The Artificial Mirage (20 page)

Hours passed, and the guards hadn’t worked up the nerve to guess his nationality a second time. Surprisingly, the place was air-conditioned. Saudi prisons weren’t supposed to be air-conditioned. A ringing sound resonated throughout the room. One of the Saudis pulled an antiquated mobile phone from his pocket and spoke some terse words in Arabic. The exchange went on for a few minutes. He looked at them, hoping to decipher something from their gestures and expressions, but nothing correlated. He thought about trying to give them money, but there was too high a probability that they were devout enough to regard his crime as worthy of every punishment available.

“You,” one of the guards said.

Charlie looked over his shoulder without moving.

“Come,” the guard said. He walked over and placed his thumb on a light-blue section of the clear plastic door to be scanned. Immediately locking arms with him, they walked him back to the elevator. The elevator continued its descent below ground level and continued for several seconds before stopping. They led him down a gray corridor just wide enough to accommodate them. Behind a tea-stained marble counter sat three Saudis in brown police uniforms and another in an impeccably tailored white thobe and red-and-white checkered gutra, leaning back in black office chairs that looked more like recliners.

“Hi,” the one in the thobe said. His beard was so carefully trimmed it looked like it was painted on.

“Hi,” Charlie said. The informality was confusing.

“We need ten thousand riyals from you,” he said as he tossed Charlie’s personal items in the plastic bag on the counter. The amount was projected from a traditional ceiling projector in blue numerals next to a brownish ring of tea that hadn’t fully dried.

“OK.”

“Do you have that?”

“I might.”

“Inshallah,” the man said condescendingly.

“Right.
God willing.
Let me check.” He opened the bag and pulled out his wallet. “I have four hundred dinars.”

“That’s not enough. You must call your employer.”

“And tell him what?”

“Tell him what happened. We must hold you until you pay the money.”

“OK.” He put on his glasses and clicked on Lauren’s icon.

She appeared in a microdress that seemed to be made of translucent green and blue fish scales. She raised an eyebrow and looked at him sideways with downcast eyes. “Hi, baby,” she said.

“Get me Saleh,” he said.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Hmm.”

“Just make the call.”

Lauren disappeared, and everything went black.

“Hello?”

“Saleh?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Charlie. There’s a problem.”

“It is only what Allah wills.”

“Yeah? I need six hundred dinars. I’m on the causeway.”

“I know, my friend.”

“I know you know. Are you going to get me out of here?”

“Of course. Relax. Be calm.”

“When?”

The screen went black again, and Lauren appeared with the same smirk.

Charlie took off his glasses.

“So?” the man in the thobe said.

“I think it’s being taken care of,” Charlie said.

“Inshallah.” The black office phone rang, and he answered it and held the receiver for a few seconds. Slowly, he placed it back in its ancient cradle. “Take your things.” He waved his hand dismissively over Charlie’s personal items on the counter.

“Halas? We’re finished?”

“Yes. Halas. You can go. These men will take you to your car.”

Charlie grabbed his things off the counter and walked to the elevator unaccompanied. The guards followed behind. He noticed one of them swiped his thumb over a reader. The golf cart was in the same place they had parked it. When they got to the customs station, he got off and walked to his car without saying a word to them.

“I’m out,” Charlie said as soon as Saleh answered.

“Good. I send you a map,” Harold said.

“Now?” He looked at the Indians, who were still reassembling the interior of the Caprice.

“Is there a problem?”

“They’re putting the car back together.”

“I send to your glasses now.”

“Got it.” He dropped it into a folder and watched as the Indians slipped the seats and door panels back into place. When they were done, he linked his glasses to the center console and let the map upload itself. As the icons of his music library swirled across the windshield, he duplicated Lauren twenty
times and dressed her in silver fish-scale lingerie. He scanned the library and found a Christmas song. Lauren lip-synched the words as she danced back and forth across the windshield amid the flurries of AR snow. He started the car and collapsed the montage with his ring stylus.

