Arabesk (129 page)

Smooth, because she lacked all body hair.

Zara had given him the list once. One night in another palace; the time she’d cried herself to sleep and woken to swallow him as she knelt on white marble tiles in the middle of a sunlit floor, three days before he prosecuted her father for murder. A fact neither one had ever mentioned. The list was relatively short and went no body hair, no labia minor or hood or tip to her clitoris… But, as she’d pointed out, a full Pharaonic would have been infinitely worse.

According to a doctor in New York (the one Zara saw at seventeen, the week after she arrived at Columbia), a rewarding sex life was perfectly possible. It might just take more effort than for some other women. And she stood, the doctor said, a better chance than many of those whose scar tissue was mental rather than physical.

The tiny vibrator the woman gave Zara went unused. Ditto a collection of glass dilators from small to medium. Zara found one article on female genital mutilation, attended one meeting at which she said nothing, then went back to writing law essays. And lying in the darkness as she said this, that time in El Iskandryia, Raf had been unable to work out from the flatness of Zara’s voice if she regarded this as common sense or cowardice…

“My turn.” Raf rolled the two of them over, so Zara lay underneath and he was between her legs. Widening her knees, Raf withdrew until the tightness at the entrance to her sex was about to release him, only to slam back, watching Zara’s chin go up in shock or surrender.

Her hands rose and fell, arms crooked at the elbow as fingers fluttered batlike in darkness. Tied to some plea forever unsaid. On her breath were white wine, hashish and the faintest trace of capers. Tastes that Raf took from her lips. And then her legs locked over his and her hips began to grind against him.

They came together with that blinding luck those new to each other sometimes get and slept, still locked in each other’s arms.

Saturday 26th March

“Take a guess,” said Hani, nudging Murad Pasha and
nodding to where Zara and Raf stood beside a wall, holding hands. A half dozen of Major Gide’s handpicked guards stood impassive against the opposite wall of the decorated alcove, carefully not noticing. “Go on, guess what they’ve been doing…”

Murad blushed.

“How do I look?” said Hani. She twirled on marble tiles, her silk dress spinning out like the cloak of a dervish. The dress was meant to go with knee-length socks but Hani had refused. Not just refused but refused totally. Sitting naked and dripping on the edge of her bath, unwilling even to let Donna dry her until the old woman agreed that white socks were out.

And Donna, still furious at being dragged from El Iskandryia to Tunis, had threatened to fetch Khartoum but even that failed to move Hani. In the end they settled on short white socks rather than the black tights Hani had wanted.

“How do you look?” Murad considered the question. She was dressed in white silk. Around her neck was a single row of black pearls, fastened at the back with a clasp made from jade and gold. Her ears were now properly pierced and a tiny drop-pearl hung from each lobe. On her feet were silver pumps.

“Anachronistic,” he said finally.

Hani punched him.

Not hard. Just enough to deaden his arm.

“The correct answer,” she said, “is like a princess.”

They were waiting near the entrance to a salon de comeras, hidden from the crowd by an elegant carved screen. Admission to the ceremony was by order of precedence and some people, mostly
nasrani
lucky to be there at all, had been sitting for over an hour as more upscale arrivals filed in to be shown their places.

It had given the new Emir great pleasure to make sure that the Marquis de St. Cloud was one of those forced to wait in the cheap seats. Sitting much closer to the front, looking slightly bemused, were Micki Vanhoffer and Carl Senior, dressed for what could only be a night in Las Vegas.

Outside, Rue Jardin Bardo was lined ten deep with people waiting for the Emir’s Bugatti coupé Napoleon to sweep past, only to be hidden on arrival by veils of silk as it disgorged its occupants, a colonel from the engineers, his young wife and their two children. Decoys insisted upon by Major Gide, who’d gratefully accepted the new Emir’s suggestion that she remain his head of security.

The actual players in the spectacle about to unfold in front of TV5, C3N and one other, randomly selected, camera crew had been the first to arrive, spirited into the salon via a back route.

“You ready?” Raf asked Zara.

She nodded. Not entirely convincingly.

