by Ahmed Mourad
‘At the very least. You can’t imagine how happy I am, Omar. For the first time in my life I feel like I’ve done something – something big. I got involved instead of edging past against the wall.’
‘Edging past with your eyes shut, you mean.’
‘The surprise is still to come. After these terrible photos of Galal, people will be on tenterhooks for the next issue: pictures of the incident at the hotel and the business with el-Assal and Habib.’
‘And because of that bit of Photoshopping we did we don’t have any link to the newspaper.’
‘I hope it works. We’ll be sunk if we appear in the frame … Here’s to the coming scandals, and good luck!’
‘God rest your soul, Gouda.’
‘If he was here now I know he’d be happy with what we’ve done.’
‘Are you going to call Alaa?’
‘Right now.’
Ahmed was about to get up when he remembered something.
‘Listen: why did you photograph Alaa?’
Omar rose from the computer and took a memory stick from his pocket. He connected it and opened the contents.
‘Come and see.’
‘God damn you, what have you done to the guy?’
‘I was worried in case he disgraced himself or sold us out, so I thought I’d keep him in line.’
On the screen was an image of Alaa’s head expertly attached to the naked body of a young man having sex with a woman. It looked completely genuine.
‘God wreck your house!’
‘I was afraid he might let something slip. Thought I’d give him a fright,’ explained Omar.
Ahmed stared at the image. ‘You filthy devil. You can’t tell it’s a composite. That guy has a hard life as it is,’ he said.
‘Let’s keep it for him. It might prove useful: he can give it to his wife when they get married. He’ll thank us then,’ joked Omar.
Poking Omar in his sagging spare tyres, Ahmed went down to the street and dialled Alaa’s number.
‘Bless you!’
‘You won’t believe it … They’ve taken Galal to hospital: a nervous breakdown. And he’s brought a case against the paper.’
‘He deserves all the very best. Now what?’
‘I gave my word: next week’s issue will be a shock. I need to come and see you to fix a few pictures that I want to use. Where will you be today?’
‘Around.’
‘We’ll meet. I’ll come to you.’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
The work meeting was held that evening in the modest flat: two large shawerma sandwiches and a family size bottle of Coca-Cola were the sacrificial offerings bestowed upon Omar to convince him to touch up the photographs and put them on a CD for Alaa.
‘You think these people will keep quiet?’ asked Ahmed.
‘Of course not,’ Alaa replied.
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning a disinformation campaign, plus libel suits and a few threats to boot. They might pay money.’
‘People will believe them?’
‘Do you see the advantage of the pictures? If I was to sit there waving my arms and shouting for a year my articles would end up wrapping sandwiches, to use Galal’s expression. Now there are pictures to back up my claim that if there’s a dirty side to these people, it means they are capable of doing anything. People will believe us. You saw what happened to Galal: it was the first time Free Generation sold out. This campaign is going to change a lot of things.’
Brrrap!
It was Omar, who had leaned to his right to release a gaseous genie.
‘Sorry! My stomach’s a little upset.’
Like an air-raid siren, the sound was the signal to flee. Alaa gathered up the photographs and said goodbye to Ahmed, who accompanied him to the door.
‘Oh yes, there’s something else,’ Alaa said.
‘What?’
‘My father, God have mercy on his soul, kept a safety deposit box at the Heliopolis branch of the Bank of Cairo. He bought it and put a few things for the family in it: five or six thousand pounds and some deeds. I’ve paid the annual subscription since he died so I don’t lose it. I’m putting the originals of all the contracts and agreements in my possession in this box, plus a few documents you don’t know about.’
He took a key chain from his pocket and removed a key.
‘Take this and keep it with you.’
Ahmed looked at it with concern. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve got a copy at home.’
Ahmed’s expression grew taut. ‘But why?’
‘No one knows when his time is up. One copy for you and another far away from me in case I’m arrested or something happens.’
Sensing the severity of his words, he sought to soften their edge.
‘In case I lose the key, my friend: then there’s a back-up with you.’
‘Is there something you haven’t told me?’
‘I’m not hiding anything from you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s just that some people have long claws and you can’t guarantee you won’t get scratched. Ayman Wasfi, for example.’
‘He’s someone in the pictures?’
‘No: someone I was preparing a file on that would have turned the world on its head. He’s an arms dealer, but very powerful: deals and trade with Israel. There’ll be an article on him in the next issue. To be honest, I thought I’d been a bit rash for a moment; played a game that was too big for me. But, what the hell, I can’t back out now. The fish is out of the water, my friend.’
‘Fine, but why Ayman Wasfi in particular?’
‘I’m just giving you an example of the whales that won’t be keeping quiet. He’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest of all. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of him: he doesn’t frequent places like that. People go to him. A serious player.’
‘Might they get to you?’
Alaa nodded his head and gave a strange smile. ‘Possibly. There are a lot of people ready to be of service.’
‘Well, why don’t we call it quits?’
‘Don’t worry. I’m looking out for myself too. The number of the safety deposit box is 1933: the year my father was born. Don’t forget it. And this is a letter of authorisation from me to you so they’ll be willing to open the box for you. It can’t be any old letter: it has to bear the bank’s letterhead. I’ve also filed the name of the bank off the key; only the box number is left, so if you forget the name of the bank, it’s over. It’s the Bank of Cairo.’
