Doug had watched the manager through most of his meal and now, as he relaxed with an apple-flavored tobacco water pipe, he watched as the manager, in his haste to unload the felucca, dropped the modem off the dock and into the ancient river. The man in the boat said nothing but the diners who watched silently filled in what they knew he was thinking.
It had been a good meal and the dockside entertainment only made it better. Forty-eight hours ago he was mopping up stray grains of rice with the piece of bread he had kept from lunch. Now a small swarm of restaurant employees bused away the remainder of the steak and potato dinners he and Sergei had enjoyed. The Osiris beer had a strange, chemical taste, but Sergei insisted that if they didn’t dine in the style of the Egyptian they would at least drink that way.
“Have you ever had a hubbly-bubbly before, Douglas?”
“Depends,” he said. “What is it?”
“This,” Sergei said, holding up the long wooden handle of the water pipe. “They call it hubbly-bubbly here. Over in the Gulf it’s called sheesha. In Istanbul you order nagillia.”
“I had it once in Morocco,” Doug said, remembering the night with Aisha, not sure if he should smile or shake his stupid head.
“What do they call it there?”
“I think the lady said it was kif.”
“Oh dear,” Sergei said. “Well, I don’t pass judgment, but if it’s somehow tied into later events I don’t want to know.”
Doug had told Sergei about his arrest at the airport, his time in the jail, and his decision to call Edna and quit. He told him about his adventure in Casablanca’s red light zone, his run-in with the pimps/assassins, his day at the beach, and his time in the old souk. He told him everything—except for Aisha. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his time with her—far from it since he knew he’d get his drinks bought for weeks with that story back in Pottsville. He just wasn’t sure what to say about her. Was she an earnest grad student really on the trail of a historical relic and family obsession, or was she, as Doug had seen her more than once as he sat in the sweltering jail cell, the sultry ring-mistress of an international cocaine cartel? Was she the kif-smoking, whiskey-chugging sex goddess of his dreams, or was she playing a role she knew would lure the foolish Yankee into acting as her drug-toting mule? He had spent most of the last two weeks hating her for one of the things she did to him and fantasizing about the rest. If I don’t say anything about her, he reasoned, maybe the bad parts will go away.
Sergei explained everything to Doug as well. He had cleared customs long before Doug but became concerned when Doug never showed up near the taxi stand. He went back inside just in time to see Doug, handcuffed and shackled, being hurried through a security door. “At first, of course, no one would tell me anything,” Sergei had said, “not that it was top secret but because no one in Egypt does anything without baksheesh, a ‘tip,’ which is at best a bribe and more typically extortion money.”
Sergei didn’t say that he had paid baksheesh to find Doug, and more baksheesh, a lot of baksheesh, to get him released, but Doug was sure that he had. Sergei refused to discuss the matter. “What was I supposed to do Douglas?” he asked, “Leave you there? Please.” But he did apologize for taking so long to find him, and the reason made Doug shudder every time he thought about it. “They lost you. Really. Couldn’t find you in any of the records. Who knows how long you would have been there.”
Sergei had also convinced him not to run out on Edna, not in so many words but that was how Doug had heard it. “You can’t possibly blame this woman, thousands of miles away, for your regrettable problems in Egypt. In good faith she has financed your trip and, in good faith, you should stick with it Douglas, until either you find what you are looking for or she calls it off. You are only as good as your word, you know.”
“Sergei, weren’t you the guy back in Casablanca who told me to play it careful? Told me pretty much to go back to Pennsylvania? Told me that there were a lot of dangers playing this game? Why the change of heart?”
“Not a change of heart, Douglas. Everything I said before still holds true. It is a dangerous game you are playing, stirring up dust that settled years ago and likely to find some nasty things buried in the process. But your problems with the gentlemen from customs had nothing to do with this affair and so you have no real reason to resign now. See it through, Douglas,” he said, blowing out a cloud of blue sheesha smoke; “if not, you may wake one day to find that not finishing the job was the cause of all the regrets that followed.”
