Desiring Cairo

by Louisa Young

He put his head on one side and looked down at me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You idiot. Get in the car.’ And we got in the car and after five minutes or so we started laughing, and laughing, and had to pull over again. Relief. For the time being.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Give Me Your Hands

  Back at Madame Amina’s, over coffee, behind green shutters, under the slowly flapping fan, Sa’id began to tell me what he thought about Eddie. But then his mother walked in.

  I nearly laughed. She was wearing a greenish suit. A woman’s suit, made out of some soft cloth, a baggy elegant suit, but still a greenish suit. Just the same shade. But I didn’t laugh.

  Sa’id was looking up at her. She was standing in the middle of the room, stock still at the place she’d reached at the moment she’d realised we were there.

  I jumped up and muttered something about coffee and tried to get away, but Sa’id was annoyed at that and gestured me to sit still and shut up. So I did.

  He continued to stare at her. And she at him. And I at each of them in turn. How do they look to each other after so long? I tried to imagine not seeing Lily for ten years. Tried to remember not having seen Harry for ten years. How could Sarah not take her handsome son in her arms? How can they keep this up?

  Then he stood and, speaking in Arabic, said to her, ‘The coffee is fresh. Have some.’ And left the room.

  She sat where he had been sitting. Drank the coffee I had poured for him.

  ‘Is he coming back?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She flung her head against the back of the couch and sighed, long and hard. I felt for her, but there was nothing I could say, so I didn’t say it. Instead I went to his room where he was lying on his bed, and I sat on the end and didn’t say anything there either.

  After a while he got up and locked the door, and pulled me down with him on the bed, and we lay there together, on our backs, tucked tight, and after a while we fell asleep, and after a while I got up again and went to my room and slept there, till dusk. The tuberoses were still in the hall and the smell seeped through.

  Sarah woke me. She had a note for me from Hakim who, she said, had been in and out like a whirlwind.

  ‘He left you this,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it’s about. Wouldn’t let me wake you till he’d gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’ I said, dopey with daytime sleep.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He was upset.’

  I took the note, scribbled in Arabic. Couldn’t really read it. I could only make out one word, written in English letters. François.

  What the fuck?

  ‘What does it say?’ I said, tearing off my nightshirt and flinging on all-purpose dust-coloured baggy trousers and long shirt, for travelling in hot dusty places.

  ‘It says that François has further plans, knows you have left the Hotel el Hussein but does not know you are here, and that you should stay put, he is going to see him and sort it out.’

  What the fucking fuck?

  ‘What’s it about?’ she asked. Smelling my adrenalin.

  ‘A mad cunt with tuberoses,’ I said. What plans? Sort out what?

  Hakim.

  Businessman teaching him things.

  Shit.

  What plans?

  I went to wake Sa’id. He was up, showering. He came out from the bathroom wet and beautiful in a gallabeya the colour of unpolished lapis. There is a word: tarab. It means, roughly, the way music makes you feel. It comes to mind. Even now. There is probably a word in Arabic for the feeling in the small of your back inspired by the sight of your lover’s wet hair.

  ‘We have to go out,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  I showed him the note. His hair dripped on it as he read it.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. But I thought – the new business contacts, the people you don’t like … If he’s working with Eddie then …’

  ‘Of course.’ Of course he said of course. Of course he takes it all in and is a step or two beyond. ‘But now what?’

  ‘Find him?’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Eddie –’ I said.

  ‘What do you fear?’ he said. Calmly.

  ‘That Eddie will hurt Hakim if Hakim turns against him.’

  ‘Aiwa,’ he said. ‘But he will hurt you more. And we don’t know where they are. So?’

  Good point. We hadn’t a clue.

  ‘Eddie mentioned some places. The Semiramis, Justine, Arabesque …’

  ‘Do you want to tour Cairo in case he is in one of these places?’

  I thought about it. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s stupid, but we can’t leave it. It’s all we have.’ I can’t leave Hakim in my danger.

  He looked at me quizzically. ‘You want to go where Eddie is?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ I said. ‘But if Hakim …’

  ‘He was very upset,’ said Sarah.

  Sa’id ignored her.