“Hey, come on,” Lauren said, and she started running until she was twenty feet ahead of the car. The car accelerated with a guttural moan as they left the island, and the twelve lanes of the causeway opened up to the wide expanse of the undisturbed Gulf that reflected the full moon like a pane of black glass that extended as far as he could see.

“Where are we going?” Lauren said breathlessly as she looked over her shoulder and continued running.

“Qatif,” Charlie said.

“What’s that?”

“A town.”

“Why?” Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead.

“We’re going to meet someone.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“Yeah…why?”

“Just curious. I missed you,” she said before vaporizing and reappearing in the passenger seat next to him.

“I missed you too.”

25

T
he car drove itself along the raised highway through Dammam and toward Qatif past identically bland whitewashed apartment blocks lit by yellow streetlights. The Autohighway grid connection ended when he got off at the Qatif exit; he had to drive manually. He followed the map on the windshield past the fish market, an empty concrete plaza. Amid palm trees and thickets of tall grass, AR signs pointed out date farms in the distance. The streetlights ended when he turned onto a long winding dirt road lined by ditches that had filled with muddy water. Aluminum sheet metal clumsily attached to plastic posts lined the road and completely obscured what was beyond. The road came to a dead end, and he stopped in the middle of a large circle of mud surrounded by sheet metal. He could see the second floor of a concrete house draped in thickets of ivy and illuminated by floodlights. Falcons smeared in black grease circled above it. The windshield map indicated he had reached his destination.

He sat in the car, not sure whether to get out. He took his glasses out of the docking station and put them on. The irremovable display of the Kiblah with an arrow indicating the direction of Mecca hung in the right corner of his vision. He got out of the car and walked toward the gate, his shoes clinging to the mud, and looked around for an icon or something to interact with in AR. The sounds of real birds and crickets and the feeling of the damp air in his nostrils were unexpected and no longer familiar to him.

A section of sheet metal was pulled back, and Saleh appeared in a white thobe. A man in Pakistani dress with a set of pruning shears looked at Charlie and then disappeared behind the sheet metal. Saleh lifted his thobe up to his knees to keep the mud off of it as he made his way over to Charlie with an outstretched right hand. “Hello, my friend,” he said.

“Hi.”

“I hope you were treated well on the causeway.”

“I’ve stayed in better places.”

“Of course. I was able to secure your release. It was no trouble.”

“It was for me. You planned it that way, right? I was the distraction.”

“I am sorry, my friend. I could not tell you….then you would be prepared.”

“I just lost four hundred dinars.”

“You seem uncomfortable, my friend,” Saleh said.

“What are they for?” Charlie said as he looked up at the Falcons.

“Security,” Saleh said vaguely before muttering something indistinguishable in Arabic.

“Praise God” read the translated caption above Lauren’s head, one letter appearing at a time as she slowly mouthed the words through lips painted the color of dried blood. She was wearing a black velvet miniskirt and phosphorescent purple tights and a large silver Egyptian cross that dangled from her neck. It was odd seeing her utter Saleh’s words.

“They took all of the alcohol,” Charlie said.

“I know. But they could have taken them from me.”

“That’s it? It doesn’t bother you?”

“It was written, and so it is.”

“It wasn’t a rare vintage, was it?”

“No. Harold had the rare wine—very unique. I could not risk losing those bottles.”

“I see.”

“Inshallah, I have sufficient extra cases of Krug here in my cellar. Leave the car open so it can be restocked. Please come inside.” He gestured toward the open section of sheet metal.

Charlie didn’t move. “I want triple. Triple the fee.”

“Money is a funny thing, Mr. Charlie.”

“It sure is. That’s why I want more of it. Keeps me laughing.”

“That is too much, my friend.”

“I guess I’ll be on my way back to Bahrain.”

“Back to the marina, my friend?”

“Yeah. Back to the marina. And you can get your Pakistani friend to deliver the Krug. I’m sure his charm should get him through compound checkpoints—no problem.”

“OK, my friend. You know how to bargain.”