Outside in the audience were Hamzah Effendi, Madame Rahina and the brother Zara had tracked down to a squat on the edge of Kharmous, half brother really. Hamzah’s bastard. Once a factory and later an illegal club, he’d soundproofed his squat with cardboard and spray painted it gunmetal grey. The floor had been earth, friable and damp but he’d doped it with liquid plastic, tipping the can straight onto the ground.

“What are you thinking?” Raf asked.

“About Avatar. You know, back when he was a kid, was it right to take him home with me—or was I just being a spoilt brat…?”

“Ah,” Raf smiled. “The
what-if
factor.”

Zara stared.

“For every action we take,” said Raf, “there’s probably a better one.”

“Does that apply to this?”

“Which this?” Raf demanded. “
Us this or this this
?” The sweep of his hand took in the coughing and restless shuffle of feet beyond the screen.

“Both,” said Zara.

In a different world Raf might have answered that there was nothing he’d do differently where Zara was concerned, not even his jilting her which put Zara across the front of
Iskandryia Today
and nearly cost him his life. He loved her and had no certainty that any other course of action would have led him to where he stood; but Murad turned and caught Raf’s eye and the words went unsaid.

Checking his watch, Raf listened to something in his earbead and nodded.

Three, two, one…

On cue, an unaccompanied voice rose in the salon outside.
Maaloof al andalusi
, the music Ifriqiya made famous. Frail and strong, haunted and ancient. The words a lament for those who had gone before and a greeting for those who were to come after.

Near the far end of the suddenly silenced room, Khartoum raised his head and hung a note on the air so unearthly that Hani shivered. The poem that echoed off the salon’s high roof came from Rumi, the great Sufi sage but the intonation was Khartoum’s own.

Slowly, one note at a time an
’aoued
filled the spaces around the words. Then an instrument that Raf thought might be a
nai,
only deeper than any flute he’d ever heard.

“Time to move,” Hani whispered.

“Yep. Everybody’s waiting.” This was, Zara knew, a stupid thing for her to say. Unfortunately it was also true: five hundred carefully chosen people were waiting on the far side of that screen to see the proclamation of the new Emir. A ritual intentionally designed to mix Western with North African traditions.

For religious reasons the proclamation needed to happen in the salon de comeras, the hall of ambassadors, rather than the Zitouna mosque, because women and men could not be allowed to mix in the mosque and, anyway, letting
nasrani
into the prayer hall would outrage the mullahs.

Officially the beards were no longer a problem, Kashif’s arrest and subsequent suicide had seen to that. Major Gide’s interim report suggested reality was different. The fundamentalist tendency would remain quiet only for as long as their embarrassment lasted at having backed a man given to treachery and wicked living.

“Come on…”
Zara was shaking Raf’s arm.

And as Khartoum’s voice rose to a note as ethereal as waves against rock, then ended abruptly, leaving only silence, Murad said, “We can’t do this.”

“What?”

“We just can’t.” There was a sadness in Murad’s voice, a maturity at odds with the anxious smile on his thin face. This was a boy who’d sat holding his father’s hand while the old man died. A boy who’d insisted on attending not just the funeral of his father, as was expected but also of his brother, after Kashif shot himself through the head. Three times. The funeral of Lady Maryam, who succumbed to the same flu that killed the Emir, he refused outright to attend. And that took a different kind of strength.

“Look at us,” Murad said.

Age was more than a simple sum of years. Into the load went experience and modes of survival. Strength could be learnt and adopted or developed through necessity and nothing tempered it faster than learning to stay alive.

Murad nodded towards the hidden crowd. Then swept his gaze across Hani, Zara and Raf, finally ending with a glance at a mirror which showed a twelve-year-old boy in a tight uniform, stars of gold and enamel across his narrow chest.

“Look at what I’m wearing…”

Murad’s new uniform, identical to one worn by Raf, was based around an Egyptian version of the old British cavalry tunic, borrowed by an earlier Emir and introduced as court dress. No North African or Ottoman regiment had ever gone into battle wearing such clothes. Its use was strictly ceremonial. The only difference was Murad’s lack of shades.

