by Parker Bilal
‘These things are rarely straightforward.’ Kasabian got up to refresh his drink. ‘It may not be a coincidence that the Americans are once more knocking on Saddam’s door, as it were.’
‘You said this American came to you out of the blue?’
‘I have no reason not to trust him. Especially since he came to me recommended by such a respectable dealer as Norton Granger.’
‘Did you check on him?’
‘I understand your concern,’ Kasabian smiled. ‘It is in your nature to see conspiracy everywhere.’ Makana was beginning to tire of that smile. Kasabian’s manner suggested there was something here he could not be expected to comprehend. ‘But the art world is a high-risk business. There are no assurances. Anyone who expects it will grow old and poor very quickly.’
‘Where do I come in?’
Kasabian settled back in his chair. ‘As I mentioned, there have long been rumours of what disappeared from Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion thirteen years ago. But that is all, just rumours. Sellers are often reluctant to say how they came into possession of a certain painting or sculpture and many buyers are equally unconcerned with such . . . formalities. If the piece is for a private collection nobody will ever see it without permission.’
‘I take it you have no moral problems with selling potentially stolen items.’
‘I am a dealer, Mr Makana. I take what comes to me. It is in the nature of the game. I didn’t steal the painting, you understand. And if I didn’t sell it, my nearest competitor most certainly would.’
‘I get the feeling you have an idea where this painting might be.’
‘Very astute, Mr Makana.’ Kasabian took a sip of his drink. ‘My client insists that the rumours he has heard associated this painting with a certain Iraqi colonel of the Republican Guard by the name of Kadhim al-Samari.’
‘It sounds as though he came here well informed.’
Kasabian shrugged. ‘He’s American. With a few friends in Washington he could have access to some of the most powerful intelligence services in the world.’
‘But still he came to you.’
‘To him this is a foreign country. I assume he came to me because of my knowledge of the region and how things work here.’
‘In other words, he knows who has the painting but not how to find him.’
‘That is my understanding.’
‘And you think that this colonel of yours might be in this country?’
‘It’s possible. Naturally, before contacting you I made a few enquiries of my own, in the hope of establishing contact. That is the key to my work, Mr Makana: circulating, making my name known.’
‘But you came up with nothing.’ Kasabian’s smooth charm was beginning to grate. The more he strived to convince him of his sincerity, the more Makana began to wonder what it was he was not telling him.
‘Correct. No trace whatsoever of a Colonel Kadhim al-Samari. If he is here he keeps a very low profile.’
‘What is it you would like from me, Mr Kasabian?’
‘I want you to find this man Samari. If our American friend is right, then we have a priceless collection under our very noses. If he is wrong, well, my reputation is at stake. I cannot have this man going back to New York to report that I was anything but completely thorough. It goes without saying that you need to be discreet. We don’t want the world to know of our interest in this man.’
‘What do I do when I find him?’
‘Nothing. Report back to me and nobody but me. Not a word to anyone else. Any approach must be handled very delicately.’ Kasabian beamed once more. ‘We don’t want to scare him off.’
‘I understand.’
‘I hope so. You can make the arrangements for fees and so forth with my assistant, Jules. You will be handsomely rewarded, but I want you to report only to me. Is that clear?’
‘I think so.’
Kasabian leaned forward to rest his hands on the desk. ‘Please be aware, Mr Makana, there are many people who might be interested in this information. I don’t want you to be in doubt about where your loyalties lie.’
Makana got to his feet. ‘This is a big city, Mr Kasabian, but a small town. I wouldn’t get very far if my clients couldn’t feel they could trust me.’
‘Very good, then we understand one another. Discretion is the key.’ Kasabian got to his feet and came round the desk. Makana shook his hand and headed for the door. Kasabian’s assistant was sitting in a chair just outside the door. He leapt to his feet as it opened.
