Dogstar Rising

by Parker Bilal

  ‘In her place you would have left already?’ Makana brought his eyes away from the books to the woman in the doorway.

  ‘If I had the chance I would leave tomorrow.’ She sounded a resentful note.

  He went back to the shelves in front of him, asking casually, ‘How did the family take to her marrying him, I mean, Doctor Hilal being a Muslim?’

  ‘Of course, it’s not the same, but it’s what happens. Anyway, she always did as she pleased, and expected the world to arrange itself around her.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy for you.’

  ‘It wasn’t. Many people refused to have anything to do with her, but what can you do? We are a family.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Maysoun sniffed. ‘His faith was not the problem. It was politics. For years we begged her to get him to moderate his views. You cannot reason with fanatics. What’s the point of antagonising them? He lost his job. Her career was ruined.’ She buried her nose in the handkerchief and blew hard. ‘I asked her to tell him to apologise. He refused. Too proud. And now look.’

  ‘You blame him for her death, but Meera believed in him. She supported his ideas.’

  ‘Ideas!’ Maysoun clutched her handkerchief fiercely. ‘What do ideas matter? They are nothing but the fruit of man’s vanity.’

  With that she spun on her heels and disappeared down the hall. Makana turned his thoughts on the person who used to inhabit this room. It was the study of a dedicated academic. Meera had obviously read widely, in English, Arabic and French. There were shelves weighed down with theory and others crammed with dog-eared novels. They were used up like old rags that had been through the ringer too many times, corners bent and pages yellowed, spines cracked open to reveal the wonders they contained. The mystery that was Meera threaded its way through all of this. He flipped through some of the books on the shelf finding her name in journals and anthologies, the author of papers on Thomas Hardy and George Eliot. A wave of sudden familiarity washed over him as he recalled Muna’s study at home, and that in turn brought back Damazeen. Could he be telling the truth? Could Nasra still be alive?

  His concentration broken, Makana returned the book he was holding to its place and turned his attention to the desk. An antique writing bureau with a carved back. It had a number of small drawers and cubbyholes. It wasn’t in mint condition. Was anything in this tired city? Everything seemed exhausted and on its last legs. The varnish was scratched and in a couple of places the elegance of an arch was curtailed abruptly where a mishap of some kind had chipped off a corner. Scars in the base showed that the tabletop, now fixed roughly in place with a couple of hasty screws, had once been a folding leaf. Its faded style hinted at the elegance of another age and he wondered if it had once belonged to the grandfather she had spoken of.

  The chair creaked comfortably as he settled himself into it. For a long moment he remained motionless, taking in everything in sight. He was aware that he had barely glimpsed the surface of who or what Meera had been, and that the key to her death lay in somehow managing to see through her eyes. A tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl contained pens and pencils. Objects she chose with care. On the right side a series of shelves contained sheets of paper and envelopes of various sizes, shapes and colours, all stacked in order. He went through these slowly and meticulously, opening old bills and leafing through receipts. The drawers were cluttered with things she did not much care for but could not bring herself to throw out. A tangle of ribbons, Sellotape, thumbtacks, a bottle of Chinese ink for an old-fashioned fountain pen. The pen itself was a bulky German thing. A man’s pen. The name Graf von Faber-Castell engraved on the side. The left-hand side of the desk was taken up by a stack of three little drawers. Each with a heart-shaped piece of ivory inset around a tiny keyhole. One of them was missing its little ebony handle. None of them was locked. The first was stuffed with more outdated receipts: a watch-repair shop, Madbouli’s bookshop, a stationer’s in Sharia al-Kasr, a pharmacy in Zamalek. He sifted through and replaced them. The second contained bits of jewellery, odd earrings, a pair of spectacles with a cracked lens, old coins and notes from Syria, Greece, French Francs, Italian Lira, Spanish Pesetas. The watch and the glasses belonged to a man, mementoes perhaps of her father. As he was stuffing them all back the drawer snagged and refused to close fully. Pulling it all the way out he peered into the cavity and saw that something had been caught at the back. It must have slipped down or been stuffed there. Scrabbling about with his fingers he eventually managed to free it: a photograph of three men in military uniforms. It appeared to have been taken in a desert somewhere. He studied the barrenness behind them and wondered where it could be. Then he turned his attention to the faces. He immediately recognised two of them: Rocky was at the back, his left eye drooping. Second from the left was Ramy, Faragalla’s nephew. Makana remembered him from the picture of the excursion at the Blue Ibis offices. The third man he hadn’t seen before. Makana turned the picture over, but nothing was written on the back. After a moment he tucked it into his pocket. As he turned to leave, Makana paused in the doorway and wondered what he wasn’t seeing. Maysoun was standing by the front door, her head bowed.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, as she opened the door for him. She said nothing. It looked as though she had been crying.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was almost eleven o’clock by the time Makana reached the uneven streets of the Mouski and stepped into the narrow gap beside the old silversmith’s shop. At this hour of the evening the metal shutters were down along the shopfronts and the streets were deserted. The odd naked lightbulb spilled watery pools of illumination over the shadows. Cats stepped daintily through the garbage left from the day’s market like queens from a forgotten age. The hiss of an oil lamp marked the progress of a man trundling his cart homeward, his back bowed with weariness. The cart was laden with heaps of peanuts and roasted melon seeds, wayward horns of paper cones curled skyward like model towers in a fantastical city.

