Authors: Parker Bilal
‘She walked into the sea one night and that was it. They fished her up in one of the nets.’
The tone of the man’s voice changed. ‘Then he came here, pretending to be concerned about her, trying to make things better . . . when he knew
he
was the reason she had died. “What a tragic accident,” he said. He tried to give me money, as if that would make things better. What kind of a world is it where people think they can just buy whatever they want?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Makana. ‘Not much of one, I suppose.’
‘We sat together, over there.’ He raised a hand in the direction of the terrace. ‘He told me he knew what it was like to love, that he was in love with another woman, an actress or something, which was why he had never touched Dunya. It mattered to him that I believed him. That’s when I hit him.’ He nodded at the broken oar lying on the ground. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’
Makana suddenly felt weary. It was as if Adil had finally emerged from the secrecy that had been obscuring him, to be revealed as a simple man, trying to make amends – and paying for it with his life.
‘I don’t regret it,’ said the fisherman. ‘It won’t bring her back, but I don’t regret it.’
They walked back over to the restaurant and Makana righted a chair and table and sat down while the man disappeared inside to prepare coffee. Lighting a cigarette, Makana called the eldest of the watching boys over. He handed him some money and told him to run over to the resort and call the biggest policeman he could find. ‘Tell him to come straight away and don’t leave without him. You’ll get the same amount when you come back here.’ The boy disappeared in a puff of dust, his bare soles flying behind him as he ran along the beach as if his life depended on it.
Makana sat and smoked a cigarette, listening to the wind thrashing angrily through the sharp, dry fronds overhead and watching the sea patiently striking the beach, pounding as steadily as it had done for millions of years. It would be a while before the boy got back, but the coffee was taking longer than he’d expected. After a while Makana realised something was wrong. He got up and went inside the house. The kitchen was empty. No coffee pot was on the stove. He moved from room to room until he found him. The body swayed back and forth gently in the wind. The man had fashioned a simple noose from a length of nylon fishing cord and hanged himself from a wooden beam at the back of the house. The palm fronds above his head thrashed in a frenzy.
It was after midnight by the time Makana got back to Cairo. Gaber’s office was in darkness save for the low halo cast by a desk lamp. Makana paused in the doorway for a moment, watching him. The neat waves of white hair were bowed over the paper he was writing on. A wraith of smoke curled languorously from the ashtray at his elbow. He seemed to sense Makana’s presence rather than hear him for he looked up suddenly, the expression of vulnerability on his face immediately remoulding itself into the familiar, impassive mask.
‘Ah, there you are. Come in, please. What a terrible business.’
His eyes swiftly took in the state of Makana. The torn and bloodstained clothes, the scratches on his face.
‘You appear to have been in the thick of the battle.’ Gaber cleared his throat awkwardly.
Makana settled himself down in a big, comfortable leather chair and it felt softer than a feather bed. He resisted the temptation to close his eyes and instead reached for the sandalwood box on the desk without asking. Gaber was there with the heavy gold-plated lighter shaped like a sphinx. Despite the luxury of the upholstery, it was difficult for Makana to sit comfortably. Every inch of his body ached with pain. He sucked in the soothing, rich, foreign tobacco.
‘Have you told him yet?’
‘As you can imagine, he took it badly. The doctor is coming to give him a sedative. I told him I would call him when you got here.’ As Gaber reached for the phone, Makana raised a finger.
‘You might want to wait a moment.’
‘I’m sorry?’ A faint, watery smile crossed Gaber’s face.
‘You need to consider Hanafi’s reaction when he discovers what you were up to.’
In the long silence that followed Gaber aged visibly. He let the receiver fall.
‘I met Daud Bulatt last night.’
Gaber sat back and folded his fingers together.
‘You were there from the start. The ever loyal Gaber, cleaning up the mess. It was your job to make Hanafi respectable. You did it, you worked hard for all those years – and what did you get in reward? Very little. He still treats you with contempt. He humiliates you in front of people. Why? Because he can, because he always could, because he knows you will take it and never complain.’
Gaber stretched out a tapering hand for his own cigarette. He puffed at it for a moment or two before returning it to the ashtray. Reaching into a drawer, he produced a chequebook.
