ARAB (15 page)

“Hey, Garcia!” the captain yelled, counting the money. “Show the man his bunk. If he’s hungry, fix something for him. Not too much of the good stuff.”

He gave Bashir a dirty smile. “I don’t have to do this, you know. I’m taking a hell of a risk. I could have you tossed over the side, who would know?”

“I’m sure Foad appreciates what you’re doing.”

“Who?”

“My friend, Foad Shikt,” Bashir said.

“Who the hell is he?” He swiveled the stool around and stared out the windshield. “Show him his bunk, Garcia. And watch he don’t steal anything.”

Bashir didn’t dare undress or even take off his shoe. He wanted to examine his wounded foot, aching now in the soaked towel, but decided to wait until morning. There was a man in a bunk next to his, mouth open, snoring. Bashir lay there for hours, lulled into a heavy drowsiness by the rolling of the boat, tormented by fear of infection, annoyed by the snoring.

Why had the captain denied knowing Foad? What happened on the beach? The shooting. My God, what have I done to my friend? He thought of the many times Foad had defended him at the camp, stood up for him when the police threatened to send him back to Gaza, a boy who had nothing back there, who had lied to join the group of detainees in some kind of exchange thing.

*

It was dark in the cabin when the man called Garcia shook him awake. The man next to him was still snoring. The air smelled of unwashed flesh and foul breath.

“The captain wants you off the boat,” Garcia said.

Bashir didn’t understand. He said, “I don’t have my passport.” He had no idea where he was or what time it was. Had they crossed the border?

“You won’t need it.” Garcia said, tugging at Bashir’s arm. He was joined by a second man who put an arm behind Bashir’s back, an arm behind his knees and carried him outside. They were near a beach. He saw lights on a jetty, people waving and yelling.

“What are you doing?” Bashir screamed. His flailing elbow struck the man’s face. The man cursed him, rushed him to the rail and threw him overboard. He sank in a massive splash but was buoyed up by air under his jacket. He drove both feet into the moving hull, terrified of getting caught by the propeller.

Waves of froth from the boat’s wake spilled over his face as he watched the stern lights move away. He was only a hundred yards off the jetty where young voices yelled at him. In a kind of delirium he made his way to a float, pulled himself onto it and sat there, feet dangling in the water, young voices calling to him.

“You all right down there?”

He couldn’t see who was calling, only dark forms moving above the railing, lights shining on the float.

“Come up the ladder,” someone yelled.

He got up, took off his soaked jacket, searched the pocket for his wallet, found it and limped across the moving float. He slung the wet jacket across his shoulder and began to climb, unable to avoid thrusting upward with his bandaged foot. He grabbed two posts and pulled himself to his knees onto the jetty.

“Get back, get back!” a man yelled at the gawkers, squatting next to Bashir. “You all right?”

“Yes,” Bashir said, aware of legs and feet crowding around him. “I fell off that boat,” waving vaguely.

“More like you were thrown off,” the man said.

“No, it was an accident. We were fooling around.”

“But the boat kept going.”

“Where is this?”

“Marsa Mutruuh,” the man said. He caught Bashir’s arm and helped him to his feet.

“Aah, thank God,” Bashir said. He was still in Egypt. He knew this city. He had been here many times.

“Can you help me to the hospital?” he said. “My foot.”

The man half carried him to the end of the jetty. A boy, apparently the man’s son, ran into a parking lot and held open the passenger door of a small sedan.

“I’ll get it all wet,” Bashir said.

“Just get in,” the man said.

With the boy in the back seat, the man drove away from the beach. Bashir lowered his face into his hand and wept.

Chapter Twelve

In freshly laundered clothes, thanks to a sympathetic nurse, Bashir stood in the doorway of the hospital on Alexandria Street in Marsa Mutruuh, across from the railroad station. A uniformed policeman smiled at him and was now looking at the extended leg of a young woman emerging from a taxi. A brossard on the policeman’s arm read in English TOURIST AND ANTIQUITIES POLICE, symptomatic of Egypt’s never-ending friendliness to well-heeled foreigners.

