City of Jackals

by Parker Bilal

  ‘Not much here,’ commented Sindbad, sceptical as ever about the purpose of the excursion. Makana ignored him. He wished he knew what they were looking for.

  ‘The address you have, where is it exactly?’

  Sami laughed. ‘It’s an IP address – I mean, you know, it’s not a real location.’

  Makana glanced back at him. ‘Not real?’

  ‘No, it’s a virtual location, a number, an address in cyberspace.’

  Makana turned back to the street. ‘I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be straightforward,’ he muttered.

  They were almost out of town already. It was a small place. Makana signalled for Sindbad to turn around. The Datsun pulled off to the side, then swung round and back up onto the lip of the road.

  ‘Let’s go more slowly.’

  This time a couple of people stopped to watch them, following them with their eyes, wondering what they were doing. A sign pointing east indicated the road to Al Qusouma. ‘Take that,’ said Sami.

  They turned left, but a few hundred metres found them leaving the town behind. As the buildings thinned out Makana noticed what looked like a service station set on the right-hand side of the road. Two faded petrol pumps and a rusty sign stood out in the sun. Further back stood a low single-storey building with a raised veranda running along the front of it and a sign displayed along the top. The black lettering had faded to the point where it was only a few smudged lines, but there was a drawing at either end. A logo that was strangely familiar.

  ‘This is it,’ said Makana.

  They pulled off the road and drove up to the building. There were no other cars in sight. When they got out Makana pointed up at the sign. The five lines radiating out of a point. A star.

  ‘Sothis.’ Makana held up the matchbook he had found in Ihab’s kitchen.

  There was an air of abandon about the place. Sami went up onto the veranda and sat down at one of the tables. Makana walked around the building before coming back to join him. They sat there listening to the squeak of a faded metal sign swaying in the wind. Sindbad was cleaning the windscreen with a rag. Sami sat deep in thought, smoking and staring out at the arid landscape.

  ‘Maybe we could get some breakfast,’ he suggested. ‘I’m starving.’

  A door creaked open and a woman appeared. She was small and dressed all in black, adjusting the scarf that covered her head. Her lower lip was tattooed blue in the manner of the Bedouin. Beside her stood a boy of about ten.

  ‘Is there any chance of getting any breakfast around here?’ Sami asked.

  ‘Breakfast?’ The woman pronounced the word as if it were alien to her.

  ‘Sure, you know, some eggs, beans, bread, maybe some taamiya.’ Sami was miming with his hands as he moved towards her, stopping when he saw her pull back. ‘How about tea?’

  She stared at them for a moment longer and then turned to the boy and began speaking quickly before retreating through the doorway she had come from.

  ‘I’m not sure I actually got through to her. I mean, they do speak Arabic around here, right?’

  After a time the little boy could be seen running across the forecourt in the direction of town. Maybe there would be a chance after all.

  The air was warm and dry and there was a certain serenity to the place. Sindbad stood out by the car, leaning on the Datsun calling his wife. Traffic along the road in front of them was sparse. The occasional car or lorry swished by. A pickup with a camel sitting regally in the back.

  After a time the door opened again and the woman in black reappeared. She set down a tray with three glasses of mint tea and a pink plastic bowl filled with sugar. As she turned to go, Makana asked her to wait a second. He showed her the photograph of Mourad but she shook her head wordlessly and vanished back inside. Sindbad joined them and they sipped their tea in silence.

  ‘It’s nice here,’ observed Sindbad, stretching like a man of leisure. ‘It’s peaceful.’

  Makana felt like reminding him they were here for a purpose, but he decided against it. In the distance he spotted the little boy returning from town, his young arms weighed down by plastic bags.

  ‘Here comes breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘About time,’ said Sami. ‘I don’t know about you, but driving makes me hungry.’

  Sindbad brightened. ‘It has the same effect on me. That’s what’s so terrible about driving all day, you’re always hungry.’ Makana had never known Sindbad to speak of anything with such passion as he spoke of food.

  Sami disappeared inside in search of a bathroom. When he came back he gestured for Makana to join him in the doorway.

  ‘Take a look.’

  The interior was gloomy and deserted. At the far end of the room two rather old computers were set against a grubby wall. Above them an incongruous and rather tattered sign announced it as the ‘Sothis Internet Café –Welcome!’ The hearty greeting seemed at odds with the setting, as indeed were the computers. They returned to their seats and soon the boy reappeared bearing a tray he could barely carry. He set down plates of white cheese, flat discs of bread, dried dates and finally a bowl of ful mudames, fava beans crushed into a paste and flooded with olive oil. Sami was eager to tuck in.

  ‘Well, I think we might survive,’ he said, smiling at the boy, who turned without a word and was gone. ‘So do you really think this is the place?’ he asked as he tore off some bread and began to eat.

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Makana. He was thinking about the woman and how quickly she had replied, barely glancing at the photograph.

  ‘Desolate place, though,’ Sami continued. ‘I mean, if they drove through here at night with a vanload of refugees nobody would notice.’