  The air felt muggy and humid, as if it might rain. The narrow cut looked dark and uninviting. Makana picked his way carefully. Once his eyes had adjusted to the gloom he found the faint city glow filtering over the rooftops was enough for him to see by. Despite the late hour and the silence, as he cut across the square Makana had the impression he was being observed. When he tugged the bell there was again a long pause before the quiet slap of slippers could be heard approaching. The bolt was drawn and the door swung open to reveal the same small boy in his red tarboosh. Once again, as he crossed the threshold, Makana felt the modern world fall away and his mood lift as he climbed the spiral staircase, one hand on the bone-smooth stone. The hall of bird cages was dark and still, each cage now veiled by a sheet of white cloth. Makana recognised the sprightly figure of Yunis waiting for him at the far end. His silhouette stark against the glow on the other side of the open doorway.

  ‘Ah!’ He removed his dark glasses to get a better look at Makana. ‘You look tired. What’s the matter, you’re not sleeping well?’

  ‘I was up late.’

  ‘You need to get married again. You’re still young. Soon it won’t be that easy. You’ll get used to solitude, the sound of your own voice.’

  ‘I could always start collecting birds.’

  ‘A poor substitute for a wife. Take my word for it.’ His skin looked as pale and translucent as onionskin paper, an exotic species of bird about to be blown away.

  ‘I wondered if you had had any thoughts about printers.’

  They sat in the protruding alcove, overlooking the garden. He allowed the solitude to transport him momentarily to another age, when caravans stopped for the night and the yard below would fill with the shuffle of camels and packhorses being watered and fed, having borne ice from distant mountains, or animal skins laden with salt across the desert.

  ‘Do you think he suspects you?’

  ‘Yousef?’ Makana reached for a cigarette. ‘I really don’t know. There’s more to him than I thought.’
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br />   He reached into the pocket of his gelabiya and handed over a list of some fifteen names.

  ‘These printers are the kind you are looking for. Simple establishments, old machines falling into disrepair.’ He produced a half-smoked cigarette from another pocket and lit it. The old man’s cheeks seemed to hollow impossibly as he drew smoke into his lungs. ‘The letters show a lack of attention to detail which means laziness. Which then cut the list further in my mind.’ He spoke over his shoulder as he led the way into the circular library to pluck a book from a shelf.

  ‘Statistics In Comparative Human Development: A Case Study.’ Makana looked up. ‘Sounds fascinating.’

  ‘Examine the first page. Look closely at the places I have marked.’ Yunis held up one of the letters Makana had given him. ‘Do you see it?’

  ‘They were printed on the same machine?’

