Dogstar Rising (25 page)

‘I understand.’

‘No. No, you don’t.’ The man made to move away when something made him stop. He was clearly scared, but he turned and led the way, and five minutes later they came to the corner of a narrow street. The man pointed at a building.

‘That’s where you will find him,’ he said.

When Makana looked back he was already walking away. A scattering of used coffee grounds had turned the sandy ground into a muddy tongue the colour of molasses. The café was nothing more than a doorway, an opening in the wall, metal doors flung wide in a space that might once have been a garage for a small car. Roughly hammered together wooden benches rested against either side. These were deserted except for one man who sat upright with his back against the wall. Makana sat down opposite him and called for coffee. After a time he became aware that the man, a heavy, unshaven man with a handlebar moustache that looked as though it had escaped from the tomb of some pasha of old, as if it ought to be hanging in a frame, was staring at him.

‘I look at you, and the first thing I think is police.’

‘We all make mistakes.’

He was a self-styled
Omda
, a neighbourhood leader who spent his life watching the street go by, making other people’s lives his business. Air bubbled through the waterpipe as he exuded a cloud of aromatic smoke.

‘Around here we take care of our things our own way. We don’t need the police.’

‘I’m not police.’

Behind the counter a young boy no more than twelve fussed with a small brass kerosene stove set on the counter. He snapped a lighter. The flickering blue flame turned the place into a little cave of wonders. ‘I don’t mean to tell you your business,’ said the man stroking the back of his hand along his moustaches as if they were a pair of plump doves, ‘but you’re wasting your time here.’

‘All I want to do is drink my coffee in peace.’

The boy kept his eyes studiously on the battered pot he was stirring with a spoon. The smell of coffee filled the confined space.

Makana took his time to study his surroundings. The walls were scarred with the usual graffiti: Down with the Americans. Down with Israel. Down with the government. Down with everything and everyone because the rest of the world was better off, and this was as far down as you wanted to go. Who was this Rocky? Why did Meera have a picture of him stuffed behind her desk? The boy avoided his gaze as he set down the coffee on the table at his knees. The man opposite stared at him as he puffed his waterpipe. Makana sipped the coffee slowly as people came and went past the entrance of the building opposite. A little girl leading a small boy by the hand went by, a green plastic bag banging against her legs, heavy with warm round loaves of bread. A tall man with a beard, wearing thick-framed spectacles and a white gelabiya put a hand to his nose and hawked up a mouthful of phlegm which he spat on the ground before stepping out and moving away along the street.

As he got to his feet Makana reached into his pocket for some money. He found a rather worn ten-pound note, with a tear in one side. Far too much for a simple coffee. He folded it carefully and tucked it under the cup out of sight. If he came back some time it might be helpful to be able to talk to the boy. He had been planning to cross the street for a closer look, but found his way barred. Three young men stood blocking the entrance.

‘You have no business here,’ said the man on the bench behind him. Makana turned to look at him. The man circled the long pipe stem in the air. ‘Go away and don’t come back.’

Chapter Twenty-Four

The day was fading fast as Makana made his way through the gates into the Fish Garden. Shadows seeped from the base of the banyan trees like flowing ink. Birds chattered excitedly at the last rays of light draining from the sky. Makana hurried, not wanting to be late for his appointment with his mystery caller.

The Khedive Ismail inherited his fierce dislike of the British along with a love for all things French, including the roulette wheel, from his grandfather Mohammed Ali Pasha. A poor gambler, his extravagant tastes and poor judgement bankrupted the country, dropping it neatly into the laps of the European powers in
1879
. The Ottoman court relieved him of his post in a telegram addressed to the ‘former Khedive’. Ismail had dared to dream of Parisian boulevards and zoological gardens packed with marvellous exotica. His grandiose plans ran out like water in a desert, leaving a few quaint touches such as the Fish Garden, a fossilised relic of a long-dead age. Today it was in a sad state of dereliction, although anything that brought a touch of greenery to the grey cityscape was a welcome addition. A crumbling testament to the desire to carve out a European empire on this continent, it also delivered a stern warning about the perils of trying to impose oneself on a city that wriggled out of any definition you cared to throw at it.

