Dogstar Rising

by Parker Bilal

  ‘I think so.’

  Sindbad tapped the wheel gently, the way you might pet a cat with a furious and unpredictable temper. ‘Actually, I bought it from my brother-in-law who is always in trouble with money. I was doing him a favour.’

  ‘I see,’ said Makana. It explained a lot. ‘So now you’re a free agent.’

  ‘Al Hamdoulilah!’

  ‘Do you have other people to help you, or do you work alone?’

  ‘Just me, Effendim.’

  ‘Then how do you manage to work twenty-four hours a day?’

  A cloud descended over Sindbad’s face. ‘I have a wife and five children. When the Lord gives you a life like that he doesn’t intend for you to sleep.’

  The traffic was the usual snarl of hot metal and smoke, but Sindbad had a good eye. Restlessly grinding the gearstick and twisting the wheel, he darted into openings, carving a swift line through the clogged obstructions. Before long they were pulling up under the twisted eucalyptus tree that leaned precariously out over the riverbank. Down below the awama waited, as regal as an emissary from a long-forgotten kingdom.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ Makana asked, as he climbed out.

  ‘I am at your service, ya basha. All you have to do is call.’

  Makana watched the black-and-white taxi clatter away under a cloud of exhaust, then he turned and made his way down the path towards the river. At this time of day, as evening was falling, the awama seemed to lose all her blemishes and defects. As the light grew faint, the houseboat seemed to loom out of the shadows in all her former glory, or at least it seemed that way to Makana.

  A large, untidy man missing most of his front teeth stood in the doorway of Umm Ali’s hut chewing a piece of sugar cane. This was Bassam, her useless brother, who had turned up about a month ago and seemed in no hurry to return to the home village in the Delta. The story was that his wife had left him. ‘First sensible thing that woman has done in her life.’ Umm Ali was not the type to mince her words. ‘Now if only she had poisoned him before she left . . .’

  Spitting a wad of chewed-up pulp on the ground, Bassam wagged a finger as Makana went by. ‘And don’t forget about the rent this month. My sister is too soft, but don’t think you can play those games with me.’ The finger disappeared inside his mouth to fish out something caught between his few remaining teeth.

  ‘Why doesn’t he just go home?’ Aziza, Umm Ali’s youngest daughter, lay sprawled on Makana’s sofa where she regularly hid when she wanted to get away. Locking the place was a waste of time. He had the idea that Aziza climbed along and through the window on the riverside. It didn’t matter how carefully he locked the shutters, she still managed to get in without any trouble at all. Now she was reading one of his books, or pretending to do so. The cross-eyed Aziza was the sharpest tool in the box. Her voluptuous elder sister was as slovenly as she was lazy and wouldn’t lift a finger if she wasn’t forced to. And at the ripe old age of eleven, her little brother Saif was already a veteran delinquent. He’d already been through Makana’s belongings and deemed there to be nothing worth his time to be found. Aziza guarded the place with a fierce sense of propriety. She cleaned up without being asked. In return Makana would slip her some money when her mother and siblings were not looking.

  ‘If a stone accidentally fell on his stupid head while he was sleeping, would I go to prison?’

  ‘He’s your uncle. He’s family.’

  ‘There’s no law that says you can’t hate your family.’

  Makana had to concede she had a point. No doubt Bassam would sooner or later get bored with life on the riverbank and decide to go home to get his wife back, or, failing that, find some other idiot to marry him.

  ‘He says we should throw you out and move in here ourselves.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Will you kill him now?’ Aziza sat up eagerly. Makana shook his head as he went into the kitchen to make coffee.

  ‘Go home. I have work to do.’

  Grudgingly, she got to her feet and walked towards the door. ‘Well, if you find me dead tomorrow don’t come complaining to me.’

  Makana listened to her go, singing to herself softly, the wooden boards creaking under her feet. It was impossible for him to look at her and not think of his own daughter, Nasra. How old would she have been now?

  Hardly a day went by when he didn’t think back to that night on the bridge. He played it out in his mind over and over. It seemed to him that he was compelled to keep asking the same questions again and again. Their lives had been in danger. There had been no other option but to flee, he knew that. But could he have played it differently? And if he had done, would they still be alive now? These were questions to which he knew he would never find answers.

  The last rays of light were draining from the sky as he climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Makana threw off his jacket and lit a cigarette before settling down into the old armchair to watch the sun going down. This was his favourite time, when the fury of the day had worn itself out and the world seemed to roll onto its back and breathe a sigh of relief before the evening started in earnest. Up on the bridge the familiar honking of horns heralded the sunset, punctuated by the occasional bleating of a musical interlude on a siren. It was always impossible to tell the jokers from the real thing, an ambulance on a hopeless mission to get through the gridlock. He finished his coffee and lit his second cigarette as he turned his attention to the letter Faragalla had given him.

