The Search for Yaser Abdel Said (part 13)

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The transformation couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds. He didn’t know what he had been afraid of. He didn’t feel any different than he had before. He was still Bernard Piffy, the same old insouciant unflappable world-renowned private eye on the trail of Yaser Abdel Said—at least that is what they thought at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and that would have to do. He glanced at Asma bint Marwan. She seemed a lot taller than she had before—more formidable.

“It didn’t work,” he said.

Bint Marwan smiled. “Take a look in the mirror,” she said.

Piffy glanced at the mirror over the bureau. Jumping Jehosaphat! His mouth sagged in amazement! He would have fallen if she hadn’t caught him by the elbow! She steadied him as he gaped at the mirror. “That thing—that thing in the mirror—“ he croaked, “that’s me?”

Oh, it was him all right .It was Bernard Piffy but not the Bernard Piffy he had grown comfortable with the past thirty-forty years. He swallowed. He had forgotten how much he had looked like Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer of The Little Rascals. Not a bad looking kid, but he was so small, so little, so tiny. He felt vulnerable. It was hard to believe he had ever been so young. It was scary! He looked like a kid dressed in his dad’s clothes. But it couldn’t be! He clumped across the room in shoes several sizes too large for his feet. He wanted to say, “This is another fine mess you have gotten me into,” but he was afraid she might turn him into Stanley Laurel.

He looked at his feet, glanced at the mirror. “Okay,” he muttered. “What do we do now?”

“We sign you up for Ahmed’s Madrassas School,” she said, “and you steal the secret code that controls the King Flea.”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” he said.

She smiled sweetly. “And then we find out where Yaser Abdel Said is hiding and you take him back to America,” she said.

No! No! That was too easy. It would never happen that way. The whole idea was absurd! It was insane! He looked at the scrawny arms and legs buried under the folds of his famed alter ego’s clothes and winced. For crying out loud, they were the arms and legs of a ten-year-old! He would be at the mercy of every undernourished teenage girl in London let alone someone like Yaser Abdel Said!

He swallowed. “I can’t go like this,” he said. He was searching for an excuse—any excuse. If he had had cold feet before he was now walking about on blocks of ice.

“Don’t worry,” said bint Marwan. “I’ve taken care of all that.”

She produced a valise. Piffy watched in dismay as she opened the valise, dumped its contents on the bed and begin sorting through them. They were clothes—boy’s clothes. “You can change in the closet if you want,” she said.

He scowled, took the clothes she offered him and headed for the closet. Ten-year-old boys didn’t undress in front of strange ladies and if bint Marwan wasn’t a strange lady he had never seen one. The clothes were a perfect fit—he didn’t know how she got the sizes right, but he wasn’t crazy about the Doctor Seuss underpants and he could do without the turban.

He must have stayed in the closet longer than he should because bint Marwan started hammering on the door.

“You’re not trying to escape, are you?” she said.

“No,” he said. If he had thought he could have he would have tried. He edged out of the closet. She looked him over carefully.

"Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee,” he sang, “there’s peace and good will.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

Yes, what was that? Then he remembered. “It’s a song I used to sing when I was a kid,” he said. It must have welled up from his subconscious.

“I’ll get you something to eat,” she said, “and then we’ll get you enrolled in Ahmed’s Madrassas School.

She took Piffy to McDonalds. He had a Big Mac Meal. A fat lady at a nearby table looked at him and then at bint Marwan. “Is that your child?” she asked. “He is such a well-behaved boy.”

Piffy wanted to throw his Big Mac at her. “Don’t you dare!” hissed bint Marwan.

Piffy glowered. He didn’t like being ten-years-old. The only advantage so far was it gave him a better view of bint Marwan’s legs.

She told Piffy to wait at the table while she went to the Ladies Room. He sat there for some time, studying the other kids in the restaurant. Other kids? Jumping Jehosaphat! He wasn’t a kid—he only looked like one. He was Bernard Piffy, private eye deluxe. Nonetheless, one little girl caught his eye. She was so cute! His mind began to wander.

“Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee,” he sang. “It gives me a thrill To wake up in the morning to the mockingbird’s trill.”