Ahmed nodded without comment, irritably stuffing the key and the letter of authorisation into his trouser pocket as he bid him farewell. He wasn’t comfortable with the look in Alaa’s eyes as he descended the stairs.
He stayed up all night smoking until there was nowhere to stub out another cigarette. Alaa’s words troubled him. This was not the defiant, self-confident individual of their first meeting. There was a tremor in his glance.
Finally sleep overcame Ahmed. His date with Ghada was four hours away.
19
Amid the calm streets it stood, surrounded by trees on every side: the Faculty of Fine Arts, the beautiful heart of Zamalek.
It was nine thirty in the morning.
The bus stop was not far from the college. Ahmed got off carrying his camera bag and wearing sunglasses which he had purchased for twenty pounds from Mohammed Asfoura, a friend from the Faculty of Commerce and the son of the biggest importer of Chinese sunglasses in Egypt. They looked real enough. They were for special occasions.
He had remembered to put on the black shirt that closely resembled the one worn by Amr Diab in the video for Two Moons and to douse himself with the knock-off Hugo Boss cologne.
As he approached the college he took out a tissue, wiped his shiny black shoes and checked that his hair was keeping to the direction they had agreed on. He felt unusually excited as he passed through the gate, having first asked security where the Developing Artistic Talent course for chil
dren was held.
‘Go straight ahead. To your left, under the gazebo.’
He kept pace with the beating of his heart until he caught sight of her in the distance. She was sitting on the ground in the posture of a mermaid, leaning on one hand and drawing with the other. Beside her a small girl was painting something on a white canvas using a large brush. Ghada was joking with her, surrounded by fifteen other little boys and girls.
He didn’t resist for long.
Taking out the camera and aiming it in her direction, he waited for a smile and stole a moment. Then more moments. He placed the bag on the ground and pressed the review button by the camera’s viewing screen but what he saw had not the slightest connection with what he had photographed: it was a sequence of shots like a film reel showing Hossam. Hossam Munir: his friend!
It was the final two seconds before he met his fate, taken from the corner where Ahmed was hiding behind the window on the balcony of Bar Vertigo. Hossam stared into the eye of the camera in shot after shot, gradually opening his mouth in a silent scream. A violent shiver ran through Ahmed’s skin, giving him the appearance of a plucked chicken. He jabbed at the review button and the pictures scrolled past, frame after frame, until Hossam fell to the floor and a reflection appeared in the glass. It was the reflection of the killer. The camera’s lens had swerved away in fright and taken three shots of the Nile.
There was somebody there. A well dressed somebody leaning against the wall with his back to the Nile, smiling and smoking a cigar. On his ring was engraved the letter G.
He opened his mouth to speak. He was saying something. A word.
Ahmed was aware of a roaring passing close by his ear, then brakes screeching.
It was the sound of a speeding car overtaking the microbus in which he found he was still sitting when he lifted his head. It took him a minute to realise that he had dozed off, his head resting on his wrist against the back of the seat in front of him and his camera on his lap. He was on his way to Zamalek to meet Ghada.
A strange heaviness had caused him to drop off for a few moments, enough time in which to see that peculiar vision. His forehead was red, stamped with two stripes and a circle from the buttoned cuff of his shirt. It appeared that he had been in that position for some fifteen minutes. He was out of breath.
He removed his sunglasses and wiped them, recalling the images he had seen on the camera. He looked shocked. Hossam’s face and that of that devil, who had grinned at him. He tried to recall: he was saying something. A word. He couldn’t remember. He prayed to God to protect him from the Devil and recited Ayyat el-Kursi, the Verse of the Throne, to ward off evil.
The microbus had reached its last stop: Aboul Feda Street, Mustafa Kamil’s nom de guerre from the days of the struggle for independence.
He was walking along, trying to rid himself of the effects of the dream that most closely resembled an injection at the dentist – agonising and numbing – when he stepped into a small puddle next to the kerb. He stopped to wipe his shoes and it was as though he were seeing the exact same dream, like a film on loop.
He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock. He lengthened his stride a little to reach the college on time.
‘Good morning. The Talent of Artistic Development course?’
‘Developing Artistic Talent?’ replied the security guard, apparently disgusted with people like Ahmed.
‘Yes, that’s the one.’
The security guard made a gesture that implied, ‘Get lost; the Devil take you and the one that sent you here.’
‘Inside, to your left. Beneath the gazebo,’ he said.
Ahmed thanked him and walked quickly away before the guard could shoot him in the head.
She was as he had seen in the vision. Children surrounded her and she was drawing them something that he was unable to make out from where he stood. They were laughing, making gestures with their hands like sign language, all movement and noiseless uproar; a beautiful scene from a silent film.
Ghada was making the very same gestures, oblivious to Ahmed’s presence as he took out his camera and turned the lens in her direction. He photographed her laughing, sketching and waving her hand. She seemed to know what she was doing: the children competed for her attention, each one showing their picture for her to add a suggestion. He captured it all, then picked up the camera and headed over.
