Authors: Parker Bilal
‘Are you sure about this?’ Wad Nubawi seemed uncertain of his role. Makana needed no prompting. On your feet was better than being trapped in a vehicle. He swung his legs over the side and dropped to the ground.
‘Of course I’m sure. Where is he going to go?’ Sergeant Hamama gestured at the blackness beyond the furrow made by the vehicle’s headlights. Where indeed? Makana contemplated the odds of running straight into the blackness. How far would he get before they shot him?
‘I need to take a leak,’ said Wad Nubawi. As he walked past, Hamama held out his hand.
‘Leave the gun with me,’ he said helpfully.
While Wad Nubawi walked back a few paces into the shadows behind the pickup to find a quiet spot, the sergeant gestured for Makana to move further forward until he was in the full glare of the headlights. Makana backed away from him, never taking his eyes off Hamama who in turn watched him closely as they waited in silence. When Wad Nubawi had finished he walked back up along the side of the vehicle until he was standing next to the sergeant.
‘Why not let me do it?’
‘You think you’re up to it?’ Sergeant Hamama asked, his gaze still fixed on Makana.
‘Sure,’ nodded Wad Nubawi. ‘I never liked this one since I first set eyes on him.’
‘Okay, if you think so.’ Without further preamble, Sergeant Hamama turned and lifted the gun. He shot Wad Nubawi through the temple at point-blank range. The shot sounded strangely muted out there in the open. Wad Nubawi dropped without a sound. His head and torso beyond the edge of the road, leaving only his legs and scuffed shoes in the cone of light. They twitched once and then went still.
‘Help me roll him off the side,’ said Sergeant Hamama, tucking the pistol into his belt. When Makana hesitated the sergeant looked up. ‘If I’d have wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.’
There was no arguing with that. Makana stepped forward.
‘Take the legs,’ said Hamama. Together they rolled the body over the side of the road and watched it slide down the gentle incline to come to rest on the sand some three metres away.
‘Aren’t you going to bury him?’
‘It goes faster like this,’ said the sergeant. ‘In a couple of days there’ll be nothing left.’
‘Why now? Why here?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes things just feel right. Don’t you ever get that?’ Hamama squinted at Makana. Hands on his hips, Hamama craned his neck back to look at the stars. ‘It’s not a bad place to die, though, you have to admit.’ With that the sergeant walked around and climbed in behind the wheel. He waited a minute, staring ahead through the windscreen, before leaning over. ‘Are you coming?’
Makana, still handcuffed, got in on the passenger side as Hamama started up. They rolled along, small stones crunching under the wheels. Ahead of them to the south the desert rose up in two high walls separated by a cleft. As they drew closer the glow of the headlights revealed recesses in the rock, old burial chambers, pockmarking the left-hand wall.
‘Where are you taking me?’ Makana asked.
‘Don’t start getting any ideas. If it was up to me you would have stayed behind with our friend back there. It seems that you are of value to somebody. Any idea who that might be?’
‘Only one person. Someone who used to work for me, my old NCO, Mek Nimr.’ Even as he spoke, Makana was reminded of Zahra and how long she had waited for her revenge. Eleven years didn’t seem all that long to end what had begun that night on the bridge.
‘Your NCO?’ Sergeant Hamama tipped his head. ‘How the world turns. Well, I have responsibilities. It’s the same everywhere. Show me someone who has complete independence and I’ll show you a liar, or a fool. Take your pick. Even the president of the most powerful country on earth can’t do anything without the support of congress, and that’s how it is.’
‘That’s the deal. You hand me to Musab and Musab hands me to Mek Nimr?’
‘Something like that.’
‘In return for what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. All of that stuff goes on above my head. All I do is take care of my little plot of land. They ask me a favour and at some stage I get one in return. That’s a lesson that might have benefitted you, if I may say so.’
‘What lesson is that?’
‘Knowing your limitations. Everyone has a station in life. You go beyond that and you are just asking for trouble.’