  Yunis took the book from Makana and turned it over so that he could read the printer’s name: Mereekh Academic Publishers Egypt. ‘They do a lot of work for Cairo University.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Makana said.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ Yunis examined him. ‘Your mind is elsewhere this evening. What is bothering you?’

  ‘Ghosts. Things I thought I had put behind me for ever.’

  ‘We never put the past behind us, not really. We just put it aside for a while.’ Yunis led the way through to the next room and along a narrow passageway. The walls were bare and there was only a fragment of light to see by. A bend brought them to the top of a staircase that descended into darkness. ‘You can leave by the rear entrance. Mind how you go.’ Yunis paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ Makana asked, but the old man had already gone. He turned his attention to getting down the staircase, trying not to break a leg. He felt cautiously with his feet, stepping down slowly, moving one foot at time. Then he was in a narrow alcove. Suffocating in the dust and with cobwebs clinging to his face, he felt with his hand to find a heavy old door. Light filtered through cracks in the wood. A rusty bolt finally gave with a snap and the door swung inwards. As he stepped out into the street a shadow rose over him. He tried to duck the blow, but managed only to deflect it as it struck him high on the cheekbone and sent him staggering and down on one knee. An arm closed around his neck and jerked him back up, until he felt his feet leave the ground. His air supply was cut off and he felt himself becoming light-headed. One arm was pinned to his side so he thrashed about with the other, his feet pedalling in the air, trying to find a purchase. Whoever was behind him was big and incredibly strong and smelt of aftershave. Was this to be the last thing he knew of this life: cheap cologne? The street was deserted at that hour. To take his mind off his problems, the second man stepped up and punched him heavily in the stomach, hard enough to expel whatever air was left inside his lungs. Then he was hanging limply from the tree branch that was wrapped across his windpipe. A glitter of light brought the hot glow of a blade closer. Behind it was a short, ugly man with a wispy coil of a beard framing his face. A thinning mat of hair rested across the top of his head. His beard and hair were dyed with henna.

  ‘You feel this?’ A low rasp as he pressed the blade to Makana’s throat.

  There was an absurdity to the situation. The little man resembled something out of a fable. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves maybe. And the question ignored the fact that Makana could not have answered him with all the will in the world. He was immobilised and barely conscious. The ugly man leaned closer.

  ‘Keep your nose out of Zafrani business,’ he whispered, pressing the tip of the blade to Makana’s ear. He flicked the tip as he stepped back with a swift nod to his accomplice. Makana slid to the ground gasping for breath. His neck was wet and he put a hand to his ear to stem the bleeding. When he looked up again the two men had disappeared like smoke into the night air.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Makana woke up in pain the next day. His body ached and his neck felt as though it had been stretched on a rack. The bedsheet was stained with blood. A quick glance in the cracked mirror confirmed that he had a bruise the size of an egg swelling on his left cheek and a nasty gash on his ear. By the time he reached the Hourriya Café, Sami was already there drinking beer, which seemed a reckless proposal at any time of the day. Makana stuck with tea. An old man at the next table licked his lips like a cat as he watched Sami pouring foaming Stella into his glass. A shoeshine boy went from table to table looking for anyone who still cared about the state of their shoes. Around the sides of the bare, unkempt room sat ageing men in various states of decrepitude. They played chess, read newspapers and smoked their cigarettes. Most of all they just stared into space, remembering times gone by, glory days, as distant as the pharaohs. Sami liked to make out they were poets or literary critics, but to Makana they just looked like sad old men whose lives had been played out.

  ‘You look a lot worse than I feel, which actually makes me feel better,’ said Sami.

  The atmosphere in here, the sense of resignation, all added to Makana’s melancholy mood. ‘Does Rania know you drink in the middle of the day?’

  ‘Oh, don’t start that.’ Sami raised both hands in protest. ‘Don’t you ever feel that the whole thing is just so hopeless?’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything. The despair. Don’t you feel that sometimes? What happened to you by the way? It’s getting to the point where I’m not sure I want to be seen with you in public.’

  ‘Always nice to know you can count on your friends.’

  ‘I hear you and Macarius were out finding bodies the other night.’

