do that I will leave to you. And now if you’ll excuse me …”

“Yes, of course,” said Farrell, putting down his cup.

As if by magic the boy Abdul appeared, this time in a black T-shirt, and Mrs. Pollifax said warmly, “We thank you very much.”

He ignored this. “Do not follow too closely. When you no longer see him you will be near enough to the Citadel to find your own way.”

The heavy door was opened, they were gestured to leave first, and once they had negotiated their return to the narrow street outside the boy passed them, sauntering slowly on ahead of them, his hands in his pockets. His route was certainly circuitous. “So we can never know where we’ve been,” pointed out Farrell.

“On the contrary,” said Mrs. Pollifax demurely, “like Hansel and Gretel I noted that before we turned the corner we passed a barbershop, a souk that sold sheepskins, another selling copper pots, and two very large photos of President Assad, one smiling and one serious.”

Five minutes later the boy vanished completely from sight.

T
hey spent the remainder of Monday in finding a way to get to Palmyra the next morning. They did not want the company of a guide for the entire day. Buses needed reservations a day in advance, and the possibility of service taxis sounded doubtful. Eventually they concluded their research by arranging, through the hotel, a one-way Transtour car with driver, an overnight at a hotel in Tadmor, and a reservation for a similar car to return them to Damascus in the morning.

And since the next day would be Tuesday there was a note handed to them at the desk from the embassy, inviting them to discuss pertinent matters Tuesday morning at eleven o’clock.

“I wonder what they’d tell us,” mused Mrs. Pollifax, tearing up the note. “I shall retire early with my broken camera and guidebook and catch up on sleep. You can carouse if you’d like,” she kindly told Farrell.

“Carouse?” he said with amusement. “My dear Duchess, having inched past the age of forty, and following a fourteen-hour flight, I have to confess sleep has enormous appeal to me, too.”

* * *

T
heir driver the next morning was an affable young man named Khalid. He spoke English “and much French, too,” he announced with a flashing smile, and he had been trained for guiding tour groups, “But not many Americans yet,” he added regretfully. “They say bad things about us that make us very sad. So far only three American groups for me over the summer.” Having divested himself of this he began to fling cheerful comments over his shoulder as they started their drive to Palmyra, while Farrell glanced behind to see if they were being followed.
“Bilad-es-Sham,”
he said, was the Arab name for Syria, and once Damascus was a famous and beautiful oasis—“very green,” he assured them, “very green and sweet in a country so much desert. And please,” he said, “if you wish a picture with camera anytime, I will stop.”

“Unfortunately,” Mrs. Pollifax told him, “my camera broke in Damascus. No more pictures.”

“Broke? Is
broken?”
he said in horror, as if a tourist without a camera was unthinkable. “In Tadmor there are Konic shops.” He briefly turned his head to give them a happy smile. “With your permission we stop there, there may be a fresh camera for you.”

“Gray car,” said Farrell, having just glanced back at the road behind them. “Up to you, Duchess.”

“If we could … Cyrus knows so much more history than I do that I know he’d appreciate some snapshots of Palmyra,” and to Khalid, “If there is time … yes!”

“Good,” he said, and continued his over-the-shoulder remarks as they passed through the modest industrial section of the city. “Business!” he said, nodding toward a factory and shaking his head. “Exporting goods no problem, but to import—
ya rabb!
—many snarls and troubles.”

“Very old cars,” commented Farrell. “But you have oil.”

Khalid chuckled. “Before 1981 the oil in Syria’s earth was heavy, not rich, but there was an underground earthquake in the eighties that changed it.” He laughed. “We think oil flowed in from Iraq—good light oil suddenly!”

They were reaching the desert now, flat, tawny sand with tufts of grass, soon turning into pebbles and stones, a barren landscape except for a hazy blue mountain at a distance off to their left, and the great arc of blue sky overhead.

“Soon Tadmor,” said Khalid.

“Palmyra or Tadmor?” asked Mrs. Pollifax, puzzled.

