The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus

by Sean McLachlan

  After a few minutes, his boss managed to make some excuse to come into the back room with Moustafa.

  “So what have you discovered?” Mr. Wall asked.

  They exchanged all the information they had learned, which sadly did not amount to much. When Mr. Wall said he would put pressure on the doorman who had delivered a message for the press, Moustafa shook his head.

  “Let me go, boss. I’ll follow him and see if he meets with this gang again. I can also ask around the neighborhood. Give me a bit of money to loosen some tongues and I’ll see what I can learn.”

  “I can loosen his tongue the same way I loosened the photographer’s tongue.”

  “I think the subtle way will be best now that we are getting closer, and …,” Moustafa trailed off, unsure how to put it delicately.

  His boss tapped his mask. “And I’m visible a mile off? You’re quite right. Here’s a bit of spending money, and you’re on danger pay from now on.”

  “If you stop getting caught up in murder investigations, Mr. Wall, I will forgo all pay for a month.”

  His boss laughed, thinking he was joking. Moustafa felt tempted to correct him, but knew better than to try.

  It did not take much investigation to learn something of Claude Paget, the doorman at number 2 Sherif Basha Street. Every building in that fashionable district had a doorman, most of them Egyptian. The fact that Claude’s building had hired a European doorman set it apart as more fashionable than most. The building, like the others on the street, was built in the Colonial style and inhabited mostly by Europeans of the middling sort who could not afford a house. European shopkeepers and businessmen, or young professionals recently arrived in Egypt hoping to make their fortune, these were the sorts of people Moustafa brushed shoulders with in the streets. He also saw a fair number of well-off Egyptians, all hoping to raise their social status by boasting of their Greek or French or Italian neighbors.

  Moustafa curled his lip in disgust. While he admired many things about Europe, he despised these Egyptians who tried to be more European than the Europeans. Didn’t they understand that the Europeans would never accept them, no matter how much they pretended?

  Take those two fools, for example, a pair of Egyptians who looked one generation from the farm but dressed in cheaply made imitation Western suits. There they stood, speaking loudly to each other in French even though their common language was Arabic. But why speak the local language when you can impress a street full of your neighbors by speaking French?

  And bad French, at that.

  “Il a dit que c’était mon faute,” one said, projecting his voice as if his friend stood half a block away.

  “Mais c’était pas ton faute!” the other replied.

  “That’s incorrect,” Moustafa said as he passed by, “You don’t say ‘mon faute,’ you say ‘ma faute’.”

  The two glared at him. They were the kind of Egyptians who thought themselves automatically superior to a dark-skinned Nubian from the south. Moustafa smiled and continued on his way.

  Moustafa went about his investigation in a straightforward manner. Knowing the doormen of all neighborhoods spent their days sitting at their posts observing their street and having little to do but gossip with passersby, he simply went to the building opposite number 2 and engaged the doorman in conversation.

  The doorman was a watery-eyed old Nubian with a ready laugh and proved eager to share some time with a fellow southerner. Moustafa posed as someone looking for an apartment on the street. He offered the man a cigarette, sent a boy playing nearby off to fetch some tea from the nearest café, and started asking all about the neighborhood. The doorman was only too happy to sing the praises of his building and district, and, by the time he had accepted a third cigarette and a second tea, had moved on from housing prices and the social status of the neighbors to the oddity of having a Frenchman sharing his profession across the street. They could see him standing at his post, a younger man dressed in tidy livery and greeting the residents as they passed through the front entrance. Moustafa noted that one of his arms hung slack at his side and guessed the man had been injured in the war. It took only a minimum of coaxing to get his new Nubian friend to tell all.

  Much of it was useless—how the man behaved in an arrogant manner with the other doormen, how he was often drunk or hung over on duty, how badly he spoke Arabic, and how he didn’t understand the complicated system of bribes and favors that made life work in Cairo. Moustafa did learn that Claude Paget was his real name, which told him something else—that the man was stupid. He delivered a message for a gang of killers to the press using his real name! It wasn’t until near the end of the conversation that Moustafa got what he really wanted.

