by Parker Bilal
Makana examined the German girl. In these climes she was an exotic creature, with her fair hair and blue eyes. He wondered which of the two men she was involved with? Neither one, or perhaps both? Who could say what their habits were? They were on holiday, they should be allowed to do what they liked. When their time was up they could go home to their regular, ordered lives, and all of this would slowly fade. He recalled the Qadi. A short, squat, middle-aged man wearing robes. Grey beard that was trimmed along the line of his jaw. A touch of vanity.
‘A woman? Are you sure?’
‘Yes. We saw a woman. Alone. You understand? You never see them alone. Always two or three.’
‘Yes. What time was this, can you remember?’
‘Around three. It was hot.’
So, some hours before the body was discovered by the farmer and his wife. When he asked if she could describe the woman, the German girl shook her head.
‘But they all look the same, no?’
‘Yes, of course they do. They all look the same.’
She gave Makana a long look, as if she had entrusted him with something valuable and then she turned away, hesitated, as if she had some last comment to add, and then left, jogging back to where the two men waited close to the road. The three of them got on their bicycles and started back to town.
Makana watched them go. Luqman was standing behind him.
‘Sorry, it looks like I lost you some business there.’
‘Maalish,’ said Luqman philosophically. ‘But don’t pay too much attention. She sounded confused. You know what it’s like. She probably wants to appear more interesting than she is.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Makana.
‘Strange though. You see a dead person and don’t report it?’
‘They don’t trust the police. They didn’t want to get mixed up.’
‘Yes, but still,’ Luqman muttered. Makana went back to the Norton. He had anticipated problems starting it again. His natural lack of faith in the durability of things. But to his surprise it took just two kicks of the starter and the engine was purring nicely. The German boys gave a roar of encouragement as he passed them on the road. Perhaps there was a living to be made in this, Makana thought to himself. He ought to begin charging.
Chapter Seventeen
The road between the lakes was long and straight as an arrow. The grey colour of the water and the distant outcrops gave the landscape a sense of having been drained of all living matter. Even the sky had the same ghostly, half-dead appearance. At the end of the lake he kicked the gear into neutral and coasted to a halt. The road turned back towards town, but the other way snaked off into nowhere. From here, running in any direction you cared to choose, there was nothing but sand and dry outcrops of rock that stuck up like bony knuckles. To the south the camel routes led through a string of oases down to the corner where the borderlines of Sudan, Egypt and Libya met. An arbitrary point in the ground, the intersection of a cartographer’s ruler when the continent was being sliced up by the European powers. To the west and north was the Libyan Desert, which would deliver you through the distant ridge to the coast, or deeper into the Sahara. There wasn’t much else between here and the Atlantic Ocean, three thousand kilometres away.
Instead of stopping in town, Makana went straight through, managing to find the road he had taken with Sergeant Hamama out towards Jebel Mawtah, The Mountain of Death. There was no traffic. High bands of reeds sheltered the road on one side, a grove of palm trees on the other. This gave way to a view of the rounded, low hill on top of which the square shape of the temple was visible. The ruins of the Abubakrs’ old house somehow looked even more forlorn, perched on the edge of the field. Makana wasn’t sure what he hoped to find here, but he parked the Norton on its stand and wandered through the remains of the building. What was it like growing up out here, he wondered, so far from town? Nagat would have had to walk to school every morning, which would have meant almost an hour each way. The rest of the time was no doubt spent working around the house and in the fields.
A spindly figure was making its way towards him, balancing easily as he walked steadily along the uneven ridges of earth that divided the flooded fields. Makana smoked a cigarette as he waited for the man to reach him. A man in peasant clothes, baggy cotton breeches and a long shirt that might once upon a time have been white. Over his shoulder was hooked a short hoe with a rough wooden handle. White stubble covered his face and head and Makana estimated him to be in his fifties. They met beside the crumbled mud walls of what might have been a storehouse or barn behind the main house.
‘You won’t find anyone here, you know,’ he said as he drew nearer. ‘They left long ago.’
