by Lilya Myers
The nightmare Kafele had lived for so long had turned into a beautiful dream. Not only would he be his own boss, Nahab was going to pay him more than he imagined. That would make it possible for him to be completely independent of Aswad. The best part was he could have all that without being under Aswad’s thumb any longer. Kafele confided that while Aswad was gone, he would probably move off the compound. He had as much right to ownership as they did, Nahab told him. Nahab advised him otherwise and explained how to work something out with his brothers to continue living there. Kafele thought that was an odd thing to say.
“Why would I want to stay? With my father’s power and influence, the police won’t be able to detain him more than a few days.” That’s when Nahab told Kafele that he had asked a friend who worked at the prison about Aswad. The good news was that Aswad would be there a lot longer than a few days. Nahab gave Kafele enough information to convince him that there would be no vindication for his father. Twenty years had been handed down to him and his sentence could be increased if he didn’t behave. Kafele was stunned.
“You know, your father was an extremely wealthy man. Sooner or later, someone will find out where that money was hidden, and if he were to die before he got out of prison, well…you see my point. If you gave up your villa, how would you know what devious things your brothers could do?”
Kafele was never greedy for money. At Nahab’s insistence, however, money painted a different picture. The first order of business was to tell his brothers about Aswad and say that he would continue to live there so they could return to America. It made sense.
Omar and Saib had been spending longer stretches in America and making fewer visits to Egypt. With Aswad out of the picture, they might decide to come back and live at the compound. Finding a goldmine before they left would be incentive enough. Kafele knew how Aswad operated, which told him that locating the money wouldn’t be impossible. It just wouldn’t be easy. He contemplated what that amount of money could do for him. And then he pondered whether the filth of his father’s hands had tainted it and be transferred to him somehow. Egyptians were a superstitious lot.
Nahab’s voice brought him back to the present. “Always know what your competition is selling and how much they are asking. Pay attention to what items tourists fancy. And don’t get too friendly with your neighbors. They are your competition, not your friends,” Nahab said as they reached the car.
Kafele was unworried about the meeting that would take place with his brothers a few short hours from the time Nahab dropped him off. The confidence he had in himself had dramatically grown and changed, particularly with Nahab’s influence. He hadn’t seen his older brothers for quite some time now, and the playing field had changed significantly.
The servants prepared a meal to serve when his brothers arrived. It was very likely that they’d be cranky and hungry after a long trip, followed by the drive from the airport. Kafele’s first hope was that he would be able to stave off questions about Aswad until their stomachs had been satiated. Then he’d drop the bomb.
***
After thinking better about it, Kafele decided to have his brothers ushered directly into the dining room. Nahab always talked about timing and persuasion. Kafele had asked to be alerted upon their arrival so that he could direct the servants to deliver the food to the table moments before they walked in.
He heard them as soon as they entered the house. Two heavy pairs of footsteps, almost in sync, echoed down the hall. The platters of hot food had just been placed on the table. Kafele didn’t take his father’s seat at the head, nor did he take a seat at the place that had been his growing up. Instead, he took a seat facing the doorway, across from the place settings for his brothers.
As soon as Omar and Saib entered the room, Kafele made sure that he was the first to speak. Without getting up, he motioned them to sit as the food was being placed on the table. “I assumed you would be starved by the time you arrived.” The two older brothers eyed Kafele curiously. Kafele’s looks hadn’t changed exactly, but his air of maturity and some extra weight took them aback. They hadn’t seen him in quite a while and his choice of clothing disguised his new physique.
Omar began talking as he spooned rice onto his plate. “Father sent a note to meet him in the west wing. We expected him to be there. Then, one of the servants told us to come to the dining room.” He looked up directly at Kafele. “Where is he?”
“He wasn’t able to be here,” Kafele answered matter-of-factly. It was entirely the truth but Kafele didn’t want to expound on it just yet. He chuckled to himself at the question and the answer. After all, his response was entirely factual.
It wasn’t totally unlike Aswad to demand that his sons meet him and then keep them waiting or not show up at all.
“Is he getting around well on that foot?” Saib asked.
“I suppose,” Kafele said.
“Did he say where he was going?” Omar asked. Kafele shoveled in a mouthful of food to delay answering. Omar kept talking. “He knew that Saib and I were flying in today.”
“I guess his absence was unavoidable.” Kafele said nonchalantly. It was becoming too difficult to keep up this charade. “Look, I was going to wait until we finished dinner to tell
you –”
Saib leaned forward with undivided interest and bluntly asked, “Tell us what? The bastard is dead?” he asked with a chortle.
The room became deafeningly silent. Omar and Saib stared at Kafele. Kafele finally broke the silence. “Why don’t we go in the other room? N’iam can bring us coffee in there.”
Omar didn’t budge. “We can stay in here –”
Kafele moved toward the doorway. His body language suggested to his brothers that he was the one in charge in this moment. “If privacy’s your concern, it needn’t be. I don’t think there’s much I can tell you that they don’t already know,” he said, referring to the servants. He hadn’t turned back to gauge their expressions as he exited through the doorway.
