The Golden Scales

by Parker Bilal

  ‘Something like what?’ He widened his eyes dramatically.

  ‘I can’t say. It’s just a feeling I have. She looks . . . lost. You know what will happen if a European woman gets herself into trouble? It will be bad for all of us.’

  ‘I see.’ Makana extricated his arm and reached for another piece of bread. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

  Aswani tilted his head. ‘Perhaps you could just have a word with her.’

  Makana chewed in silence as Aswani went on, ‘Since you speak English and everything, you could just ask her what she is doing. If she’s all right, then fine, no harm done. But if something happens to her it will be on my soul until Judgement Day.’

  ‘Tell me, Ali, do you worry about all your customers like this?’

  ‘You know I do,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Now let me go and see about your kofta, and eat what you want today. It’s not going on the account.’

  Makana sighed and pushed back his chair. It wasn’t as if he needed a free meal at this point, or further distraction, but Ali had seen him through some dark times and if it would make him feel happier then Makana was obliged to make the effort.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, feeling rather foolish. The table was littered with tobacco and broken cigarettes. Ash was scattered over everything. There were several notebooks and sheafs of paper. The woman was lighting another cigarette as he spoke. She stiffened perceptibly. He smiled amiably. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you seem worried about something . . .’ Makana felt like a complete fool, realising as he spoke that this approach could easily be misconstrued. ‘Is there some way I could help?’

  The woman blew smoke away from her face. Her eyes fixed on him coldly. ‘You speak very good English.’

  ‘Well, thank you . . .’ Makana gave a small bow.

  ‘And so you will understand perfectly when I tell you to get lost, you creep?’

  Makana’s face was an awkward mask by now. Still, he managed to step back and dip his head gracefully. ‘I understand perfectly. Sorry to bother you.’ Then he spun on his heel and went back to his food. The woman could go to hell. At least he had done right by Ali . . . although, having seen her close up, he was convinced the cook had not been wrong. There was something the matter with that woman; she was clearly insane. Aswani arrived hotfoot from the grill, bearing Makana’s reward, a huge mound of freshly grilled skewers of lamb.

  ‘How did you get on?’ He kept his voice low.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about her,’ said Makana, reaching for the kofta which was always best when it came straight off the heat. ‘I think she can take care of herself.’

  The cook stood there fretting, completely forgetting what he was supposed to be doing. He started to wander back towards the kitchen.

  ‘Ali?’ Makana called him back and pointed.

  ‘Sorry.’ He set down the plate and disappeared, the fretful expression still fixed to his face. Makana returned to the folder as he continued to eat, only to have his concentration broken again a few minutes later.

  ‘I’m sorry . . . about earlier.’

  Without hesitation, the Englishwoman slid into the chair opposite Makana’s.

  ‘My behaviour was quite inexcusable. I’m sorry. I just don’t . . .’

  Her head was bowed. Makana shut the folder, silently cursing his luck.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I just ate.’

  ‘Would you like something to drink? Tea or coffee?’ He pushed some plates aside and reached for his cigarettes.

  ‘Tea would be fine.’

  Makana signalled to Aswani. The woman sat with her hands clamped to the seat of her chair, staring down at the table. Makana had been convinced she was suffering from some form of mental illness, possibly depression of some kind. Now he saw that she was simply very unhappy.

  ‘Are you writing a book?’

  ‘A book?’ She frowned deeply. ‘Oh, that. No, I just keep a record of everything.’

