Arabesk (46 page)

Stating the obvious to Hamzah was living dangerously, but he paid Olga to tell him the truth and so Olga did. Besides, he was too shocked to fire her. Which he did about once a month, only to say nothing when she turned up the following day, as if their fight had never taken place.

Another PA might have convinced herself that this was because he prized her opinion, that the unusual leeway he gave her had nothing to do with those half dozen occasions each year when he took her to bed, but he knew Olga lied neither to him nor to herself. All the same, their relationship wasn’t based on anything as simple as sex.

It was her lack of avarice that first captured his imagination. Other mistresses had taken the diamond chains he offered, the Cartier watches, the inevitable mink. Olga took nothing but her salary and returned every gift, opened but unused. She seemed to want nothing from him but his company and, occasionally, his presence in her bed. And it was
her
bed, a single one with metal frame, because she’d refused his offer of a flat as well.

“Olga, where did I go wrong?” Hamzah’s grin was rueful but admiring. There couldn’t be another daughter in Iskandryia who’d stamp unannounced into her father’s HQ, spin on the spot and slip off her jacket to show her naked back, lash marks and all, when asked why she refused to come home.

But then, daughter and mother had never been close. And it hadn’t helped that Rahina’s only advice to Zara before her abortive engagement to Ashraf Bey was, “Never undress in front of your husband.”

If Hamzah could have stopped the whippings, he would have done so years back; but mothers dealt with daughters and fathers with sons. And his boast that he’d never lifted his hand to Zara lost out to the fact he’d never actually raised his voice to protect her either. Tradition strangled him, Hamzah knew that. Under the silk shirt and Gucci suit he was still a
felaheen
at heart.

Zara, however, was not a
felaheen
daughter. Proper schools, two years in New York and a career at the Bibliotheka Iskandryia had seen to that. She was brave, beautiful and smitten with Ashraf Bey, although Hamzah was prepared to bet almost anything she hadn’t let Raf know that.

He understood what drove his daughter. What was even weirder, he actually admired her while knowing full well it was meant to be the other way round.

“Olga, I’ve got a problem…”

Her laugh was instinctive. “You’ve got lots of—” Then she stopped. “You mean you’ve got a problem I don’t know about?” Olga paused in the doorway, then quietly came back to where Hamzah sat. She didn’t perch on the edge of his desk or casually grab a chair and straddle it. She waited for Hamzah to nod towards a leather sofa. And when she sat it was elegantly, with her stockinged legs crossed at the ankle.

Hamzah wondered what Olga saw when she looked at him. A filthy capitalist? A self-deluded gangster? A parvenu so desperate for baubles he bought his own title? Or a father unable to safeguard a daughter who refused all protection?

“Okay,” said Olga briskly. “Problems I do know about… Your daughter’s been busted by the
morales
for running an illegal club. She’s in love with some spoilt little princeling who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. There are rumours of a strike at the refinery. And, despite a full and frank talk, someone’s still asking around about your childhood, according to Kamil…”

“Avatar,” Hamzah corrected, without even thinking about it. “He calls himself DJ Avatar.”

“Whatever. He could still become a problem…”

“No,” said Hamzah. “Ashraf Bey’s a problem. Avatar just wishes he was.”

“You believe the bey’s for real?”

“I know he is,” Hamzah said heavily. “And he’s a trained killer, government issue… A bit damaged round the edges but still under guarantee.” The big man laughed. “Well, that was how he described himself.”

“And you actually
wanted
this man to marry your daughter?”

“I want,”
Hamzah corrected her. “More than want,
I need
this man to marry Zara.”

“I see,” said Olga. “Can I ask why?”

Hamzah shook his head. There were, in his experience, immutable laws about how fathers felt regarding the suitors who sent flowers and elegant cards to their daughters. The first feeling of hatred gave way to one of regret. Third, and finally, came loss as the daughter became a woman. So was it written.

Laws, equally immutable, governed the behaviour, if not the actual feelings, of those courted. Whoever came calling, daughters pretended to despise them. Presents were returned unopened, letters sent back unread. Mashrabiya shutters were slammed tight against each and every serenade. No touch was sought or permitted.