  ‘Another homeless boy. Do you know if they have identified him yet?’

  ‘What do you think? Do you know how many homeless kids live in this city? Conservative estimates put the figure at fifty thousand. Boys and girls trying to escape a life of abuse. Most of them disappear, melting into cracks in the pavement. They are the symptom of serious social breakdown. Families that are under such pressure, no money, no jobs, no food, that they start to tear one another apart, like wild animals.’ Sami slapped the side of the table, causing an old man snoozing nearby to jump. Sami apologised. ‘Maalish, ya ammu.’

  ‘Can’t you go and solve the world’s problems somewhere else?’ the man grumbled.

  ‘There is some connection here that I can’t really see,’ said Makana, leaning his elbows on the table. He pushed the photograph across. Sami looked at it.

  ‘Three soldiers. Who are they?’

  ‘This is Ramy, Faragalla’s nephew, and the one with the eye is Ahmed Rakuba, Rocky. The third one I don’t know.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Meera’s study.’

  ‘And you think this means . . . what?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Makana looked vague.

  ‘You seem distracted. Has something happened?’

  Makana looked at him and decided he wasn’t ready yet to start talking about Nasra.

  ‘Perhaps I should go to Luxor and have a talk with Ramy.’

  Sami watched him as he took a long swallow of beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a man trying to drown himself. He finally came up for air and began to top up the glass.

  ‘Have you had any more thoughts on what Father Macarius might be hiding?’

  ‘Only the obvious.’ Makana recalled the wooden angels floating over the boxing ring and the strange mute who had carved them.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That the killer might actually turn out to be connected to the church or the gym. They would shut him down if that was the case.’

  ‘They would burn him to the ground, more like.’

  ‘Yallah ya shabab,’ muttered the man dozing at the next table. In the middle of the floor, a cat arched its back, stretching itself along a pillar of sunlight that fell across the broken black-and-white tiles. The sandwiches arrived and the cat stepped up, twirling its tail in the air. Makana dropped a slice of chicken on the floor and instantly five other cats dar
ted out of the shadows.

  Sami poured the last dregs into his glass and raised the bottle of Stella to call for another one. Makana knew his friend would go back to the paper and put his head down on his desk and sleep for an hour or so until the day cooled off and night fell. Then he would order coffee and start his rounds of the city’s receptions and parties. He did most of his work at home and only showed up at the paper every day, he said, because otherwise someone else would steal his desk.

  ‘How did you get on with the Eastern Star bank?’

  ‘I read Ridwan Hilal’s book on the subject. He talks about some of the crooked schemes the banks get up to. One of them involves siphoning funds through small companies with a lot of turnover, particularly of foreign currency.’

  ‘You mean, like travel agents?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sami. ‘It seems the government set up their own committee of investigation. They published a report.’

  ‘Clearing the bank of all charges.’

  ‘You should be reading fortunes. You’d make a good living. I had an aunt who read coffee grounds. She never made a milliem, always giving it away. Generosity is a flaw in my family.’

  ‘So that’s it, the bank was cleared?’

  ‘It gets worse. Remember I told you I had a friend who was working on the story?’ Sami slid a folded newspaper across the table and tapped his finger on a small item that appeared at the bottom of an inside page and Makana read: Journalist Nasser Hikmet falls from hotel room window in Ismailia. ‘They’re calling it suicide.’

  ‘Falling out of windows is an occupational hazard for journalists.’

  ‘Nasser was a good man. He deserved better.’ Sami gave a long sigh. ‘You know what our problem is? We can’t decide what we want. Do we want West or East, Islam or the joys of secularism? We think we can have it all.’

  It struck Makana that he was surrounded by people who had made great sacrifice, who had laid down their lives on a battlefield in a war that was undeclared. Meera, Nasser Hikmet, the tortured boy lying in the ruins of a house in Imbaba. Further back, there were people like Talal’s father, and of course Muna and Nasra. What was it all for? What cause did their deaths serve? His thoughts seemed to follow an eccentric orbit that kept leading him round, circling what he had managed to keep at bay all these years. What would he do if she was alive?