Standing in the road, turning the map in his hands, Patrick became aware of a noise, louder than Cairo’s usual cacophony of car horns, street-sellers and construction work. The tumult – close and getting closer – had a different and more urgent tone to it. A march or demonstration of some sort, and, after a quiet day with little new to report, a stroke of luck. He stuffed the map into his pocket, took his recording machine from his rucksack and waited in a nearby doorway, holding the machine and its large foam-headed microphone out in front of him with both hands.
He didn’t have to wait long; the first indication of what was about to arrive came in the form of a muffled pop: a tear gas canister being fired into the air and then the roar of a crowd – more excited than scared. He looked down at the digital recorder: the levels were dancing around wildly from green to red; he tweaked a dial and hoped that the device had captured both the fump of the tear gas and the crowd’s cheer. Patrick was considering whether to risk checking the recording when, from the top of the street, a ragged group of young people came running, shouting as they ran, tearing down the centre of the road. Several were wearing the football shirts of their local Cairo team; others were dressed in a more practical outfit of thick jackets and scarves. They wore the jackets to protect against baton blows from the police and the scarves to combat tear gas. Patrick smelled the sharp stink of the gas on the clothes of the people streaming past him. He put the tape recorder in his jacket pocket and one hand over his mouth while keeping a firm grip on the microphone with the other.
The demonstrators shouted as they ran, throwing their words up in the direction of local residents, who were watching wide-eyed from their balconies: ‘Enzel! Enzel!’ Come down! Join us! Patrick looked up too and saw a growing number of people emerging from inside their apartments to take a look, some moving pot plants or taking their washing down from the line so they could get a better view. The demonstrators shouted louder, urging their fellow Cairenes to leave their cramped homes and join them in Tahrir Square. Patrick counted sixty or seventy protesters, none any older than himself and most of them significantly younger: teenagers. He saw Egyptian and Tunisian flags being worn as capes or waved in tribute or for inspiration.
He recognised one face, a woman with coal-black hair and green eyes who he’d seen working behind the reception at Carver’s hotel. William had mentioned her but Patrick couldn’t remember her name. As she sprinted by, the woman glanced at him, smiled and slowed her run; she recognised him too and something about Patrick seemed to amuse her. For a moment he thought she was going to stop and speak but her friend, a short-haired girl in a leather jacket running a few paces behind, caught up, placed a hand on her shoulder and urged her on. The boyish-looking young woman had a mobile phone in her hand and was texting as she ran; she wore a rucksack like Patrick’s.
The mob moved on together down the street, their shouting growing louder: ‘Enzel! Ghadan!’ Ghadan was one of the other Arabic words that Patrick had learned in recent weeks. He had made a list of these words in the back of his black notebook for ready reference. When he read the list it seemed to Patrick that the words had a certain style to them: ghadan meant ‘tomorrow’, thawra meant ‘revolution’, kifaya as he already knew meant ‘enough’. A lexicon of revolution.
Carver wrapped a towel around his pink, pale freckled shoulders and lay back on the sun lounger, gulping air. The swim had taken it out of him. He retrieved his gold-framed glasses from the pile of discarded clothes and stared upwards. It was getting dark and the trees in the hotel garden had lost their colour; they looked like black cut-outs against the blue night sky. He had the gardens almost to himself: the bar had shut for the night and the skinny lifeguard was clearing up around the pool. He watched as the kid attempted to waltz a reluctant sun umbrella across the floor and under cover for the night. As he set it down, the heavy concrete base caught the boy’s bare big toe; he uttered an oath and Carver looked away. When he looked back he saw that someone was offering to help the lifeguard and it took him a moment to recognise that this someone was Zahra, dressed strangely, in a thick puffer jacket and scarf. Carver sat up and waved her over but she shook her head, lifting a hand to indicate that they could talk in five minutes. William nodded.
