by Nick Drake
This was one of the slums’ streets notorious for the opium trade, where the low-level gang boys would sell to the more desperate addicts–those who dared to come here, despite the dangers, driven beyond fear by obsession. The slums were populated by immigrants from Punt and Nubia, originally drawn to Thebes by the lucrative southern trade routes that brought gold and copper, ebony, ivory, incense, slaves and rare animals–leopards, giraffes, panthers, little brown monkeys, ostriches–from beyond those lands. Others were drawn by the dream of a better life; the lucky ones ended up labouring on big construction projects, or being employed for their prized skills in metalwork. But in these years, the last royal constructions had been completed–such as the Great Colonnade Hall, inaugurated under Tutankhamun–or abandoned under Ay’s austerity. It was taken as a sign of the dynasty’s weakness that no new monuments or temples had been commissioned–for such triumphs in stone were symbols of power and honour. And so the children of those immigrants, with no prospect of work, and with a keen sense of their alienation from the wealth of the city, turned to the only other option available to them: crime. Not for them the business of tomb robbery, which required surveillance, organization, and effort, and which was in any case the preserve of the older thieving families. These teenagers were messengers, couriers and occasional killers for the opium gangs.
As I watched and waited, Khety’s dead face kept flashing through my mind. I remembered Kiya holding on to her daughter for dear life. And I recalled Tanefert’s desperate face as she had struggled to console me when I had finally found the courage to walk into my own yard, and sink to my knees before her. My heart was like broken glass in my chest. Would it be like this for ever? I struggled to keep my focus on the spectacle before me: the haggard shadows, the arrogant youths, and the yellow-toothed, ragged addicts, with their dulled eyes. One, obviously a rich boy, shambled along the street, his arrogance undermined by his fear and need. He had the signs of withdrawal: his legs shook with wild energy, and he was scratching at his arms, drawing blood. He wore good clothes, and gold rings on his fingers, and his hair was neatly cut. It was like watching an antelope being stalked by lions: the Nubian boys quickly closed in, tracking him along the street, and whistling to each other. One of them jauntily approached the rich boy. He was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, already tall but still with a child’s bony thinness and awkwardness, wearing a short white kilt, leather tassels, gold earrings, and with his hair immaculately plaited. He was full of bravado. Keeping always to the shade, he nodded, and beckoned the rich boy to follow him up a side alley. The rich boy nodded back. The Nubian boys sniggered, and made their way around the back. Those rings would soon be off the rich boy’s hands, most likely with his fingers still wearing them.
I slipped up the alleyway. They were standing close together, but the Nubian boy had his dagger out, threatening the rich boy. I grabbed him from behind. His weapon clattered to the ground. He writhed in my grip like a feral cat.
‘Get out of here now,’ I hissed at the rich boy.
He was trembling, but not with fear.
‘No–I need it, I have to have it…’
To my amazement, he actually picked up the dagger and wavered it uncertainly at me. The Nubian kid laughed at both of us with open contempt.
‘You stupid idiot. Give it to me!’ I shouted.
I looked up the alley. The Nubian boys were gathering. The kid in my grip bit me hard. I whacked him on the side of the head.
‘I’m Medjay, and if you don’t give me that blade and run, you’ll be in prison,’ I said to the rich boy. He glanced at me pathetically, gave the dagger to me, and just stood there hopelessly.
‘Go!’ I yelled. He finally scarpered. I pressed the blade against the Nubian boy’s neck vein, which pulsed delicately. He was wearing a carved amulet, bearing the sign of an arrow, his symbol of belonging, and of protection. The same one the dead boys had worn.
‘What is it you want, Medjay man?’ he demanded.
‘I want you to take me to your boss,’ I replied.
He laughed in my face, a practised snarl of contempt, smirking and scoffing.
‘Who do you think you are?’ he said.
I slapped him hard across the face a few times.
