by Louisa Young
‘He is here,’ said Sa’id. ‘With the mother. I don’t know where she is staying. My father is very upset – angry because Hakim is being very stupid, not so much because of her. He was stupid in London, now he is being stupid here. He is testing his strength, you know. Young man behaviour. Little brother. He wants to lock his horns with everybody and be his own man, but he has no judgement. He won’t listen.’
‘Have you talked to him?’
‘He knows better. He knows best. Knows everything. He has these new friends here and wants to make his own business. So this is what he must do. I told my father, let him do it, let him make his mistakes. But my father is upset too about the mother, but puts it all in the same hat and doesn’t know which thing is upsetting him … and how are you, habibti?’
‘Poor Abu Sa’id,’ I murmured, but, ‘No, poor Angelina,’ he said, and took my hand, and held it very carefully for a moment before giving it back. But I still didn’t tell him.
‘Angelina,’ he said.
No names, no details, I thought. I am alone here.
‘Habibti?’
‘The thing is this,’ I said to him. He didn’t take his eyes off me. ‘There is someone here, in Cairo.’
I found myself almost gagging. Where is the madness? Where is my courage? Where is my heart? ‘My enemy. He means me harm.’
He turned to concentrate on the shisha, stirring up the coals. When he had it glowing again he turned to me, looking at me over the mouthpiece. It is an unbearably thoughtful attitude.
‘It’s the one – he came back from the dead. The one who was dead. Isn’t.’ I now had to think on my feet, sort my truths from my half-truths. Sa’id just carried on smoking. ‘You spoke to him on the phone. He let me think he was dead. One of his tricks. He plays tricks. Once he kidnapped me. He has threatened me.’
Still no reaction.
‘He threatens me with love. He thinks I should be his – he believes that I am, and only my own bad judgement is keeping us from eternal happiness.’ I think that’s it. Something like that. He wants to fuck me and fuck me over; I want to kill him. That’s about right.
‘Egyptian man?’ he said.
‘English.’
‘Living in Cairo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Since when?’
‘Only a month or so.’
‘His name?’
I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Before, I couldn’t because it would be betraying Harry. Now, I didn’t know.
‘Not mine to reveal,’ I said. Hurting inside at what he must be thinking, that I don’t trust him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I mean – I don’t know his name. He had a different name when I knew him before.’ It was true. Harry hadn’t been able to tell me the new name – he didn’t know it himself. He would, he had said, try to find out. He hadn’t held out much hope. I suspected that he would much have preferred to get me picked up and deported for my own safety. Or guarded, or followed. Perhaps Interpol are watching as we speak. I suspected that he thought I would hate him, hate him if he tried to stop me. Perhaps I wished he had risked that.
‘Eddie,’ said Sa’id. ‘I wondered.’ Of course he hadn’t forgotten. Then, ‘You are asking a lot of trust,’ he said, and I was, and I wasn’t giving him any.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’
But he still didn’t push it. How long can I rest on his patience? It seems endless.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘it will begin. Tomorrow I am going to set it off. He will know tomorrow that I am here. I am to go to Banque Misr at the Nile Hilton to pick something up and …’
He raised one of his elegant eyebrows.
‘Money,’ I said. Oh fuck. ‘Lots of money.’
He raised the other.
‘Oh. Oh.’ I put my knuckle on my forehead and prayed for grace. ‘He said, if I didn’t pick up this lots of money he would give it to a bunch of fascist, racist – you know. Far-right bastards. Murder immigrants, beat up refugees, those people. You know.’
He knew. He laughed. For a moment I was afraid. But it was only admiration.
‘Clever man,’ he said. ‘Very clever.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Eh,’ said Sa’id, with a kind of shrug. ‘Brains versus virtue. Good fight.’
‘Sa’id,’ I murmured. ‘Please.’ We were talking quietly anyway but our voices grew lower and lower.
‘It is good to know what you are fighting,’ he said. And of course that’s true too.
‘But his brain is – what we might loosely call mad. He continues to trust me and expect things from me though I hate him, I’ve told him so, I’ve hit him over the head with a poker …’
‘Why?’ said Sa’id.
