The Hidden (14 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Nemmat had witnessed Fatima’s display at the el-G. She’d seen her choose the sickly looking white-skinned soldier from the crowd, had seen it all from behind the thick curtains separating the backstage alcove from the glare of the stage lights. As usual, it had repulsed her. The soldier’s loose red mouth; his watery, drunken eyes; the clownish flush of his cheeks against his wispy pallid features—it had all made her shudder.

She imagined briefly the soldier’s hands on her own flesh and shut her eyes in horror. She was not unused to the hands of strange men on her body, but the sight of the ugly soldier had made her feel particularly ill.

Nemmat wasn’t convinced that Fatima had chosen well. The soldier did not look like the type who could be easily parted from his wallet. He had a mean face and looked young, but then again, he was a soldier and they were very well paid, the Australians in particular. However, she had no time to think about that now.

She had to focus her attention on the newspaperman and the girl at the club. The girl was cowering in her seat with eyes narrowed. The newspaperman, stony-faced, was watching Fatima with the soldier and then watching the girl, always watching the girl, watching her reaction, leaning over, touching her arm, leaning too close.

From her secret nook, Nemmat could see the desire behind his eyes. If he was at the el-G—even though he was with this girl—he must be expecting Nemmat to perform, expecting a secret nod of affirmation to confirm that the plan was on target. No doubt that was why he was here—and why he stayed, even when it was obvious the girl wanted to leave.

Well, Nemmat wasn’t going to perform tonight. Fatima had relieved her of her duties, knowing she had to contact one of the letter boxes. What Fatima didn’t know was that Nemmat was expected at a different letter box tonight, that in fact she was expected to take possession of one of Angel’s babies and then supposed to take the child to Tashi’s house and that the consignment would be sent on once again from there.

She slipped quietly through the dark, musty corridors to her dressing room, cloaked herself in her chador, and left by one of the back doors, pushing through the thinning crowds to the back quarters of Birka.

She didn’t have far to go. Nemmat found the narrow doorway and knocked loudly. No answer. She looked around nervously. She did not want to attract attention. She wished Tashi were with her. If he were, it would naturally be assumed that he was her husband and all suspicion would melt away.

She knocked again. At last Angel came to the door. Nemmat bowed her head and hugged the woman’s shoulders. A boy stood in the darkness behind her, cradling a bundle of cloth. Nemmat could see the cherubic face of the baby.

“Here she is,” Angel said, reaching for the sleeping child. “Be careful with her. She is well padded.”

Angel smiled secretly to herself, patting the swathe of cloth enfolding the baby.

“My job is done. Tashi is waiting. My sister is now quite well rested and should be able to change the child. If she is not strong enough to do that, Tashi can help her.”

Nemmat gathered the child in her arms and kissed the baby’s forehead.

“Don’t worry. It won’t take me long to get to Tashi’s house, and your sister’s little darling will be well looked after. I’ll make sure the baby is changed and made comfortable before I leave. Do you have any message for your sister or Tashi?”

Angel shook her head, but then her eyes lit up and she said, “Yes, just tell them the baby is fine. Inshallah, God willing, we will claim our victory.”

Nemmat smiled and bowed. “Ma’as salaama, peace be with you,” she said, and swept away.

She walked briskly through the dark streets, feeling the warmth and the heaviness of the human bundle in her arms. As a chador-covered woman with a child in her arms, she would not arouse any suspicion. She would not be seen for who she really was—a brothel girl who wore an almost-invisible sheath under her chador, whose body moved for the men who paid her, who detested them with passion, who wore her brothel mask for her mother, to whom she owed her life, not for her father, who had deserted her and her brother long ago.

As she held the child in her arms—a young babe only six months old—her heart beat sadly and a lump rose in her throat. For the first time she imagined what it must be like to be a mother. She clasped the sleeping body more tightly to her and checked that she was not being followed.

