The Hidden (20 page)

She lifted her weight again and moved the chair backwards with deliberate precision so as not to make too much noise. Luckily the mud floor was soft, and any sound was muffled. She positioned her chair as close to the table edge as possible and began to rub the rope against it. After a few minutes, her wrists hurt so much she had to stop. She closed her eyes despairingly for a moment, then looked at Farouk. The dark charcoal gleam of his eyes begged her to continue. She started rubbing again until her arms became numb and she thought she’d lose all feeling in her body.

Eventually, the rope weakened and split in two. She was free. She listened carefully. No sound. She swung around to stare at the door. She risked getting up off her chair, went to Farouk, and tried untying the bandage around his mouth, but he shook his head violently. She knelt down in front of him and put her ear to his mouth, but the bandage was tied too tightly for him to whisper anything coherently. Farouk jerked his head towards his pile of clothes lying on the floor. She did not know what he wanted her to do. She looked back at Farouk, who was shaking his head now. She was to leave his clothes where they were for the time being. What did he want her to do? Then he nodded at his clothes again. Aimee got up and crept towards them. She knew there was nothing in his pockets that hadn’t been found, so she picked up his shoes and looked over at Farouk.

He nodded. She examined his shoes and found a tiny raised groove in the inner leather. She pulled at it and removed a section of the inner lining. Inside she found a tiny penknife. She gave Farouk a questioning look.

He was shaking his head again. Then she saw tears rolling down his face. She replaced the knife and sprung up quietly. He was miming, telling her what to do. The tears were part of the act. He hunched over and continued the act, jerking his head towards the door. His eyes lit up in a smile.

She understood. She repositioned her chair where it had been, sat down, wrapped the rope around her wrists, and put them behind her back; then she started wailing, a low-pitched wail at first, growing gradually louder, then more pitiful and desperate.

Her eyes were squeezed shut as she wailed. Eventually she heard the lock shaking and the door was pushed open. The soldier stood there gaping at them. Aimee threw herself into the performance.

“I’m going to die of thirst, Monsieur,” she wailed miserably. “I can’t bear this heat. Please get me some water? I will die for sure if I don’t have something to drink.”

The soldier shut the door behind him, eyeing her suspiciously.

“This had better not be some sort of trick. I’m armed.”

He was so young. He would not use his revolver on her. He was under the control of his general. He would not dare risk shooting her. His men would return and expect them to talk because they were too mentally and physically exhausted to hide anything from them anymore. The men would expect information. But the boy would do nothing. His was an idle threat.

“Please,” Aimee sobbed. “Some water, please.”

The soldier examined her suspiciously. Aimee could see his mind ticking over, analysing the scene in front of him. Perhaps he had a sister like her, younger perhaps. The kindness seeped out of him unrepentant. He backed away, pointing his revolver at Aimee and then Farouk. He opened the door and reached for his thermos, poured a small drink for her with one hand, kicked the door shut, and approached her.

This was her chance. As he approached, she held his gaze, slid her wrists out of the rope, and waited. The soldier put the cup to her lips.

Aimee counted down the seconds, sipping as slowly as she possibly could. She stared up at him under gratefully hooded eyelids, and forced an enticing little smile of camaraderie. A faint smile emerged in response on his lips, so faint as to be almost undetectable. Her chance had come.

He turned and began to walk away, satisfied with her subservience to him and convinced that she would not try anything dangerous or stupid.

She stood up and flipped the length of rope in the air. Lassoing him around the neck, she pulled as hard as she could, straining against his strong young body as it struggled to pull away. Then she grabbed the revolver. She pointed the revolver at the boy, who now lay squirming on the floor, and backed away in the direction of Farouk’s shoe. Never moving the gun away from the boy’s face, she crouched down, retrieved the small penknife, slit the bandages that gagged Farouk’s mouth, then cut through the rope that bound his arms to the chair.

Farouk grabbed the revolver, leapt out of his chair, snatched the end of the rope around the boy’s neck, and pulled it until the boy’s face was pink.

“Don’t kill me,” he whimpered, wide-eyed.

