Private Paris (Private 10)

18th Arrondissement

Noon

HAJA HAMID EXITED the women’s toilet and went to the fountain in the lobby of the mosque. She performed the ritual of ablution—washing her hands and feet—with practiced ease. When she stepped into the women’s prayer hall, there were already fifty or sixty women inside. Like Haja, they all wore brown or black robes and matching scarves. Some, like Haja, also wore veils.

She knelt at the back, listening to the clicking of worry beads and the voices murmuring surrender to Allah. The sounds brought back so many memories that she was filled once again with strength and resolve.

Facing east, Haja started the physical motions of Islamic prayer, bowing to put her forehead flat on the carpet and then rising with a stiff posture. She wasn’t silently reciting lines from the Koran, however. Her lips curled around vows she’d made long ago.

She waited until Imam Ibrahim Al-Moustapha went to the front of the prayer hall to lead the service. The second his back was turned, Haja got up and returned to the anteroom, searching for her sandals amid all the other shoes.

The imam began his talk just as she snatched up her sandals and went out the door, into the street. Head down, Haja kicked into the sandals and moved past three men trying to paint over the AB-16 tag on the mosque’s outer wall.

Satisfied that the bloodred tag was still bleeding through, she walked by a man sweeping the sidewalk in front of FEZ Couriers, a messenger service next door to the mosque, and then a tailor shop that sold robes.

“Ay, pétasse!”

The call—“Hey, bitch!”—came from the other side of the street.

Haja glanced left and saw him: late teens, pale skin, and brown curly hair. Carrying a camera slung across his chest, he was pointing at her in a rage.

“Can’t wear the veil in public, Muslim bitch!” he yelled.

Haja tore down the veil, turned her head from him, and broke into a trot. When she glanced again, he was angling across the street at her.

That kicked her into an all-out sprint down the sidewalk toward an old green Peugeot sedan. She got there half a block ahead of her pursuer, jumped in the backseat, and said, “Get us out of here. Now.”

Epée already had the Peugeot running. He threw it in gear and squealed out, heading back toward the mosque. The teen stepped from between two cars, trying to aim his camera.

Haja pulled up the veil. In the front passenger seat, Mfune, who was dressed in the green jumpsuit of a Paris sanitation worker, turned his head. Epée jerked the wheel toward the kid as if to run him down.

The photographer jumped back between the parked cars and they were past him.

“What was that all about?” Epée asked.

“My fault,” she said. “When I came out of the mosque, I still had the veil up and he started

shouting at me that I was a Muslim bitch.”

“Why the camera?” Epée demanded, turning off the boulevard heading toward the train tracks.

“I have no idea,” she said, taking deeper and slower breaths. “None.”

“Did you get the job done?” Mfune asked.

The tension fell from Haja’s shoulders. She wiped at the sweat on her brow, saying, “Just as we planned. You?”

The captain held up a green translucent plastic bag filled with trash and said, “What do you think?”

Chapter 21

WE LEFT EVANGELINE Soleil’s flat, having received permission from Valerie Richard to search her home. She’d offered to take us there straightaway, but Louis said he wanted to go take a look at her husband’s opera-writing hideaway first.

The Uber car was waiting, and Louis gave the driver the address.

“So is that the norm in Paris?” I asked. “To have a mistress and a wife who are friends?”

“No,” Louis said. “And even to have a mistress now, it is not so common among men younger than fifty.”