The Hidden (45 page)

Poor Gigis would find him, of course. He had it all planned. Gigis would remove the blood-soaked will from the grip of his hand and organise the dismantling of his estate.

What better way to die than by his own Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolver, his favourite weapon. A bullet through the head would leave no room for mistakes. He had nothing to live for now that the tumour had taken hold of his lungs, nothing to live for now that Issawi was dead. His work was done. He stubbed out his cigarette and went inside.

It was Gigis’s night off, and he was visiting friends at Giza. A whisper of a breeze fluttered through the rooms. He sat down and put his head in his hands. Then he looked up and swallowed back a lump in his throat. The sweet scent from the flowers in the garden drifted in on the wind.

For a moment he ached to carry on living, but it was too late. He was wanted, wanted by Security Operations, by the Secret Police, by Intelligence. His sentence would not be light. He heard
his sister’s voice in his head, comforting him, telling him that everything would be all right. She had been so caring, his sister. She had cared about everyone. He pictured the soft gold of her hair, her pale eyes, and her skin, the colour of peaches and milk.

He slammed a fist against his chest and coughed up blood into a large white handkerchief. He had so little time. He wanted to see Aimee before it was too late. It was his last wish. He wanted atonement for the way he had treated her, for deluding her into thinking that Mahmoud and Issawi had killed her husband, for trying to lure her into a trap for his own selfish reasons. He walked inside and went upstairs to his study, where he normally slept on a low makeshift bed. He poured himself a fifth whisky, opened the double doors to the little balcony, and sat down in an old rattan chair. He was a Perpignan baby, born at the grand old mansion of Le Comte Cavaille d’Anton. He could not even remember his maman’s face, the poor Egyptian slave his father had impregnated. How he had hated his father for his treatment of his maman. His father had been a hardened criminal, a toothless mass of odious flesh with his hands in the corsets of all the women of Roussillon. Farouk knew he would see both his sister and his beloved soon enough, the two women who had never really left him through all these years. He sat rocking himself backwards and forwards, hugging his chest, like the boy he had once been—a hungry, sad Alexandre, beaten and prodded by his papa, while Maman was raped and cast aside.

All grown-up, Alexandre the man was tall and magnificent, with a head of shocking black hair and flashing black eyes that he’d been told he’d inherited from Bouchra, his dear Egyptian maman. He wished he could remember her face. He couldn’t. But he remembered her tenderness and the way she had loved him as a child. And when she had died, he had been heartbroken.

His entire adult life he had vowed to revenge the wrongs his own father had perpetuated.

That was a long time ago.

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Cairo, June 12, 1920

Written by Saiza Ali Sultan

I can hardly see the words I am writing because my eyes are misty, my body is trembling, and my hand is shaking so much that it is almost impossible to move the pen across the page.

Thank God my little niece is safe. She will live with me until she is old enough to be removed from this foul, atrocious city full of murderous criminals.

Then I will send her to live in France to be brought up under the loving guidance of Catholic nuns at the wonderful Institut de Neuilly, near Paris. It is run by my friends, and I trust them to take good care of her. The scandal surrounding baby Aimee’s birth and life must be kept hidden. In France she will live as Aimee Nur al-Shezira, the legitimate daughter of Hezba and her husband, Khalil al-Shezira. If she were to stay in Egypt, people would talk. One day perhaps things will change. One day, I hope, little Aimee will be part of a different world. Until that time, I hope and pray that the God of us all, be we Muslim or Christian or Jew, protect us from evil and the insanity of men.

Hezba is gone. She was assassinated, butchered by three of al-Shezira’s male family members. Al-Shezira’s younger half brother, Haran Issawi, was the instigator.

He walks free, while my sister is dead.

The qadi has not ordered any investigation into it, because it is deemed an honour killing and considered just punishment for her actions.

The qadi, I am sure, is glad to wipe his hands of the affair.

