by Paul Sussman
CAIRO – MANSHIET NASSER
‘Every day for the last decade I’ve dreamt of seeing pictures like this,’ said Flin, staring down at the photographs in his hand. ‘And now I am seeing them I can think of nothing on earth I’d rather look at less.’
He shuffled the images, going through them one by one – again.
‘It could be anywhere,’ he groaned, shaking his head helplessly. ‘Any-bloody-where.’
Freya cricked her neck and gazed out across the city through the wall-less void at the rear end of the room. She felt curiously calm given that their twenty minutes had almost elapsed. Behind her the three guards were playing cards at the head of the staircase, seemingly oblivious to their presence. At her side Flin pored over the photos, as he had been doing ever since Girgis had left, his eyes boring into them, his hands trembling.
Some of the images were general shots of a tree-filled gorge, its sheer walls rearing up towards a slit of pale sky high above, as though someone had sliced a scalpel deep through the rock. Others were more specific: a towering obelisk with the sedjet sign inscribed on each of its four faces. An avenue of sphinxes. A monumental statue of a seated figure with a human body and the head of a hawk. There were pillars and parts of walls and three more shots of the gateway they had already seen, everything swaddled in a heavy jacket of vegetation – flowers and trees and branches and leaves, as though the mud-brick and carved stone of the man-made structures had over time begun to dissolve back into the natural landscape, reverting to their elemental state.
Mud-brick, carved stone, trees, rock walls – nothing, however, to give any hint of the wider context, of the oasis’s actual location. And now their time was almost up.
They’re going to cut my arm off, Freya thought, wholly unable to connect with the horror of what was about to happen to her. It was almost as if she was looking in on the scene from outside. As if it was someone else’s limb that was about to be shredded. They’re going to cut off my arm and I’m never going to climb again.
For some inexplicable reason she felt like laughing.
She glanced at her watch – a couple of minutes left, tops – and stepped up to the edge of the rough concrete floor, looking down at the street below. She thought about jumping, but it was way too long a drop. Thirty metres minimum, probably closer to thirty-five. It would either kill her or at the very least shatter her legs like matchwood. Nor was there any possibility of climbing to freedom – she’d already knelt and peered out over the edge of the floor, trying to assess a potential route down, but it just wasn’t feasible. And anyway, the guards would clock what they were doing before they’d even started their descent. Shredded arm, shattered legs, shot: there were no appealing options.
‘Do you think he was just threatening?’ she asked, looking round at Flin. ‘You know … the granulator … do you think they’ll actually … ?’
He looked up, then back at the photographs, unable to meet her eyes. It was all the answer she needed. Only about a minute now.
Away to her right there was a rumble of an engine and a slash of headlamps as a large flat-bed truck manoeuvred slowly around the corner at the top of the street. It jerked and juddered as the driver worked the brakes, trying to keep the vehicle under control. She wondered if she should shout out, cry for help, but what was the point? Even if the driver heard and understood her what was he going to do? Call the police? Charge up the stairs and rescue them single-handed? It was hopeless, utterly hopeless.
She wrapped her arms around herself, wondering how much it would hurt, whether it would hurt or if she’d just go into shock or pass out.
‘Will you be able to get me to a hospital?’ she asked out loud. ‘Is there one near?’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Flin, his voice taut to the point of breaking, his face sheened with sweat and drained of colour. Curiously, he seemed more worked up than she was.
Up the hill the truck had managed to negotiate the corner and was now descending slowly towards her, its brakes wheezing and squealing. Its bed was heaped with what from this distance looked like a mound of sand or rubble, although it was difficult to tell in the dim, unhealthy glow of the intermittent street lamps. Freya watched it for a moment, then suddenly jerked round as behind her one of the guards let out a triumphant cry, brandishing his playing cards at his two companions, making a rubbing motion with his fingers to indicate that they owed him money. Grumbling, they handed over the cash and were just about to deal again when from outside came three sharp blasts of a car horn. Time up. As if she had been slapped hard across the face, the reality of her situation burst on Freya. She started to shake, fighting back a strong urge to vomit. She turned to Flin.
