The Eye of Ra

by Michael Asher

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It was Robert’s last comment about the “natives of al-Maqs”.’

  ‘What’s so funny about that?’

  ‘Well, the “natives of al-Maqs” are my relatives. That’s where my mother was from. In fact, this Mukhtar wald Salim is my uncle!’

  We rumbled slowly into the street, past parked cars and the gates of well-lit villas. I throttled up quickly — this bike could accelerate from zero to thirty in only five seconds. By the time we reached the road junction we were fairly tripping along. Just at the end of the road, a tall, dark figure stood smoking a cigarette, silhouetted by a street lamp. He was built like a weight-lifter, and as we approached his domed forehead and clipped moustache came into focus, just for a split second, as he threw away his cigarette, and turned casually out of the light.

  29

  I know now, of course, that it was Hammoudi. The following were among police documents stolen from his briefcase some time afterwards:

  Memorandum — Confidential

  For the Eyes of the Officer Commanding SID Only

  To: Col. Sultan al-Faid, OC Mukhabaraat SID Division.

  From: Capt. Boutros Hammoudi, i/c Operation Ushabti

  Subject: Source Jibril (COPY)

  Sir,

  The subjects Ross and Anasis left Rabjohn’s house at about 2010 riding a motor-cycle. The bike took me by surprise, and I didn’t recognise them until they were almost past me. I was able to ascertain the make and registration number of the vehicle in question, which has been traced to Robert Rabjohn, an American citizen, the owner of the house under surveillance. At the end of the street, the subjects turned right down al-Urubba, towards the Abbasiyya flyover.

  The house had been under surveillance by my SID team since the previous afternoon, following a tip-off from Source Jibril that subjects Ross and Anasis were hiding out there. I had ordered the team to move in and arrest them at 1200 hours, but at 1100 I got a message from Major Rasim Bakr — Source Jibril’s contact in SID — to cancel the arrest operation and continue surveillance until further notice. As the commander of the operation on the ground I questioned Major Rasim’s orders, as I suspected they came straight from Jibril. I am not aware of Jibril’s identity, but I do know it is not standard operational procedure in SID to let informers run investigations. Maj. Rasim then pulled rank on me and said to me that he would be reporting my attitude to you personally. I had to accept his orders, but as the operation should rightly have been under my command, I’m writing this report to you to let you know my side of it.

  I believe that Source Jibril has had too much influence on this op. It was Jibril who first reported Cranwell’s body on the Giza plateau, and Jibril who informed Maj. Rasim Bakr that the victim might have been killed by drugs. It was for this reason that I ordered Cranwell’s flat to be searched the same day, and dis-covered documents showing a link between Cranwell and Nikolai Kolpos, a known trafficker in illegal antiquities, whom we have had under surveillance for some time.

  My hypothesis was that Cranwell was supplying valuable antiquities to Kolpos, who was smuggling them out of Egypt to private collectors. He had many contacts especially in the Arab Gulf States. Cranwell recently obtained two rare 18th-Dynasty ushabtis, which Kolpos was getting ready to sell. We have not yet been able to ascertain where these antiquities came from. Cranwell was found dead at Giza, and my own view is that, due to the great value of the objects, Kolpos and Cranwell disagreed, and Kolpos paid two killers to murder Cranwell, and disguise it as a natural death. Cranwell’s ghaffir informed me that he was last seen leaving his flat in Khan al-Khalili with two oddly-dressed men after a row. I ordered a post-mortem on Cranwell’s body, but before it could be completed the corpse was transferred to the British Consulate on the authority of Maj. Rasim Bakr. When I asked him for an explanation Maj. Rasim warned me not to interfere. In my opinion, the transfer of the body was carried out on the request of Source Jibril.

