by Parker Bilal
They emerged from the darkness to find a round, sprightly man in his sixties wearing a navy-blue tracksuit and a beaming smile. His eyes crinkled with delight as he grasped Doctora Siham’s hands in his.
‘Ah, Jehan, how lovely to see you!’
Makana had never heard her first name being used before. Professor Asfour hailed from Luxor and was delighted to meet someone from Sudan, a country he knew well, he claimed, having once studied there. All of this was blurted out within minutes of meeting. Through the thickened lenses of the professor’s spectacles Makana imagined he looked as interesting as a new specimen.
‘So, how did you find our bizarre trophy room?’
They were moving through the gardens now, following the winding paths, trying to keep up with the fast-moving professor.
‘This is my daily routine. My doctor tells me I have to lose ten kilos. I ask you, where would you find ten kilos on me?’ He slapped his hands against his sides in energetic denial before moving on. ‘We have a long tradition of extracting the internal organs. As I’m sure you know, the Ancient Egyptians mummified not only human beings, but a wide range of animals also. They turned the living creature into an icon, a divine representative of the power of life.’ Just following the track of the professor’s thoughts was a demanding business.
‘Those bizarre objects have less to do with divinity than with asserting male authority,’ Doctora Siham said, managing to get a word in.
‘Of course, it is a perversion of the original concept. Mummification was intended as a form of adoration, preserving life for all eternity. In the act of removing the inner organs, Anubis was performing a labour of love.’ If Jehan was unconvinced by this she kept it to herself. Perhaps she had heard it all before. Asfour carried on. ‘Here, on the other hand, we have a vulgar display of the arrogance of the ruling classes. Glory in life rather than in death. This palace tells us much about the way such absolutists dominate our history. Men who never questioned their superiority. The prince was eventually buried in Switzerland. His mausoleum was taken apart and the marble used by Gamal Abdel Nasser for his own tomb.’ The professor chuckled to himself. ‘Nothing much has changed. Erasing the existence of previous rulers from history is something of a tradition. The pharaohs did it all the time.’
‘Only they are no longer mummified,’ said Makana.
‘Some would argue they have already been mummified, they just don’t know it.’ Professor Asfour whinnied like a horse at his own humour. Doctora Siham’s smile was set like concrete. The professor turned a corner and, finally, slowed. ‘Jehan has told me something of your case and she kindly consented to allow me to look at the two bodies, even though I think she was bending the rules a bit.’ The professor flashed a conspiratorial wink at the pathologist.
‘In the interests of science,’ Jehan shrugged dismissively. ‘Officially, I can call in anyone I think might help me to complete my report.’
‘Naturally, I am honoured.’ Professor Asfour gave a little bow. The conversation seemed in constant danger of veering off the road.
‘What can you tell us, Professor?’ Makana asked.
‘Well, I’m afraid there is really very little to link the two men, apart from the fact that they clearly suffered unusual deaths. Both hail from different ethnic groups. The severed head shows the distinctive markings on the forehead of the Mundari, while the young man was a Bor Dinka.’
‘Are these tribes ever hostile to one another, traditionally speaking?’
Professor Asfour flashed a wan smile. ‘We try not to use the word tribe in this day and age. It rings of imperialist notions of racial superiority.’
The distinction did not strike Makana as being particularly helpful – but it seemed wise to humour the professor. ‘The Dinka and Mundari, then.’
‘Two ethnic groups that are traditionally adversaries. They occupy the same territory in the South Jonglei area. The Mundari are sedentary farmers while the Dinka are cattle herders. This competing use of the land, especially during migration, can create tension.’
‘Is it possible that each was a victim of the other group?’
‘It’s possible, of course. The uninformed view of your country’s problems is of a simplistic split between Christians in the South, united against an intolerant Muslim regime in the North. Four decades of civil war testify to the gravity of that conflict. But we often forget the existence of deep rifts within the South itself.’ The professor grew stern. ‘Two thousand perished in the Bor massacre of 1991, for example, hundreds of thousands made homeless.’
