The Hidden (17 page)

He raised his hand and let it hover over her skin, not daring to touch her, his breath quickening, becoming laboured, a painful sensation jabbing at him from within his stomach and down around the base of his spine and his groin.

She stirred slowly, moaning slightly in her sleep but did not wake up. He sat back and bit his lip as the haunting refrain of the muezzins signalled the start of a new day.

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Kerdassa, August 23, 1919

Alexandre gets dressed. I do too. I wish we had more time together. But we don’t. I will have to be happy with the feeling of him inside me as I ride back to al-Qahire.

“You know what we have to do, don’t you, Hezba?”

“Yes.”

“Then it is kismet that you have to go to Minya,” he says.

I nod slowly. I know what he is talking about. It is our secret.

“Yes,” I say. “I know.”

“My sister tells me you want to go to Paris or London where you have friends, that you have begged your family to be released from this marriage.”

“Yes.”

“Your husband will not divorce you?”

“No, he will not. He wants me to give him children. I am the youngest of his wives, you see, and I have not yet fulfilled my duty.”

“And you cannot divorce him?”

“My papa will not allow it. My marriage to al-Shezira is an important political alliance. He has promised to disown me if I divorce my husband.”

“Is your father really so cruel, Hezba?”

“My father does not love me. Something happened between us a long time ago. Something even I don’t understand. When I went to live in the harem, my papa stopped showing me affection. Our relationship became almost like that of a frustrated teacher and his pupil.”

I swallow hard. It was hard talking about Papa like that. I study Alexandre’s face as he dresses. Suddenly I feel a pang of fear that I am leaving myself too open, too vulnerable, that I am putting all my hopes in the hands of my lover and I should not be doing this.

I wonder why I have told him these things, things that are so close to my heart. I want to believe he is on my side, but how do I know? By telling him things, I make myself vulnerable to him.

Alexandre wraps his arms around me once more and whispers in my ear. “My men and I cannot forgive a man like al-Shezira for robbing our friends and their families of money and their livelihood. I want to make sure my friends’ debts are repaid.”

I slip my hand in my pocket and dig out the money I have brought him. He doesn’t count it. He puts it in his pocket and kisses me tenderly on the mouth.

“Thank you. I will pass this on,” he says. “It will buy us more weapons, more equipment. We are eternally grateful to you, Hezba.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Aimee was having one of those dreams in which she knew she was dreaming. In her dream she saw a silky, hazy image of a silent courtyard tucked away behind the minarets and the mosques. The sun beat down unforgivingly on the hard pavement and a lone jacaranda tree. In her dream she saw a pair of large hooded eyes, a hand decorated with henna playing nervously with the voluminous black cloth, in which a figure was draped from head to toe. She recognised the face of Fatima, and Azi was standing before her.

She woke up suddenly and cried out. Then she rubbed her hands over her face and calmed herself. She had been dreaming; that was all. She grabbed her dress and underclothes from the chair and went off in search of a bathroom. Two doors down from the bedroom she found one and locked herself in, squatting behind the door on the cold mosaic tiles. Then she turned on the taps and ran a warm bath. She sank into it and washed herself. She examined her thighs and her arms and her stomach and the dark hair between her legs; then she closed her eyes.

After towelling herself dry, she slipped on her underclothes and dress, smoothed her hair into a long plait down her back, and ran her hands over her face. Then she went back to the corridor and stood quietly, not knowing whether she should leave, write a note, or return to her ransacked house on Sharia Suleyman Pasha.
She wanted to thank the monsieur. Then she remembered. He had promised to take her to Ismailia today, to Lake Timsah, to the spot where Azi had been murdered.

She heard the sound of footsteps and saw him. He smiled brightly at her and stretched out his hands to greet her.

“You must be hungry, Madame. I’ve given my boy the day off, but I’ll find something for you in the kitchen. Then we must leave for Ismailia.”

Aimee tried to muster a smile.

“Thank you. You are very kind. You’ve helped me so much already.”

He beckoned her to follow him, and together they walked to the kitchen.

