Dogstar Rising

by Parker Bilal

  ‘But the other monks suspected him.’

  ‘They were . . . suspicious of everyone. They couldn’t understand our relationship. We had something special, Antun and myself. A loyalty, an understanding. Nothing more.’

  ‘So, when the time came you offered to take him away with you.’

  Father Macarius nodded slowly. ‘In the end, when they came and closed us down it was a relief in a way. The distrust between us was unbearable. None of us knew if the others were killers.’ Macarius’ voice cracked. ‘I took the boy with me. I brought him here. Oh, Lord forgive me, I brought him here.’

  ‘Father, do you have any evidence that Antun is responsible for these recent killings?’

  ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’ Unable to sit still, Macarius got to his feet and started pacing. ‘Imagine if it is true, if I have protected him, all these years. My God, what have I done?’ Father Macarius faced the crucifix hanging on the wall above his head and closed his eyes. ‘I caused the death of those children.’

  ‘No!’

  The anguished cry echoed from the dark recesses on the far side of the room. Makana turned in time to see a shadow dart from where he had been hiding and head for the door.

  ‘Antun!’ Macarius cried. ‘Quick! We must catch him. He must have heard everything.’

  They made it out into the yard in time to see the figure vanish through the doorway on the far side leading to the darkened gym. The priest hurried over, pulling open the door and disappearing into the blackness within. Makana felt he was chasing a shadow.

  ‘That’s his room up there.’

  An enclosed storage space made of warped plywood ran along the far end of the room just under the roof, suspended over the punchbags and weights. A staircase materialised out of the gloom. Steps creaked ominously as they climbed. It led to a square hole. Makana stuck his head through and found himself inside a small room.

  ‘There used to be a bulb up here, but it seems to have gone.’ Father Macarius’ voice echoed out of the darkness. Makana stared hard in the direction it had come from. He could have been standing with his nose almost touching the wall and he wouldn’t have known. There was some scuffling and then the sound of a match being struck. Father Macarius’ face surfaced briefly in the halo of light from a candle. Then he turned and disappeared like a fish swimming into black water.

  Makana realised he had been standing next to a window of sorts, a hole cut into the plywood wall. In the turgid gloom below punchbags dangled like hanged men. The patched and grubby canvas ring stood out as an outcrop of dull ivory against all that darkness. The snap of wings made him look up sharply. Something. A pigeon? A bat?

  Father Macarius was moving deeper into the gloom. The stuttering flame cut ahead of them like a dying star. Makana felt the floor creak beneath him and realised that the whole structure around him was made of rotting old wood. The watery light picked out shadows scattered around the walls. Close up they resembled people huddled on the ground, then he realised they were old sacks stuffed with equipment, ripped gloves, torn singlets, stacks of paper flyers. Makana made his way over carefully, following Father Macarius’ voice, his heart stopping with each crack the floor gave, like brittle ice. There was no reply from within. The sides around the entrance were grubby from people’s hands. The light narrowed as the priest squeezed through another gap.

  ‘He’s been living up here for years . . . No one else ever comes up here.’ The voice tailed off.

  The next room was low and dark. Here, faint light filtered through an arched window at knee level which faced onto the street. Opaque glass covered with patches of old newspaper. A heavy musty smell in the air reminded him of a cow shed. The floor was cluttered with all manner of junk, bits and pieces that appeared to have been salvaged from the street. Out of the gloom floated wooden crates, milk churns, wheel rims, hubcaps, a soapstone sphinx minus its head, electric cables, car batteries, a heavy wooden tiller, and across one wall an array of bird cages awkwardly shaped from chicken wire and whittled struts. Makana was put in mind of Old Yunis’ rather more exotic menagerie. These birds were in a much poorer state and looked wretched for the most part: brown turtledoves, sharp-eyed pigeons with twisted wings, a yellow canary that stood out like a tiny sun floating in the darkness. There was an old mattress slung in one corner. A few cardboard boxes that seemed to contain Antun’s clothes. How could they let him live like this? More than sheltering the boy, Makana suspected that Macarius was hiding him from the world.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Father Macarius uttered the words in a low whisper, staring past him.

