Читать книгу Deadline Yemen (The Elizabeth Darcy Series) - Peggy Hanson - Страница 32

CHAPTER 28

“I passed the hours listening to the gentle lubalub of the hookah and whispered conversations about dead poets and fine deeds. In Sana’a, qat governs. No rush, just a silky transition, scarcely noticed, and then the room casts loose its moorings. ‘Capturing moments of eternity,’ someone once called the subtle tinkering with time that qat effects.”

Kevin Rushby, Eating the Flowers of Paradise

It was qat time in Sana’a, the post-prandial ritual of chewing the leaf, exchanging poetry and high thoughts with friends, sitting companionably, and then withdrawing into aloneness.

Tom Reilly lay back on the dusty mufraj cushions in the sparsely-furnished room, pulling off tender leaves at the top of the qat branches in a plastic bag. Three water pipes, the hookahs, gave off tobacco and herbal smells that mixed nicely with the ever-present dust of the cushions.

A few casual friends had stopped by: three Peace Corps volunteers, two volunteers from Irish Concern, and the spectacular Swede, Christine Helmund. All of them were idealists, he supposed. Even Christine. He felt he was past that stage. Though sometimes he wondered.

It was a daily thing, this qat, immutable. Every Yemeni from top officials to porters in the souq was thus engaged. The officials and rich people—the men, at least—got the choice top ends of the sprigs.

Qat was one of the things that had bonded Tom to Yemen. He looked forward to it every day. Usually he chewed with foreigners, as today, but sometimes he got invited to the home of a Yemeni man, and had the chance to join in with the poetic outbursts and intellectual arguments of the natives. Women, of course, were never in sight at these chews, though Tom knew they were in a lower mufraj with women friends, chewing the leftover leaves not chosen by the men.

Tom found it hard to articulate exactly what he got from Yemen. Living at the end of the world could be addictive. Relationships came and went. Not having a regular job like these volunteers gave him extra freedom. Glancing at the sexy Christine, he felt like a truant schoolboy, escaping the rigid structure and authority figures back home.

Adding a few choice bits to the wad in his cheek, he felt the warmth of self-confidence that often came with qat. He turned to one of his companions, Larry, a pony-tailed volunteer who was stationed way off in the Wadi Hadhramaut, a good twelve hours across desert tracks in an uncomfortable taxi loaded down with people and animals.

“So did you hear about Petrovich?”

Larry looked startled. “What about him? Is he here now?”

“He’s dead,” stated Tom. “Killed last night at the Dar al-Hamd. They found him this morning.”

Larry was quiet for what seemed a long time. “What happened?” he asked, finally.

“I guess he ticked off some Yemeni. There was a jambiya in his chest.”

Tom glanced at Christine, who had in fact been the person who related some of the details. She sat frozen this afternoon, none of her usual vitality showing through. How well had she known Petrovich? “Christine, how did you learn about it?”

There was a long pause. Then Christine roused herself to speak delicately around her own qat wad. “I went over to talk to him this morning, but an American woman told me he was dead. She told me about the jambiya.”

“Well, that’s one problem we won’t all have to face anymore,” muttered Larry.

“Whadya mean?” Tom looked sharply at Larry. “Did you have problems with him, then?”

“Oh, not real trouble. I just thought he stuck his nose in where it wasn’t wanted.”

“Like where?” Tom was deep enough into qat to not care much about the answer. He felt above it all, full of lofty thoughts.

“He kept asking us stuff that didn’t have to do with our project. He was a pretty bad supervisor, for being an expert and all that.”

“What did Petrovich say? What did you talk about?”

Christine, who had sat quiet, now chimed in. “When he came to my village, he asked about things—about volunteers in the Hadhramaut, how they were doing.” She glanced in Larry’s direction.

He leaned over and lounged even more extravagantly against the cushions. “Which project? The beekeeping one? The one for marketing the honey?”

Christine looked startled. “Yes. Your projects, no, Larry?”

“Maybe. I work on them sometimes. Go ahead with your story.”

Christine sat quite still, as though thinking it over. “He said something about the gossip. About how volunteers who are supposed to be working have been going out of Seiyun at night with a couple of local guys. I told him maybe they were doing something with drugs?” Christine looked even paler than before and kept her eyes down.

“Drugs!” sniffed Tom. “Of course they were doing something with drugs. I’d just forget about Petrovich if I were you.”