Florence of Arabia by Christopher Buckley

Author:Christopher Buckley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Satire
ISBN: 9780739452486
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-09-12T23:00:00+00:00

She was taken to a windowless room of ambiguous architectural purpose. It could serve as a cool cellar for fresh foodstuffs, Kaffir limes and Damascus melons. Such subterranean spaces had other, less pleasant uses. The thickness of the door that shut behind her. the sparseness of the furnishings before her—a wooden chair and table, an overhead lightbulb. a bedspring cot and plastic tub—bespoke austerity. The one item out of place was a video camera mounted on a tripod.

By her wrist watch, its face scuffed by the handcuffs, it was going on three in the morning when the door opened. The man confronting her wore Western dress that might have been a military uniform minus insignias.

"You are being deported," he said. He put some papers on the table before her. "Where you are deported to, it depends."

She read the papers. It was a confession in the form of a script. Presumably, she was to read it for the video camera.

In it, she admitted loan "unnatural and immoral relationship"—not with the sheika but with her TV Matar colleague Fatima Sham. Florence had become enough of a journalist to know a good lead paragraph. She read on. She was further admitting to trying to blackmail the Wasabi Royal House of Hamooj. Her "shameful plot" was to demand $20 million from them. When they refused— "as, God be praised, they should have"—Florence's lover Fatima Sham put on television the "wicked and untrue" story about Princess Hamzin. Someone put a lot of thought into this, Florence mused as she read. It went on to say that Florence and her "accomplices" then avenged themselves on the "honorable Wasabis" by killing Falima in the gruesome manner depicted and sending a copy of the tape to Kaffa, saying they would put it on TV Matar and blame them for it if a ransom of $40 million weren't paid. Again, the "upright" Wasabis held fast. But then "the police"—the script did not specify whose police—caught her. She could no longer live with the shameful things she had done, so she was recording this "true confession." It concluded with an apology to the emir of Matar and the king of Wasabia for perpetrating such vile doings while a guest on "holy" soil.

"Well." she said finally, looking up at her dour jailer. "I seem to have been very busy."

He pressed the record button on the video camera. "Begin," he said.

Florence looked into the camera. "My name is Florence Farfaletti," she said. "I'm an American citizen. It appears that I am being held in some basement somewhere. It's a bit damp, but otherwise tolerable. Have a nice day."

The man pressed the stop button. "You won't like it in Kaffa." He came toward her. Florence recoiled, thinking he was going to strike her, but instead, he unlocked her handcuffs.

"You run a television station." he said. He pointed to the video camera. "So, here is television camera. In two hours I come back. Make the film."

She used the next hour to explore every inch of the room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.