‘This way please.’ He indicated a door on the other side of the hallway. A small brass plaque read Jalal Sirhan. ‘Jules’ as Kasabian had referred to him was a small, concise man, in his forties. He was wearing a grey suit that was immaculate, if a little tight. His office was small and discreetly furnished, without the clutter of Kasabian’s. It barely looked lived in. He closed the door gently behind them, went round the desk and produced a card with two telephone numbers on it and a fat brown envelope.
‘I hope you do not object to being paid in US dollars? There are two thousand five hundred here and you will get the same amount again when you finish your work. Mr Kasabian wants me to tell you that there will also be a bonus, depending on the degree of success you achieve. Obviously your expenses are apart from this. Keep a record and there should be no problems.’
‘I could get used to working in the art business.’
Jules smiled without humour. ‘We are always looking for people who can be discreet.’
Downstairs the guests were beginning to disperse. Makana found Ali on the veranda, busily chewing his way through a mound of pastries.
‘Where have you been? I’m starving.’
‘I was talking to Kasabian.’
‘Let’s get out of here.’ Ali wiped his mouth with a napkin as he followed Makana along the veranda. ‘How did it go?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
There was a commotion ahead of them as they approached the gate to the street. A young man was arguing with two of the waiters. The man, in his thirties, was dressed in casual Western style with elaborate jeans and a shirt with a lot of studs on it. His hair was thickened with some kind of glistening oil that made it hang down the back of his neck. Dalia Habashi appeared to be trying to intervene on his behalf.
‘What seems to be the trouble?’ Makana asked.
‘Oh, they are just behaving like animals.’ Dalia waved a hand and turned away.
‘Look,’ began Makana, ‘I’m sure there’s a way of resolving this peacefully.’
The man who was being manhandled towards the gate turned to address Makana. ‘Listen to him, he’s a genuine statesman.’ He smiled. ‘Why don’t you go and save somebody else’s life?’
Dalia was yelling at the waiters again. ‘Let him go. He hasn’t done anything.’
‘Sorry, Madame, we have our orders.’
Taking advantage of the distraction, the young man managed to wriggle free. He shoved Makana in the chest and then swung a clumsy punch at one of the waiters before overbalancing. He scrambled to his feet and ran out into the street where he jumped onto a yellow Yamaha motorcycle. The engine roared into life and he sped away.
‘He won’t be back,’ the waiter sniggered.
‘Why is it that at the first whiff of authority men in this country have to behave like brutes?’ Dalia Habashi asked nobody in particular before stalking off. Makana wanted to ask her who the man was and what he had done to be ejected like that, but she was already gone.
Ali had finished his snack. ‘I’m starving,’ he said, brushing the crumbs off his hands. ‘Let’s get something proper to eat.’
Chapter Two
Sindbad was waiting in the car when they came out of Kasabian’s house. On the way into town Ali was in a talkative mood, excited by the evening’s events.
‘It’s not that I enjoy these things.’
‘Of course not.’
‘But you know how it is, one is expected to socialise.’
/> Makana let him talk. His mind was on the meeting with Aram Kasabian. An Iraqi colonel and a German Expressionist painting. He was pretty sure he’d never come across such an odd combination before. More than that, he wasn’t sure how far he trusted Kasabian. Makana had dealt with a lot of people in his time and most of his clients had something to hide. It was in the nature of the business. That’s why they came to him, expecting their problems to be dealt with in a discreet fashion by a man who had nothing to gain by exposing their secrets, and everything to lose.
26th July Street was packed. The usual deadlock. Vehicles of every shape and size jammed like logs in a narrow cleft. Brakes squeaked, horns croaked. Faces stared out from the metal cages around them, praying for freedom. It was a particularly oppressive spot, hemmed in on both sides by tall buildings and crushed beneath the weight of the overpass. It felt like being enclosed in a gloomy concrete tomb. The gaudy flash of bright electric lights running along either pavement provided the only distraction. People going on with their lives, not stuck in limbo. Not so much entertainment as a form of exquisite torture. Even the red prawns being shovelled onto a mound of crushed ice seemed to have a better fate. Intellectuals hunched around a low-lit table in Simonds café. A row of electric mixers whirred sugarcane into an angry white froth. And everywhere there was music and blinking lights. Money changers, plastic shoes, striped shirts and coloured lamps.
