Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  The street is called Tel el Amar. We come to it, and it isn’t nearly as exotic as it sounds. The first block is all two-story foamstone warehouses with chrome plastic laminate doors, stained-looking. The buildings run one into another, and there’s no feeling of neighborhood. Nowhere to go, no door to knock on if we get in trouble. I find myself clutching my veil.

  Akhmim doesn’t seem comfortable, either. He checks the address against numbers above the doors. Dried mud shows where the street puddles when it rains.

  We walk through more blocks of warehouses, and see only two people, both short, gnarled dark men who look like Berbers. They stare at us. I’m glad I brought Akhmim. He looks young and strong. Past the warehouses there are some empty lots and smaller buildings that sit plunked down in the middle of gravel and dirt. A lot of them are empty to the dry wind. A few of them seem to have something to do with fixing machine parts. Other than the woman we saw at the train station, the only people around are men.

  “Is it much farther?” I ask. If he says yes, I’m going to suggest we just turn around and go back, but Akhmim says no, maybe just a block.

  The address is a green foamstone building. It has a big open chrome door, as if cars or tractors or lorries are supposed to pull in, and there are dark stains on the slick concrete floor. There’s some sort of machine and a lot of dark, greasy parts and electrical wires. A man and a boy are sitting there, looking at the machine but not working on it. They watch us walk across the lot without saying anything.

  I take the paper from Akhmim and look at the name on it. “I am looking for Khalid?”

  The older man says, “He’s not here,” and the boy, who looks about seventeen, thinks this is funny, showing white teeth. The older man doesn’t say anything else, and doesn’t look at the boy. Some sort of joke is being played on us.

  “Ah, when will he be back?” I ask.

  The older man shrugs, and the boy laughs. Is Khalid dead? Moved away? In prison?

  “I’m here for a friend,” I say. “Nabil sent me.”

  “I’m Khalid,” the boy says and the older man grimaces in pleasure.

  This is another joke.

  The boy grins at us. “How do you know Nabil?” he says.

  “I know his sister.”

  “Rashida?” he says, and I realize he really does know Nabil.

  “No,” I say, “Hariba.”

  “Who’s Hariba?”

  “His older sister. She was jessed.” Maybe the seventeen-year-old will take us to Khalid?

  “Ah. You know Rashida?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Rashida is a sweetie,” he says. “I’ve got to do some business,” he says to the older man.

  The older man nods and raises his hand. We walk back across the lot and when I look back, holding my veil with one hand, I see the old man still sitting there, looking at the dismantled machine.

  “How’s Nabil?” the boy asks.

  “Not so good,” I say. “He got beat up by the police.”

  The boy whistles through his teeth.

  “What for?”

  “Because his sister, who is jessed, ran away. They thought he might know where she was.”

  “Holy Name,” the boy says meditatively. He looks at Akhmim. “Who’s this? Your husband?”

  “My cousin,” I say.

  “Hello,” Akhmim says.

  The boy snorts through his nose, obviously unimpressed.

  We walk down the street for a bit, then the boy says, “So why did Nabil send you to me?” and I realize he really is Khalid and we’re not going to meet someone else.

  “He is trying to help someone get out of the country.”

  “Two people,” the harni says.

  “His sister?”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “And whoever she ran away with, right?” Khalid says. “She wants to go north to the E.C.U.? Do they want papers? Or how do they want to go?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “How can they go?”

  “They can go with false papers, but that’s really expensive. Or they can go as cargo. That’s cheaper. We take them across to Málaga or Cádiz. Then they can claim asylum or whatever they’re going to do. Personally I recommend Málaga.” He looks at Akhmim. “You ever been to Málaga?”

  “Not yet,” Akhmim says.

  “It’s a nice town, I like it very much. I’m thinking of going to Málaga myself and staying there. You can get augmented, get a good living, live in a nice place.”

  “You should go,” Akhmim says politely.