People were looking at him so he shut up, stared at the table. What was keeping bint Marwan? Had she deserted him? It would be just like her. He looked at the cute little girl. She was leaving the restaurant. It was then that he noticed the woman in the full-length black nikab hovering at his elbow. She was staring down at him, only her eyes visible through the thin slit in her headscarf. He could have reached out and touched her. He frowned. What the Hell did she want?

“Come along, junior,” the woman said.

It was bint Marwan! The voice was harsher, the eyes darker, angrier, but it was bint Marwan. She had gone to the Ladies Room, a hot young chick and had returned as an old hag. He remembered the old hag well. He didn’t like the transformation. He made a face—that’s what kid’s do when they are displeased. “I don’t like you like this,” he whined.

“It can’t be helped,” she said. “It wouldn’t do for me to enroll you in Ahmed’s Madrassas School wearing a short skirt, with my bra glowing through my blouse. They would take a whip to me.”

He made another face. Okay, if he were a kid, he would act like a kid. “I ain’t going,” he pouted. “I’ve changed my mind.”

Bint Marwan put a hand on his shoulder, her fingernails digging deeply into his tender ten-year-old flesh. She might as well have been Hulk Hogan. “Okay, okay, I’ll go!” he said.

It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. The enrollment went off without a hitch. So for the next three days Piffy sat on the floor of the Ahmed Madrassas School with a bunch of other kids trying to memorize the Qur’an. It was super-nova boring. He got the Allahu akbars right and most of the PBUHs but his heart wasn’t in it. And there was no Ahmed. He was on vacation or something and the kids were being instructed by a substitute who didn’t know anybody’s name and kept losing his place in the Qur’an. He was what would be called a strict disciplinarian.

But bint Marwan told Piffy to keep trying, Ahmed was bound to show up; it was his Madrassas.

The fourth day Piffy forgot himself—maybe it was the boredom, maybe it was the synchronized weaving back and forth; maybe he was just a kid rebelling against something he didn’t want to do. Anyway, it the midst of a sura the old song came bubbling up from the past.

“Tra la la, twiddle-dee dee-dee,” he sang, “And my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill of the birds in the tree tops on Mockingbird Hill.”

There was a stunned silence. The teacher walked over to Piffy. There was an ugly look on his face. He was halfway between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He had a baton in his hand and was about to administer a trashing to bint Marwan’s favorite ten-year-old child when there was a commotion near the entrance to the schoolroom. He glared at Piffy, tucked the baton under his arm then hurried to the door to greet what he thought were Madrassas inspectors.

Piffy let out his breath. He had almost peed in his pants! What a close call that had been! But it wasn’t over—not by a long shot. He would be lucky if he weren’t water boarded before the day was done! He focused his eyes on the Qur’an. He started to pray. Not to Allah—maybe to God, maybe to Rooster Cogburn—yeah, maybe to Rooster Cogburn, to somebody.

He could hear the hum of voices as the instructor led the inspectors to the front of the class. One of them sounded vaguely familiar. Where had he heard that voice before? There was something else too—a fragrance, a scent wafting though the air as they passed by. He knew that smell! It was acrid, bitter…something curdled in his stomach. It was cordite! And mingled with it was the odor of freshly mown hay! Phosgene! He was afraid to look up.

The instructor rapped his baton on his lectern. “Children!” he announced. “We have two very important guests—Sheikh Atta and Sheikh Hanjour. The Prophet has sent them to us. They are searching for an infidel spy.”

Piffy groaned. At last he looked up. Oh, yes, it was Atta and Hanjour! He remembered the last conversation he had had with them.

“They are looking for a Bernard Piffy,” said the instructor. “They were told he was here. He is a very dangerous man—this Piffy. He is an infidel. But there is no Bernard Piffy here. They have been mistaken,”

Atta smiled. “Insha Allah,” he said. “We are sorry to have inconvenienced you.” He turned to go followed by Hanjour.

They had taken less than a dozen steps when the kid sitting next to Piffy jumped to his feet and pointed at Piffy. “He’s Bernard Piffy!” he squealed. “He said so! He sings infidel songs and eats Big Macs at MaDonalds! He doesn’t wash before prayers! He is an apostate—a Jew! Come and get him!”

Well, if that wasn’t a fine how-do-you-do!

(To be continued)