‘Do you think it is possible we are witnessing a bout of intertribal warfare?’
Professor Asfour winced at the term but Makana ignored it. People were killing one another. Fussing over the terminology seemed a luxury he couldn’t afford.
‘It’s possible. People carry their traditions and prejudices with them.’
‘And being refugees together in a foreign land? Doesn’t that make them put their differences aside?’ Doctora Siham asked.
‘I’m afraid the evidence shows not.’
Makana pressed on. ‘Does either group have a tradition of ritual dismemberment?’
‘Not so far as I know.’ Professor Asfour checked himself. ‘Look, perhaps we should stop thinking of them as representatives of a particular ethnic group. Maybe we should think of them as people. Lost and abroad in a foreign society that despises them. The ethnic element may be just a part of a more complex grievance. Young people often have little understanding of their own traditions and practices.’
‘How do they deal with that?’
‘They make things up. They improvise. Of course, one might argue that all traditions are improvisations in some way, variations on what has survived in living memory. At the end of the day they grew up here, in the slums on the outskirts of the city. They know nothing else.’
‘But the old allegiances can still apply?’
‘To some extent, yes, but often they are adapted. When you uproot members of these groups and place them in a hostile, unfamiliar environment such as this city, new communities are formed, not always in a positive way.’
‘You’re talking about gangs?’
Professor Asfour nodded. ‘The thing to remember is that often these young people feel as if they have nowhere they belong to. They try to make what they have their own. They reject the values of the society they find themselves in. They invent their own norms. The key is empowerment. Sometimes that can lead to crime.’
As the professor and the pathologist moved on to matters of a more personal nature, Makana turned away, lighting a cigarette.
‘I was so sorry that you could not make it. The film was excellent. Next week there is a film festival at the French cultural centre. Perhaps I could send you the programme?’
‘Well, I’m rather busy at the moment, as you can see,’ said Jehan. If it was an excuse the professor took it gracefully.
‘I understand perfectly,’ he said, with another little bow, which seemed appropriate considering their setting. He returned to Makana and held out his hand. He had to be off.
‘I shall never lose weight unless I stick to my exercise routine and then I will be ready for embalming.’ He gave a hoot of laughter. They watched him jog off along the path, then Jehan, as he was beginning to think of her, suggested they move on. Families were streaming in as lunchtime approached. Crowds of children, women clutching bags bulging with enough food to sustain an expedition to Xanadu.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said. ‘You do have time, don’t you?’
Ignoring a chorus of taxi drivers offering to take them wherever they were going, they cut a line through to the riverside, negotiating high pavements and speeding vehicles to arrive at a bay of relative calm. The sky had cleared up, leaving a chill breeze that seemed to sweep the city clean. The crowns of the palm trees swelled majestically overhead as Makana followed along beside Doctora Siham. Jehan. He wasn’t sure how to address her now. The informality
of using her first name felt extravagantly reckless. If she felt the same way the doctor gave no indication of a similar concern. She was in a relaxed mood, hair blowing freely in the wind.
‘Do you have a cigarette?’
Which he did, naturally, and a few minutes passed in lighting up and savouring the bitter flavour of the tobacco. She held the Cleopatra away from her and grimaced.
‘How do you smoke these things?’
‘It’s an acquired habit.’
‘Yes, but why acquire it?’ Too late, Makana realised she was smiling. A pathologist with a sense of humour. Who would have guessed? She turned and wandered off, taking long, purposeful strides, not waiting for him. He caught up with her when she paused to lean on a railing and gaze at the water.
‘I always associate the river with romantic dreams. You probably find that strange.’
‘Why should I find it strange?’
‘Well, you don’t seem like the kind of man who has much time for romance.’
Makana was having trouble understanding where this conversation was leading. She turned away to stare moodily at the river.