Angel was a ruthless spy, yet she acted the part to perfection. Her code name suited her brilliantly. Nemmat could not fault the innocence of her face and the demeanour of devoted motherhood she portrayed to the world. She had three sons of her own. This child in
Nemmat’s arms was Angel’s sister’s firstborn. The sister’s health had failed when she had delivered the child into the world, and Angel had been looking after the little girl ever since. Now Nemmat was returning the child to Tashi and his wife in a swathe of cloth in which were hidden carefully wrapped slabs of dynamite. All Tashi had to do was unravel the cloth and extricate the dynamite. The baby girl’s body was a death trap. Little did she know she was a crucial member of the X. Tashi had considered it unsafe to get the dynamite by the usual methods, knowing that any of the X’s letter boxes could be raided at any time. The bomb had to be assembled quickly and moved around frequently to lessen the chance of discovery.

Nemmat found Tashi’s door, knocked, and waited with her head bowed. At last he answered and ushered her in, scanning the activity in the street outside as he did so. Nemmat followed him through to the back of the house where Meryiam, his wife, lay on a low couch.

“Give me the child,” Tashi said.

Nemmat handed him the human bundle.

“No one followed you?” he enquired.

Nemmat shook her head. Tashi laid the child on the carpet and unravelled the cloth. Meryiam and Nemmat stared at the baby’s bare flesh. Tashi looked up at them reassuringly.

“Inshallah, God willing. The baby is fine.” He unravelled the bandages that held the soft gelatinous slabs of dynamite to the baby’s body, gathered them up in a pile, and passed the child to his wife.

“Here, Wife, take your child.”

“Will that be enough for a man like Issawi?” Nemmat asked, watching Tashi roll the slabs in some of the discarded cloth.

Tashi looked up and smiled. “Inshallah, God willing, this will make a right royal mess of the Abdin Palace and your archenemy Issawi,” he said. “The perfect revenge, Sayyida, the revenge you’ve wanted for your mother for so long.”

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Kerdassa, August 23, 1919

We arrive at Kerdassa. Exposed under the cold night sky, I now feel scared. I am freezing, petrified, and the look of terror on Mustafa’s face as he summons me to a safe place to tie up our horses makes me even more afraid. We dismount and lead our horses to a nearby stable. The village is alive with people and noise, and I feel vulnerable. It must be a local moulid, a festival for the land, for rain, for the fecundity of the fellahin’s crops. I attend to a loose strap on my boots.

My nerves are failing me, but I try to pull myself together. I want to be eyes only. I want to observe without being seen. I do not want to fall prey to the preconceived notion that I am inferior because of my sex. I see two men sitting outside a neighbouring mud-brick house, smoking a pipe. I feel their eyes hot on me, watching me carefully. To them, I am a soldier. I know they are wondering what my business is here, in a desert village at night. Mustafa explains our business to the two men. His Arabic is servile and hopeful. I do not speak for fear of giving myself away. He explains he has come to a meeting organised by Hassan, that he is expected, that Hassan is a friend.

“What is the soldier’s business?” one of them asks.

Mustafa explains I am a friend and says no more. After more suspicious glances, we are told, “Come this way.” The older of the two men, quite possibly a sheik of the village, leans on his stick and walks slowly towards one of the village houses. As he turns, I glimpse by the light of the moon a flicker of suspicion in his eyes, and my heart thumps even more violently. This sheik has a thick white beard and a hard face. I feel my femaleness like a mark on my skin. My walk is too dainty. I am too cautious, too shapely, too pale, too female, to be anything but a girl. But
the sheik does not take any notice of me. He seems to be too absorbed in his own thoughts to be concerned about two strangers.

He does not talk as he leads us to this mud house. We walk through crowds of people on the main street, women sitting on the ground cradling sleeping children, men arguing and laughing. I hear a loud rhythmic noise and chanting coming from a nearby house—women’s voices, hypnotic sounds. A circle of older women in plain, dull clothes—unveiled, wrinkled, and unattractive—is guarding the house. They are holding hands, their eyes are closed, and their heads sway from side to side. We stop, and to my horror the sheik comes up close to me, holding out his hand. From under my soldier’s cap, I examine the leathery texture of his skin. My breath stalls for a moment out of fear, but then I notice something that I had not noticed before: He is half-blind.

I realise he takes me to be the soldier I am pretending to be because he grunts at me in a thick voice. “Australian?”

I am mortified. My grasp of the English language is minimal, and I do not have any idea how to reply correctly. Since I speak only Turkish, Arabic, and French, I say nothing, pressing his hand in reply. But then he goes on slyly in Arabic.