My darling sister did not have enough strength in the last months of her life to continue writing in her diary. The doctor looking after her insisted that I be allowed to visit her every day, and she drew great courage from that. He also ordered that she be made as comfortable as possible in her temporary jail at Zamalek.

He arranged for her to have a few pieces of furniture put in her sitting room, reading material given for her, and instructed that her food and drink to prepared with the health of her baby in mind.

The qadi who sentenced her to be executed had connections with al-Shezira. This was reported in the newspapers, and a British high official was appointed to look into the case and identify any evidence of the perversion of justice. This news of a trial steeped in corruption was a great shock to my half sister. Her anger made her uncomfortable. She would not rest and insisted on pacing around her room most of the day. She demanded that I find out as much as I could about the British high official looking into the case.

She asked that I go and see him, and I did.

This kind man, Errol Simmons, had reviewed all the paperwork and was about to make official his decision to overturn the sentence and for the case to be brought before a Western court, with a new set of lawyers, full admissions by witnesses, written statements, and another court hearing.

A new court case was to take place after Hezba had had her baby. When I told Hezba this news, she was ecstatic. She talked about Cairo changing for the better and a chink of light appearing in the darkness that surrounded all women, from the humble wives and daughters of the fellahin to the richer women enclosed in harems.

I told her that her defiance in taking off her veil had received as much admiration as it had hatred and that gradually the women of Cairo were starting to take off their veils too.

Many lawyers had come out in her support, men who believed that the inequality Egyptian women face was the foremost reason for our lack of economic progress and dependency on the British for aid. Hezba was confident up until the end that justice would prevail.

And she was right when she suspected she was going to give birth to a girl. Her tiny girl-child came into this world at dusk on March 1, 1920, as Hezba lay on her favourite rattan couch behind the mashrabiyya in the first-floor sitting room of Virginie’s house.

I tried to move her with the help of one of the servants to a more comfortable place, but she didn’t want to be moved.

She delivered the baby without too much trouble. Despite the changing world around us, we paid tribute to our family’s tradition by dressing Hezba in golden robes for the birth and by singing and lulling her through the pain just as we had done in the harem.

She was allowed a wet nurse and was up and in good spirits shortly after the birth. Though still under house arrest, she embraced her new role as a mother to Aimee and began preparing for her new trial.

I had just appointed a new lawyer for her when word came that she had been murdered during the night. Her baby, just two months old, asleep in her cot in the next room, was spared. It has been reported that Haran Issawi bribed the guards to let him and al-Shezira’s brothers-in-law into the Zamalek house.

Not only does Haran Issawi walk free, but rumour has it that he was recently promoted to a higher position within royal circles.

I insisted that Hezba’s body be cremated. I took her ashes out to the desert where I threw the powdery dust to the wind and watched her remains swirl through the air, so that she could be as free as she had always wanted to be.

I have not read her journal. I have respected her wishes that her daughter will be the only person allowed to read it, but only once she has become a woman. I will finish this sentence, then package up this
diary with string and put it away safely until the time is right to give it to Aimee. God forgive all this evil in the world.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Aimee stood looking up at the outline of Farouk’s Zamalek mansion in the softening dawn light. She held her pistol tightly inside her pocket. A soft breeze caressed her face, and she inhaled the pungent scent of earth.

The front door opened. She held her breath. Out of the shadows came Farouk. He was smoking. His shirt was bloodied and torn. He looked old and ill. He saw her and he froze.

“You came,” he said. “Thank God you came. I thought I’d never see you again.”

Aimee did not answer. She walked towards him, up the steps, and stood in front of him. Her heart thundered in her chest. She searched his face, the grey-black of his hair, the rough razored flesh of his time-worn cheeks, the twisted line of his mouth, the coal black of his eyes. She looked for herself in his features. She was his child.

“Come out to the garden and have a drink with me. You look ill,” he said.

She didn’t say anything. Words were lodged painfully in her throat. He ushered her through the doorway, and she followed him to the back of the house and into the garden.