  ‘Sort it out,’ said Sa’id. ‘Oh God, the little brother’s idea of sorting things out. OK, we’ll go and find him.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Neither of you are coming,’ said Sa’id.

  ‘Yes we are,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay in the car, I’ll go in disguise, but I’m coming.’

  ‘So am I,’ said Sarah.

  ‘She should come,’ I said. ‘She can ask things that you can’t without arousing suspicion. Eddie won’t recognise her. She can play the dumb tourist.’

  ‘English women,’ said Sa’id, and laughed. Bitterly. He went to get dressed.

  I thought about disguise and though it seemed stupid it also seemed sensible. Perhaps Madame Amina would have a burka or something. She still moves like a woman who expects to be wearing a scarf, even though she isn’t. She never extends her left arm; it’s still holding some piece of cloth in place next to her body, the habit (ha!) of a lifetime.

  For God’s sake, I can’t wear a burka to a nightclub. A burka could make me look like any woman from further east and a little more devout than Egypt, but not like someone who would be let into the Semiramis. I shall just put on something long and wrap a scarf round myself.

  I thought about the scarves I had brought. (Of course I had scarves. You don’t not have, in Cairo.) They weren’t big enough – of course I had scarves, but small, or fine, or easy scarves. I am European.

  I went to Sa’id’s room. ‘Lend me your white scarf,’ I said. Years ago in Morocco I had accepted the loan of a man’s scarf on a chilly night and he had taken it as a sexual acceptance. Oh well.

  He passed it to me, the scarf within which we had fucked, and wrapped it round my head and shoulders like a cage. I let it hold me, knowing it could grant me invisibility, freedom. I wanted him to kiss me but he didn’t.

  *

  First we went to the Nile Hilton. Sarah enquired at the desk for Monsieur du Berry; no, monsieur was no longer staying in the hotel. Sa’id called a few other swanky hotels, the Sheraton, Intercontinental, the Ramses Hilton. At the Semiramis he wondered if M. du Berry’s booking for tonight at the nightclub could be increased to a table for eight. Bingo! Increased it was. So that was one thing we knew.

  Then we went to Arabesque, and on to Justine and Aubergine in Zamalek, to all the places we could think of where an Eddie might go. At each place Sarah went in to look. It was stupid. We would have to wait. So we parked up outside the Semiramis and sat. Sa’id and Sarah had still not addressed each other directly. Like it or lump it I was in the middle. Just sitting in the car in the warm night, it became ridiculous. But I couldn’t say anything.

  Sa’id sent a small boy for a shisha, and had it brought to the car. Two tourist police in their white uniforms eyed him. Sarah went and smiled at them. They asked her if she spoke Arabic. Shwoyya shwoyya, she said, just a little, which is what a tourist would say, not what the academic English Arabist would say. She was playing her role. They smiled at her and said Welcome Cairo. Shukran, she said. Afwan, they
said. Where you from. And all that.

  Time passed slowly. And we didn’t know where Hakim was. Sa’id rang home. No sign of him, said Madame Amina, and why is everybody behaving oddly tonight? Who? said Sa’id. Coming and going at all hours, she complained, and she thought Hakim had a girlfriend. Where, said Sa’id. Zamalek, she said, of all places. He was forever getting her driver to take him down there. What address? She didn’t know. Ali would know. Could she get him? No, he had gone home for the evening. Where did he live? Way out God knows where. What was his number? He didn’t have one, you have to ring the tea-house. What was the tea-house number? She went and got it. He called, and somewhere out in the middle of nowhere a tea-house child was sent to fetch Ali the driver to the phone, and an address was revealed. Not a street I knew. Sa’id did. ‘Swanky,’ he said. One of my words.

  So we went round there. I sat silent in the back, Sarah attempted to look prosperous and respectable in the front as we passed the languorous policemen on each corner. The house had its own garden, a drive going round, locked gates. I could see lights on in the house; shifting and moving through the foliage in the garden. We sat.

  Crickets chirped.

  Smell of jasmine and warm lawns watered at dusk.

  We sat.

  Sa’id’s phone rang.

