The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus

by Sean McLachlan

  Faisal did not seem phased by the threat. His eyes grew even wider. “One of those big stone tomb things appeared in his house?”

  “Yes, and there was no sign of a break in. Do you see what I’m up against? I have no time to chat with lazy, dirty—”

  “The jinn are back!” Faisal cried. This got several people in the crowd whispering amongst themselves.

  Moustafa groaned. “How many times do I have to tell you there’s no such thing as jinn?”

  Faisal jumped up and down. “His house was full of them and then they, um, went away. Now they’re back.”

  “Then you shouldn’t linger around here or they’ll sweep you up in one of their dust storms and take you far out into the desert and feed you to the jackals.”

  Faisal froze in terror.

  “I meant that as a way to get you to leave,” Moustafa said, shoving him.

  “I can help!” Faisal protested.

  “You can help by going away and not coming back!”

  Faisal stuck his tongue and Moustafa lunged for him. The boy scampered away, dodged someone from the crowd who tried to grab him, gave Moustafa a crude gesture, and ran off.

  “God save me from such pests!” Moustafa cried.

  Just then, Youssef returned with the sleepy-eyed watchman. The fellow was a wiry old man, well past his prime but good enough to keep an eye on the neighborhood at night and call out the time.

  “You wanted to see me?” Karim asked, stifling a yawn and adjusting his faded green jellaba.

  “Come inside,” Moustafa said. He didn’t want everyone to hear their conversation, although it would no doubt become the main subject of local gossip soon enough.

  Moustafa led Karim into the house and shut the door behind them. Karim started to take his sandals off but Moustafa stopped him.

  “The front part is a shop and not the house,” Moustafa explained, then led him into the main showroom.

  Karim’s eyes went wide when he saw all the antiquities gathered together. Statues of deities and pharaohs stood at various points in the room, and shelves along the walls held smaller antiquities such as swords and jewelry. Further up, the walls were covered with Coptic textiles. An arched doorway at the far end opened into a courtyard with a fountain surrounded by more statues. His eyes went wider when he saw Mr. Wall and the police commandant come over.

  “Ask him if he saw anyone around the house last night,” Russell Pasha ordered.

  Moustafa felt like replying that he would have never thought of that himself, that he was astounded by the policeman’s brilliance. In fact, he felt like saying, he didn’t even realize they wanted to question the night watchman and had assumed they were inviting Karim to tea.

  Of course you didn’t use sarcasm on a European, so Moustafa turned to Karim and asked the question he was about to ask anyway.

  Karim shrugged. “No, I saw no one, just the late delivery.”

  “Late delivery?”

  Karim pointed at the sarcophagus. “That stone box over there.”

  “Who delivered it?” Moustafa asked, glancing at the large wooden portal that led directly into the room from the street. Like many old houses, the gate was more for ornamentation and was opened only to let in large crowds or a palanquin, a smaller door set into the portal being used for regular comings and goings. Whoever left the sarcophagus would have had to open the entire portal to get the thing in.

  “A group of Europeans delivered it,” Karim said.

  “Europeans? From where?”

  Karim shrugged again. “Europe.”

  Moustafa resisted the urge to slap him. “We’ve established that. Which country in Europe?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t speak with them.”

  “You blockhead! Someone was going into Mr. Wall’s house in the middle of the night and you didn’t stop and check on them?”

  “They were European!” Karim objected.

  Moustafa sighed. Yes, that was how matters stood. Europeans could do anything without suspicion. It was like they carried a placard on their chest saying, “Untouchable by Egyptian Law.” There had been a case last month of an Englishman who had murdered an Egyptian in some drunken brawl. The law dictated that the killer faced trial in an English court instead of an Egyptian one. The English court, of course, had found him innocent.

  “Could you tell me what’s going on?” Russell Pasha demanded.