‘You’ve obviously been through a lot. I am sure that Mr Hanafi would want you to be rewarded in full for your services.’
‘That’s it? I take the money and disappear?’
Gaber put down the pen he had lifted from the blotter.
‘What is it you want from me?’
‘Nothing. Just answers, that’s all. I’m a curious man, and you’re right, it’s been a long night, so perhaps you will do me the favour of telling me the truth.’
‘What do you want to know?’ Gaber folded his fingers together again on the desk.
‘When we first met, I asked you where you had got my name from. You were very vague, saying something about an old acquaintance. But you never said who exactly.’
‘What are you driving at?’
‘It was Bulatt, wasn’t it? Daud Bulatt gave you my name.’
Gaber reached for another Dunhill from the box, the light bouncing off the mother-of-pearl inlay on the lid. Makana did the same. This time he lit it himself but it tasted just as good, despite the sharp pain that scored itself down his shoulders and back at the movement.
‘You knew him from back in the old days, when he was with Hanafi.’
For a time Gaber sat in silence. A shadow had settled over his face and refused to budge. He lowered his head as if pondering a weighty dilemma. When he looked up it was as if the mask he wore had aged ten years.
‘I devoted the best years of my life to serving Hanafi loyally,’ he said, studying the glowing tip of his cigarette. ‘When I first met him I was a young lawyer from a good family, and Hanafi, well . . . he was a
bultagi
, a simple thug from the wrong side of the tracks, but he knew more about the world than I ever would, or so it seemed to me. I was young and impressionable. He made his money through extortion. He was everything I had studied law to fight. I had led the pampered life of a middle-class child, spoiled by his parents. I was not as smart as they thought I was. I learned that at university. I knew I would never get the best jobs. But Hanafi gave me an opportunity.’ Gaber sat back and looked at the ceiling. ‘He had everything I lacked . . . power, charisma. He was afraid of nothing and no one. Not even death.’
‘So you turned your skills to defending a criminal.’
Gaber dismissed this with a tut of impatience. ‘He needed me. We were going to change the world, together. He needed someone to turn him into an honest businessman. He wanted to get out of the rackets. He took me under his wing, led me into the darkest corners of society, and I felt safe, protected.’ Defiance glinted in Gaber’s eyes. ‘
I
built this empire, not him. He has no business sense. He knows how to scare people, how to intimidate them, but he doesn’t understand markets. He doesn’t understand politicians.’
‘But you do.’
‘Yes,’ said Gaber quickly. ‘And now . . . his mind has gone. Age, illness, I don’t know. It’s all slipping away from him, but he won’t let go. If I didn’t act, he would take us all down with him.’
‘You were trying to protect him from himself? Or trying to save the company for yourself?’
Gaber’s head sagged low, as if he could no longer bear its weight, his face dipping into shadow. But you didn’t need to see his face to feel the emotion in his voice.
‘Hanafi started to get sentimental. I knew he was planning to hand everything over to Adil. He doted on the boy. You’re right. He never saw me as anything but an educated fool. He would never let me take over.’
‘So you decided to cut Adil out of the equation?’ Gaber nodded. ‘And you enlisted Soraya to your cause.’
‘She saw what was going on. She understood the danger the company was in, and she knew that Adil was an obstacle and a threat.’
‘You heard about Bulatt, that he was still alive and well and living just next door. Who told you, I wonder? Was it your friend Colonel Serrag?’
Gaber remained tight-lipped. Makana continued.
‘You arranged a friendly match in Khartoum and sent word to Bulatt. You thought he would take care of things from there. Only Bulatt had other plans.’
Through the window behind him, Makana could see the trees on the terrace bending in the high wind. There was a storm blowing and the air swirled with fine dust which seemed to glow like particles of gold in the brilliant spotlights that illuminated the penthouse.
‘You must have realised there was a certain risk, bringing Bulatt into the picture.’
‘Of course,’ Gaber snapped. ‘But you must understand my position. I had no choice. I was convinced that if something wasn’t done, everything would be lost.’
