The Hidden Oasis (9 page)

There was a car park in front of the terminal building, fringed by weeping fig trees and pink-flowered oleander bushes. Zahir padded across to a battered white Toyota Land Cruiser with a luggage rack clamped to its roof, its left headlamp smashed out. Hefting her bag into the back, he threw open the passenger door and, without saying a word, climbed in the driver side and started the engine. They moved off, passing through a security point and out onto a tarmacked road – the only road – that wound away through the desert like a slash of dirty grey paint. Ahead loomed the green blur of the oasis. Behind, hemming it in and curving the length of the horizon like the rim of a giant saucer, reared a steep, cream-coloured escarpment.

‘Gebel el-Qasr,’ said Zahir. He didn’t expand on the comment, and Freya didn’t ask.

They drove fast and in silence, gravelly dunes giving way first to scatters of scrub grass, then to irrigated fields interspersed with palm, olive and citrus groves. After ten minutes a sign in Arabic and English announced they were entering Mut which, from Alex’s letters, Freya knew was Dakhla’s main settlement. A sleepy affair of two – and three-storey
whitewashed buildings, it was all but deserted, its dusty streets lined with casuarina and acacia trees, its pavement edges painted with minty bands of white and green, the town’s predominant colours.

They passed a mosque, a donkey-drawn cart with a group of black-robed women sitting in the back and a line of camels wandering aimlessly along the side of the road; occasional wafts of dung and woodsmoke pushed in through the open windows. Under other circumstances Freya would have been fascinated: it was all so different, so completely alien to her own experience. As it was she just sat there gazing distractedly out of the window as they followed a wide boulevard through the town, crossing a succession of mini-roundabouts from which other boulevards radiated off in different directions so that she had the curious sensation of pinging around a giant pinball machine.

In a matter of minutes they were out the other side and speeding through a patchwork landscape of maize fields and rice paddies. Dovecotes and palm groves drifted by, irrigation canals, strange twisted outcrops of rock until at last they came into a village of densely packed mud-brick houses. Zahir slowed and swung left through an open gateway, coming to a halt in a yard hemmed in by high mud walls topped with palm fronds. He tooted the horn and cut the engine.

‘Alex’s house?’ asked Freya, trying to match the yard and attached, ramshackle dwelling with the descriptions in her sister’s letters.

‘My house,’ said Zahir, opening the door and getting out. ‘We drink tea.’

Freya had no desire whatsoever to drink tea, but she
sensed it would be impolite to refuse – Alex’s letters had made much of the importance Egyptians attached to hospitality. Tired as she was, she grabbed her knapsack and alighted as well.

Zahir led her into the building and along a corridor – dark and cool, smells of smoke and cooking oil – and into a gloomy, high-ceilinged room with pale blue walls and a mat-covered floor. Other than a cushioned bench along one of the walls and a television sitting on a table in the far corner, the space was empty. He waved her onto the bench, shouted something towards the back of the house and squatted down on the floor in front of her, his
djellaba
riding up to reveal white Nike trainers. Silence.

‘I hear you worked with Alex?’ she said eventually, Zahir showing no sign of starting a conversation. He grumbled an affirmative.

‘In the desert?’

He shrugged as if to say ‘where else?’

‘Doing what?’

Another shrug.

‘We drive. Far. Out to Gilf Kebir. Long way.’

He flicked his eyes up at her and then away, cricking his neck and brushing at something on his
djellaba.
She wanted to ask him more: about Alex’s life here, her illness, her last days, anything he knew about her, everything, desperate to gather in whatever tiny fragments of her sister she could. She held back, however, sensing that he wasn’t going to be particularly forthcoming. Molly Kiernan had warned her he was surly, but it felt like more than that. Almost antagonistic. She wondered if Alex had told him what had happened between them, why they hadn’t spoken for so long.

‘You’re a Bedouin?’ she asked, pushing the thought from her mind and making a renewed attempt to break the ice.

A nod, no more.

‘Sanusi?’ It was something she vaguely remembered from Alex’s letters, a name somehow associated with the desert peoples. If she was hoping to impress him with her knowledge she was disappointed. Zahir let out an exclamation of disgust and shook his head vigorously.