  Makana turned to look back. The wall through which they had just passed was covered with symbols and letters. The words were written in what he knew was Coptic. The stark images were like a religious vision. They appeared to have accumulated over many years. Painted onto the wood in such thick layers they resembled the icons Makana had seen in the church. Even in the low light he could make out vivid ochres and reds. Angels floated around the ceiling with golden wings and halos circling their heads. The images seemed to make up some kind of biblical mural. At the centre was the large figure Makana had seen before. A face surrounded by what appeared to be wings or flames. They tapered into points above and below. The angel with eight wings. The Seraph.

  Father Macarius gasped. He touched a hand to the wall gently. ‘Saint Macarius and the Seraph. Only here it is the winged angel alone. Antun identifies strongly with it. Here’ – he leaned closer – ‘you can see that it has Antun’s face.’

  Makana drew closer to the flame and the features of the slight, retiring boy he had seen in the gym floated out of the gleaming dark wood into the light.

  ‘He has lost his mind,’ said Father Macarius quietly, almost to himself. ‘All these years I have tried to protect him.’

  ‘What does the rest of this mean?’ Makana turned back to the mural. Father Macarius stirred himself from his thoughts and lifted the candle stub again. His hand was covered with melted wax.

  ‘This is the Book of Daniel. The angel precedes the coming of the apocalypse.’

  ‘The end of the world?’

  ‘Apo-kalypto in Greek signifies the lifting of the veil. The world is cleansed by fire. Truth is revealed. The age of dishonesty ended.’ Father Macarius leaned back, his eyes slowly reading the words scrawled on the walls. ‘The poor child sees himself as the angel heralding the apocalypse.’ Father Macarius stepped closer to the wall, raising his free hand as if to touch the angel floating above him. ‘And so he turned himself into the Seraph, the highest of the orders of angels, the Burning One.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He will cleanse the world with his flame. I still can’t believe he would kill anyone.’

  Makana lifted something from the floor. A cape of some sort. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  ‘Some of the fighters wear them to keep warm before they enter the ring in a tournament.’

  Something had been sewn onto the inside of the lining.

  ‘Feathers?’ asked Father Macarius incredulously.

  ‘Pigeon feathers by the look of it.’ They had been sewn into the cloth in bunches. Makana turned the cape around in the air. Tiny flashes of light revealed strips of silver foil, coils of tin that bobbed gently as if they were living creatures. The whole cape was covered in feathers, sewn with great care into a pattern.

  ‘The wings of an angel,’ murmured Father Macarius. ‘The Angel of Imbaba.’

  ‘And this?’

  Makana drew the priest’s attention to another figure which appeared to dominate one corner of the mural. It was drawn in charcoal and was the face of a man, with horns.

  ‘Satan. The devil.’

  It struck Makana that the drawing was more than that. In fact, it seemed to him that the face was actually a depiction of someone specific. A mixture of the mythological and the real. A focus for the pain that Antun had carried with him for years. The features were precise. Makana steppe
d back to get a better look.

  ‘You recognise who it is?’

  ‘Of course,’ muttered Father Macarius, his jaw hanging slack. ‘It’s Rocky.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Makana felt as though events were taking their own course. All he could do was follow the sequence set out for him. As he came out of the gym, he found himself surrounded by Ishaq and his boys. There seemed to be more of them this time and a number of them were carrying what looked like weapons: chains, sticks, iron bars.

  ‘What is going on?’

  ‘Why are you asking for me?’ Ishaq asked in response.

  ‘I need your help,’ Makana said. ‘Antun may have gone after Rocky. He might be in danger.’

  ‘Rocky? Why should we help him?’

  ‘Antun is the one who is in danger,’ said Makana.

  ‘You think Antun killed those children?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think it was Rocky.’ Makana looked the others over. ‘Also, I think he knows where a friend of mine is.’

  ‘You want us to go after Rocky?’

  ‘You know where to find him?’

  ‘We can’t go there. There are not enough of us.’