‘Think you’re a soldier, a big man, a brave?’ I said, jabbing the blade harder against his skin. He stared at me incredulously, licking the blood from his lips. Now I saw a glint of fear in his eyes.
‘I’ll kill you for this disrespect,’ he said, glancing at his approaching colleagues. I shoved him around, and shouted at them all.
‘I’m a man with questions, and I want some answers. And believe me, I’ll cut out his eyes before he can blink if you come any closer.’ And I raised the dagger to show I was serious.
The boy clicked his tongue. His eyes moved from side to side as he tried to work out what to do next.
‘You’ll never walk away from this place. The shadows will kill you. You will be cut up into little pieces!’ he offered, brazening out the situation.
I punched him hard in the kidneys. He buckled up, and his colleagues drew back a little, spitting, calling oaths and shaking their heads.
‘Here’s the deal. Either I arrest you for possession of opium, which means you’ll end up in prison and I’ll personally make sure you never see daylight again, or else you take me to whoever it is runs your gang.’
The boy just laughed with contempt.
‘You’re a madman. You think you can just go on in and talk to the boss? You? You’d be dead meat before you made it through the door.’
‘That’s my problem. Show me the door. Or I’ll cut out your eye…’ I said.
And I pressed the point of the blade home right next to his eye, producing a dot of blood, to show him I was serious. Suddenly his bravado vanished, and he started to whisper, ‘Don’t don’t don’t…’
My hand was shaking, we both realized.
‘Now tell your little friends to fuck off, unless you want to let them see you piss yourself,’ I said quietly.
He motioned to the other boys to back off. They drifted away into the shadowy passages.
The crude wooden door he took me to gave away nothing of the business inside. The sign of the arrow was drawn on it, big and crude. Someone had added a pair of gigantic balls to the symbol. Inside I could hear raucous laughter, and wild shrieks.
He knocked, according to a code. Someone was talking, cursing the interruption, and the door creaked open a fraction on its hinges–just enough for me to slam it wide and enter. Inside everything was squalid: naked young girls in opium drowses lay in desultory poses on couches or on the floor, and young men in groups shouted aggressively in triumph as they played euphoric games of senet, or traded jokes and insults. But as soon as the men saw me, they leapt to their feet, jeering provocatively, making threatening gestures with their knives, and pornographic ones with their fists and tongues, ululating as they approached. Behind them I saw a few small, long-necked jars of opium juice. These lads were the next step up from the boy I was with. All wore the arrow amulet on leather necklaces. All wore their hair braided in the same style. I held the dagger close to the boy’s throat. Suddenly he was angry and vicious, knowing he had been badly shamed, and fearing his life was worth even less than mine to his gang. A couple of the larger, more senior lads stepped forward, their ostentatious knives drawn.
‘Gentlemen, I know this visit is unannounced, but I want to speak to your glorious leader. About this…’
And I held up a papyrus bearing the sign of the black star. They stared at it. One grabbed it from my hand, his eyes glittering.
‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded.
‘From the mouth of a dead dealer,’ I said. ‘We both know what it’s about, and I’ve got information. But I’ll only talk to your leader.’
I was blindfolded, and made to wait on a low stool. I listened to the shouts and arguments, and the taunts that came my way. But none of the lads harmed me. Final
ly I was yanked to my feet, and we set off. Three of them pushed me roughly through passageways and side streets, accompanied by the boy. I could hear the business of the city going on in the distance, and I knew we had moved out of the slum, into a better area. Whenever anyone approached they were warned away. Eventually we arrived at our destination. I was ushered inside. The air was cool, and smelt clean, and I heard the sound of water, and splashing, and the giggling, seductive laughter of girls. The blindfold was removed.
I was in a bathhouse, in one of the private chambers set out with couches for resting. Before me stood a Nubian man, tall and slim. He gazed at me. His stony eyes were alert with intelligence. He wore many gold necklaces, and bangles. He cracked his neck dramatically, and sauntered over to assess me more closely, running his long, ostentatiously serrated gold dagger around me, as if I were a slave he might acquire or destroy.
