six months. Fuad scares him a little. The tone of Fuad’s faxes is becoming harsher. In the evening, Salim sits in his hotel room, reading his Qur’an, telling himself that this will pass, that his stay in this strange world is limited and finite.
His brother-in-law gave him a thousand dollars for miscellaneous traveling expenses and the money, which seemed so huge a sum when first he saw it, is evaporating faster than Salim can believe. When he first arrived, scared of being seen as a cheap Arab, he tipped everyone, handing extra dollar bills to everyone he encountered; and then he decided that he was being taken advantage of, that perhaps they were even laughing at him, and he stopped tipping entirely.
On his first and only journey by subway he got lost and confused, and missed his appointment; now he takes taxis only when he has to, and the rest of the time he walks. He stumbles into overheated offices, his cheeks numb from the cold outside, sweating beneath his coat, shoes soaked by slush; and when the winds blow down the avenues (which run from north to south, as the streets run west to east, all so simple, and Salim always knows where to face Mecca) he feels a cold on his exposed skin that is so intense it is like being struck.
He never eats at the hotel (for while the hotel bill is being covered by Fuad’s business partners, he must pay for his own food); instead he buys food at falafel houses and at little food stores, smuggles it up to the hotel beneath his coat for days before he realizes that no one cares. And even then he feels strange about carrying the bags of food into the dimly lit elevators (Salim always has to bend and squint to find the button to press to take him to his floor) and up to the tiny white room in which he stays.
Salim is upset. The fax that was waiting for him when he woke this morning was curt, and alternately chiding, stern, and disappointed: Salim was letting them down—his sister, Fuad, Fuad’s business partners, the Sultanate of Oman, the whole Arab world. Unless he was able to get the orders, Fuad would no longer consider it his obligation to employ Salim. They depended upon him. His hotel was too expensive. What was Salim doing with their money, living like a sultan in America? Salim read the fax in his room (which has always been too hot and stifling, so last night he opened a window, and was now too cold) and sat there for a time, his face frozen into an expression of complete misery.
Then Salim walked downtown, holding his sample case as if it contained diamonds and rubies, trudging through the cold for block after block until, on Broadway and Nineteenth Street, he finds a squat building over a Laundromat and walks up the stairs to the fourth floor, to the office of Panglobal Imports.
The office is dingy, but he knows that Panglobal handles almost half of the ornamental souvenirs that enter the U.S. from the Far East. A real order, a significant order, from Panglobal could redeem Salim’s journey, could make the difference between failure and success, so Salim sits on an uncomfortable wooden chair in an outer office, his sample case balanced on his lap, staring at the middle-aged woman with her hair dyed too bright a red who sits behind the desk, blowing her nose on Kleenex after Kleenex. After she blows her nose she wipes it, and drops the Kleenex into the trash.
Salim got there at 10:30 A.M., half an hour before his appointment. Now he sits there, flushed and shivering, wondering if he is running a fever. The time ticks by so slowly.
Salim looks at his watch. Then he clears his throat.
The woman behind the desk glares at him. “Yes?” she says. It sounds like Yed.
“It is eleven thirty-five,” says Salim.
The woman glances at the clock on the wall, and says, “Yed,” again. “Id id.”
“My appointment was for eleven,” says Salim with a placating smile.
“Mister Blanding knows you’re here,” she tells him, reprovingly. Bidter Bladdig dode you’re here.
Salim picks up an old copy of the New York Post from the table. He speaks English better than he reads it, and he puzzles his way through the stories like a man doing a crossword puzzle. He waits, a plump young man with the eyes of a hurt puppy, glancing from his watch