  Moustafa translated for him. The police commandant then demanded the answers to several questions that anyone with half a brain would know Moustafa was going to ask next. Mr. Wall, thankfully, kept quiet. At least one European gave Moustafa credit for his abilities.

  “What time was this?” Moustafa asked the watchman.

  “At midnight. I had just called out that all was well.”

  “So what did these Europeans look like? How many were there?”

  “There were five or six of them, all strong fellows. Dressed simply, not in fine suits like your boss and this policeman. Most looked fairly young. They had a couple of Egyptian workmen with them. They had the stone box on a heavy cart with wheels and rolled it off a ramp on the back of a lorry. The lorry had a little crane with a thick rope tied to the stone box.”

  “Who let them in?” Mr. Wall asked in Arabic.

  Karim blinked. “Didn’t you, sir?”

  “No.”

  “But your door was open. They might have been able to pick the lock, but how could they have slid open the bolt?”

  “I wish I knew,” Mr. Wall grumbled.

  “Are you sure you remembered to slide the bolt, sir?” Karim asked.

  “Of course he did!” Moustafa shouted. “Do you question his intelligence?”

  As Karim sputtered out an apology, Mr. Wall intervened. “It’s a perfectly legitimate question. Yes, I did bolt it. I am very particular about that. Besides, the bolt was in place when I arose this morning.”

  Karim looked as confused as Moustafa felt. “I don’t understand how this is possible, sir.”

  “Neither do I,” Mr. Wall said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t question them, sir. I assumed it was one of your deliveries. You get so many. I thought it odd that it came so late at night, but your door was open, as I said, and they were moving something in. If they had been moving something out, I would have questioned them.”

  “It’s all right, Karim,” Mr. Wall said. “You did your duty. You may go now.”

  As Karim bowed and started to take his leave, Mr. Wall called him back.

  “Um, Karim, one last question. Did you see … me there?”

  Karim blinked. “No, sir.”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Wall was quick to say. “Silly question. Thank you for your time.”

  Moustafa stared at his boss, utterly baffled.

  3

  Faisal knew that something was amiss the moment the Englishman came up to the roof that morning.

  Faisal had been sunning himself, lying out of sight of the neighbor women behind the lip of the low wall that ran around the edge of the roof. When he had heard the rattle of the key in the rooftop door lock, the boy had leaped up and bolted for the little rooftop shed he called home. He scrambled over the heap of old furniture and other junk piled against the inside of the doorway and into the shed.

  He had made it out of sight just in the nick of time.

  Peeking through a little peephole he’d made in the pile of old wood, he saw the Englishman burst through the door, pistol in hand. The Englishman looked all around the roof as if searching for something.

  The neighbor’s wife cried out in surprise and no doubt hurried downstairs to hide herself. Didn’t the Englishman know how to come onto his own roof without the neighborhood women seeing? Silly Englishman.

  The shout sent the Englishman on his way. He moved back to the door, took a last brief look around, and then glanced at the shed.

  Faisal froze. If the Englishman found him here he’d be angry. Faisal might even lose the best home he had ever had
.

  But all the Englishman saw was a shed full of old junk, the same old junk that had been in there when he bought the house. What he didn’t see was that Faisal had cleared out the inside to make room for a bed made of burlap sacks filled with straw covered by a tarpaulin and a blanket. It was a cozy little place, safe from stray dogs and bullies, and Faisal wanted to keep it.

  The Englishman gave a nervous glance in the direction of the neighbor’s house and then went back downstairs, locking and bolting the door behind him.

  Faisal let out a breath of relief. That had been a close one.

  Why had the Englishman come up here? He never came up here. There must be some trouble!

  Time for Faisal to earn his keep. The Englishman didn’t know it, but Faisal worked as his watchman. He protected the house from burglars and jinn and other dangers, and all he took in return was this secret house on the roof. Plus a little food from the pantry. Just a little.

