A Hologram for the King

  The walls were his friends. There was something to this, to this drinking alone in one’s room. Why hadn’t he ever done this before? He could do all this and no one could say boo. All this was his. These beds were his. The desk, the walls, that big bathroom with the phone and the bidet. He walked over to his second bed and looked at his things, his electric razor and itinerary and binders and folders, spread out, ready.

  He looked at the pillows at the head of the bed. You are so white, he thought. He liked the sound of that and wanted the pillow to hear it. —You are so white, he said. Now stop staring.

  He downed the last swallow and refilled the glass. This is an adventure, he thought. The moonshine makes me an adventurer. And then he finally understood why people drink alone, and drink more than they should drink alone. An adventure every night! It made a hell of a lot of sense.

  He had to call Kit. No, not Kit. Someone, though. He picked up his phone. There was one message on it. It had come in the last hour. Morning in Boston. He listened to the voice mail. The first was from Eric Ingvall. —Hey buddy. Haven’t heard from you, so I assume all is good. Check in tomorrow if you get a chance. I need a status report.

  The second message was from Kit. —Call me. It’s nothing bad.

  This made him want to call her all the more, but somewhere in the listening to her very sober and very small voice — she was diminutive and her voice was high, though always firm and always clear — he realized that he would not sound good tonight. He was tired, and he was drunk, he now knew unequivocally that he was drunk, and one should not call one’s daughter in such a state, especially when trying to instill her with confidence about his ability to provide for her.

  He sat at the desk and wrote.

  ‘Dear Kit, Parenting is a test of endurance. You have to have the fortitude of a triathlete. People say, It goes so fast. They grow up so fast. But I don’t remember it ever going fast. It was ten thousand days, Kit, requiring a military sense of order and precision. You were never late for school, for practice, for anything. Think of it! It was an intricate architecture of daily meals, appointments, check-ups, rules enacted and enforced, sympathy begged for and granted, frustration felt, ruinously, and stamped down. That’s not to say it went slowly or seemed overlong. Just that it wasn’t fast.’

  He would probably have to cut that part. It didn’t sound right, any way he put it. But it was true. The raising of a child is the building of a cathedral. You can’t cut corners.

  ‘So can I get some latitude here? Cut us both some slack. I remember when I realized my parents were hypocrites like everyone else. I was eighteen. And after that I was high on the power brought by that realization. What did I know, though? I guess I’d realized that they lied from time to time. And that my mom took pills, had been hooked on morphine for a while when I was younger. And so I lorded it over them. I was the perfected version of them, I thought. Makes you think of Hitler Youth or the Khmer Rouge, right? The children, full of themselves and their purity, shooting the adults in the rice paddies.’

  He put the pen down. He could barely see the page.

  He stood and the ceiling whirled over him. He fell to the bed and looked at the wall. He had underestimated the moonshine. Even when he had realized its power he had underestimated it. Hanne, you devil! he thought. I really love this world, he thought. The making of this wall. I love the people who did it. They did good things here.

  XVI.

  ALAN OPENED HIS EYES. 10:08. He’d missed the shuttle again. He would call Yousef.

  He threw his legs off the bed and stood in the dark room. Beyond the heavy curtains he knew the day was bright, too bright to be part of. There was an acute pain in the back of his neck. He made a mental note to investigate that in the shower.

  He stood, found the mirror over the desk, and looked at himself. His face was wrecked, his cheeks sinking to his jowls, his jowls sinking, with some flourish, into his shirt.

  In the shower he washed his hair and body and thought, Who is this man who could miss the shuttle not once but twice in three days? Who is this man who could again wake at 10 a.m., having no doubt missed calls to his cellphone, knocks on the door?

  At that moment he had a clear recollection of a woman knocking, saying Alan? Alan? He’d barked at them, sending them away, thinking she was a maid. But now, he realized, a maid would not have been calling his name. It must have been Rachel or Cayley. It was Rachel. He knew it now.