At the heart of the little park was a mound that contained the grotto itself. The air in there was cool and damp. Tanks set into cavities in the rock were built to hold every manner of tropical fish brought from the coral reefs of the Red Sea. Most of these now appeared to be devoid not only of life but even of water. In one tank, painted with a green film of rotting algae, lay a cupful of murky, rust-coloured fluid in which an unremarkable colourless creature was flapping its last. There was no one about. The tunnels of the grotto, never filled with light, were at this hour of the day gloomy and damp. A stooped figure appeared silhouetted in the arch behind him.

‘Are you alone?’

‘Just as we agreed,’ said Makana.

‘Yes, but are you alone?’ the other man insisted. He was in his late fifties with a dark complexion and tight greying curls shorn close to his skull. The brown suit he had on seemed to have been worn down by nervous energy. The flesh of his face looked slack, overcooked and falling off the bone, hanging in heavy pouches under the eyes. He was clearly afraid, twisting his hands together and looking round.

‘It’s good to finally meet, Professor Serhan. After all those unfinished phone calls I was beginning to wonder.’

‘How do you know who I am?’

‘I’ve seen photographs of you.’

Serhan looked scared enough to bolt like a rabbit at any moment. ‘I called because I have information.’

‘What kind of information?’

The exasperated handwringing began again. ‘Look, the point is that you can’t investigate this matter if you don’t have all the facts.’

‘What facts?’

They were locked in a strange dance, with Serhan edging backwards and Makana trying to head him off. When he reached the wall of the grotto the professor peered out at the quickening shadows. The smooth trunks of the palms stood out from the rest of the trees like white bones. They stood there for a while. Serhan lowered his voice to a whisper.

‘You’re the one who was with her when she died, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘She didn’t deserve to die like that.’ Professor Serhan took a moment to examine Makana more carefully. ‘I knew her, a long time ago.’ The professor’s courage seemed to waver. Then he rallied himself. ‘Let’s walk a bit. I don’t like staying in the same place for too long.’

Makana followed as the professor led the way up a narrow path, moving unevenly, but quickly. They were soon lost in the twists and turns. The gardens were a popular venue for courting couples who popped up at every bend in the narrow footpaths that wound like string around the artificial mound above the grotto itself. They sat on the benches, surreptitiously holding hands, the young and the not so young, seeking out an elusive moment of privacy. Serhan walked with a determined stride around the little hillock until he came to a bench. They sat side by side like clandestine lovers. He removed his glasses and wiped a handkerchief across his face.

‘You need to understand that Meera’s death has upset me. I can’t help thinking about it.’

‘You said you knew her.’

‘A long time ago. When we were . . . young.’

‘This is before she married Ridwan Hilal?’

‘Long before that. We were students. I was older, of course, writing my doctorate.’ Serhan sat upright, staring down at his small hands resting on his knees. ‘It was a different time. We were young and foolish.’ He paused, the spectacles glinting in the fading light. ‘There was talk of marriage.’

‘Is that why you tried to warn her, by sending the letters?’

Serhan’s eyes were deep wells of sadness. His head dipped. ‘I knew he would get it. I thought anything else would be too much. If the letter was intercepted. If someone else saw them. But I knew he would understand.’

‘Only somehow he didn’t.’

‘I’m afraid I overestimated his powers.’

‘You had access to a printing press.’

‘Yes, at the university. They all know me there. I told them it was for a course I was doing.’

‘And the references to the Dogstar?’

‘I needed some reference that he would understand. I couldn’t risk anything more direct. When we were students some of us used to write modernist poetry. We called ourselves the Dogstar Poets. You have to remember, this was the
1980
s. Sadat had just been murdered by radicals in the name of jihad. There were great debates among the students about the ideas of fundamentalists like al-Banna, Shukri and Sayyid Qutb, who felt that not only our rulers, but the entire Egyptian society, was living in a state of Jahiliyya. To them, we had all been corrupted by the West.’