  ‘Hallo?’ he said. He spoke in Arabic, answering questions, and asking them. La’ah, he said, a lot. No. Then got to meshi – OK. Then he passed the phone to me. ‘Hakim,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you?’ I said. We spoke Arabic.

  ‘At Monsieur François’s house,’ he said. ‘Tell me one thing –’

  ‘What.’

  ‘He says you are his wife. To be his wife. That you are waiting to be together.’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘Then why does he say it?’

  ‘He wishes it were true.’

  There was a silence; a full silence. Crickets on the line and crickets in the garden.

  ‘He says you are going to be married. He says you are going to Upper Egypt on honeymoon. I have booked rooms for you at the Winter Palace Hotel. He has been planning it for weeks but he just wasn’t sure what day you were coming. He said you just had a tiff, but he is seeing you tonight and you are leaving on the wagon lits and you will marry there.’

  I had a sudden weird image of Eddie and I in morning suit and full white meringue, side by side in the billiard room of the Winter Palace, among the stuffed animals and leather furniture and orientalist prints of Nubian boatmen at places now drowned beneath the great lake, and I snorted. This is great. White slavery in the east with Eddie as the Sheik of Araby, carrying me off into the desert. And a pair of actual Arabys protecting me. Eh. Except I’m not sure Hakim is protecting me.

  ‘He is a mad fuck who lives in a dream world, and Hakim, he is dangerous.’

  Sa’id was making wanting-the-phone faces. I ignored him.

  ‘No. Not so. He is kind and good. Of course you must not marry if you – but he is kind and good. He loves you. I was so pleased when I realised it was you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All these plans and things. He was saying his fiancée is just very shy and new to Cairo, that she wouldn’t be going out much. But when I saw the flowers I knew, because I took them to the Hotel el Hussein. So I was surprised when it was you because you are not new or shy, but I was pleased for you to be marrying such a man.’

  ‘Hakim, have you told him where I am staying?’

  ‘Of course! He knows where I live. I told him you are old friend of my family, that I stay with you in London, that you stay with me.’

  ‘Listen, Hakim, please …’

  Sa’id grabbed the phone off me and started a big brother thing. I grabbed it back and said: ‘Hakim, this is more important to me than you can imagine. Let me tell you. I have known this man – François is not his name – I have known him for two years. You have known him for what, two weeks, a month. Trust me. Leave him. Leave his house as soon as you can. If you like I will tell you everything that has passed between him and me but believe me he is a bad man. Do not tell him anything about me. Hakim?’

  The silence was there. Then: ‘What has passed between you and him?’

  I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to heighten the pressure, to raise the stakes. I only wanted to show a card, to show I had a hand. Which card? Threatening Lily? Telling me he’d kidnapped her? Kidnapping me? Drugging me and trying to rape me? Prostituting my sister? Trying to set fire to me, all those years ago in Charlotte Street, when I was dancing on the table and he poured brandy at my feet and expressed his admiration by setting it alight?

  ‘Hakim,’ I said. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘I don’t know why you would lie.’

  ‘I’m not lying. I’m not lying. Believe me he has done me wrong.’

  Hakim was silent.

  ‘We must get off the line, Hakim. Listen, he kidnapped me once before, OK? Please. Just come away.’ I didn’t know the word for kidnap so I used the English.

  ‘That’s true, actually. If she’s saying what I think, it’s true. She was being recalcitrant and wouldn’t come. Silly girl. I must say you’ve a nice accent, darling.’

  FUCK.

  ‘Eddie’s on the line,’ I hissed to Sa’id.

  ‘Now sweetheart. Has Hakim told you all my plans? Oh bother, I so wanted it to be a surprise. Never mind. Come along tonight to the Semiramis and we’ll talk it all over. Hakim will come too, probably. If he’s good. Will you be good, Hakim?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, faintly, on the extension. Crackly.

  ‘I’m annoyed with you, Hakim,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the boy.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Sarah.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Semiramis

  ‘We’re fucked,’ I said.

  ‘How so?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Eddie was on the line. He probably didn’t understand much but he got the gist, that Hakim and I know each other and I was warning him off. Hakim says Eddie has plans to take me up the Nile and marry me.’

