The old Emir kicks off his loafers, then places his wallet, phone and keys on the Formica-covered table. He unbuttons his dishdasha, drapes it over a hanger and hooks the hanger onto the metal bar in the locker, before reaching for the coarse yellowish kaftan. From the shelf above, he pulls a full greyish-white beard with rubber straps. The straps go over his ears. He takes a pair of thick-framed glasses from the shelf. For good measure, he adds a faded baseball hat. He looks in the mirror on the inside of the locker door and sees an ancient Bedouin man. No one would pay him any attention. He transfers wallet, phone and keys to his pockets, then bends down for the worn-out sneakers on the locker floor.
A minute later he exits the building. Turning a corner, he approaches a pick-up with some gardening tools in the back. The key is in the ignition. The old Emir smiles; the truck is a Ford Ranger with a compass integrated into the dashboard, for the adventurous driver out in the wilderness. He always enjoys seeing the compass swivel with the changes in direction. He starts up and drives along the street to a side entrance of the palace compound. The guard in his alcove barely raises his head before pushing some button, whereupon the fifteen-foot, spike-covered metal gate parts soundlessly.
The old Emir presses on the gas, and as he turns onto the road his moustache lifts with happiness.
***
Half an hour earlier, the old Emir was standing on the balcony outside his study. The stars appeared like grains of broken glass on the fabric of the sky. He could make out the constellations of Al-Dubb Al-Akbar and Al-Jabbar, and Al-Dabarān if he was not mistaken. Not much smog tonight, a dry warm breeze from the western desert; somewhere a night bird hooted. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the balustrade and scanned the garden stretching to the enclosure wall. Patches of bougainvillea and jasmine glowed in the light of ground-level lamps. From beyond the wall came the hum of traffic.
He stepped inside and walked to his desk. A TV was running silently on a stand. Document folders were stacked to either side of the writing pad. The left stack represented matters already dealt with, the right one, considerably higher, matters yet to be dealt with. A folder lay open on the pad. He picked up a report with a red stamp at the top and leafed through the pages again.
Two enlarged passport photographs were stapled to the last page. He picked up his spectacles and held them to his eyes. One photograph showed a brunette woman in her early thirties, whose blue eyes seemed mismatched with her hair. A smile as if by force of habit. Her name – made up, obviously – was highlighted in yellow on the page below. The other picture showed a man of around forty. Cropped dark hair, a bit of grey here and there, trimmed beard on hollow cheeks. He was in dress uniform, on his collar the crown and two pips of a colonel. His name was also highlighted: Ahmad Al-Qattan – a good family, a respected family! The old Emir’s face paled, and he returned the report to its folder, closed it, and pressed down upon it with his knuckles…
The image on the TV changed: the oddly rectangular figure of his Enemy appeared. His Enemy of many decades. Jet-black hair – dyed, surely dyed – combed straight back, watching his stony-faced legions march past, assault rifles on their shoulders. Semi-trailer trucks, each hauling a missile or drone. And now tanks. A cut back to the Enemy, shaking his fist. The old Emir felt the gesture like blasts of air on his face.
He grasped the folder again and tore open the Domestic Intelligence report. Raising his spectacles, he scanned a paragraph. He looked at the TV, then at the desk clock in its crystal casing: quarter to nine. According to the report, they’d be meeting soon. He couldn’t just sit around here. He at least wanted to see!
Moments later, the old Emir was passing through his study. He carefully opened one wing of a double door and stepped into a marble-floored corridor. A sword in a frayed, silver-plated scabbard hung on the wall. He reached out to let his fingertips glide over the weapon; then one of his steps squeaked. He froze, his eyes on the mahogany door ahead, open just a fraction of an inch. When no sound came, he gingerly resumed his steps. He passed the door but then stopped and turned back. Slowly, he pushed the door inward. Shurouq was lying on her side; her breaths came deeply and regularly. Her grey hair, still reddish-brown here and there, covered her eyes.
The old Emir walked over to his wife. By her side on the cream-colored duvet lay a book, spine up, modern art-type lines crisscrossing on the cover. On the back, a black and white picture of an ancient man, staring blindly into space. Strange books Shurouq read, the result of her studying in America all those years ago. The old Emir bent forward to lay the book on the nightstand. A gold-framed picture of their family stood there: all the kids and grandkids, nieces and nephews, Shurouq and himself at the center, in the chateau garden in the Auvergne last summer. His oldest was there, with his little daughter on his arm. A grown man, sure, but not ready – you could still see the boy in him. The old Emir stood up straight; he had to keep going for another while.