Up ahead a strange glow appeared to emerge from the desert floor. Makana peered into the darkness, trying to make sense of the way light seemed to be coming up from below the ground.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
‘That is Kalonsha.’
Kalonsha emerged from the darkness like a scene from a phantasmagorical dream. A nightmare inhabited by spirits left behind in this desert over the centuries. The men walking could conceivably have been modern-day counterparts to the warriors of the army of Cambyses that was swallowed up by the sand. They wore a mixture of traditional cotton robes and headdresses, military fatigues, camouflage trousers, army boots, sandals. Some had shaved heads while others sported the woolly afro of Hadendowa tribesmen. There was a range of racial typologies, reflecting the span of countries around the Sahara, north and south, east and west; from the green hills of Rwanda to the arid coastline of Mauritania, from Igbo to Bambara and back again. All of Africa was here and a handful of white faces testified to links further afield. A Toureg in a cowboy hat of fletted nylon strode by, his face masked by huge retro sunglasses with metal rims that looked like something from the 1970s. Other faces looked Cuban, or Latin American perhaps. Most of the men were armed. AK47s of various types were slung from shoulders as casually as waterbags along with other weapons from a range of sources. Around the sheltered bays were arrayed a startling display of vehicles along with military hardware including an old jeep with Wermacht markings on the side. It was being admired by a group of youths chewing qat in a scene that could have taken place in a museum painting. The man who leapt out from underneath was clearly white. A modern-day Robinson Crusoe, his skin so harshly burned by the sun it looked like leather. He mistook the curious onlookers for interested buyers. ‘Type 82 Kubelwagen, one of the most reliable cars ever made. I’ll take any offers.’ Clearly a labour of love, although it would never be of more than passing interest to these kids, for whom the history of cars was as dead as the pharaohs. Further over was a converted Nissan pickup with an anti-aircraft gun mounted in the back. The chassis was probably shot to pieces from the recoil but it drew the kind of admiring looks a decent camel used to get, or a beautiful woman. Even thinking in those terms was redundant.
Everywhere was the smell of food. Kebabs sizzled over hot coals, beans bubbled away in fat cauldrons. A plump man broke off from stirring a mountain of pasta to ladle steaming hot sauce over pots of the stuff. Fires flickered here and there. The moving flame throwing a montage of dark shapes over the sheer cliffs surrounding them. The depression they were in was roughly divided up between the various items on offer. There were large sections for vehicles and arms – stalls selling every make of weapon and ammunition available in the world. Evidence, if it was ever needed, that the one thing man had perfected in thousands of years of evolution was the weapons he used to kill his fellow man with. If that wasn’t a sign of progress, thought Makana, what was? Potential customers pored over shiny automatic pistols and high-calibre rifles like connoisseurs. They were in the middle of the African continent. As far from the coast in any direction you cared to choose. Transport and portability were the keys to survival. Further over were white goods: refrigerators and washing machines, which seemed almost surreal in their domesticity. Beyond that were television sets as big as doors, air-conditioners, stereo systems, towers of loudspeakers blasting nomad rhythms to the stars. Were there homes that still dreamed of power supplies and happy families in clean clothes? Perhaps they represented a kind of ideal for these warriors. A market of utopian dreams? One day they would put down their weapons and plug in their appliances and life would be good. Whatever it was, Kalonsha was clearly beyond the reach of any kind of law and order. Beyond any known logic, thought Makana as he passed an aircraft jet engine with Chinese characters on it. Were they still in Egypt? He wasn’t sure. Sergeant Hamama’s presence seemed to provoke no signs of nervousness. Here his uniform was really just a variation on a theme. Everyone was wearing the clothes of one army or another. Gaddafi’s African Legion, the Interahamwe, along with a dozen other militias and scraps from the national armies of about ten countries.
Sergeant Hamama decided to remove the handcuffs. In a place devoted to liberty, market and otherwise, and ruled by lawlessness, restraints might be considered a provocation. As he wandered along behind the sergeant, Makana could hear the enterprising salesmen promising delivery in any of a dozen cities on the edge of the Great Sand Sea.