  Makana took a moment to study her more closely. She looked older than he had at first thought, although this might have been the result of her obvious distress. Skinny as a bird, with eyes that were red and swollen. Stress lines crimped the corners of her mouth. She smoked in quick nervous puffs. Makana imagined she was the type of hardy traveller who came to Egypt in search of authenticity. The kind who would never be satisfied with guided tours and pyramids, trips on a felucca and an evening of belly dancing. They came in pursuit of Flaubert, or some other romantic figure, in the spirit of the nineteenth-century European fascination with this part of the world. They wanted to see the real Egypt, to meet the people, to travel and eat among them. They wanted to maintain the illusion that the world was a state of mind, ruled by fluid borders, where everyone lived happily in freedom and equality. They neatly omitted to consider the privilege of free passage they carried in their back pocket like a magic charm, and the travellers’ cheques and credit cards that went along with the passport. A real experience, hence the need to ‘record’ everything. She struck him as disillusioned and terribly sad at the same time.

  The tea arrived. Aswani caught Makana’s eye and gave him a brief nod of gratitude before moving away discreetly. Makana sighed. His entire life could be expended performing favours for friends and acquaintances. He would wind up a curiosity in a corner of the bazaar. Children would point him out and laugh. After what felt like a very long time, the woman began to speak. Her head was angled to one side so that she appeared to be addressing one corner of the table.

  ‘Years ago, I came here with my little girl, Alice.’

  She spoke in fits and starts. A shudder ran through her and one bony hand came up to her face as she sucked in another lungful of smoke. ‘We were staying right across there, in a hotel overlooking the square.’ She nodded over her shoulder. Makana sipped his tea. The woman’s eyes looked up and met his. ‘And then one day she disappeared.’

  Makana set down his glass. ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘She was in the bedroom.’ The woman was shaking her head repeatedly, as if the gesture might be enough to change the outcome of the story she was trying to tell. ‘I don’t know. One minute she was there, lying asleep, and the next . . .’ The effort of speaking seemed to overcome her. She was silent for a long moment, staring at her hands clasped together on the table. ‘They never found her.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  As she struggled to regain her composure, the woman’s chin bobbed up and down.

  ‘She was four at the time.’

  ‘She couldn’t have gone far.’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes came up to meet his. ‘But she was gone. I never saw her again.’

  Makana was silent for a long time. He told himself this was mere coincidence, that this woman he had never seen before in his life knew nothing about him or his past.

  ‘When exactly did this happen?’

  The woman began to speak and then stopped, pressing a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry and closing her eyes tightly. A tear squeezed out of her left eye and ran down to her chin where it hung for a moment before dropping to the table.

  ‘Seventeen years ago this autumn.’ She was fumbling for another cigarette. The packet was empty. ‘It was when Sadat was killed. I remember that.’ Makana pushed his Cleopatras across the table to her. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ she went on. ‘It’s a little ridiculous to come back year after year expecting to find her. But that’s the thing about having children – you can never give up.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Makana, unable to bring himself to say more.

  ‘Do you, really?’ The woman exhaled smoke into the air above her head, totally absorbed in her memory of that time. ‘I was frantic. I ran round in circles. My head was spinning. Eventually the police came and . . . it was hopeless. Nothing helped. I kept thinking she would reappear, that I would look around and find her standing right behind me, with that same cheeky smile on her face
. I never did.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘What could I do? In the end I went home. I went back to England and tried to carry on. It doesn’t go away though, it never leaves you.’ She pushed a hand through her unkempt hair. ‘For some years I couldn’t cope. It was so awful. Eventually, I got better. It took a long time, but I really believed that it was because of her, Alice, wishing me to recover so I could come and find her.’

  ‘And that’s what you did?’

  ‘For the last few years I’ve been coming back regularly, going over the same old ground, hoping something will turn up.’ She studied him closely for a moment. ‘Do you have children?’

  Makana paused. ‘A daughter.’

  She nodded as if she had expected this answer. Then she smiled. ‘How is it that you speak such good English?’

  ‘My wife,’ said Makana, this time hesitating for only a brief moment. It got easier once you were over the initial hurdle. ‘Muna. She did a postgraduate degree at London University. In botany.’ He stopped speaking, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘People tell you there is nothing you can do, that it’s best to leave it in the hands of the professionals. But it never is. Your child is just another name to them. The police . . . the embassy.’ The woman glanced over her shoulder at the open doorway and the light in the square.