‘Did you know the family?’ Makana offered his Cleopatras but the man declined with a tilt of his head. He had the slow measured pace of a man who has learned patience from the land.
‘Well, you could say that.’ The man raised a hand and pointed. ‘I live over there. I’ve lived and worked this land all my life.’
‘What is it you grow here?’
‘Dates, lemons, figs, beans, anything really. It’s hard land. There’s a lot of salt in it.’ He reached up to the wall beside him to break off a piece with his fingers. ‘We call it Kharshif. The salt makes it good for walls. They are strong.’ A grin crossed his face. ‘But when it rains, it dissolves and the walls just disappear. Luckily it doesn’t rain too much around here.’
‘What about the Abubakr family, did you know them?’
‘My grandfather used to work for his grandfather. The entire family worked for him.’ A hand swept outwards. ‘All of this land belonged to them.’
‘They sold it off.’
‘People make choices.’ The man shrugged. ‘Sometimes they are unlucky.’
‘Unlucky?’
The man glanced over at the ruins. ‘People said the family was cursed. Others said they brought it on themselves. Allah knows.’ His eyes were narrow and steady. ‘What is it to you anyway?’
‘I’m doing a favour for a friend of the family.’
‘You’re not a policeman?’
‘Do I look like one?’
The man looked him up and down warily. ‘You ask questions like one.’
‘Well, I’m not. One of the girls was named Nagat. She died a few years ago. I was looking for her husband.’
‘A lot of bad luck here. Three girls. One after the other. The mother died in childbirth. They say she would have given him a son.’
‘You knew the father? Tawfiq Abubakr?’
‘I knew him. Everyone around here did. He owned the land we worked. Nobody shed a tear for him when he died.’
‘Who owns the land now?’
‘That’s not my business.’ The man shrugged and squinted into the distance. ‘We work it just as we always have. Nobody says anything.’
‘None of the girls remained here. One went abroad, the other to Cairo and the third disappeared.’
‘She ran into the desert. Never came back.’ He shifted the weight of the hoe on his shoulder, impatient to move on. ‘People say they ran to save themselves.’
‘What else do they say?’
The man’s narrow gaze returned to find Makana’s. ‘They say that the eldest daughter took the place of the wife.’
‘Is that what you say?’
‘I say that what happens under a man’s roof is nobody’s business but his own.’
‘The middle girl, Nagat, married a man named Musab Khayr. Do you know where the family lived?’
‘Of course.’ The bony arm lifted and pointed. ‘Just along there. But you won’t find anything. They left too. Everyone’s gone. I’m the only one left.’ And with that he walked off.
Makana headed over to the house the Khayr family had lived in, surprised at how easy it was to suddenly have a lead on him. This was a much more humble building. A simple farmhouse. It had collapsed long ago. The walls were worn down to a shapeless heap. All that remained of the roof was a few roughly hewn, uneven palm tru
nks, slumped this way and that. As he approached, a couple of weaver birds darted out from underneath the rubble. Makana watched them fly away over the fields.
When he arrived back in town, Makana parked the motorcycle in the alleyway behind the hotel, in a spot where he would be able to see it from the window of his room. He was beginning to develop a fondness for the machine. It was already growing dark. The street lights were coming on, pinpricks of shiny glass against the falling night. As he straightened up he caught a glimpse of a solitary woman passing the end of the street. Reminded of the German girl’s story, Makana was curious. Hurrying along, he reached the corner to see the figure disappearing into the next street. Makana walked quickly, passing the rather grand house that Bulbul insisted on throwing stones at every time he went by. A lone cat sat astride the wall. One paw extended, it paused in giving itself a bath to watch him go past. The street narrowed into an alleyway that wound upwards. A brief flutter of black cloth told him she was just ahead of him. The street led towards the ruins of old Shali that dominated the hill. The remaining houses were no more than solitary walls, jagged edges where the rest of the structure had vanished, or, as he now knew, dissolved in the annual rains. The bright walls contrasted with the dark spaces in between. Windows and doorways through which people had once walked.
