Dogstar Rising (5 page)

In the street Makana raised a hand and instantly retracted it as two taxi cabs veered alarmingly towards him. The first was a stately old Peugeot driven by a grey-haired man who was lost behind the huge wheel. The second was a small, battered, and somewhat lopsided
1970
s Datsun that careered wildly across three lanes before skidding to a halt at his feet. The small car shuddered on its springs as the ensuing hooting and shouting match unfolded around it. The driver was the size of a small gorilla. As he hung out of the window the other man realised he had met his match and drove off with a dismissive wave over his shoulder.

‘
Yallah, ya bey
!
’ the driver leaned over and called up. ‘Don’t anger me by making me wait.’ Without further prompting Makana dragged open the rear door and climbed inside, only to be thrown backwards as the car took off. The interior was badly beaten up and so torn the upholstery looked like it had been mauled by hungry dogs.

‘You were a bit hasty back there.’

‘I am truly sorry, sir,’ the driver sought his eyes in the rear-view mirror, though his tone suggested he wasn’t in the least repentant. ‘I meant no offence, believe me, but in this business one has to fight. I swear by Allah that every morning I tell myself I’m a warrior going to battle. I have five children to feed.’

‘Take me to Imbaba.’

‘Hadir, ya bey
.’ The driver wrestled the protesting gearstick and pinned it squealing in place so that Makana actually felt sorry for it. ‘I’ll get you there faster than lightning.’

‘Just get me there in one piece.’

As they drove, Makana wondered about Faragalla. The more he thought back over their meeting the more it seemed to him that the man’s bumbling incompetence was no more than a convenient shield to hide behind. Even if the letter contained a threat, it was of such a veiled nature that it would take a guilty conscience to see anything there at all.

As the car scraped and coughed its way along, Makana became aware of the giant watching him in the mirror.

‘The brother is here on business?’

Makana was used to being taken for a visitor. If his dark skin didn’t do it, his accent gave him away immediately.

‘I live here,’ he said wearily.

‘
Ya ahlan wa sahlan
, you are very welcome,
Effendim
. If you ever need a car . . .’ With a speed and dexterity remarkable for his size, the driver flourished a business card from under the strip of artificial black-and-white Dalmatian fur that ran across the dashboard. ‘Twenty-four hours a day,’ he added, raising a thick index finger towards the sky. ‘Allah and mechanics permitting.’ Makana glanced idly at the card as they crossed to the west bank of the river. Above a telephone number ran the words,
Sindebad Car & Limoseen Servise –
24
hrs anytime
. Makana leaned over the front seat to take a better look at the big man’s profile.

‘Is that you, Sindbad?’

‘Ah, of course it’s me, who else would it be?’ Irritated, the driver glanced back and then stopped. A frown puckered up the fleshy features as his eyes widened. For a moment their journey risked coming to an abrupt and unpleasant end as the car drifted across several lanes and back again, like a duck sailing over a flooded field. He was oblivious to the hooting and swearing that followed him.

‘Is it really you,
ya basha
?’

‘How are you doing, Sindbad?’

‘I ask you,’ the big man lamented. ‘See how I have come down in the world. You knew me when I was working for Saad Hanafi. Those were the days.’ He indicated the grubby shirt and trousers he wore. ‘I am a sorry figure compared to that proud man.’

Sindbad had once had a promising career as a boxer. They had met a couple of years ago when he had been working as a chauffeur for one of the wealthiest men in Cairo. In those days he had worn a suit when he drove.

‘You never really liked wearing those clothes, did you?’

‘To be honest, no,
ya basha
. It made me feel stiff, like one of those figures in the shop windows in Talat Harb Street. I still have it, though. Some days I think about wearing it to work, just to remember what it was like.’ Sindbad shook his head. ‘But it’s not the same. Nothing ever is.’

‘You lost your job, then?’

‘When the old man died everything went to pieces. They let us all go.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, it was a blessing. The money they gave me was enough to buy this car and now I am my own boss. There’s nothing like it in the world. I can tell you, I wouldn’t go back for anything. Not now. No matter how bad things are. Working for yourself, a man can keep his dignity. You understand what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

Sindbad tapped the wheel gently, the way you might pet a cat with a furious and unpredictable temper. ‘Actually, I bought it from my brother-in-law who is always in trouble with money. I was doing him a favour.’

‘I see,’ said Makana. It explained a lot. ‘So now you’re a free agent.’

‘
Al Hamdoulilah
!
’

‘Do you have other people to help you, or do you work alone?’

‘Just me,
Effendim
.’

‘Then how do you manage to work twenty-four hours a day?’

A cloud descended over Sindbad’s face. ‘I have a wife and five children. When the Lord gives you a life like that he doesn’t intend for you to sleep.’

The traffic was the usual snarl of hot metal and smoke, but Sindbad had a good eye. Restlessly grinding the gearstick and twisting the wheel, he darted into openings, carving a swift line through the clogged obstructions. Before long they were pulling up under the twisted eucalyptus tree that leaned precariously out over the riverbank. Down below the
awama
waited, as regal as an emissary from a long-forgotten kingdom.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ Makana asked, as he climbed out.

‘I am at your service,
ya basha.
All you have to do is call.’

Makana watched the black-and-white taxi clatter away under a cloud of exhaust, then he turned and made his way down the path towards the river. At this time of day, as evening was falling, the
awama
seemed to lose all her blemishes and defects. As the light grew faint, the houseboat seemed to loom out of the shadows in all her former glory, or at least it seemed that way to Makana.