  “When he works the day shift he’s asleep half the time. See how he’s nodding off at his post? These Europeans don’t know their work. It’s because he spends all his nights at The Gardens of Paradise.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Ah, I can see you’re a good Muslim if you have to ask that! It’s a belly dancing bar. A low den of sin if there ever was one. I am ashamed to say just as many supposed Muslims go there as do unbelievers. He’ll be there tonight; I’ll bet a month’s wages on it.”

  Moustafa continued to chat with the man, and even accepted a tour of a vacant apartment, asking all sorts of questions about prices and amenities. The spacious rooms and fine views over the city made him think of his little one-room house and dusty yard on the fringes of the city. Nur and the children deserved a place like this, but who had that kind of money?

  After they finished the tour it was time for evening prayer, and the doorman lent him a prayer rug and together they bowed toward Mecca as the neighborhood muezzin made the call to the faithful.

  Once he finished his prayers, Moustafa stood up, feeling clear-headed and calm as he always did after making his peace with God. Perhaps one day He would reward his faith by granting him a higher station in life. Then he could give the children a proper education. But it was all God’s will and he must submit to whatever was ordained. He only hoped the Almighty would forgive him for going to a belly dancing bar in search of a criminal.

  It didn’t take long to find. The first man he asked eagerly told him the way. Moustafa felt like smacking him. He felt like smacking himself too, for asking directions to such a foul place.

  Sending up a quick plea for understanding toward Heaven, Moustafa made his way through the darkening streets into a narrow side lane filled with an outdoor café. Men sat at small tables, sipping tea and smoking sheeshas. Judging from the heady smell of the smoke, not all the sheeshas were filled with tobacco.

  Beyond the café, the lane grew darker, the windows all dark and the shops all closed, until he came to a small, blank door with a single red electric light burning above it. There was no sign, but the dinginess of the place and the music coming from within told Moustafa he had found his destination.

  Squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.

  The door opened instantly, and a big brute of an Egyptian, every bit as big as Moustafa, stood blocking any view of the interior. The fast-paced music of a tablah drum, tambourine, and oud filled Moustafa’s ears, and his nostrils were assailed with the combined stench of tobacco, hashish, alcohol, and sweat.

  “I don’t know you,” the bouncer said. The words came out as both a statement and a challenge.

  “I’m just a man looking for a good time,” Mosutafa said, slipping him a ten piastre note.

  The money disappeared into the pocket of the man’s jellaba.

  “Entrance fee is five piastres.”

  Moustafa didn’t need to be told the previous ten piastres did not cover it. Luckily his boss has been generous with his expenses. He pulled out another note and handed it to him.

  “Go in,” the man said.

  Moustafa stepped across the threshold, and into a world he had only heard about through wild tales at the café. Peering through the smoky haze, he saw
a long, low room with several mirrored columns. Small round tables filled much of the space, and even though it was barely past eight o’clock most of the tables were full. Men drank liquor and laughed and smoked pipes and sheeshas. Waiters in glittering gold pantaloons and vests hurried around with trays full of bottles. At the far end of the room, three musicians kept up a lively beat for a woman on the stage.

  Moustafa stopped and gaped. Having spent much time around Westerners, drunkenness didn’t shock him anymore, but what he saw on stage made him want to cover his eyes and retreat to the nearest mosque.

  The woman was a light-skinned Egyptian with enticingly broad hips and generous thighs. Her costume, if such a skimpy garment could even be graced with that name, barely covered her breasts and cleft and highlighted everything else. It was made of some glittering fabric, as if sewn from gold coins, and it sparkled and shimmered in the spotlight. The fabric moved as she moved, creating a hypnotic play of motion and light that made Moustafa stop and stare, mouth agape. Her smooth calves, her ample thighs, seemed like a vision of the Hereafter. Moustafa’s eyes moved up past the gyrating hips to that lovely bare belly and continued to the deep cleavage of her breasts.