While Doug had found Sergei’s advice a bit extreme, when he called Edna that night he didn’t mention quitting.
“Oh my God, Douglas,” Edna said, “where have you been? I’ve been so worried. Egypt Air said you arrived but you never showed at the hotel and you didn’t call. Where were you?”
He lied, of course, creating an old high school friend whom he met on the plane—the odds being so astronomical that it sounded plausible—and they had gone on a bit of a binge…. He let it trail off so it sounded like the old story about the irresponsible former-brewery employee and his rich, jet-set friend from Pottsville, that swinging place, closing bars and breaking hearts. He apologized, a bit too much he thought later, and assured her that he wouldn’t let her down, that he’d be back on the case right away and that he’d already set up some appointments. “I gave you my word,” he found himself saying, “and you’re only as good as your word, you know.”
Sergei took care of everything. While he had recovered Doug’s bag, all that remained were the guidebooks and the papers, everything else having “disappeared” while it sat in a secured locker at the police station. He had bought Doug new clothes, a bit conservative for his tastes and a little loose given his prison diet, but name brand and selected with care. He had managed to locate Doug’s passport, no doubt with the help of more baksheesh, and even had him looked over by a Swiss doctor he knew. The room, the meals, the wardrobe, it all had to cost a considerable sum of money and Doug had recalled Sergei’s comments about a tight budget.
“I contacted the museum,” Sergei explained, “and told them I had located a few small items from the Mamluk era—a mosque lamp, some quality pieces of pottery—things that won’t be on any list of non-exportable antiquities, and that if they sent me a draft I could make some arrangements. I know the museum business. ‘Arrangement’ is the term for ‘if you are lucky’ and since it wasn’t a huge sum and since they know the items are either stolen or about to be stolen….”
“Wait a second, the museum would know they were stolen? Isn’t that illegal? And unethical?”
Sergei smiled as he exhaled another blue cloud. “If the museums of the world each gave back what was technically stolen goods, I doubt that together they could mount a decent exhibition. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but there is more truth to it than you’d realize. Forged letters of provenance, dubious background checks, a most liberal reading of treaties and contracts, not to mention outright theft and plunder. In my years with the museum I have seen it all, and, truthfully, participated in it as well. It is the nature of the beast, I believe. It consumes as much as it can find, gorging itself in the times of plenty, like during the war, and hunting, constantly hunting, in the lean times.”
“But I’m always hearing about how some museum shelled out a million bucks for a painting or some thingamajig.”
“Oh they do, they do. Museums worldwide spend billions and billions each year to lawfully acquire objects for their collections. But the beast is not stupid. Why should it spend more than it must to satisfy its hunger? Just like you, the beast tries to get as much as possible by spending the least. It is patient, it is greedy, and it is always hungry.”
“What about the real owners?” Doug asked. “Don’t they ever get wise and try to get the stuff back?”
“Have you ever heard of the Elgin Marbles? No? Well, on a hill in Greece is a building, perhaps one of the most famous in the world. It’s called the Parthenon.”
“Yeah, I think I may have heard of it,” Doug said, annoyed that Sergei would think he was that stupid.
“When it was built in the fifth century BC,” Sergei continued, oblivious to Doug’s tone, “its pediments were adorned with statues, each larger than life, depicting mythological events, and along its frieze ran a series of sculptures depicting life in Athens during the Classical era, all of it either done by, or at least supervised by, the great Phidias. And there they remained, surviving disasters both natural and man-made. They were relatively intact during the Ottoman occupation of the city and it was then, this would be around 1800, that a British official, one Lord Elgin, negotiated with some petty officials in the occupation forces and ‘bought’ the statues.
“Using methods that were crude even for that era, he had the statutes hacked from the building. Some fell as they were being removed, shattering on the steps below. Others were too hacked up to bother with and they were left behind. But the bulk of the sculpture, a world treasure if there was ever one, ended up in Lord Elgin’s estate and eventually in the British Museum.
