The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [124]
The Zebaris were granted American visas within the week and flown to Washington at the government’s expense, which included a charge for excess baggage of twenty-three Turkish carpets.
After five days of intensive questioning by the CIA, Hamid was thanked for his cooperation and the useful information he had supplied. He was then released to begin his new life in the United States. He, his pregnant wife, and the twenty-three carpets boarded a train for New York.
It took Hamid six weeks to find the right shop, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, from which to sell his carpets. Once he had signed the five-year lease, Shereen immediately set about painting their new Americanized name above the door.
Hamid didn’t sell his first carpet for nearly three months, by which time his meager savings had all but disappeared. But by the end of the first year, sixteen of the twenty-three carpets had been sold, and he realized he would soon have to travel back to Istanbul to buy more stock.
Four years had passed since then, and the Zebaris had recently moved to a larger establishment on the West Side, with a small apartment above the shop. Hamid kept telling his wife that this was only the beginning, that anything was possible in the United States. He now considered himself a fully-fledged American citizen, and not just because of the treasured blue passport that confirmed his status. He accepted that he could never return to his birthplace while Saddam remained its ruler. His home and possessions had long ago been confiscated by the Iraqi state, and the death sentence had been passed on him in his absence. He doubted if he would ever see Baghdad again.
After the stopover in London, the plane landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport a few minutes ahead of schedule. Hamid booked into his usual small hotel, and planned how best to allocate his time over the next two weeks. He was happy to be back among the hustle and bustle of the Turkish capital.
There were thirty-one dealers he wanted to visit, because this time he hoped to return to New York with at least sixty carpets. That would require fourteen days of drinking thick Turkish coffee, and many hours of bargaining, as a dealer’s opening price would be three times as much as Hamid was willing to pay—or what the dealer really expected to receive. But there was no short cut in the bartering process, which—like his father—Hamid secretly enjoyed.
By the end of the two weeks, Hamid had purchased fifty-seven carpets, at a cost of a little over $21,000. He had been careful to select only those carpets that would be sought after by the most discerning New Yorkers, and he was confident that this latest batch would fetch almost $100,000 in the United States. It had been such a successful trip that Hamid felt he would indulge himself by taking the earlier Pan Am flight back to New York. After all, he had undoubtedly earned himself the extra $63 many times over in the course of his trip.
He was looking forward to seeing Shereen and the children even before the plane had taken off, and the American flight attendant with her pronounced New York accent and friendly smile only added to the feeling that he was already home. After lunch had been served, and having decided he didn’t want to watch the in-flight movie, Hamid dozed off and dreamed about what he could achieve in the United States, given time. Perhaps his son would go into politics. Would the United States be ready for an Iraqi president by the year 2025? He smiled at the thought, and fell contentedly into a deep sleep.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a deep Southern voice boomed out over the intercom, “this is your captain. I’m sorry to interrupt the movie, or to wake those of you who’ve been resting, but we’ve developed a small problem in an engine on our starboard wing. Nothing to worry about, folks, but FAA authority rulings insist that we land at the nearest airport and have the problem dealt with before we continue with our journey. It shouldn’t take us more than an hour at the most, and then we’ll be on