  He dried himself and picked up the hotel phone. It had been disconnected. When had he done that? Much about the previous night he remembered, but at a certain point it fell off a cliff. He found a dent in the bathroom door, at foot level. His laptop was under the bed. A flash of inspiration: Had his room been ransacked? Maybe Hanne’s worries about the secret police were well-founded. The muttawa had been here. They’d heard their conversation and had come in to investigate while he slept. No. For starters, the moonshine was still there, half-full.

  He called Yousef.

  —You available?

  —Alan? You sound terrible. Were you attacked?

  —Can you drive me to KAEC?

  —Of course. But I have to ask, are you missing these shuttles on purpose, to spend more time with Yousef, your guide and hero?

  —You’re using too many words, Alan said.

  —I’ll be there in twenty minutes.

  Alan threaded his heavy arms through a clean shirt, feeling he was despoiling its immaculate cotton. As he buttoned it, the collar rubbed against his neck, and the pain was extreme. He went to the bathroom mirror and turned himself around, but could see nothing. He needed two mirrors held strategically to see what looked like a gunshot wound. Or more like he’d been gnawed on by a rat, a rat trying to dig a hole into Alan’s back. A faint recollection came swimming into view: had he taken a knife to the growth on his neck? Was that possible? And again the battle was on, between the responsible self he knew this morning, who would engage a driver at great cost to take him to his duties at the city-to-be in the desert by the sea, and the self who would carouse around the hotel room, stabbing phantom tumors, kicking doors and writing unsendable letters. Which among the selves was expendable? This was eternally the question.

  Alan looked around the bathroom for something like a bandage or antiseptic. There was nothing. He buttoned his shirt and hoped no one would see what he’d done.

  He went downstairs. He sat in the atrium, ordered coffee. By the concierge desk, there was an electronic sign announcing the events to be held that day at the hotel.

  NEW FUTURES: Medina Room

  ARABIAN TRADING SUPPLIES: Mezzanine Floor

  PRINCIPLES OF BANKING: Hilton Hall

  SUCCESS STEPS, PART I: 10 a.m.

  SUCCESS STEPS, PART II: 11 a.m.

  He could be successful by noon, here at the Hilton. Why, then, was he going to the tent by the sea?

  Alan was taking his first sip of coffee when Yousef appeared.

  —Alan.

  —Alan tried to smile. Hello, he said.

  —You look worse than I expected. What happened?

  —Just a night of… Alan caught himself. As friendly as they were, he couldn’t tell where Yousef stood on the subject of alcohol.

  —Just jet lag. Never had it so bad.

  Yousef smirked. —I went to college in Alabama. I know a hangover when I see one. Where’d you get the booze?

  —I’d rather not say.

  Yousef laughed. —You’d rather not say? What, you think you’ve come upon some rare commodity? That you might endanger your source?

  —You think this is funny.

  —I do.

  —I made a promise.

  —Not to tell?

  —I don’t break promises.

  —Oh God. Fine. But listen: You don’t have to go to KAEC. There’s no way the King is coming today. He’s in Yemen. Look.

  Yousef took Alan’s newspaper and showed him page 3: a photo of Abdullah on the tarmac of the Yemeni airport. Alan hadn’t b
een told anything about this.

  —I should go, though, for appearances.

  —You want to get some food first? You’re already late.

  They walked outside, and the daylight, which Alan had dreaded, was diffuse, forgiving. He felt attended to, as if the sky and sun would cleanse him, might wash away last night’s debauchery.

  The bellhop, a huge man with a walrus mustache, was grinning at Yousef.

  —Salaam, Yousef said to him, and shook his hand. He comes into my dad’s shop, Yousef explained. He buys a lot of sandals.

  Alan got in the car while Yousef searched under the hood. After a minute Alan got out again and came around to help.

  —What are we looking for? Red sticks of dynamite?