Pakistanis in their drooping style of dress were walking in and out of at least a dozen long greenhouses amid a fastidiously maintained lawn.
A gravel driveway led to what looked like a barn beyond a guesthouse that was designed after a French chateau. A long, low stone wall was lined with cages containing at least a hundred white doves. There was a two-story brick garage with ivy growing up the side. It might have been a carriage house next to a Georgian mansion in Connecticut. But it wasn’t Connecticut. The main house was brown stucco with red tiles on the roof. They walked on a cobblestone walkway past a meadow of rosebushes and African violets; there was a wall of dark green bushes in front of them.

“What’s that?” Charlie said.

“It is a maze,” Saleh said with a quizzical look on his face, like he was studying him.

“Keeps you from getting bored?”

“Everyone’s dying of boredom here…or just dying,” Saleh said.

“I guess we’re helping to keep them alive.”

“We are in a way, my friend.”

“Oh yeah?” Charlie laughed so hard that the doves became flustered in their cages.

“Yes.”

“Well, whatever I can do to help,” Charlie said.

“All we have left are these plants and the dead plants underground.” Saleh paused as he looked up at the moon. “And our culture and traditions… but everything else—our whole infrastructure—is kept alive because of the oil. The desalination plants, the roads, the people…all of these children. When we were only thousands, we could live off goats, and we could find water in an oasis like this. But this is not enough now.”

“What are the doves for?” Charlie gestured to the cages lining the wall.

“We eat them.”

“Oh yeah? I’ve seen pigeon on menus in Bahrain.”

“They are the same.”

“That’s interesting.”

Saleh laughed.

“I see. So, is that like a business you have going?”

“No, of course not. There is no money in it. Please. Walk with me, my friend.”

“So you’re Shiite, right?” Charlie said as they began strolling into a separate meadow section of tall grass and daisies and a series of dome-shaped greenhouses.

“No. Although I was, in the past. It makes life easier for me…and for my family.”

“And yet you stayed here.”

“Of course. People have this idea that only Shiites must live in Qatif. Why should the Shiites have a monopoly? This is a good business. They are clever people, of course. They have to be. It is very difficult for them to get jobs here, and in Bahrain it is even difficult for them to get passports.”

“Why?”

“They are the majority in Bahrain, but their government is Sunni. By denying them passports, they are not counted in the census. But all of this is irrelevant. People are always unhappy with the way things are in their lives. We must do what we can.”

“To survive?”

“Yes. To survive. Don’t you agree, my friend?”

“Look, Saleh, I’m not a rat.”

“You are not Muslim. And you are not Christian. So what are your beliefs?”

“I can tell you what I don’t believe. I don’t believe in biting the hand that feeds me. As long as we share the same goal, we don’t have a problem. Unless I’m a rat. And I’m not.”

“But rats are intelligent. We must be like them to survive. There are so many things hidden in this maze…Even I need a map to find them.”

“You have the map in AR?”

“Of course not. The best defense against hackers and the government is to use technology as little as possible.”

“Yeah, I never used to think about security that way.”

“But now you have seen life from a different perspective. It is interesting. This is how we learn as human beings…by our problems.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes, I think I’ve had enough of learning experiences.”

“You can’t stop God, Charlie. God is everything. Destiny. It is written, and it can be no other way.”

“How am I part of that destiny, Saleh?”

“I know you are not working for the police. Everyone makes money, and everyone is happy.”

“So you trust me?”

“There are degrees of trust. Our lives are a series of transactions, and in this particular transaction, we benefit each other.”

“Right.”

“Do you know what I was doing ten years ago?”

“No.”

“There were men who sympathized with what was happening in Iraq. Saudi men. Why? I don’t know. They could go to university for free and enjoy their lives, but they didn’t want that. They wanted to kill themselves for those people.”

“You were an idealist.”

“I was never romantic. No. I smuggled them across the border.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And then I brought them to your army and sold them for ten thousand dollars each. Do you believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

“You live life, and it is gone very quickly. You know, there are men who did many terrible things, and they continue to do them. We are running out of things to sell. In Bahrain, they had pearls. They went diving for them. Now, the Japanese oyster farms produce far more beautiful pearls. Frankincense was once equivalent in price to gold, but now it is only a few riyals for a bag. I am looking for what you call an exit strategy from this land of diminishing returns. For my family.”