“Australians rich. Lots of money.”

I shake his hand now, bow, dig deep in my pocket, and put some piastres into his palm. To my relief, Mustafa steps in and draws the sheik’s attention away from me. Mustafa raps on the door of the house and it is opened. We go in. Three bearded men in pale blue jalabas are seated at a large table lit by two lanterns. One of them is not wearing a turban, and I can see that his thick dark hair is long and greasy. The group stares at us. Mustafa approaches them with his hand up.

“As salaam alaikum. Peace be with you,” Mustafa says. “Sayyid Hassan,” he continues, “I am horseman and servant for the sultan pasha, and I am dutifully escorting his daughter, Sayyida Hezba Hanim al-Shezira, to you, at her most esteemed wishes.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Farouk wanted to get Aimee away from the club. He did not want to risk being seen by Gad Mahmoud. At the earliest opportunity, they made a discreet exit. He summoned a taxi near the el-G and ushered Aimee inside. He glanced at his watch. It was two in the morning. He slid inside the cab after her, glad of the vehicle’s dark cocoon. He was fighting a burning sensation that was crawling up his spine, constricting his heart. He signalled to the driver to wait for a moment while he spoke to the madame.

“Come to my house at Zamalek,” he said quietly to Aimee, holding her hand comfortingly.

“But my friend Sophie—?”

“Would you want to worry her? My boy will take care of you. You’ll find everything you need there. You can sleep in one of the spare rooms.”

“But the police? Surely I should tell them about the raid on my house?”

Farouk shook his head. “Not yet. I have an idea.” He paused for a moment, searching her face. “Go to Zamalek to be safe. I’ll join you there soon, I promise, but there’s something I must do first. Trust me.”

He stared at her, at the thick mane of dark hair falling below her shoulders, and felt by the throbbing energy pulsing through him.
He wanted to entwine her fingers in his. He wanted to lean forward and kiss her gently on her mouth, but he knew that would be highly inappropriate, so he pulled back, stopping himself.

Aimee nodded, too tired to disagree. Her body and mind longed for Azi, but her husband was gone. This man was alive. For a moment in the darkness, she felt safe, protected, warm, and glad that she was with him.

But then suddenly he pulled away from her. “I must go,” he said.

“Yes,” she whispered, not wanting him to.

Farouk told the driver the address and got out of the car. He watched as it drove off down the narrow street towards the Nile.

Aimee leaned back and closed her eyes. Through the open window she inhaled the dark, dusty smell of the earth and the streets, not wanting to look out at the bustling cafés, the still-open shops, the doorways where sleeping bodies lay.

The taxi driver suddenly slammed his fists against the steering wheel. “Wen-Nabi,” he shouted in frustration, begging the Prophet Muhammad for deliverance from bad drivers. Aimee opened her eyes again and saw people everywhere. Drunken British soldiers were pushing one another out of clubs, boys were balancing boxed-up pastries and cakes on the handlebars of their bicycles, and men were tugging at carts of vegetables.

She closed her eyes once more, and her mind spun with thoughts of Farouk, her mother, Azi, and the hard-faced prostitute Fatima. Lulled by the motion of the car travelling over the ragged streets, Aimee dreamt of the house where she lived, of the Nile, of her bedroom. In a half sleep, she saw herself telling Sophie about the el-G, Fatima, the break-in, and she saw the look on her face as she told her everything. She imagined Sophie’s disbelief and then wondered whether she had actually dreamt it all. The past few weeks had been
a kind of living nightmare, and now here she was—on her way to the house of a man about whom she knew nothing. Between jolting wakefulness, she wondered if she had lost her mind.

The car stopped and she opened her eyes. She did not know where she was. Out the window, she saw large majestic houses bathed in moonlight, towering palm trees, and she smelt the scent of burning oud. She leaned forward to clutch the back of the seat in front of her. The driver turned around and smiled at her. He pointed up at a large building on the other side of the street; an old mansion with jutting balconies, mashrabiyya, and spires; a large pale pink house built in the European-Ottoman style of ornate stone.

“This is the address the Sayyid gave, Madame. You are here.”