‘You’ll need to get a tourniquet round my elbow.’ Her voice was unsteady, her eyes dull with fear. ‘When they’ve cut … when they’ve done it. You’ll need to get something tight round my elbow or I’ll bleed to death.’
‘They’re not going to do anything to you,’ Flin said. ‘You have my word. Just stay behind me. I’ll …’
‘What? What will you do?’
He didn’t seem to have an answer.
‘Just stay behind me,’ he repeated impotently.
She stepped up to him, took his hand and squeezed it. For a moment they stood like that. Then, letting go, she reached out and undid the buckle of his belt, Flin remaining motionless as she slipped the belt out of the loops of his jeans and passed it to him.
‘Tourniquet,’ she said. ‘As soon as it’s done you have to get this round my arm. Promise.’
He said nothing.
‘Please, Flin.’
A pause, then he nodded, taking the belt from her and touching her cheek.
‘Just stay behind me.’
The men had packed away their cards and were peering down the stairway as from below came the echo of ascending feet. One of them looked over at Freya and grinned, chopping his right hand against his left wrist, making a growling sound as of grinding machinery. She shuddered and turned away, stepping back to the edge of the floor and gazing down at the truck again. It was now only forty-odd metres up the hill, still descending at a snail’s pace. Maybe she should call out. Scream the place down. It wasn’t like she had anything to lose. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth, but for some reason she couldn’t make her voice work. Could only stand there staring as the truck rumbled ever closer, its flat-bed suddenly coming into clearer focus as it passed directly beneath one of the sodium lamps. It was not, as she had at first thought, heaped with sand or rubble, but with old material – loose shreds and scraps of cloth, offcuts of carpet, a fluffy mass of cotton, what looked like chunks of foam mattress: a deep, soft, cushioning …
‘Flin,’ she whispered, her shoulders tensing, electricity rippling down her spine. And then again, more urgent: ‘Flin.’
‘Hmm?’
He came up beside her. Freya nodded down at the truck, now less than twenty metres away.
‘You ever see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?’ she asked. ‘That scene where they—’
‘Jump off the cliff.’ Flin finished the sentence for her. ‘Oh Christ, Freya, I don’t think I can. It’s too far.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt.
‘It’s too far.’
‘I’m not letting them cut my arm off, Flin.’
Behind them the echo of footsteps drew ever closer. Flin looked at her, then at the truck, then at Freya again.
‘OK,’ he said, wincing as if about to drink something he knew would taste disgusting.
He slipped the photographs inside his shirt and buttoned the shirt up to the collar, tucking it well down inside his trousers. One of the guards had wandered across to the granulator. The other two were still peering down the stairwell. None were looking directly at them.
‘Count of three,’ she murmured as the front of the truck came level with where they were standing. ‘One … two …’
‘In the film �
�� they survive the jump, don’t they?’
She nodded. ‘Although they both get shot later. Three!’
They clasped hands and stepped out into space.
For a moment the world around them blurred into a confused kaleidoscope of walls and roofs and balconies and washing lines before snapping into focus again as they thudded down onto the back of the truck. The mound of cloth and rags gave beneath them, breaking their fall. Freya was thrown sideways against the truck’s tailgate, slamming into a sodden slab of mattress foam, jarring her neck, but otherwise unscathed. Flin was not so lucky. Bouncing off a roll of old carpet and over the side of the truck, he flailed through the air like a drunken gymnast, crashing sideways-on into a stack of plastic barrels and from there face-first into a heap of rubbish, some unseen object slicing a deep gash in his left arm.
