and wearing a vest.
Brenner motioned to the tower houses and said, “The first few floors as you can see are made of stone, and the upper floors are mud brick. The ground floor is used for animals and to collect human excrement from the upper floors.”
“Sounds like 26 Federal Plaza.”
Brenner continued, “Each tower house has a shaft for excrement, and another shaft that’s used to haul up well water.” He informed us, “This presents a sanitation problem.”
“You think?” I asked Brenner, “Is this restaurant on the ground floor with the animals and excrement?”
“No. Two floors up.” He explained, “That’s called the diwan, where guests are received.”
And no one would know if you farted.
He continued, “Above the diwan are the floors where the extended family lives, sharing a single kitchen.” He concluded, “The top floor is called the mafraj, literally, a room with a view—sort of the penthouse, and this is where honored male guests gather to chew khat and watch the sunset.”
I need a room like that. Hey, guys, let’s go up to the mafraj and stare into the sun and get wasted. Then we can bungee jump down the excrement shaft.
Anyway, Kate seemed overwhelmed by the experience, and she took lots of photos and asked Brenner lots of questions, and he was happy to share his knowledge with her, or make up answers. If he was a peacock, his tail feathers would be fully fanned out by now.
We continued our walk without seeing much evidence of the twenty-first century. There were a few other Westerners wandering around on some of the streets, so we didn’t stop traffic. But these annoying kids kept following us asking for “baksheesh, baksheesh,” which I remembered from Aden meant either alms or get-the-fuck-out-of-here money. Brenner said to ignore them, but Kate wanted to engage them in playful conversation, or take their pictures, which cost five cents.
Brenner also said, “If the kids suddenly disappear, we may be having a problem.”
Gotcha. “Hey, Abdul, you want a piggyback ride?”
Anyway, as a detective, I noticed what was missing. Women. I’d seen fewer women on the streets than I’d seen dead rats.
I asked Brenner about that and he replied, “The women do their errands in the morning, usually with male escorts, then they stay indoors to cook, clean, and take care of the kids.”
“Sounds grim,” said FBI Special Agent Kate Mayfield.
Brenner had a joke and said, “But Thursday is wet burqua night at the wadi.” He added, “Bring your laundry.”
Funny. But Kate didn’t laugh, so I didn’t either. You gotta be careful, even here.
Sunday wasn’t the Sabbath around here so everyone who had a job was at work. But what I noticed, as I’d noticed last time in Aden, were hundreds, really thousands, of young men on the streets and in the souks, obviously unemployed and killing time. Their futures would probably take one of three paths: petty crime, emigration, or Al Qaeda. Or maybe someday they’d just revolt against the government, hoping that anything that came after would be better than this. Indeed, they were a demographic time bomb waiting to explode.
Brenner said, “Here’s the restaurant.”
Kate said, “That was fascinating.”
Brenner offered, “If we don’t go to Aden tomorrow, I can show you the rest of the city.”
I thought we’d already pushed our luck. But this was the guy who did a second tour in Vietnam. But hey, you gotta die somewhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The restaurant was called, appropriately, “Old Sana’a,” and so was the tower guest house in which it was located.
I assumed Brenner had been here and he hadn’t died of E. coli or a gunshot wound, so we followed him through an open arch into a large, high-ceilinged space, lit only by sunlight coming through narrow windows in the stone walls. I was relieved to see that the space had been cleared of livestock and excrement, though a hint of all that remained in the air.
We climbed a spiral staircase to the diwan level, where a white-robed man sat behind a table, on which was a stack of assault rifles. I guess you had to check your guns here. The man smiled, decided we were probably English speakers, and said, “Welcome. For lunch or room?”
Brenner replied, “Restaurant, please.”
The desk clerk/maître d’armaments stood, grabbed three menus, and we followed him through one of those Casablanca-type archways with hanging beads into a large, sunlit dining room that took up the whole floor of the tower house. He escorted us to a low round table with beanbag chairs near an open