Shurouq sighed; she was dreaming. Something good, hopefully. A scent of oud rose from her skin; the back of her hand showed a thin scratch where the cat had gotten her. He pulled the duvet over her shoulder, touched her hair.
“Tisbaheen alaa khair, hayati.”
Before closing the door behind him, he switched off the light. Then he hastened down the corridor.
***
The freeway traffic rolls steadily. In the distance, at the tip of the peninsula, stand the flares of concrete and glass, compelling in their dimensions, as if they’ve always been there. The old Emir has blurred memories of a warren of one-story adobe houses sprawling where those towers now stand, and he likes those memories. They feel like a soothing hand on his chest, though he knows that life used to be hard for the fishermen and tradesmen with their wives and children living in those adobe houses. Then Allah saw fit to have his grandfather’s men find in the desert the black liquid humanity aches for, lusts after, is prepared to kill and die for – and everything changed.
The interior of the pick-up begins to rattle if he pushes it over sixty, and so he stays in the right lane. He turns on the radio and listens to Fairuz singing delicately of her love for another city, one that now lies in ruins. Unbidden, his father’s hoarse voice enters his mind, as this voice sometimes does: This part of the world is like a dune, always moving with the wind of the times – his father’s favorite dictum. Here they are, a small rich country. His grandfather had spent the dollars wisely; his father kept the country at the crest of the dune, safe from the avalanches. He himself would do the same, inshallah…
His phone begins ringing. He reaches into his pocket, looks at the screen. The old Emir sighs. He harbors a longstanding suspicion that his wife has second sight. He turns down the radio, accepts the call.
“Where are you?”
“Hayati, just driving around a little.”
“You promised you would stop with this foolishness!” Shurouq’s voice echoes in a sparsely furnished room, so she’s standing in his study.
“It relaxes me, helps me…”
“It is dangerous!”
“What’s going to happen? I’m just driving.”
“Everyone’s been begging you to be more careful!”
“I am careful! I’m…”
“He has agents here! You know that!” she cuts him short. “I want you to come home!”
“I’ll be home in an hour or so, hayati. Go back to bed. There’s nothing to worry about.”
An exasperated harrumph before the phone goes silent. In his mind’s eye he sees Shurouq storming back to their bedroom, her robe billowing.
He exhales and takes the next offramp. The compass swivels as he turns onto a double-laned road lined with 1970s apartment blocks. Windows shining a warm yellow, air-conditioning units like tiny jutties. To his right, the black waters of the Gulf. He turns left at a green traffic light. After a few hundred yards, he pulls into a sand lot, switches on the interior light and adjusts his beard in the mirror.
As he crosses the lot, the wind pushes at the back of his kaftan. He passes through a refurbished adobe gate. Immediately to the right stands a one-room police station. He glances inside; the single desk is unoccupied. Above it hangs a portrait of himself. The old Emir presses on and enters the souq. Every time he comes here his chest expands. He played hide and seek here with his cousins – a different world. As an adolescent, he twice met the beautiful daughter of a Circassian silk trader in the back of her father’s shop.
He walks along the row of spice vendors, standing behind their wares. Bedouin ladies in abayas, some with niqab, are inspecting bags of cumin and sumac, turmeric, cloves and Baharat, while chatting amongst each other and arguing with the vendors. He turns left into the butchers’ row. The tangy smell of meat, cats scowling in corners, waiting to be tossed a morsel. Right. The fruit vendors handing out toothpick samples from their luminous piles of kumquats and dragon fruit, melons, oranges and jujubes.
He notices a clock hanging on a wooden beam and increases his pace. Turning another corner, he comes to the central square, packed with tables and chairs of surrounding restaurants. Waiters rushing, hands full with platters of shish kebab, humus, masgouf, tabouleh and fattoush salads. The blend of food smells, from the rafters the whirring of fans, the hum of neon tubes, under his feet the crunch of vegetables dropped on the cobble stones. The old Emir winds his way through the lanes, children jostling him, screeching with delight, as they chase each other under tables and between the chairs of their parents and older siblings. When he reaches the other side, he looks over his shoulder. His people seem without care or worry. Oh, but to have their insouciance.
A host of swaying fountains marks the edge of the souq. The hubbub of voices recedes. He turns right, and suddenly he is alone. After fifty yards, he reaches a café with a picture window.
***
The old Emir approaches the counter. The barista, a young man with his hair piled high, is pouring bottled water into an enormous coffee machine.
He lifts an index finger. “Digeega.”
The old Emir nods and lets his eyes glide through the café. Tiny, maybe eight yards by ten, mellow lights over tables of deliberately rough make, jazz piano notes trickling from the darkness below the ceiling.
