They took a taxi to the gold souk, marveling at the sparkling palaces. Bahrain reminded her of Disneyland. Everything was new and white and clean, at least on the boulevards. She could see alleys where things didn’t look quite so bright, where black shapeless women, like clumsily wrapped fruit, toiled along carrying shopping bags or infants. But the taxi sped on, the driver touting this shop and that, handing back cards and brochures, telling them how cheaply they could buy. Gold, perfumes, dresses, rugs, brassware, art.
She slowly became aware thirty dollars wouldn’t go very far. She’d had the rest of it sent home in her allotment. It wasn’t a lot, but now she was in a combat zone it was tax free. The navy made a big deal out of the combat zone exclusion, it was like a fifteen percent pay raise, they told her.
The driver dropped them in a big parking lot surrounded on three sides by buildings and on the fourth by the highway, on the other side of which was the Gulf. Ina led them back between the buildings, most of which seemed to be banks, into shop-lined streets that quickly narrowed until they couldn’t walk abreast. Insurance brokers, barbers, electronics stores, grocers, food booths with meat sizzling on skewers. The ground floors had the kind of pull-down security grating you saw in the States in bad neighborhoods. The air smelled like spices and hot grease and exhaust from the mopeds that kept racketing by.
She slowly realized they were the only women back here. The other pedestrians were all men. Small, fine-boned Arabs in robes who smiled at them as they slipped by. Others, darker, rougher-looking, in work clothes, turned to call out foreign phrases, or sometimes, pieces of movie English. “Wankers,” Ina muttered. Lourdes looked scared. But Ina cruised ahead like a battleship, large and fair and with her big legs unabashedly bare in her shorts, and the men glared at her but edged aside.
They found an enclosed mall that was an Alpine-aired wonderland after the heat and exhaust of the alleys. It was almost like being in a nice mall at home, except the signs were in Arabic and French and Italian as well as English, and now they were surrounded by women. They bargained for perfume and clothes, and had tabbouleh and falafel with flat hot bread and jasmine tea at a noisy crowded restaurant. She fingered ancient jewelry the shopgirl told her was Bedouin. In the dress shops the Arab women laid their dark cloaks aside. Exquisite lovely women, trying on expensive European fashions, they eyed the Americans and slowly turned away. Ina tried on dress after dress. She chattered like a magpie. Lourdes kept complaining how expensive things were. Cobie almost bought an Italian linen outfit but when she went to pay found she’d mixed up dinars with dollars. The price wasn’t thirty dollars, it was almost a hundred. She gave it back reluctantly to the girl, and one of the sleek women said something in Arabic to the others, who giggled. Then smiled sweetly at her, seeing she’d heard them.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” she told Ina.
“Just a minute, I want to check out these scarves.”
“We’ll be outside. Come on, Lourdes.”
When Ina came out, they walked along the waterfront road, looking at the flower stands. They saw another mall, but Cobie said, “I’m sick of shopping. I can’t afford to buy any of this crap anyway.”
“All right, how about dinner?”
They agreed on what they wanted: a nice restaurant where they could listen to music while they ate, where somebody would wait on them. Somehow that last part was important. That they wouldn’t have to stand in line holding fiberglass trays. Just the memory of it made her sick: the grade B meat thick with fat and gristle, the watered-down vegetables cooked to mushiness. Midrats, the leftover meat from lunch or dinner, and hot dogs. Always hot dogs. Then they’d find a nightclub, and have some fun.
The Gulf Gate was on the waterfront, with a pillared entrance, its name over it in blue light in English and Arabic. Mercedes and Rollses and white limousines in front of it. The doormen wore red uniforms and fezzes like in a movie. They hovered outside till they got up enough courage to go in. Then they sailed in together, talking loudly to cover their nervousness. They followed Arabic music into a room decorated like a seraglio. It was called the Scherezade Night Club. “This is it,” Ina said. “There should be some guys from the ship here.”
“Do we
The maitre d’ led them to a table. Ina asked if there’d be a band, and he said it was early; they could sit and have drinks till it started. Ina ordered a Fosters and lime. Lourdes said she’d have that, too. Cobie started to order a daiquiri, then remembered how wrecked she’d gotten on them in Palma. She changed her order to a vodka and orange juice, light on the vodka.
