The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  He closed his eyes to forget these idiotic words, these futile thoughts, and entered the hotel.

  She still had the same room, the one that was set apart a little, “so we don’t have to keep quiet,” as she used to say in her daring moments.

  Jeremy took off his sunglasses and knocked at the door.

  In the silence that followed, lucidity returned to him and he knew he had no business here. It was dangerous. For him.

  A part of him began to hope that nobody would answer.

  The door opened a little way, revealing a man in white-and-gold livery and a red fez.

  “Sir?”

  “I should like to speak to Miss Leenhart, please.”

  The servant frowned. “You must be mistaken, sir. There is no Miss—”

  “Show him in,” said a woman’s voice behind him.

  The man did so and Jeremy entered the suite with its broad bay windows, which let all the light of the plateau into the vast living room.

  A wooden balcony ran along the entire length of the room. Through the open windows, the heady scent of jasmine wafted up from the hotel gardens.

  Jeremy walked out to the table that had been laid out under a fabric parasol. The finest porcelain cups and plates were set out on the embroidered tablecloth, between pots of jam.

  And in her rattan armchair, a woman dabbed her lips with a napkin and sat up.

  Although he knew her beauty well, it took Jeremy’s breath away all over again.

  Her long black hair against her snow-white skin.

  Her large, green eyes beneath a fringe of incredibly long lashes.

  Her cheeks, whose roundness was emphasized on the left by a beauty spot right in the middle. Her arms, so long and slender.

  She was wearing a green dress that fell open at both sides below her hips, and that Jeremy had never seen before; there was a large knot on the low neckline. A dress he had never touched, never unfastened. This thought clutched at his heart.

  Her lips, which were a timid pink, opened in a polite smile. “Have you forgotten? I am Mrs. Keoraz now.”

  “As you wish…”

  She inclined her head, and an ebony-colored lock of hair fell over her forehead. She could be as elegant and beautiful as she could be cold and distant. In a moment she had switched to the second of these aspects.

  “If you have come to take up my time, then respect what I am,” she cut him short, all traces of a smile gone.

  She picked up a slice of bread and spread it with rose preserve.

  “You know I will never call you that,” he said, dragging over a chair in order to sit facing her. “I need you.”

  “That need is not reciprocated. What do you want?”

  Still the same repartee, capable of trading her velvet tongue for the serpent’s fangs, mused Jeremy. This allusion brought to life a whole host of memories, which tortured him inwardly.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  He took a long breath before beginning. “I need your help. It is about your foundation.”

  “Francis’s, you mean.”

  Jeremy clenched his jaw, hollowing his already emaciated cheeks still further. “And which you are involved with,” he said between clenched teeth. “Don’t play this game with me, Jezebel.”

  “What game?”

  “You know very well! This business of blowing hot and cold. Not with me, I know you too well.”

  She put down her slice of bread and stared coldly at him. “So? Doesn’t it work? Dare to tell me it has no effect on you. I know how to make men suffer, don’t underestimate me in that art; you are all transparent to me. I was curious, I loved you all, I collected you all, I observed you from every angle, and then, I became tired. You are transparent to me. I see through you as I see through all the others. So don’t come here to ask for my help and tell me that I produce no effect on you, otherwise why would you be wearing an expression like that?”

  Jeremy sat up straight, aware that he had hung his head too much. She classed him among all the others, accorded him no importance whatsoever; she counted him as just one more name, one more pleasure, without taking account of what he was.

  Yes, she was right, she knew what to do to make him suffer. That was exactly right. Grant him no importance and act as if their affair had been just one more domino in her own personal game.

  “Jez…” he said, very quietly, after a time.

  He could not continue; she started eating as she observed him, without helping him, waiting to see what words would extricate themselves from the turbulent mess inside him.

  Jeremy made what he knew was a terrible mistake in her presence. He lowered his eyes. He escaped the vise of her emerald irises to sweep his gaze across the windows that led to her apartments. Behind her, the glazed door opened onto the bedroom. Onto an immense, soft bed whose sheets spilled onto the floor. Jeremy swallowed his saliva as the ditch within him became an abyss.

  “He … is he there?” he managed to ask.

  “Who? The man who is giving me pleasure?”

  Jeremy wanted to hate her. Detest her to the point of banishing her from his existence.

  She had not said “Mr. Keoraz” or “my husband,” which would have been painful enough; no, she had used him as an instrument for her pleasure. Which was even worse. And she knew it. She knew that Jeremy had loved her beyond the emotions of the mind or the heart, to the point of considering their lovemaking as the sole materialization of this powerful love. Carnal love had been everything. Because she was not playing during those moments, it was the only time of rest, the sole moment when she was herself, naked, stripped bare. And he who possessed her in the moment of orgasm could gaze upon her true soul.

  This jealousy went beyond all those petty emotions of daily life that Jeremy had lost. She knew it. She was sneering at him.

  “He is showing some friends from London around,” she confided. “Why? Do you wish to speak with him, perhaps?”

  “Stop. I need you to help me. It’s not about me. It’s about children.”