6 Zahra
DATELINE: The Seti Hotel, Cairo, Egypt, January 26 2011
The Seti Hotel and its manager, Mr Akar, relied heavily on Zahra Moussa. Her job seemed to involve everything from running the reception desk to serving dinner and Carver was sure she was over-qualified for all of it. Zahra had checked him in on the day he’d arrived, and then a few minutes later brought his luggage to the room herself, to the Englishman’s significant embarrassment. She took the crumpled notes that Carver offered as a tip but then seemed to loiter. When a confused Carver offered her some more tip money she shook her head.
‘What place in England are you from?’
‘London.’
‘I have been to London. Trafalgar Square.’
This was said with such pride that Carver found himself saying how interesting the square was – so much history, the fourth plinth etc. etc. – in spite of the fact that he loathed the place, avoided it at all costs and thought the plinth was a scandalous waste of public money. She matched him enthusiasm for enthusiasm and when he said he was a journalist, delivered the first piece of useful information he’d received since arriving in Cairo. Zahra told him that the head of Egyptian intelligence was going to make a statement later that evening, that it had just been announced.
Carver decided to test her further, asking if she could draw him a map showing him the best way to get from the Seti Hotel to the Royal View where his colleague was staying. She’d taken the pen and paper from Carver’s bedside table and drawn him a map. Her knowledge of the city and the quality of her English – top of her class at school and then a summer scholarship to an English language school on the Kent coast, she told him – convinced Carver that instead of employing the fixer that London had recommended he’d try and persuade this woman to do the odd bit of translation work and provide the local expertise he needed. He rarely used BBC fixers anyway, preferring to find someone local who would work only for him. Zahra Moussa might fit that bill.
Carver made the offer the following morning, while reception was quiet and her manager was elsewhere. He promised decent pay and flexible hours that could fit in around her commitments at the hotel. Zahra accepted immediately, her only condition being that no one else at the Seti, neither guest nor staff – and in particular Mr Akar – should know about the arrangement. This suited Carver just fine and they shook hands on it.
While he waited for Zahra and her colleague to finish clearing up around the pool, Carver dressed and checked the contents of his plastic bag. The bag rarely left his side; it contained his MiniDisc recorder, a reporter’s notebook and several pens.
It was dark now and the mock-Parisian streetlights around the hotel garden were flickering into life, the air was cool. He wondered whether they might be better off inside the hotel, in the warm, but swiftly dismissed the idea. Better to stay out here, away from Mr Akar and from other sharp-eyed hacks. The Muslim Brotherhood meeting was important, potentially decisive and a significant scoop if he and Patrick were the only ones to find out about it. Carver felt a little guilty for missing a whole day’s work and figured that finding out about the Brotherhood’s plans might go some way to making up for that.
For all the talk of the Arab Spring being a Facebook or Twitter revolution organised by a bunch of kids with smartphones – an idea that Carver was deeply suspicious of – the Muslim Brotherhood was still key. The younger generation could start something – they had started something – but they wouldn’t be able to finish it. For that they would need the Brotherhood. The Brothers had the brawn and the numbers.
He dried his thinning hair with the towel and folded his arms against the chill. A bat dropped from one of the palm trees and swept low across the swimming pool. Carver thought he heard its call
– a high-pitched piping sound, two beats long. After she’d finished clearing the sun umbrellas and the gawky lifeguard had sloped inside to help serve dinner, Zahra walked the long way round the pool and over to where William sat.
‘Hello.’ She sat down on the lounger opposite his. ‘Are you not cold?’
Carver looked at her. What light there was left in the darkening garden seemed concentrated on Zahra’s open face. Her green eyes were bright, her dark hair shone. Carver looked away.
‘I’m fine.’ He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘So, listen, I need to find out about this Muslim Brotherhood meeting everyone’s talking about. Have you heard anything?’
‘Of course, they decide whether they will support Friday’s protest. It is an important meeting.’