‘He was trying to …’ My stop was abrupt. Not a nice girl not wanting to utter words of shame, but a girl all too aware of her own shortcomings. I don’t want to talk about this because I don’t want to lie about it and I cannot tell the whole truth. I can’t tell Sa’id that. For all our deep pure and human sexual communion; for all the curious things we’ve cried to each other at moments of intensity. I don’t want him to know I did that.
But he thought he understood, and muttered something deeply admiring in Arabic, to do no doubt with virtue and honour and a good woman being above rubies, or some such, and I felt filthy. Looked in his beautiful eyes and felt filthy. Because of the lie. Because of not trusting him to understand, not giving him the choice, not not not.
But if I don’t give him the opportunity to … this is not going anywhere if I don’t.
Look what happened with Harry, when we didn’t tell each other.
I could tell Sa’id about how my designated driver had left me alone and drunk in the car, in the middle of traffic, because that was not my fault. I could tell him how seeking to avoid incrimination (because of the upcoming custody case with Jim) I had ended up beholden to Ben Cooper, who had set me to spy on Eddie, because although I did wrong I did it for the best of reasons. I could tell him about Janie. I wanted to tell him all that, fill in for him all the gaps in his knowledge of my sorrows and dramas. And I would tell him. But I cannot tell him that I fucked Eddie, because I don’t forgive myself that, and I cannot imagine anyone else forgiving me.
And I can’t say anything that might betray Harry, because if Harry and I can’t trust each other by now, after all the crap we’ve been through, what’s the point? Well, Harry and I do trust each other. I know that.
And if Sa’id and I can’t trust each other?
Oh God, not now. We are here now and this immediate problem must be dealt with now. And later I will see where that leaves us.
‘So you want men to be with you,’ Sa’id was saying. ‘Invisible men. All the time.’
‘No,’ I started to say, and then thought better of it and said, ‘Yes.’ Because I realised at that moment that he could arrange this. And I was glad. Oh yes I fucking was. He plucked a mobile phone out of his side pocket and dialled, and spoke – fast and guttural and quiet, I couldn’t follow – and said, ‘Tammam.’ OK. Done.
‘Gosh,’ I said, though it wasn’t quite as sinister and impressive as it would be at home, because here any man of any stature has a number of other men who will do things for him. Ask someone for a light and he’ll send a small boy to buy you a lighter. So it was just like that. Only a bit more so.
He made a small hands open and shoulder shrug gesture. The least you would do, under the circumstances. OK.
‘Are you a big man, then, Sa’id?’ I asked. I couldn’t not. What with the singing last night, and now this – I want to know who my lover is, and who he is in relation to this city. ‘Are you a big man?’
‘Don’t you know?’ he said, with an exceptionally naughty grin, at which an image of the body wrapped up inside his scarf and his Arab dignity brought heat to my skin again. Never mind covering up the beautiful woman because of the chaos she causes to men, what about the chaos the bea
utiful men cause to us? Even covered?
He saw it, and it pleased him, and he accepted it with an indulgent sideways look, and a murmured ‘malesh’, never mind, and took me back to business.
‘And then what?’ he said.
Ah yes. That again.
I shook my unclear head. ‘We’ll see,’ I said.
‘You just take the money and go home?’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
A tiny and immutable silence sat between us for a second; a moment in which we might have started to talk about what happens afterwards – but we didn’t. Later.
‘Then next time he thinks of another trick,’ continued Sa’id, as if the silence had never been.
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘And?’
‘He’s threatened Lily,’ I said, and my heart returned to me. A phrase from the Book of the Dead spun across my mind: ‘May my heart be with me in the house of hearts.’ And something about my mouth, and my two legs that I may walk therewith, and my arms and hands that I might overthrow my foe. I saw myself like a Pharaoh on a temple wall, smiting Eddie, holding bunches of tiny enemies by the hair and smiting them. I knew it wouldn’t be like that. And I said, ‘Let’s go and fetch it now, shall we?’ And I was ready to.
He looked at me, and I swear there was love in his eyes. I’ve seen it once or twice and I know what it looks like.
‘One moment,’ he said, stopping me, sounding for a moment for all the world like the trader again. ‘Where does he live?’