“We’ll eat outside in the garden,” Farouk said.

Aimee quelled her beating heart and went to sit on the little bench near the fountain. A few minutes later, Farouk arrived with a tray of delicacies and two glasses of sweet tea. He handed her a glass and a plate of food.

They ate silently. Aimee stared at her plate and into her glass of tea. She did not want to look at him, but she could feel his eyes burning into her face. Reluctantly, she raised her head and gave him a timid smile.

“Why are you being so kind, Monsieur?” she asked him.

He looked away for a moment, then turned back towards her and met her gaze.

“I liked your husband,” Farouk said. “And it stands to reason that I should want to help his young widow with any information that could lead to the arrest of those responsible for his murder.”

Aimee hung her head and breathed deeply. He made everything sound so proper, so devoid of emotion. So why was her head swimming? Why did her body feel so weak?

“You are certain you want to go to Ismailia?” he asked. “You realise it’s going to be hard for you?”

“I know, I know,” she said solemnly, bowing her head. “But it might help me. In fact, I think it will.”

“You must change your clothes,” Farouk said abruptly, putting down his tea glass. He stood up and pulled her to her feet.

“My sister’s bedroom is upstairs near the blue room where you slept. There are lots of clothes in the wardrobes. She was slender too, about your size. I’m sure you’ll find something to fit you that will be suitable for the desert. Your dress and shoes are too dainty for this trip.” She tried to protest, but he explained. “We must leave the car some distance from where we are going. I know that area. We have to walk through desert scrub to a little village. We will meet someone there, a friend. You would be better off in sensible clothes.”

“Must I wear your sister’s clothes?” Aimee asked.

Farouk laughed. “Well, nothing of mine will fit you. Now go, upstairs. It’s the third room on the right. We’ll leave as soon as you’re ready.”

Aimee found the room. It was musty, with the shutters tightly closed. She pulled some clothes out of the trunk, dressed, and returned to the garden.

“That’s better.” He smiled, cocking his head at her. “You look remarkably similar, dressed in her clothes.” But his voice fell away, and he bit his lip.

“Similar? What do you mean?” she asked.

His eyes flickered sadly. “My sister. In those clothes, you remind me of her. Your eyes are a similar colour and you have the same slight physique. She was a beauty too, much fairer than you with sun-bleached hair but just as striking.”

Aimee blushed inwardly. “You have no photograph? No painting?” she asked.

“I don’t like to keep things like that. I keep it all in my memory.”

He suddenly looked so young, like a little boy. “Finish your tea and we’ll go. I have to stop off somewhere first; I hope you don’t mind?”

Aimee eyed him curiously. “No, of course not.”

“It won’t take long,” he said. “I have to give a message to my friend Nasser at Nasser’s Trinkets in the Muski district. Then we’ll be on our way.”

“I’m ready,” she said.

Farouk led the way to the garage. As he opened the garage door, Aimee asked, “Were you never married, Monsieur Farouk?”

He was silent as he opened the car door for her and she slid into her seat. While he started the engine, she saw that his mouth was pinched, as though he were trying to repress a thought. She realised she had touched a raw nerve.

“I would like to have been,” he said as he pulled onto the road. His brow was wrinkled; his long nose twitched. He wound down his window and cursed a group of young boys kicking stones along the road, lingering too long behind donkeys and carts and little trolleys of wares.

“I would have been a most unsuitable husband for any woman.”

“Oh, really?”

“I travel a great deal, and I have a restless heart. It’s like a sickness. I have given myself to many peoples and places, but I have not yet managed to give my heart to one woman, to settle into family life. And now I am old. I don’t see myself changing.”

She stared at the road ahead.

“Is it far to Lake Timsah?”

“Not too far. The journey will take about one-and-a-half hours, assuming that we don’t encounter any trouble on the road.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“There are road blocks, inspection of papers. But you mustn’t worry. We should have no problem.”