“I don’t support this,” said Murad. “I didn’t think you did.” He looked sadly at Hani reflected in the mirror. “And I don’t want to be part of it. I refuse to become Emir.” Lifting a felt tarboosh from his head, the boy nodded to a guard. The hat Murad held was inlaid with gold thread and seeded around its base with tiny freshwater pearls. Pinned to the front was a priceless diamond spray of feathers. The
chelengk
a recent sign of favour from the Sultan in Stambul.

The guard who reached out to take it retreated at a scowl from Raf.

“You have it then,” Murad said and Raf shook his head.

“Wrong size,” said Raf. “And anyway, it belongs to you.”

“Why?” Murad asked, and everyone looked at Raf.

That was the real question. All of Raf’s life had been leading up to this, it seemed to him. Standing in an alcove off a crowded salon de comeras, off-loading his responsibilities onto a child. Which was one way to look at it. The other was that Raf was trying desperately to do the right thing in a situation where there was no right thing to do.

“This is difficult,” he said.

“Really,” said Hani. And when Raf nodded she sighed. “That was irony,” she said.

Beyond the screen, Khartoum’s voice edged into the silence and soared away, stilling the crowd again.
“Ya bay.”
Raf caught the word in a refrain and lost the meaning as he looked down and saw Murad still waiting for his answer.

“You think it should be me,” Raf said, not bothering to make it a question. They’d been through this. None of them believed there should be an Emir to start with, but that wasn’t really the point. A coup had been averted.

A new era had arrived.

The last of the UN sanctions had been lifted that morning.

Five hundred people were waiting within the salon for sight of Ifriqiya’s child ruler. A hundred thousand filled the streets. Camera crews wandered the Medina recording anything and everything for worldwide syndication. There were two members of the German Imperial Family, a first cousin to the Sublime Porte, the president of the United States, both presidents of Russia and the Prince Imperial of France, despite his recent disgrace. All gathered to welcome Ifriqiya back into the family of nations.

As squabbling, incestuous and venal a group as ever existed.

In thirty years the country hadn’t seen half that number of VIPs. Hell, even one VIP would have been more than Ifriqiya had seen in thirty years. The ice age was over and the state’s political and diplomatic purdah had been quietly brought to an end.

At a high cost, a fact not doubted by any of those who stood in the alcove; although they differed in their understanding as to how high. What they now discussed was, if one were honest, who should be the first to pay.

“The problem,” said Raf, crouching until his face was level with Murad’s own, “is that your father was not my father.”

That got their attention.

“Yes he was,” Murad insisted.

“No.” Raf shook his head. “I’ve known this for days. One of us had Emir Moncef as a father. The other didn’t.” From his pocket, Raf pulled a sheet of paper folded into three and Hani, being Hani, recognized it for what it was. A sanguinity report.

“This is your father’s DNA,” Raf said to Murad as he pointed to a column down one side of the slip. “And this is your own,” he pointed to the next. “And this third one is mine. You can see there is no relationship between the first two and the third. My mother was not your mother and my father was not your father; we are not even cousins.”

“I don’t understand,” said Murad, face crumpling. “Who are you then?”

“My mother once told me my father was a Swedish hiker. That’s probably as true as anything else she ever told me.”

The boy nodded, a movement so small as to be almost imperceptible. And then, meeting Raf’s eyes, he nodded again, his second nod firmer, more confident.

“Give me that printout,” he ordered.

Without a word Raf handed Murad the DNA results. Instead of looking at them, the boy ripped them in two, did it again and then one more time, struggling in his final attempt.

“You’re my cousin,” he said in a voice that allowed no room for argument. Only Murad’s eyes, made larger than ever by sadness, betrayed him.

“And your bodyguard,” added Raf. “Should you need one.”

Hani raised her eyebrows.

“I thought you might enjoy living in Tunis,” Raf said. He didn’t quite glance at Murad as he said this but Hani scowled anyway. And he got the feeling she might have stuck out her tongue, if Murad hadn’t been watching. “Or we could commute between here and El Isk,” added Raf, “if that works better for everyone…”

Zara’s face was unreadable.

Beyond the screen, Khartoum fell into expectant silence and the guards around the edges of the alcove strained forward as if they might toss Murad’s group into the waiting hall themselves, so worried was Major Gide’s expression.