A large, untidy man missing most of his front teeth stood in the doorway of Umm Ali’s hut chewing a piece of sugar cane. This was Bassam, her useless brother, who had turned up about a month ago and seemed in no hurry to return to the home village in the Delta. The story was that his wife had left him. ‘First sensible thing that woman has done in her life.’ Umm Ali was not the type to mince her words. ‘Now if only she had poisoned him before she left . . .’

Spitting a wad of chewed-up pulp on the ground, Bassam wagged a finger as Makana went by. ‘And don’t forget about the rent this month. My sister is too soft, but don’t think you can play those games with me.’ The finger disappeared inside his mouth to fish out something caught between his few remaining teeth.

‘Why doesn’t he just go home?’ Aziza, Umm Ali’s youngest daughter, lay sprawled on Makana’s sofa where she regularly hid when she wanted to get away. Locking the place was a waste of time. He had the idea that Aziza climbed along and through the window on the riverside. It didn’t matter how carefully he locked the shutters, she still managed to get in without any trouble at all. Now she was reading one of his books, or pretending to do so. The cross-eyed Aziza was the sharpest tool in the box. Her voluptuous elder sister was as slovenly as she was lazy and wouldn’t lift a finger if she wasn’t forced to. And at the ripe old age of eleven, her little brother Saif was already a veteran delinquent. He’d already been through Makana’s belongings and deemed there to be nothing worth his time to be found. Aziza guarded the place with a fierce sense of propriety. She cleaned up without being asked. In return Makana would slip her some money when her mother and siblings were not looking.

‘If a stone accidentally fell on his stupid head while he was sleeping, would I go to prison?’

‘He’s your uncle. He’s family.’

‘There’s no law that says you can’t hate your family.’

Makana had to concede she had a point. No doubt Bassam would sooner or later get bored with life on the riverbank and decide to go home to get his wife back, or, failing that, find some other idiot to marry him.

‘He says we should throw you out and move in here ourselves.’

‘Does he?’

‘Will you kill him now?’ Aziza sat up eagerly. Makana shook his head as he went into the kitchen to make coffee.

‘Go home. I have work to do.’

Grudgingly, she got to her feet and walked towards the door. ‘Well, if you find me dead tomorrow don’t come complaining to me.’

Makana listened to her go, singing to herself softly, the wooden boards creaking under her feet. It was impossible for him to look at her and not think of his own daughter, Nasra. How old would she have been now?

Hardly a day went by when he didn’t think back to that night on the bridge. He played it out in his mind over and over. It seemed to him that he was compelled to keep asking the same questions again and again. Their lives had been in danger. There had been no other option but to flee, he knew that. But could he have played it differently? And if he had done, would they still be alive now? These were questions to which he knew he would never find answers.

The last rays of light were draining from the sky as he climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Makana threw off his jacket and lit a cigarette before settling down into the old armchair to watch the sun going down. This was his favourite time, when the fury of the day had worn itself out and the world seemed to roll onto its back and breathe a sigh of relief before the evening started in earnest. Up on the bridge the familiar honking of horns heralded the sunset, punctuated by the occasional bleating of a musical interlude on a siren. It was always impossible to tell the jokers from the real thing, an ambulance on a hopeless mission to get through the gridlock. He finished his coffee and lit his second cigarette as he turned his attention to the letter Faragalla had given him.

In another life one might have resorted to sophisticated forensic techniques to search for fingerprints, or even DNA identification, but no such technical option was open to him. There was also no telling how useful it would be since he had no idea how many people had already touched the letter. Which meant, finally, that the only clues he could hope to find would be in the content of the letter itself. By now the light had almost gone. He moved over to the large table that stretched along one wall and constituted his office. Switching on the desk lamp he rummaged around in a drawer for a large magnifying glass. The letter was clearly printed not on a simple office printer but with ink and typeface. Putting aside the magnifying glass Makana dug about for a copy of the Quran and looked up Sura number
53
:
Surat al-Nejm.
The Star. Here he read:

The Unbelievers follow vain conjectures and the whims of their own souls, although the guidance of their Lord has long since come to them.

Have you considered him who turns his back upon the Faith, giving little at first and then nothing at all? Does he know, and can he see, what is hidden?

The stack of reference books and encyclopaedias he had accumulated over the years from a variety of bookshops and the second-hand stalls around Ezbekieh market now formed a pillar by the side of the table. Here he learned that the star in the Quranic text referred to Sirius, the brightest fixed star in the sky, that it was the first to appear, which explained its Arabic name,
al-Shiara
, which meant ‘The Leader’.

In Ancient Egypt the star was known as Sothis or Sopdet and was associated with Anubis, the god who appears at times with the head of a jackal, at others with that of a dog. It was found on the tombs of the dead and guarded the way into the Underworld. This explained its Latin name,
Canis major,
or the Dogstar. Sothis represented change. The regeneration of the earth. The solar year began with the first appearance of the Dogstar on the eastern horizon shortly before sunrise and marked the start of the annual floods, which were vital to the country’s agriculture. Its absence from the sky was believed to coincide with Osiris’ journey through the Land of the Dead and so it was associated with the resurrection of the deceased. To the Greeks the star was a gate into hell, out of which fire poured – the cause of anxiety in the so-called dog days prior to the flood, when the rising heat drove people to madness.

Makana pushed the books aside finally and lit another cigarette. Astronomy. Ancient Egyptians. He got to his feet and went over to the railing. He felt unsettled and couldn’t work out why. The lights of Zamalek swirled in the water at his feet. The sound of cheerful music came from a small boat that sailed by below. The passengers were strobe-lit by the disco beat pulsating through a string of lights whose colour reverberated against the dark water. When they spotted him the young men and women began to wave and cheer wildly. If it went on like this, Makana thought, he would be in danger of becoming a landmark.