Makana was familiar with the thinking of those who believed that Islam had been polluted by popular tradition. Their logic was simple: drop it all and go back to basics, restore Islam to its former glory. The ignorance of modern times was compared to that in the time before the coming of the Prophet. Violence was justified as a means of restoring the country.

‘We admired the writers of the early twentieth century, the modernists in what we called the
Nahda
, the Egyptian Renaissance. We questioned tradition and were fascinated, for example, by the poets of the Jahiliyya who were writing before the Prophet Muhammed. We believed that the true nature of this country lay in embracing our past, all of it. Not just Islam.’

‘Is this why you hounded Ridwan Hilal out of his job?’

Serhan floundered like a fish out of water. ‘That was an unfortunate business, but let me explain. When you are young, changing the world is a simple matter. You are invincible. You can clearly see the errors made by previous generations. As you get older . . .’ The professor bowed his head momentarily. ‘Well, the thing about compromise is that it starts with something simple, hardly noticeable, but gradually it becomes more serious, until you no longer recognise who you are.’

‘You accused Hilal of apostasy. You declared his marriage null and void. Are you trying to say this had nothing to do with your feelings for Meera?’

‘No, well . . . I don’t know.’ The professor looked pained. ‘Look, the matter simply got out of hand. Certain people took advantage. It was wrong of me, and believe me, not a day goes by when I don’t think of what I did. I . . . I loved her. I would never have done anything to hurt her.’ Serhan stared at the ground, wringing his hands together. There was something touching and rather pathetic about seeing a man of great knowledge being reduced to the uncertainties of a lovesick teenager.

‘Those were different times. We wore our hair long. There were rock concerts at the pyramids. Imagine that. American bands came all the way from California to play for us. We wanted to embrace this new way of life. To shake off the old ways.’ His voice tapered off into a sigh. Then he seemed to have trouble starting up again. ‘We thought of ourselves as intellectuals. The women smoked cigarettes and talked about Simone de Beauvoir. I wanted to love a woman like that, a woman who gave herself to me because she chose to, not because society obliged her. You understand?’

‘But things changed.’

Serhan nodded sadly. ‘There are times when you realise you are not as strong as you thought you were. Marrying a Christian would have devastated my family. We would have been outcasts. Our children, if we ever had any, would be strangers in their own land.’

‘So you let her go, but you didn’t forget her. When she married Hilal you were jealous. Is that why you tried to destroy him?’

‘I told you, people took advantage of me. I was weak. But I also disagreed with Doctor Hilal’s thesis. Fundamentally. It is a profound issue. I am a religious man and . . .’ He paused, as if seeking a way to convince himself. ‘What he did was wrong. You can’t treat the word of Allah like some cheap novel you buy in the street. It’s just wrong.’

Makana was beginning to get a sense of the differences between the two men. Both were unquestionably devout. Intellectually, Hilal was clearly more agile. He wanted to believe, not only in his heart but also with his quite substantial intellectual powers. Serhan on the other hand was bound by conventions, still struggling to find the courage of his own convictions. He seemed to be no longer sure what he believed, or why he acted the way he did.

‘As you probably know, my situation improved somewhat after that whole business.’ He threw Makana a wide-eyed look of alarm. ‘That wasn’t why I did it, of course.’

‘Of course not, but you did make a good profit.’

‘In a certain way, perhaps I did.’ He was squeezing his palms together like he was wringing out wet laundry. ‘I went up in the world. But that all came later. I didn’t need to be told that what Ridwan had published was wrong.’ Serhan licked his lips and stared at a spot somewhere in the distance. ‘I began to move in certain circles, among influential people. Powerful men of industry, military officers.’ The shadows were lengthening as the last flickers of light were snuffed out.