Yet Hamzah knew beyond doubt that his own daughter had spent a night with this man. And while he should have been furious, he was merely worried and oddly sad. It was hard to know if his tenderness for Zara and her willingness to turn to him was a sign of success or proof of failure.

And beyond these things he barely ever thought about, like his own feelings, was a real threat to his wealth, his happiness and to his own and Zara’s lives. Because when Iskandryian newsfeeds began running stories they shouldn’t and the police stopped contacting him at the first sign of trouble then the threat was real.

Someone somewhere reckoned they could change the balance of power.

“Look,” said Hamzah, relenting slightly. “At its most basic, I need Ashraf to marry Zara to give her protection… Protection I may not be able to provide for much longer. And if she doesn’t marry the bey, I have to find someone else. The big problem is that I may not have time.”

Behind her heavy spectacles, Olga’s blue eyes were large. She understood exactly what he was saying. If Hamzah could no longer protect his daughter, then he couldn’t protect her either. If he couldn’t protect her, then what hope had he of protecting the refinery, Hamzah Enterprises or any other of the myriad shells within shells making up the story that justified the last thirty years of his life…

“Have you upset the General?”

“No.” Hamzah shook his head. He and Koenig Pasha had a better understanding than most people realized. All the General required of Hamzah was that he recognize who was in charge of El Iskandryia, which wasn’t the young Khedive and wasn’t him. In return, the General kept Interpol at bay, played Washington’s investigators off against those from Moscow, and shamelessly ignored or flattered Paris.

“Tell me,” said Hamzah, “is there such a thing as a normal childhood?”

“No,” Olga replied immediately.

“Then, even allowing for the fact no one has a normal childhood,” said Hamzah, “mine was different.”

Standing up from his desk, he walked to a window, leant out and watched a sweeper in the playground of St. Mark’s College. The fact that Hamzah’s marble-and-red sandstone office was built next door to the college was not an accident.

He’d worked the kitchens at St. Mark’s, long ago, when he first arrived in the city. The name
Hamzah
came from a faded board listing every pupil killed in the war of 1914–15. The
Quitrimala
that became his surname was borrowed from the gilded spine of a book in the library.

He wasn’t meant to leave the kitchens but no one saw a young boy in a jellaba with a split broom in one hand and a dustpan in the other. To the pupils and masters of St. Mark’s, Hamzah was so invisible that he might as well have been made from glass.

No one would ever look through Zara.

“Follow her,” Hamzah demanded.

“Me?” Olga sounded surprised.

The thickset man briefly considered that option. There were advantages but the disadvantages were greater. “No,” he said, “get someone from security. Have them report back every five minutes.”

At noon Hamzah received a report that Zara had been admitted to the General’s house and had seen not the General but the young Khedive himself. Two hours later she was shopping for children’s clothes accompanied by a small girl, described as anxious and scrawny. The child had just demanded a haircut, one enough like Zara’s own for them to be taken for sisters.

At six, both Zara and Raf’s niece Hani were being driven aimlessly back and forth along the Corniche in a calèche, one of those open-top, horse-drawn carriages loved by tourists. Shortly after that, they disappeared through the door of a warehouse at the back of an old market near Rue Tatwig.

A quick and dirty skim through the land registry revealed that it was owned by a holding company. An even dirtier skim anchored the ownership to Madame Sosostris, a known agent of the
Thiergarten,
Berlin’s infamous intelligence service. An organization with whom Koenig Pasha was believed to have close, if occasionally fractious, links.

But it was only when Zara was joined by Lady Jalila, wife of the Chief of Police, aunt to Hani and cousin to a woman Ashraf Bey was rumoured to have murdered, that Hamzah began to get really worried.

Sudan

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are…”

It was Zac who came up with the idea of turning off the river, a few days after antiquated F-111s bombed Masouf Hospital with his brother inside.

