Authors: Parker Bilal
Doctor Medina was in his clinic doing tests of some kind. He looked like a mad scientist in his lab coat and protective goggles, bowed over a counter cluttered with all manner of instruments, plastic hoses, old Bunsen burners and test tubes.
‘I thought you had been expelled from our fair community?’
‘Not quite,’ said Makana. The doctor appeared to be sober, which made a change.
‘I could have guessed as much. And now you’ve come to haunt me.’
‘I caught a glimpse of our mysterious lady this evening.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Doctor Medina lifted his goggles and gestured towards the table in the middle of the room. Last time Makana had been down here a dead body had been stretched out on it. Now it was laden with what looked like the remains of a small feast.
‘I usually eat down here when I’m working,’ explained the doctor. ‘Help yourself. I’m glad you came back. I wanted to tell you about my discoveries.’
Makana declined the offer of food but he took a seat while the doctor busied himself with a brass coffee pot.
‘What discoveries?’
‘About the Qadi. Remember I told you that I thought he had been drugged?’
‘Some kind of tranquilliser.’
‘That’s what we assumed.’ The doctor nodded as he lit the gas burner. The brass coffee pot rested on a rusted iron tripod. ‘The real question was how it was administered.’
‘I get the feeling you know the answer.’
‘I’ll come to that in a moment.’ The doctor couldn’t help but grin with delight. It took about ten years off his age. ‘Have you ever heard of Ketamine? It is often used for animals, but has the advantage of being odourless. It has no colour and it is tasteless.’
‘So it could have been put into a drink?’
‘Even more ingenious.’ Doctor Medina, still beaming, placed a bowl of what looked like roasted melon seeds on the table. ‘It is a national vice. We eat these things all the time. It’s the salt.’
‘You mean someone coated these seeds in Ketamine?’ Makana asked.
‘Mixed into the salt. Our killer is smart. He, or she, studies the habits of their victims. I took those seeds from a packet in the Qadi’s pockets. Now, when it came to Ayman, the killer chose something different.’ The doctor bent to the refrigerator and produced a transparent plastic bag containing a tiny flake of some kind of brown substance, no bigger than a grain of rice. He set it on the table like a conjurer about to produce a flock of doves.
‘And this?’ Makana asked.
‘A piece of caramel. I found it in Ayman’s mouth. It was trapped between his upper molars. I analysed it and guess what?’
‘Ketamine?’
‘Even better.’ The doctor was having a field day. ‘Ever hear of Atropine? It’s a parasympatholytic. Popularly known as Belladonna. Cleopatra used drops of it to dilate her pupils and make her look more beautiful.’
Makana searched through his pockets and located the wrapper he had found on the hill where Ayman was killed. He placed it on the table next to the scrap of caramel.
‘That would have been a small dosage, enough to make him woozy, even knock him out briefly. I found a puncture mark on Ayman’s neck. He was a big man, so my guess is that the killer injected him with more, just to make sure.’
‘How sure are you that the mutilation took place after death?’
‘It’s fairly simple.’ Doctor Medina looked offended. ‘You have lost faith in my skills?’
‘I need to know if it’s possible they were tortured before death.’
‘How would that change things?’
‘It might provide us with a motive.’
‘I see.’ Doctor Medina regarded Makana for a time before shaking his head. ‘It’s not possible. They were sedated before the mutilation, and in this particular case he was actually dead. Atropine was a popular poison in ancient Rome. The Emperor Augustus was murdered by his wife. She injected it into figs.’
‘Does that mean it’s easy to come by?’
‘It occurs naturally.
Atropa Belladonna
is part of the Deadly Nightshade family. It’s related to tomatoes and aubergines.’
‘Our killer didn’t have to search for it.’ Makana described the supply of drugs he had found in the old house.
‘So we have our killer?’
‘I think we can assume they won’t be foolish enough to go back there now.’
Doctor Medina held the coffee pot over the blue finger of the Bunsen burner and waited for it to boil.
‘Sergeant Hamama means to close down the case. I’ve already been told to prepare the bodies for collection. They will be buried tomorrow.’