  It wouldn’t even have to be at night, Makana thought. You could drive a herd of elephants through here in broad daylight and no one would bat an eyelid. The ful was watery and the oil had a slightly rancid taste. It seemed like a comedown after last night’s meal. This, he reminded himself, was how things in his life tasted normally. It made the prospect of eating Chicken Kiev in a fancy French restaurant in the company of an attractive woman seem oddly surreal.

  ‘We live with the self-created myth that once you leave the city everything tastes much better.’

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Sindbad said. ‘Personally, nothing I eat is ever as good as the food I eat at home.’

  ‘Your wife is a good cook, then?’ Sami ventured. Makana raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t a good idea to get Sindbad started on the subject.

  ‘Every man should be proud of his wife’s cooking,’ Sindbad beamed before launching off into a long and detailed account of every dish his wife had ever prepared for him. Sami listened but said nothing. He seemed to be deep in thought. Suddenly restless, Makana got to his feet and paced to the far end of the veranda to peer around the side of the building. The landscape stretched southward in a flat, open sweep. A side door opened and the little boy who had served them now came out to sit on the steps. He was eating a sandwich, his reward no doubt for fetching their breakfast.

  ‘Hello,’ said Makana, as he wandered over. ‘Is that as good as it looks?’

  The boy chewed for a bit longer and then nodded.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Wahid.’

  ‘You like living out here, Wahid?’

  For that he got a shrug. Makana nodded his understanding. He allowed a few moments to go by in silence, then reached into his shirt pocket for the photograph and held it out for the little boy to take.

  ‘Have you ever seen this man before?’

  Wahid grinned. ‘Sure, he’s my friend.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  Wahid curled up his shoulders. Time wasn’t something he was too concerned about. Out here you saw people when you saw them.

  ‘Not so long ago.’

  ‘You remember when that was? A week? A few days? How many?’

  ‘Three.’ The boy held up as many fingers.

  Three days?
Could they really be that close? Makana tucked the picture into his shirt pocket. ‘Tell me, the last time you saw him, was he alone?’

  ‘No.’ The boy shook his head. ‘He had his friends with him. They were going on a trip.’

  ‘Do you know where they went?’

  ‘Where he always goes.’ The boy took another bite of his sandwich and then pointed off into the distance.

  ‘Out there? But there’s no road.’

  ‘It’s a track. Not everyone knows about it.’

  ‘Can you show me?’

  The boy looked thoughtful. He studied his sandwich and took another bite. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen.

  ‘My mother doesn’t like me going off by myself.’

  ‘It won’t be for long. Just show me where it starts.’ Makana considered the wisdom of offering money to a child – was this how the seeds of corruption were sown? ‘I’ll tell you what, you show me the place and I’ll buy you an ice cream.’

  ‘Any kind?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  The boy was already on his feet. Makana followed him out across the sand towards a large grey rock. It was further than it looked and the day was getting warmer. By the time they reached it Makana was sweating. If the boy was right, three days would mean Mourad had left Cairo the day before Ihab was killed. The boy skipped along happily, picking up sticks and throwing stones to amuse himself. On the far side of the grey boulder, which was the size of a small house, a track twisted off through the sand in a south-easterly direction. The boy pointed into the distance. Makana handed him a couple of notes.

  ‘You think that’s enough?’ Makana asked. ‘I need you to go back and tell my friends to come and pick me up in the car. Can you do that?’

  ‘Do I get another ice cream for that?’

  Makana added another note to the pile and then watched the boy skip off back in the direction they had just come from. So much for the innocence of youth.

  It took another ten minutes before Sami and Sindbad appeared in the Datsun. Makana waved them down and climbed into the back.

  ‘This is starting to feel like an adventure,’ Sami laughed into the wind.

  After they had followed the track for half an hour Makana was beginning to wonder if perhaps the boy had truly taken him for a ride. It was Sindbad who had the sharpest eyes.

  ‘There,’ he pointed. There was something there. Another ten minutes brought it into focus. A red Toyota Hiace. It was lying on its side.

  ‘Slow down,’ said Makana.

  As they approached a brown smudge broke away and trotted away from the overturned minivan.

  ‘What is that, some kind of dog?’ Sami asked.

  ‘A jackal,’ said Makana. ‘Stop the car here.’

  He got out and made his way over on foot. The stench hit him before he had gone five paces. Approaching the vehicle from the rear he could see shadows through the glass. Bending down he picked up a hefty stone and threw it. The stone clattered against the side of the car and brought an ungainly pair of vultures hobbling out. They flapped their wings and took themselves off a short distance, where they settled to watch him.

  The heat had done its work. The bodies were swollen and the skin blackened and taut as a drum in places, burst in others to reveal the suppuration beneath. Three bodies sprawled in the rear of the minibus. They were fresh, no more than a few days old. Two of them he guessed were Beatrice and Estrella, the third he could not identify any further than that it was male. Makana moved around and squatted down to look through the side window at the driver. Mourad’s family would not recognise their son. Reaching through, Makana rummaged through his pockets until he found what he was looking for: a wallet with an identity card in it. It seemed a sad end to the young man’s dreams of changing the world for the better. It was a dismal task and the stench drove Makana back a couple of paces. He reached for a cigarette to fight the nausea crawling in his gullet.

