2.1 ~ Nadia: One.

 

I was woken by the noise from the TV screen above my cell door. It had come to life and showed a digital clock which read 9:55. The cell was gloomy because the single light, beneath a glass dome, only glowed with a soft light. I wondered if there were hidden cameras within it. If there were, whoever was watching the monitors was getting an eyeful of my sex because the tunic had ridden up during the night.

The authorities had a reputation for being tough in the UAE, so it was possible I was being spied on. It was the belt and cuffs that shocked me more than anything. I was a woman who hadn't been charged with anything, so I wondered how they treated those who were convicted of crimes.

Having my wrists cuffed to a padlocked belt was bizarre, but I slept like a log, on my back and felt refreshed. As I lay there pondering my situation, I felt angry at the way I had been treated. I clung on to the hope that the officer had got the time of the report wrong and that the Prince or Javid Fadel would come forward to explain what happened.

I needed the loo, so I swung my legs around and went to do my toilet. I noticed an extractor fan immediately came on when I sat down on the seat. There was a foot pedal for douching, so I couldn't complain about that aspect of my incarceration. There was also a polished square of stainless steel fastened to the wall above the sink, but my reflexion depressed me deeply.

I returned to the hard bed and had just found a comfortable position when I heard a key in the lock. It was a different female officer. She was wearing a similar dark green abaya and hijab; and was carrying a wand to ensure compliance.

"My name is officer Hamdi. Get up and stand to attention." Her tone was much more militaristic than the previous guard.

She stood watching my legs, knowing I couldn't avoid flashing my pussy as I swung them around. As soon as I was standing, she unlocked the padlock on the belt and released the cuffs. She laid the items on the bed, then strode to the end of the cell and collected my day clothes from the shelf.

She went to the door and waved me out. "Come on..."

"Where are you taking me, Ma'am?" I asked as I passed her.

"To have a shower." She pointed at a door.

The door, just a few feet away, at the end of the corridor, was ajar. I pushed it open and entered the windowless room. There were six showerheads along one wall and a bench along the adjacent wall where piles of clean towels had been placed. A washing machine, a tumble drier and two huge laundry baskets were lined up along a third.

The woman, who had just placed my clothes on the bench, pointed at the basket beside the washing machine. "Put your tunic in that basket, then shower."

The woman didn't take her eyes off me while I showered, dried my body and dressed in the long garb and headscarf. Hurrying me along, the officer led the way to the barred door and out into the reception area, then through another barred security door into a small canteen. It was empty apart from the woman organizing the food behind the counter.

After sitting down to eat my food at one of the metal bench tables, I saw more evidence of restraints and subjugation. Four open metal cuffs were hanging from bars along the edge of each table. However, the guard didn't make a move to snap one on my wrist while I ate my scrambled egg and toast. I guessed that they were used to keep prisoners from fighting one another.

I got the sense that I was being isolated from the world. I hadn't seen another prisoner since I was brought into the police station. It was late in the night so I was having to have a late breakfast, but I was desperate to talk to a someone, preferably a solicitor who could advise me of my rights.

That was about to happen, but first the guard took me back to the reception desk. "This is Miss Kateb, Ma'am."

The officer consulted her screen. "She's to be taken to interview room five."

"Is my solicitor going to be there, Ma'am?" I asked.

The officer frowned at me. "You will have thirty minutes with a solicitor. The interview with the officer in charge will begin soon afterwards."

At least I was going to be able to speak to someone. Being isolated from my friends and work colleagues was driving me nuts. The officer took me up three floors and led me down a corridor where I saw the first signs of life.

I didn't like the way the garb I was wearing covered my entire body apart from my face. Often, when I wore an Abaya and headscarf around Dubai, I felt like I had lost my identity and become a nobody. I had that feeling on the journey to the interview room.

There were uniformed and plainclothes police officers on the move, along the corridor and entering offices, but none of them took a blind bit of notice of a woman officer leading a woman prisoner to an interview room. When we entered the small room, I got my first sight of the outside world at 11:00 AM. It was just a panorama of tinted-glass clad skyscrapers, but it beat being isolated in a windowless cell.

Depressingly, there was two handcuffs hanging from a metal rail, running along the front of the desk. As soon as the woman had steered me into a chrome tubular chair, she tapped the surface of the desk.

"Miss Kateb, place your hands on the front of the desk." As soon as I had followed her instruction, she closed the cuffs on my wrist.

"Do you cuff everyone that you bring in for questioning?" I asked the officer.

"You are under arrest, Miss and have been classified as unstable."

"Unstable!" I exclaimed and rattled the cuffs by lifting my hands. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard."

"Calm down, Miss. I don't make those judgements..." She fetched a tablet computer and placed it in front of me. "While you type your statement in the presence of your solicitor, the officer in charge of your case will be reading what you write. We use this system to stop any chance of your statement being coerced by an officer. Then, he will join you and go through your statement. Once you sign it, the officer will then charge you with whatever offences he thinks you've committed."