  In another life one might have resorted to sophisticated forensic techniques to search for fingerprints, or even DNA identification, but no such technical option was open to him. There was also no telling how useful it would be since he had no idea how many people had already touched the letter. Which meant, finally, that the only clues he could hope to find would be in the content of the letter itself. By now the light had almost gone. He moved over to the large table that stretched along one wall and constituted his office. Switching on the desk lamp he rummaged around in a drawer for a large magnifying glass. The letter was clearly printed not on a simple office printer but with ink and typeface. Putting aside the magnifying glass Makana dug about for a copy of the Quran and looked up Sura number 53: Surat al-Nejm. The Star. Here he read:

  The Unbelievers follow vain conjectures and the whims of their own souls, although the guidance of their Lord has long since come to them.

  Have you considered him who turns his back upon the Faith, giving little at first and then nothing at all? Does he know, and can he see, what is hidden?

  The stack of reference books and encyclopaedias he had accumulated over the years from a variety of bookshops and the second-hand stalls around Ezbekieh market now formed a pillar by the side of the table. Here he learned that the star in the Quranic text referred to Sirius, the brightest fixed star in the sky, that it was the first to appear, which explained its Arabic name, al-Shiara, which meant ‘The Leader’.

  In Ancient Egypt the star was known as Sothis or Sopdet and was associated with Anubis, the god who appears at times with the head of a jackal, at others with that of a dog. It was found on the tombs of the dead and guarded the way into the Underworld. This explained its Latin name, Canis major, or the Dogstar. Sothis represented change. The regeneration of the earth. The solar year began with the first appearance of the Dogstar on the eastern horizon shortly before sunrise and marked the start of the annual floods, which were vital to the country’s agriculture. Its absence from the sky was believed to coincide with Osiris’ journey through the Land of the Dead and so it was associated with the resurrection of the deceased. To the Greeks the star was a gate into hell, out of which fire poured – the cause of anxiety in the so-called dog days prior to the flood, when the rising heat drove people to madness.

  Makana pushed the books aside finally and lit another cigarette. Astronomy. Ancient Egyptians. He got to his feet and went over to the railing. He felt unsettled and couldn’t work out why. The lights of Zamalek swirled in the water at his feet
. The sound of cheerful music came from a small boat that sailed by below. The passengers were strobe-lit by the disco beat pulsating through a string of lights whose colour reverberated against the dark water. When they spotted him the young men and women began to wave and cheer wildly. If it went on like this, Makana thought, he would be in danger of becoming a landmark.

  One line in the Sura kept turning over in his head: Does he know, and can he see, what is hidden?

  Chapter Four

  Arwa was wearing a gold lamé hijab covered in palm trees in shimmering Islamic green. Otherwise the Blue Ibis offices looked pretty much the same. The same air of dysfunctional chaos reigned as on the previous day. Telephones rang unanswered; queries were yelled across the room to no response; people appeared at the door and then eventually left when no one attended to them. It was hard to comprehend that the Blue Ibis actually managed to function at all.

  ‘Your people in Quseir,’ Arwa cupped the mouthpiece of the telephone as she called across to Wael. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘What people?’ Wael didn’t even bother to lift his feet down from the desk in front of him.

  ‘There was supposed to be a bus to pick them up yesterday.’

  ‘Who is that on the phone?’

  ‘The hotel.’ The receiver was dropped on the desk as she went back to typing a letter. ‘They want to know what happened to them.’

  ‘How should I know?’ Wael held his hands up in the air.

  ‘Just speak to them, will you?’

  ‘Is it always like this?’ Makana asked as Meera went by on her way to the filing cabinet next to him. She lifted her shoulders. It was more like a gesture of resignation than an answer. She pointed out a table in the corner.

  ‘That’s your desk.’

  No sooner had he sat down than a thickening cloud of cloying scent settled over him and he looked up to see Arwa approaching with an armful of files.

  ‘Here we were expecting you to be setting an example for us, and you sit there waiting for work to be brought to you?’ She dumped the heap of folders in front of him and flipped the first one open to reveal a sheet of accounts. ‘What matters is the final figure at the bottom. Understand? The boss never looks any further. As long as the final tally shows a profit you don’t have to worry.’

  Makana raised his eyebrows. ‘Even if it doesn’t match the receipts?’

  The crown of palms shook. ‘Don’t even think about trying to straighten it out. The last person who tried is buried under the pyramids. All that matters,’ she went on, enunciating every word slowly, as if addressing an idiot, ‘is that the two figures match. That is all you have to do. A small child could manage it.’ She swivelled on her heels and was about to march away when a thought occurred. ‘I know nothing about improving efficiency, or management, but if the boss sees you lazing around you’ll be fired before you even have time to settle in.’ Arwa clucked at her own humour. ‘Now that might improve our situation.’ She marched off before he had time to respond.

  ‘I got the same lecture when I first started here,’ Meera said. ‘The mess goes back as far as you can imagine and many of the figures are inaccurate or illegible.’