  Faisal made sure all his meager possessions were well hidden in a little nook he had made under the pile of junk, so that even if someone clambered into the shed all they’d find was a few burlap sacks. After he felt satisfied his secret was safe, Faisal hurried across the roof, peeked over the lip of the wall to make sure none of the neighborhood women were in sight, pulled himself over, and climbed down the outside of the building. He used a drainpipe and the bars on the windows as handholds and footholds.

  The wall was easy enough for him to climb, and he had added a few extra holds by chipping away at the seams between the stones with a sharp piece of metal he had scrounged. Most people couldn’t climb this wall even with the improvements he had made, but he was the best climber in all of Cairo, perhaps all of Egypt, and he got down the side of the wall as fast as if the wall had been a flight of stairs.

  He ended up in a narrow, disused alley behind the house. From there he took a circuitous route between the closely set houses and shops to make it to Ibn al-Nafis Street. Faisal could have simply taken the alley between the Englishman’s house and the neighbor’s house that led directly to the street, but he didn’t want people to see him coming and going through there too much. They might figure out his secret.

  Once he got to the street, he strolled along as if nothing was wrong, begging for alms and being ignored as usual. Once he got across from the Englishman’s house, he sat on his haunches near the café and waited.

  It wasn’t long before a big shiny motorcar with a colonial policeman and an Englishman inside parked in front of the house. Faisal watched as they went into the house, took a dead man out to the motorcar, and the colonial policeman drove off with it. When Moustafa came out, Faisal went up to him and asked him what was going on. He got brushed off as usual.

  Moustafa was annoying. The Nubian thought he was the Englishman’s assistant, but Faisal was way more useful than he ever was. Moustafa didn’t live in the neighborhood so he didn’t know all the dangers. Plus he didn’t know how to do a lot of things that Faisal did. He didn’t know how to pick pockets or even how to break into a house! Sure, he was strong and he knew how to use a gun, so he was useful in his own way. He could also read the old picture writing. Faisal didn’t see any use in that, but the Englishman liked it.

  The worst thing about Moustafa was that he didn’t know anything about jinn. He didn’t even believe in them! It looked like it was up to Faisal to save the Englishman again.

  But how? When the Englishman had first moved in, there had been lots of jinn in the house. Their leader looked like a big man with a crocodile head that pretended to be a statue during the daytime. Faisal had bought a special charm that got rid of them all. Now the crocodile-headed jinn remained a statue all the time.

  But what had gone wrong? How could the jinn have beaten the charm? It had been made by Khadija umm Mohammed. Everyone in the neighborhood said she knew more about magic than anyone. If she made a charm, it couldn’t be beat.

  But wait, hadn’t she said that if the charm was removed from the house it wouldn’t work anymore? He had tucked it out of sight behind the crocodile-headed statue. Maybe the Englishman had moved the statue, seen it, and thrown it away?

  Faisal shook his head. He should have warned the Englishman about it, but the Englishman didn’t believe in jinn either and would have thrown it away just the same. Besides, to admit the charm was there he’d have to admit that he had been inside the house.

  Faisal sighed. It got really complicated trying to help someone when you couldn’t tell them that you were helping them. Now what could he do?

  He needed to think, and the best way to think was to eat. He had some bread and apples he had taken from the Englishman’s pantry, but in his excitement he had left them up in the shed. He didn’t want to risk going back up there while the police were in the house, so he decided to go to the ful stand up the street and get some of those wonderful beans. They always made it with extra vegetables and lemon juice, just the way he liked it. A bowl only cost half a piastre and luckily he had just that exact amount of money. The day before, some foolish man had left it on a table in a café to pay for his drinks and walked off in a hurry. Before the waiter noticed, Faisal had plucked it up for himself.

  Faisal grinned. That had been a good trick. The waiter would think the man had walked off without paying! But Faisal didn’t feel bad, because the man was a stranger in the neighborhood and would probably never go back to that café. No one had gotten in trouble and Faisal ended up half a piastre richer.