‘I don’t know. I thought maybe he would be at the Nile Hilton because he doesn’t know when or if I am coming, so perhaps he would need to be near. Anyway, more likely downtown than round here.’ Though why do I think that? What do I know about how that mad fool’s brain works?
‘What does he look like?’
‘Mid-fifties. Handsome. Posh. Grey hair. Though what do I know, perhaps he looks completely different now.’
‘Does he speak Arabic?’
‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past him.’
For once Sa’id failed to understand an English expression. I tried to explain it. Then a ferocious-looking gipsy woman in black appeared with a censer of burning frankincense which she proceeded to whirl in wild circles round first Sa’id’s head (he bent it acceptingly) and then mine, jerking it shortly and viciously also towards my belly. No, I told her. Not belly. Heart. I gestured my heart to make it clear. She narrowed her eyes and relocated her blessing, or whatever it was. No doubt she thought I wanted a lover not a baby; I just wanted my heart to know I was glad it was back. I wasn’t going to lose it again. It is easy to be lost in a land where there are no pictures of things, only patterns based on them. A land of interlocking patterns. I thanked her and gave her baksheesh, whereupon two small girls (one the antimony child from last night) appeared trying to sell me paper handkerchiefs, and we decided to leave.
Another phrase rose from the depths of my memory: ‘In Egypt one does things on impulse, because there is no rain to make one reflect.’
We ambled on up towards the hotel, both thinking I think of having the last shag of peaceful times before we moved into the next stage, dealing with Eddie, and then, only then, dealing with ourselves and what we were going to be to each other. But even as we stepped up to the threshold, before we even entered the dark shabby hall, even over the Khan el-Khalili smells of felafel frying, and coffee, and perfume oils, and shisha, came the unmistakable death-sweet scent of tuberoses.
I hissed to Sa’id: ‘Walk on. You don’t know me. Stay near.’ And cursed the fact that this street debouched into the square, with no alleys off before getting there. Should I go right down Sharia al-Muski? Or risk the open square and across on to the main road, and trust the crowd? I went right. I could hear Sa’id whistling behind me. ‘Enta ’Omri’. God bless him. I dived down al-Muizz l’din Allah, then right again at the olive man and again at the packets of braid to trim your gallabeyas with (avoiding the oil drum and the family of scrawny cats) into the little network leading to Mahmoud’s Fancy Dresses shop, everything for the belly dancer, which I hadn’t visited since 1989 and wasn’t going to visit now, but it was a part of the labyrinth with which I was familiar, and that was good enough for me.
Sa’id caught up with me in a dark piss-smelling corner under a piece of rope-bound wooden scaffolding holding up a crumbling wall.
‘What?’ he said.
‘The flowers.’
I held on to him.
‘What?’
‘I smelt tuberoses. Did you smell them?’
He put me back from him a little and looked at me, holding my head carefully, a hand on each cheek.
‘The hall of the hotel was full of tuberoses. That is the kind of thing he does. Just to … tweak my chain. Tell me how clever he is. He thinks it’s romantic. Or claims to think so. He … ach.’
‘So he knows where you stay.’
‘Where I was staying,’ I said.
We stood in silence a moment, a fool and her lover, hiding in the middle of the bloody bazaar.
‘So we go somewhere else.’
‘Yes.’
How the hell did he find me? He’s only been here a month and already it seems he has picked up the oriental habit of omniscience. He’s probably been handing out pictures. Probably half the musicians are in his pay. Fool to have gone to Paradise last night. I hadn’t thought he’d be so … more fool me.
TWENTY-ONE
Family Life
Then Sa’id and I had a row, because I wanted to go and hide somewhere in the market, over towards Bab Zuweila where I knew a seamstress who had never spoken to a man who was not an immediate family member, and in whose house I felt I would therefore be pretty discreet and safe, and he thought I would be utterly and completely visible if I went down there, the whole neighbourhood would be chatting about it if an Englishwoman suddenly appeared, and I should go somewhere like his other aunt in Maadi (which is kind of like Putney – where you go when you’re well-off, you get married at 28 and you aren’t intending to be very interesting ever again). Too many ex-pats, I said. You’ll blend right in, he said. Fuck that, I said. He didn’t like me swearing. I just looked at him and he saw what I feared – that he was becoming more foreign, more other to me, and so was I to him, and that we would no longer be able to operate together.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said.