  Ishaq fell silent. Makana could feel the other boys twitching around him.

  ‘There’s a café called Al Madina, that’s where you’ll find him. If you go over there,’ Ishaq warned, ‘you’ll be in their territory. We can’t go into that area.’

  Al Madina? The same name that Bassam had mentioned. ‘Who are they?’ he asked. Suddenly all of them were talking at once.

  ‘They are the ones who are fighting us.’

  ‘They want to drive us out of here and burn the church to the ground.’

  ‘They have protection.’

  ‘The police won’t touch them.’

  ‘Just as they won’t touch Rocky.’

  ‘He’s one of them.’

  It added to the theory that the violence towards the Copts was being coordinated in some way. If Rocky was on the payroll of the security forces as a hired thug that would explain why he was given free rein to act with impunity. He was a small cog in a much larger wheel. By turning a blind eye to his activities they were ensuring that the terror continued. In the frenetic agitation he felt around him Makana sensed that something was about to break.

  ‘You’re preparing for an attack?’ Makana asked.

  ‘They said they would come tonight.’

  ‘They are saying Antun is the one who killed those boys,’ explained Ishaq. ‘It’s just an excuse. They are coming for the church.’

  ‘I still need to find Rocky,’ Makana insisted. Heads were being shaken and eyes turned away. They were so wrapped up in their own fury nothing else could deflect them. It put him in mind of Ghalib Samsara. Where did that fury come from? Makana thought about the dogstar’s long journey through the darkness, of the desperation and madness that traditionally precedes its reappearance on the horizon.

  ‘You’re on your own,’ said one. ‘We have to stay here.’

  ‘They are blocking the roads,’ said another. ‘There’s no way through from this side.’

  ‘We can go round from the other side by car,’ Makana suggested.

  Finally, with a reluctant shrug, Ishaq stepped forward.

  ‘I’ll show you the way.’

  Makana waved Sindbad over. As the battered Datsun ground its way towards him, he thought it was a good idea to get going before Ishaq thought the matter through too carefully and changed his mind, but Ishaq dropped into the back seat and stared idly out at the street.

  ‘It all just got out of hand. These murders . . .’ Ishaq shook his head. ‘It’s a war out there.’

  ‘Why is it people keep talking about war as though it was inevitable?’ Makana asked.

  ‘What would you know about it?’

  ‘Watch your mouth, boy!’ interjected Sindbad.

  ‘It’s all right, Sindbad.’

  ‘Hadir, ya effendi.’

  ‘Sindbad,’ Ishaq leaned over from the back seat. ‘I knew I’d seen your face before. You used to box, didn’t you? Heavyweight, right?’

  Sindbad mumbled something under his breath.

  ‘Maybe you have all the protection you need, after all,’ Ishaq said, sitting back.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Makana.

  They drove back towards the riverside and sank into a mass of dense traffic, as if the wheels were churning through thick mud. At the Kit Kat roundabout they turned in again and the streets grew narrow and more crowded as the number of pedestrians swelled. They flooded across the road, reducing the car’s progress to a snail’s pace. A camel being led by the nose overtook them. Loping gracefully along, oblivious to the absurdity of its surroundings. Horns beeped in harmonious disarray while figures wandered back and forth through the headlight beams like a herd of sleepwalkers. Ishaq leaned over the front seat and pointed.

  ‘Take the next left. It’s on the next corner. You can see it.’

  ‘Take him back to the gym,’ Makana said to Sindbad as he got out of the car. ‘I’ll walk from here, then come back and wait here for me.’ To Ishaq he said, ‘Try and find Antun. If you do, take him to Father Macarius.’