  ‘Get the police,’ said Sarah. ‘Really. If this man has been making threats …’

  ‘It’s not so simple,’ I said. I looked at them. How much could I say? We had to get through tonight and get Hakim back, but then life continues, and I wasn’t going to betray Harry. I wasn’t. I was pretty sure that Eddie didn’t know Harry was police; and then there was the system of loyalties, the police stuff, that Harry had betrayed by telling me. I didn’t understand that, but it didn’t matter. For me it was simply between us. I do not betray Harry.

  I wished he was here. But he’d be a fat lot of good, really. In Zamalek. But even so.

  ‘The thing is, Sarah,’ I was saying, ‘that as I said I know this bloke of old, he did once kidnap me, I didn’t press charges for a lot of very complicated reasons, and he has come back to haunt me, and all I want is to get him off my back. Now it turns out …’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. Faintly.

  Sa’id was thinking. I could tell because he was holding my hand.

  ‘Enta ’Omri’ again. Give me your hands, so my hands can rest in their touch. (Give me your eyes, so my eyes can roam free in their world.)

  ‘Are you the only thing he wants?’ he said.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘What he was saying today, one fuck and he leaves you alone, do you believe him?’

  ‘No. And anyway I’m not doing it.’ Why is he asking that? Does he think I would? Is he testing me?

  ‘I know you wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t let you.’

  If there’s one kind of phrase that riles me, it’s anything involving ‘not’, ‘let’ and ‘you’.

  ‘But habibti,’ he said. The female again. Bossed and protected.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You know his mentality.’

  ‘Insofar as it’s knowable.’

  ‘So what do you think?’

&nbs
p; ‘I don’t want to go tonight. I’m not going where he is. But we must get Hakim because, what he was saying … he was saying if I come to the club Hakim will come to the club. It’s a trade. Hakim for me. One way or another. He did that before with Lily.’

  ‘With Lily?’ he said. He looked shocked.

  ‘He said he’d kidnapped her, blackmailed me with it. He hadn’t, but I didn’t know that. She was just late back from tea. Every mother’s nightmare.’ Oh gosh yes you can look back and laugh. Hollowly.

  ‘But Hakim is with him,’ said Sarah. ‘We know that.’ She looked a little green under the neon street lights.

  ‘He’s a big boy,’ I said. Not meaning it.

  ‘He’s not that big,’ she said. ‘And he’s silly. And Lily wasn’t even kidnapped anyway.’

  ‘It’s not a competition, Sarah,’ I said. ‘Any of us are in danger, Hakim most so at the moment. Chill.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Malesh,’ I said.

  She and Sa’id still hadn’t addressed each other. Still carrying round all the crap that needed to be cut through.

  *

  We stayed outside Eddie’s a little longer, then went on to the Semiramis because Sa’id thought it would be a good idea to choose our table. Backs to the wall. That kind of thing.

  It was about one when we got there. How long since I was last here? Eight years or so. It’s pretty much like the Paradise, only better nick all round, better quality, higher prices. Two fairly superior babes in stretch velvet were actually singing along, and a singer who seemed to be Lebanese was having a go. The band were OK. I recognised the tabla player from somewhere a long time ago. Plenty of them, but two electric pianos which I hate. They were finishing up. Eddie wasn’t there yet. Our dinner started to arrive: masses of it. Dish after dish of tabbouleh and houmous and babaghanouk and tahina and chicken liver and felafel and God knows what. I wanted a drink, but there’s something about these hotels that stops me from ordering. Not just the prices.

  Then the band changed, a bunch of guys in satin waistcoats started up a rocking rhythm and a dancer came on, in a full length black and gold beaded encrustation, with body stocking, and gave it her all. Which was not bad at all, except that she had shoes on and I just don’t hold with that. But it was all right. It was all right when she came back in a skin-tight baladi dress with a pantomime horse in a carnival outfit; it was all right when the horse started working the tables and came nibbling my neck with its huge pantomime nose. It was almost all right when the girl came round and danced to me, until I realised she was Eddie’s sex toy from London, the Turkish one from Marouche, the night he drugged me. It wasn’t all right when she wanted to pull me on stage. Eddie hadn’t come in yet as far as I could see, but I bet he was there and I bet he had fixed this.