“Now this is a good example of your rightful owners trying to get the stolen works returned. Everyone knows this story and no one disputes the Greek claim that the Elgin Marbles are really the Parthenon’s marbles, but, despite constant pressure from the Greek government, the marbles stay in England.”
“And I assume Lord Elgin ended up fat and happy,” Doug said.
“Poetic justice intervened, I’m happy to say. His young and beautiful wife left him when his nose literally rotted off, the outward effects of an advanced stage of syphilis.”
Doug whistled between his teeth. “And I’m sure you’ll tell me that this is just an example, that you could tell me dozens of other stories….”
“Hundreds, actually. Not always with the syphilis.”
“…and that people and whole countries are robbed of fortunes and everybody knows and nobody can do jack about it and that’s just the way of the world, right?”
“The museum world, yes. Not to be confused with the real world I’m afraid.”
“Geeze, Sergei,” Doug said, “and here I thought Captain Yehia was rough company. Don’t you know any nice, sweet, normal people?”
Sergei laughed as he signed for the meal, slipping in an Egyptian fifty-pound note as a tip. “There’s you, and there’s this fine gentleman here,” he said, handing the leather case to the waiter, “and that about sums it up. And to be honest,” he added in his stage whisper, “I’m not so sure about the waiter. He said the salad was fresh, but….”
Chapter 16
Stuck inside one of the guidebooks was the book of matches with Aisha’s minute scrawl providing directions to Uncle Nasser’s shop in the Khan al-Khalili. The Ashkananis had had one stall or another in the Khan since the sultan Salim the Grim brought Ottoman rule to Cairo in the early 1500s. In the current shop, located near the Bab al-Badistan—the gate of the domes—Ashkananis were selling locally made gold necklaces, pearls from the Arabian Gulf, and precious stones and jewels when Napoleon rode by. Most of the stock was imported from India now, but it was still high-quality merchandise. Nasser, son of Nasser, son of Ali, son of Mohamad, son of Nasser, the latest Ashkanani to own the shop, sat on a folding chair behind a wooden and glass display case, sipping tea.
Few of the shop owners, and certainly none of his sons or his grandsons, knew as much about the type of things sold in this part of the souk as Nasser, but his opinion was only cautiously sought. A slight tilting of his head or a barely audible click of his tongue was enough to knock thirty percent off any previously appraised value. But, and this was rare, if his left eyebrow twitched upward the piece could double in price.
His expertise was jewelry, his passion was mosques. Not the whole mosque, just the minarets, the spindly towers that rose alongside of each mosque and from which the call to prayer was made. He loved the diversity of the minarets, the subtle changes in architectural details that signalled a radical shift in local politics, royal favor, or theology. There were hundreds of minarets in Cairo, and Nasser had seen them all. He saw beauty in each of them, from the smooth simplicity of the winding minaret at the Mosque of Ibn-Tulun, the oldest still standing in the city, to the exquisite carved details on the minaret of Jamin al-Bahlawan, to the stark pencil shapes favored by the Ottomans. Like old friends they greeted him as he drove through the city each morning, and he watched as they slowly decayed, the constant fog of pollution accomplishing in twenty years what the wind and the sun had not done in five hundred. And when one finally collapsed, or was pulled down, Nasser mourned its passing. Nearing ninety, he knew they would outlast him, but probably not by much.
But this morning he had seen an old friend he had not seen for years. The latest urban renewal project—how many thousands of those had this city seen?—had pulled down a condemned boarding house a ten-minute walk away. A modest little minaret in the Fatimid style now peeked out from behind the rubble, the sun lighting four of its eight sides for the first time in sixty years. When he had seen it he laughed out loud and slapped his hands together. They had a lot to catch up on, Nasser and this minaret.
He was still smiling when Doug found the shop just before noon.