  A subtle movement in the alchemy of the constituent parts of her face indicated to Jeremy that he had hit home.

  “Children from your foundation who are dying.”

  She put down the piece of bread she had started eating directly on the tablecloth, and her eyes narrowed to two long, dark slits.

  19

  In the meantime, Azim was wearing out the paving stones and beaten earth of Cairo’s eastern districts. An artist often used by the police had agreed to produce as accurate a portrait as possible of the last victim, taking care not to reproduce the wounds that had deformed the face. Detective Matheson had asked him to leave him with the investigation into the foundation that had educated the dead children, but he had not asked him to keep his distance.

  By going to the head office, the little Egyptian had identified the fourth victim. He had succeeded in meeting a certain number of people involved, until one of them immediately recognized the child’s portrait.

  Seleem Yehya, aged ten.

  Azim transferred the information to the police secretary. As luck would have it, in order to be accepted by the foundation, the children had to supply as much information as possible upon registration. Beginning with the address where they could be found. The old districts of Cairo had the peculiar characteristic that the streets did not all have names, still less numbers. When you asked the way, in general you had to be guided by landmarks like a fountain, a house with blue shutters, or a crossroads with five branches.… Seleem’s address had been transcribed according to this code.

  Before noon, Azim had found the child’s parents, and become the bearer of the terrible tidings.

  He had questioned them briefly, between the sobs and the shouts of rage, before vanishing into the sordid street where they lived.

  Seleem had the same profile as the preceding victims. A calm, lively, and curious child—hence his presence at the foundation—and one who did not go looking for trouble.

&
nbsp; And, above all, he was described as obedient.

  How could the murderer succeed in getting good children out of their homes, in the middle of the night, and of their own free will?

  The desire to find out a little more about this foundation made him seethe with impatience. But he had promised Detective Matheson that he would do nothing, that he would wait for him.

  The key to the problem was in the murderer’s method of making the children come to him. Azim could sense it.

  How do you lure a little boy or a little girl to you? How do you persuade them to leave their homes soundlessly, without a word, right in the middle of the night?

  A Westerner with money or simply original objects bought from his country could incite this curiosity. But this hypothesis implied an Englishman who could speak Arabic, capable of making these children trust him, and who moreover ran the risk of being noticed more easily in these districts than an Arab. Unless he moved around in a djellaba. Or if he knew the district very well, so as to avoid the busy streets. Everything was possible in the final reckoning.

  Azim repeated these questions to himself, over and over.

  He did have one small idea, but it was unacceptable.

  A magic spell.

  An evil enchantment, in the manner of the ghuls, who lured their prey through demoniacal manipulations, lies, and enchantments.

  Of course, that didn’t stand up.

  No more than that rumor that was haunting the eastern districts. That the killer was a ghul.

  And yet … that could explain a lot of things. The extreme violence—no man could be so brutal with a child, except a madman who had become an animal. The traces of enormous claws—they had no plausible explanation for the time being; nobody apart from that cynical old doctor could believe that it was really nails that had produced such deep wounds, and moreover he had not come to this opinion through his medical knowledge, but through a lack of other ideas. The spells—that would explain why the children came deliberately to the killer. And above all—the witness reports—the hypothesis came from them after all, from witnesses who had seen the beast.

  Witness reports.

  “If that’s where the foundations of this monster’s existence lie, that’s where we must search if we are to have a clear conscience!” said Azim out loud as he walked along a street in Darb el-Ahmar, an old district of the city.

  He stopped to drink from a fountain and splashed his face and neck before setting off again for el-Abbasiya, to find the family he had visited the previous day with Jeremy Matheson.

  On the way, he was astonished that his English colleague had not refuted the ghul hypothesis. He was so closed to anything irrational that he hadn’t even wanted to listen.

  Azim had told him that ghuls were female demons. But sperm had been found on each victim. The Englishman had not paid sufficient attention.

  Azim had already been turning this question over and over in his mind for a while. Evidently this ghul story was just a legend to frighten people … but what or who was hiding behind this thing that wandered through the alleyways at night? For Azim had no doubt that there was indeed something. He knew people like himself, prompt to liven up events, but there was never smoke without fire. Behind the story of the ghul, a reality was hiding.

  Azim reached the house of mourning. The children were not there, only the father and his wife. The detective questioned the wife for several minutes, asking for the names of the women who could give him information, and where to find them. Then he left in search of them.

  He found two of the three. The first mentioned her uncle as the direct witness of the creature; Azim asked to meet him. He lived in the Gamaliya district.

  The second spoke to him of another woman whose husband said he had watched the ghul. Azim’s heart leaped when he learned that this couple lived under the cemetery of Bab el-Nasr, also in Gamaliya. They were not the same people. Azim obtained the necessary information and thanked her.

  An hour later, he was in the company of an old man, with a gray mustache and skin tanned by decades of burning sun, walking along in a blue djellaba, the color worn by the Tuaregs, the “Blue Men of the Desert.” Azim told the man why he had come, and explained that his niece had sent him about this “beast” he said he had seen.