‘Who brought this person uninvited into our place?’ he asked quietly.
The Nubian boy was terrified. He looked down. The man raised his chin, almost tenderly.
‘You made a mistake, Dedu. A bad mistake. You’ve betrayed us all. Do you understand that?’
The boy nodded slowly. His lower lip was trembling now.
‘Please…’ he whispered.
‘Please what?’ said the man.
‘Please, my lord. Don’t kill me.’
The man pondered, watching the boy.
‘Wait there,’ he said. ‘Think about your error.’
The boy nodded and bowed humbly. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for him.
Then the gang leader turned to me.
‘Normally, I only see Medjay officers by appointment, by night. Is this visit for business, or pleasure?’ he asked.
‘Something of both,’ I responded.
He chuckled, playing with his knife, executing complex little moves he’d honed for performance and intimidation.
‘You’ve got a lot of audacity coming in here like this. Now I have to decide whether to kill you or listen to you. I think I’ll listen to you, and then kill you afterwards. You’d better have a good story. Who knows? It might even prolong your life–for a while.’
He threw out the men who had brought me and the pretty young girls who lay about on the couches. Then, when they had all sauntered or scurried away, and only he, Dedu and two bodyguards remained, he offered me a low stool, with exaggerated politeness.
‘I’ll stand. I’ve come to discuss this.’
I held out the papyrus. He glanced at it, nonchalant.
‘So what?’
‘I found it in the mouth of my closest friend. His head had been separated from his body.’
‘Ah, your closest friend.’ He grunted with sarcastic sympathy. ‘Alas, death is everywhere. The God Seth, Lord of Chaos and Confusion, is surely walking the streets of this city once more. Now he does not even spare the fine law-enforcing officers of the Medjay. What are things coming to? And what is it you want from me?’
‘I’m sure you are also familiar with this symbol. It has been found in the mouths of others–dead young dealers who were, I’m sure, in your employment.’
‘And so?’
‘And so we have something in common,’ I said.
Suddenly his knife slammed into the wall, just a hair’s breadth from my face, near my eye, and juddered there. I stared at him, unmoved.
‘You and I have nothing in common. And I still don’t know why you are here. I think, and I can find no answer. You had better help me out, quickly,’ he said.
‘You, I assume, want to know who has been slaughtering your boys, and taking away your business.’
‘And what do you want?’ he asked.
‘I want to know who killed my friend. And I want to kill him.’
He nodded, delighted by this.
‘Ah, revenge, it is so beautiful,’ he said. ‘But my question is this: what can you do for me that I can’t do for myself?’
‘A deal. Mutual benefit. We share all our knowledge. I’m a Medjay detective. This gives me authority, and it grants me access to places you could never reach. However, you will back me up. You will tell me what you know about this new gang. We’ll combine intelligence. You provide the force, if and when the time comes. And then you can take your revenge. But the crucial clause is this: the killer of my friend is mine to do with as I choose.’
He put the tips of his fingers carefully together and smiled.
‘You think this is funny?’ I said. ‘You think I’m here to amuse myself?’
He nodded, as if somehow impressed by my reckless behaviour.
‘You are truly angry, my friend, and I admire your thirst for revenge. But perhaps you did not think carefully enough about coming here. Perhaps you didn’t think about respect.’
‘I thought carefully. You know who I am. You could easily kill me if you wanted. So why else would I take this kind of risk unless I was–sincere?’ I replied.
He chuckled at the word, repeating it to himself as if it were the punchline of a joke. Then he reached for a jug of wine, and poured us each a measure.
‘Sit down, my sincere friend,’ he said, in a warmer tone. ‘Let me tell you about myself.’