  ‘Isn’t it facing the wrong way?’ Sami asked. ‘I mean, if they were going towards the border, they should be facing in the other direction.’

  Makana looked from the crushed minibus to the sandy track. A set of wide tyre tracks cut across. A heavy jeep had turned around here.

  ‘They were trying to escape. My guess is they ran into an army patrol and tried to get away. The soldiers chased after them. They were driving too fast. They lost control.’

  The rest was obvious. The light minibus had slammed into a rock and then rolled. The driver and both passengers must have been killed at once. Makana moved back to the vehicle. There was a bullet hole in the side, which might have sparked the accident. Certainly it proved that the soldiers had fired at them. Through a cracked window he saw that Estrella still wore the silver Ethiopian cross like her mother’s, the one she had been wearing when he had first seen her. He reached in to remove it.

  ‘Is that Mourad?’ Sami nodded at the driver.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Why leave them out here?’

  ‘A warning perhaps, to others thinking of trying the same route.’ Makana straightened up and looked at the horizon. It was one explanation, but out here it was anyone’s guess. Shooting unarmed civilians was surely not an official policy. More than likely it was a group of trigger-happy kids, soldiers who got carried away with a chase. It was that easy, and that pointless.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Heavy traffic turned the journey back into an ordeal, but all tedium was overshadowed by what they had just witnessed. There was almost no conversation between them, each trapped in his own thoughts. The search for Mourad had come to an end. All that remained was to break the news to his family. There seemed no point in prolonging their agony.

  As they progressed in fits and starts, Makana called Okasha and filled him in about their day. Sami had fixed the spot where they had found the Toyota using his telephone.

  ‘I’ll text you the grid reference.’

  ‘That would be helpful. I’ll make some inquiries, find out exactly what happened.’ Makana didn’t believe anything would come of it, but there was nothing wrong with letting him try. At least that way the army would know they couldn’t just do what they liked. Sami was going to write about the matter too, he was willing to bet, and that might change things.

  ‘There’s one other thing you can do for me.’

  ‘As if I haven’t done enough for you already. I can just give up my position and devote my time to assisting you.’

  ‘Mustafa Alwan has a son. The boy has something wrong with him.’

  ‘Why is this of any importance?’

  ‘The boy needed an operation. Alwan, despite what he was earning on the side, could never afford to pay for something like that. The Hesira Institute promised to perform the operation, but then delayed. Alwan got fed up. He thought they were stringing him along, so he threatened to go to the press.’

  ‘The press? This makes no sense. What was he going to tell them?’

  ‘We didn’t get that far.’

  ‘Well, he’s still in a coma.’

  ‘Is his wife at the hospital with him? Maybe you can ask one of your men to check with her. I’d like to confirm what kind of treatment the boy requires.’

  Okasha promised to do his best. Makana rang off and told Sindbad to take him to the Verdi Gardens. On the way through town they dropped Sami off.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come along?’ he asked as he climbed out.

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘You’re right. It was just a thought.’

  Makana watched him pick his way through the lanes of traffic, the crushed, tilted metal, the wheezing engines and thick gusts of foul black smoke. This city could swallow a man whole, but he still hoped Sami would do the right thing and repair things with Rania.

  The Hafiz family seemed to sense bad news. Perhaps it was written too clearly on Makana’s face, but Mrs Hafiz burst into tears and had to be led away by her daughter. Mr Hafiz gestured
at the large round table in the centre of the room and asked him to be seated.

  ‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No matter how much you try to prepare yourself, it’s never enough.’ Hassan Hafiz sniffed. He took a napkin from the next table and wiped his eyes. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  So Makana told him, as much as he had managed to piece together. Mourad and his friends had been running a freedom train, helping people less fortunate than themselves to escape this country in the hope that they might start a new life elsewhere.

  ‘He was a brave boy,’ nodded the father.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Never turned his back, always went straight on with his head held high.’

  It was certainly a risky undertaking, and a credit to the young man’s conviction that he went through with it. The only person who could tell them how many people they had helped over the border was Fadihah, and with Hakim still on the loose, it was important they tried to find her.

  ‘I have passed the details to a contact in the police force who will make sure that the remains are recovered and brought back here.’

  ‘That is kind of you.’ Hafiz looked down at his hands. ‘I owe you some money, I’m sorry, my mind.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. We can settle that another day.’ Makana was uncomfortable taking money from a man he had just informed of his son’s death. It would have to wait.

  ‘Thank you, for being so understanding, and for all you have done.’

  ‘I’m only sorry it couldn’t have ended in a better way.’

  Hafiz nodded, more to himself than to Makana, and shuffled away down the room. Makana sat for a time in the empty restaurant and then decided that perhaps it was time to take himself off. Okasha called back as he was getting into the Datsun.

  ‘I heard back from the officer at the hospital. It seems that Mustafa Alwan’s son has a chronic condition. His liver is failing. He’ll die unless he gets a transplant, which pretty much means he’s done for. Unless he gets a new liver, of course.’

  ‘That’s what Alwan was promised.’