The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (Part 44)

CHAPTER 44:

”TRA LA LA, TWEEDLE DEE,

DEE DEE”

It was getting close to daylight when ten-year-old Bernard Piffy, the Ka’b created version of the famous private detective, led the donkey through the gates of the Osama bin Laden Madrassas for Girls. It was a fool’s errand. He would have had a better chance of breaking the Birdman out of Alcatraz or Tom Paine out of the Bastille or Sara Palin out of a Keith Olbermann diatribe.

Who had thought up this crazy plan? He needed more boots on the ground. A donkey, a dog and a Saudi Prince stuffed in an empty 50-gallon jar of cooking oil wasn’t a rescue mission it was a Little Rascal’s Fourth of July parade. Sure, puppy dog had a big edge over Rooster Cogburn’s cat and a bigger one over Baretta’s cockatiel but after all was said and done he was still a dog.

He must have been insane to think he could rescue Aisha—his darling little Aisha—from a fate worse than death with what amounted to a donkey, a dog and a dork. It had been an absurd plan to begin with. It would never work. And the more he thought about it the more convinced he was it wouldn’t. Who had talked him into this incredible nonsense—George Costanza?

He would have to look on positive side if he wanted to survive the next few hours. There were a few things that would work to his advantage: he had memorized the Madrassas floor plan and he knew exactly what he wanted to do and where to go. Of course, he was well over an hour behind schedule and even an ant couldn’t move a rubber tree plant with an elephant sitting on it.

And it wouldn’t have hurt if he had brought along a weapon of some kind. Maybe he should have kept St. Anthony’s aspergillum. Perhaps he could have borrowed Wheatley W. Wheatley’s one-hundred-percent mujahideen-pizzle whip. As it was he couldn’t help but feel naked. He would have to rely on his wits and that would be a gamble.

He was surprised to find no one at the gate. He led the donkey to the cook shack. So far, as impossible as it seemed, everything was going according to plan.

A man came out of the building. He was large, gruff and baldheaded. “It’s about time you got here,” he grumbled. He looked the kid up and down suspiciously. “Where’s Duldul?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” mumbled Piffy. “I was given ten dinars to deliver the cooking oil. I don’t ask questions.”

“Well, give me a hand,” grumbled the cook.

They un-strapped the 50-gallon jars from the donkey’s back and rolled them into the storeroom. The cook never stopped grumbling—Duldul had promised him something extra and now he was not here and one of the jars seemed a little light. Was he being short-changed by any chance?

Piffy didn’t say anything. He helped the cook strap two empty 50-gallon jars to the donkey’s back and that was it.

As soon as the door to the cook shack closed behind the disgruntled cook, Piffy led the donkey toward the gate but he took his time and once he was sure nobody was watching he slipped around a corner and ground hitched the animal to a shrub in an interstice alongside a no-longer used classroom.

He picked up puppy dog’s cage, drew an imaginary line from the entrance gate to the cook shack, turned 25 degrees to the left, gazed into the immensity of the universe, found Sagittarius and then the Milky Way. Okay, he knew where he was. It was better than dead reckoning. Grandpa Piffy had taught him how to navigate by the stars. Columbus would have approved of what he had just done.

Now if he could avoid the Sargasso Sea…

According to Wheatley’s information Aisha’s room was in the East Wing of the Harem. Yeah, the Harem! They didn’t call it a Harem but that’s what it was. He could get killed if he was caught in there. This is where the late start could rise up and bite him. He had no idea of who might be about at this time—a protector of virtue, a preventer of vice, a janitor, an early riser, a sleepwalker. But he had his souvenir Shell Scott Tenth Anniversary Lock Pick and Skeleton Key ring in his pocket and he could get in anywhere he wanted if he had to. He would trust to luck.

He slipped through the Madrassas without encountering a soul and was soon inside the girl’s dormitory. He turned on his pencil flashlight. Aisha was in Room 16. It would be a snap! And then came the first snafu and it was a big on! Wheatley W. Wheatley had screwed up! There was no Room 16! That’s right—there was no Room 16!

Oh, there were a plenty of rooms and all of them had numbers but the numbers were in Eastern Arabic! Something curdled in his stomach! He would have been better off trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls! There were things that looked like ones and there were r’s and v’s and upside down v’s and a backward 7 but there wasn’t anything that looked remotely like a 6! How in the hell was he supposed to find Aisha’s room if there were no 6s?