They lay where they were for a few seconds, groggy, winded. Then shouts rang out above and they started scrambling. Freya heaved herself off the back of the still-moving truck and dropped to the ground. Flin slid and stumbled his way upright, his shirt sleeve soggy with blood. Staggering over, he propelled her towards a narrow alleyway on the opposite side of the street from the building in which they had been held. The shouts from above were now answered by other shouts at street level, where men must have been stationed to watch the building’s rear. They reached the alley and piled into its narrow black mouth, blundering forward through the darkness, gagging at the sour, suffocating stench of raw waste, feet crunching on a tide of rubbish.
‘There are rats!’ Freya shrieked, sensing something – lots of things – scurrying round her feet and ankles.
‘Ignore them!’ ordered Flin. ‘Just keep going.’
They ploughed on through the murk, moving more by instinct than sight, the glow of the street lamps behind doing little to dispel the enveloping gloom. Flin tripped, fell, clambered upright again, sputtering in disgust; Freya’s foot sank deep into something that felt horribly like a dead animal. She kept moving, the darkness growing ever more intense, the smell ever more unbearable until suddenly the alley took a sharp turn to the left and began to slope steeply downwards. There was light ahead, framed by the narrow slit of the alley’s lower end. From behind, round the corner, came the sounds of pursuit: curses and yells and a bark of gunfire. They stumbled on, moving as fast as they could, the rubbish gradually petering out in a slide of old cans and paint pots. The opening drew nearer and nearer until the walls to either side fell away and they emerged on top of a vertical, three-metre embankment. Grim tenements pressed in all around; a floodlight mounted on a pole to their left cast a fierce, icy glare. From below they heard a muffled grunting, accompanied by a powerful waft of faeces.
‘Jump,’ cried Flin.
‘It’s a fucking pigsty!’
‘Jump!’
He nudged Freya in the back and she dropped down, sprawling in a viscous soup of mud and straw. Her hands sank into the filth almost to the level of her elbows, the grunting gave way to alarmed squeals as slithery black shapes scattered around her. Struggling to her feet, she turned and looked up, slapping at a slime-covered snout as it butted into her thigh. Flin was still on the embankment, pressed against the wall just to the right of the alley mouth, his left arm soaked with blood, his fists clenched. The clatter of cans grew louder as their pursuers charged down after them, their descent accompanied by the sporadic crackle of gunfire.
‘Over there!’ hissed Flin, nodding towards a heap of straw bales on the far side of the sty. ‘Go! Quick!’
‘What about—’
‘Just go!’
She waded through the mire, reached the bales and clambered over them, crouching down as the first of their pursuers burst from the alley, some way ahead of his companions. He started to turn, shouting back. As he did so Flin fell on him, unleashing a flurry of punches and pitching him head first into the sty where he landed with a squelch and a sharp crack as of something snapping.
Flin leapt down into the mud. Yanking the pistol from the man’s limp grasp he swiftly frisked his pockets. He pulled out an extra ammunition clip, then stumbled across the sty and threw himself behind the straw bales, dragging Freya’s head down out of sight just as the rest of Girgis’s men came barrelling out of the passage. They skidded to a halt and looked around, seeking out their quarry in the glare of the floodlight. Unable to spot them, the Egyptians started shooting indiscriminately, raking the enclosure with deafening volleys of gunfire. Bullets whizzed and thudded around the two westerners, kicking up explosions of mud and straw; pigs stampeded in all directions, squealing in terror. On and on it went, Flin holding Freya close with one hand while with the other he fumbled with the gun, waiting for the barrage to ease off. The moment it did, without hesitation, he forced Freya’s head down further, scrambled into a kneeling position and unleashed a volley of his own, his finger pumping rhythmically at the trigger, his arm tracking left and right as he sighted different targets. He emptied the ammunition clip, slotted in the new one and cracked off a few more rounds. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun. There was no return fire. He reached out and squeezed Freya’s arm, breathing heavily.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’
For a moment she remained where she was, curled in the mud, the echo of gunfire gradually fading, leaving just the whimpering of injured pigs and the domino-like clack of shutters as around and above them people opened their windows to see what was going on. Then she unravelled herself and moved into a kneeling position, looking out over the straw bales. In front of her, splayed across the top of the floodlit embankment like corpses on a stage, were four crumpled bodies.