  —I’m not sure, Yousef said. Maybe some unusual wires?

  Alan had been kidding. —You really don’t know? he asked.

  —How would I know? I watch the same TV shows as you.

  Together the two men, neither of them having ever seen a bomb, looked at Yousef’s engine to detect whether or not it contained one.

  —I don’t see anything, Alan said.

  —I don’t either.

  They got in the car. Yousef put the key in the ignition.

  —Ready?

  —Don’t make it more dramatic.

  Yousef turned the key. The engine roared. Alan’s heart was popping.

  They drove away from the hotel, again passing the same Saudi soldier atop the Humvee, his face in the shadow of the beach umbrella above, his feet soaking in the baby pool.

  —So your dad has a shop?

  —In the old city. He sells sandals.

  —Wait. Your dad sells shoes?

  —Yup.

  —My dad, too. That’s incredible.

  Alan looked over to Yousef, half expecting this to be a joke of some kind. The coincidence was too much.

  —You don’t believe me? Yousef said. I’ll show you the shop while you’re here. That’s where I worked growing up. We all had to, my brothers and me. But my dad’s a dictator. He won’t listen to us. Especially me. I could help that place a lot, modernize it. But he’s old now. He doesn’t want to hear anything new.

  Yousef’s brothers had all gone into other professions. One brother was a doctor in Jordan. Another was an imam in Riyadh. The last one was in college in Bahrain.

  They were on the highway now.

  —Let’s have a joke, Yousef said. For good luck.

  —That a Saudi custom?

  —I don’t know. I never know about our customs. Or what people think our customs are. I’m not sure we have customs.

  —I don’t have any jokes today, Alan said.

  But then one occurred to him.

  —Okay. A husband and wife are getting ready for bed. The wife is standing in front of a full-length mirror taking a hard look at herself. ‘You know, dear,’ she says, ‘I look in the mirror, and I see an old woman. My face is all wrinkled, my hair is grey, my shoulders are hunched over, I’ve got fat legs, and my arms are all flabby.’ She turns to her husband and says, ‘Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself.’ He studies her hard for a moment, thinking about it, and then says in a soft, thoughtful voice, ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with your eyesight.’

  Yousef laughed out loud. Too loud.

  —Please be quiet.

  —Your head hurts that much? Must have been some bad siddiqi.

  —What’s siddiqi?

  —It means my friend. That’s what you’ve been drinking.

  —I deny it.

  —Alan, I’m not the muttawa. And you’re not the first businessman I’ve driven around. Wait a second.

  Ahead there was a checkpoint. A pair of young soldiers stood in the median, stopping cars. On the side of the road, three more uniformed men sat in a police car. Yousef rolled down his window. The soldier mumbled a question to Yousef, Yousef answered, and the soldier waved him through. And that was that. Yousef drove on.

  —That’s it? He didn’t want to actually see anything?

  —Sometimes they do.

  —They looking for someone in particular?

  —Maybe. It’s all for show. No one wants to be a soldier here. They’d give the jobs to foreign workers if they could.

  They left the city and were soon on the same desolate highway. A truck carrying palm trees passed them, spraying dust.

  —You hungry or not? Yousef asked.

  —I’m not sure.

  —Better to be very late than just a little late. I drove a guy from Texas around for a few weeks last year. He told me that. If you’re half an hour late, it looks like a mistake. If you’re two hours late, it looks intentional.

  Yousef chose a roadside place a few miles up the road. They pulled over. The restaurant was open-air, a series of low-walled rooms. They walked inside the main building, and the smell of fish overwhelmed. Seafood was not what Alan had had in mind when imagining his first meal after the moonshine bender. He wanted bread and bacon.

  Yousef led him to a wide display case, hundreds of fish on ice.

  Alan almost retched.

  —You have a preference? Yousef asked.