Moments later a young man, dressed in a grey suit entered the room. "Thank you, Officer," He said holding the door open.

As soon as the woman left the room, the young man closed the door and walked around to the seat on the other side of the desk. Immaculately turned out in a tailored suit, the swarthy young man was younger than I hoped for. As he seated himself, he placed his briefcase on the desk and took out a file. Only then did he acknowledge my presence.

"Miss Kateb, I'm a solicitor and my name is Emad Marwan. I'm the public defender assigned to your case."

"My first name is Nadia, Sir."

"Yes. Okay, Nadia. Tell me about the car."

"Sir, I didn't steal the Ferrari. Sheik Emad Al Ruktum let me drive it. I admit the drink driving offence, but I didn't steal the car."

He stared at me with a look of concern on his face. "Nadia the car belongs to Sheik Badawi. He has identified you as a person in the vicinity of a room where his coat was hanging. He was attending a buffet dinner at the Sapphire Tower last night. It's as plain as the nose on my face that you took the keys and drove his car away..."

"That's not true," I exclaimed. "They're making it look like I stole it, but I didn't..."

"Nadia, if you persist with a fairy-tale involving Prince Emad, the court is going to commit you to a mental institution. For god's sake, think of yourself and your friend."

"My friend? Who are you talking about?"

He frowned. "Rimsha Yousuf of course. She's a sensible girl. She has come clean and admitted her part in the theft."

"Her Part? NO!" I jumped to my feet. "Rimsha has nothing to do with stealing the car!"

The door opened and a male officer entered behind me, "Sit down, Miss," he said in my ear.

I slowly sunk into the chair.

"Thank you, officer. I think Miss Kateb has calmed down now."

I waited until the door was closed and clenched my fists to get a grip. "I repeat, Sir, my friend Rimsha isn't involved in the theft of the Ferrari."

"Nadia, Lieutenant Zahir let me see the statement that your friend's solicitor has submitted to the prosecutor."

"Is she here?"

"Yes, she is, but I don't know where."

"Please, you have to do something to help her. She's completely innocent."

"And, you're guilty?"

"I didn't say that. I'm saying that she's innocent."

"It's touching that you're worried about your friend and I know why. I'm sorry, Nadia, but I'm going to have to put it in a nutshell for you. All the evidence and your friend's statement are enough to convict you, no matter what you say. You two found out that there was a party in a conference room at the Sapphire Tower, so you jumped in a taxi and had the driver drop you off in the basement where you spotted the Ferrari."

He paused to let that sink in. Rimsha had been dragged into the shitstorm because she was my flatmate and because I had left several stupid pictures on my phone. Hegazi Engineering had a stand at an engineering exhibition in the Lux hotel. Rimsha and I manned the stand for three days and were given a room because of the long hours. The room was opulent, so we made the most of living in luxury, in more ways than one.

"That part is true," I admitted, even though it was half-truth and half lie. She was lying to protect the company and in particular Abdul and Asif. I could go along with that. They had nothing to do with what was happening to me or Rimsha.

"Your friend admits that you fantasized about driving the car away when you arrived." I remained quiet. "In the party, you both danced, consumed plenty of alcohol and later had sex with strangers in various locations in the building. You met up and you asked her to keep watch while you stole the key. You then drove off together in the car."

"That is so not true," I said miserably.

"Nadia, I've seen the evidence. The photos that she took of you on the hood of the car. Let me tell you, those pictures are damning. All the charges against you are encapsulated in those pictures."

I was horrified just thinking about the young man examining a picture of me spreadeagled on the Ferrari's hood. Describing it as indecent was the understatement of the year.

I saw a hole in the prosecution case. "How did Rimsha get home?"

"You dropped her off at the flat you both use to entertain men. Then you went for one last drive, but you were caught red-handed."

"Flat we use to entertain men? Are you talking about where we live together?"

"No, the one the police describe as a brothel. When they burst in, Rimsha was found bound and gagged. She must have upset her late-night customer."

"There's no way that Rimsha implicated me in running a brothel."

"No, but the evidence supports it. Your bag was stuffed with thousands of Diram and the doctor estimates that you had sex with at least three men. Rimsha admits to two men on the night and that she has a string of regular customers."

Rimsha a prostitute? Bound and gagged in a brothel? I couldn't believe my ears. The teenager was a bright kid even without a university education and very popular with the men... Was it really possible that she had 'a string of regular customers'? I put my head in my hands and tried to make some sense of what I was hearing. One thing was certain, I had to change the story that the Prince gave me permission to drive the car.

Somehow the Prince and his henchmen were building a watertight case against us both. Rimsha was very impressionable and had a lot of boyfriends. If she was a prostitute, the police may have put pressure on her to say she helped me steal the car, as a way of avoiding prosecution. They also had indecency and attending an illegal party charges they could bring against her.

In a nutshell, my goose was not only cooked it was burnt and about to be thrown in the trashcan!