Authors: Parker Bilal
‘Oh, no.’
‘How would you describe him? What kind of man was he?’
‘Oh, that one could take care of himself. It wasn’t long before he was mixed up with all sorts. He had business with a carpet merchant down by the furniture store in the next street. The girl was no more than a child.’
‘You mean his wife. Nagat?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. She was very young.’ The dyed beard flapped up and down agitatedly. ‘Maybe that’s why they ran away from wherever it was they came from.’
‘Siwa.’
‘Siwa, yes, that’s right, the oasis.’ He scratched his armpit. ‘He was one of those types, you know? The kind of man who’s going to end up badly, no matter what. You avoid people like that.’
‘He went to prison for a time.’
‘I don’t know anything about that.’ The man’s wayward eye fixed itself on Makana. ‘I don’t like to mix myself up in other people’s business.’ And with that he hurried away.
The furniture store was closed and shuttered and looked as if it had been that way for years. The only hint being a pile of rugs laid out to catch any passing business. A sullen young man in jeans toyed with a string of prayer beads. He pushed his glasses up his nose and stared down the street. He wore a T-shirt stamped with the words: Happy Dreaming. When Makana asked him if he remembered Musab, he shrugged and looked away.
‘It was a long time ago. You’re probably too young to remember,’ Makana said, hoping to jog some kind of response from him. The notion that he was too young for anything stung the boy. He flipped the string of beads over quickly and glared at Makana.
‘You’d have to talk to my uncle. He used to run the place in the old days.’
‘How do I find him?’ Makana asked.
‘In the cemetery. He passed away three years ago.’ The smile of satisfaction on the young man’s face was compounded by the arrival of another man who came up to shake his hand. The two men fell into conversation, ignoring Makana who took the opportunity to sift idly through the carpets, which seemed to be Persian.
‘You’re interested in a carpet?’ the young man snapped. He was in the process of lighting his friend’s cigarette.
‘I’m curious to know where they come from.’
‘They are all genuine.’ The man blew smoke into Makana’s face as he smoothed the rugs back into order. ‘They have a certificate on them,’ he said, indicating a label.
‘No, I mean, how do they get here?’
‘What kind of a question is that?’ the man frowned.
‘It’s just a question.’
‘Who are you to be asking such questions?’
Makana looked at the two men and shrugged. ‘I might be interested in buying a carpet.’
‘You don’t look the type to be interested in carpets.’
‘Is there a certain type that buys carpets? What type might that be exactly?’
‘A moment ago you were asking questions.’
‘What kind of questions?’ The new arrival had now taken an interest. His eyes ran over Makana as if measuring him for a suit.
‘Musab Khayr. Remember him?’ Makana asked. The second man muttered something and tilted his head fractionally in the direction of down the street. Makana followed his lead and saw the two men he had spotted earlier. They were standing by a stall selling women’s garments, trying to look interested.
‘Why don’t you take your friends and go ask your questions somewhere else,’ the first young man said, turning away.
When Makana looked again, the two men had disappeared. In their place stood Zahra Sharif.
At first Makana thought it was just his eyes playing tricks, that she was summoned from some part of his subconcious that he was not fully in command of. Between the constant movement of people she was there and then she was not. Then the crowd parted once more and he saw her striding towards him. This time her headscarf was white. It hung in a loose loop under her chin and made her skin look darker and her eyes seem larger. Makana had the odd sensation that his heart had tripped a beat when he realised the smile she was wearing was meant for him.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ she said.
‘You have been following me.’
‘No, not at all.’ She pointed back the way she had come. ‘I had to visit some ladies who are running a collective. It’s very interesting. Would you like to see?’
Makana was thinking that the smile was definitely an improvement. He checked over her shoulder one more time for any trace of the two men, but they had disappeared. ‘Actually, I was going to call you.’
‘There, you see, I did better than that,’ Zahra said. ‘I did call you. There was no reply the first time, and the second time your secretary said she would take a message. She sounds very young.’
‘That would be Aziza.’ Makana smiled. He really ought to start paying her something as a regular salary, just for answering the phone.
They were standing in the middle of the street, having to dodge from side to side as porters went jogging by, backs bent under huge cartons stamped in Mandarin, boys dragging trolleys loaded with bales of cloth, women carrying baskets bulging with indigo aubergines, bottles of olive oil and armfuls of small children.
Turning to walk on by mutual consent they passed Bab Zuwayla, where Tumanbey, the last of the Mamluks, was hanged in 1517. Across the other side they reached the Tentmakers Bazaar where they strolled through rays of dappled light in the cool, dark space beneath the high roof.
‘Let’s see, a friend of mine is usually here,’ Zahra said. They came to a little opening that was tended by a young woman in her twenties. Her eyes lit up when she saw Zahra and the two greeted each other warmly.
When the introductions were taken care of the girl turned to Zahra. ‘I need to ask you a favour. Can you look after the place for half an hour? Only I need to take my son to the doctor and I know my father would hate it if I closed.’
Half an hour for a visit to a doctor sounded optimistic, but Makana said nothing.
‘Make yourselves comfortable. Tell the boy to bring you whatever you want.’
When the girl had gone they sat inside the open-fronted shop that was really no more than a large cubicle. The walls were covered in colourful printed cloth used for fencing off streets for weddings and funerals. There were handsewn appliqué covers. It added up to a vivid collision of colour and geometry. Makana took the only narrow chair in the place while Zahra settled herself cross-legged on a heap of cushions, untied her headscarf and removed it, shaking her long black hair free so that it fell down over her shoulder. Her eyes glittered with mischief.
‘I shock you.’
‘No,’ he said, although it wasn’t quite true.
