Shamanka (26 page)

“Goodbye, Khensu… Let's go, Lola. He doesn't want to be found.”

Lola will miss him. She's not had a baby to care for since she nursed Sam. Khensu filled a gap that her toy monkey could never fill.

Sam puts an arm around her. “When I find mum and dad, I'll buy you a kitten, Lola. Or a rabbit, if you like. Or maybe you'll fall in love with another orang-utan and have your own baby.”

As they walk back to Bastet's shrine, Sam chatters to Lola about the baby orang-utan fantasy. “I could babysit for you, if you wanted to go out. I wonder if you'd have a girl or a boy, Lola… Oh! That's odd. Where's Kitty? This is the right place, isn't it?”

Kitty is nowhere to be seen. She's probably wandered off to see the rest of the temple, so they sit and wait for her. But the minutes turn into hours and still no sign. They search all through the night but Kitty doesn't reply.

“Here, Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!”

A raven-furred cat sits on a tombstone and watches them. It's wearing the bold eyeliner of an Egyptian priestess. The markings on its face bear an uncanny likeness to Kitty's mask. It stares at Sam.

For a split second, Sam believes it might be possible for people to shape-shift into animals – but does it work the other way round? Can animals shape-shift into humans? Would this cat turn back into Kitty? Was Aunt Candy really a python who had turned into a person and was unable to twist itself back?

The cat averts its gaze, bored with the speculation. It's just a cat, Sam tells herself. She takes out a pencil and paper and asks the spirits where Kitty is hiding. Instinctively, she knows she's hiding. She doesn't know why; perhaps it is some kind of test. Or the desire for privacy. Or maybe, like Khensu, she's come to the end of her journey – she's home at last and Sam must carry on without her.

There's no alternative. The spirits remain silent; Kitty doesn't return. Sam has no reason to stay in Egypt. Somehow, she must travel to Mexico to visit Father Bayu. His name is dominating the witch doctor's list – scorching the page. She slams the book shut to extinguish the sparks.

Sam and Lola must make their way down the Nile to Cairo, but the boatman won't allow them onto his raft until Sam pays the fare. He's been tricked before and he's wary of this wild, lonesome girl. Or maybe he's scared of orang-utans.

“Show me your Egyptian pounds, lady!”

“I only have euros, but they're as good as anything.”

“No good! No journey!”

She could offer him the second oyster pearl from the witch doctor's pouch, but it would be a waste. The pearl is worth a great deal and she's sure he'll short-change her, so she searches for Mr Fraye's coin.

It's an unusual coin, about the size of a ten-pence piece but heavier. It's tarnished, but when she rubs it on her sleeve, it gleams brightly. On one side there's an orchid framing the embossed head of a hornbill. On the reverse there's a picture of a man in a headdress with boars' tusks in his nostrils. Sam hands the coin to the boatman.

“Will this do?”

His eyes dart from left to right as if it's the currency of the devil. “Get in, get in!” he insists, pulling her on board. “I will take you there for
nothing
, providing you never tell a living soul that I refused to take you in the first place.”

Sam promises and the agitated boatman plunges his pole in the water and punts them down the Nile at phenomenal speed, as if pursued by demons. When they arrive at Cairo, he can't wait to get rid of them.

“The airport is
that
way!” He pushes Sam and Lola off the raft and punts away so fast, his arms blur.

The heat is unbearable, but Lola will have to disguise herself as a person or they won't let her on the plane. Sam has no clothes to lend her, so they head for the bazaar to buy a burka.

The bazaar is hot, spicy and loud. There are richly patterned carpets for sale. Chickens, goats, pots, pans, lamps, jewellery and cloth. There's a barrow loaded with spiky-skinned fruit that look like lizards and a barrow loaded with lizards that look like spiky-skinned fruit.

They find a man selling burkas, but he won't accept euros either, so, in a beggar-free corner, Sam takes off her ringmaster's hat and performs a few tricks with Lola to earn some money. In an Egyptian bazaar, nobody cares if you have a pet orang-utan. There are monkeys everywhere, not to mention rats, cats, snakes, camels and dogs.

There are also donkeys – one of which has just collapsed under the weight of its load. Sam has just bought the burka when a shrill cry rings out from a child waving a stick. “He's dead! Now how will we carry pots to market?”

The half-starved donkey is slumped on the dirt floor, a bag of dust and bones. Sam pushes her way through the crowd and asks them all to stand back. At first they take no notice; who is she to tell them what to do?

She must act quickly; showmanship is needed to control this audience. She must be like the Dark Prince of Tabuh and work the crowd. She stands on an upturned mango crate. “Ladies and gentlemen, I will now levitate!”

Sure enough, she appears to have risen into the air – not very high, but just enough to enthral the spice-seller.

“See the magician!” he cries.

Word gets around. Now Sam has the attention of the crowd and, with excellent sleight of hand, she produces two palm fronds from nowhere which she waves hypnotically.

“Magician, magician, see the magician!”

Maintaining an air of mystery, Sam steps down from the box and walks towards the donkey. As she walks, she chants – but she's not chanting the resurrection chant. She's trying to discover what is real, what is magic and what is illusion, so she's chanting something quite ridiculous:

She hasn't gone mad; she's trying to understand the power of chanting.