‘Right, and d’you know when it’s happening – when and where?’
‘People think it will be at the Mosque of the Servants of the Compassionate, near El Hossein Square. But I don’t know when; sometime tomorrow or, if not, then the next day. When I find out, I can tell you.’
Carver nodded. He took a pen and the spiral-bound notepad from his plastic bag and handed them to her. ‘Write down the name of the mosque, will you?’
Zahra wrote the name and address in careful capitals.
As she handed the notepad back Carver noticed an acrid smell, a whiff of something from the folds of her clothes and scarf. He recognised it straight away. ‘You stink of tear gas; where’ve you been? A demo?’
‘A small one only.’
Zahra lowered her voice and told Carver about the demonstration, organised at short notice by a friend of hers and designed to annoy the Egyptian police and encourage more people to get involved ahead of the next big protest. They’d gathered outside a nearby government building with a few handmade placards and despite only a hundred or so people turning up – mainly students – the police had arrived quickly and in force.
‘When they started to fire the tear gas, we ran.’
‘Good idea. Running is always a good idea. Running away is the first thing they teach you on the riot training course.’
Zahra pulled her sunbed closer to Carver. ‘You have been taught riot training? What else do they teach you?’
Carver stared at Zahra, the trace of a smile on his face. ‘I’m not sure I should tell you; the training’s meant to help journalists report a riot, not demonstrators start one.’
‘You can tell me – information in return for information. You tell me this and you do not have to pay me for the details of the Brotherhood meeting.’
He dropped the notepad back into his bag. ‘Fair enough.’ He knew that Zahra had been sympathetic towards the pro-democracy protesters for a while, but it seemed to him that she’d been attending more meetings since he’d asked her to work for him. He felt increasingly responsible for her safety. ‘Let me see what I can remember. The obvious stuff: don’t get hit by the grenade, stay clear of the container that spews out the gas, don’t try and pick them up or throw them back, they’re hot.’
Zahra nodded.
‘What else was there? Get yourself upwind if you can, away from where the gas is coming from. Buy yourself a gas mask, of course, if that’s possible?’
She shook her head. ‘It is impossible; anywhere in Cairo that sold them is stopped. People have been arrested for even asking shopkeepers about a gas mask.’
Carver remembered being advised to wear a bandana or scarf soaked in lemon juice or vinegar in the absence of a gas mask but he got the impression that this was not new information as far as Zahra was concerned.
‘Or get yourself some swimming goggles. I saw some of that in Tunisia and years back in Seattle.’
Zahra leaned forward, she found this advice more interesting.
‘And if you’ve got nothing else, no protection, then just try and breathe the air inside your shirt until you can get clear. How’s your breathing now?’
Zahra took a deep breath in through her nose, flaring her nostrils, before exhaling through her mouth. ‘It is okay.’
‘Good.’ Carver hesitated. ‘If you start getting wheezy, let me know, I’ve got inhalers. You know? Puffers?’ He put a hand to his mouth and mimed the motion.
‘I know what this is. They give you these for riots?’
Carver shook his head. ‘Not for riots, for asthma. And for being … you know …’
‘Old?’
‘Middle-aged.’
Zahra smiled, checked the time on her phone and stood. ‘Your friend was at the demonstration … Patrick?’
‘Was he? That’s good news. Did he have his Marantz? I mean did it look like he was working … recording?’
‘Yes. He was standing against a wall, hiding. Holding his microphone up like this …’ Zahra mimicked Patrick’s stance. ‘He looked funny, like a little boy with an ice cream.’ She glanced back in the direction of the hotel. ‘I should go and get ready.’
‘Sure. You’re doing the dinner shift?’
‘Dinner shift and night shift, I am helping Mr Akar out. He is very short of staff.’
Carver watched her walk back across the garden in the direction of the brightly lit hotel. He’d wait a few minutes before making his own way back. Just then something caught his eye – a movement, three or four floors up inside the main hotel. A figure, standing silhouetted in a lit window and looking their way, but when he looked again the figure was gone. Most likely one of the maids, turning down the room.