Makana wondered about Kasabian’s mysterious American client. He seemed to trust him. At least he was willing to seek out a fugitive bearing stolen goods on his behalf, which meant that the painting, if that was what he was truly after, had to be worth a lot of money.
They inched forwards, edging past a bus that was lodged across the road. A crowd stood around offering opinions but the bus wasn’t going anywhere. A wheel had fallen off. The axle was ground into the tarmac like a broken tooth. The passengers inside peered out at the cars slipping by and wondered when they would begin moving again. A traffic policeman waved an illuminated baton that looked like a child’s toy. Ali was still talking.
‘You never know. I mean, they probably won’t buy anything today, but six months or a year from now, maybe they’ll remember my work.’
It was a nice idea, but seemed like a flimsy premise upon which to base your existence, but then what did Makana know? Was it any different from him waiting for someone to knock at his door with a problem? He was in business because those who were charged with upholding the law were no longer to be trusted, or didn’t care enough to do anything about it. Some of his clients had tried the law, been up and down every avenue available before turning to Makana. Some didn’t want to risk making their private affairs public, because they were innocent and no one would believe them, and some because they had something to hide.
‘He’s been good to me,’ Ali went on. ‘Kasabian, I mean. A great support over the years. Not so much in sales, perhaps, but you know, just being there.’ Ali twisted round in the front seat to look back at Makana. ‘How did it go, by the way?’
‘Well, we’ll have to see how it works out, but thanks for the introduction.’
‘Don’t thank me, he’s a good man to know. Lots of contacts. And besides, that’s what we’re here for isn’t it? To help each other. That’s all we can do. Speaking of which, when are you going to trade this wreck in?’
Makana noticed a stiffening of Sindbad’s thick neck. Generally, when Makana had people in the car with him Sindbad made a point of minding his own business, but the Datsun was a sensitive issue. Sindbad loved the car as dearly as his own offspring.
‘Actually, ya doktor, this fine car has served me well for many years.’
‘It’s served a lot of people well by the looks of things,’ said Ali, brushing his hand over the scarred dashboard. ‘I can see the road through the floor here.’
Sindbad wagged his head philosophically. ‘It needs a gentle hand.’
‘Please, let me repay you,’ Ali implored, turning to Makana.
‘You don’t owe me anything.’
‘You know what I mean. I would never have had the courage to go there by myself. I’m serious, come by the workshop. I’ll find something that will suit you.’
As they started to move on, Makana said he would think about it, feeling Sindbad’s eyes on him in the rearview mirror. There was no written contract between them, but it was understood that Sindbad would be available for Makana as his exclusive driver whenever he needed him. In return he was paid a modest salary. When Makana had no work for him, Sindbad returned to being a regular taxi driver. Day-to-day running costs were Sindbad’s problem, but if it came to major repairs or damage then Makana would be obliged to share some of the burden. All of which meant that he had some stake in the vehicle. Sindbad’s faith in the Datsun was unshakeable, to the point where he remained blind to its faults. Even suggesting that it needed to be seen by a real mechanic, and not his brother-in-law or some other neighbourhood cowboy who thought he knew something about automobiles, was akin to heresy.
The traffic eased as they hit the downtown area where the evening was in full flow. In a few minutes they arrived at Aswani’s to find the oversized chef huffing and puffing over the hot grill. He came across to say hello, snapping the sweat from his brow with a finger and shaking it off on the floor. It was that kind of a place.
‘I have fish today, how about that for a change?’ He stared at them as if daring them to defy his recommendation. But Makana had learned over the years to rely on the cook’s judgement. If Aswani said fish, then fish it was.