  Next, Jibril drew Maj. Rasim’s attention to Omar James Ross, a known associate of Cranwell’s with a background of trafficking in antiquities. Ross was expelled from the EAS two years ago for the offence. He is also suspected of forging antiquities. I thought at first that we might have uncovered a smuggling ring which might be responsible for some of the major operations of the last ten years. Source Jibril told Maj. Rasim that Ross would be meeting a contact on the Giza Plateau. I was lying in wait and arrested Ross on that occasion, but was unable to trace his contact. I was ordered by Maj. Rasim to let him off with a warning, and without even trying to ascertain who this contact was. In my opinion it was the girl Elena Anasis, who Ross was trying to subvert.

  The result of this premature action, I believe, was the murder of Nikolai Kolpos, carried out by Omar James Ross, either in revenge for the Cranwell killing, or more probably to get back the ushabtis that Kolpos was hiding. I also think Anasis was an accessory to the murder, because she moved out of Kolpos’s flat two days before. Eyewitness accounts tell us that a man answering Ross’s description was seen fighting with Kolpos in his shop two days prior to the incident. The same evening Ross’s room at Shepheard’s was burnt out - this may have been a bid by Kolpos to eliminate Ross, who was in fact, out of the hotel at the time. It is possible he was tipped off by the Anasis girl. A man wearing an earring on his upper right ear, as Ross does, was seen by eyewitnesses near Kolpos’s shop when it was blown up.

  On the morning after the fire, I identified Dr Evelyn Barrington, a known associate of both Ross and Cranwell, at the scene. I put a tail on her, which she managed to throw off in Tahrir Square. That reminded me that Barrington is or was an operative of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. She is reputed to have left the Service years ago, but this may be deep cover. I am certain that she has been involved in operations against this country in the past, and her arrival changed the current investigation. When I informed Maj. Rasim Bakr this, he told me I should confine my investigations to antiquities smuggling and murder. Technically this was beyond his authority, as such decisions are properly the business of the operation commander — in this case, myself. I believe this order also came from Source Jibril. It seems to me that the informant Jibril is running Maj. Rasim Bakr, rather than the other way round, which is not standard procedure. Anyway, I now know that Barrington is involved in the Kolpos affair at least as an accessory. Through a secret informant I picked up a baker’s assistant called Mohammad Ghali, who broke under interrogation and informed us that he had taken an injured man answering Ross’s description to an address in Zamalek in the middle of the night. There, he was met and paid off by a foreign woman speaking fluent Arabic — Barrington — who took the injured man to her place. Unfortunately, Ghali had a heart attack under deep interrogation and was unable to reveal more. We put a watch-team on Barrington’s block, and the following day, her flat was visited by the girl Anasis. They all set out together in Barrington’s car, but again she was wary and threw off our tail. The next thing we knew Source Jibril was informing us that the subjects were at Rabjohn’s house in Heliopolis.

  It seems odd to me, Sir, that while Source Jibril’s information initiated this operation, he has constantly obliged us to change tack. First, he informed us that Cranwell had been poisoned, then he asked Maj. Rasim to stop the post-mortem operation that might have proved it. He let us know that Ross would be meeting a contact at Giza, but asked us not to hold him or even find out who the contact was. As a result of this, Kolpos — who might have told us a great deal under deep interrogation — was murdered. Last, Jibril informed us that the subjects were hiding at a house in Heliopolis, then made sure we didn’t arrest them. I cannot help suspecting, Sir, that Source Jibril might be using this operation to his own purposes, whatever they might be. The presence of Barrington, and now Rabjohn suggests to me that foreign powers might be involved. As you well know, Sir, I am first and foremost a patriot and a defender of the integrity of Egypt, which was the world’s first civilisation and the world’s leading po
wer when the ancestors of these foreigners were still naked savages living in caves. It seems to me that a threat to our integrity must be dealt with by action. Many times in the past foreign intelligence organisations have tried to infiltrate us and make fools of us. I fear that there could be a lot more to Operation Ushabti than smuggling artefacts — Source Jibril could be a foreign agent, and SID could be just a pawn in a game played out between foreign powers. Can I suggest that we investigate the identity of Source Jibril before continuing with the operation?

  Memorandum — Confidential

  From: Col. Sultan al-Faid, OC Mukhabaraat SID Division.