“Aisha Al-Kady! That little devil,” Nasser said. “What kind of trouble is she making in Morocco now?” To Doug’s surprise, it took him little time to find the shop—only an hour and a half, which, given the warren of shops and alleys, Doug thought was rather impressive. More surprising, Nasser Ashkanani seemed pleased to meet him and eager to talk. Should he be surprised, he thought, that her own uncle described her as a trouble-seeking devil?
“The last time I was in Morocco, that would be five years ago, Aisha was off to some museum somewhere. Crete? Tehran? Should have been home, looking after the family business. She was just here, Aisha was, not two months ago. I don’t think she mentioned you, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, we just met a few weeks ago. I was in Casablanca to ask her grandfather some questions about some old friends he had. One of them was my uncle. Maybe you knew him. Russell Pearce?”
Nasser Ashkanani didn’t say anything, but leaned over in his chair and began rummaging under the counter. After a minute he reemerged with an inch-thick stack of photographs. He patted each of his coat pockets until he found his glasses, which were sitting on the counter in front of him, and hooked the wire frames around his large ears. He looked at each photo and then tossed it on the glass top of the case displaying finely wrought gold bracelets. Some were in color but most were black and white, with thin white borders and scalloped edges like the old Kodak prints Doug’s father got at the drug store. Some showed Nasser, his arm around a tourist, holding the expensive trinket that he had just sold, others were of Arab men sitting around the shop, in front of the shop, at the coffee shop just down the narrow alley from the shop. Nasser Ashkanani had spent half his life not more than twenty feet from where he sat now. There were many shots of mosques and minarets, and over these Nasser seemed to linger a bit longer. He looked at one photo and set it down for Doug to look at. It showed an older Arab woman in oversized, dark sunglasses and fashionable black clothes. “Umm Kulsoum,” he said, and when he saw no reaction in Doug, he added “the most beloved singer ever. The Nightingale of the Nile. She came here often.” He set down the stack of photos and disappeared under the counter again. Doug could hear the sound of cassette tapes clacking together and then the hiss that comes before the music. A live recording; there was much appreciative crowd noise before the voice started. It sounded like every other Arabic singer he heard, but Nasser smiled as the lyrics started. “Umm Kulsoum,” he said, pointing up to the music that flowed overhead.
He continued to flip through the stack till he came to a black and white photo, which he held up to get a better view. Doug could see the holes left by thumbtacks, the Arabic script on the back and the date 1948, written in pencil. “Recognize your uncle?” he said as he set the photo down for Doug to see.<
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The photo was taken outside the shop—you could see the arch of the Bab al-Badistan over the heads of the four people in the group. Although he was much older now, Doug recognized Nasser. He was taller then, a full head of jet-black hair and a finely trimmed mustache. He still had the mustache, not so neatly trimmed, but the hair was now white and there was a lot less of it. Somehow, in the heat of Cairo, he looked cool in a tan suit and tightly knotted tie. He stood with his arm around Russell Pearce, whom Doug recognized despite the open-mouthed smile and fact that he had blinked as the picture was snapped. The black and white photo still captured the dark tan in tints of gray, and the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt showed the muscular forearms of a ball player or bully. Sweat stains showed through the band on his Panama hat.
At the far end of the group was another man, an Arab, wearing a white linen suit and tie, but who also wore a nervous smile, probably because his arm was gingerly placed around the shoulders of a young and stunning Edna Bowers. This was a closer shot than the photos in her Toronto apartment, but she improved in close-ups. Her hair, which fell about her shoulders like a black waterfall in the Paris photos, was cut short here and parted on the left. The photo cropped her off just below her narrow waist, her pleated, belt-less khakis drooping to show her navel peeking out from under her tee shirt. She was sweating just enough for her two dark-brown nipples to appear on the film. They looked nothing alike, Edna and Aisha, but they both had that sultry aura, that same heart-stopping face. No wonder the Arab guy looked nervous, Doug thought.
“If you are here about your uncle, and Aisha sent you, then you must be after Al Ainab. And if you are, you are in the wrong place and you’re a damn fool.” At least he smiled when he said it, thought Doug.
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