He checked door after door. Maybe he should go back to the beginning and start all over again. But by now he wasn’t sure where he was. A few more minutes of stumbling around and he would be hopelessly lost. Maybe he could ask someone for directions. Sure, the Imam in charge of eternal doom…

So what the hell was he supposed to do? He had fumbled the opening kickoff and now it was the last play of the game and he was on the one-yard line with 99 yards to go! He would have to throw a Hail Mary and the only thing he had for pass protection was a dog in a birdcage

He swallowed. He took a deep breath and he began to sing—softly, ever so softly...

“When the sun in the morning peeps over the hill, And kisses the roses round my window sill, then my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill…”

He wasn’t Caruso…maybe Moms Mabley.

“Shut up, Aisha!” someone shouted from behind a closed door.

“Tra la la, tweedle dee, dee dee,” he finished lamely.

He moved stealthily down the corridor and tried again.

“Got a three-cornered plow and a acre to till…”

“Tra la la, tweedle dee, dee dee,” a faint voice came from nearby.

“Aisha?” he whispered. His hair was standing on end.

“Bernie?” she said.

A door opened. It was Aisha! He stepped inside and the door closed behind him. She gave him a big hug.

“Oh, you brought puppy dog!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah,” he said. He set the cage with its dozing dog on a chair.

They were not alone. There was another girl in the room. It was Fatima. He recognized her from his previous visit to the Madrassas. She was wearing a Hamas Mouse nightgown and was staring at him as if he were Jack the Ripper’s kid brother.

“What’s she doing here?” he asked.

“It’s Fatima,” said Aisha.

“I know its Fatima,” said Piffy. “What’s she doing here?”

“She hiding from Jamaluddin,” said Aisha.

“Jamaluddin?” said Piffy.

Fatima nodded dumbly.

“He’s the janitor,” explained Aisha. “He’s always after her—sometimes he comes looking for her at night.”

“Jamaluddin?” repeated Piffy. The big lout janitor with the heart of gold and the Sufi flea in his beard…he knew who Jamaluddin was.

Again Fatima nodded dumbly, her eyes wide, her mouth open.

“Well, tell her I won’t hurt her,” he said. “I’m not an ogre and I’ve never cleaned a toilet in my life.”

“She’s afraid of him,” explained Aisha.

“Why,” said Piffy. It was a reasonable question.

“He’s changed,” said Aisha. “He used to be such a nice person. He was kind and respectful and very generous. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for us girls. He even got in trouble with the Imam for sneaking in special treats for Fatima.”

“That sounds like Jamaluddin,” said Piffy.

“But then he disappeared one night,” said Aisha, “and when he came back he was changed. He’s always angry now. Instead of being helpful and nice he is just the opposite. He grabs us and pinches us every chance he gets. He grabs us where we shouldn’t be grabbed. When we complain, he laughs. He says Allah has made the enjoyment of our bodies lawful in the Qur’an and he says he intends to enjoy ours.”

Piffy’s mind flashed back to the night in Yasser Arafat’s Fuhrerbunker. Jamaluddin…Janitor Jamaluddin…the hick from the sticks with the flea in his beard…big and none too bright. The last time he had seen him he had been in a towering rage, ripping legs from tables and smashing Communist revolutionaries over the head and thirsting for the blood of a private detective near and dear to the ten-year-olds heart.

“He’s become a monster,” said Aisha. “He terrifies us! He says we curse too much and are ungrateful to men.”

“Well, you can forget about him,” said Piffy. “I’m getting you out of here tonight—right now—this instant. So grab what clothes you’ll need. I’ve got a donkey double-parked by the old vacant classroom.”

“Can we take Fatima?” Aisha asked eagerly.

“Fatima?” groaned Piffy. Oh, no—not another complication!

“We can’t leave her!” begged Aisha.

Piffy wanted to cry! But what a beautiful little girl, his darling Aisha! With a chance to escape, to put the horrors of the Madrassas behind her, she was thinking about her precious little friend! What selflessness! His heart went out to her. Oh, how the middle-aged mind in the ten-year-old body had the hots for this little girl!

By now Fatima was over her fright. She was staring at Piffy. She had large melancholy eyes; the kind one saw at the dog pound on the day they gassed creatures large and small. It was heartbreaking.

“Oh, God!” he said.

“Will you take me?” she begged.

“Well, I guess,” he said. “I’ve got two 50-gallon jars and there’s no doubt you will fit—but we’ll have to hurry.”