‘Not Sanusi,’ he spat. ‘Sanusi are dogs, scum. We al-Rashaayda. True Bedouin.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean—’

A clinking from the corridor outside interrupted her. A boy of no more than two or three came toddling into the room, followed by a young woman – slim, dark-skinned, attractive. She carried a shisha pipe in one hand and a tray with two glasses of reddish-brown tea in the other. Freya stood to help, but Zahir waved her back to the bench, motioning to his wife – or so Freya assumed – to lay the tray and pipe down beside him. For the briefest of moments her gaze met Freya’s, and then she was gone.

‘Sugar?’

Zahir emptied a spoonful into Freya’s glass without waiting for a reply and handed it to her before sweeping the boy into his arms.

‘My son,’ he said, smiling for the first time since they had met, the tension of a moment earlier apparently forgotten. ‘Very clever. Aren’t you clever, Mohsen?’

The boy laughed, feet kicking beneath the hem of his miniature
djellaba.

‘He’s beautiful,’ said Freya.

‘No beautiful,’ said Zahir, wagging a finger disapprovingly.
‘Women is beautiful. Mohsen handsome. Like father.’

He chuckled and kissed the boy’s forehead.

‘You have children?’

She admitted that she didn’t.

‘Start soon,’ he advised. ‘Before you too old.’

He spooned three sugars into his own tea, sipped and, lifting the mouthpiece of the shisha, puffed it into life. A cloud of dense blue smoke drifted ponderously up towards the ceiling. There was another uncomfortable pause – or at least Freya found it uncomfortable; Zahir seemed oblivious. Then, raising the mouthpiece, he pointed above her head to a curved knife hanging on the wall, its bronze scabbard inlaid with intricate silvery tracery, its ivory handle tipped with what looked like a large ruby.

‘This belong my family in-sis-teer,’ he said. Freya was momentarily confused before realizing what he meant.

‘Ancestor,’ she corrected.

‘This what I say. In-sis-teer. He name Mohammed Wald Yusuf Ibrahim Sabri al-Rashaayda. Live before six hundred year, very famous man. Most famous Bedouin in desert. Sahara like his garden, he go everywhere, even Sand Sea, know every dune, every water-hole. Very great man.’

He nodded proudly, hugging an arm around his son. Freya waited for him to continue, but that seemed to be all he wanted to say and they lapsed into silence again. The distant cough of an irrigation pump drifted through the open window and, from closer, the squawk of geese. She gave it another couple of minutes, sipping at her tea, the young boy staring up at her. Then she put her glass down, stood and asked if she could use the bathroom. Not because
she needed to, just to get away from him for a while. Zahir waved a hand, indicating that she should follow the corridor they had come in along, towards the back of the house.

She stepped out of the room, relieved to be alone. Passing a couple of bedrooms – bare walls and floors, curiously ornate wooden beds – she swished through a bead curtain and out into a small internal courtyard. A pile of bamboo cages was stacked against one wall, crammed with rabbits and pigeons. From an opening directly ahead came the clank of pots and the sound of female voices. To her right were two closed doors, one of which, she assumed, must be the bathroom. She crossed the yard and opened the nearest one. It was either an office or a storeroom, she couldn’t tell which, a desk, chair and ancient computer suggesting the former, sacks of grain, a rusted bicycle and various farming implements the latter. She started to close the door only to stop, her attention drawn to the far side of the room where the desk was pushed into a corner. Sellotaped to the wall above it was a photograph. She stepped into the room, staring.

The picture was in colour, blown up to several times its normal size by the look of it so that even from the doorway she could make the image out clearly: a towering curve of glassy black rock erupting from an otherwise featureless desert like some enormous scimitar ripping its way through the sands. It was a dramatic formation, gravity-defying, its uppermost end tapering to a point, its sides notched and serrated from millennia of weathering giving it a curiously barbed appearance. Part of Freya couldn’t help thinking what an amazing climb it would make, although it was less the rock itself that drew her attention than the person standing in the shade at its base. She crossed to the desk
and leant over it, gazing up. Although the figure was tiny, dwarfed by the curving monolith overhead, the smile, the battered suede jacket, the blond hair were all unmistakable. Alex. She reached out a hand and touched her.

‘This private.’

She spun. Zahir was standing in the doorway, his son beside him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, embarrassed. ‘I got the wrong door.’

He said nothing, just stared at her.

