City of Jackals

by Parker Bilal

  ‘I don’t think he has a passport.’ Mr Hafiz frowned at his wife, who looked at the table.

  ‘He’s never been abroad,’ said the daughter, addressing Makana for the first time. ‘He’s always dreamed of it, but he’s never been.’

  ‘He’s a boy. Twenty-two years old. He doesn’t know the world.’ Mrs Hafiz held out a photograph. Mourad Hafiz was smiling at the camera in that clear-eyed way of young people who have nothing to fear.

  Mr Hafiz grasped Makana’s hand. ‘Just find him,’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t care what it costs. Please, just find him.’

  A ray of sunlight was edging its way along the floorboards. Makana unclamped his fingers from the blanket. He tried to think of the reasons why a young man who had no troubles would go missing. It wasn’t a question he was ever going to answer sitting here, but maybe it was a good reason to try and make a start to the day. The sound of footsteps came from the stairs leading up from the lower deck. Makana knew the sound of Aziza’s tread anywhere and already he felt his mood lifting. Over the years he had found in his landlady’s daughter a kindred spirit. He had watched Aziza grow. Seventeen, she was quick-witted and funny. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange, considering the fact of his own absent daughter. He was about to open his mouth to ask for tea when he saw the look on her face and knew that today, for some reason, tea was going to take a while.

  Chapter Two

  Aziza led the way along the riverbank with the surefooted tread of a child who had spent her entire life running up and down these muddy parts. Makana followed more cautiously. His body felt stiff and out of sorts and he wished he had had time for at least one glass of tea, but he trusted Aziza, and if she said he was needed urgently then there was no point in delaying.

  ‘How is school these days?’ he asked, partly to get her to slow down.

  ‘School?’ She turned to him. ‘I’m thinking of dropping out next year.’

  ‘Why? I thought you liked it.’

  ‘What’s the point of spending years learning stuff I don’t need when I could be earning money?’

  He detected the note of sarcasm in her voice.

  ‘You’re a smart girl, you shouldn’t let it go to waste.’

  ‘Tell that to the birds.’

  It sounded like her mother talking. Umm Ali was pragmatic to a fault, and to her it was as clear as the sun that sending a girl to school wouldn’t get you anywhere. She herself had been married by the time she was sixteen, and raising a family not long after that.

  ‘You can do more with your life than sell vegetables in the market.’

  ‘Who’s going to pay me, you?’

  Before Makana could think of an answer, he noticed a crowd had gathered up ahead. A stream of new arrivals was trickling steadily down the riverbank from the road. The bank was shallower here and the land open, with only the rubble of a collapsed wall to bar the way. Here and there heaps of broken bricks and the odd rubber tyre poked out of the long grass. More people stood on the roadside gawking as they waited for transport to materialise. It was still early and there was some blessing in that, because the number of onlookers was still low.

  Makana was impressed by the authority Aziza wielded. Dressed in a shapeless, ragged dress that trailed around her ankles, there was still something of the tomboy about her. She was quick and lithe, and having grown up along here she saw the riverbank as her own private domain.

  ‘Clear the way! Come on, let the mualim through.’

  The crowd parted to reveal a small fishing boat beached in the shallows. Makana wondered if it was the same one he had seen not so long ago from his window. The fisherman was a small man with bandy legs and grey bristles around his gills. The boat was old, the wood worn away where ropes and nets had cut deep in the course of time. A frayed blue and orange nylon net was heaped in the bottom of the hull. Resting on this was a sack. He looked up at Makana as he approached with the sceptical eye of a man who had seen enough miracles in his life to know trouble when he saw it.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘What do you care? He’s an expert. He works with the police.’ Aziza dispatched him with such ease that Makana almost felt sorry for the fisherman, as if an apology might be in order. Instead he found himself pressed in closer as everyone else crowded in behind him.

  ‘Give him room! Move back there!’ Aziza jumped up on the bow of the small boat and began issuing orders like a seasoned admiral. The sack rolled to one side. It was ragged and waterlogged and the size of a football.