And so it was I ended up listening to one of the most notorious and ruthless bosses of the city’s cartels. I found him to be a hard, intelligent businessman, with an astute sense of theatre; his own grand style of violence he deemed a necessary part of business. It was an expression of power, and a demand for respect. Of course, he was prepared to use it whenever it suited him, which was often; but he was no psychopath. In fact, he saw himself as a benefactor, for the men under his control were young, and otherwise hopeless, and he believed he was shaping their lawlessness to more useful ends. The vast profits of his trade he saw as a reasonable redistribution of wealth. He was himself simply profiting like a businessman from a new market of consumers–the affluent young of Egypt, who could afford the luxury of opium, and then, when pleasure turned to addiction, who could maintain that, too. He had even devised a special deal; the first hit was free. Thereafter, they bought from him. He had no concern for their welfare; in the direct terms of his morality, that was their responsibility.
I began to realize this was a man who believed his actions were reasonable and principled; he saw his cartel as a family, or a kind of brigade, and its rules were based not on violence, but on trust. Most of the kids who came to him were orphaned or from homes so broken by poverty and violence they were better off without them. He gave them something to do, something to define themselves against, and a strict routine with tangible rewards. Most strangely, perhaps, he was proud of the city, and of his position.
As a–now–former Medjay officer, I belonged on the opposite side of everything he stood for, and everything he said. And yet I found myself unable, at times, to challenge the truth of his arguments. But in any case, it was not in my interest to question him further about the less appetizing aspects of his apparently benign underworld tyranny. I only needed to know what he could tell me about the Black Star Gang.
‘They are a mystery, and they are a big problem. The supply of opium is limited, and hard to obtain, and therefore of great value; and so all the Theban gangs have always fought over it. It has been notoriously unreliable. Of course it is smuggled up the Great River, by boat. It is not so difficult to bribe the right men to smuggle the shipments through the port. And the captains take their share willingly. Sometimes the quantities are excellent–three or more shipments in one month. But at times they have dwindled to nothing. Some of us tried to set up better, more consistent supply lines, but it was impossible. The distances were too great. The contacts were obscure. The jars are heavy, and the opium juice is inconvenient to transport. It is a strange world out there, beyond our borders, and mostly our dealers and negotiators do not return.’
‘And now?’ I asked.
‘Now, suddenly, the gang war in the city has exploded again. At first we suspected each other. But soon even the
most adamant of my rivals recognized this was the work of a different group. They are nothing like us.’
‘Tell me what you know.’
He sighed, and began to pace the chamber.
‘These killers are like the spirits of the dead. They travel in silence. They destroy everything. They go where they will … and no one escapes or survives,’ he said simply.
‘But how do they do that?’ I wondered.
He shrugged.
‘It is their style. It’s very elegant. And you know, unlike the rest of us, they don’t diversify at all. Gambling, prostitution, illegal smuggling of rare goods, kidnapping–these are all potentially lucrative areas. But as far as I know, they have shown no interest in any of this—’
‘How do they distribute the opium? It’s one thing to import it, and to destroy the competition. It’s another to set up a new distribution system of dealers,’ I said.
He opened his hands wide in agreement.
‘I have no idea. I am hoping you will tell me. Perhaps, when they have wiped out the rest of the opposition, they will offer us a distribution deal. No doubt the terms will not be very acceptable.’
He gazed at me, then leaned back, and roared with laughter.
‘You know something; I feel I could almost like you. You must have some balls, coming in here and talking to me like this.’
I ignored him.
‘Is there anything else you can tell me? The smallest detail might be useful,’ I said.
He pondered the papyrus and the black star.
‘Here in Thebes we are at the end of a long process, a long journey, a chain of many connected businesses. This has never been efficient, but it was always necessary. But it seems to me somehow this gang must have solved that problem. I don’t know how, but I believe they control the whole process from supply to delivery. Perhaps you should think about that. Think about where the chain begins, as well as where it ends.’
‘And where is that?’
He smiled.
‘North.’
