Shadows on the Nile

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘So where is he?’ she asked directly.

  ‘Now, that is the question indeed. I cannot tell you that,’ he spread his hands apologetically, ‘I am sorry, because if I do, you will have no reason to tell me what it is I want to know.’

  If I do. Three words. That meant everything.

  If I do. They meant that this Fareed knew exactly where Tim was. She saw her hand on her lap start to clench and she quickly tucked it under the other.

  ‘What is it you want to know?’

  Ask me anything. Anything at all. I will tell you my innermost secrets, if that’s what it takes.

  ‘It is clear that your brother has revealed to you his plans, or you would not be here. I will tell you where he is hiding, in exchange for knowledge about this group he works with and about the find they have made in the hills.’

  Jessie’s throat felt as if sand had been poured down it. So close. So close she could almost touch Tim, yet now suddenly he was snatched away as far as the moon. She studied her questioner and made herself think carefully. In silence she considered the men in black robes squatting around the edge of the cave, their hard and dedicated faces. Outside she could hear a wind picking up, sand churning and swirling, and a truck was grinding its gears as it climbed the slope of scree.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jessie asked. ‘What is it that you and your followers want?’

  Fareed issued a command, a rapid burst of Arabic, and the line of men rose soundlessly to their feet. Each one carried a curved dagger in his hand, pointed at his own heart. Jessie had to force herself to remain seated, to fight the urge to leap to her feet and flee. A wave of sound came at her, as the men’s voices chanted as one and left Jessie in no doubt that this was some kind of dedication of self to a cause that would brush her aside like a mosquito if she got in their way.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked again.

  Fareed’s face had changed. It had grown hungry. His cheeks seemed to sink into hollows, his eyes withdrew deeper into his head, as though something inside him was consuming him.

  He raised his own dagger to his throat and translated for her. ‘Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.’ His gaze fixed fiercely on her.

  ‘We are the friends of Hassan al-Banna.’

  Hassan al-Banna. Jessie remembered the name. Monty had mentioned him in Cairo. The American ambassador had told him that a schoolteacher named al-Banna had set up an organisation called the Muslim Brotherhood with the aim of returning society to the precepts of the Qur’an. One of their main intentions was to rid the country of the British and to seize back military and political control of Egypt in the hands of the people. The last thought made her acutely aware of her own vulnerability as one of the hated westerners.

  They wanted information. But she had nothing to trade.

  ‘So you do not know where their find is in the hills?’ She acted surprised. As if it were the least they should know.

  He frowned at her. ‘No. They cover their tracks well and post sentries in the desert. Two of our men have been killed trying to follow them.’

  Killed. Tim is working with men who kill?

  She looked around her again to hide her moment of shock, letting her gaze roam over the cave and the silent men.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked.

  ‘You are asking questions,’ he said softly, ‘not giving answers.’

  She nodded and asked again, ‘What is this place?’

  He took a full minute to consider whether to answer, but eventually waved a hand in the direction of the mouth of the cave. ‘Many men come to me, wanting to bring the holy word of most bountiful Allah back into the lives of our people. They are angry at the foreigners here,’ he paused and narrowed his sunken eyes, ‘especially you British who have robbed us of power in our own country. Hassan al-Banna is working to educate the illiterate and to build hospitals for the poor, but these brave men,’ he gestured at the black-clad figures, ‘come here for more than words to fight the British with.’

  ‘Is this a training camp? A military centre?’

  Fareed did not say yes, but neither did he say no. ‘They come here to intensify their personal piety. But it is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated.’

  Jessie could not look at him. She stared down at the rope marks on her wrists because if she looked at this implacable man for one more second she would give up hope, and she couldn’t afford to do that.

  ‘Tea?’ he asked politely.

  She almost laughed. Tea? In a cave? With a man with a gun at his side, ready and willing to kill her, she was certain, with no more thought than he would stamp on a cockroach. Tea?

