Kingdom of Strangers Read Online Free PDF Page B

there as innocently as his own house key. He had never used it. He wasn’t even sure it would work. But it slid into the lock, and the door opened.
    The apartment was dark. The stillness made him nervous. She always had music playing, the television on, Al-Jazeera flickering silently in the background. Food cooking on the stove. He stoodin the quiet and launched a single question at the universe:
Where is she?
    Feeling oddly like an intruder, he sat on the sofa and tried to reach her on her cell phone. It went to voice mail on the first ring, which meant that it was off.
    He went directly to the neighbors. Iman and Asma were a blatantly lesbian couple who claimed they were sisters. They had a wall in common with Sabria’s apartment, and on quiet summer nights when the noises from their bedroom strained through the wallboards, Ibrahim would lie there wondering if the women would ever get caught and who would miss them if they were executed. They seemed to exist in a world of their own.
    They were the only neighbors who ever came to the apartment, who ever exchanged more than an occasional hello with Sabria. Asma opened the door and gazed at him with the diffidence she had demonstrated ever since Sabria told them he was a cop.
    “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen Sabria today?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “Not since yesterday.”
    “Did you hear her go out?”
    “No. Why? She’s not there?” Even Asma seemed to find this odd. “Maybe she went to the store?”
    “I thought she’d be here.”
    Asma called to Iman, and the two women stood there puzzling out the last time they’d seen Sabria. It had been two days, in fact, once all the details were straightened out, but Iman was certain that she’d heard noise coming from Sabria’s apartment late this afternoon.
    “It sounded like she was at home,” Iman said. “I heard the television.”
    “Okay, thanks,” Ibrahim said. “If you see her, tell her to call me.”
    He went back to the apartment. He hadn’t talked to Sabriasince the night before, but she’d been just as ever. Happy to see him. Smiling. Plying him with chicken and rice and a bowl of
halawa
mixed with cream. Sliding into his arms as he sat in a postdinner coma watching her; arousing him with the warmth of her hands, the power in her thighs as she climbed onto him.
    He took another look around. No sign of forced entry on the doorjamb, the handle. Windows locked. Nothing out of place. Only her purse, keys, and cell phone missing. She had gone somewhere.
There’s going to be a stupid explanation
. But he couldn’t think of one. Every time he’d toss out an idea, he’d feel a skipping panic, little splashes of excitement before each notion sank. He was surprised that it could happen as easily as that—that the most important thing in your life could vanish so quickly and quietly.

4
    T he worst part was that there was no one to tell.
    He lay awake, staring at the wooden window screen of the men’s sitting room. Dawn hadn’t broken, they hadn’t even sounded the first call to prayer, but he’d woken up anyway, panicked about Sabria.
    In the five years he’d known her, she’d never been on time for an appointment. Yet in the two years since they’d been together, she’d never missed a date. They didn’t have a date per se, but they saw each other three to four times a week. If he could only tell Omar what was happening, his brother would, by his very embodiment of authority, provide an answer. But what was Ibrahim going to say:
I’ve had a mistress for two years and now she’s gone
?
    It was tempting to blame his paranoia on the discovery of the bodies. He remembered this from before, working Homicide in his late twenties. Every time there was a murder, he grew panicky if something went wrong at home. Now more than ever, he needed the rest of his life to retain its delicate, secret structure.
    Someone had to know where she was. She didn’t have many friends. She worked during