I hated the smell of Rashid’s cigarettes. He always lit up in my car, a beat- up Mitsubishi Lancer with just enough space to breathe. I hated the smell of his cigarettes, but I always took one when he offered. It was the ability to please that you learned as a spy: smoking a cigarette, offering compliments you didn’t mean, falling down drunk from having accepted too many vodkas.
His cigarettes were Canary Kingdom, a cheap Middle East brand that claimed to import its tobacco from Virginia. Virginia: That’s where CIA Headquarters is, I would inform Rashid casually. Link his source of plea- sure to his source of risk, another trick of the manipulation trade. I’d offered to get him real American cigarettes with my ration cards on the naval base, but he’d refused, said he liked his native carcinogens. Anyway, he in- sisted on green apple, a flavor I’d never find in any of Uncle Sam’s packs. It was my misfortune that cigarettes were Rashid’s only vice; he was too pious to drink and I was never able to expense alcohol during our meetings.
Green apple had begun to mix with the odor from a nearby dumpster and our stationary car smelled like a rotting orchard. “We will not negotiate until they release Junaid,” Rashid was saying, shaking his head and looking out the window. The slums stared back at us, brown and uneven and stunted, as though they’d grown tired over the years, further from notions of a legitimate city. Late afternoon sun turned the car windows, caked with dust, to tarnished copper. I’d convinced myself that the car didn’t need a washing, that the dirt helped hide my informants.
Rashid’s eyes narrowed, his black pupils reflecting the dying rays of sun like rusty steel blades. He was getting self-righteous and indignant as he always did when talking about Junaid, the dissident poet who’d been rot- ting in a Bahrain jail since the early days of the uprising.
“Someday the king will answer to Allah for what he has done!” Spittle flew through Rashid’s crooked brown teeth. His youngish skin was dark and pockmarked, his curly hair greasy, undoubtedly styled with the cheap gel sold at every corner cold store. He looked leaner than usual—maybe the lingering effects of fasting for Ramadan—the concavity of his chest visible beneath his thin shirt. I never allowed him to wear his preferred white thobe when he met me—too conspicuous.
“If not to Allah, at least Al-Hakim will answer to the international com- munity.” I smiled.
Rashid’s face turned conciliatory. “I forget you Americans do not believe in Allah. Yes, even the international community has condemned the meritless detention of Junaid.” His English was perfect, the product of four years at Oxford—or was it Cambridge? I could never remember.
“And Junaid is not the only unjust detention,” he continued. “Four doc- tors imprisoned last week for treating protesters. Simply providing medical care. Following Hippocrates—”
“Yeah, I heard about it.”
“Your country’s arms embargo is the only thing that keeps us alive.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Rashid took a drag, blew a cloud of smoke into my face. “Anyway . . .
you understand our position.”
I opened the window a crack, threw out my cigarette, returned the pen
flashlight to my mouth. “So what about Fourteen February? What’s your plan? Continue the war?”
“Yes.” Rashid tapped my notebook with his knobby finger. “Write that down. Inshallah, we will continue the struggle.”
I. S. Berry spent six years as an operations officer for the CIA and has lived and worked
in Europe and the Middle East, including two years in Bahrain during the Arab Spring.
She has a degree in Law from the University of Virginia, and is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, International Association of Crime Writers, and the Association of Former Intelligence Workers.
The Peacock and The Sparrow was her debut novel, published in 2023.
Berry currently lives in Virginia with her husband and son.
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