Absolution

by Paul E. Hardisty

  But surely, I began, and then stopped. Samira was crying. I reached out and put my arms around her. She let her head fall to my shoulder. I held her for a long time as she cried. Later, after the candle stub had burned down, she told me something of her past.

  Before she was widowed, Samira and her husband spent time working in one of the big tourist hotels in Cairo. She was a chambermaid, he a cleaner. They lived in a small apartment provided by the hotel company, for which they paid approximately a half of their low combined wage. Their boss also withheld one in every five pounds they earned as an ‘employment security fee’. There was barely enough left over to buy food and medicine for her eldest daughter, who since birth has been plagued by poor health. She and her husband took turns caring for their two small daughters. He worked nights, she long days. Occasionally one of the workers would complain about the poor wages and the dirty, cramped accommodation, the long hours. The response was always swift. The offending worker would be taken away by armed security guards, usually at night. By morning, replacements had arrived – there was no shortage of people waiting to fill vacant positions.

  Samira and her husband worked hard as their daughter’s health worsened, doing extra hours so they could pay for doctors and medicine. And then one day, after she had finished a long shift, Samira’s boss asked her to meet him in his office. He knew about her daughter’s illness and said he could help by increasing her salary. She couldn’t believe her luck. The raise he proposed was not big, but it would have made a real difference. Her husband would be pleased.

  Samira lowered her eyes, fell silent.

  I asked her to continue.

  She was crying now. No, she said to me. It is too shameful.

  I held her a while. Nothing is shameful, I said. Look at us. Despite all of this, you survive, you worship Allah. You are true of heart.

  Samira nodded, looked at me for a long time then continued.

  Happy about her pay increase, she smiled and thanked her boss. He was not so bad after all. He looked at her with a strange expression, almost as if he were sad, or disappointed somehow. Confused, she asked him what was wrong.

  He reached for her hand, took it in his. Oh, Samira, he said.

  She pulled her hand away, made to leave. But he grabbed her wrist, held her. She struggled, but he was a big man and very strong.

  That was when he told me, she said: no one gets something for nothing. Her face was hidden in darkness. He tried to touch me, she whispered. But I scratched him with my free hand and pushed him away. He touched his face and his fingers came away with blood. He hit me and I fell to the floor. He stood above me, cursing, and for a moment I thought he would hit me again. But then he pulled me to my feet, walked me to the door and told me to get out.

  I waited for Samira to continue, for I knew there was more. Outside, somewhere close by, two of the men who share our vacant, rubbish-strewn plot were arguing about something, their voices strained and rough. We huddled together in the darkness of her little shelter and listened to the anger and frustration in those voices, the raw aggression, until finally they moved off, and the din of the traffic on the corniche descended upon us again like a lullaby.

  Samira told me the rest of her story. The night of the incident with her boss, she had tried to cover up the bruise on her face with some makeup that she had borrowed from one of the single women, but her husband noticed it immediately. She told him that she had been reaching up into one of the cleaning cupboards and a tin of polish had fallen and hit her.

  The next day, when she reported for work as usual, she had expected to be dismissed immediately. But her boss said nothing. Days went by in the normal routine, and the few times she ran into her boss he acted as if nothing had happened. The raise she had been promised did not materialise though. She stayed quiet, did her work.

  And then one day, about two weeks after the incident, midway through her shift, her boss cornered her in the storeroom. He followed her, closed the door behind him, and pushed her back against one of the supply shelves. This time he was rougher. As he hit her he told her that he loved her, that she was beautiful and that he could not stop thinking about her. In desperation, she reached out behind her. Her hand closed around a plastic bottle of cleaning solution. She swung it at his face as hard as she could. The cheap plastic bottle exploded, showering them both with bleach. Her boss screamed, staggered back, clawing at his eyes. She ran.