‘No loose ends.’
‘Exactly.’
Makana studied the toxic blue colour of the filter on the Cleopatra he was holding and considered the wisdom of lighting it.
‘You’ve done a good job, Doctor, but if there is an investigating committee from Mersa Matruh they are going to ask questions.’
‘What do you mean?’ Doctor Medina seemed puzzled.
‘They might want to check your credentials as a medical practitioner.’ Makana nodded at the coffee pot which was bubbling madly. ‘Maybe you ought to turn that off?’
The doctor didn’t appear to have heard so Makana reached across for the gas valve and switched off the flame under the coffee pot.
Doctor Medina remained staring at the bubbling brown liquid as it settled in the pot.
‘I made a mistake, once. A long time ago.’
‘Is that why you came here?’
The doctor nodded.
‘I was a fairly idealistic young man. Who isn’t? When I first graduated I went to Palestine, to Gaza, and later to the camps in Lebanon to serve the refugees there. They had nothing. No medicines, no doctors or nurses. They were desperate and they greeted me as a hero. It was a good time, despite the hardship and the suffering. It felt good.’ His voice trailed off. ‘I thought I would change the world. Instead it changed me.’ His mouth glistened with spit and he wiped it with the back of his hand. ‘I need a drink.’ He turned to the small refrigerator tucked underneath his workbench. Producing a rounded chemical flask and a dirty glass from the sink he gulped greedily. ‘How did that happen? Where did doing good turn into something bad?’ He stared through Makana, as if he wasn’t sure he was really there, as though he were addressing a ghost. ‘I came home. I tried to help young women. Do you know how many illegal terminations there are every year in this country? It’s horrible. Most of them are carried out in grubby backstreets by old hags with no formal medical training. The same women who perform the circumcisions. We are hypocrites. We like to pretend we are above all that, that we are good observant Muslims.’
‘You tried to change that?’
‘Women were dying of septicaemia, bleeding to death on filthy kitchen floors. I helped where I could.’ Doctor Medina paused, staring into space. ‘Until one day I made a mistake. A simple error that comes from working two jobs, sleeping only when I could no longer keep my eyes open. I was so tired I couldn’t see straight. I’m not making excuses for myself, you understand? I’m just telling you how it happened.’
‘You lost a patient?’
‘A young girl whose family lived in misery. She worked as a maid in the home of a nice, respectable judge who was in the habit of abusing her on a regular basis. She couldn’t afford the scandal, nor the child. Her whole family depended on her income. There were complications. By the time they called me I was too tired to go all the way back across town to see her. It was a momentary decision. I had to sleep. I told them to give her some pain killers and if the fever got worse they should call a doctor. But they were afraid of taking her to a doctor, afraid of the consequences, and so they did nothing and the girl died. She was nineteen.’
‘But you don’t know for certain that you killed her.’
‘I should have gone!’ Doctor Medina thumped his fist on the table so hard it made his glass jump. ‘If I had gone I could have saved her life . . . and mine.’
‘Instead you ran away.’
‘I had no choice. Shortly after that I was denounced. I wasn’t surprised. I half expected it. Luckily someone warned me and I managed to get out. I had to flee overnight. I left my belongings behind. I left everything.’ Doctor Medina poured himself another drink. ‘I thought if I went far enough I could get away from myself. But there is nowhere that far in the world. You can’t do it. I tried, Allah knows I tried. But I didn’t make it. I wound up here and for a time everything was good. Nobody asked any questions. I did my work and gradually I built up people’s confidence in me. It’s not easy. It took time.’ The doctor’s eyes were haunted. ‘Then one day a young girl walked into my clinic.’
‘One of the Abubakr sisters?’
‘Safira. They both came actually. I mean, Nagat brought her. They were both very nervous. They didn’t want their father to find out.’ An absent smile played around Doctor Medina’s face as he recalled that first encounter. ‘I promised them their secret was safe with me. Doctor–patient confidentiality is sacred, I said. They liked that, and then they showed me what he had done.’
‘The girls’ father was abusing them?’