The intelligence report was correct. The two of them are sitting in the far corner, she facing the room and, it appears, listening with rapt attention. Her forearms on the table, enclosing a ceramic cup. She looks prettier than in her picture. Her hair falls in shining waves, blue eyes preternaturally large. Of Al-Qattan, the old Emir can only see the shoulders and the back of his head. He’s not in uniform, of course, but is wearing a dark sports jacket.
“Yes, amee, what would you like?” comes the voice of the barista.
The old Emir smiles. The young man’s moustache droops and his chin beard extends to the collar of his white shirt. He brings to mind an Arab samurai.
“Istikanaat chai, law samaht.”
“Tmam.”
The barista places a wooden tray on the counter and on it an engraved brass saucer. On this he sets an istikan and a tiny spoon.
“How is your business going here, young brother?”
The barista is pouring the copper liquid. “Alhamdullilah, amee.”
He places two double cubes of packaged sugar on the tray and a glass saucer with a twig of mint.
“Shukran.”
The old Emir digs a bill from his pocket. He waves away the change, takes his tray and walks over to the one unoccupied table.
He sits, back to the wall, and drops a sugar cube into his tea, then a second. His doctors always tell him not to, but what do they know? Allah decides how much time to grant, not some doctors. He adds a mint leaf, stirs and takes a sip of the hot sweet liquid while glancing toward the far corner.
Al-Qattan and the blue-eyed woman look like they are in love, and who knows, maybe they are. Both now giggling like youths. But no, he is in love, a traitor in love; she is a spy. Al-Qattan is also married with children, but more to the point, he knows things the Enemy desperately wants to know. The TV images of the marching legions flash through the old Emir’s mind, and cold rage wells up from his stomach. He drinks from his tea again. The rage passes in a shiver through his body. What stupidity! A family man, a traitor – wrecking his and his family’s life.
Domestic Intelligence has been on Al-Qattan’s tracks early. Hardly any damage done…
Across the room sits a man in a freshly starched dishdasha. Roughly fifty, broad features, full dark beard. His legs, facing the counter, crossed at the knees. Reading a newspaper, a cup on his table and a phone. The old Emir thinks that he’s seen the face before; at some palace function this man was standing in the wings. The old Emir feels with certainty that he is looking at the author of the report he pored over in his study less than an hour ago. Now the man leans forward to view a message but doesn’t press the screen.
The old Emir turns his attention to two ladies at a table in the corner to his right. They look like sisters: both of ample stature, full cheeks shining a golden red and enclosed in a white hijab with silver trim. They are picking at a shared piece of knafeh, while chatting and gesticulating, lost to the world.
Out of the corner of his eye, the old Emir notices Al-Qattan disappearing into a corridor next to the ladies’ table. Evidently on his way to the bathroom. The brunette woman, now alone, scrolling on her phone. He must look the man in the eye who is selling out the country that has born him and given him his livelihood!
The old Emir takes another sip and rises from his chair.
***
The bathroom door creaks as he pushes it open. He hears Al-Qattan’s voice from the stall: “… yes, of course. Understood, don’t worry.”
He’s realized he is no longer alone and has cut short the conversation. The stall door opens and the traitor steps outside, slipping his phone into his inside pocket and making for the sink.
When he sees the old man, his gait falters, but then he swipes his hand below the faucet. Al-Qattan’s profile is oddly flat, with a straight forehead and drooping nose. His complexion looks sallow in the mirror light.
As the old Emir moves forward, the traitor presses the soap dispenser; his jacket shifts and the old Emir can see a bulge under his armpit. Before the old Emir reaches the stall, Al-Qattan, as if compelled, looks to the side and their eyes meet. Nondescript, a bit watery.
Al-Qattan concentrates on the hands he is furiously rubbing together.
He recognized me! The thought voice-like, raspy in the old Emir’s mind, as he closes the stall door behind himself.
The waterflow ceases. A perfunctory whirr of the hand dryer, hurried steps, the creak of the bathroom door. The old Emir feels emptiness below his sternum. He reaches for his beard. Impossible! He opens the door, stares at himself in the mirror. A different person. He pushes the glasses up on his nose.
But what if Al-Qattan did recognize him?! His Emir in disguise in the same café where he is meeting his spy lover – bit much of a coincidence. They’d leave immediately. The old Emir bites his lower lip. What a fool he’s been! He’s sabotaged the operation. Domestic Intelligence has been waiting for the right moment, when Al-Qattan has the documents with him on a flash drive. Apparently, that’s not tonight. Now he’ll destroy the evidence; the blue-eyed woman will be on the next flight out, protected by her diplomatic passport.