A group of small boys sidled up alongside Makana to ask for change. Three, four, five of them, like stray cats. Did they live here, in these ruins? Their clothes were ragged and their feet mostly bare. Makana tried to brush them off, but they were insistent.
‘Where you from, mister?’
‘Cairo.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re not from there.’
Makana reached the corner and looked left and right. Nothing. The road tapered away in both directions, twisting out of sight around a bend both ways.
‘Give us a cigarette, mister.’
The eldest of them wasn’t more than ten years old. Makana started to go left. The boy pointed right.
‘Do you know where she went?’
‘You want to go to Abu Sharaf, mister? You want a woman?’
Makana didn’t know what he wanted. Why was it so important for him to catch up with her? He couldn’t explain. In a gesture of defeat he turned to begin going back downhill. The walls behind him seemed to rise up, closing in on their secrets.
The boys’ laughter trailed him down the incline back to the street. This time as he went past the big house he paused to take a closer look. It belonged to another age. He would have guessed the style was Ottoman. The upper floor appeared to be made of wood. It had a gabled roof and elaborate carvings in the balustrade that ran along the balcony. The only thing it had in common with the houses up on the hill was that it too looked as if it might be about to fall down. Over the high walls the thick fronds of regal old palm trees swelled majestically on the current of warm evening air. The wooden shutters on the windows were cracked, the slats hanging down at an angle. There were no lights visible. He ran a hand over the high metal door feeling the dents where rocks of various sizes had struck home.
The square was deserted. At Hamza’s coffee shop the coloured lights turned their strange orbit on the ceiling of the veranda and the sound of laughter trickled down over the quiet streets. The lobby and reception area of The Desert Fox Hotel were empty. He heard a telephone ringing when he was halfway up the stairs and knew it had to be coming from his room. He rushed up and along the corridor but by the time he had opened the door it had stopped. He threw open the window and looked down to check the Norton was still there. It was. Then he lifted up the holdall and went through his things. Whoever had been through them had been careful not to be too disruptive. He was now convinced that Sadig had gone through his room to check for proof that he was with State Security. As he sifted through his clothes he recalled how Muna used to admonish him for not taking more care of his appearance. She would throw shirts out when she had had enough of them, just to make him buy something new. He crushed the shirt in his hands. Why had this feeling of loss become so acute? He had managed for years, or so he had thought, and now suddenly it felt unbearable. The telephone began to ring.
‘Zahra?’
‘Sorry, it’s just me,’ Sami’s voice crackled down the line. ‘Is this the same Zahra you asked me about? Okay, none of my business. So tell me, how is life in the wilderness treating you?’
‘I feel as though I’m on the edge of the known world. Beyond this there is literally nothing.’
‘I can’t tell. Is that good or bad?’
Makana felt a sudden longing to be back in Cairo. He could hear noise in the background, people calling out and the crashing of plates.
‘Where are you?’
‘Aswani’s,’ said Sami, with his mouth full. ‘You have no idea what you are missing. He got hold of a couple of lambs cheaply and he’s roasted them whole. Amazing. Wait, let me step outside.’ There was a pause and then relative peace with the familiar sound of cars nudging one another along with their horns in the distance. Music playing somewhere. ‘How are you getting on?’
‘They have their own problems to deal with here.’
‘Any connection to why you’re there?’
‘I’m not sure,’ sighed Makana, reaching for his lighter, ‘but it certainly complicates matters. I’m now helping the local police.’
‘Isn’t that going to delay you?’
‘I don’t really have much choice.’ Makana paused, convinced that he could hear breathing on the line from somewhere close by. Sami said something that he didn’t catch. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said at least you’ve had a break from the city. Things are bad here. What’s happening in Palestine is getting worse. People are very angry. The Israelis have gone into Jenin. They are flattening the town. There are reports of a massacre. No journalists can get in.’
‘Did you find out anything more about Musab?’