  To: Capt. Boutros Hammoudi, i/c Operation Ushabti

  Subject: Source Jibril

  Capt. Hammoudi,

  Thank you for your report. Your points are noted, and your allegations will be investigated as soon as possible. In the meantime, you are to move your surveillance team, with a support group of the Special Operations Section, to Kharja oasis in the Western Desert. You are to be at Baris, in Kharja, by sunrise tomorrow without fail. You will await further instructions there. You will be i/c operation on the ground, subject to the orders of Maj. Rasim Bakr.

  PART II

  THE WESTERN DESERT OF EGYPT

  1995

  30

  We sighted our first police checkpoint beyond the pyramids, where al-Ahram Street merges with the desert road. There was a pale moon and little traffic, and I cut the lights and nursed the motor-cycle off to the west, putting a good two miles between us and the asphalt strip. The desert was gravelly here, but uniformly flat without holes or banks and the Honda’s chunky tyres could easily deal with the small stones. My eyes soon adjusted to the darkness. The stars were already out in their full royal majesty, and I kept the Great Bear and the Pole Star directly behind my shoulder. I didn’t need a compass to travel in the desert — from my Hawazim forebears I’d inherited a compass in the head. Soon, Giza was an archipelago of light far behind us and I pushed even farther west, leaving six, ten miles between us and the road. Giza was swallowed up by the darkness, and there was nothing but ourselves and the sound of the engine in the vastness of the night. Beyond the wall of darkness, I knew, the Sahara stretched on and on like an ocean. We could have turned west and driven in a straight line and never crossed another asphalt road, nor a river, nor come across another big city in three and a half thousand miles. That was the distance between here and the Atlantic coast.

  It was almost midnight when we halted. The night was cool and still, and when I scanned the stars I saw that they were opaquely visible through a screen of dust. That told me the ghibli might be on its way. Elena stretched, swinging her arms to get the circulation going. ‘I never dreamed I’d be sleeping in the desert tonight,’ she said. ‘You sure no one will find us?’

  ‘Nobody knows we’re here,’ I said. ‘That’s the beauty of the desert. If you have the confidence you can just fade into it. The Egyptians of the Nile are terrified of it, even now. For them it’s like another world, so big they can’t imagine it. They just try to pretend it’s not there.’

  We began to turn our arbitrary stopping place into a home for the night, laying out our blanket and sleeping-bags. I lit the gas cooker and Elena cooked rice and sardines. Afterwards we drank tea from big plastic army mugs sitting by a fire I’d kindled from a few shreds of wood I’d picked up in Rabjohn’s garden. The flames flickered wildly in the stones. I lit my pipe. There was no sound but the low soughing of the wind, increasing gradually in volume. I listened carefully and glanced up to see an even thicker nebula of dust scouring across the stars. Pieces of grit struck my face suddenly. From the west there came a steady, tympanic boom as if some giant creature was stamping across the desert floor. Elena shivered. ‘That’s Raul,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s Raul?’

  ‘In Hawazim legend he’s the demon drummer.’

  She shivered. ‘I can see why the Egyptians were so scared of the desert,’ she said. ‘It’s like the sea — you feel overwhelmed by its bigness. You feel its power can break you.’

  ‘That was the lesson my mother’s people learned — flexibility. You don’t try to stay the same, don’t try to make a stand against nature. If anything does that it’s bound to fail in the end. You roll and move with the landscape. The Hawazim did it and they’ve survived for thousands of years.’

  ‘Your mother was really one of the Ghosts of the Desert?’

  ‘Yes, she was.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Nobody really knows. They say the desert took her. I was nine years old.’

  Elena shivered again. ‘Doesn’t that make you afraid?’

