by Parker Bilal
‘Such cases are not as rare as one might think,’ he had told her.
‘Really?’ she looked at him disbelievingly. ‘I personally have never heard of such a thing.’
Nevertheless, she agreed to hire him for a trial period and so for a week Makana had tailed Ragab back and forth across the city. He had engaged Sindbad’s services and they had taken turns sitting outside his office in case he dashed out on foot. But nothing. Until now.
‘Mrs Ragab, certain facts have come to light that I think we need to discuss.’
‘Facts? What facts?’ Mrs Ragab looked taken aback. Gold jangled as she clutched at her throat with a sharp intake of breath, almost as if being strangled by invisible hands. ‘If this is some scheme to try and extort more money out of me, I can tell you now that you can save your breath.’
‘This is not about more money, though I should point out that so far I have worked for a week and not received any payment.’
‘I explained this at the outset. I don’t believe in paying in advance for services I have not yet received. Surely you can understand that? Lots of your clients must feel the same.’
Actually, most people understood that Makana began working the moment you engaged him and that everybody needed something to tide them along: a deposit, an advance, call it what you will, but Makana let that one go.
‘Tell me what you have learned about that useless husband of mine.’
‘It seems that your husband has not been entirely forthright with you, Mrs Ragab.’
‘So you have found something!’ Her eyes glistened.
‘When we first spoke, you told me that you have no children.’
‘Must you stick that dagger into my heart yet again?’ The painted eyes widened in disbelief. ‘We have already established this fact. Do you think I would need your services if Allah had been generous enough to provide us with offspring? A man needs a son. He needs children, if only to prove to the world that he is indeed a man. And what of my feelings? Do you think it is easy for a woman of my age to listen to her friends reporting on the progress of their children? This one to be a doctor, that one an engineer. They try to sympathise by asking why I don’t adopt some poor black orphan from Africa, with God knows what diseases. No, Mr Makana, I have no children.’
Makana allowed the tide to wash over him before he put forward his next question. ‘Do you know if your husband has any children from a previous marriage?’
‘Previous marriage? What are you talking about?’
‘So, as far as you know, your husband has no other children?’
‘How dare you presume you have the right to ask me such intimate questions?’ She frowned at him as if she were addressing a mentally deficient waiter.
‘A little before three a.m. yesterday morning, a young woman was admitted to the Garnata Clinic, which I think you know.’
‘Of course I know it. We have been members of that clinic for years.’
‘Karima Ragab. Does that name mean anything to you?’
Mrs Ragab frowned. ‘Are you saying she is a relative of ours?’
‘She was admitted as your husband’s daughter.’
Mrs Ragab sat in stunned silence. ‘That can’t be,’ she murmured.
‘I can assure you, Mrs Ragab, that it is. The girl is seventeen years old and her bills at the clinic are being paid for by your husband.’
‘It’s a very exclusive clinic, of course,’ said Mrs Ragab, examining the backs of her hands, ‘not to mention expensive, but I insisted. I did. I said, in matters of health there is no point in trying to cut corners.’ Mrs Ragab paused, having temporarily lost her way. The head waiter fluttered around the table like a large vulture, a broad smile on his face and a fresh teapot in hand. The smile wilted when Mrs Ragab shooed him away and he beat a hasty retreat.
‘Seventeen, you say? The man has no shame!’
‘The girl may not survive. In fact, it is probable that she will die.’
‘I find all of this very disturbing. I knew nothing of this girl’s existence until you told me just now.’ Mrs Ragab’s mood had changed. The fury had been replaced by confusion and she seemed to see the man sitting opposite her for the first time.
‘You have children of your own?’ Makana couldn’t see the relevance of the question. Mercifully, Mrs Ragab wasn’t expecting an answer. She clicked her tongue. ‘Men are all the same. Indifferent on the outside but sentimental as an old woman on the inside.’
‘How long have you been married, Mrs Ragab?’
‘Fifteen years in August.’
‘So, it is possible that this girl could be from a previous marriage.’
‘I told you. I know nothing of any previous marriage. Believe me, that is not the kind of thing that one can keep secret, not even my husband.’ But as she spoke her face grew thoughtful and Mrs Ragab stared into the distance.
‘If the girl dies,’ Makana went on, ‘there is bound to be an investigation. Your husband’s name would come out.’
‘A scandal, you mean? No, my husband has enough influence to make sure that will never happen.’
‘I was thinking that perhaps this is the time for a meeting with your husband.’
‘The three of us, you mean? Oh, no, that would never do. I shall take care of this myself.’ With that she heaved herself up out of the chair and straightened her skirt. ‘I wish they would get some more comfortable chairs. I suppose it comes from employing people more accustomed to squatting on the ground.’ She hesitated as she began to move off, and then said, ‘You must consider our business terminated. Please send me your bill and you will be paid whatever I owe you. ’
‘I’ll send someone over.’
‘Please do that.’