  Makana took a deep breath and then started to gather up his things, putting the cuttings and photographs back in the folder, sliding the folder into the envelope.

  ‘They all know me in the bazaar. I ask them the same questions every time and they nod and smile and ask me how I am doing, but they have nothing to tell me. I know that someone there knows something. I’m sure of it. I go round and round the streets, the stalls, the artisans. I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m missing something, a secret door with Alice behind it.’

  The woman fell silent. Makana reached for one of his own cigarettes and realised there were none left in the packet. He crumpled the paper quietly in his hand.

  ‘Thank you for listening.’ She gave a loud sniff and started to get to her feet. ‘I’m sorry for taking up your time. Your food will be cold now.’

  As she made to move away, some impulse caused Makana to reach into his pocket for one of his business cards. He held it out. ‘If you need help with something, you can call me.’

  She took the card absently without looking at it. ‘Thanks. Sometimes I think that talking about her is the only way I can keep Alice alive. I suppose you’ll understand that, being a father?’

  Makana smiled but said nothing.

  ‘And I’m sorry about the way I spoke to you earlier.’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No. It was unforgivable.’

  Makana watched the strange sad woman as she walked towards the door and disappeared from sight. He felt drained emotionally. All thoughts of Adil Romario had been driven from his head. He got to his feet and stumbled out into the open air.

  Chapter Four

  They were still with him. He would have liked to think they always would be, but he knew that wasn’t true. Recently he had begun to feel almost as if they were taking leave of him, as their memory faded with time. But not today. Now he felt their presence more strongly than ever. They were here with him, in this crowd, their faces bobbing upon the sea of strangers around him, their voices in his ear.

  Baba!

  Turning instinctively, Makana stared down at the child, realising his mistake too late. It was always too late. The fleeting glimpse of a woman’s back as she moved away from him, a little girl holding her hand, her face twisted back in his direction. For a brief moment the big round eyes, the thick hair falling in plaits around her ears, spoke to his heart, convincing him of the impossible, telling him this might have been Nasra. It was all he could do to stop himself from calling out.

  Propelled by the need to get away from the Englishwoman and her loss, he felt himself being pulled in as he quickly crossed the square to plunge himself into the crowded narrow lanes of the bazaar, like a meteorite falling to earth, his heart pumping the old anger through his veins, through his muscles, until it burned itself out in the stifling air.

  With all its noise and bluster, Cairo would always be alien to him. The gigantic bluffs of concrete, with their buttresses and pinnacles, were an unnatural landscape to a man who hailed from a small city of single-storey houses with open yards and dusty trees that blew green and lazy over the river at dusk. The trees here were stark, ashen silhouettes that belonged to a twilight world. The world he haunted now. Ghost trees to fit a ghost town. Makana was grateful to this metropolis for giving him shelter, for taking him in and giving him a chance to start again, but it would always be an uneasy relationship. This city whose whole history was an obsession with opposites. Night and day. The separation of the realm of the living from that of the dead, the Underworld. The flow of life from the river to the cosmos. It was an accumulation of burial mounds, mastabas, graves, pyramids . . . century upon century, dynasty upon dynasty.

  For the last seven years Makana had been going through the slow process of learning to live again. In the manner of an invalid recovering after a bad accident, rediscovering the use of his limbs, learning the basics, one step at a time, coming back to life, adjusting to his new existence as a nonentity. A restless spirit in an unfamiliar world. Work, though it came in spasmodic, irregular bursts, and usually from unexpected directions, was a relief. He was doing the only thing he knew how to do. It allowed him to immerse himself in the land of the living; people’s fears and hopes, their weaknesses and desires. Work he could deal with. It was the long lay-offs in between when he felt himself slipping back into the shadowlands. Interludes which occasionally stretched into extended droughts with no hint of rain for months. Interminable idleness that drove him almost to desperation. It was at those times the memories came crawling back into his mind; when the dead lay heavy on his chest, making it impossible some days to summon the energy to get out of bed.