  Alan wanted anything but this. He wanted to leave and get something dry. Crackers, chips. But he had grown used to eating whatever was put in front of him. —Up to you, he said.

  —Let’s get a couple of these, Yousef said, nodding at a pair of foot-long fish, silver and pink. We call it najel. Not sure what you would call it in English. Yousef ordered for them both.

  They were seated outside, though there were no seats. The custom was to recline on the floor, each with a stiff cushion to lean against.

  Flies alighted on their knees and arms. Alan waved them away, but they were not long deterred. The thought of eating fish outdoors like this, in this heat, chased away his appetite. An animal sound turned his head. Atop their low wall, a cat, looking a thousand years old, had taken up residence. Its left eye was cloudy and a lower tooth protruded upward from his mouth, an inverted fang. It seemed impossible that such a creature could survive one more day. Yousef barked to the maitre d’, who came over with a small broom and shooed the cat over another wall and into the alleyway.

  Yousef’s phone vibrated. His thumbs went to work.

  —My girlfriend, he said.

  Alan could not keep Yousef’s women straight and said so.

  —I’ll explain, Yousef said.

  He had been engaged to a girl, Amina, who he’d known as a teenager. When they had presented their intentions to her parents, her father had refused to grant his permission to marry. The case against Yousef was tough: his family was Bedouin, and to some upper-class Saudis this was unacceptable. They think we’re savages, Yousef explained. His father was a shopkeeper, a villager, an uneducated man. That he had done well — he had earned millions of dinar, Yousef noted, and had erected a massive compound in his home village, had leveled a mountaintop to build it — mattered not.

  —And so that was that?

  The possibilities flooded Alan’s mind: couldn’t they have just left the country? Eloped?

  —There was nothing to be done. But it’s fine. I don’t think about her so much any more. Anyway, my parents found someone else for me.

  The woman they’d chosen, Jameelah, was gorgeous, Yousef explained, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and suddenly she was his. They were married a few months later, but though he loved to look at her, to watch her walk across the room, they’re weren’t in any way compatible.

  —Dumb as a goat.

  They were divorced a year later, and he was single again.

  —I always have drama with women. But not with Noor.

  Noor was his girlfriend, inasmuch as such a thing was permissable. She was a bit younger, twenty-three, a graduate student. They’d met online.

  —She is so brilliant, he said. She kicks my ass every day. And she’s descended from the Prophet Mohammed. I swear this is true.

  Things were progressi
ng with Noor, he said, and the two of them were trying to plot a way to tell their parents about their intentions, when he started getting texts from his ex-wife Jameelah. She was now married to a wealthy man in his forties, who Yousef suspected of being an extreme kind of international swinger.

  —He goes to Europe and has sex with boys.

  —He’s gay? Alan asked.

  —Gay? No. You think that means he’s gay?

  Alan wasn’t awake enough to follow that tributary, so he let it go.

  The food arrived. Plates filled with chopped lettuce and cucumbers and tomatoes, brown rice, khobez — a bread like naan — and then the fish. Yousef lassoed the meal with his finger. —Syadya, he said. The fish had been deep-fried, but otherwise was the same fish they’d seen under glass, eyes and bones and all. Alan ripped some bread and grabbed at the flesh of the fish. He took a bite.

  —Good? Yousef asked.

  —Perfect. Thanks.

  —You fry anything, it tastes right.

  The cat reappeared. Yousef threw his foot toward the blind, ancient animal and it meowed, outraged. It scurried off.

  —Meanwhile she sends me ten texts a day. Some of the texts are just bored, like, ‘What are you doing,’ blah blah. And some are, like, really sexy. I wish I could show you some.

  Yousef scrolled through the messages on his phone, and Alan found himself wanting to see the sexy texts from the bored Saudi housewife.

  —But I have to delete them the second I get them.

  Jameelah could prove her whereabouts for more or less every minute of their marriage, and the husband had not read the texts themselves, but his suspicions were nonetheless unbridled.