But when the old Emir hurries back into the café, there they are, chatting as if nothing has happened. The sisters and the bearded man also still in their places.
The old Emir sits down. A delivery driver is taking a paper bag from the counter before returning to his scooter outside. Anything for a cigarette! The old Emir touches his pockets, but he’s forgotten his pack in his study. Best to leave, nothing he can do here…
“Something you’d like, amee?” The barista suddenly by his table, refilling the istikan from a brass pot.
“La shukran.”
The old Emir reaches for his tea and notices a Post-it folded in half under the saucer. He spins around, but the barista is already stepping behind the counter again.
The old Emir opens the Post-it. A line of blue shapes. He realizes with chagrin that the frame on his nose holds plain glass; his spectacles are lying on his desk. The sepia light doesn’t help. He extends his arms, pushes his head back, blinks and squints, and the shapes swim into focus:
Your Highness, you are in danger.
The old Emir stares. When he raises his eyes, the bearded man is looking at him, then quickly reaches for his phone.
The sounds now fluid, the ladies’ chatter, the woosh of the dishwasher from behind the counter, the jazz piano, all one indistinguishable swirl. The old Emir folds the Post-it, opens it again, before laying it aside.
There must be a back exit. Isn’t there a door behind the counter? That would lead to a storage area, and from there to an alleyway. Can he trust the barista? He put the Post-it there while pouring the tea. Did he? Maybe, the old Emir thinks, the Post-it was there when he came back from the bathroom, but he didn’t notice.
Across the room, Al-Qattan and the spy deep in conversation. The sisters in their corner, bent over their table, hands flying, in the throes of gossip. The bearded man scrolling. The old Emir turns to the counter. The barista taking an order on the landline, scribbling on a notepad on the countertop. Is that a blue pen?
Just walk out! Will he – they?! – stop me?! The old Emir is about to lever himself up when, through the glass inset of the door, he sees Shurouq marching toward the café, in black hijab and flowing black abaya like a Bedouin woman.
A chime strikes when she pulls open the door. Her eyes fix on him, and he sinks back into his seat.
“Hayati,” he whispers when she reaches his table. “We’re in…”
She doesn’t let him speak, her eyes wide in mock surprise. “You recognize me! But I’m in disguise!”
She sits down across from him. “So this is what you mean by you’re just driving around?!”
“I… I stopped for tea.” He leans forward. “You shouldn’t have come. We’re in danger.”
“Indeed we are!”
She reaches out and takes the Post-it. She gives it a glance, rolls her eyes, then waves over the barista.
“You couldn’t come up with something a little more original?”
“I am sorry, Your Highness.”
***
The barista locks the door and takes his place next to Al-Qattan and the bearded man; the sisters and the spy with the blue eyes shuffle up. They are now all huddled together a respectful five paces away, looking at the floor. The sisters’ role was to occupy the remaining table, the old Emir thinks, so that no walk-in guests could disturb the operation.
Shurouq makes a sweeping gesture. “They were following my orders. Do not be angry at them. It was for your own good. You needed a scare.”
The old Emir studies the group. The bearded man glances up. His dishdasha rustles as he pushes back his shoulders. His hands though are turned outward – desperation, pride, an apology.
Trust those with the courage to stand up to you on small matters; they will be with you when hard times come…
Finally, the old Emir nods. “Tmam.”
All look up; one sister laughs with relief. Al-Qattan exhales an “Alhamdullilah,” his features all at once flush with life.
The old Emir hears Shurouq by his side: “We had better go home.”
They follow the barista out through the back exit into an alleyway lined with garbage cans and delivery trucks. The barista locks the door, and the bearded man takes the lead. The alleyway runs parallel to the central square, from where faint sounds reach them. Few people cross their path, once a group of Bangladeshi men heading toward their sleeping quarters, then a couple walking with the haste borne of the illicit nature of their affection.
The old Emir feels his wife’s hand reaching out. He glances over his shoulder. The rest of the group is following at a distance.
“Shlonik?” she asks when their fingers lock. He can tell she is smiling.
“I’m alright,” he grumbles.
They pass along the jewelers’ domain at the easternmost edge of the souq. Many of the shops still have customers, inspecting the displays of gold in all shades wrought into rings, bangles, armlets and finely braided necklaces and wristlets, interwoven with gemstones, pearls and honey-colored amber. No one pays their group any heed as they follow the bearded man to the main road.
A black limousine stands in the bay of a bus stop. Leaning against the hood, a man in military uniform. On seeing them, he spits a piece of gum into a trashcan, then opens the back door of the limousine, salutes and stands to attention.