‘Jesus,’ she said, trembling. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
There were voices now, and shouts, and the distant wail of a siren. Flin gave it a few more seconds, scanning the alley mouth in case any more pursuers should emerge. Then, jamming the gun into the back of his jeans and covering it with his shirt-tail, he pulled Freya to her feet.
‘How did you do that?’ she mumbled, her voice hoarse, disbelieving. ‘All those men. How did you … ?’
‘Later,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Come on.’
He helped her through the sty and over a low breeze-block wall, people shouting at them from above, gesticulating. The wail of the siren grew louder. They kept moving, skirting a rubbish tip and setting off down a dark narrow street, both too shocked to speak. After fifty metres a sound of running feet from around a corner ahead forced them to duck into a fetid doorway. A group of children scampered by, chattering excitedly, wanting to see what was happening. They waited for them to disappear, then hurried on, the road sloping downwards, twisting and turning, getting steadily wider. They passed a brightly lit shop, and then a fruit stall hung with fairy-lights, and then a café, more and more people materializing around them, more light and bustle, the street seeming to come alive the further down the hill they went. They knew from the way eyes bored into them that the gun battle had been heard, and that with their mud-caked clothes and Flin’s bloody shirt they were being connected with the commotion. They quickened their pace, desperate to get away. Fingers pointed at them, voices jabbered, twice men came up and tried to stop them. Flin pushed them off, clutching Freya’s arm and steering her through the crowds until at last the street dropped down a final steep slope and flattened out into a patch of waste ground. There were parked cars, a row of giant rubbish bins, a railway line and beyond that – like a roaring river dividing that particular corner of Cairo from the rest of the city – a busy three-lane highway with traffic careering past in both directions. They broke into a sprint, getting up onto the highway’s verge and frantically flagging down a taxi.
Initially the driver was reluctant to take them. The car had just been cleaned, he explained, the seats only recently re-covered, he didn’t want them getting everything dirty. Only when Flin produced his wallet and counted out a fat wad of notes did he relent and wave them in. Flin took the front passenger seat, Freya – pale,
hollow-faced, exhausted – the back.
‘Where you go?’ asked the man.
‘Anywhere,’ replied Flin. ‘Away from here. Just drive. Quickly.’
Throwing another glance at his passenger’s bloodstained shirt, the driver shrugged, started the meter and pulled out into the traffic. Flin craned round and looked at Freya, their eyes meeting briefly before he turned away. Grabbing a handful of tissues from a box on the dashboard, he pressed them to his arm and sank back into the cheap plastic upholstery. As he did so he felt Freya lean in behind him, her face coming up close to his ear.
‘I want to thank you for saving my life,’ she said, her voice numb, subdued.
He gave a dismissive grunt, started to mumble that he was the one who ought to be thanking her.
‘I also want you to stop bullshitting me,’ continued Freya, cutting him off. Reaching down, she yanked the pistol from the back of Flin’s jeans and pushed its muzzle into his kidneys. ‘I want you to tell me who you are, what’s going on and what the fuck you got my sister involved in. And so help me God if you don’t the driver’s going to be cleaning a lot more than pig shit off his new upholstery. Now talk.’
The twins weren’t happy when they got the call from Girgis, not happy at all. The game had just gone into extra time after Mohamed Abu Treika’s 88th minute wonder goal had brought El-Ahly level at 2-2 and there were still three more scores to come, including Osama Hosny’s winning header. And now they were being ordered to drop everything and get themselves over to Manshiet Nasser without delay. If it had been anyone else they would have told them to fuck off. But Girgis was Girgis, and although they didn’t like it – they hated being interrupted during football, hated it – he was still the boss. Grumbling, they packed away the DVD and covered their mother with a blanket. Checking there was food and drink left out for her when she woke in the morning and money on the kitchen sideboard, they got on their way.
‘Wanker,’ muttered one of them as they trudged down the tenement stairs to the street below.