  “My mother would die if I left her,” Khalid says.

  “How much would it cost to go to Málaga or Cádiz?” I ask.

  He says, “Six thousand.” It’s more than Alem makes in a year.

  Akhmim shrugs. “Oh well, so much for that idea.”

  I open my mouth, as shocked by Akhmim as by the amount.

  “You think it’s too much,” Khalid says, defensive.

  Akhmim shrugs. “It’s probably a fair price, but you know Nabil. You know his family. His mother can’t sell enough funeral wreaths to pay for that.”

  Khalid frowns and hunches his shoulders, looking very much as if he’s seventeen. “I don’t know. Maybe, for Nabil, if I don’t take a cut. Normally I have to take my cut, you know? I have a business. I have to keep up appearances. These boots, do you see these boots?” He holds up one foot. They’re ugly; they look like the military boots all the boys are wearing. “These are E.C.U. Do you know what they cost?” He names a fourth of what Alem and I will pay for rent for a month in our new flat. I try to look impressed. “But for Nabil,” he says, “maybe I could do a favor, you know? Nabil is a good guy. Good to his mother. He does good business for me.”

  Khalid looks at his expensive boots for a minute. “Half,” he says finally. “That’s the best I can do, even for Nabil.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Akhmim says. “He’ll be grateful.”

  “Yeah,” Khalid says, sullen now. “He better be.”

  “We’ll see if they can get the money,” Akhmim says.

  “Okay,” Khalid says. “You know where to find me, right?”

  I show the piece of paper.

  As we are walking back, I ask the harni, “How did you know to do that?”

  “We’re good at bargaining,” he says. “Humans are easy to read.”

  * * *

  “What did he say?” Hariba says.

  “He said he would take you and Akhmim for a price.” I tell her the price.

  “You asked about Akhmim?” she says, eager.

  “I took him with me.”

  “Oh, Ayesha! Thank you!” She grabs my hand.

  “Be quiet,” I hiss.

  We glance at the door. I didn’t bring Tariam this time, but Hariba’s mother is visiting and we can hear the low murmur of Hariba’s mother and Zehra talking.

  “So much money,” Hariba says. “How can we get so much money?”

  That’s up to her family. I can’t help her-after we put the money down on the flat, Alem and I don’t have enough to get through the rest of the month. We’re eating with my mother more times than is decent and she doesn’t understand why we’re moving away, so every dinner is strained. When I told her we were moving for better schools, she said I had gone to school here and turned out fine.

  “Are you going to tell them?” I say as softly as I can, cocking my head at her mother and aunt inside.

  “I have to,” she says miserably. “Maybe Zehra could help us? Maybe we could pay it back, send it from the E.C.U.? Everybody’s rich in the E.C.U. I’m going to send money back to my mother and to my aunt Zehra and to my sister Rashida for the baby and to Nabil. I’ll make up for all the trouble I’ve caused.”

  I nod. I don’t believe her, but I’m not going to argue with her. I don’t think Zehra has money to loan her.

  “I will even send the money to Mbarek to pay for Akhmim.”

  It’s difficult not to comment on that,
but I don’t.

  * * *

  “What does she want me to do?” Akhmim says. He’s waiting at the end of the street like he always does.

  “Is this what you do all day?” I ask. “Wait for me?”

  “Only in the afternoons,” he says, “and only until three. You’re always home by three to cook dinner.”

  I shudder. “She doesn’t know how she is going to get the money.”

  “I’ve got the money,” he says, the same way I would say, “I’ve got some tea.”

  “Where did you get it?” I ask.

  “Some of it’s mine,” he says, “from work. Some of it was loaned to me by a woman named Tabi, where I work. Most of it’s from a harni called Ebuyeth. She doesn’t have much to spend money on, so she gave it to me.”

  “You know another harni ?” I ask.

  “Three other harni, “ he says. “What does Hariba want me to do?”