“Where is Gigis? Are we alone?”

“He’s not here. He had the night off. He went to a party in Giza. Thankfully, he was a long way from the Abdin Palace when the bomb exploded. He will be home soon.”

She listened to him speak but could not take in what he was saying. She felt her body swaying and her legs about to give way.

“Aimee, sit down. You’re so pale, you look like you’re going to faint.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I came to find you.”

He held out his hand to support her, and he noticed her flinch when he touched her.

He pulled back and examined her face sadly. He reached for the whisky decanter that stood on a stone table and poured her a drink.

He put the glass into her hand and circled her hand with his as she held it. Again he felt her flinch.

“Aimee, tell me you’re all right. I was so worried. I was praying that you had made it to safety.”

“I thought you’d been killed,” she said coldly, and then she took a sip of the whisky. “The bomb killed a lot of people, didn’t it? Half the Abdin Palace has been destroyed. You can still see the smoke from here.”

He hung his head guiltily. “Yes, yes.”

“I thought you might have been one of them. I thought your boy might have news of you.”

He flinched a little at the tone of her voice. She appeared changed. There was something cruel in her expression. He studied her vivid green eyes, which were sparkling intensely. Her skin looked deathly white, her charcoal-coloured hair contrasting with her pallor. She held herself rigidly as though made of stone. She sipped the whisky calmly, looking more human, less rigid. He saw her chest rising and falling shallowly.

“Aimee—? Come here, let me hold you. We had a very lucky escape. Tell me what happened to you after the explosion.”

“I went to Madinat Nasr to see my aunt,” she said, stepping back from him as he approached her. He wondered why she had done that and looked at her quizzically.

“But when I got there, my aunt’s housekeeper, Rose, told me that my aunt had had a fall, and that she had died.”

Farouk tugged at his shirt pocket and retrieved a cigarette, his eyes never leaving hers. His eyebrows knotted over a frown, and then he said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He offered her a cigarette. She refused. He lit his own.

“She wrote me a letter before she died,” Aimee continued. “I found it in her handbag.”

He cocked his head, screwing up his eyes in confusion, but he didn’t say anything.

“A couple of days ago, before Gad Mahmoud kidnapped me from your offices”—she held her hand up to stop him from interrupting her when she saw his features stiffen—“I’d been to see her. My aunt wanted me to meet someone, a man.”

She stopped for a moment, waiting for him to say something. His breath had quickened, and he held her firmly in his gaze. “The man was a eunuch who’d been found roaming the streets of Aswan. He’d been brought to live with my aunt.”

What was she talking about? A eunuch? Aswan? What did this have to do with him?

She continued. “My aunt said this eunuch was someone I would want to meet. He had known my mother, you see, had been her slave a long time ago.”

“Why are you telling me this?” She did not answer him.

“His name was Rachid. He was my mother’s servant, as I said. He loved her. His master blinded him with red-hot pokers because
he had helped my mother betray him. My mother had a lover, you see, and Rachid helped orchestrate their meetings.”

She watched him as she spoke. The black of his eyes had intensified, and his mouth had opened slightly. She continued.

“When I met him at my aunt’s house, Maman’s eunuch gave me a little photo album of pictures to look at. He showed me photographs of my mother, photographs of her house, scenes from her life in Cairo during the Great War.”

He was shaking his head as a hardened cough tugged at his throat. He stood back, rammed his handkerchief to his mouth, spluttered into it, and wiped away blood from his lips.

Aimee reached forward to steady him. “You’re ill,” she said. “There’s blood.”

Farouk wiped his fingers and folded the handkerchief. “I’m all right, don’t worry. What’s all this about a eunuch?”

She knew what she had to say, confront him, come face-to-face with the hateful reality of what she had found out. She started to shiver, not able to frame her words. She wanted to tell him that she knew who he was, but the reality of it seemed too incomprehensible, however she looked at it. There were words she could say, though, words that came easily.