“Ah, the town she has always been Tadmor. Once it was called the City of Dates—you will see. But Palmyra—the Romans named it City of Palms—but no palms,” he added humorously. “Now what is your hotel?”

“The Zenobia,” said Farrell.

He nodded vigorously. “Good place, inside the town and inside Palmyra ruins also, you can walk with ease. The town has beautiful dates to sell; on your evening stroll you may find good Bedouin weavings, too, they bring them into Tadmor from the desert, but first we find you camera, yes?”

Reaching Tadmor, Khalid turned down a cobbled street lined with colorful signs. They passed an open market hung with huge clusters of dates, yellow, dark red, brown and black, and Mrs. Pollifax wished she could take a picture of this, and of the street, which had all the flavor of the Middle East.

Khalid stopped the car in front of a Konic sign. “I go with you,” he said. “He may not speak such good English as me.” They walked through the door into a dusty shop with lines of kerosene tins stacked along one wall, an ancient rifle suspended from the ceiling, an assortment of dull brass and copper pots,
cases of cola, and glass jars and boxes on the shelves. A man shuffled out from an inner room, his lined brown face brightening at sight of them.

“Cameras?” he said.
“Yes!”
he exclaimed, and walking over to a wooden chest he opened it and delved into it, dug deep, and brought up a huge, dusty, forlorn-looking black box, and then another one equally as dusty and old. “Cameras,” he said proudly. “Russkies.”

“Russkies?” Farrell said in astonishment, touching one. “You mean these are
Russian
cameras?”

He nodded and announced that he would sell the somewhat smaller one for fifty American dollars, the larger for seventy-five.

“One could scarcely sling one of these over one’s shoulder,” said Mrs. Pollifax, looking at them with interest. “Or find film for them, either; they must be at least fifty years old.”

“You buy?”

“Shukren
, but no—
la,”
she said. “I’m sorry.”

Khalid, embarrassed, said, “Perhaps another shop?”

Farrell intervened gently. “I think we’d better go on now to our hotel.” Secretly he was wondering, with considerable amusement, what their surveillants must be making of this; as they left the shop he saw the familiar gray car parked discreetly at some distance up the street.

F
or a mere overnight stay Farrell had piled his gear into a knapsack, while Mrs. Pollifax had packed what she needed in an open straw bag with handles, into which she had added her new djellaba—or
galabiyyas
, as the merchant had called it—for the warmth of it at night. Finding a group of German tourists
lined up at the hotel’s registration desk, and knowing they already had a reservation, they were delighted to find a terrace that overlooked the ruins of Palmyra and where they could wait for the group to disperse. They retreated there at once, bags in hand, although not before Mrs. Pollifax had seized upon a copy
of Palmyra: History, Monuments & Museum
—“just what Cyrus will enjoy,” she told Farrell. Once they were settled Farrell disappeared and returned with two plates of baba ghannoj, a beer and a cola, and they ate lunch gazing out upon the remains of the long-ago city that had been Palmyra, reduced now to acres of truncated columns, arches, walls and temples, the earth littered with fallen blocks of stone.

“Cyrus told me something of this,” she mused. “Palmyra is where Queen Zenobia ruled, much loved and very successful until—Such a musical name, isn’t it?”

“Until what?” asked Farrell, chasing the last shred of eggplant with a slice of bread.

“Until what I don’t remember, except that eventually she was captured by the Romans and taken back to Rome to be paraded in gold chains.”

“And now has a hotel named for her.” Farrell nodded. “Such is immortality.”

“Cynic,” she retorted, and turned to her guidebook for directions. Their hotel stood just inside the walls of Palmyra, very near the streets of Tadmor. She said, “It looks as if we need only leave the hotel, turn to the right, and walk down the road past what’s called the Temple of Baalshamin to reach the Monumental Arch that stands at the end of the main avenue.” With a glance at Farrell she added, “We’d better go now; the noon call to prayer ended ten or fifteen minutes ago, we’ll be late if we don’t stir ourselves, register, and leave.”