  As the Datsun screeched away, Makana stumbled off over the usual debris of shattered bricks and shredded nylon bags. The street was dark and uneven. A discarded watermelon rind smiled up at him from the dirt. The asphalt, if there ever had been any, had long since been buried beneath layers of mud and rubbish. It had been broken up and ground down by lorries and horse carts and every manner of human transport and footwear, and never replaced. No one really paid much care to an area like this. The politicians and their loved ones didn’t live nearby and few tourists ever ventured here. The houses were unadorned. Ragged scraps of light appeared here and there announcing an opening in a wall was a shop of some kind. Children scampered by. A group of boys were kicking an old football about under a solitary lamppost. Spurts of dust flew up around them. An uneven goal had been drawn on the wall with a stick of charcoal. You could barely see the wall, let alone the goal. Training for a generation of blind footballers.

  The café was closed. The name was painted in letters so feint you had to look twice to see them. The metal doors were shuttered and bolted, sealed with a heavy padlock. It was the same hole-in-the-wall café where he had left a ten-pound note for the boy. The same torn note that had been nailed to Sami’s hand. There was no sign of the Omda with the handlebar moustache.

  The building where Rocky lived was right across the street. Could Rania be here? Makana had a sense that he was being watched as he crossed and ducked quickly through the open doorway. The threshold was like a heavy curtain, on the other side of which was pitch blackness. The glow from the street behind him revealed only the foot of the narrow stairwell. Up above him faint threads of light filtered under doorways. It was hot and airless in there. Landlords regularly overstepped the building regulations, discarding common sense as they did so. Thus a four-storey building would be pushed up to seven, nine or eleven floors even, as if trying to push the limits of human stupidity, or break the world record for precarious living. Every now and then the earth would give a slight tremor to remind people of their humble place in the scheme of things. Whole buildings came down, walls crumbling as if they were made of brittle clay. Men, women and children crushed in their beds. There would be the usual cries for justice and the blame would be passed, and gradually things would return to normal and people would sleep peacefully again, until the next tremor. At a small window on the second floor he paused and put his head to the opening and breathed deeply. Outside, an eerie combination of shadows and streetlights painted the street in squares of light and dark. Turning back, Makana flicked the wheel of his disposable lighter to reveal graffiti left by tomb raiders: apartment numbers and the names of occupants scratched on the wall with charcoal. The sounds of the street fell away. The excited chatter of televisions played obliviously behind closed doors. People talk
ing, mothers calling to children, an argument between man and wife.

  Above him a door opened and closed abruptly. Makana heard the sound of someone moving upwards in the darkness and then stop. For a time there was nothing but the muted sounds of life from the apartments around him. He waited, sensing that the person above him was waiting for him to do something, but what? Slowly he took a step upwards, and then another, feeling his way as carefully and as quietly as possible. There was no inside edge to the stairwell, nothing to stop him falling if he put a foot wrong. He stopped and pressed himself back against the wall as something swooped down on him. A heavy object struck the edge of the staircase just above his head. There was a crash as it exploded, showering him with bright dust and small chunks of concrete. Then he could hear the sound of someone running upwards and he began to move again, this time with less caution. With one hand scraping along the wall, he felt his way, a blind man racing through a tunnel. His eyes were adjusting to the dark and he could make out a faint glow from high up where he guessed the stairs gave onto the roof. Makana moved quickly, climbing the last three flights as fast as he could, stumbling a couple of times, scraping his hands and banging his knee painfully, until finally the dark enclosed space gave way to the open air.

  Breathing heavily, Makana stepped cautiously up onto the roof. It was a relief to be out of the choking confines of the stairwell and out into the cool night air. He looked around him but could see nothing but shadows. There was no light up there save for the faint glow that filtered up from the street and surrounding buildings.

  The stairs carried on up into the sky, a hopeful, if crooked chart of the building owner’s projected ambitions, aimed at the stars and cut off abruptly in mid-air. He circled around trying to avoid tripping over the clutter of junk: television antennae, buckets and planks of wood, old car wheels, broken bicycles, chicken wire, paint hardened in pots, bags of cement turned to solid rock by the rains. Like a distant oasis the skyline of downtown Cairo glowed in the distance, announcing the eternal life of neon-strip signs championing airline logos, cigarettes, soft drinks. Modern idols begging for worship. Beyond lay the soft domes and lean Ottoman minarets of the citadel which floated above the city in a bowl of light, like a looming spacecraft from another age.