‘So Adil came back, alive and well, and recruited into Bulatt’s plans for revenge.’
‘I know nothing of all that. All I know is that Bulatt tricked me. He didn’t get rid of Adil. Instead he came here himself.’
‘He came because Adil went missing. You didn’t know what was going on. All you knew was that you had to deal with it as discreetly as possible. Bulatt persuaded you to hire me.’ Makana paused. ‘You were still on talking terms with Bulatt then. You didn’t know that he had his own plans. You had no choice but to go along with him; with Adil missing you had nowhere to turn.’
‘I didn’t know what to think.’ Gaber put his face in his hands. ‘For all I knew the young fool had got himself into some other trouble. I just knew that if anyone started snooping around they might come up with all kinds of things. I couldn’t risk that.’
‘And Bulatt promised he would get rid of me when the time came.’
‘Something like that.’
Gaber lifted his head and conceded the briefest of nods. Then his expression froze and his eyes drifted off to a spot somewhere over Makana’s right shoulder. He turned to see Hanafi standing in the doorway. How long he had been standing there it was impossible to say, but from the look on his face he had overheard enough.
‘What is this? What is going on?’
He stepped into the room. He moved like a drunk. Perhaps it was the medication they had given him, but there was something wild and deranged about him. The silk dressing gown he wore had come undone. Underneath, a vest and undershorts peeped through. He made no attempt to adjust his clothing, and seemed completely oblivious to his appearance. His hair stood on end as if he had been sleeping on it. Or tearing at it. He stepped closer to them.
‘You killed my boy? You, of all people?’ Hanafi was barefoot, his feet like pale mice creeping across the carpet in fits and starts. ‘You were nothing, nobody, when I found you.’
Gaber began to rise. ‘Now listen to me, Saad. Whatever I did, I did for the sake of all of us . . . for the company.’
‘Listen to you? I have listened to you for long enough.’
By now he was upon Gaber. His open hands were swollen with age and rheumatism, but they came down hard like the wooden paddles of a steamer, relentlessly pounding Gaber to the floor. ‘If it wasn’t for me you would be out there peddling your ass! Selling insurance to old ladies . . .’
Gaber raised his hands to defend himself but sank under the blows. He tried to grab something to help him stay upright and pulled the fancy blotter, the telephone, the heavy cut-glass ashtray, on to the floor with him.
‘He’s dead! Do you understand that? You killed my son!’
‘It’s not like that,’ Gaber protested, crawling back towards the bookcase, blood pouring from his nose and a cut over his left eye. Hanafi’s strength seemed to belie his age. His fists drew back again and again to land on Gaber’s head until it sounded like a pulped melon. Eventually he stood up and turned to face Makana. His hair and clothes were in disarray and his face was smeared with blood. Makana could hear a faint wheezing sound coming from behind the desk which told him the other man was alive, if only barely. Hanafi was staring straight through Makana, his eyes wild and unseeing.
‘
Baba
!
’
The haunted gaze lifted and Hanafi let out a cry as if he had seen a ghost when Soraya rushed across the room towards him. He threw up one arm to keep her back.
‘No! Don’t touch me!’ Then he turned away, stepping blindly into the French windows behind him. The doors flew open as he crashed against them, letting in a gust of wind that sent papers flying.
Hanafi staggered out, carried by his own momentum. Makana watched as Soraya followed her father out on to the terrace, reaching out to him time and again. Each time he would brush her off and move further away. Finally, she stopped and watched helplessly as the strange figure pirouetted across the terrace as if upon a stage. Hanafi had the grace of an ageing ballerina, a drunk or a madman who manages to avoid, by some miraculous sense of balance, the most obvious traps and pitfalls. Staggering and somehow not falling, he made it across to the other side. With a little hop he stepped up on to a bench and then suddenly he was standing on the parapet of the terrace. The updraught from below flapped the hem of the gown around his plump legs so that he resembled a broken umbrella, or a large, ugly vulture whose wings had lost all coordination. He raised his hands and shouted something, as if addressing the world far below him. Soraya threw out her hand. ‘
Baba
!
’ she cried, one last time, and then he was gone.