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  He uttered something in Arabic and one of the men, scarcely more than a boy, disappeared into a tunnel at the back. For a while no one spoke, giving Jessie time to consider her next response, but she was taken by surprise when Anippe Kalim entered the cave bearing a tray with two glasses of mint tea and a small pot of honey.

  The young woman gave no hint of recognition. She inspected Jessie with cold unfriendly eyes for a moment, before she glanced at Fareed. Instantly she lowered her eyes respectfully and served him first. He nodded at her but said nothing, and she withdrew on silent feet.

  ‘Now,’ he stirred honey into his tea, ‘tell me what you know of this group of thieves your brother is involved with.’

  She could confess the truth – that she knew nothing. Or she could lie. The choice was easy.

  ‘I don’t know much.’ She watched Fareed. Displeasure came easily to him and furrowed his forehead. ‘But,’ she added quickly, ‘I am ready to pass on what information I do have in exchange for learning where Timothy is now.’

  ‘You lie.’ Anger overlaid his formal politeness for the first time. ‘You lied to Anippe in London, pretending you didn’t know where your brother had gone, yet you knew exactly to follow him to Egypt. To Cairo. To the Mena House Hotel. To Luxor. Clearly you know far more than you claim.’

  She didn’t deny it. If he thought she knew nothing, what use was she to him? He would toss her aside like garbage. It frightened her that they had kept track of her movements so closely while she was blithely unaware of it. Were they the ones who had followed her round the streets of London and broken into her flat? She finished her tea in a silence that seemed to echo through the cave, and only when she placed her empty glass on the brass tray once more did she look at Fareed directly.

  ‘They are stealing antiquities, I believe,’ she told him coldly. ‘It is an organisation that buys knowledge from local farmers about where new finds are turning up in the desert.’

  No reaction. ‘Go on.’

  She held her breath for a moment to steady herself. ‘They use my brother’s expert knowledge to select what to take and what to leave behind. He can date the objects for them, choose the most valuable pieces – the older the better, of course.’

  ‘All this we know.’

  So her guesses were right.

  ‘They excavate at night,’ she added. ‘In the caves.’

  ‘What about this new find they’ve made?’

  ‘I don’t know the royal name but it is a queen.’

  ‘Her tomb?’

  ‘Yes.’

  His hand clenched into a fist and she could feel his anger, as an extra presence in the cave.

  ‘Who are these people? And how do they transport the treasures?’ he demanded. ‘What tracks do they take through the desert?’

  She opened her mouth, as if to reply, but closed it again and for a moment there was silence. ‘Tell me where my brother is living.’

  He didn’t hesitate this time. ‘In a house set back beyond the fields by the curve in the river downstream. We keep watch on them. Four men. Another comes and goes.’

  ‘How will I recognise the house?’

  ‘It is old and painted green. In front is an alabaster factory
with a broken tower on one end. You can just see it from the river.’

  ‘If you know that this group is stealing ancient artefacts from Egypt, why don’t you inform the police? Isn’t it their job to …?’

  He uttered a harsh sound that was instantly swallowed by the limestone rock encircling them. ‘Money passes from hand to hand to make eyes look the other way.’

  ‘Corruption?’

  He regarded her with distaste. ‘Do you know how little a policeman in Luxor earns?’

  She was embarrassed by her ignorance and for the first time looked away. The men in black galabayas were alert and watching Fareed closely, as if eager for a signal from him that would allow them to fall on her with their daggers. She had to give him something more, something that would keep their blades in their belts.

  ‘Fareed,’ she said quickly through dry lips, ‘if I can find my brother, I can tell you more about who is running this illegal activity and …’

  In one swift movement he rose to his feet and was towering over her. ‘You know more!’ His anger seemed to feed on her words.

  Something. She had to give him something.

  ‘They transport it all by boat,’ she lied. ‘Not through the desert but by boat to Cairo at night.’