The bearded man turns.
“Give him the key,” Shurouq says, gripping the top of the car door.
“Right.” The old Emir reaches into his pocket and holds out the key for the pick-up. He points across the street to the sand lot.
“Yes, Your Highness.” The bearded man nods; clearly, he already knows where to look.
As he walks away, his head lowered against the flying dust, the others draw up.
“Thank you. We will talk,” Shurouq says, looking at the old Emir.
“Yes, you will hear from Her Highness and me soon.”
His eyes come to rest on the blue-eyed woman. What is her story? She played her role well. Is she part of the Service? The people working for him – or for Shurouq, rather, it would appear – know their craft. A comprehensive piece of theater they staged for him. He looks at Al-Qattan and after a moment gives the man a nod; Al-Qattan salutes. The old Emir walks around the limousine to where the driver stands by the open door. The old Emir settles into his seat; with a sigh he pulls off his fake beard and pushes it into the seatback pocket in front of him.
The rear doors close; then the driver’s opens and closes.
“I am sorry,” Shurouq says. “I’ve been so worried. I felt I needed to do this.”
The limousine inches its way into the traffic.
“Perhaps it was for the best.”
Perhaps. But none of this can get out. Ever! Another thought is taking shape in the old Emir’s mind as he looks at his wife. A strand of reddish-grey hair has escaped her hijab and curls above her eyebrow. But as he is trying to put his thought into words white light flashes across her face. The limousine tilts as if a giant’s hand is reaching under the chassis, followed by a boom and a silence so complete he hears the rush of blood in his ears. With a crunch, the limousine settles back into the horizontal, and outside a dozen car alarms begin honking.
Shurouq’s irises ringed in white, her face marble, her mouth open as she tries to scream. Her face presses against his shoulder, her fingers digging into his back. His vision blurs and contracts, but then his right hand settles on the nape of her neck, and he presses his lips to the top of her head. He can feel her rich hair through the fabric of her hijab.
After a second or an eternity, he hears the driver stuttering hoarsely from the front of the car, “A b-b-bomb, Y-Your Highness…”
The old Emir looks up. The driver’s face is smeared with blood; something is sticking out of his cheek.
“Your Highness!” he now shouts. “Are you unharmed?!”
The old Emir nods. “Yes…”
“One moment, Your Highness.”
The old Emir hears a creaking noise, and then the door next to him is yanked open. A gust of wind fills the limousine with the smell of charred rubber and plastic and of singed metal. Behind the driver in the sand lot, fire billows from the wreck of the burning pick-up.
***
They walk slowly through the flashing blue lights to one of the police cruisers. His left arm is around Shurouq’s waist; her hand is holding on to his upper arm. The old Emir’s right hand is clenched inside his kaftan pocket. Beyond the police cruiser, he sees Al-Qattan and beside him the blue-eyed woman. They are staring at Shurouq and him; then both tentatively raise a hand. The sisters are sitting on the curbside. One of them appears to be crying; her shoulders are shaking. Her sister is holding her. The old Emir thinks of the bearded man who turned the key in the ignition of the pick-up. He didn’t even know his name. The man must have had family, children. The old Emir looks again at the crying woman on the curb. They would not lack for anything; he makes a mental note to see to this tomorrow. That should have been him in the burning wreckage…
The old Emir inhales as if to give more space to the coil of rage and guilt inside him. The Enemy’s agents can’t be far; they will not get away. The borders will already be closed.
Shurouq stops and looks down. She lifts her foot, and the old Emir sees a dark object the size of a bantam’s egg, though of perfectly spherical shape. He bends in the knees and picks up the dashboard compass. It feels warm to the touch.
Shurouq takes the orb from his fingers and studies it, turning it back and forth. Her hand is still shaking. The plastic surface has cracked into a maze of fissures, but inside the compass still swivels. Finally, she lifts her eyebrows as if mildly surprised at the ways of the world, then drops the compass into the breast pocket of his kaftan. She presses the flat of her hand against his pocket.
Son, a willful wife is good for a man, if he is wise enough to profit from her willfulness.
“Life and the compass,” Shurouq says. “Hang on to it.” After a moment, she adds as if the clarification is needed, “Particularly, the former.”
Image Credit : Photo by Florence Feingold on Unsplash
by 
Martin Rosenstock
Latest posts by Martin Rosenstock (see all)
- The Old Emir - September 12, 2025
A finely crafted and written story. The author knows the landscape, people, and culture of the region. This is the sort of quality fiction that could be published in many magazines, if they were more adventurous. Kudos to Close to the Bone for getting there first. Rosenstock is a writer to watch.