The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(19)
*
Sami Boustani stared at the feast cooling on the kitchen table. Lamb kebabs, both shish and kofte; three types of salads; a rice pilaf; tiny herbed falafel balls; homemade yogurt and mint sauce; and his favorite dish, his sister Leila’s specialty, kubbeh, deep-fried crispy buckwheat, stuffed with minced lamb and pine nuts.
He checked the clock: it was just after eight thirty. By now most of the food should have been eaten, and they should be moving on to dessert, a retreat to the sofa, sliding closer, some gentle kissing, and then, perhaps … he glanced at his bedroom. But the food was still here, untouched. As was he. The kebabs were starting to congeal, the salads were wilting, and the rice was tepid. A bottle of unopened Lebanese rosé wine stood in the ice-bucket. He put his hand inside the container. The ice had melted and the bottle stood in a pool of water.
Sami reached into the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Brooklyn Lager. He wasn’t much of a wine guy anyway. At least he hadn’t opened the bottle. He could keep it in the unlikely event that he ever persuaded another woman to come round for dinner. He took a long swallow of the beer, picked up a kubbeh, and bit off the top half. It tasted dry in his mouth; the buckwheat like sawdust, the meat too rich. He forced himself to swallow it then sat down on the lumpy sofa.
Sami was thirty-five. Almost all of his friends and relatives of his age, both in the United States and in Gaza or Israel, were married with children. He still lived alone in a dark one-bedroom apartment in the basement of a brownstone on East Ninth Street that belonged to his uncle. The orange acrylic carpet was dotted with stains, and the walls, once cream, were now various shades of brown. The pipes banged and rattled, and the hot water in the bathroom spurted brown for at least a minute. There was a damp patch in the center of the lounge wall in the shape of Italy. The ramshackle furniture, including a twin bed, dated from the Reagan era but with no hint of eighties retro-chic. It was just old. Sami had lived there for more than two years but still had not got around to properly unpacking. Whenever he made time to sort out his possessions he ended up changing his mind, telling himself that this was only temporary accommodation. But each time he looked at rental websites he realized that, despite the gloom, at $1,500 a month the apartment was a bargain.
The Boustanis were Christian Palestinians who had emigrated to the United States twenty years ago from Gaza. Sami’s father, Ahmad, had relatives in Manhattan, so the family settled there. Seven years later, Ahmad died of lung cancer after a lifetime of heavy smoking. Maryam, Sami’s mother, had moved to Brooklyn to live with his sister Leila, her husband, and their five children. The pressure was on, if not to match Leila, then to at least enter the race.
Sami could handle pressure. He was a skilled and experienced reporter: nuanced and intuitive, yet dogged and aggressive when necessary. The UN beat demanded a subtle grasp of geopolitics and US policy: he had previously covered Congress, and had been posted to London to cover Parliament. He was now widely acknowledged to be one of the best journalists in the UN building. Navigating the complex world of competing interests with confidence and flair, he produced a stream of scoops for his newspaper and became a confidant of ambassadors and senior State Department officials. His only real rival was Jonathan Beaufort, the veteran correspondent for his newspaper’s almost namesake, the Times of London.
But there was one thing Sami had never mastered: the rules of Manhattan’s ruthless dating scene. The choreography of when to show interest, when to retreat, when to advance, and when to wait for the call—it was beyond him. He had not had a relationship of note since his return from London, although he’d enjoyed a few flings. He was regularly invited for drinks, even dinner, by female UN officials. At first he had accepted readily, then he realized that usually they were not interested in him as a person, only as a means of access to the pages of the world’s most influential newspaper.
Yael was not like that. She didn’t want to talk about the UN at all. Sami could not quite believe that she might be attracted to him. His mother and sister could barely contain their excitement about him having a dinner date at home, and had spent the previous day cooking for him. There was, of course, the considerable issue: he was Palestinian and she was Israeli. Or half Israeli. He had not shared this with his relatives. But he would, he thought, cross that bridge when he came to it.
Sami drank some more beer, put the bottle down on the coffee table, and sat back with his hands behind his head. Now, of course, there was no bridge to cross. He replayed his brief conversation with Yael in his head, her excuse that the secretary-general had called her in to the Secretariat Building for an emergency meeting on the Syria crisis, her apologies, the embarrassed future promises to “get together soon.” It was possible, he supposed, that there was such a meeting. Yet he didn’t believe her. There was something in her voice that made him think she was lying. He sat up straight. And there was an easy way to find out.
His iPhone beeped. An e-mail had arrived. He checked the header: “Story for you” from [email protected]. Sami’s e-mail address was not public, but like that of most reporters it was easy to guess, being a combination of his surname and his news organization. He frequently received e-mails from unknown people promising great revelations that rarely proved newsworthy. He would check it later. But first he would have a quick look at the news channels and see what was happening in the world outside Apartment 1G, 45 East Ninth Street.