  By the time she returned home, her husband had already left for the night shift. The next morning, he was found floating in the Nile. A terrible accident, the authorities called it. He had slipped and hit his head as he walked home in the dark, they said, fallen into the water and drowned. As a widow with two children to care for, she was immediately dismissed. She went to the police and told them her story. They laughed at her, sent her away. Soon her meagre savings were gone and she was forced onto the street. That was fifteen months ago.

  Yes, she said, I support The Lion. He is a good Muslim. I believe this in my heart. He speaks the truth in a country of lies. Is this not what the prophet commands? He cares for the people when those who rule are concerned only with their own wealth and power. He does not seek to hurt people, only to destroy the property of those who commit sacrilege. Is this not what Allah, blessed is his name, wishes?

  I am a journalist. There are always many sides to every story, and nothing is ever as clear as it seems. But, as my mother used to say, another wrong does not right the first. I did not say this to Samira. I bid my neighbour goodnight and returned to my shelter, as I do every night, to write to you and pray for Allah’s guidance.

  I cannot allow myself to become subsumed in the misery of others. I need to stay focused on my task. And yet, as each day goes by, I feel my sense of purpose draining away. Eugène and Hamid are gone, God care for their souls. Nothing I do can change this. And while the truth of how and why is important, surely the suffering of others – of those still living – is of greater importance. Is revenge, the search for justice, more important to me than compassion for those who must live in fear and want? Do I want you here, Claymore, simply so I can use you as an instrument of vengeance? These are the questions posed by my rational self. But that part of me cannot compete with my heart. I will find these people who took my husband and my son from me, and, God help me, I will have my revenge.

  This evening, I will meet the Kemetic.

  The Means to Absolution

  Welcome to Egypt, he says to the desert wind.

  This land of dead pharaohs and kings.

  Clay brushes the sand from his hand, blades the sweat from his temples and brow with the knuckle of his right thumb. He drops the folding shovel to the ground, looks up into the sky, blue like those eyes. Dust swirls in the distance. He’d always enjoyed digging, even in the army. The physical act of excavation, the slow but steady progress of the work. But not the graves. There had been far too many of those, filled by friends and enemies alike. And now, with one hand, it is so much harder.

  He drags Crowbar’s body across the sand and lets it slump into the hole. His friend, his mentor, the man who taught him everything he knows about killing, about life, lies face to the sky, eyes open, blank as the heavens. Clay kneels beside the hole, reaches down and pulls the wallet from Crowbar’s pocket. He flips through the pages, finds his SADF file photograph, the one taken shortly after his nineteenth birthday, before jump school, before Angola, before Crowbar, before everything. He slides the photograph from its plastic sleeve, looks at it a moment, and slips it into his pocket. Then he replaces the wallet, lays the Galil on Crowbar’s chest and folds his friend’s hands across the weapon. He places the frags beside him, the extra mags for the Galil, his ancient, stained copy of War and Peace, the pages held together by an elastic band. Then he stands and starts covering him over, pushing the sand and stone into the hole with his boots. The sand films Crowbar’s eyes, covers his forehead, and then he is gone.

  Clay looks down at the mound, considers s
peaking a few words, thinks about all the times this man has saved his life, has been there to guide him. That everything has now changed, he is certain. He heels a furrow in the sand.

  ‘Hit first, hit hard,’ he says aloud, only the distance to hear him.

  And then he hoists his pack onto his shoulders, wraps the end of his keffiyeh around his face, and starts walking towards where he knows the river will be.

  Soon, the wreck of the Cessna has disappeared behind him, folded into the landscape of low ridges and broad washes of stone and shale. He imagines the place in a few years, the sand drifted over everything, all trace of Crowbar’s grave and the plane that carried them here gone. The sun flares and burns above him, melts the land spread before him into shimmering lakes of metal. He walks on, letting the pain in his side flow through him, using it as energy. He is good at walking.

  Cairo is still eight hundred kilometres away. There is only one highway, one river, north. That is where they will be watching for him. Unless they think Clay and Crowbar are still travelling by plane. Travelling overland, away from the main road, or on the river, will take too long. He must gain the highway, and start north. And he must do it quickly.