He got out his phone and texted Patrick. He told him he’d heard that his producer had gathered some new audio. He suggested they put the piece together in his room.
‘I’ll get us some room service. My treat. No vodka necessary.’ He pressed send and then a thought occurred. ‘PS: I did the bloody twenty lengths so no nagging necessary either.’
7 Firebrands
DATELINE: The Taxi Café, Asmara, Eritrea, January 26 2011
Gabriel twisted the top off his fresh bottle of beer and filled his glass. He stared at his grandsons, a more serious look clouding his old face.
‘While I have you both together, before I forget, I need to talk about something.’
The boys put their drinks down and focused on their grandfather.
‘I saw your mother today, she came to find me. She was upset … worried.’
Solomon could guess what was coming; he continued to eat, leaving Gebre to do the talking.
‘Worried about what?’
‘About you two of course, about her boys.’ The old man shuffled awkwardly in his seat. ‘But mainly, Sol, she worries about you.’
‘Why? What have I done now?’
Gabriel turned the thick brown beer bottle in both hands and sighed. This was familiar if uncomfortable ground for all three of them. In the absence of a father figure, the boy’s mother would call on Gabriel when she had concerns. More often than not, her concerns centred on her elder son. For almost ten years now, Gabriel had been trying to play the part of father and grandfather; he used to tell himself that it would get easier as the boys got older, but in fact it got harder.
‘It is your cycling. She worries that if you are selected for the team, if you travel outside the country, you will not come back. She read a report in the newspaper about the Red Sea Camels, the footballers who asked for asylum in Botswana.’
Solomon sucked at his teeth. ‘First she hates the cycling because she thinks it is not serious – a waste of time she called it. Now she thinks it is too serious.’
‘She is your mother, it is her job to worry.’
‘It should be her job to support me, to help me and Gebre, but she will not do that. If I am selected for the cycling team and they travel, then I will go. I have to.’
‘I understand, that is good. It’s just …’
‘And whether I come back or not will be up to me. Half of the young people in the country are leaving, or trying to.’
His grandfather glanced back over his shoulder.
‘Would either of you bla
me me if I did the same?’
The restaurant was busier now and Gabriel doubted that anyone other than he and Gebre had heard Solomon’s words, but nevertheless he pulled his chair tight to the table and whispered his response. ‘This is foolish talk, son, dangerous talk.’
‘I’m not your son.’
‘I know, but—’
‘But nothing, I am not your son, you are not my father, you cannot tell me what to do.’ Solomon pushed his chair back; it scraped noisily against the floor and now other people were paying attention. The man at the bar had turned and was looking their way.
Gabriel leaned towards Solomon and lowered his voice. ‘Please, Sol. Stay and finish your food.’
But Solomon’s pride was more powerful than his hunger; he stood up and glared down at the pair. ‘No. I have more practice that I need to do.’ He waved a hand in the direction of his brother. ‘Gebre will stay.’
Solomon and Gebre’s father had been gone for nearly ten years now. Missing, but not yet presumed dead, at least not by the boys’ mother who continued to hope and pray for his return. She was helped in that respect by the cruel unpredictability and general air of mystery that surrounded the Eritrean judicial system. The husband of one of her cousins, together with his friend, had been hauled off the street by the army in a similar manner to her own husband. Both men had eventually returned, much diminished but alive, several years later. These sorts of stories were common, so who was to say that the same might not happen in her case?
Daniel Hassen had fought with honour during the Eritrean war of independence but his reward for that service had been small. He quickly became disillusioned with the politicians who put themselves forward to lead the newly independent Eritrea and made no secret of his dissatisfaction. Solomon remembered his grandfather’s attempt to explain the reasons for Daniel Hassen’s regular run-ins with the authorities.
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