  In Makana’s former life he had been a police officer. A good one. An inspector. It seemed to him now like another age, a previous incarnation. So remote and distant he sometimes wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing. It had not been a bad life. The cases that came his way were usually straightforward crimes of passion. Explosions of violence that in a brief instant transformed for ever the lives of victim and perpetrator alike. Most homicides were committed without forethought or planning. People killed those they were closest to: they killed their loved ones, their wives or husbands, brothers or neighbours. They killed them in the heat of the moment, with a kitchen knife snatched up in anger, with a brick, a hammer, or by cramming a pillow over their heads and holding it down until there was no more struggling. They doused them in kerosene while they were sleeping and struck a match, standing out in the yard to watch the flames darting through the wooden slats of the window shutters. People killed because they could no longer stand to go on. Abuse, hatred, suffering in silence, rage, jealousy . . . Makana would find the culprits. He would wear them down until they confessed. Often it didn’t take much. They came running to the police station covered in blood, trying to rip out their own hearts in their anguish and pain. It made you wonder just what kind of creature man was.

  All of this took place against a backdrop of violence on a larger scale: the civil war that was as interminable as it was absurd. There were no winners, only losers, hundreds of thousands of them. They lost their villages and homes, their land and livestock, their children and parents, husbands and wives. Occasionally, it spilled over into the life of a police inspector. A soldier returned from the front to discover that his wife had remarried in his absence. He had lost an arm in the war, but that didn’t stop him slaughtering his entire family with a bayonet. Makana had never seen so much blood, the house reeked of the stuff. A curtain of flies flew into his face as he ducked in through the doorway of the bedroom.

  Flexibility a
nd patience, these were the two key virtues required to do his job. There were robberies and smuggling gangs – contraband alcohol and tobacco brought in over the border from Eritrea or down from the Red Sea. Sometimes more serious items, such as weapons. The economy was bankrupt. The shops were empty, even basic goods hard to come by. There were demonstrations over the price of sugar and bread. The weekly salary of an ordinary policeman would buy you a kilo of tomatoes. Things were bad, and the politicians were worse than useless. They buried their heads in the sand and offered platitudes and pathos. People managed somehow. They battled on, they helped one another. Once a week you had to get up at four in the morning and line up at the petrol station to collect your fuel ration. They would all go, his daughter Nasra crawling into the back seat to doze while they waited. He and Muna would spend the night talking in the car until they opened the pumps. It reminded them of when they were courting. Nights in the petrol queue became their special time together.

  Then one day the country awoke to find a new regime had arrived, announcing that the solution to all their problems lay in a more rigorous embrace of Islam. The self-styled Government of National Salvation promised to overturn the hierarchies of class and ethnicity to make all equal under the sun of religious faith. Salvation? wondered Makana. What kind of salvation?

  ‘That’s politics,’ Mek Nimr, his then sergeant, had remarked. ‘Never mix politics with police work.’

  Everything was always so simple to Mek Nimr. In retrospect, perhaps Makana might have benefited from paying more attention to him back then. Mek Nimr saw what was going on more clearly than his superior officer. He was swift to take advantage of the opportunities. Makana never saw trouble coming until it was too late.

  With the new regime everything changed, even the business of murder. Never mix politics with police work . . . only now everything was politics. Makana’s department was placed under the command of Major Idris, a stiff-necked military man who not only knew nothing about police work, but didn’t want to know. He didn’t have time for it. To Major Idris, it was all a matter of filling out the right forms and keeping his nose clean. A party member, he was on his way up. Nothing else mattered. Catching criminals was certainly not a priority. Praying was a priority. Keeping his superiors happy was a priority. With Idris came a flood of similar types, Makana had no idea where from. He had never seen them before. They seemed more concerned with flushing out potential critics of the regime than pursuing law breakers.