Ka had found a small radio and a pair of spectacles. The radio was one of those old, windup things made of blue plastic. Like the spectacles, its case was cracked, and the dial didn’t work too well, but it still got Radio Freedom, which was the government, and Radio Liberty, which wasn’t…

An old woman was talking about war. She sounded cross and upset. Close to tears. She didn’t think the hospital had been an arms depot at all, she thought it was a hospital.

Did she have any proof she was right?

Did anyone have any proof that she wasn’t?

How long did Madame Ambassador think the war would go on? The woman asking all the questions was younger, her voice brittle.

“As long as there’s water to be fought over,” replied the old woman tiredly. “As long as…”

“…the Nile flows,” Zac repeated, for about the fifth time. “That’s what she said.”

“Rivers aren’t taps,” said Sarah, flicking long black braids out of her eyes. Being reasonably open to new ideas, Sarah wasn’t contemptuous like Saul, just doubtful. She looked across their small campfire to where the sergeant sat, and casually asked Ka what they were all wondering…

“What do you think?”

It was Ka’s job to know.

“Well”—Ka poked at the embers with a stick, sending sparks flicking skywards—“rivers get bigger, right, Saul?” That was what he remembered being told.

Saul shrugged. He was older than Ka and bigger, only not as clever. And Saul wasn’t his real name any more than Sarah was Sarah or Bec was actually Rebecca. But they’d fought with Ras Michael and those were their given names. The shoulder patches might have changed after they swapped sides at Aswan, yet the biblicals had stuck. Mostly because they’d been with Ras Michael for so long their original names were lost.

“Gets bigger? Says who?” Bec’s voice sounded aggressive but then it always sounded aggressive. Hers was still a real question.

“I do,” said Ka, more confidently. “Rivers start as streams and then get bigger on the way down the mountain. So they must begin small.”

“What mountain?” Zac asked.

“There’s always a mountain,” Ka said. “Or a hill. So if we find the start we can block it…”

“And just how do we do that?” Bec demanded.

It was Zachary who answered. “With ash,” he said, then blushed. “You build the dam with stones, put twigs behind it and then throw ash in the water. That blocks the small holes.”

“Okay,” Saul said heavily. “Suppose we decide to turn off the Nile…” His tone made it obvious how stupid he found that suggestion. “How do you suggest we get to where it starts?”

“Follow it,” said Sarah, as if that was blindingly obvious.

“Rivers wiggle,” Zac protested.

Sarah looked at Zac, trying not to be cross with the small boy. “Then we’ll just have to follow the wiggles, won’t we?”

“Not necessarily,” said Ka, then stopped. Only he’d said too much already. And Sarah was looking at him, openly interested.

Reaching into his shirt pocket, Ka pulled out the dark glasses. They were warm beneath his fingers. From the moment he’d found them, day or night, whatever the temperature in the desert they were always slightly warm. As if their temperature was controlled by a tiny spider’s web of gold threads that ran beneath the surface of the frame.

“Wow,” said Saul. “He’s got shades.”

Ka kept his temper.

“Where am I?”

“What…?”

Flipping up one hand, Ka cut dead Sarah’s question. He could still see the others but now the fire had become a white blaze. A split second later, the flames fell into focus and it was the others who backed into shadow. And then in front of Ka’s eyes, the picture changed. Maybe it altered inside his head or maybe the new picture happened on the lenses. It was hard to tell.

All Ka knew was that suddenly he looked down at himself. A boy with too-big boots sitting at a crude fire beside a girl in a vest and combats. Opposite sat another heavier girl, a small boy hugging a gun, and a large boy who was clearly the eldest but whose poorly mended arm put him at an obvious disadvantage.

Around them were dotted other fires, other groups. Ka was slightly shocked at just how many fires there were. Further away began real tents, where the real soldiers slept, their campfires fuelled by gas, not scrub or camel dung. Beyond this, a slope began and at the bottom was a wide river. And though the water level was low, fat hippopotami still hung heavy near the muddy banks, ignoring the jackals that slunk out of the darkness to drink.

Black birds with white crowns roosted in the ruin of an old tomb, its broken walls split apart so long ago that it looked like a natural formation, an outcrop of crumbling mud brick.