  ‘Did you find this? Where was it?’

  ‘Out there in the water, I snagged it with my net. It must have been lodged on a tree branch under the surface.’

  ‘Did you look inside?’

  The fisherman’s eyes held Makana’s. Silently, he jerked his chin downwards. Makana leaned over and hefted it to find it weighed more than he had imagined. Carefully he pulled back the edges. As he did so, something inside gave a kick. Instinctively, he pulled back, bringing a snort of derision from the fisherman and laughter from somewhere in the crowd. Makana held the sack open and peered inside. He saw a grey seething mass.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’

  The fisherman shook his head in disgust. Makana stuck a hand inside and was rewarded with a sharp electric shock that shot up his arm. He dropped the sack and stepped back.

  ‘Some expert,’ muttered the fisherman.

  Makana threw him a weary look and returned his attention to the contents of the sack. His fingers were slightly numb, but he managed to grasp whatever it was that had stung him and pull it out. The crowd reared back as the catfish hit the ground. With a grunt the fisherman stepped over it and with a hand on either side he flipped it out into the water. The crowd murmured their approval. Makana held open the sack and peered inside again. Brushing as best he could at the flies that had surged in around him, he ventured to take another look, the fisherman peering over his shoulder.

  ‘Looks blacker than the devil himself.’

  ‘Aziza,’ said Makana, over his shoulder. ‘Run back to the awama and fetch my telephone, would you, please?’

  She leapt off the bow of the boat and sprinted away. The crowd turned to watch her go. This was a lot more entertaining than watching the traffic go by.

  ‘You’re going to have to move back up to the road now,’ Makana told them. ‘Before the police get here. You stay where you are,’ he added to the fisherman, who had started edging away the moment he heard the word police. ‘They’re going to want to talk to you.’

  Okasha took half an hour to arrive, by which time much of the crowd had dispersed, leaving only a few young men with nothing better to do with their time except lean on each other and stare. In his black woollen uniform and accompanied by dozens of officers, the broad-shouldered Okasha made an impressive entrance. People fell back to make room. Looking back, Makana caught sight of a familiar figure.

  ‘I thought it made sense to bring her along. From what you said, this is a forensic matter.’

  Makana watched Doctora Siham making her way carefully down the incline from the road, followed by two assistants hauling a large grey trunk full of her equipment. The Chief Forensic Officer had a formidable enough reputation to make most of the policemen who knew her straighten up and focus on carrying out their duties properly. Where Okasha had to yell to have them behave she managed it without raising her voice, at times without having to speak. Even the crowd lining the route seemed to sense her authority and pulled themselves back. One cheeky youth made some derogatory comment and was silenced at once by his friends.

  ‘Where is it?’

  Makana indicated the sack, still resting on the fishing net. Okasha stepped forward and cursed as the water lapped around his boots. Makana was wearing plastic sandals and hadn’t noticed his feet were wet.

  ‘Better leave it till she gets here.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ muttered Makana.

  They waited while Doctora Siham prepared herself, pulling on gloves and a f
ace mask. She glanced at Makana.

  ‘This is your doing, I take it? Getting us down here so early in the morning?’

  ‘The river is very special at this time of day. I thought you’d appreciate it.’

  She said nothing, turning and stepping in to lean over the boat.

  ‘Did you have a look?’

  Makana raised his eyebrows. It was almost a frivolous remark, coming from her. Surely she didn’t expect him to have taken the fisherman’s word for it before calling her? She went back to peeling the sacking carefully away. ‘Can we get something up to shield us from all those curious eyes?’ Her assistants immediately produced a large tarpaulin which they held up to prevent onlookers from seeing what she was doing. Flies began to buzz furiously as the sacking came away to reveal the head. It was sitting upright, somehow balanced on the fishing net. The skin was blackened and streaked with grey. A web of eager flies swarmed in excitedly. Around the jaw the flesh had started to come away.

  ‘Something has been feeding on it.’

  ‘There was a catfish in the sack with it.’

  ‘Another reason not to eat fish in this town.’