  There his gaze stopped and rested for a while before moving down again. He did not see her face. Her body was far too distracting.

  Now he knew why they called this place The Gardens of Paradise. It was like a vision of the wonders that waited for all the faithful!

  Moustafa shook his head and sent up a prayer for forgiveness. How could he think such blasphemy?

  “Hey, you! Stop gawking and get out of the way!” someone shouted in English.

  He turned and saw a drunken Englishman in a soldier’s uniform waving at him angrily. Moustafa swallowed his contempt and stepped out of the man’s view.

  “Come over here, my friend!” a rosy-faced Egyptian called from another table. The man had a nearly empty bottle in front of him and treated Moustafa to a wide, stupid grin. Not knowing what else to do with himself, Moustafa joined him.

  “I can see it’s your first visit to this kind of place,” the man said, his boozy breath wafting over Moustafa and making him want to gag.

  “I suppose it is obvious,” Moustafa replied.

  “Here.” The man slapped a glass down in front of him and started to fill it with wine. “This will get you into the spirit.”

  “I don’t drink alcohol,” Moustafa said. He was tempted to quote the Koran at this lapsed Muslim but knew he’d only be wasting his breath.

  The man laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, you’re one of those, eh?”

  “Yes, I’m one of those,” Moustafa growled.

  The man took the glass he had offered Moustafa and knocked it back. Wiping his moustache with a contented sigh, he said, “It is no matter. This place has much more to offer than hangovers. The booze is overpriced anyway. You can save your money for other things.”

  “Other things?”

  The man jutted his chin in the direction of the stage. For the first time, Moustafa noticed an open doorway to the right of it. Dark next to the bright spotlight of the stage, he couldn’t see what lay inside, but the cluster of scantily clad women lounging at the entrance told him enough. He gulped.

  Once again he caught himself staring, and once again he forced himself to look away.

  Then something else caught his attention. Claude Paget walked through the front door.

  Moustafa worried for a moment that the Frenchman would recognize him. He had been sitting across the street from him for more than an hour, after all. But like so many Europeans, he didn’t really see the Africans all around him.

  Except for the belly dancer on stage, that is.

  Claude blew her a kiss, which the dancer answered with an extra shimmy, and Claude sit down near the front. From the glances the two kept exchanging, Moustafa guessed that he was one of her regular customers.

  Moustafa’s hands balled into fists. He was no innocent. While he knew that Europeans came to places like this to fornicate with Egyptian and Soudanese women, this was the first time he had ever seen it with his own eyes.

  The music picked up, and once more all that bare flesh distracted him. He didn’t hear the waiter by his side until the man tapped him on his shoulder.

  “What do you want to drink?” the man asked, sounding like he had asked the question several times already. “You can’t sit here without a drink.”

  “A tea,” Moustafa said.

  “That will be two piastres.”

  Moustafa stared at him. “That’s ten times what it costs in a good café!”

  The waiter jerked his thumb toward the stage. “Do cafés have this?”

  The drunken Muslim sharing his table barked out a laugh. “They sure don’t!”

  Moustafa grumbled and pulled out some money. He didn’t know how he was going to explain all this spending to his boss.

  When he looked back at Claude’s table, he saw the doorman wasn’t alone. Another European had joined him, a tough looking man in a cheap suit who looked French. He looked in his early twenties and had the deep tan of someone who had spent some time in Africa. Moustafa tried to ignore the temptation on stage and the raucous applause of his table companion and focus on the two Europeans.

  While he couldn’t hear what was said, the two seemed in adamant conversation. Claude the doorman kept shaking his head, gesturing wildly with his one good arm, and the other European looked like he was insisting on something. They got a bottle, and after a few quick slugs, Claude seemed to soften. They bent closer to one another and began to talk, both looking eager. Moustafa tried to think of a way to get closer to them, but all the nearby seats were taken and the music had risen to a fever pitch. The whole room clapped in time. His gaze flicked back to the dancer on stage, to see that her movements had grown wild. Moustafa found himself clapping in time as well. He told himself that he only did it to blend in, that the sweat pouring from his face was only due to the heat of the room.