‘Nobody excels in self-delusion like we do. We like to think we are still at the centre of the Arab world, when in fact we have little real influence. Cairo provides a playground for wealthy Arabs, produces trivial films that pale in comparison with what we made half a century ago. We boast of winning the October War when we were almost wiped out. We like to think we are descended from the pharaohs, but if they turned up today we would frown disapprovingly at their way of life.’ She turned her back to the river and faced him. ‘We dwell in a twilight world of nostalgia and unrealised hopes for the future.’
‘The professor seems quite fond of you.’
She threw him a sharp look. ‘We’re colleagues, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.’
He wondered if he had offended her as she pushed herself off the railings and they resumed walking. This was odd. He felt like a college student again. Where did that come from?
‘He knows a lot. Unfortunately he also has some rather old-fashioned ideas about romance.’
‘Another dreamer?’
‘You could say that. The poor man is convinced he’s in love with me.’
‘I can see how that might complicate matters.’ Makana recalled the gatekeeper at the university telling him that her husband had died. It didn’t seem like the moment to pry.
‘He’s a theorist. To him the world is nothing but a test case for his ideas.’
‘He’s studying you.’
‘It feels like that sometimes.’ She sighed while the wind blew her hair around her face. ‘He has convinced himself there is a bond between us. Both of us lost our respective spouses. His wife and my husband. To him that makes us twinned souls, like Isis and Osiris.’
‘I thought he was a sociologist.’
‘To him it’s the same thing. All societies go back to them. The Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah. It’s all rooted here in Ancient Egypt.’
‘A fascinating man.’
‘He has his moments, but he’s not for me.’
‘But he thinks otherwise.’
‘Hence the invitations to dinner, the cinema. It all be-comes very complicated.’
Makana was beginning to think the same thing. He cleared his throat and offered another cigarette. This time she declined, which was a shame. Something about the sight of her smoking with the wind blowing in her hair seemed to unbalance him, as if gravity had been temporarily suspended.
‘I’m having trouble subscribing to this idea of a war between rival gangs,’ Makana admitted.
‘The methods are different.’
‘Perhaps we are seeing something that is not there.’
‘You mean, simply because the two victims are young males from South Sudan doesn’t mean they have to be linked?’
It was his turn to sigh. When you put it like that there wasn’t a lot to tie them together at all. What was it then that made him think there was a connection?
‘So, we need to find something that ties the two bodies together,’ she said. It sounded like a concession.
‘Is that possible, I mean in the forensic work?’
‘We still haven’t had the tissue samples back from chemical analysis. Maybe there’s something there.’
It seemed like a slim straw to be clutching at. He caught her smiling at him.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that this isn’t even your case, officially. I mean, you’re not actually working for anyone on this. You have other things to do, I assume. So why pursue it?’
‘Someone has to, don’t you think?’
‘Sure, but why you? I mean, maybe you should be asking why you feel the need to help people you have no obligation to.’
‘I’m not sure I’d like the answers.’
They both fell silent for a time, following the flight of an ibis that drifted like a sheet of newsprint from the sky. Was he the only factor the two deaths had in common? It wasn’t a helpful thought. Jehan leaned over towards him, plucking the cigarette from his fingers to puff on it herself.
‘You might be surprised.’