The brothers scrambled to follow him into the other room. An older woman appeared carrying a tray with Egyptian coffee and sweets as they settled themselves on the plush couches. They waited for her to dispense of everything on her tray. As an afterthought, Saib called out to her that they were not to be disturbed.
Saib was motivated to give the servant an order because Kafele’s take-charge attitude diminished his feeling of superiority. For all of his life, Kafele’s presence or input had been dismissed or ignored completely. The youngest brother didn’t want to lose the import he had finally gained, albeit through Nahab’s mentoring and Aswad’s imprisonment. Before anyone else had a chance to ask questions, he related the scene between his father and the police to his brothers and the terms of their father’s sentence.
Startled but not fazed by the news, both Omar’s and Saib’s minds worked overtime as they listened to Kafele. Omar never made that trip to Morocco to procure the weapons deal for Aswad. If he had, he’d be sharing cell space with his father, or worse yet, his father would be free and he’d be in prison. It turned out that Aswad had to handle the arms deal himself.
Saib’s angst was over an entirely different matter. He wondered if Kafele had already found the money he’d been trying to get his hands on for years. He was doing well in business now but who couldn’t use extra cash for those personal comforts? The pleasure he was feeling right now, knowing that Aswad was in prison, couldn’t compare to a vault full of money.
Some prisoners were granted a visit every two weeks, others once a week. Visiting rights were irregular at all the prisons in Egypt and those rights were generally better before sentencing than after. Since he had been sentenced, there was no need to rush to visit the prison.
Allotted visitation time varied. Sometimes visitors stood in line for hours, waiting for police inspections to finish before they were let in, only to be turned away. Every morning that went by, Aswad awoke hoping that he would be called for visitation. Each day turned into night witho
ut him being summoned.
Usually, three people were permitted to visit. Omar set about making the arrangements for their visitation. Kafele flatly refused to go. Neither brother was terribly surprised by that since they had witnessed some violent exchanges between him and Aswad. Saib, too, showed signs of reluctance but at the last minute changed his mind. He thought too much about what secrets might pass between Omar and their father to stay behind.
A week passed before the two older sons were granted permission to see Aswad. They stood in line in the sun for almost three hours. The wind was particularly cruel. Even in December, the desert sun had the capability to assault the body with great intensity as the swirling sand bit into one’s flesh like thousands of tiny needles. It was almost more than Omar and Saib were willing to do for the man who had calculated a life of servitude and humiliation for them from an early age.
Just as they entertained the thought of turning away, everyone was taken into a large hall where the prisoners were waiting for their families to arrive. Aswad sighted them first and moved through the crowd toward them. He knew Omar would come but he was actually surprised to see Saib.
A row of guards with machine guns lined the entrance and also the two adjacent walls, nearly surrounding the prisoners and their visitors like a box. The thought of attempting escape during a visitation wasn’t seriously entertained. Omar nodded and pointed for Aswad to turn and meet them at the closest corner of the hall. There was no embracing between father and sons, no physical contact at all. Not that any of them cared.
Aswad couldn’t come to a solid decision about how he would secure his release, but he’d already decided that it would involve both, or at least, one of the sons who came today. It was important to him to examine their proclivity toward what he was considering before he proposed it to them. They both listened but didn’t offer much to the conversation.
While Aswad vaguely eluded to the fact that he did not plan to be there much longer, he was careful to be obscure about how he planned to achieve freedom. There was only one chance of getting it right. He was willing to wait until the next visit to approach his sons with the proposition that would ensure his departure from the hell in which he’d been placed.
Aswad was an exclusive protector of one person only. Himself. He was blind to anything that didn’t generate positive compliance. He emphatically declared that their job would be to enact the means by which he would regain his freedom. He would lay everything out to them on their next visit in two weeks.
Omar and Saib left the prison. It would be twenty years before they would see or speak to their father again.
PART II
2004
CHAPTER 28
Long Island, New York
HE HAD BEEN watching, waiting for her to come out of the house. It was about midnight when the young woman finished her home care nursing shift.
It had been a long day of red tape and paperwork for Selena. Her patient’s condition had worsened to the point where home care was no longer sustainable or suitable. As hard as she tried, Mrs. Rossetti could not hide the fact that she was no longer able to stay in her own home. The young woman had grown to love her but her duty and her conscience couldn’t give in to Mrs. Rossetti’s pleas, in spite of the deep sadness this brought her. She should have had Mrs. Rossetti moved to a facility a couple of months ago but both Mrs. Rossetti and her heart wouldn’t let her.
Selena would take meals to her patient and check on her even when she was off duty. The young nurse could ill afford to give Mrs. Rossetti free care on her own time. The old woman might be ill but she was still sharp as a tack. She could see right through Selena. The young woman needed a mother to lean on. She needed someone to confide in, a shoulder to cry on. Arms that would comfort her. God knows, her aunt wasn’t providing that. It made Mrs. Rossetti wonder how someone could keep their own flesh and blood at arm’s length like that.
