Finding Nouf Read Online Free

finally, "then there must be other wounds like it on her body."
    Nayir marveled at her audacity and wondered how the examiner could put up with it. He glanced at her nametag again, noticing this time that she was a lab technician, not a medical examiner. What exactly was the difference?
    "It rained a week ago, did it not?" Maamoon asked.
    "Almost two weeks ago," Nayir answered. "The day she disappeared there was rain. How long has she been dead?"
    "It's difficult to say."
    Nayir could feel the woman's gaze on his face, but he kept his attention on Maamoon. "Is it possible to say whether the bump on her head occurred when she was still alive?"
    "Yes," the woman said.
    Nayir waited for an elaboration, but she didn't provide one. A silence ensued, and Miss Hijazi gently moved the sheet from Nouf's arms. When she turned her attention to a series of bruises on Nouf's wrists and hands, Nayir allowed himself to watch. She swabbed one of the lesions. "Looks like sand," she said. "There's something beneath her fingernails too. These look like defensive wounds."
    "No, no, no," Maamoon clucked, pushing her aside and pointing to one of Nouf's wrists. "Those marks are from a camel's reins. Don't you see the pattern?"
    Nayir studied the wounds more closely. They weren't uniform, and Nouf had scratches on her fingertips as well. "They look like defensive wounds to me."
    Maamoon grew stern. "I said they're from leather straps."
    Miss Hijazi placed a swab in a glass tube and set it gently on the counter. Turning back to the body, she paused for a moment and then gingerly lifted the edge of the gray sheet that covered Nouf's legs. She held it in the air and studied the body for a long time. Nayir watched her eyes move over it, as carefully and sensitively as her hands, and it surprised him to see that she was touched by this death. There was a sadness in her eyes that spoke of personal loss, and he wondered if she had known the family and if she was the one who had informed them.
    Finally she laid down the sheet. When she spoke, her voice was questioning, reluctant, a sharp contrast to her words. "I see no evidence that she touched a camel. No hairs on the body, no abrasions on her thighs." Maamoon tried to interrupt her, but she continued. "I don't have much experience estimating time of death, but I'd guess she's been dead at least a week."
    "Of course!" Maamoon snapped. "Considering how often it rains in the desert, I'd say she died when it rained. Here's what happened. The wadis filled up, she was crossing the desert through one of those wadis, and
shack!
it started to rain. She tried to swim, but a flash flood carried her away. She banged her head; she hurt her wrists.
Yanni,
she drowned."
    Nayir studied the examiner. "But she had a camel."
    "So what?" he cried. "Camels can't swim!"
    Which was completely untrue. Gorillas were the only animals incapable of swimming. Camels, despite infrequent contact with water, happened to excel at the sport. Nayir had seen it himself at the Dromedary Rehabilitation Center in Dubai, where the therapists encouraged their patients into pools to heal broken bones and soothe arthritic joints. Once in the water, the camels frolicked like children and even grew angry when the sessions ended.
Why,
they seemed to ask,
did Allah craft our bodies to live out of water?
    "Camels swim," he said. "And the camel would have saved her life." Nayir fumbled in his pocket for another miswak and stuffed it into his mouth, grateful for the spicy taste, which took away some of the odor of death. He chewed for a while and circled the table. Nouf's right hand stuck out from under the sheet. The wrist was splattered with brownish mud. It seemed to have been baked into her skin by the heat. "What is this?" he asked.
    "It looks like mud," Miss Hijazi said. She scraped samples of the skin into a jar.
    Maamoon snatched the jar. "She
drowned,
my friends. Mr. Sharqi, are you convinced that it's her?"
    Nayir stopped chewing. "Yes, it's