Chapter Twenty
Fantômas was waiting under the statue of Simon Bolivar, a stone’s throw from Tahrir Square. What could be more appropriate for a revolutionary artist than the liberator of Latin America? With his dreadlocks and dressed in a ripped T-shirt and some kind of overalls daubed in a multitude of paint, he resembled an exotic bird that had stopped off on its annual migration. Cars tooted in salute and young men hanging from the doorways of lopsided buses yelled witticisms that floated off on a toxic slipstream. Fantômas himself was unconcerned, leaning up against the revolucionario’s pedestal with the bemused and distant look on his face of a man immune to anything this city had to throw at him. The inner confidence of one preoccupied with the amount of work to be done and the lack of time to do it in. When Makana appeared, emerging from the crowd of strangers like an apparition, he straightened up and dropped his cigarette butt to the ground before wordlessly leading the way back to the choking line of minibuses shuttling and hooting their way forward. Jockeys called out a litany of destinations near and mostly far, while hordes of impatient passengers jostled for space. Fantômas steered Makana towards a garish purple minibus dashed with yellow inscriptions. These Wheels are on Fire, one read. Another was dubbed The Tarmac Gazelle, along with the more common sprinkling of mundane religious invocations, seeking protection from on high.
‘I know you usually travel in your own car,’ said Fantômas, as they squeezed into the rear seat alongside a large woman who remained as immobile as a bulging sphinx. ‘I thought you should have a taste of what it is like for ordinary people.’
The price of the ticket. Makana was content to go along if it made his guide happy. ‘How well do you know Father Saturnius?’ Makana asked when they began to move. The woman next to him filled the air with a pungent blend of fierce perfume and perspiration. He longed for a cigarette to clear the air.
‘I met him when I first arrived in this city with nowhere to stay, no money. I was young and I had nothing. If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know what would have become of me.’
They were shuffling slowly up an overpass, one metre at a time. It wasn’t perfume, he decided, coming from the woman next to him, but industrial-grade insecticide that made his skin itch. The windows of the minibus were jammed halfway open, or closed.
‘What about the American, Reverend Corbis?’
‘He’s a strange one. His wife is an angel. Really. She has helped so many people, gives her services for free.’
‘They’ve been coming here for a few years now?’
‘Sure. What can I tell you? They have a mission. Their God-given task to save us.’
Fantômas gave a flick of the hair, less a necessity than part of his style. The dreadlocks had a life of their own. An oasis of rubbery palms. Looking at hi
m was like trying to get a fix on a mirage.
The conductor, hanging out of the doorway, reeled off a list of destinations to an indifferent crowd on a corner in Heliopolis. No takers.
‘As if it would kill them to say no thank you,’ he muttered, consoling himself by rustling through the fistful of banknotes in his hand. ‘The same faces every day, nobody ever says hello.’
‘Helping people is what justifies their existence,’ continued Fantômas.
‘This adoption programme of theirs, how does it work?’
‘The Homehavens Project?’ Fantômas rolled his eyes. ‘They only pick the best. They interview everyone they can find, go through the whole routine. Questions and more questions. Then tests and more tests. In the end they only take a select few. A lot of people are frustrated by that.’
‘Sounds like you don’t approve.’
‘Look, taking a handful of people and giving them a new life in America is fine, but it doesn’t solve the problem. There are thousands who need help, who have a right to go home to their country. They all want a chance to start a new life.’ He shook his head. ‘To me, this is all about making Americans feel better about themselves.’
‘How often does it happen?’
‘Oh, they take a handful, a couple of times a year.’
‘Do you know people who have started a new life in America?’
‘Sure.’ Fantômas scratched his head as he grew vague, nodding in his usual slow, steady fashion. ‘You hear about cases, you know.’
‘Okay, so let me ask you about something else. Aljuka and his boys there.’
Fantômas looked out of the window. ‘I thought it might come to this.’
‘Is there a war going on? I mean, between different factions, or whatever you call them?’
‘A gang war?’ The expression on his face sank. ‘You mean an urban reinvention of tribal warfare?’
Makana gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Is it that far-fetched?’
‘It’s a projection. Come on. Aljuka is a soldier. I mean he was killing people when he was nine years old. He walked out of South Sudan. The Lost Boys, they were called. He led a group of them. Some of them drowned. Others were killed by wild animals, lions, pythons, crocodiles. There are wild stories he can tell. In the end he reached Kenya and one of those nice humanitarian organisations. One thing led to another and he wound up here.’