  He thinks of Rania, alone, somewhere in that huge city of chaos. And while he knows she is capable and smart, and has been trained in evasion and survival, his anxiety swells. All he has is a telephone number, the one she gave him five days ago. Whose number is it? Will she be there when he can get to a phone and call? And why is she in Cairo anyway? She loses her husband and child, thinks she is being framed for their murder, skips the country and ends up in Egypt with the AB after her. It makes as much sense to him as so many of the other things she has done since he’s known her. He thinks, not for the first time, that she is the most enigmatic person he has ever met. Guided by forces he does not understand, her deductions are as mysterious to him as the nature of chance and the currents of time. And he realises, trudging through this country of empty horizons, that for as long as he might live, he will never know her as he wishes to. No man can ever truly know another. How can he hope to know a woman such as her?

  He walks out the day and through the night, pausing only to drink and eat, moving steadily east. His excretions are minimal, his body and the elements taking everything. The pain in his side ebbs away and then blooms again. Dawn comes. Stars fade, then disappear. The sun warms his face, pushes away the cold that has taken harbour inside him during the night.

  An hour before noon, he comes over a rise. An empty road stretches out before him, both horizons obscured in a haze of windblown dust. He can smell water. It makes the air heavier, thicker. He starts down the slope, stepping over the exposed strata of jutting siltstone, the darker fraying shales, the wind-polished ironstone. The rock crumbles under his boots, follows him down the slope. His eyes are on the thread of road. He knows from the charts that it will lead him to Aswan, and that there, he will be able to find a telephone.

  He quickens his pace. The road is there, a ribbon now. And to the south, a pair of yellow eyes shine through the heat haze. Headlights emerge, gleaming along the belt strap of tarmac. Clay breaks into a run, the long-strided lope that reminds him of the war, of the urgent days-long escapes from Angola, outnumbered and outgunned, moving steadily, the weight of their weapons and equipment pounding their shoulders and jarring their knees, hour after hour without respite, on through the night, Crowbar urging them on.

  But Crowbar isn’t here anymore. And never again will he be there to guide him, to give him reprieve, or praise for murder, or the means to absolution. From now, he will have to run and fight for himself. He alone will be responsible. And as the yards and the years fly beneath him, he knows that with Crowbar gone, his life might again be restored to whatever trajectory may originally have been intended. Just maybe.

  He reaches the road berm just as the vehicle approaches. It’s coming at speed, the headlights strobing across the tarmac. Clay clambers up to the verge, pulls the keffiyeh away from his face, and motions with his hand, up and down, the African way. The vehicle slows, flashes its headlights. It is an old bakkie, a Toyota by the looks of it, its bed loaded with sacks and logs. The man behind the wheel is wearing a white turban, Sudanese style. His skin is very dark. Clay can see him staring out through the open side window, the slipstream buffeting his perched sleeve. As he nears, his eyes widen, big and white in their sockets. And then the engine guns and the old pick-up gains speed again and flashes past him in a cloud of dust.

  Clay stands by the roadside and watches the vehicle disaggregate in the heat ghost shimmering up from the tarmac. He stands a moment, contemplates the nature of fear, the warnings born of self-preservation, the prejudices built from years of childhood urgings and adolescent scarring. He starts walking north. Towards Aswan. Towards Cairo.

  Hours pass. He covers at least fifteen kilometres along the road without seeing another vehicle. The sun burns heavy above him, its crazed, billion-year-old photons hammering his shoulders and the crown of his skull, burning the skin around his eyes, melting the tarmac under his feet. He wonders: when was the last time a stranger looked at him without that same fear, that same hollowed-out grin? It is as if they are sending x-rays through him, revealing not only spine and ribs and skull, but the tubercular shadow of the spirit that lives within him, that fast-twitch killing thing. The man in the bakkie saw it. And it terrified him.

