City of Strangers by John Shannon

the divine right of kings so the Shias tended to grant their leaders papal infallibility. Anyway, Southern California is a little short of Persian ayatollahs, but the lads did locate a Sunni sheik who was fierce enough for Iman Behrooz.”
    He shrugged apologetically. “One finds that many Christian sects also have their militia leaders and fanatics.”
    “Let’s hold the editorials. Does he have a name?”
    “Sheik Arad. I have no idea what his title means, but he’s got a little group around him. The boys didn’t stay with him long.”
    “Do you know why not?”
    “One gathers from Fariborz Bayat that Sheik Arad was a pretty hair-raising character. Bayat was fairly open with me, at least at first. The sheik’s like some ancient prophet. One either drops everything to follow him out into the desert, or else one can go to hell.”
    The peculiar electronic tone now sounded again out in the hall, and even at one remove from the clanging bell that he remembered, the summons gave him a chill. Broyard Toussaint perked up. “I’m going to have to go. I’m invigilating a biology exam.”
    “Invigilating?”
    He smiled. “Fancy old prep-school word for proctoring.” He gathered up a handful of papers.
    “Quickly, then, do you think the boys might have followed this sheik out into the desert?”
    “Mar Vista, actually. His school. It was the first place the police checked, as one might guess, plus the second and third. It appears not.”
    Jack Liffey followed Toussaint out of his office, just as a flood of students washed past. There were a few girls, after all, wearing beige skirts and navy blazers. “Do you have a guess?”
    “Hold up, friendasaurus!” a boy bellowed about an inch from Jack Liffey’s ear.
    “That’s cold, dude!”
    “I’d suggest you talk to Billy de Villiers. He was Fariborz Bayat’s good friend. Call me right after school and I’ll arrange it. I wish you good luck on finding the boys. One liked Bayat quite a lot.”
    “Well, laissez les bons temps rouler!”
    Toussaint smiled tartly. “One’s accent sucks, my friend.”
    “Sit.” The tall, thin Arab named Hassan indicated a spot on the floor with the flat of his hand, as if pointing with a single finger would be rude. A dull red patterned carpet, about three feet by six, had been laid over the beige wall-to-wall of the tract house. Nearby, the sheik sat cross-legged in front of several plates of food on another small carpet, boiled lamb and pots of stewed vegetables that he was plucking out with a piece of limp flatbread and stuffing into his mouth.
    “Thanks, sure.” Fariborz was fighting a tendency to talk to them in a kind of stilted baby-talk, trying to make sure these strange men understood him. What he was also trying to do was keep some contact with the commonplace amidst so much that was unfamiliar, even alarming. Two men in turbans who looked like identical twin wrestlers waited behind the sheik with their arms crossed. They looked different from the others, less bronzed, with longer faces, and the boys had learned they were Afghanis, rumored to be former Taliban.
    He and Pejman sat uncomfortably, crossing their legs. Yahya was still cowering in the room that they’d been assigned and would not come out with them.
    Sheik Arad chewed with his mouth open, smacking and snicking. He made some wordlike noise, perhaps acknowledging them, but they could not make it out. The religious leader was not at all what Fariborz had expected, but they had seen him several times now and they had grown less disturbed by his peculiarities. One eye had a cataract, giving him a permanent wild squint, and his legs were withered—at least what little Fariborz had ever seen of them peeking from under his robe. The boys themselves had given up eating meat sometime back, manufacturing a kind of ascetic Islam for themselves, so they had all been put off by the sheik’s carnivorous diet and his table manners. Letting meat juices run out of one’s