‘Sounds good,’ said Makana.
‘Oh, and by the way, could you tell your strange friend to stop pestering my clients? It ruins the digestion to have to keep fending him off.’
Makana didn’t need to look far to catch sight of the offending person. Barazil was impossible to miss. He was tall and as thin as a cane, dressed in what could only be described as rags. It wasn’t that he had no clothes, just that everything he had was not so much a possession as a potential profit. Makana could not recall where he had met him. He seemed to always be around, moving through the city with smooth confidence. Instead of a home, Barazil had a storeroom, an old garage with a collection of outsize padlocks attached. Inside he kept everything from refrigerators to sacks of rice to toy aeroplanes. Racks of leather jackets that had never seen an animal in their lives. Stoves, electric heaters, acrylic blankets printed with tigers and superheroes, pop stars you’d never heard of. There were stacks of chairs, aluminium buckets, toilet bowls, boxes of rainbow-coloured feather dusters. You had to admire the sheer range. He was the king of the cheap and shoddy product, a modern-day pasha of the provisional. More to the point, as far as Makana was concerned, he was a reliable source of all manner of information. Today, however, he had brought along a bag full of telephones for Makana to try out. With a sense of occasion Barazil sat down, ushering in a characteristic odour of unwashed nylon and mothballs.
‘You have to have one nowadays. Otherwise the world will forget you.’
‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing.’
Barazil laughed and slapped the table, hee-hawing like a donkey. ‘I swear, half of the things you say I can’t understand, and the other half make me cry tears.’
Like all good salesmen, Barazil was a showman. Makana had been considering the idea of a mobile telephone for longer than he cared to admit. The old landline was sluggish and unreliable and Umm Ali had the inconvenient habit of disconnecting the line when he was late with the rent, although she would swear on the life of her late husband that she had never tampered with it. The idea of being available at all times of the day and night, regardless of where you happened to be, made sense in many ways. On the other hand, who wanted to be available all the time?
‘How much are you charging for these things?’ Ali asked, prodding the items on the table with a wary finger.
‘I swear on my mother I would never ask anything more than a fair price.’
‘Don’t
get him started on his mother,’ said Makana, glancing over to see where Aswani was with the food. The grills behind the counter were billowing smoke and flame through which Aswani’s helpers rushed back and forth. At times they looked as if they were stoking a steam engine, at others fighting a fire. At the centre of the storm stood the portly figure, issuing orders like a field marshal, inspecting every dish before it went out. The place was crowded. Large groups of traders from the bazaar, wholesale vendors, craftsmen, all gathering at the end of the day. There were the odd visitors, the occasional tourist who looked about them with wonder and a degree of unease, a little unsure if they wanted to do this after all. And then there were the night owls, the nocturnal creatures who flitted from place to place doing the rounds, looking to pick up any opportunities that might be available; newspaper vendors, boys bearing trays of cigarettes and chewing gum, ballpoint pens and lighters. People like Barazil, who was hastily tearing off strips of bread and dipping them into the appetisers with the enthusiasm of a man who has no idea where his next meal will be coming from.
‘What happened to your mother?’ asked Ali, undeterred.
‘My mother sold me to a circus when I was six.’
‘That’s terrible. How much is this one?’
‘That, ya sidi, is the best I have,’ Barazil gulped between mouthfuls. ‘You have good taste.’
‘Were you really in the circus?’
‘For ten years I was jumping through flaming hoops, climbing ropes, turning cartwheels. I slept in a box of straw with a chimpanzee. Until I was twelve I thought he was my closest relative. Because you are a friend of the basha I will give you a fair price. You can take pictures with this one and play music.’
‘Music, really?’ Ali’s eyes widened as he leaned forward eagerly for the demonstration. Makana was all but forgotten. He turned the instrument over in his hands and thought about the envelope of cash in his pocket. The time to buy such a thing was now, rather than wait until money became scarce again.
‘Is this the smallest you’ve got?’
