Dubai Shakedown: Chapter 1

DUBAI SHAKEDOWN

Every soul shall taste death.  We will prove you all with good and evil. –The Koran, 21:311

Chapter One

It was a fairly typical week, crime wise, in Dubai.  A Filipino worker had been arrested in Bur Dubai for cross-dressing and soliciting prostitution from a passing undercover police officer; a Russian expat had threatened to kill a woman after raping her at knifepoint on Jumeirah Beach Road; two Arab expats had been caught trying to push an 80 kg safe out of the bathroom window of a real estate company in Deira; a Bangladeshi had been arrested for stealing 15,000 dhs from a gift shop in the Festival City Mall; an off duty detective had stopped two locals from kidnapping his daughter while he was parked in Muhaisna.  The majority of the Dubai Criminal Investigation Department’s workload consisted of burglary, theft, kidnapping, rape and prostitution cases.  There was the occasional murder, usually as the result of fights and scuffles among laborers at one of the dozens of constructions sites across the rapidly rising desert city, but high profile homicides had recently been on the rise.  A Chechen warlord had been shot dead in the car park of his apartment building in the Marina, two Indian businessmen had been killed over a debt owed in Mumbai while eating curries at a restaurant in Al Barsha, and a Pakistani hit man had chased a professor from Lahore through the parking lot of the American University before gunning him down and fleeing.  No real suspects had been arrested in any of these cases.  Then there were the four Eastern Europeans, armed with AK47s and body armor, who had crashed through the glass windows of the jewelry section of Wafi Center and made off with 5 million dhs in diamonds and gold; no one had been killed, and all four had been caught while trying to leave the country via the border crossing with Oman and were now in Dubai Central Prison, but all in all there were now plenty of high profile cases to keep the detectives of Dubai’s CID more than busy.

Hani al-Rashid had spent ten years as a lieutenant in the Criminal Investigation Department, until two years ago, when his wife Jemila and their two small children had been killed in a car accident on Sheik Zayed Road.  Two labor crew buses had been racing, weaving in and out of traffic, until one of the bus drivers lost control and flipped his bus over on its side, crashing into her white Honda Accord and smashing into the concrete center divider.  He’d retired from the force a month later, with a special dispensation from the Sheik, and after a year of sorrowful moping around the family villa in Satwa, nearly overwhelmed with nafs modhlima, the darkness in his soul, he’d finally gotten bored of the gossip filled days of ordinary life, re-found his faith, and set up a small private investigations office among the Hindi shops of the old Bastikiya neighborhood.

Business had been slow.  Arab societies and Arab families were fanatical about safeguarding their privacy, so the idea of turning to a private investigator to solve a problem, although not unknown, was not a popular solution. Most of Hani’s work had come from former contacts and colleagues in the form of doing background checks, skip traces on bad debts, and a couple of suspicious husbands wanting their wives followed for a few afternoons.  Nothing high profile, nothing interesting, and certainly nothing like what he had been used to working on with the CID.

Hani was born in Dubai, when Dubai was mostly a small creek side village, but his mother was from Jordan and his father from the West Bank, so he wasn’t a native Emirati.  Since Islam was a patriarchal system, like his father he was considered Palestinian and had a passport issued from Ramallah, unlike his mother who had all the rights and benefits that came from holding a black Jordanian passport.  Because nearly every country required a visit visa, Hani had rarely travelled outside the UAE and the Gulf region.  Dubai was his home, even though he could never become a true citizen of the rapidly growing Emirate, and he didn’t have the desire to call anywhere else home.

Hani sat at one of the inlaid mosaic tables in the courtyard of the Basta Art Café, drinking mint tea in the early evening while catching up on the week’s crime events with one of his former colleagues, Sergeant Abdullah bin Mohammad of the CID.  It was the week before the start of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and reflection that was one of the required five pillars of Islam.  The exact day when Ramadan started would be determined when a special moon sighting committee caught the first glimpse of a sliver of the new moon, and Ramadan would end thirty days later on the first day of Shawwal, with the Eid al Fitr holiday.

“That Chechen warlord was the highest profile assassination we’ve had in the region, “ Abdullah said.  “Not that he didn’t deserve it.  Yanni, the guy was a real piece of work: torture, murder, even leaving severed heads in the towns around Gudermes to frighten people into accepting Moscow’s rule.”

“Any suspects?”