Not looking for me, Bashir told himself. He felt good. He had drawn money from the bank. He had been treated well. He had just enjoyed a fine breakfast. His foot had been cleansed and dressed with some kind of ointment. An attendant had brought him leather sandals with adjustable straps for his bandaged foot. Although he still limped, he was a new man. Maybe he should buy a cane; it would make him look distinguished.

He smiled at the policeman and made his way across the street, reaching the sidewalk just as an army truck swept past carrying a squad of solders, probably heading for the border town of As-Salum.

An old man apparently noticing Bashir’s interest in the truck said,

“Soldiers and sailors all over the place. Can’t trust those people over there.”

“In Libya?” Bashir said, to be friendly.

“Their president is crazy,” the old man said. “I heard he’s got a bomb, one of those atomics. You ever hear that?”

“Yes,” Bashir said. He excused himself and walked into the station.

He had a lot on his mind. While in the hospital he had read a newspaper story about “an incident at Abu Qir.” Nothing was mentioned about Bashir’s escape, but Foad had been shot and was accused of smuggling aliens into the country. He was being held in a hospital as a ‘person of interest,’ not charged with a crime, but he could be held indefinitely, the article said.

Bashir was sickened to the core. I should go to him. But if I do, will it help? Will they free him? They’ll imprison me! They’ll connect me to Faisal Ibrahim and imprison me for life. And it will strengthen their suspicions of Foad.

Later, seated on a hard bench in a passenger car, he told himself he could not go to Alexandria. I can’t help Foad. I’ll get help from Esmat Bindari. He has influence. He’ll tell the police in Alexandria to release Foad. It will cancel my promotion, but what else can I do?

I’ll say Foad is a friend. I won’t have to say I was with him, but if Foad has given the police my name, Mr. Bindari will find out I have lied. He’ll find out I have worked for Faisal Ibrahim! I’ll be fired! Everything I’ve worked for will be lost. I’ll go to jail!

But I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m just trying to get ahead! Why is this happening? Why has the world turned upside down?

Feeling a sudden wrenching in his belly, he put his hand to his mouth and hurried down the aisle to the lavatory and barely reached the toilet bowl before he fell to his knees and vomited.

*

Foad was in a bed in a room of white walls and chemical odors. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling hurt his eyes as he tried to focus on the face that hovered over him—squinty, bloodshot eyes boring into him, the vile odor of cigars on heaving breath.

“Your fingerprints are all over that crutch, Mr. Kishk.”

The surgeon said the bullet had pierced the bone. He could feel a heavy weight of pain in his shoulder. Frightening smells came from the bandages. He remembered running from the lights, voices yelling, a policeman shooting. He didn’t know whether Bashir had escaped in the trawler. That captain was a selfish, unscrupulous man who might not have stopped for Bashir. But they found the boat with the crutch in it. They didn’t find Bashir. He must have escaped—or, God help him, he could have drowned.

“You should have volunteered his name, not forced us to obtain it through fingerprints.”

“He’s my friend!”

“And he was at your house. He was seen with the crutch by your neighbors.”

“I helped him.”

“Why is he wanted by the police in Cairo?”

“I don’t know that he is. He needed help. I got him away. I didn’t know it was the police chasing him.”

“You’re being very foolish! He was with you for hours. He must have told you.”

“Somebody was chasing him.”

“The police?”

“No. Somebody he worked for. I don’t know.”

“He’s a mechanic at Cairo airport. What did the police want with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Aah, stupid!”

Foad closed his eyes, expecting to be slapped. But the man backed away. He said to a guard, “Let nobody talk to this man.” He left the room.

Foad closed his eyes. They will hold me. They will take me to jail. Maybe they will torture me. What will become of my mother?

*

Miraculously Bashir’s car was in the parking lot near the airport. He feared it had been impounded by the police. Suddenly a boy crossed the lane and started wiping the windshield of his car with a scrap of newspaper. It’s what he used to do, hoping to earn a few piasters. For some reason it angered him.

“Leave it alone!” he said. “Get away!”

“I’m trying to help,” the boy said.

“Help someone else.”