  The tablah and oud abruptly stopped, the tambourine made a final rattle, and the room fell silent. The woman threw herself on the stage floor, panting and sweating, and gave Claude a wide grin.

  The European pushed some money in Claude’s direction. He grabbed it, gave his companion a quick nod, and moved toward the back room. Drunkenness and haste made him clumsy and he bumped into one of the tables, nearly knocking over a bottle. He ignored the angry words from the bottle’s owner and continued to the door beside the stage. The dancer leaped up and skipped after him. After a moment, the tanned European moved that way too, hooked an arm around one of the girls waiting there, and disappeared through the entrance along with Claude and the dancer.

  Moustafa shuddered. He knew he must go in there, but he feared for his honor. No real Muslim should be in a place like this. He had justified it to himself by the fact that he had to investigate a murder, but could he really enter such a den of iniquity?

  As if in a dream he found himself standing and moving toward the back hallway. The fake Muslim who had invited him to his table shouted some crude encouragement.

  His throat dry and his heart pounding, Moustafa approached the darkened doorway. Only the faintest light shone within and he could barely make out a hallway lined with several doors on each wall. Claude and the belly dancer entered one. He did not see the other European.

  “Hello, handsome,” one of the women lounging by the entrance cooed, putting a hand on his arm.

  “Get off me, harlot! I’m married!” Moustafa snapped.

  He passed her by, ignoring the harsh language thrown after him, and went to the door of Claude’s room, sticking his foot in just before it closed.

  “Hey!” Claude shouted.

  Moustafa pushed the door open and grabbed the man by the collar. The belly dancer, who stood by the bed in the small, grimy room, screamed and backed away.

  “Where’s the Apache you were speaking with?” Moustafa demanded.

  “I-I don’
t know. I mean, what Apache?” the man babbled, going pale.

  Moustafa shook him. “Tell me what you know before I turn you into a eunuch!”

  “I don’t know,” the doorman wailed. “I’m only a messenger.”

  An excited babble came from the hallway behind Moustafa. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a crowd of dancers staring. He ignored them and turned back to Claude, shaking him hard enough to make his teeth rattle.

  “Tell me all you know. I don’t want to spend another instant in this vile den of sin.”

  “One of them, Albert Bernard, was in the war with me. He approached me and offered me money. This other fellow tonight I don’t know. I was told to meet him here. He was supposed to give me another message.”

  “What is it?”

  “He never got a chance to tell me. I didn’t want to have any part of it anymore. I heard about the murder and was scared. But he insisted. Then he gave me money to come back here with Fatima and said he would talk to me once I finished.”

  Moustafa shook him again. “This is what you’re going to do. You will—”

  Strong hands grabbed him from behind and yanked him away from Claude. He whirled around, fists raised, to see two burly Egyptians with truncheons, obviously the bouncers to this place.

  “Get out or we’ll smash your head in,” one of them barked. The other shoved Moustafa down the hall toward a back door at the end of the hallway. Moustafa glared at them, but decided not to fight. He didn’t want to make a scene that could bring the police. If he got charged with creating disorder in such a place his family name would be stained forever.

  “Get your hands off me, I’m going,” he growled.

  The bouncers opened the back door and shoved him out, slamming the door in his face.

  “Don’t come back again!” one of them shouted through the door.

  “I wouldn’t come to this evil place again if you offered me a Sultan’s inheritance!” Moustafa shouted, kicking the door.

  A soft sound made him glance about. He stood in a darkened alley, lit only by a candle encased in a red globe above the door. On both sides of the alley rose blank walls, the windows high above all shuttered and the ground littered with orange peels and a few empty bottles.