‘That’s the reason I’m calling. Your source appears to be right. He could have visited Karima before she died.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘He appears to have gone missing.’
‘I thought he was in detention?’
‘Exactly. They appear to have lost him.’ They being State Security.
‘How could that happen?’ asked Makana, thinking aloud. Was it possible he was imagining that someone was listening in? Perhaps we give them too much credit, he thought. Sometimes it was good to be optimistic.
‘The answer is, it can’t, not without help from inside. My source inside the ministry tells me they are desperate to find him before news gets—’ The line went dead. Makana remained sitting there with the receiver to his ear listening to the hum of the dialling tone, waiting for the call to restore itself. He tapped the lever cautiously a couple of times, but Sami was gone. When he finally replaced the receiver on the hook it began ringing. He lifted it again expecting to hear Sami’s voice but there was silence. After a time he heard someone clear their throat.
‘Yes?’ Nagy from downstairs.
‘Yes, what?’ asked Makana.
‘You called reception.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s why I lifted the phone. What can I get you?’
Makana hung up without saying another word.
In his sleep, Makana mistook the knocking at the door for a clock ticking. Time running out. When he opened his eyes he heard Sadig calling his name.
‘Open the door, Makana, before we break it down.’ Nothing would have given him greater pleasure, he might have added. Makana pulled on his trousers and reached for a shirt. Breaking down the door suggested they were getting desperate in their efforts to impress him. Nagy was probably standing behind him with the pass key in his hand. Makana pulled the chair away from the door and unlocked it. Sadig stepped in with a disappointed look on his face, as if he had been hoping to catch Makana in the middle of some obscene act. He stuck his head around the bathroom door for good measure and wh
en he came back the scowl on his face had deepened.
‘Get dressed. I have orders to arrest you.’
‘On what charges?’ asked Makana.
‘The sergeant will explain.’
It wasn’t Nagy, but his daughter Rashida who was hovering by the door. She was shaking, he noticed, her hands trembled as she took the key from him. Her father was waiting at the foot of the stairs.
‘What do I do now? How do I know I’m going to get paid? I have a business to run here.’
His malevolent look suggested he had known all along that it would end like this. Nobody paid him any attention except the girl, who implored her father to be quiet.
Sadig straightened his beret and produced a set of handcuffs.
‘Is this really necessary?’ asked Makana.
‘It’s nothing personal. I’m just following orders.’ A claim that was flatly contradicted by the thin, sadistic smile that crossed Sadig’s face as he tightened the cuffs around Makana’s wrists before leading him out into the street.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
Despite the early hour a crowd had gathered. Makana recognised a few faces. Wad Nubawi stood in his doorway with folded arms. Bulbul’s sad donkey staggered up alongside.
‘Ha, ya basha, have these pigs started with their usual tricks on you too?’
‘Get away from here, boy. Yallah!’ Sadig thumped the side of the karetta and Bulbul took the hint, skidding away on unsteady wheels.
‘Just say the word and I’ll get you out,’ Bulbul called over his shoulder. Makana watched him go. He was in no doubt that the boy probably could manage such a feat. Nothing about this place surprised him any more.
Chapter Eighteen
They walked up the hill into the ruins of Shali, along almost the exact same route Makana had taken the previous evening. No sign of the young boys this time, nor of the lone woman. The crowd tagged along behind them, perhaps hoping for a lynching. More people were waiting further up the narrow street as they turned a corner. Boys clambered onto unstable walls. Women rocked toddlers on their hips. Where had they all suddenly appeared from? Sadig had to thrust people aside, which he did with some relish, enjoying exercising his powers. And people obviously knew him. When they saw who it was they moved aside swiftly enough. Beyond the rubberneckers was a police cordon made up of a couple of uniformed men. In the distance Makana could make out the skinny, nameless officer alongside the stout figure of Sergeant Hamama. In the background, leaning on a wall was the rumpled shape of Doctor Medina. They were staring intently at something that was hidden from view. It was only when he reached them that he saw what it was.