‘He had broken her arm. It wasn’t the first time. There was evidence of other breaks which had healed badly. Fingers. Toes.’ Doctor Medina paused to take a deep breath. ‘And in the process of examination I discovered she was pregnant.’
‘He was using them sexually?’
Doctor Medina snorted. ‘It’s more common than you might think. People live isolated lives. This man’s wife had died years ago. I suppose there are a million ways to explain it. Nobody talks about it because of the shame.’
‘Was it only the younger daughter who was being abused?’
‘There were indications that another daughter had also been abused.’
‘Butheyna.’
‘She left early on and never came back. Nagat was tougher, in a way. Safira was more vulnerable. Do you think I could have one of those?’ The doctor pointed at Makana’s Cleopatras. Without waiting for an answer he reached out. Makana lit it for him. ‘I could show you a thousand reports on the dangers of tobacco,’ Doctor Medina said as he exhaled, ‘but none of them address the question of how to substitute the comfort these bring.’
‘Go on with your story, Doctor.’
‘It’s the oldest story in the world. A sad old man falls in love with an innocent young girl. I don’t know when or how it happened, all I know is that it did. I did the termination and I set her arm. There was a certain amount of physiotherapy involved to help her recover mobility. In the course of those meetings naturally we talked. We had the most enchanting conversations, right here in this room.’ The doctor glanced around them at the lifeless space they sat in as if wondering how such a dismal place could ever be infused with magic. Makana wondered too how much of this was in the doctor’s head. ‘Such vitality, such imagination. We talked about everything. She wanted to know about the world. Circumstances. What opportunities are there for a girl like that in a place like this? People demand that you conform. It’s what is expected. As a woman your duty is to obey your father, then your husband and finally your sons.’
‘It must have hurt you to know that she was being abused by her father.’
‘Naturally, it hurt.’ The doctor paused. ‘I’m not a brave man, Makana,’ he said. ‘It pained me to know what that man did to her. I wished there was a way of saving her, of getting her away from that house. But what could I do?’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘She asked so many questions. About the world in general. About Cairo. What was life like in the big city? Were people really free? Could a woman marry a man out of love rather than out of family obligations?’ Doctor Medina raised his eyebrows in wonder at the memory. ‘But it was more than that. I marvelled that her mind could be so unsullied by the life she lived. All day working the land, which is hard, back-breaking toil. Even the way her father used her; she seemed to be able to shrug all that off.’
‘How do you explain that?’
‘I don’t. I can’t, not really. Looking back now, I suppose it was almost as if she had created a space in her head where she was free. And somehow . . . somehow I was allowed in.’ The doctor’s courage seemed to falter then. ‘It felt like a privilege.’
‘Who killed her, Doctor?’ Makana asked softly.
Doctor Medina hung his head, suddenly very tired. ‘Musab got greedy. He was always hot- headed and arrogant, but at a certain point he became ambitious. Wad Nubawi had treated him like a son. He didn’t like being on the road for days at a time, which left Musab to his own devices. The inevitable happened. It occurred to Musab that he didn’t need Wad Nubawi, so he plotted a little coup d’état. He managed to rally a few other discontented souls and they dragged Wad Nubawi off to teach him a lesson. They turned up here in the middle of the night. I was asleep. I could barely recognise him, he was so badly beaten. Musab wanted me to amputate the fingers of his left hand.’ The doctor splayed out his own hand on the table. ‘One by one. He wanted it to be done properly, didn’t want him to die, you understand, just to suffer until he surrendered command. That was important to him.’
‘And you refused.’
‘I couldn’t do it.’ Doctor Medina held Makana’s gaze steadily. ‘I know it sounds foolish, but everything had changed for me. She changed me. Before, when I first came here, I was a mess. Musab helped me to set myself up. He brought me patients. I patched up his men when they were hurt, got them drugs, amphetamines to keep them awake when they drove long distances. Small things. In return he would pay me in good Scotch whisky. It was a weakness. But this was different. Removing a man’s fingers. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes after that. I decided I couldn’t bear that. I wanted to change for her. I wanted to be a better man.’