  Intrigued, Makana went through the heap of files trying to get an idea of how this firm managed to operate. The problem was that nothing really matched. Even the names of places seemed to vary. Makana didn’t need to be a trained accountant to understand that the Blue Ibis administrative system was in such disarray it was hard to understand how a company could manage to function in such a state of disorder. Money was seeping out of the company like a leaky boat. Nobody really had any idea how much came in or went out. There was a trail of unfamiliar names too, the mention of which elicited only blank looks, or remarks like ‘Oh, she doesn’t work here any more’ or ‘He left years ago!’ The high turnover of employees might also have explained the variety of filing methods. Each new person appeared to have brought their own system with them which would then be abandoned when it came time for them to leave. Some were alphabetical, others numerical, some by year, others by month, one was even based on country of origin. And someone had come up with an innovative method of classifying tourists according to their dietary requests. Makana’s head was spinning when he looked up to find Yousef standing in front of him wearing a thin, cunning smile.

  ‘So, how are you getting on?’

  ‘Well, you know. It takes time to get the measure of things.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll bet it does.’ Perching himself on the corner of Makana’s desk, Yousef produced a green-and-white packet of LM menthol cigarettes from his breast pocket and shook one out. Makana declined, preferring his own Cleopatras. Yousef then lit both of them with a gold lighter.

  ‘So you’re here to clean things up for us, eh?’

  ‘Sayyid Faragalla thought I might be able to help.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’

  Yousef wore a gold chain around his neck that matched the watch on his wrist. There was something about him that was hard and cheap. It made you want to count your fingers after shaking hands. But he was also at ease. Makana had met his type before. He was used to giving orders, to being in charge.

  ‘Maybe you want to take a break from all that?’

  ‘I could do, I suppose.’ Makana stretched his arms above his head.

  ‘I have an errand to run. I thought maybe you could help me. Get some fresh air.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Nobody in the room seemed to pay any notice. On the reception desk, Meera’s attention was focussed firmly on the typewriter in front of her. As they started to descend the stairs, Yousef turned to him.

  ‘You don’t have to play games with me. Faragalla told me you just got out of prison.’

  ‘It was a misunderstanding,’ Makana improvised, wondering what else Faragalla might have dreamed up.

  ‘It always is,’ Yousef said knowingly. ‘I understand you are distantly related to him?’

  ‘A distant cousin, on his mother’s side.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had relatives abroad.’ Yousef paused, then dismissed the matter. ‘Still, you learn something new every day.’ He drew on his cigarette, examining Makana carefully. ‘You can drive, right? I need someone who can take me around.’

  ‘I thought Faragalla wanted me to work here?’

  ‘You’ll find out that Faragalla leaves most decisions to me. Come on.’

  Yousef led the way downstairs and out into a side street where an Opel Rekord, the brown colour of rotting bananas, was parked. The cars were all tightly packed in a row, nose to tail all the way down the street. A couple of street boys, no more than twelve years old, ran up and started rolling the cars back to allow them to get out. Yousef called them over and handed them each a few crumpled notes.

  ‘You were in the army?’

  ‘I did my military service,’ Makana replied, which was true. He omitted the part about going from the army into the police.

  ‘I did fifteen years in the Military Police. It does something to a man, don’t you think?’ Yousef tossed the car keys across to Makana. ‘You drive.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ll tell you on the way.’

  The traffic was heavy. When a car cut in front of them Yousef leaned out of the window to hurl insults at the driver before slumping into his seat, overcome by a dark, morose mood.

  ‘I hate this city. People here are as dumb as shit.’

  ‘It’s not all that different from anywhere else.’

  Yousef snorted and examined Makana with a wary eye. ‘What did you do to get yourself locked up?’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about it, if it’s all the same.’

  ‘Sure, I understand.’ Yousef smirked. ‘I don’t like to judge people.’ He directed Makana down Ghamhouria Street to park in front of a small hotel.

  ‘I’ll get into trouble if I stay here.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Yousef grinned, revealing a gold eye tooth, ‘everyone round here knows
me.’

  Not only did they know Yousef, they knew his car. Makana sat behind the wheel and watched uniformed policemen walk by as if the Opel were invisible. After that they toured more of the city’s hotels, coming to a close at the Sheraton in Dokki. This time, Makana watched Yousef disappear through the door, waited a moment, and followed him inside.

  The lobby was a vast marble hall broken by partitions and thick pillars. There were lounge areas, a restaurant and café. Sinking into a chair behind a screen, Makana picked up a discarded newspaper from the table. For a moment he thought he had lost Yousef completely, and then he reappeared on the other side of the reception area where he was shaking hands with a man in a dull brown suit bearing a name tag in case he forgot who he was.

  The paper contained a story by Sami Barakat on the murders in Imbaba. Another body had been found. Makana had known Sami for a number of years now, ever since he had been investigating the disappearance of footballer Adil Romario. Since then they had become friends. Sami was one of a small number of journalists who was openly critical of the government.

  Sami’s article gave the impression there was more to the case of the murdered boys than was obvious. The latest victim had been badly disfigured. Sami gave few details, no doubt at the request of the police investigators. A number of factors pointed to the possibility that the young boy had been living rough, one of the thousands of homeless children eking out an existence on the streets. This, Sami suggested, was one reason so few resources were being allocated to the case. The child’s body showed signs of extensive torture over a long period of time. ‘All the evidence points to someone exploiting these children for their own foul purposes,’ Sami concluded. ‘There are those who appear to want to use these killings to spread irresponsible talk of rituals and stir the flames of sectarian hatred.’

  ‘Makana, isn’t it?’