  ‘No, because I grew up in the desert. It has its hazards — but so does the city. My mother’s people are looked down on by the so-called “noble” clans of the desert fringes who live more comfortable lives. The Hawazim have been persecuted by governments since they came out of the ark — the Mamluks and the Turks hounded them and forced them out into the farthest and most arid tracts of desert, where they learned to survive. They can find their way in the desert literally blindfold, by feeling the texture of the sand and by the direction of the wind. They can remember the tracks of every camel and every person they’ve ever seen. They can locate sip-wells in absolute desert where there are no known water-reserves and drink the water using a hollow reed. They can smell open water miles away. They will drink the gastric juices of oryx and gazelles and even the vomit of their camels to survive. They can live on locusts and desert rats for days. Those were the lessons they learned from the desert. A Hazmi in the town or the village is despised as a dirty Hazmi, but in the desert nobody despises him.’

  ‘And you can do all those things?’

  ‘Not as well as them — after all, I’m only half Hazmi. But as the Hawazim say, “a thing learned when young is a thing carved in rock” — I learned desert skills as a boy — to track, find my way, live on plants and animals, to handle camels, to shoot a rifle, to set game-traps, to throw a knife. A lot of it I learned from my mother. She was as competent as any man.’

  ‘Yet the desert killed her?’

  ‘She was very independent. She sometimes insisted on going off with the salt-caravans into the Sudan — a fifty-day trek. It was a man’s job really, but she did it. It was pride, I think. She didn’t want it thought she was being kept as a charity by some well-heeled Afrangi — that she’d forgotten how to live in the desert. I know she never wanted me to go away to school in Cairo. I think she thought it was a reflection on her — that she couldn’t look after me properly or something. But my father insisted. So while I was away she’d occasionally go off with the caravans to prove what she was worth. The desert got her in the end.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘That year there’d been some terrible storms — the ghibli brought with it clouds of dust the colour of blood. That’s why they referred to it as “The Year of the Great Red Dust” — their years are names not numbers. Anyway, the ghibli can be so powerful that it strips the paint off cars.’

  ‘It was the ghibli that got your mother?’

  ‘The story went that she was travelling with a salt-caravan, when some camels broke their hobbles and got lost. Maryam went to track them down and never came back. A ghibli blew up and covered her tracks completely. They never discovered her remains. My father was completely shattered by it. He never referred to her as being dead — always said she’d “disappeared”. I got into the same habit, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘It was 1969 — a long time ago now.’

  ‘And the Hawazim don’t live in the desert any longer?’

  ‘A lot of them are half-settled in villages on the edges of the oases. But don’t be fooled by that — it’s just for the sake of appearances. They can pack up and head off into the sands any time they please.’

  ‘What about your uncle — Mukhtar wald Salim? You think he’ll welcome us fugitives?’

  ‘Has
to. It’s the desert law. A guest is always welcome — even a stranger or an enemy. Blood ties are utterly sacred to them. Mukhtar’s my mother’s elder brother — the amnir of my section of the tribe.’

  ‘What’s an amnir?’

  ‘It literally means a guide, but actually he’s a kind of shaman. Mukhtar was chosen early, and had the responsibility of heading the clan since he was quite young, because my grandfather also died prematurely. He’s an old man now, probably in his mid-seventies — hard to say exactly, because the Hawazim have no idea of birth-dates.’

  ‘A shaman? I thought the Hawazim were Muslims.’

  ‘They are, but only in name. For them Islam is a veneer over a much more ancient religion — a belief in the spirits of the earth and the cosmos.’

  ‘How long have they been around?’

  ‘According to them, for ever. They say they’re the Arabised descendants of a people they call the Anaq, who lived in The First Time — when divine beings visited the earth. There’s traces of ancient Egyptian belief there, too. They have traditions about some of the Pharaohs — even Akhnaton, whom they regard as the embodiment of evil — they call him “The Fallen One”.’

  ‘What was your uncle’s attitude to your mother marrying an Afrangi?’

  ‘At first he was against it. To the Hawazim any townsman is a wimp. To live with them means living by their standards and believe me, they’re no pushover. The up side of it is that you won’t find any more hospitable, generous, courageous or loyal people anywhere. They live by their own code, and have this fetish about reputation that’s absolute. I mean, if you fall short — even if you’re a stranger — you’re damned for ever. On the other hand — the down side you might say — you won’t find any cripples among them. Anyone who can’t keep up with the caravan when they move is left to die.’