That was the key word—hurry. They would have to hurry—before Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin, before Bernard Piffy’s donkey turned into an episode from Seinfeld

But before either of the girls could gather up so much as a single article of clothing a sound came from the corridor that caused the hair on Piffy’s head to stand on end and his stomach to curl into a gigantic Charlie Brown knot. Igor had thrown the switch at Castle Frankenstein!

It was the Muslim call to prayer! He had heard it before but had never understood the words and he didn’t now but it scarcely mattered. What rotten luck! If he had started on time…if he hadn’t been delayed…

“Allahu akbar!” the muezzin chanted, the words exploding in the small room like shells fired from an atomic cannon.

“Hayya ‘ala-salah. Al-salatu khayru min an-aawn. Allahu akbar!”

The call was repeated two times and then the voice fell silent.

Piffy let his breath out slowly. “What in the hell was that?” he asked even though he damn well knew what it was.

“It’s the call to prayers,” said Aisha. “We must hurry.” She threw a burka over her nightgown and grabbed up her prayer rug.

“Of all the damn stinking luck,” muttered Piffy. And it was only the beginning.

Aisha took her little friend by the hand. “Come, Fatima,” she said. “You must be brave. When we come back from prayers, Bernie will get us out of here.”

Prayers? They were going to prayers?

And just like that they were gone and Piffy was alone in the tiny room!

It was inconceivable! They had heard the call to prayer and they had dropped everything! Oh, sure, they would be back but by then it would be broad daylight and the chances of sneaking a couple of ten-year-old girls out of the Madrassas in 50-gallon jars without being seen by half the Mujahideen in Gaza would be less than chugalugging a can of Drano without getting a sore throat. He was devastated!

This couldn’t be happening to him. Maybe he didn’t understand Islam—the 1,400 years of brainwashing. It didn’t seem possible that a few words chanted in a deserted hall by a muezzin could drive the instinct for self-preservation from the mind of a healthy ten-year-old! It was like a man dying of cancer reaching for a pack of cigarettes. A trained dog could more easily ignore his master’s whistle than a Muslim could ignore the call to prayer. What the hell was he to do?

There was a momentary commotion in the corridor and then came an eerie silence. He opened the door a crack to peek out into the hall.

Someone was coming! In the split-second before he shut the door, he recognized the man. It was Jamaluddin, the janitor with the newfound penchant for grabbing little girls in soft places—the mastodon that had once had a flea in his beard. What if he was headed for Aisha’s room? It could be. He might be after Fatima!

The ten-year-old couldn’t afford to take any chances. But it was too late to beat it down the hall. He was trapped in Aisha’s room and there was no place to hide but the closet.

Okay, he would hide in the closet! It was larger than a 50-gallon jar of cooking oil. He would curl into a little ball. No one would look in there and if they did he would be lying on the floor covered with lion skins or pantyhose or something.

He slipped into the closet. He left the door slightly ajar so he could peek into the bedroom. He held his breath. He would count to sixty and if nobody came through the door he would come out.

One…two. The door to the corridor opened before he got to ten.

It was Jamaluddin—the former Sufi flea carrier. He looked a lot bigger than Piffy remembered. He was huge—gargantuan. He moved slowly into the room. He looked cautiously from side to side, frowned; scratched his head. He crossed the room to Aisha’s dresser and began opening the drawers. He pawed through her clothes, holding some of them up to his face before tossing them across the bed.

Then he looked toward the closet. He must have caught a flicker of movement. He turned slowly. There was a smile on his face.

By now Piffy’s stomach had crawled into his throat! Dracula had risen from the dead!

Jamaluddin took one step toward the closet, then another. The smile had turned into a satanic grin. “Ah-ha!” he chortled “Hiding in the closet, ‘ey? Thought I wouldn’t find you, ‘ey?”

Piffy’s knees were beginning to buckle. He was trapped! The only thing he could do was come out of the closet! Damn! He was worse off than Fay Wray on the Empire State Building! At least she could have jumped. He couldn’t even do that! He was petrified…

“Come to Jamaluddin, little Fatima—come to Uncle Jamaluddin,” cooed the janitor.

The ten-year-olds heart skipped a beat. “I’m not Fatima,” he croaked.

Jamaluddin didn’t hear. He was busy talking: “The Qur’an says ‘you may have whomsoever you desire; there is no blame on you if you invite one who you had set aside. It is no sin.’ And I have set you aside.”

Then, suddenly, he reached into the closet and grabbed Piffy by the wrist!

There would be no blame and there would be no sinner…but there would be a victim…