Finding Nouf Read Online Free PDF

forcing him to circle back toward the bridge for a spot. He didn't mind parking so far from the house—there was less chance that people would notice his ugly, rusted-out Jeep—but as
he walked across the lot, shoes clacking loudly, he began to wish there'd been a spot by the door. The heat was intense, and in his suit it was excruciating. He wondered for the millionth time how much the family had paid to construct a polished marble parking lot. The glare was so bright that Nayir, who prided himself on never needing sunglasses, was forced to place his hand across the bridge of his nose to shield his eyes.
    Othman's mother, Nusra, met him at the door. Like many older women, she had relinquished a face veil and wore a simple black scarf to cover her hair—hers fastened so tightly that it looked like a skullcap. Her deeply lined face posed no threat to strange men, was certainly no cause for erotic alarm, but her sons complained anyway, fussing over the impropriety of exposing herself in public. Nayir suspected that their protests were not about propriety; he believed they were repulsed by her eyes.
    Inexplicably blinded while giving birth to her first child, Nusra refused to wear sunglasses. She liked to feel the light on her face and claimed it could illuminate the darkness in her head. One day, she said, her vision would snap on as abruptly as it had snapped off thirty-three years ago, and when that day came, how would she notice the miraculous change if her eyes were hidden?
    When she opened the door, Nayir looked away out of respect and because the sight of those enameled, blue-rimmed eyes made his spine seize up. He was surprised that she would answer the door. She should have been surrounded by comforting women, suffering paroxysms of silent grief.
    "Nayir," she crowed. (How did she know? She always knew.) "
Ahlan wa'Sahlan.
Please come in."
    He stepped through the giant doorway and remembered himself. "Many blessings on you, Um Tahsin. I'm deeply sorry for your loss."
    "Thank you." She fumbled for his hand, took it in her own, and stroked the flat of his palm, her rough, dry fingers catching his skin. "Thank you for everything. Your search for Nouf brought us hope when we had none."
    "It was an honor."
    "Please come in." She led Nayir down the hallway, her steps as
confident as a child's. "I always know when it's you because the air in the house becomes fresher, happier. And I can smell the desert on your skin."
    "What does it smell like?" he asked.
    "Sunlight." She opened a door and motioned him into the sitting room. "And dust."
    He looked around. The crowd was thinning, and he didn't see Othman among the men. Small groups of cousins and uncles, most wearing headscarves and long white
thobes,
were wandering onto the terrace that surrounded the house, whispering to one another, their faces stoic and respectful. Nayir had half expected to find the brothers sitting quietly with tear-stained faces, but that was ridiculous. Of course they wouldn't let their feelings show.
    "The ceremony begins soon," Nusra said. "But meanwhile, rest."
    Nayir turned to thank her, but she'd slipped away.

    The Shrawi women had cleaned Nouf's body and wrapped it in the
kafan
she'd worn on the hajj the summer before. The white sheet, long and unbroken by stitching or seams, circled her slender body in three tight bands. The women placed the body on a wooden board in the central courtyard of the family's mosque, the cleanest room on the island.
    Nouf's head was facing Mecca by the precise calculations of the GPS system that the builders had used to construct the mosque. The entire room jutted at an awkward northeasterly angle from the house, but the builders had promised that the room was in perfect alignment with the Kaaba in the Holy Mosque, some hundred kilometers distant.
    The right side of the room was closest to Jeddah, to the mountains and the desert beyond that. This was where Nayir stood, waiting for the prayers to begin. Just ahead