“A Russian national being set up as a fall guy.  He’ll be deported after we’re positive he’s not guilty.  But get this.  Whoever really did it left a gold plated pistol at the crime scene.  No fingerprints, but the President of Chechnya has often been photographed holding a gold plated pistol.  Wallahi, the clue obviously points in one direction.”

“I miss it, I really do.”

Abdullah laughed.  “I guess following Khalid Ibrahim’s wife through Mall of the Emirates just isn’t the same as a murder investigation.”

“It turned out she was sleeping with her Indian driver.”

“May he have better luck with his next wife.”

“Insh’allah,” Hani said sadly, looking away from his friend.

Abdullah suddenly turned serious  “Rahmato Allah Aleyhim…” May God rest their souls.

They sat in silence while they finished their tea, then Abdullah stood.  “Yanni, I’d better get going.  The traffic this time of night is hell.  Yalla.  So, same time next week my friend?”

“Insh’allah.” They shook hands, walked out of the quiet courtyard together and into the noisy maze of Bastikiya streets.  Hani’s office was above a spice importer and as he walked up the stairs he smelled cardamom and cinnamon, curry and crushed black pepper.  It was neither accident nor contingency that had led him here; there was a purpose, God’s purpose, behind the loss of all he had loved and cherished in life, and even though he did not understand why it had all happened to him, he trusted that even though little had been revealed to him so far, what path would follow was what God had already written on his forehead.  Night would always be balanced by its opposite, day, and he believed that soon, insh’allah, the reckoning of night would be replaced with the light of the sun.

The door to his office, with the embossed gold letters in Arabic and English reading “Haqq Investigations,” was slightly open.  He must have forgotten to lock the door when he left earlier to meet Abdullah.  Hani pushed carefully against the knob with the palm of his right hand and saw a man already seated in one of the two chairs facing the empty desk.   He was thin, dark, with silver hair and dressed in the loose fitting traditional Indian kurta and pajamas.  He was glancing around the room at the hand-woven carpets Hani had picked up on a trip to the Taznakht region of Morocco and tacked to the walls for decoration.  The man seemed interested in the Amizagh signs woven into one of the carpets.  Hani cleared his throat.

“Marhabbah.  Can I help you?”

The man stood, smiled, and reached out his hand.  “You are Hani al-Rashid?”

Hani took the hand and nodded.  “And what is your good name?”

The man let go and then touched his heart with his hand.  “Patel Shetty.  Originally from Mangalore, I have been in this fine city now for nearly thirty years.”

Hani moved behind his desk and motioned for Patel Shetty to be seated, before sitting down himself.  “And what can I do for you?”

“Haqq means truth in Arabic, right?”

“Terrref arabi? You know Arabic?”

“Yes, I have to.  I’m in the coffee importing business here.  But that’s not why I need your help.  Colonel Maktoom of the CID recommended that I come here.  You know Colonel Maktoom?”

“Of course.  He was my boss when I worked for the CID.”

“Colonel Maktoom said you could help me.  I need you to find out the truth about what has happened to my daughter.”

Hani leaned back in his chair.  “What has happened to your daughter?”

Patel Shetty looked down for a moment, then met Hani’s gaze.  “My daughter Satya works as a fashion model.  She’s very striking, very tall, very beautiful.  A few months ago, she started seeing a young man from Germany.  I did not approve, but…”  He interlaced his fingers and shook his head.  “This young man—Dieter Schatten—volunteered for one of those human rights watch organizations.  He was involved in organizing protests, with the aim of unionizing the laborers working and living here in those labor camps in areas like Al Quoz.”

“Both protests and unions are illegal here.”

“Of course.  Last week, she missed one of her favorite designer’s show.  Her two roommates haven’t seen her and according to Colonel Maktoom, Schatten was deported for illegal activities back to Berlin three days ago.”

“Perhaps your daughter went with him.”

“No, there’s no record of her leaving the country.”  Patel Shetty sighed.  “The CID have opened a missing persons case file, but I’m very worried and want swifter action than the police can supply.  So Colonel Maktoom recommended I come to you.”

“And how do you know the Colonel?”

“Wasta.  His cousin is my Emirati business partner.”

Wasta was the Arabic notion of having connections or knowing the right person to get something done.  It was still the way many things were accomplished, not only in the Emirates but also throughout the Arab world.  Hani briefly flashed for a moment on his own daughter and the worries he would never have about her, then he thought about the deep sadness in Patel Shetty’s brown eyes.  Perhaps the daughter was depressed that her boyfriend had just been deported and was laying low for a few days; perhaps something had happened to her.  So far, Hani’s biggest cases had been small cases; here was a case that could really challenge him.  He felt the spark of the old fire flare up within him.