  “I think she wants to go,” I say. All that money. I’ve never seen that much money at one time. I didn’t believe Hariba would go because of the amount of money. With that money, Alem and I could buy a co-op. With that money, Tariam could go to a private school.

  “Will you ask her for me?” the harni says.

  “Are you carrying this money around?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Ebuyeth is keeping it until I need it.”

  “I think we need to go and see Khalid. Can you go tomorrow?”

  He nods. “Should I have the money then?”

  * * *

  The next day I don’t even go to Hariba. I meet Akhmim and we get on the train and head west. The ancient Egyptians considered the west to be the land of the dead. I can’t stop thinking, “land of the dead, land of the dead,” although it’s a stupid thought that pretends to mean something. How long until Akhmim and Hariba are gone? It could all be over so soon, please, Allah. I try to remember my life before I spent all this time going to see Hariba. I told my mother that was where I was going today. I’m tired of the lying, I want it to all be done. But I couldn’t tell Alem where I am going, he’d forbid me to go. Or at least he should.

  It will all be over. Hariba and her harni will disappear to the E.C.U. and I can go back to my life.

  There’s no one in the train station this time. The walk is even longer than I remembered between the foamstone warehouses. Then we walk for blocks until the numbers say we’ve passed the shop where we can meet Khalid. “We’ve gone too far,” I say.

  “Let me see,” says Akhmim.

  We walk back and pass it again before we realize. We find it the third time and see the reason that we passed it is that it’s all boarded up. It looks abandoned, but the pale boards are new.

  Akhmim walks up to the big garage door and tries to pull it open, but it won’t move. He strikes the door with his hand. “Hello?”

  We wait and the wind sighs down the empty street.

  He hits the door a couple more times with his fist. “Anyone here?”

  No one answers. It’s so creepy I feel sick.

  The harni walks around the building and when he comes back, he pulls on a board and tries to pull it off. Then he looks around until he finds a rusted length of re-bar, the metal bars that reinforce concrete, and pries at the board until he gets it lifted off. I watch him disappear inside.

  I’m afraid he won’t come back out.

  No one is on the street. It’s as if no one lives here, as if we were in the desert.

  The harni comes back out. He shakes his head. “No one here.”

  “This is the place,” I say.

  “I know,” he says. He dusts his hands against his pants.

  “Where could they go?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, as if it were a real question.

  We stand for a while. I’m trying to think of what to do next, and then when I don’t know, I’m trying to decide how long I should stand here before I say we might as well go back. I look up at Akhmim and he’s looking up the street.

  A boy on a dirty bicycle pedals towards us.

  “Excuse me,” Akhmim says.

  The boy looks at him, but shows no sign of stopping.

  Akhmim steps into the street, “Excuse me. Do you know where the people who were here went?”

  The boy slows down, passes us, then does a slow, lazy semicircle in the street and stops, one foot down.

  “What?” he says.

  “The people who were here two days ago,” Akhmim points to the boarded-up building. “One of them was named Khalid. Do you know where they went?”

  “Khalid?” the boy says, and my heart starts to race. Then he says, “I don’t know any Khalid.” He waits there to see what we’ll do next.

  “Thank you anyway,” Akhmim says.

  “Are you looking for Khalid?” the boy says. He looks about fourteen. His hands and face are dirty, his ankles are black, and he smells. I think maybe he’s a little crazy. It’s the way he stares. He doesn’t blink, he just stares at us with this funny kind of smiling expression. “Do you want me to look for him for you?”

  Akhmim shakes his head. “No, that’s all right.”

  “I could look for him for you,” the boy repeats.

  I want him to go away. “Let’s go,” I whisper.

  Akhmim and I start to walk. “Thank you, but no,” Akhmim says.

  The boy shadows us, pedaling slowly. “You want me to look for him?”

  I’m afraid of this boy. I don’t know if Akhmim would help me if the boy did anything crazy.

  “I could look for him,” the boy says.

