Dogstar Rising

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 1980s. 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.

‘One last thing. What prompted you to send those letters?’

‘A couple of months ago I happened to overhear a conversation. It was at a shareholders’ meeting at the bank.’

‘The Eastern Star?’

Serhan nodded. ‘There is a general meeting once a year that you are obliged to attend. I generally go along to show my face and leave as soon as I can. I was sitting at the back and there were two men standing behind me. I overheard them talking about having taken care of something. I wouldn’t have paid much attention except I caught Meera’s name. They also mentioned someone else, a journalist. Again, I would probably have dismissed the incident from my mind but the following morning I read in the paper about a journalist, a man named Hikmet. He had thrown himself from a window. I knew immediately that I had overheard his executioners. I realised they were talking about killing Meera.’

‘Who were these men?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t dare turn around. But it was the way they were talking. They mentioned her by name, and the place where she worked. I didn’t know she was working in a travel agency, but I know that things were hard for them after . . . well, you know. I couldn’t approach her, for obvious reasons. So I decided to write.’

A groundsman wandered up the path in green overalls and big rubber boots, his feet heavy as if he was wading through thick black molasses, telling people the garden was closing.

‘This is a terrible mistake,’ said Serhan, leaping to his feet. ‘I should never have come here.’

Makana hurried after Serhan, who was rushing down the path at great speed. He grabbed hold of his arm.

‘Why send three letters? Why not just one?’

‘When the first one didn’t work I sent another, and then another. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t respond.’ Serhan’s lips moved soundlessly as if worrying at a rag. ‘It’s no good. I shouldn’t have come. You mustn’t try to contact me.’

And with that he was gone, melting into the thickening shadows that sprang up all around. Makana considered chasing after him but he had a feeling there was no point. Serhan was scared out of his wits. The only reason he had talked at all was because he had managed to lull himself into a state of false security remembering the old days when everyone had been young and he and Meera had been in love. With a sigh, Makana lit another cigarette. He wondered if Serhan had chosen this place because they used to come here back then. The groundsman appeared again clumping towards him, his boots making sucking noises, opening and closing like black eels clamped around his legs. His eyes were dull white orbs floating in the gloom.

‘We’re closing.’

Makana took himself off without waiting to be asked again.