  Okasha and Makana exchanged glances but said nothing. They watched as Doctora Siham carefully cleaned off extraneous debris and collected it in sample bags before preparing to put the head into a sterilised container for transport back to her laboratory.

  ‘Any idea how long he’s been dead?’ Makana asked.

  ‘Sure, and as soon as I get him back to the lab I’ll be able to tell you what he had for supper and what his favourite music is.’ She gave Makana a withering look, as if to say she expected better of him. ‘One thing I can say, but you must have worked that out for yourself.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Okasha.

  ‘The same reason he knew this was a he.’ Doctora Siham pointed to the strange pattern of lines drawn across the victim’s forehead. ‘He’s one of your fellow countrymen.’

  Chapter Three

  After the pathologist had left them, Okasha gave orders for boats and chains to drag the water up and downstream from their spot in the hope they might find the rest of the body. The fisherman was taken away for questioning. He objected at first. ‘I have work to do, a family to feed,’ he protested as he was led away. Okasha and Makana left them to it and made their way back to the awama, where Aziza was quick to produce the tea she had prepared for them. Okasha looked around the place.

  ‘Doesn’t it get cold at night?’

  ‘It gets cold all the time. Every year seems colder than the last one.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t have a good woman to take care of you,’ Okasha said, brushing a speck off the brass stars on his shoulder. ‘I tell you, I don’t think I could live like you, all alone like this. I would go mad if I didn’t have a family to go home to.’ Makana looked at him but said nothing. Okasha returned the look. ‘What? I’m not supposed to say anything? Who else is going to tell you? You have to get over it. You have to move on.’

  ‘If you’re suggesting I meet one of your wife’s friends again you know how that ended.’

  ‘You don’t have to remind me. I’m still apologising on your behalf.’

  It had been one of the most awkward events in the many years the two had known each other. Okasha’s wife’s idea, or so he claimed. An excruciating experience. They went to the Galaxy Cinema in El Manial. The film was a dreary melodrama that seemed to only involve people yelling at one another and breaking things. Makana hated every minute of it while his companion of the evening found it adorable. What to say? The golden age of Egyptian cinema lay groaning in its vault. In the end he had sneaked out for a cigarette and never gone back inside.

  ‘All I’m saying is that you should get out. I mean, just open a window or something!’

  As Okasha headed for the stairs Makana called him back.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘To our friend from the river? Who knows. We’ll see what the good doctor comes up with, but without a body and no identification, there’s not much we can do.’

  ‘You mean because he’s from South Sudan?’

  ‘We don’t know that for certain yet,’ sighed Okasha. ‘But yes, if that’s the case then I don’t see people getting too excited about getting to the bottom of this.’

  ‘More a case of one less problem?’

  ‘You said it, not me.’ Okasha examined Makana. ‘You’re not taking this personally, are you? Come on, even if he is from South Sudan, you’re at war, right? North and South?’

  ‘Someone has to take an interest.’

  ‘Well, don’t hold your breath, right now the Sudanese are not exactly popular in this town.’

  He was referring to the protesters who had been occupying a maidan in Mohandiseen since late September. The square, a park the size of a postage stamp, was opposite the Mustafa Mahmoud mosque and more significantly, right around the corner from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The protesters were mainly Southern Sudanese who were demanding the right to claim asylum status in Egypt and thereby gain access to services such as public schools and hospitals. It would mean an end to a twilight existence where, because they were not officially recognised as refugees because of an open-border agreement, they didn’t qualify for help. It was safe to say that the Sudanese generally were enjoying a moment of acute unpopularity among their Nile Valley brethren, blamed for everything from moral degeneracy, drunkenness, prostitution and crime to posing a threat to national security. The president still hadn’t forgiven them for the Sudanese involvement in the assassination attempt on his life in Addis Ababa ten years ago. Makana understood what Okasha was telling him. Nobody was going to care too much about a dead body, or even part of one, that had just been fished out of the river.

  ‘I’m just asking you to let me know if there are any developments.’