Makana watched her march away. He somehow doubted this was the last time he would see Mrs Ragab. The waiter with the club foot was brushing dead leaves off the next table. He looked across at Makana with a certain degree of empathy.
‘Can I get you anything, ya basha?’
Amir Medani’s office resembled a cave stuffed from floor to ceiling with paper. There were reams of it. Piled high in stacks, along the walls, on shelves, overloaded bookcases, tables. It was tempting to think that nothing ever happened here, but Makana knew from years of friendship with the lawyer that despite the rather humble setting, the rundown building, the cracked windowpanes and the doors that had to be scraped closed, a great deal went on in here. In the outer office, telephones were constantly ringing. At the other end of the line there might be an ambassador or a minister, an assistant to a head of state or official of the United Nations or European Union. Amir Medani knew all of them and his reputation reached far beyond the confines of these noisy, dusty rooms. His assistants all knew Makana and they waved him through to the inner sanctum. Amir Medani had a face that could only be described as lived in. It seemed to carry all the sleepless nights and worries etched into it. His eyes lifted from the paper he was reading, a pair of glasses set up on the crown of his head.
‘Don’t tell me, I died and you’ve come to offer your condolences.’
‘How have you been?’ asked Makana as he crossed the room to the window. As usual it was hard to see anything through the grubby glass and what he did see wasn’t encouraging.
‘How am I? I’m fine. More to the point, how are you? And where have you been?’
‘You know how it is.’
‘I’m not sure I do,’ said Amir Medani, leaning back and folding his hands. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
Makana detected a certain irritation in the other man’s voice.
‘I see you’re busy as usual.’
‘We’re always busy. The world is in a serious mess right now. Ever since the attacks on America all the rules have been thrown out of the window. People are being arrested all over the place. No procedure.’ Amir Medani tossed his paper aside and scrabbled about the table for a lighter and a cigarette.
‘Have you heard anything?’
‘You can’t do this
, you know,’ Amir Medani exhaled slowly, his face vanishing beneath a wreath of smoke. ‘Disappear for months and then just turn up without an explanation.’
‘What explanation would you like to hear?’
‘What explanation have you got?’
For a while the two men stared at one another, then Makana turned back to the window and Amir Medani sat back in his chair with a long sigh.
‘You can’t let this business get you down.’
‘I think she’s alive,’ said Makana without looking back.
‘You don’t know that for certain. Nobody knows.’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Really? How? How can you be sure your daughter is alive? Just because that fool said she was? He was playing you. He was playing all of us, and look where it got him.’
Amir Medani was referring to the one-time artist and entrepreneur Mohammed Damazeen, who had first told Makana that Nasra was still alive in Sudan. Damazeen had been trying to get Makana to help him with some dirty deal he was setting up and which ended up killing him.
‘I told you, I made enquiries. Your old sergeant Mek Nimr is now a high-ranking officer inside the National Intelligence and Security Services. He is protected twenty-four hours a day. He lives behind a barrier where nobody can touch him.’
The most shocking part of Damazeen’s story was that Nasra had been taken in by Mek Nimr into his own home. Why would he do something like that? He had tried to destroy Makana and indeed had come close to killing him. He might have succeeded if Makana had remained in Khartoum. Instead he managed to escape, though the price he paid had been the life of his wife and daughter, or so he had believed for ten long years. It made no sense for Mek Nimr to take Nasra into his own home, except that in a certain, twisted way, it made perfect sense. If he couldn’t get his hands on Makana, then he could make sure he had control over the one thing in this world Makana held dear above all else: his daughter.
‘Mek Nimr makes a point of employing only people from his own tribe. His personal servants, cooks, drivers, messengers, all of them are Shaiygia like him,’ Amir Medani was saying.
Whenever Makana heard news from home he found himself musing about what it was that was going on there. For the last thirty years the country had buried itself in the fantasy of a religious utopia constructed along the lines of an intolerant brand of Wahhabist Islam, transposed from the Arabian Peninsula and enforced with a level of violence unseen since medieval times. Islam as the solution to all evil. Naturally, this vision excluded vast swathes of the population, whose citizenship was now deemed conditional on their accepting these new rules. Makana was among the last to give up. An old-fashioned idealist in some ways, he had always believed the people would come to their senses and restore the country to one in which diversity was a strength rather than a pest to be extinguished like vermin. A country in which it was not your race or your religion which decided your status, where honesty and right distinguished you, not just professions of piety.
‘I thought about going back.’
‘That would be the stupidest mistake of your life,’ said Amir Medani, stubbing out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. It pained him to see his friend in this state. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I still have a lot of contacts and sooner or later one of them is going to come through. In the meantime I suggest you don’t do anything rash. Are you working?’
Makana nodded. The question brought back the image of the girl, Karima, lying on the bed in the clinic.
‘Well, that’s what you need to focus on.’ Amir Medani had got up and come round the table towards his friend. ‘Nasra wouldn’t want you to waste your life away. She’d want you to go on.’
‘You say that as though you agree she’s alive,’ said Makana.