Her back was to him as he smoothed his hair and called out to her: ‘I didn’t know you knew sign language.’
She was busy drawing a large yellow rose for a small girl standing beside her and gave no reply. Ahmed feigned a cough and tried again: ‘One can see you’re an artist.’
It was like dropping a stone into a well and hearing no sound.
The little girl saw what he wanted and pointed her finger over Ghada’s shoulder to indicate that someone was standing there. She turned towards him. How happy she looked to see him! She smiled, revealing her teeth as regular as those on a comb, then said, ‘Have you been standing there long?’
He was silent for a while, looking searchingly into her eyes.
‘Five minutes, perhaps.’
‘What do you think of this place?’
‘Wonderful. It’s the first time I’ve come here, actually.’
‘This is my college.’
‘I photographed you from a distance. Take a look.’
As he bent down to pick up the camera he asked, ‘How did you learn sign language?’
When she failed to respond he lifted his head. ‘You don’t want to tell me? Is it a trade secret or something?’
‘What?’
Ahmed quickly repeated the question as he retrieved a piece of cloth for cleaning the lens.
‘I was asking you about sign language: how did you come to learn it?’
She waved her hand at him. ‘One word at a time, please.’
Ahmed didn’t understand.
‘I have to see you while you’re talking. I read your lips.’
And all of a sudden he understood. His eyes went to the small sign hanging from an easel: DEVELOPMENT OF ARTISTIC TALENT FOR DEAF AND MUTE CHILDREN.
She was looking directly into his eyes. She seemed powerful and unshakeable, unconcerned if he should show revulsion or try to back out. Her serene smile remained unchanged as she weighed every emotion in his face and kept watch for the white flag to be raised. The answer appeared on Ahmed’s face; a smile that told her: ‘I couldn’t care less. I wouldn’t turn you down if you’d been run over by a single-cannon Russian T-62 tank.’ He moved closer and spoke clearly: ‘I have so much to say.’
She smiled. ‘After the course.’
The course lasted nearly an hour and a half: a whole other world of hushed innocence, where Ghada was his muse. There was a picture wherever he turned, and he recorded everything: the pictures, the children and their paint-spattered hands, her hands as she drew, and her smile. He photographed her tickling a child, laughing like them, in innocence. She was like a white page, without malice, gazing at him with smiling eyes that thanked him for being there. She taught him some signs so that he could interact with the children. A mischievous child splashed his nose with red paint and to his astonishment he found himself laughing because she was laughing. In other circumstances he would have buried the child alive, but today he was laughing from his heart.
An hour and a half passed like ten minutes. Afterwards, Ghada began to gather up the scattered paints and brushes and the parents started to arrive to pick up their little blossoms. Before they left she gave each child a kiss, and she spoke with some of the parents, who seemed extremely fond of her.
Then she was standing before him, and all he could think to say was, ‘Do you eat ice cream?’
The Cool ice cream parlour was nearby, a couple of streets from the college. They walked there in silence, which lasted until two glass bowls were placed before them on a glass table whose vase of roses sat amid scents of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate.
Ahmed kept staring at
the small strawberry moustache that had appeared on her top lip. She noticed his gaze and he pointed at her mouth, indicating that she should wipe.
She gave an embarrassed smile and asked him, ‘What do you think of the course?’
‘Believe me, I’ve never felt as happy as I did today.’
She crinkled her eyes in amusement. ‘Perhaps you could tell me just what your story is?’
‘My name, dear lady, is Ahmed Kamal. I was born in Sayyida Zeinab on Valentine’s Day, 1977, and I have a sister called Aya. I’ll tell you about her later.’
She listened, fascinated, as he told her about his life and current circumstances, minus the murky details, of course. He made her laugh a lot at his expense, giving comical accounts of tragic events such as the diarrhoea that took him unawares on a bus coming back from Hurghada that had no lavatory, the trousers that ripped when he bent down to play with a child in a famous restaurant, or the pigeon that singled him out as the lucky recipient of its gift of guano. He told her about Attallah, who sold fermented milk and looked just like Al Pacino, and painted a picture of himself at secondary school, that picture that becomes an embarrassment to its subject with the passing years: the moustache like straggling weeds, the huge glasses that hung down over half his cheeks concealing a face like a skull, the blow-dried coif, the Adam’s apple sticking out like a Belisha beacon and the cut-price T-shirt printed with a picture of Iron Maiden or Mariah Carey in a swimsuit.
Then he told her about the first time he saw her: how he had gazed at her like a child gazes at the gift he has been promised if he does his homework. Her cheeks flushed a delicate pink, complementing her beauty.
At last he fell silent and her eyes left his lips and roved over his face.
‘I’ve given you a headache.’
‘Not at all.’
‘Could I find out a bit about this person who’s made me so dizzy? If Papa turns out to be a minister, give me a chance to escape.’
‘Papa, God have mercy on his soul.’
A 90cm-diameter butane stove dropped on his foot. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘He died when I was twelve years old. Mama works at the Ministry of Health, and I’ve got one sister, Miyada. She’s my naughty double. I’m a twin, as you’ve noticed.’