1. Is it the actual words of the chant that make it potent?

2. Can you use any old words because the magic is in the rhythm of your speech?

3. Is all in the tone of your voice?

It's not for me to say what makes a chant work. It's up to you to experiment and draw your own conclusions; but not now – the donkey is our priority at the moment. It appears to have stopped breathing. Sam is kneeling at its head, fanning it with the palm leaves. Its eyes remain fixed. Sam closes the lids gently with her thumb, then she constricts the muscles in her throat and throws her voice into a clay pitcher balanced on a woman's head.

“Fill me with water!”

The woman smiles awkwardly, hoping she's misheard. But she can't have; everyone is staring at her. The seemingly ordinary pitcher on her head is speaking.

“Fill me with water!”

The woman gives a short, sharp scream as if she's been nipped on the bottom by a dog, hitches up her skirt and runs down to the river to fill her jug.

“Run! Run! Run!”

She returns breathless and passes the jug to Sam who pulls the donkey's drooping lip outwards to form a pouch. She drips the water in and raises its head. The water trickles down the donkey's parched throat.

“It's dead!” cries the child.

Sam lowers the donkey's head, places her hands over its heart and presses – one, two, three … and release. One, two, three … and release.

“It's dead!” cries the child.

One, two, three … release! Sam does it again and again, eyes closed, picturing the cooled blood of the donkey flowing once more through the arteries, lubricating its exhausted engine …
there
! She can feel a heartbeat. Stand back!

The donkey rocks on its spine, kicks it legs and clatters onto its hooves. It takes a deep breath and lets out a long, low huff through its flared nostrils. The crowd cheers; the donkey is alive! Sam feeds it with slices of melon.

But who's that shouting from the upturned mango crate? It's the boatman. He's dancing up and down and yelling, “Witch! Witch! Arrest her! She's a witch!”

How swiftly the mood of a crowd can change. Despite Sam's protestation that she hasn't brought the donkey back from the dead – all it needed was water and a rest – no one will listen to her.

“Liar! Liar! Witch! Witch!”

The police arrive. Sam and Lola are handcuffed and thrown into the back of a van.

A large cabinet is pushed onto the stage. An elephant is led into it and the blinds are dropped. The cabinet is turned sideways by stagehands and the masked magician waves a wand. Two circular panels are dropped giving the audience a clear view through the cabinet; the elephant has gone! How?

There are two possibilities:

a) The elephant lies down in the cabinet and the floor of the cabinet is slightly raised…

b) When the curtained opening of the cabinet is raised, the audience can see through the circular opening at the back to the rear of the stage, but can't see the elephant because it is standing in the side of the cabinet (now it has been turned) which is wider than the uncurtained opening.

I
t's impossible to pick the lock on the prison cell. Even Lola can't manage it with her opposable thumbs.

“Now what?” Sam sits down hard on the concrete floor. There's no furniture except for a bucket and a bench. Lola upturns the bucket and sits next to Sam.

“Any bright ideas, Lola?”

“Ooo.”

Sam wishes the guard would come. If he did, she could distract him while Lola stole his keys, hardly a difficult move for two accomplished magicians.

“Guard… Guard, I need a drink of water!”

Sam bangs on the bars but the man won't leave his desk.

“Quiet, witch, or I'll throw you to the rabble. They will tear you limb from limb.”

Sam, who is very attached to her limbs, keeps quiet. At times like this, she really needs to refer to the witch doctor's notebook, but the guard has confiscated her things.

Having finished looking at his magazine, he becomes bored and starts rifling through Sam's bag. She can hear him talking to himself; he's just found the divining rod.

“Huh? A back-scratcher! Aww… Worhhhhh… That hit the spot!”

Now he finds the witch's cord.

“Now this'll be handy. It'll stop my gown gaping when I answer the door to the butcher's boy… Or I can use it to strangle someone.”

He's found the witch doctor's notebook. Sam's heart skips a beat. She squeezes her eyes shut and prays to Bastet, Ra, Jesus, Mary and Allah –
please don't let him destroy it!
Surely there must be one god who will answer her prayer? There seem to be so many gods. Or maybe there
is
just the one and the world is a giant mirrored ball which refracts his image a thousand different ways – who knows.

The guard sniffs the book with his bristly nostrils, “Pooh … smells funny! Ooh, wonder if it's got any rude pictures…”

He must have opened the book at this point because he screams as if he's been bitten by a cobra and leaps out of his chair. He
may
have been bitten by a cobra – they're ten a penny in Egypt – but I didn't see one, and if it was a snake, why did he curse the book, grab his gun and poke it through the bars at Sam?

When confronted by a man with a bristly nose and a gun, most people faint or scream. But not Sam. She's so angry that he dared to touch her book that she wags her finger at him and, in a voice that isn't entirely her own, she says in Motu:
“Shoot me, shoot me. You can't kill me. I am Sam Khaan. If you shoot, your toes will drop off, your liver will shrivel and your children will grow tails!”

I'm not sure if this put him off or not because … look who's here! It's Kitty! She's brought a nice policeman with her who orders the guard to unlock the cell door immediately and release the inmates. Sam could throw her arms around her, but for reasons we've discussed, she doesn't.