  ‘Sure,’ nodded Okasha, unconvincingly. ‘Don’t you have other things to worry about?’

  Makana did, of course, have matters of his own to see to. He took a taxi across the river to Ain Shams University. The main building was a former palace of the Khedive Ismail, lovingly modelled on Versailles. An air of decay and decadence lingered in the drained ornamental pool and dry fountain. The Vice-President for Education and Student Affairs was at least willing to meet him, which was always something. The appointment had been set up by Munir Abaza, the Hafiz family lawyer. Makana found himself sitting across the table from a slovenly man wearing a shirt like last week’s menu, spattered with food stains. He gave the impression he had more important things to do with his time than discuss missing students.

  ‘Students are under a lot of pressure, you understand,’ he said, picking his nose when he thought Makana wasn’t looking. ‘Most of them don’t come here because they love studying. They come because they think it will help them to get a better job. They want to please their parents. They want to impress the girls. Most of all they don’t want to grow up. They want to put off starting out in real life for as long as possible.’

  ‘What can you tell me about Mourad?’

  ‘I can’t claim to know all the students personally, you understand? I spoke to the parents. I understand their concern.’ He examined something on the end of his finger before wiping it on the underside of the desk. ‘He wouldn’t be the only one to lose his way. There’s a lot of pressure on young people nowadays. Sometimes the future of their families depends on them. Naturally, there are many who cannot cope. They become disheartened. They lose their way.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that’s what happened to Mourad?’

  ‘Not in so many words. I mean don’t go running back to them with all this. I’m just trying to show you that these situations can be complicated.’

  ‘Does that happen often, I mean a student dropping out without a word and disappearing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say often, but it happens.’ The vice-president nodded to himself. ‘These are difficult times. The classes
are oversubscribed and crowded, and there are no guarantees that any of them are going to find work once they leave here.’ He leaned back in his chair and waved a hand vaguely. ‘And there are temptations.’

  ‘Temptations?’

  ‘Girls, alcohol, drugs. Many young students find themselves brought face to face with a whole new world with which they are not familiar.’

  ‘Do you think he fell in with the wrong crowd, was led astray somehow?’

  ‘Now you are reading too much into my words.’ The director seemed pleased with himself for no apparent reason.

  ‘His parents are worried, which is why I’m here.’

  ‘We’re approaching the end-of-term exams. Students often feel they are under more pressure at this time of year. And then the cold weather.’ He shivered and tried to smile, revealing a set of uneven yellow teeth. ‘Inshallah, he will return to the family safe and sound, when he has had his fun.’ He rested his hands on the table. The interview was over.

  A porter in a shabby lab coat pockmarked with burn holes shuffled along beside Makana to take him to the student hostel. His eyes could barely settle on the steps in front of him, distracted as he was by the female students hurrying by. He didn’t say much, and when they finally arrived at Mourad’s room in a modern cement building with all the charm of a mausoleum, he grunted and stood aside, hands in pockets, and stared at the ceiling.

  Mourad shared a room with another student. There wasn’t much to see. There were two beds, one on either side of the narrow space. Each student had a desk and a wardrobe. Jeans and T-shirts were heaped with no apparent order on the different shelves. Makana, aware that the porter was there to keep an eye on him as much as anything else, wandered loosely around.

  ‘He’s not here,’ said the porter helpfully, as if Makana might expect Mourad to be hiding under the bed. Taped to the wall over the desk was a map of the world. Heaps of folders and textbooks cluttered the desk. When he slid open one of the drawers the porter gave a cough from the doorway. A shelf over the bed yielded a handful of novels. Makana read the names García Márquez and Sonallah Ibrahim. There were flyers and leaflets, a mix of university administrative material, concerts, a demonstration in support of Palestine, another for something called Kefaya. On the bedside table was an old-fashioned alarm clock with bells on it and an image of Goofy on the front. On the wall above the bed was a black and white poster of Malcolm X and alongside it a poem in English by Langston Hughes: ‘Lord, I been a’waitin for the Freedom Train.’