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“Any idea how we’d find her?” Louis asked.
Farad stayed quiet and scratched at his chin while my thoughts tracked to the hijab and veil, and I thumbed through the pictures I’d taken of them on my phone.
When I found what I was looking for, I sent it to Louis’s e-mail address and said, “Pull this picture up when you get it on e-mail, and blow it up on the screen.”
The file went through almost immediately, and quickly Louis had the picture up on his screen, where we could all see it well. The hijab and veil were turned inside out, exposing labels in Arabic.
“What’s that say?” I asked Farad.
The investigator scooted forward, studied the image, and said, “Al-Jumaa Custom Tailor and Embroidery. I know this place. It’s around the corner from my mosque.”
Chapter 33
18th Arrondissement
12:35 p.m.
HAJA HAMID SLIPPED in among the other women retrieving their shoes and sandals. She fell in behind three women leaving the mosque, and followed their lead, removing her veil before she passed through the door. She wanted none of the attention she’d received the day before.
But when she stepped down onto the sidewalk, she noticed that same young man—he couldn’t have been more than seventeen—standing across the street, holding his camera. He spotted her, came her way. She tried to duck behind some other women, but he was relentless and came right up beside her.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
Haja said nothing, increased her pace.
“Please. My name is Alain Du Champs, and I am doing a project where I am taking pictures of Muslim women without their veil on, showing the world what it and they have been missing. Can I take your picture, please?”
“No. Never,” she said, and hurried on.
Hurrying up beside her, the photographer began to sing to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.”
“Wake up, Fatima, don’t let me wait. You Muslim girls start much too late. Aw, but sooner or later it comes down to fate. I might as well be the one!”
Haja picked up her pace, trying to get away, but he kept after her, still singing. Three men were coming at her down the sidewalk: an older one with longish iron-gray hair, smoking a cigarette; a younger, athletic, blond, hazel-eyed guy; and an even younger Arab man wearing a black leather jacket and jeans.
Something about the trio triggered fear in Haja. For a moment she thought they were police. But then they stood aside. The Arab guy said, “Accept my apologies, mademoiselle. Not all Frenchmen are assholes like the kid with the camera and the voice of an ass.”
Haja smiled, nodded at the men uncertainly, and then hurried on toward Epée and the car.
Chapter 34
WE WATCHED HER hurry away with her head down. The kid who’d been singing to her held tight to his camera as he tried to get around us.
Ali Fa
rad stopped him and said, “That’s enough. Leave her alone.”
The photographer scowled and said, “Makmood, in case you hadn’t noticed, France is still a free country. We don’t do Sharia law here.”
“It is a free country, and she has the right not to be harassed.”
“You a cop?”
“No.”
“Then fuck yourself, and eat pork while you’re doing it,” the kid said. But he did not pursue the woman, instead crossing the street and walking away from us.
“He was right about something,” Louis said when we moved on.