But first they had to go to the Muski district. Farouk parked his car opposite Nasser’s Trinkets and went across the street, while Aimee stayed in the car. A man greeted him in front of the shop. He pulled Farouk into his arms and kissed him on both cheeks, shaking his hand at the same time. The man appeared to be talking a hundred miles a minute while Farouk just nodded and shook his head every now and again, staring at the cracked pavement. But as the two of them stood there, Aimee saw the man slip something into Farouk’s hand. A few minutes later, Farouk returned to the car, started the engine, and pulled away. They drove in silence, out towards the Moquattam Hills, and then on to the desert road to Ismailia.

The heat of the day was intensifying. Farouk reached behind him, pulled a thermos of cold water from behind the seat, and handed it to Aimee. She took it and drank, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the exchange between Farouk and the man at Nasser’s Trinkets. For some reason, she had a bad feeling about it. This was not the Egypt of Thomas Cook and Baedeker. She thought about the desert and the long dusty roads to the Sinai, the beach resorts at Alexandria, the houseboats on the Nile and Cairo’s palm-fringed mansions, the ragged cafés and clubs, the bars and brothels, the potholed streets, the cracked sun-baked walls of the souks, the mosques and the churches, the throngs of tired citizens starting every day with a new optimism, then going to bed every night with something taken from them, something inextricably vacant.

And she wondered at the soul of Egypt, closing her eyes against the silken link she felt with the soil she walked on every day. She was more French than Egyptian, more European than Ottoman. Sophie belonged. She had an identity, a nationality. She belonged to her parents, to her country, to her uncle, Tony Sedgewick. Aimee wanted to belong—to her father, to her mother, to the traces of desert dust and sky lying flat over a bustling, dry, and irrepressible city—but she felt rootless. Her mother’s diary, her aunt, her birth, the story of her early life were hidden from her. She had come back to Cairo full of hope, but she didn’t know what was there for her anymore.

“Thanks,” he said as he took the flask from her and took a drink himself. He handed her the flask, and she pushed it under her legs.

“If you never married, Monsieur, then you have no children, no family. You are like me.”

Farouk smiled and shot her a sideways glance. “Yes, I suppose we are both orphans. I told you my parents died when I was quite young. My mother died first. She was an Egyptian servant girl my father had taken as his own personal plaything. She was just sixteen when she gave birth to me, and she died when I was five or six. I don’t remember her. And my father was not a pleasant man. He was extremely rich, but he hated me. He was a drunk, a violent man. And my sister was only my half sister. We didn’t share the same mother.”

Aimee leaned back and closed her eyes. “Is that why you left home and travelled so much?”

His features hardened. She was asking too many questions.

He continued. “When I was twenty, I fell ill. I had pneumonia. I remained weak for a long time and couldn’t do much for myself. One day Papa beat me so hard I crawled away in my own blood.
That was when I made the decision to leave and never, ever go back. And I was true to my word. I was penniless, so I went to live for a while with my sister, who had married by then. Two years later, when I got word that my father had died—an obese drunk lying in a pool of his own excrement—I went out and celebrated. It was the happiest day of my life.”

Her eyes widened. She swivelled her body around in her seat and stared at him. He spoke without bitterness. It was a story he obviously knew well, that no longer shocked him. He had lived with it his whole life.

“I’ve shocked you, Madame Ibrahim,” he said, turning his eyes from the road for a moment and smiling at her. He wondered whether he should risk bringing up Azi and Issawi again, but he decided against it for the time being.

“You should take heart in never having known such brutality. You’ve known love. You married and but for the will of Allah, you would have had a happy marriage, children perhaps, a family. You had a husband who loved you, despite his possible infidelity, and you have a dear friend here in Cairo. You’re blessed. There are many people in this world far lonelier than you.”

She stared ahead, blinded by the sunlight. Farouk opened the glove box, dug out a pair of black sunglasses, and handed them to her.

“My husband did not love me,” she whispered. “His affair with a brothel-keeper is enough to prove that.” She felt a stab of jealousy as she spoke.

He didn’t reply, instead craning his neck to see what was happening up ahead. She could see an army truck and a group of men waving them down.

“What’s happening? Why are we slowing down?”