  He gripped the coin in his pocket and hurried along. It was early morning, and Mina often helped her mother serve ful at this hour. If her mother wasn’t looking, Mina would give Faisal an extra ladleful.

  Mina was eleven, about a year younger than Faisal, so she understood how hungry children got. Adults often forgot.

  She was the only child who had a home who acted nice to him. All his other friends were street children like himself. Children with homes looked down on people like him and wouldn’t play with him. Their parents told them not to. But Mina’s parents were nice, and so poor that they practically lived on the street themselves. They only had a little lean-to made of reed mats by the side of the street to live in. They weren’t proud like other parents.

  When Mina and Faisal were smaller, they had played together all the time, flying kites made from newspapers Faisal swiped from cafés, or games like jacks and mankala. Then Mina’s father, who had run the ful stand with his wife, hurt his back and couldn’t work anymore, and Mina had to take his place. That was too bad. Mina was his only friend who didn’t pester him for food. No one knew where Faisal got his food, but all the street children knew he had it, and never left him alone. He didn’t mind sharing, since the Englishman had plenty and never missed a little here and a little there, but it got annoying. Mina was never annoying.

  As he came up to the ful stand, he got the morning’s second surprise. Mina was wearing a headscarf! It was a pale green and looked new, although made out of cheap cloth. Mina had never worn a headscarf before. She acted differently too. She stood behind the little metal stand that held the big cauldron and ladled ful into bowls for two porters who had stopped their donkeys by the road for breakfast, but instead of chattering away as she usually did, she concentrated on her work and kept her mouth shut. Her mother stood nearby stacking kindling to stoke the fire beneath the cauldron and kept looking over at Mina as if to keep an eye on her.

  Faisal scratched his head, found a louse, and flicked it away. What was going on?

  He went over to the stand and waited for the workmen to move off to rest their backs against the nearest building and eat in the shade. Then he stepped forward.

  “Good morning, Mina.”

  Mina didn’t look up at him.

  “Good morning,” she murmured.

  Puzzled, Faisal handed over his coin.

  “The Englishman is in trouble again. I’m going to have to help him out as usual.”

  Mina smiled and looked up at him briefly. “Do you really
work for him?”

  “Sure. He doesn’t know but—”

  “Mina!” her mother shouted. “Mind your work.”

  The girl blushed and her gaze fell down to the big cauldron of beans again. She ladled Faisal a normal-sized portion.

  Mina looked like she was about to give Faisal some more, glanced at her mother, and then put the ladle down.

  Faisal shrugged and took a big gulp of ful. “As I was saying, the Englishman doesn’t know that I—”

  “Go eat your food next to the porters!” Mina’s mother ordered.

  Faisal stared at her. She’d never complained about him talking to Mina before. It was obvious she meant it, though, so he went and ate with the porters.

  He ate slowly, hoping he’d have time to speak with his friend, but her mother stayed close and Mina didn’t come over to talk with him.

  Just as he finished his breakfast, he spotted Mina’s father walking down the street, making his way painfully, his back twisted. Next to him walked a pot-bellied middle-aged man and an old woman, neither of whom Faisal had ever seen before. The middle-aged man wore a nice jellaba and had a silver ring on one finger. His head was bare and he used grease in his hair to slick it back. As they passed the ful stand, the middle-aged man smiled at Mina, who kept her gaze down and nearly dropped the ladle she trembled so much. The man patted his hair to make sure it was all in place and made some comment to the old woman, who smiled and nodded. The three adults passed Faisal and went inside the little lean-to next to the ful stand that was Mina’s family’s home.

  Curious, Faisal gave back his bowl, not even trying to talk with his friend, and instead lingered around the lean-to. He wanted to get close and listen to what the three were talking about in there, because it seemed to trouble Mina, but he couldn’t get close without Mina’s mother seeing.

  So he did the only thing he could do—he wandered around that end of the street, begging as usual, getting ignored as usual, all the while keeping an eye on the reed mat that served as the front door to Mina’s home.