It was all so much like a dream that when Makana caught a glimpse of Daud Bulatt he was sure it was simply the product of his over-stimulated imagination. A half-seen silhouette. The distinctive shape of a man whose right arm was missing. Shadow and light swimming in and out of one another like two halves of a menacing dance, like snakes mating. His quarry disappeared, ducking into a crowd of men gathered around the skeleton of a vehicle of some kind. All that remained was the chassis, a gearstick poking upwards like a flower in a graveyard. When the men shifted position the one-armed man was gone.
A hurricane lamp hissed by his ear as they passed a stall with a glass-sided cupboard crammed with trays of sticky baklawa. Crushed flies adorned the grubby panes. Behind it a string of coloured lightbulbs hung like incandescent fruit over another counter where a young boy was twirling strings of dough into cheese pastries.
‘The first time I came here was twenty years ago.’ Hamama was talking over his shoulder. ‘It’s been here all this time. Every now and then someone sends his army in to try and break it up, but there’s nothing they can do. The people drift away and after a time they come back. New faces, new markets, new conflicts. That’s flexibility. People just melt into the sand and reappear somewhere else. There is a demand and there is supply. It’s been like this for centuries probably. Captain Mustafa never understood that.’
‘That’s why you killed him?’
‘Among other things.’ Sergeant Hamama shrugged. ‘He objected to certain plans.’
‘You mean the Qadi’s business with the gas company?’
‘He didn’t understand. He thought he could change things. But this . . .’ Hamama shook his head. ‘You can’t change this.’
Makana moved as the sergeant spoke. Hamama’s hand was raised which blinded him on one side, and his focus was elsewhere. Makana knew there would be no better chance than this. He threw himself sideways so that he struck the sergeant with his shoulder. It was difficult to put much force into it from so close, but it was enough to knock Hamama off balance. The uneven ground helped and Sergeant Hamama stumbled into the nearest counter which subsequently collapsed, sending pots and pans, trays of food flying along with a vat of boiling oil that tipped over with a hiss. Hamama went down on one knee giving a howl when his hand came to rest on the scalding oil. By then Makana was already running, back through the crowd hoping to lose himself. Moving left and right, randomly changing direction. At first he tried to seek out large gatherings. The more people the better. He twisted and turned, suddenly finding himself trapped within a circle of men arguing over something. He could not understand what language they were speaking, but the way they were brandishing their weapons it was all about to turn nasty. Makana began slipping through looking for a way out when he bumped into someone. Apologising, he tried again, only to have the same thing happen. This time the response was a hard shove which sent him sprawling. As Makana started to pick himself up a pair of shiny military boots appeared in front of his face. They were on the end of a pair of fancy army trousers with lots of patches and pockets on them. Not standard military issue. The man wearing them was shaven-headed and muscular.
‘Hello Makana,’ he said.
‘Lieutenant Sharqi.’ Makana struggled to sit up. ‘What a surprise.’
‘I’d say the same, but nothing about you surprises me any more.’
‘I didn’t know you took an interest in smuggling.’
Sharqi’s hard face betrayed little emotion. He was an ex-paratrooper, then a member of Egyptian Special Services. Specificially, Task Force 777, a counterterrorism unit founded in the wake of President Sadat’s assassination. More recently, Sharqi had been promoted to running his own elite and rather shadowy unit within State Security. He gave the signal and two of his men hauled Makana to his feet and held him in check.
‘Bring him along. We need to talk.’
‘What’s wrong with here?’ Makana was reluctant to be led off into the dark. Sharqi smiled.
‘I’m not going to lose you that easily. Watch your step, it’s quite tricky.’
Sergeant Hamama burst breathlessly into sight, provoking a scuffle and some shoving among the other men who had been arguing earlier. They noticed his uniform and drifted away.
‘There you are,’ Hamama addressed Makana as he closed in. ‘Now I’m going to teach you a lesson.’ He clapped the handcuffs back onto his wrists.
‘Nobody is teaching anyone anything here without my permission,’ said Sharqi.