“I’m just going to tie you up, my friend,” Farouk said as he bound him to the chair.

“Quick,” she said as Farouk dressed.

Farouk slipped the revolver into his jacket pocket, took Aimee by the hand, opened the door, and peered around.

“Can you run?” he said.

She didn’t answer. Shaking, her face and throat coated with dust, her limbs hardly able to bear her own slender body weight, she clasped his hand tightly, and they scrambled over the dunes towards the desert road.

“Who the hell are you?” she stammered hoarsely as they ran squinting in the merciless sun. “And what are you mixed up in?”

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Cairo, August 25, 1919

“Yallah,” I scream. “It’s Saiza. Her baby is coming. She needs us, Nawal.”

Nawal and I run out of the hammam back to the palace. In a moment, we are by Saiza’s side. Saiza is dripping with perspiration, and her eyes are bulging out of her head. Poor child. Her belly is so round. Her eyes are so scared. Her maid fusses over her, draping her with red silk, rubbing perfume into her feet, combing her hair, preparing her for the arrival of the child she longs for. Saiza lies on a long, low chaise, curled up on her side, her robes wet with sweat, her eyes shut so tightly that she has not seen me arrive. I whisper her name gently in her ear. Then I kiss her cheek.

“Her time is very near, mistress,” Mohammud, Saiza’s eunuch, says.

“We must get her to the birthing chair as soon as she has the strength to move.”

I put my arms around her and try and lift her up. Nawal helps. Saiza grits her teeth and pushes.

“Hezba,” she says with difficulty, “I hear your husband has come. You must go to him. You shouldn’t be here.”

I stroke her hair, pushing it off her face.

“No,” I whisper, “I will stay with you.”

“He will be angry with you if you are found here. You must go.”

I do not say anything. I swallow hard and look for reassurance in Nawal’s face. She is holding Saiza’s hand and kissing her fingertips. The baby makes another push, and Saiza screams again. She squeezes the life out of my arm. I fear her eyes will burst out of their sockets.

“Mohammud, bring the mistress some sherbet to drink.”

Mohammud pours a small glass of sherbet, and I put it to Saiza’s lips.

“There, this will make you feel better.”

Just then four lower eunuchs enter the room and start to perform for Saiza. They do acrobatics, run and jump and fall about, laughing in front of her. They climb on top of one another’s shoulders and form a column, balancing their weight carefully. Then they stage a mock fall and land on the Persian kilims with a thud before jumping up and doing more somersaults. Saiza watches them and starts to laugh. It is precisely the distraction she needs. Saiza lies back on her divan and smiles. She stretches out her arm for me.

“I am scared, darling,” she says with a little pant.

I know what she is talking about. It is only three years since I went through this.

“I know. I know,” I say. It is as though it were yesterday, with the pain of my son Ibrahim’s birth. I can feel his bulbous black head forcing its way between my legs. I can feel the pain spreading like fire from my toes to my neck. I can feel my body split in two. I can see his little body slithering out onto soft cotton. I can smell blood. I can hear my own violent screams shuddering through me.

I kiss her cheek again and nuzzle her neck. She is burning up. And I watch her eyes flutter in exhaustion. The birthing maids bathe Saiza’s forehead. The eunuchs light candles, casting dreamy shadows on the mashrabiyya and the mosaic tiles of the floor. The clowning eunuchs are
brought instruments to play, and soon the mournful sounds of ouds and lutes are heard.

Then I hear the loud echoing voices of the men returning from their evening entertainment. Their laughter wakes Saiza from her sleep. Her body spasms again as her baby pushes forward. She raises herself from her pillows to encourage the baby’s pushing.

“Hezba, Nawal, help me,” she screams.

“Darling sister, we are here,” I say, squeezing her hand.

I massage her belly. I can feel the baby moving under her skin. Then Saiza goes deathly white and lunges forward onto the floor. Suddenly, she is on all fours.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Aimee and Farouk walked alongside the desert road in a low trench hidden by the dunes, stopping every now and again to rest. Covered in sweat, with matted hair and dirt-smeared faces, their wrists sore from the rope, they were exhausted and dehydrated. The sun beat down mercilessly on them as it descended slowly in the west.