  His black eyes gleamed brighter in the yellow light of the oil lamp and she knew she had surprised him, but she was not prepared for his response.

  ‘I cannot trust you. You lie to me.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. You already know the leader of these robbers.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, it is true. You have been seen with him.’

  ‘No! It’s a lie!’

  She saw no signal but two of the black galabayas advanced on her, and her heart leapt to her throat as she scrambled to her feet. ‘Who?’ she demanded. ‘Who is he?’

  Fareed could scarcely bear to look at her. ‘You know.’

  ‘Tell me his name.’

  As hands twisted her wrists behind her back she heard Fareed’s reply.

  ‘The fat man,’ he said. ‘Their leader is the fat man.’

  40

  Georgie

  Egypt 1932

  The heat.

  The sand.

  The shouting.

  The worst of these is the shouting. It hurts my ears and makes me vomit up my fried eggs. I hate that. The taste in my mouth. I stink. I can smell sweat on me and feel sand like mouse-dirts in my hair. I mention it to you and you laugh. You are different here. You are busy, not just your hands but your mind as well, and I am squeezed into a small corner of it. I no longer write down my thoughts, but they are still here in my head, growing bigger and heavier, until they fall out of my mouth at the wrong time.

  ‘Please, Georgie,’ you say. ‘Please! Try to behave.’

  I am trying.

  For you.

  I am trying for you. And because I am frightened of the Fat Man.

  I am in my tent. It is hot. But the light is not so fierce inside and I am unseen by the others. More important to me, I do not see the desert. It sucks out my eyeballs and makes me blind. I have to crush my hands over my eye sockets to protect them and you have given me a white muslin scarf that I can wind around my face but I still see through it just enough. I do not know why you love the empty wasteland so much that you go walking in it each evening. ‘It will swallow you,’ I warn but you pat my shoulder and laugh.

  The desert’s face changes. Sometimes it is pink, smiling and soft, but at others it scowls its rocky frown, all browns and greys, and I understand that it is hungry. In my tent I hear it growl. I hate the desert. I hate the dead hills. I hate the sky. There is too much of it to fit in my head. I need my old room. My ceiling with its crack. The dark corners of my wardrobe. My beautiful uncomfortable chairs.

  I tell you these things.

  ‘I don’t want to hear this, Georgie.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because we’re here now. Try to make the best of it.’

  I try. I try. But I am sick and I sweat. I tie the scarf over my mouth and my ears to stop the noises coming out or going in and you pin a black galabaya over the canvas of my tent to make it darker inside.

  I hate so many things. I shake all the time.

  Except …

  Except …

  My mind cannot say the word. Instead I cradle a shabti carved out of alabaster in my hand and the shaking stops. When I hold these objects that were held in the hands of tomb-makers three thousand years ago, I feel that I am a member of the human race, part of a continuous process of birth and death, not some dirty aberration to be swept under the carpet and forgotten. I am one of the droplets in the Nile, as significant as every other droplet. This thought calms me. No shaking. No sweating.

  I tell you this and you say, ‘Georgie, your mind is growing.’

  I touch my head. ‘No, it is the same size.’

  You smile, but then the Fat Man shouts and you vanish. I am on my knees on the sand in my tent with thirty-one shabtis in a neat row in front of me. Am I watching over them or are they watching over me?

  A shabti is a human figure. Most are about as tall as my hand but some are as small as my thumb. Others can be much bigger. Shabtis are usually carved out of wood or stone, alabaster or quartzite, or made out of faience, which is glazed earthenware. They are workers, male or female, that were placed in the tombs of the Ancient Egypt ians to carry out the manual tasks that the dead person will be required to do in the afterlife. It strikes me that Egyptians must have been extremely lazy, if they need such figures to do the work for them.