After Selena’s husband died, she had been even more vigilant about checking in on Mrs. Rossetti. Sometimes, Selena had to bring her son along to Mrs. Rossetti’s. The old woman would be ecstatic, showering him with the attention of a doting grandmother. She’d have Selena put him on the bed with her for a nap, reading to him until he fell asleep. Her own children had moved far enough away that she never had the joy of seeing or getting to know her own grandchildren.
The relationship Selena had with Mrs. Rossetti over the past two years was as close as she’d ever come to knowing a mother’s love. “And how this woman could love my child, a stranger to her,” she thought. Selena never knew her own mother, nor was she very close to her mother’s sister. She was raised by her father who had died suddenly right before she graduated from high school.
Moving into her aunt’s home now was more of a convenient arrangement for both of them after Selena’s husband was killed. The new buyers were very kind, too. Their only son was in the military and Selena’s loss was personal to them. Since they intended for the house to be used as a vacation home, and they were in no rush to move in, they told Selena that she could stay there rent free for three more months. Selena was grateful. It was hard to let go. Although she was partially moved into her aunt’s house and had already started paying her room and board, she still had plenty to pack or discard.
On several occasions, Selena and her son would stay for a couple of days at a time while she painfully sorted through what she couldn’t keep. She’d begun to spend a lot of her own time caring for Mrs. Rossetti once she found a young, responsible student who became a reliable babysitter. On rare occasions, if her aunt was feeling charitable, she would babysit the little boy. Selena would take that opportunity to go over to her old house, put on one of her husband’s shirts that still contained his scent, and curl up on the floor.
But now Mrs. Rossetti could no longer stay in her house by herself. It was the conversation that Selena dreaded and the reason for her many sleepless nights. “My dear, I have lived in this house for over fifty years. My husband Tony built this house for me from top to bottom with his own bare hands. I raised four children here. One would think they’d care enough. You just don’t understand. This is where I want to die.”
“Mrs. Rossetti, you’ve been like a mother to me. I’d take care of you myself if I could. I’d like nothing more than for you to stay in your own home but…” Her eyes started to get glassy as she tried to look away through a blur.
“…it…it’s not my decision to make and I have a responsibility to accurately report your medical needs. Look, I need this job. I need to take care of my son. I can’t lie and say you’re okay when you’re not. You need more care than I can give you here. Please, Mrs. Rossetti, don’t make this any harder on me than it already is. I’ll do as much as I can to help you with this transition. I promise I’ll come visit you. As often as I can, I’ll bring my son, too. He adores you, you know.”
A huge tear had finally escaped and began to roll down her right cheek. Selena shifted her body so Mrs. Rossetti couldn’t see her hand come up to swipe away the tear. The old woman’s eyes weren’t that good but her senses were sharp. She probably knew the tears were there. “Someone from the facil…group home will be here in the morning. They’ll make arrangements with you…someone will come here tomorrow.”
She was uncomfortable with her own words. Damn Mrs. Rossetti’s ungrateful kids! Surely one of them could have made a sacrifice for this sweet woman. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call one of your children?”
“I only have one child and she’s in this room with me right now.”
Selena didn’t even know how to respond to that. Picking up her light jacket off the chair as she began to gather her things, Selena turned to make one last check around the room. Then she walked over to Mrs. Rossetti’s bedside. Moving silently about, she tried not to look directly at the old woman as she adjusted the bed for sleep and checked to make sure that Mrs. Rossetti was wearing her emergency alert necklace. The conversation left the sick woman looking pathetically smal
l and helpless in her bed.
Selena had come to think of Mrs. Rossetti in terms of what it would have been like to have a mother like her and a grandmother like her for her son. She bent down to give her a peck on the cheek. Mrs. Rossetti looked at her for a minute without saying a word. She wanted to savor the memories of the sweet years she has enjoyed having Selena there.
“Would you do one more small thing for me before you leave, dear?”
“Of course, but then I really have to go, Mrs. Rossetti. The sitter will be upset if I’m any later and she knows she can’t drop him off with my aunt tonight.” Fortunately, her sitter was accustomed to Selena being a little late when she was at Mrs. Rossetti’s.
“I need something from my safe and I only trust you to get it out for me. There’s a brown leather bag in there and a folder. It will just take a minute. Please.” Mrs. Rossetti gave her the combination and within moments she had removed the contents.
Selena held the items out. “If you had this in the safe, are you going to be comfortable with it laying out in the open?” No doubt a host of people from the nursing facility would be there the next day. Mrs. Rossetti didn’t reach out to take the items from the woman’s hands.
“It won’t be in the open, my dear. In that bag are my diamond wedding rings and some other jewelry Tony bought me over the years. You know, anniversaries, birthdays, special occasions…” She added with a mirth-filled laugh”…it’s not much but it’s all good stuff. I want you to have it, Selena.
“That folder there contains some of my important paperwork. You have done more for me than my own children… I want you to have this house. For you and your son. It may be old but it’s been maintained properly. Proud to say that I don’t owe a dime on it. And you need to have a home of your own for you and your son. It will give you the independence you both need. It will be one less worry… you can look it over later. Everything is there in the folder.