‘I saw Alex.’ She indicated the picture, feeling inexplicably guilty, as though she had been caught doing something she shouldn’t, like that day back in …

‘Bathroom next door,’ he said.

‘Of course. I didn’t mean to …’

She paused, flustered, unable to find the right word. Intrude? Trespass? Snoop? She could feel tears starting to well up.

‘Was she happy?’ she blurted, unable to stop herself. ‘Alex. She sent me a letter, you see, just before she died, said things … she seemed happy. Was she? Do you know? At the end. Was she happy?’

He continued to stare at her, face blank.

‘This private,’ he repeated. ‘Bathroom next door.’

She felt a surge of anger.

She’s dead!
she wanted to scream.
My sister’s dead, and you bring me here to drink tea and won’t even let me look at her picture!

She said nothing, aware that her fury was directed as much at herself as at Zahir – for what she’d done to Alex, for not being there for her, for everything. She took a last
glance at the photo, then walked back across the room and stepped out into the yard.

‘I don’t need the bathroom any more,’ she said quietly. ‘I just want to see her. Will you take me, please?’

He gazed at her, expressionless, giving nothing away, then, with a nod, pulled the door closed. He propelled his son across the yard to the kitchen before leading Freya back through the house to the Land Cruiser. They didn’t speak on the journey back into Mut.

It was nearly midday when Flin woke. He was on his sofa, fully clothed, his head pounding, his mouth dry and crusty as though it had been rammed full of chalk. For a terrible moment he thought he’d missed his morning lectures, before remembering it was Tuesday, and on Tuesday he didn’t start teaching until early afternoon. With a muttered ‘Thank God’ he sank back into the cushions.

For a while he just lay there, gazing up at the slats of sunlight that sliced across the ceiling, mulling over the events of the previous night while an incessant orchestra of car horns blared up from the street below. Then, heaving himself to his feet, he trudged through to the bathroom and took a cold shower, the apartment’s ancient plumbing groaning and rumbling as it delivered a heavy cascade of water onto his face and torso. He gave it fifteen minutes. His mind slowly clearing, he towelled himself off and brewed up some coffee – thick, black Egyptian coffee, as
sharp and sour as lemon juice. Wandering back into the living room, he threw open the shutters. A chaotic mass of buildings spread away in front of him, sweeping eastwards like a surge of muddy froth before crashing into the distant, hazy wall of the Muqqatam Hills. To his right the dome of the Mohammed Ali mosque glowed dirty silver in the midday sun. Everywhere minarets speared upwards from the confusion beneath, like needles through coarse fabric, their loudspeakers filling the air with the ululating wail of the city’s muezzin, calling the faithful to noon prayer.

He had lived here for the best part of a decade, renting from an old Egyptian family who had owned the entire block since it was first built, back at the end of the nineteenth century.

From the outside it wasn’t much to look at, the once proud colonial façade – ornate balconies, intricately carved window surrounds, florid glass and ironwork doorway – cracked and weathered and stained a dung-coloured brown by the smoggy air. Inside the common parts of the building were also well past their prime, gloomy and depressive, the walls scratched and chipped and scored with graffiti, the paintwork flaking.

It was conveniently located, though – only a few streets away from the American University where he taught. And the rent was low, even by Cairene standards, an important consideration given that he only lectured part time. And if the block itself had seen better days, his apartment, on the top floor, was an oasis of calm and light, its rooms high-ceilinged, its windows affording spectacular views east and south across the city. He would always be most at home out in the desert, where he spent four months of the year, well
away from everyone and everything, but so far as he could be happy in a city he was here. Even with that surly bastard Taib lurking downstairs.

He knocked back his coffee, poured another and returned to the window, staring out across the jumbled flux of rooftops. Most of them, like the streets below, were covered with mounds of litter, as though the metropolis was sandwiched between twin layers of rubbish. He tried, and failed, to make out St Simon the Tanner and the other Coptic churches cut into the cliffs above the Zabbaleen quarter of Manshiet Nasser, then dropped his eyes to the alleyway directly below, where the remains of last night’s whisky bottle lay scattered in the dust. A cat sniffed inquisitively around them. He wasn’t sure whether to feel disgust at himself for so spectacularly falling off the wagon, or relief that he’d somehow managed to clamber back onto it again. A bit of both, he guessed.