And he looked at me, and he looked over his shoulder, drew me further into the doorway, wrapped his cloth around us, drew up my dress and quickly, impossibly, invisibly, fucked me. Even as I realised what he was doing, I yelled out. Couldn’t not. And gasped and clenched my teeth and came on his second thrust, and he on my contraction. And I quivered, and our clothing fell back into place and we were laughing, and shaking, and he looked at me as if to say, OK? A woman with a bundle on her head scurried by. Someone hawked, a donkey brayed. He brushed the dust from the back of my head and my arse where he had pushed me against the wall. My fears were dispelled. It had taken forty seconds, which is a long time in Khan el-Khalili and he was a damn fool.
‘Thank you,’ I said. He knew what I was thanking him for.
‘Afwan,’ he replied. Then ‘Don’t go to Maadi. Come to this aunt’s. Separate rooms. Very sexy. We will have to do it like this all the time.’
I laughed.
‘No, it’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Don’t do this fantasy mystery in the old city. It won’t work. I can’t help you down there. There is a diplomat living in my aunt’s block, so plenty of police around all the time, on the entrance, you know. It’s a nice big flat. A bit – well. You’ll see. Come. She has already invited you.’
‘What if the danger follows me there?’ I couldn’t bear it if my presence would bring harm.
‘Police,’ he said. ‘Me. Invisible men.’
It was tempting. Very tempting. Handing over half the problem. But I couldn’t. Couldn’t do it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t. It’s my thing, I must do it alone, I mus
t stay alone.’
‘Angelina,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You are not alone.’
I looked a query at him.
‘Sah?’ he said. Isn’t that right? ‘You are not alone. I am here.’
Yes. He was here.
I started to say something but he cut in.
‘Fact,’ he said. ‘Not in dispute. Not under your control. At the moment.’
Oh.
Well …
I couldn’t fault it, actually. I didn’t want to get rid of him, so yes, I was not alone.
Oh.
‘OK,’ I said.
He made a little obeisance with his head. To my understanding.
‘So let us go to Garden City.’
I thought a moment.
‘Give me the phone,’ I said, and I rang the Hussein. Karim the manager came on. Ah yes, madame. What can he do? Was there any message? Yes, madame, big flowers come for you. My heart sank that it was true, and rose again that I had been right – cleverer than him. Sadly Karim does not read English. I want to see the note.
‘Karim,’ I say. ‘Who brought the flowers?’
A boy. Oh well.
‘Karim,’ I say. ‘You are the best hotelier in Cairo and you are my friend and my brother.’ (I like to lay it on thick.) ‘But sadly I must leave the hotel because I am to go tonight to Upper Egypt. Yes, I’m sorry, such short notice. Can Shakira pack up my things for me and I will send for them? Yes, I’m sorry. Thank you. What is my bill? Please send it. Put in my passport too, and the note from the flowers. Thank you. No, please keep them. Put them in the restaurant. Of course. Yes I will be back soon, ensh’Allah. I am so sorry. Malesh, thank you. Thank you. Masalaamah.’
‘OK?’ I said to Sa’id.
He looked thoughtful.
‘OK,’ he said.
We took the back streets down towards Bab al-Futuh, clambering through the market, over goats, past the café accoutrements section where shisha cords hung in bundles like dead snakes, past piles of enormous tin trays, lanterns and funnels, coffee pots and some of the most beautiful mosques in the city. There was a football match on; Zamalek v el-Ahly, and every shop had its television. Every tailor in his hole in the mediaeval wall ironing in front of the football, every café crowded, every child scurrying with a tray of glasses of tea. The horses and donkeys were grazing off the backs of their wagons, the green neon strips coming on on the minarets, the dust of the day settling, the young men throwing down water for the last time, deftly missing our legs as they flung it. At Bab al-Futuh we sat for a while in the dusk under its nine-hundred-year-old arch. The northern City of the Dead stretched out to the east, dim and frightening. The living who live in the shadows among the tombs were watching the football too.