“I can’t go on,” Aimee cried out, stumbling towards the shade of an old palm. She stood with her back to it, surveying the vastness of the desert horizon, angry that he hadn’t answered her questions.

“Why don’t you answer me, Monsieur Farouk or Alim or whoever you are?”

He came and stood next to her, studying her pale complexion and dark features. He didn’t trust her. He was sure he’d seen some expression in her eyes, something deceitful, as though she were acting a part, the first time they’d met at the magazine launch, and then again in the garden of his house. He had wondered on those occasions whether she was taking him for a ride, and whether she and her husband had been in it together. He’d been taken in—perhaps—by her youth, but she could be a spy working for Issawi. He scanned the horizon, determined to be careful now, to watch his words. He’d have to feed her a story, something to put her off the scent.

“My identity card was a fake. I have certain papers, in case I am stopped. I do undercover work compiling reports.”

“Who for?” she demanded.

“I can’t say,” he replied. “It’s confidential.”

“Who were those people?”

“Government thugs,” he said.

She ran her hands over her face. She did not understand any of this. She wanted to go to the police. First she would go find Sophie at the Continental, and then together they would go to the police. But she had no information to give them, not really. They would want proof, of which she had none. She felt weak and nauseated. She swallowed hot dusty air.

“Those thugs had something to do with my husband, didn’t they,” she said.

“I believe so, yes.”

“But they talked about letter boxes, Nasser’s Trinkets, code names, the X? They must have thought we were somehow involved with a group. I should have told them who I was, that the murdered professor was my husband.”

“No,” Farouk snapped. “You don’t understand. These men are looking for spies and terrorists. I believe they work for the king’s chief advisor. The heroin was nothing more than an excuse. I got it for a friend of mine, who did me a favour. He’s addicted to the stuff, you see, and Nasser knows how to get the highest quality. I can’t explain any more. Those men wanted to frame me, torture us for information. They think I belong to this group, the X, which is ridiculous. I don’t belong to any group. They’ve made a mistake, but that’s not so surprising, really. Nothing in Cairo is as it appears. Trust me.”

Aimee shook her head miserably, and he went on.

“This Group of the X and Mahmoud are almost certain to have been involved in your husband’s murder, and I have heard that Fatima is connected with el-Mudarris, the terrorist group I told you about.” He paused and glanced at the horizon again. She was leaning back against the palm, her eyes closed.

“Your husband—did he move in royal circles? Perhaps he was an undercover agent passing information to the British government? Was he possibly trying to blow the cover of a small group of German spies living in Cairo?”

She opened her eyes and studied him incredulously, shaking her head. Then she looked away. Farouk took her face gently in his hands, demanding that she pay attention. “Tell me, Madame Ibrahim, do you know more than you’re letting on?” Their eyes met.

“My husband was a professor, Monsieur. He wasn’t involved with any group. He was murdered, and you’re asking me to believe he was passing information to the British? He hated governments, hated the idea of war, hated it. He just wanted to educate young men. He worked hard. He didn’t know any member of the royal family.”

Farouk softened, released her, and reached for her hand, holding it gently before lifting it to his mouth to kiss it. “Forgive me,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I’ve got to get you back to Cairo.”

He saw the exhaustion on her face change to confusion as she caught sight of his ring, a gold ring worn on the third finger of his left hand, a wedding band. But he said that he had never been married.

He dropped her hand abruptly and turned to scan the horizon once more. Then he saw a vehicle in the distance heading their way.

“There’s someone coming,” he said, climbing up out of the trench to the road to wave it down.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, Aimee squinted to look. “What if it’s them?” she said. “They’re probably looking for us. They must have returned by now, found the boy, sent out their search parties. It won’t take them long.”

“Hide behind this ridge,” Farouk said. “I’ll check.”

He peered ahead. “There’s only a driver, no one else,” he said. “We’ll have to risk it. It’s too hot and too far to Cairo to carry on walking.”