  Akhmim says softly, “Don’t answer him.”

  “What?” says the boy. When Akhmim doesn’t answer, he says, “You want me to look for him?” again.

  He shadows us all the way back to the train station, although he finally stops asking us if we want him to look for Khalid.

  There’s no train scheduled to come for another forty minutes. The boy rides up and down the platform for a while, then he sits down next to Akhmim on the bench where we are waiting. He doesn’t look at Akhmim, just sits there, with his tangled ratty hair and his black fingernails. I try not to look at him. After a while he starts singing a pop song about a girl who tells a boy no. His voice is flat and hoarse, but he sings with great energy. He gets up and sings to the empty tracks and then sits down again. I’m sitting at the end of the bench and Akhmim is between me and the crazy boy. The crazy boy gets up and picks up his bike where he left it lying on the platform and goes and puts it on the train tracks. “Should I leave it here?” When we don’t answer, he walks away, leaving the bike there. He walks behind our bench so I can’t see him without turning my head, so I’m trying to listen for him and I can hear the sound of my veil rustling. I turn around and he is across the street, peeing against a garage door. I turn quickly back around. I stare at the dirty bike. It has dirt crusted on the sides of the wheels and on the chain and the spokes and the handlebars. He comes back after and picks up the bike and rides up and down the platform for a while. Finally the train comes in. He stands, one foot on the ground, and watches us get on the train.

  We sit down, the train pulls out, and I burst into tears.

  * * *

  The first place we go is Hariba’s mother’s house, to see Nabil. I leave Akhmim in tea shop with a glass of mint tea-I don’t know how Nabil feels about the harni, but I know how Hariba’s mother would. Hariba’s mother should be selling wreaths right now outside the Moussin, but who knows? And my mother lives right across the street. I couldn’t explain a strange man to her.

  Only Nabil is there. He’s recovered from his beating, except for the yellow bruises. “Ayesha?” he says, standing up. “How are you? Are you coming to visit your mother?”

  “Not yet,” I say. “Hariba sent me to see Khalid.”

  “You went to see Khalid?” he asks.

  “I did. I went to the place she told me.” I show him the paper. “I talked to him, and he said that he could smuggle them to Málaga
, but it would cost three thousand. So I went back to tell her. And when I go back to Khalid today, this place is all boarded up. No one’s there.”

  “Khalid is always there. He lives with his uncle, and that’s his uncle’s place,” Nabil says.

  “He wasn’t there,” I say. “There was no one inside. Ah, one of the boards was loose and I could tell it was empty inside. Do you know where else he might be?”

  “You’re sure you were at the right place?” Nabil says. “Those places, they all look alike.”

  “It was the right place,” I say. “This number. I walked up and down the street. And I was there day before yesterday.”

  “I don’t know,” Nabil says.

  “How do you know him?”

  “Through Yusef, You remember Yusef? I went to school with him. He had a sister. He knows Khalid, a little, you know? Khalid said he needed somebody to do something for him. Sometimes I do, like, odd jobs for Khalid.”

  I can imagine what kinds of jobs. Delivering smuggled goods, probably.

  “Would Yusef know how to find Khalid?” I ask.

  “Yusef is in Cádiz,” Nabil says simply. “It was that or prison.”

  There is nothing to be done there. I go across the street, check in on my mother and Tariam, and lie and say, “I just want to do a few errands. Can Tariam stay a little longer?” Tariam is playing, and she doesn’t fuss. My mother asks how Hariba is, and I put on a sunny smile. “Better every day,” I say.

  Then I go back to Akhmim and tell him that there is no way to find Khalid.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asks.

  Disappear, I think. “Wait,” I say. “I’ll ask Alem if he can figure anything out.”

  * * *

  I wait that night until we are in our bed. “Alem?”

  “Hmmm?” he says. Alem usually goes to sleep faster than I do. It usually takes me a long time to go to sleep.