‘You don’t look like the kind of person who shocks easily, nor the kind of stuffed shirt who disapproves of women who don’t cover their hair. No,’ she surmised, ‘on the whole you seem like a fairly modern man, which is saying something in this day and age.’
‘You always cover your hair?’
‘For work, I have to. A woman who wants to be taken seriously? If I worked in more enlightened circles then perhaps not. But I have to speak to families, most of which are poor and simple. I would never be allowed in if I didn’t look like a respectable girl.’
‘Which you are, of course.’
‘Whether I cover my hair or not.’ She nodded.
A boy of about twelve peered inside and they ordered coffee. He blinked twice at Zahra’s hair and then bounced away. She gave a long sigh.
‘What are we going to do with this country?’
‘I thought we were already doing as much as we could,’ Makana said, reaching for his cigarettes. She held out a hand for one and he lit it for her. She inhaled deeply and blew the smoke into the air above her head.
‘It’s silly, this whole place would go up in a second with just a tiny spark and yet here we are puffing away like idiots.’ She giggled. ‘I feel like a naughty schoolgirl.’
‘Did you grow up around here?’
‘Me?’ She laughed. ‘No. I grew up far, far away in a land of make believe.’ She gave him a stern look. ‘You are asking questions as if this was an interrogation.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. What progress have you made?’
‘Very little, I’m afraid. Karima seems to have led a simple life. Nobody has a bad word to say about her. Assuming it was not a random attack the only person with a possible motive has been living abroad for years. Why would he decide to kill his daughter now?’
‘There’s something you should know,’ Zahra said quietly. ‘Musab is no longer abroad. He’s here in Egypt.’
‘You know this for a fact?’
Zahra nodded her head, looking down. ‘I suppose I should have told you before, but I wasn’t sure I could trust you.’
‘Karima told you?’
‘She called me. She was very scared. She barely remembered who he was.’
‘What did he want from her?’
‘Money, and a place to hide. He was on the run.’ Zahra puffed nervously at her cigarette. ‘He turned up out of the blue with some wild story about being brought back by force and escaping.’
‘That makes no sense,’ said Makana. ‘Did you tell this to the police?’
‘The police?’ Zahra snorted and regarded him coolly from under her eyelashes. ‘And get myself into a thousand different kinds of trouble?’
They fell silent as the boy set down the coffee on a small round table in the front of the shop, intended to put potential buyers at their ease. The boy tapped his empty tray like a drum as he walked away. Zahra leaned forward.
‘Nobody is going to believe me when I tell them a man who is living in political exile in Europe turned up in the middle of the night to set fire to his daughter’s home with her in it.’ Zahra was still for a moment. ‘It seems so unfair. Why her? She never hurt anyone in the world.’ Her voice cracked and she buried her head in her hands. Makana sat in silence until she had finished crying. He waited as she dried her eyes.
‘Perhaps we should leave this to another time.’
‘No.’ She sniffed loudly and blew her nose on a tissue she produced from her bag. ‘There is no time. If you intend to catch him, you have to be quick.’
‘If what you are saying is true then we need to tell the police. They have the resources to find him.’
‘Don’t you see?’ Zahra stared at him. ‘How could someone like that, a man who is declared an enemy of the state, who lives abroad for years, involved in Allah knows what kind of activity, suddenly turn up in this country?’ She shook her head. ‘They know. They must do.’
‘You mean State Security?’
‘That’s why it is hopeless. The police are calling it suicide. Nothing will happen. You are wasting your time.’
She had a point. There was no denying the fact that if it was true, if Musab had returned to the country, and for the moment he only had her word for it, then it had to be with the co-operation of the State Security and Investigations Service of the Ministry of the Interior. The question was why? Why would Musab come back to a country where he was still an undesirable? Why would they want him back? He recalled the two men he had seen in the market. They had the look of State Security written all over them. Were they watching him already? Shrugging off the temptation to sink into paranoia, Makana addressed Zahra.
‘You said Musab had escaped. He needed help. He was on the run. Did Karima mention where he might be going?’
‘No.’ Zahra studied the tip of her cigarette as she flicked ash into the beaten copper bowl that served as an ashtray and then looked up at him. ‘How did you wind up doing this kind of work?’
The abrupt shift surprised him. ‘I was in the police. One thing led to another.’
‘You must have done other things,’ she laughed. ‘You were a child once, somebody’s son.’
And a husband and a father. Makana wasn’t used to talking about himself. It wasn’t something he felt comfortable with and he wasn’t good at hiding the fact. Also, they seemed to be veering away from the matter in hand.
‘You’re not going to find the answers you’re looking for here,’ she said, studying the coffee grounds in her cup.
‘What makes you say that?’
Zahra went on as if she hadn’t heard the question. She spoke in a vague tone, as if thinking to herself out loud. ‘These cases get all twisted up in time.’
‘Are you talking about something in the family’s past?’ Makana wasn’t sure he was following her. He shook another Cleopatra out of the pack.
‘There are things you can’t repair, no matter how hard you try.’ She looked up. ‘Why do I have the feeling you are driven by guilt?’
‘Guilt?’ asked Makana, lowering the unlit cigarette.
‘I’m sorry.’ She waved it aside. ‘Sometimes I speak out of turn.’ She reached for her coffee. ‘Anyway, I thought we were talking about you?’
‘There’s not much to talk about,’ he said, but then, for some inexplicable reason, he found himself talking. It felt as though a knot that was tied up inside him was becoming unravelled.
‘A long time ago I made a mistake. It cost the lives of the two people who were dearest to me in the world.’
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘You wish you could go back and change things, put them back how they were before.’