  The sun is low in the sky when he hears another vehicle approaching. He stops, turns, looks back along the road. A big truck is approaching, wheels and body seemingly disconnected, floating on the heat. Clay stands, watches the twenty-two-wheeler take shape. As it nears, he pulls the keffiyeh from his head, throws it over his left shoulder to hide his arm, runs his hand through his hair, drops his pack, puts out his hand. He tries to smile. Tries to hide what is inside him.

  The truck slows, gears down, rolls to a stop a couple of car lengths away. Clay picks up his pack, walks towards it. The driver leans his head out of the side window. A big smile blooms under a greying moustache, wide cheekbones, ruffled dark hair.

  ‘Ezey’eka,’ says Clay, peering up at the driver. Hello. Egyptian slang.

  ‘Selam aleikum,’ says the driver. His voice is deep and rolling, like a rockfall.

  Clay gives the customary Arabic reply: And upon you, peace.

  ‘Aswan?’ says the driver.

  Clay smiles, gives a thumbs-up.

  The driver signals for him to climb in.

  They drive on in silence. After a while the driver reaches under his seat and produces a bottle, twists off the cap, and passes it to Clay.

  Clay takes it, reaches across his body with his right hand, looks at the label.

  ‘Jayid,’ says the driver, noticing. Good.

  Clay takes a swig, feels the harsh local liquor burn inside him. He winces a smile and passes it back. The driver takes a long drink, smiles that broad smile, and passes it back to Clay.

  His name is Mahmoud. He lives with his wife and four children on the outskirts of Luxor. He and his brother own this truck, and two others besides, and use them to run goods along the Nile and as far as Hurghada on the Red Sea, sometimes even down into Sudan, if the price is right. ‘Tourist?’ he asks.

  ‘Muhendis,’ says Clay. Engineer.

  The driver nods, does not ask the obvious question. ‘English?’

  ‘South African.’ He surprises himself, saying this, after all that has happened.

  Mahmoud glances down at Clay’s stump, at his left side still covered over with the keffiyeh, wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, seems to think about this a while. ‘Everywhere in Africa there are problems,’ he says.

  ‘Everywhere,’ says Clay. In his halting, ten-year-old’s Arabic, Clay thanks him for stopping, and asks if he is going farther north, perhaps up to Cairo.

  Mahmoud recaps the bottle and slides it back into its place on the floor. ‘Tonight, Luxor,’ he says. ‘The day after tomorrow, Cairo. We have a shipment of dates.’
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  ‘Please,’ says Clay. ‘If you can take me to Cairo, I have money.’

  Mahmoud smiles, waves his gear-shift hand at Clay. ‘No money, my South African friend. You will stay with my family in Luxor. We will eat, and drink together, and I will introduce you to my brother and my wife and my sons. You will rest a day, and then we will go to Cairo together.’

  Clay thanks the man and sits a long time contemplating this kindness as dark comes and the land of tombs falls into obscurity. After a while, his eyes close, and for a moment there is only the sound of the engine and the buffeting of the wind through the window.

  Clay jolts awake. The truck is slowing, air-braking towards some kind of roadblock. He realises that his keffiyeh has fallen away from his shoulder and arm, and that his bloody bandaged side is clearly visible.

  Mahmoud looks over at him, his face lit up red and blue. ‘Police,’ he says.

  Clay scans the ground on both sides. Two police cars are drawn up on each side of the road, stopping traffic in both directions. It looks routine, but he’s been through enough of these over the years to know that you can never tell. If the police see him, there will be questions. He has few good answers, and if they examine the contents of his bag, what they will find will be enough to put him in jail while they seek more credible ones.

  ‘Stop here, please, Mahmoud,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to cause you trouble.’

  Mahmoud stretches back his shoulders, then reaches his gear-shift hand behind his seat and flips a latch. ‘In there,’ he says. ‘Quickly.’

  The roadblock is still a few car lengths away. Clay looks back. It is some sort of sleeping compartment. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yallah,’ he says. Go.

  Clay clambers over the seat, pushes himself into the space, pulls his bag in after him. Mahmoud closes the compartment door and there is darkness.

  8th November 1997, Cairo, Egypt. 23:50 hrs