  They walked side by side down a street so narrow that the superannuated buildings that rose up on either side made it look like a deep gulf.

  “Tell me in what circumstances it occurred,” said the detective.

  “It was late, and I had spent the evening with a friend who still keeps a ghoraz.* You know, it’s just more of the same with these Englishmen now. They say we are independent, and yet they want to close all the places where we smoke. Who are they to impose that on us, eh?”

  “Of course. But let’s get back to that evening. You say you were in a ghoraz. Had you smoked a great deal?”

  “Not more than usual.”

  “And you were on your way back home when it happened?”

  “Yes, it was a little lower down, we’re almost there. I was walking slowly; the smoking had made me a little light-headed. And then suddenly, I sensed that there was something. First of all, the nape of my neck shivered. I thought my hair was standing on end all by itself! Anyhow, I didn’t think about it, I flattened myself against the wall. I have to say that it was quite dark—there’s none of your fancy gaslight here!” The old man had begun to talk loudly, almost shouting.

  “I understand.” Azim calmed him, placing a hand on his elbow as if to guide him.

  “I flattened myself against the wall, really you know! It was my body that guided me and saved my life! And do you know why? Because the hashish had opened my mind to a better understanding of the world. My mind was open to the things of the world beyond! And it sensed what was approaching, and it gave the warning to my body, and it passed it on to me, so that I—the man on the surface—could understand that something inhuman was approaching.”

  This testimony must be taken with a large pinch of salt, thought Azim, almost disappointed. The old man had probably been too much under the influence of the drug that evening to think clearly. One must separate what might be true but embroidered from what was just the fruit of a delirious mind.

  “And the ghul emerged from the darkness, wrapped up in its black robe, a big hood on its head to hide it. It was walking slowly and it was very tall, almost seven feet, and it entered the blind alley down below.”

  Indeed, they arrived at a crossing of ways, itself as narrow as the streets that led off from it. The old uncle indicated the place he had stood that evening and pointed his finger toward the blind alley the beast had entered.

  “Even if my body was in control of me, I would not have known what it really was if it hadn’t raised its head before leaving. It wanted to look up high and there, in the moonlight, I saw its demon’s face. It has no face, nothing but flesh and teeth! I have been having nightmares about it every night since.”

  Azim bent to examine the interior of the blind alley. It was not very deep or tall in relation to the rest of the district. Several single-story houses stood in a line, some of them so dilapidated that living there was unthinkable.

  “Did you stay long after that?” demanded the detective.

  “At least five minutes. I was paralyzed, I was really afraid, you know. And then I kept close to the houses and walked home as fast as my legs would carry me.”

  “So you walked past the blind alley?”

  “Yes. I couldn’t see clearly, but I think it was empty. In any event the monster hadn’t come out again when I passed.”

  Azim nodded as his eyes swept across the house-fronts. He counted thirteen doors. But it was possible to flee by climbing the wall at the far end, which was not very high.

  “Do you know the district well?” Azim asked the old man, who nodded. “Then you perhaps know where one would come out on the other side of the wall, at the far end?”

  “In a backyard, full of rubble.” />
  So it was possible to leave in any direction. Azim had difficulty hiding his disappointment. “Have you seen it again since?”

  “Oh, no! And I don’t want to!”

  Azim thanked the man and left in search of the second witness, a seller of clothing. He found him at his shop, in the midst of prayer. The muezzin had called the faithful for Asr, the afternoon prayer. Azim waited outside the door until it ended. He recited his prayers from the Koran in silence. In agreeing to take up such an important office in the police, he had also agreed to put his religious practices to one side during working hours.

  The trader had seen the same creature: tall, covered by a black robe and a hood.

  “How tall?”

  “I don’t know, a head taller than me.”

  The man measured around five foot five. All the same, less than the immense size claimed by the old hashish smoker, who had seen a ghul seven feet tall. Maybe six one or two, Azim supposed.

  “I was on my terrace,” the witness continued, “and I saw it pass by just below, on the neighbor’s roof. There, it took an interest in some children’s clothes that were drying, and it jumped onto the next house, where it spent a little time by a skylight, trying to get inside. It’s a way of getting into the bedroom where my neighbor’s children sleep. It wanted to go in, but as it couldn’t open it, it left. I am certain it is what killed the children. That’s what it is searching for at night.”

  “It moved from roof to roof?”

  “Yes, and with a great deal of agility; it makes no sound.”

  “Could you make out the face?”

  There was a silence between the two men.

  “Yes.”

  The trader caught his breath and took the plunge. “It often looked behind itself. And when it passed beneath my eyes, it walked forward and then, just before jumping onto the neighbor’s roof, it turned its head.”

  He sat down on a stool, his eyes staring into nothingness. “Allah be thanked, I did not see its eyes. I think it would have robbed me of my reason. It had no…”

  He slid a hand over his own cheeks, his nose, then his chin and his lips. “There was nothing human about it. No skin, no contours, nothing but tendons, blood, and teeth. Teeth that gleamed right to the edges of the jawbones, almost as far as the ears. I shall never be able to forget it.”