Sitting behind the wheel, he stared at the boy who had retreated to a doorway and was looking sadly at him. But he wasn’t thinking about the boy. He didn’t know what to do. He started the engine and drove south to Ma’adi, a haven for resident Americans where he had sublet an apartment from an English student. It’s where he practiced his
inglizi.
As he turned onto his street, he saw two policemen leaning on a fender of a cruiser parked near his building. He drove slowly past them, averting his face.

He drove to a park on the river, got out of his car and sat on a wooden bench with his face in his hands, elbows digging into his thighs, breathing the fetid odors of the Nile.

*

Fayyum Oasis is about an hour’s drive west of Cairo, a sprawling agricultural community on a tributary of the Nile. What remained of Faisal Ibrahim’s training camp was a mile or so down a sandy road west of Lake Qaruun, a fresh water basin at the edge of the desert. It was late afternoon when Bashir reached the three wooden buildings that made up the camp, originally temporary barracks erected by the army and abandoned in the late seventies.

A scrawny man under a floppy hat leaned on the wall of the sentry shack smoking a cigarette. He looked up from a folded newspaper when Bashir stopped.

“Looking for Diab,” Bashir said, lowering the passenger-side window. He noticed a girl sitting on a table inside the doorway of a building just down the street, barefoot with a faded skirt draped over her knees.

“Farouk’s down there,” pointing, getting up. “Maybe he knows.” He seemed to recognize Bashir, although Bashir didn’t know him. Called himself Omar.

He climbed inside the car and quickly raised the window. “You bring us our pay? It’s getting hungry here,” and he grinned. “Feels good,” palms raised to the AC grill. He slapped his knees, dust rising through brown fingers.

“I’m just looking for Diab,” Bashir said, taking in the cigarette odors.

“You didn’t bring us money? How we going to live? We got babies here, women. How we going to feed them?”

“I’m sorry,” Bashir said. “Faisal—”

“He dead yet? Someone said he heard—”

“No, he’s fine. But the police are looking for him. That’s why I want to find Diab.”

The man gave that a knowing grin. “And they looking for you.”

“They’ve been here?”

“Once in a while,” Omar said, vaguely. “You go talk to Farouk maybe knows where Diab is. That’s his car down there,” pointing at a green Pontiac parked under a canvas shelter outside the third building. “He brought a woman here. I don’t like that. Offends my family. Two young daughters. What they going to think?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Bashir said, affecting an authority he no longer possessed—in fact, had never possessed. It made him feel good, pretending to be part of Faisal’s inner circle. Every one of Faisal’s soldiers had to know he was in disfavor. The story would have spread like a disease, especially now that the organization was falling apart. They were all looking for clues of disintegration.

“You’ve talked to him?”

“No.” Omar said. He opened the door and got out. “I got to stay here. You find him, tell him we need money. Some work in the mill, but it’s not enough. Men are running off.”

Deceit leaked from every word. Bashir was cautioned but he shrugged and drove to the third house and stopped behind the Pontiac. Feeling uneasy, he looked back up the street. The man was watching him. The girl had come into the doorway.

Sensing entrapment, he was tempted to speed out of there, but where would he go? He had to find Diab. He had to do what Diab wanted. But would he kill for him?

He walked with troubled thoughts through long shadows on the hot gravel. Outside the doorway he caught a whiff of fried fish. He stepped inside.

“Farouk! You here?”

A woman poked her head out a doorway down the hall. Diab’s driver, Farouk Qassis, came up behind her.

“Bashir! Hey, where you been?” pushing the woman aside. “Thought you’d be a thousand miles from here.”

“I’m looking for Diab.”

“Come in!” Big grin on his face, beckoning Bashir toward him. “Come in.” Ostentatiously friendly, fooling no one.

The woman had gone to a window, elbows up, both hands behind her grasping the sill, watching him as though expecting entertainment. Like the man at the sentry box, her face shined with anticipation.

Diab appeared from behind a curtained doorway. He needed a shave. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair uncombed.

“It was stupid running off like that,” Diab said. “You got every cop in the country looking for us. Come in here,” and he went back behind the curtain. Even as he turned, foul odors drifted off him.

Bashir followed him into a small bedroom where ribbons fluttered off the grill of a window air-conditioner. Diab dropped onto a bed, propped himself up on pillows. The air in the room was cool but stale, smelling heavily of Diab.