‘Maybe that’s what you need to believe.’
By the time Makana arrived back at the riverbank, the sun was setting and the awama was bathed in a deep magenta glow. There was a surprise waiting for him. Up on the busy roadside a car was parked under the big eucalyptus tree whose branches hung down over the steep bank like a protective hand. Not just any car. A Bentley. As Makana climbed out of a taxi and made for the path leading down to the houseboat, the car door opened and an awkward-looking figure climbed out. He came towards him and held out his hand.
‘Mr Makana,’ he said, ‘I am Magdy Ragab.’
Chapter Four
Aziza called out a greeting as they descended the winding path, now dissolving into pools of shadow. Umm Ali’s youngest daughter was growing up. She was almost fourteen now and as tall as her mother.
‘Good evening, Aziza.’
‘I see you’ve met your guest.’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘If there is anything you need . . .’
Aziza had recently taken it upon herself to act as a personal secretary to Makana rather than just being the daughter of his landlady. She and her younger brother were all that remained of Umm Ali’s little brood, the eldest boy was in the army and Aziza’s older sister had vanished and was said to be living with a shoe repairer in Bulaq. Nobody had seen her for months although Umm Ali would regularly inform him that as far as she personally was concerned, the girl was dead to her.
‘Shall I bring coffee, ya basha?’
‘Yes, thank you, Aziza, that would be kind of you.’
Makana gestured for Magdy Ragab to continue along the path that led down the bank, past the rickety shack that was home to Umm Ali and her two children, to the water’s edge and the wooden structure that was Makana’s home.
The awama had recently undergone some much needed repair. When a part of the roof had collapsed during the rainy season, Makana decided it was time to invest some of his own hard-earned cash in the services of a carpenter. If it had been left up to Umm Ali she would have waited to see the whole thing collapse into the river before loosening her purse strings. So the path had been widened and made more manageable in the slippery turns coming down the bank. A friend of a friend recommended a decent carpenter asking reasonable rates and eventually a solid wooden walkway with a handrail had replaced the old plank that bridged the muddy gap between the river bank and the lower deck. Downstairs window shutters were fixed and door handles replaced, and Makana now had what passed for a dining room with a table and chairs which, though rarely used, gave the place a touch of respectability. The carpenter had even thrown in an old wardrobe he had found cluttering up his yard, so now Makana had somewhere to hang his clothes instead of the odd nail hammered into the wall. They climbed to the upper deck where the roof had been fixed and the flimsy walls reinforced and linked together to form a structure that could hold at bay the cold wind that blew off the river in winter. Large double doors now separated the main office area from the open deck at the rear, which remained open most of the time. Cupboards and filing cabinets had taken the place of cardboard boxes for storing his archives and his files. And there was a new set of chairs along with the old one and the battered old sofa pushed against the wall which he often slept on. The window frames had been restored to working order and the glass replaced. The overall effect had a marvellous impact on his humour and the simple act of sitting in his big chair and contemplating the changes tended to improve his mood.
‘Mr Ragab,’ he ushered his guest, ‘please take a seat.’
There was something inherently awkward about Magdy Ragab. A creature of routine, it was possible he was uncomfortable in surroundings that were not familiar. In any case, he seemed not to register Makana’s words or perhaps did not feel inclined to sit. Either way, he remained standing in the middle of the room, fidgeting with his hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the distant bridge, where a procession of stick figures, now burnt silhouettes against the light of the setting sun, were making their way home alongside a slow-moving slurry of vehicles of every shape and size.
‘You know who I am?’
‘Yes, Mr Ragab, I know who you are.’
‘Of course you do.’ Ragab rolled his
shoulders as if trying to shake off his skin. Makana went on. The fact that the man felt ill at ease was perhaps not so surprising seeing as he was talking to someone who had been investigating him for the last week.
‘You are a highly respected lawyer. You have your own practice which employs three other lawyers, all junior to yourself, along with about a dozen administrative staff. You started out in criminal cases but now specialise in corporate law. You have a very good list of clients, within some of the top companies in the country. Bankers, industrialists, businessmen of one kind or another. You have contacts in the upper echelons of the military, as well as a good number of politicians and a few television personalities. They trust you because you work hard. You have a reputation for thoroughness and efficiency. You work long hours and you rarely take a full day off. You live alone with your wife Awatif, who is your second cousin on your mother’s side. You have no children . . .’
Ragab nodded his approval. ‘I inherited the practice from my uncle, on my mother’s side. He was also the one who gave me the Bentley. It’s a nineteen seventy-three model and still going strong. They used to make cars to last.’
Makana reached for his Cleopatras. Ragab watched him closely.
‘You have done a thorough job,’ Ragab went on. ‘My wife warned me that you were a rather strange character of dubious background, and that I should have nothing further to do with you, and frankly . . .’ He paused to allow his eyes to flicker quickly around his surroundings. ‘I have to say this is a rather more unconventional setting than I had expected.’
‘It grows on you,’ said Makana, blowing out a match.