  I study the one in my hand and I feel the same tightening in my chest as I do whenever I look at the chairs you gave me. You say it is a normal response to beauty, but I think you are wrong. It is more than that. It is an awareness of myself. A knowledge that I will never be able to create such beauty. The feeling is one of deep sadness, mixed with admiration. I don’t tell you that and I don’t know why. Maybe because I want to be like you. Not a substitute person like the six-inch man in my hand.

  This one is made of blue-green faience, a beautiful colour that I imagine underwater-sea to be like. His legs are mummified and down the front of them is inscribed in hieroglyphs the Spell 472 of the Coffin Texts found in Chapter Six of the Book of the Dead. You see, they believed in magic. The spell would animate the shabti to work throughout eternity as a substitute labourer in the fields of Osiris.

  I want to believe in magic.

  I hate so many things. I shake all the time.

  Except …

  I want to believe there is a spell here in Egypt that will cure me.

  *

  ‘Where is the imbecile?’

  ‘Georgie is not an imbecile. He is my brother and he is highly intelligent, so I expect some respect for him.’

  ‘He’s a buffoon, Timothy. Don’t fool yourself into thinking he is worth a moment’s thought just because he can recite the Encyclopaedia Britannica.’

  ‘He’s good at cataloguing what we’re bringing out. Extremely thorough. Doing a useful job that is—’

  ‘Give it a rest, Timothy. He’s a pain in the bloody neck and we both know it. He’s only here because you insisted on bringing him with you. If I had my way I would …’

  ‘I know perfectly well what you’d do.’

  ‘He’s a damn fool.’

  ‘He knows far more about dating Ancient Egyptian artefacts than you do.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Timothy, look what he did yesterday.’

  ‘I admit that it was unfortunate. But he didn’t mean to. It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘He didn’t mean to kill a donkey? By slamming a rock down on its head? If you think that, you must be as crazy as he is.’

  ‘It was the noise it was making. He was trying to shut it up.’

  ‘Remind me to do the same to the imbecile next time he starts shouting.’

  ‘Don’t you dare even joke about—’

  ‘What makes you thi
nk I’m joking.’

  The voices move away from my tent. But the Fat Man’s laugh stays and rolls around the tent pegs, as though it wants to loosen them, so that the canvas will collapse on top of me.

  Imbecile.

  I put down my notepad in which I am recording each shabti with detailed measurements and description of its decoration and hieroglyphs. I roll into a ball, feeling flies gathering on my skin the way they do on the dead, and bury my face in the sand.

  Imbecile.

  *

  The Fat Man comes to me with his needles. They bite my arms, my buttocks, my thigh. Like Dr Churchward, he wants to eradicate the person I am and put a new person inside me instead. He only comes when you are busy in the tomb. I was melting wax today to hold the faience on a wooden canopic chest in place when he came into my work-tent and told me to stop laughing like a bloody hyena.

  ‘Was I laughing?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘but you’re too stupid to know.’

  ‘I was enjoying my work,’ I explain. ‘I have never had work to do before.’

  He takes off his spectacles and wipes them. When he puts them back on, his eyes have changed as if he has wiped them too. I have a photograph in a book in my room in the clinic of an eagle landing on the back of a lamb, its eyes savage with hunger for blood. That’s what the Fat Man’s eyes look like. I stare at my sandals.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I didn’t mean to offend you,’ I say quickly, grasping at one of my phrases.

  He slaps me. ‘I only tolerate you,’ he says, ‘because I need Timothy.’

  I continue to stare at my feet. ‘I only tolerate you,’ I say, ‘because I need Tim.’

  He slaps me again. The touch of his hand is vile but I stand quietly, just my arms are shaking.

  ‘I could get rid of Tim,’ he growls at me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He loves his work in the tomb.’

  ‘Then you must behave.’

  ‘I know.’

  Meekly I hold out my arm and the needle bites. When you return at nightfall you are so excited about the discovery of a calcite perfume vase inlaid with gold that you do not even notice that there is nothing in my head except the buzzing of sand flies.