“I charge 1,000 dirhams a day, plus expenses.”

Patel Shetty didn’t even raise an eyebrow.  “This country has been very good to me, Mr. Hani.  I am happy to pay you whatever you require.  Just please find my Satya.”

“I’ll do my best.  If she’s out there, we’ll find her.”

***

The night was hot and humid, the air heavy with moisture from the Gulf.  Late summer the temperature rarely dropped below 90 degrees at night and the days were often brutal and unbearable.  It would be at least two months before the heat and humidity faded and then for half a year Dubai would be beach tourist heaven for Europeans and Russians.  In the industrial areas of neighboring Sharjah, the electricity had been down for three days.  Service workers and their families slept in cars with the engines running and the air conditioning on full all night because they couldn’t afford to go to a hotel.

Hani locked up and walked three blocks over to Sahlab, an Egyptian café, where he sat on a worn out couch and ordered an apple shisha.  Five minutes later, Said, the proprietor, came by with a hookah and a glowing bowl of fresh coals.  He placed the coals on the foil wrapped around the hookah bowl.  As Hani inhaled, they glowed like the eyes of demons, slowly disintegrated into grey ash.  Fifteen minutes later, Said replaced the coals with a pair of metal tongs.  Hani inhaled, blew a large cloud of white smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and then nodded in appreciation.

The tobacco both calmed and stimulated him, Sherlock Holmes with a shisha pipe.  He thought about what Patel Shetty had told him.  Before he left, he’d supplied the addresses of his daughter Satya’s agency, home, and recently deported boyfriend; in the morning Hani would start there, as well as check the hospital and police death reports.  It was more than possible that something bad had happened to the girl, that she’d become a victim of human trafficking or even worse, but it was also possible she had simply disappeared on her own for a while, that it was a simple skip job.  Hani laughed to himself at the English phrase skip job, which he’d picked up from a detective novel featuring a hard drinking American private eye.

He ordered tea to go with the shisha.  He had never tried alcohol, which the Koran referred to as containing the devil.  Even so, there were always locals and other Arabs to be found drinking beer and other forms of alcohol in the pubs and bars of Dubai.  Munafiqun, religious hypocrites bound for the lowest depths of the fire.  He shook his head, then smiled, remembering a case from his time at the CID when a drunken naked laborer had broken into a villa and surprised the sleeping residents by jumping up and down on their bed until they woke up, shocked and then screaming.  The devil, indeed.  The laborer claimed to be possessed by a djinn, a mischievous desert spirit, but the Dubai Court of First Instance didn’t believe him, convicted, jailed, and then later deported him.

The final Adhan drifted across from the mosque, the muezzin’s voice rising and falling with the words Allahu Akbar, the call to prayer.  Hani took one final puff, finished his tea, and then paid Said on his way out of the café to the mosque.  After the prayer he would normally drive back home to the family villa for a late dinner with his mother, father, and sister Amal, who at twenty-seven was a successful fashion designer with her own line of Western inspired wear.  He made a mental note to check with her to see if she knew Satya Shetty, since she’d told him on more than one occasion that the fashion industry in Dubai was a close knit group of people who usually knew each other.  Their parents despaired of her ever getting married and replacing the grandchildren they had so much loved, and then lost.  But tonight Hani just felt like being alone and thinking about his own lost daughter.

He drove his white Toyota Prado out past the city into the desert just below uptown Mirdiff, where the road slid into sand drifts and sand dunes.  Several families were parked in the dunes, sitting outside in the late night heat, under the few trees, eating and drinking.  Hani put the Prado into four-wheel drive and rollercoastered up and down the dunes until he was alone.  He parked near some scrub and walked out into the sand.   The Dubai skyline glowed like something out of a sci-fi movie in the distance, the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper, like a giant needle into the heavens.  He sat down, closed his eyes to clear the afterimages, and then opened them into a million pinpoints of stars.

Once Bedouins, camels, goats, and Arabian oryx wandered across the sands, but now the city had encroached for miles and miles, the Bedouins were now businessmen, and the camels, goats and oryx were to be found further out in the desert conservation reserves.  The desert seemed to stretch out into the blackness of infinity, into the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula and beyond, limitless and all encompassing.  He thought of his own young daughter, dead and gone far too soon, and he hoped and prayed that Satya Shetty wouldn’t be found out there as well, hastily buried in a shallow grave of sand.

Insh’allah.