Arabesk (10 page)

“And this is my daughter,” said Madame Rahina hastily. “She has a very good job at the New Alexandrian Library.”

“We’ve met,” said Raf.

Madame Rahina looked at him in shock.

“Four days ago,” said Raf, talking to the girl. “On a green tram. Going south, heading for Rue Derida. You were carrying flowers.”

“It can’t have been Zara,” Madame Rahina said firmly. “She stayed over with a friend in Abukir. They both caught the most terrible food poisoning.”

“Then I must be wrong.” Raf peeled off his glasses and dropped them in his pocket. “Still…” he shrugged, “I’m surprised there are two such attractive girls in El Iskandryia.”

Zara shot him a look that mixed relief with outrage and her mother smirked. But it was Hamzah Effendi who spoke. “Nasty stuff, food poisoning,” he said, looking at Zara.

“It’s disgraceful,” said Lady Nafisa firmly from her end of the table. “Completely disgraceful that we let immigrants mutilate each other in the name of
RenSchmiss.
I’ve written to General Saeed himself and asked him to complain to the Khedive…”

She glanced to her right, as if daring Hamzah to argue. There was no fear the person sat to her left would disagree. So far, Madame Rahina had nodded fiercely every time Lady Nafisa opened her mouth.

The big man just shrugged, though from his position at the other end of the table Raf couldn’t tell if this was because Hamzah couldn’t be bothered to argue or because he genuinely didn’t concern himself with Germans.

“What’s
RenSchmiss?”
Hani asked.

The table went very still.

“I’ll tell you later,” Lady Nafisa said, in a voice that meant she wouldn’t.

“I want to know
now,”
Hani demanded. She dipped sticky fingers into a bowl of warm water and rose petals, shook them dry and sat back. Everything about her said she wasn’t going to rest easy until someone had answered.

“Hani,”
said her aunt.

“Well?” The small girl tugged Raf’s sleeve and when he shrugged she turned to Zara. Hani could put up with Ali-Din being banished while they ate but didn’t see why she had to put up with not understanding what everybody else was talking about as well.

“You tell me.”

Zara smiled as she dipped her own fingers in a rose bowl and shook them. “Have you seen those gashes German boys have on their cheeks?”

Hani shook her head.

“We think it looks ugly but it’s tradition for them,” said Zara.
“Renommer schmiss,
the scars prove their bravery. When boys like that get to about fifteen, they go to a gymnasium, put on special jackets, helmets and metal goggles. And then they stand absolutely still, while an opponent slashes open their face…”

“Zara wrote a paper on it at Colombia,” Madame Rahina said hastily.

“Not to be encouraged,” Lady Nafisa said. She might have been talking about
RenSchmiss
but, equally, her comment could apply to letting girls go abroad to college. “Cousin Jalila and I have also sent a letter to
El Iskandryia
demanding the practice be banned.”

“We also have our traditions,” Zara said quietly, “ones which they could call—”

Lady Nafisa set her mouth into a straight line. “No,” she said. “There is a difference between barbarism and the medical demands for a healthy life.”

Hani giggled. The mention of healthy living having brought a smirk on her face. “You know where my Aunt Jalila goes?” she whispered to Raf when he bent to listen.

He shook his head.

It involved hoses and bottoms.

Lunch was in the
qaa,
at an oval table cast from marble dust and inlaid along the top with swirling Persian-blue tesserae arranged as a peacock displaying its tail. Matching benches curved down both sides of the table. Only Lady Nafisa had a chair.

The main part of the meal was goat, split open and spit-roasted until the flesh was so tender no knife was necessary and hot mouthfuls could be pinched off between finger and thumb. Two French waiters from a local café carried the dishes from the kitchens, Lady Nafisa having promised to pay what they demanded, provided they wore their uniforms from the café and the uniforms were clean.

Food as politics and food as blackmail: both theories had been regurgitated more times than anyone could remember. But food as an elaborate dance, somewhere between etiquette and preening display, that was new to Raf. Though not to Isk, where the conspicuous consumption—not of rich or rare ingredients, though both were there—but of time itself was as ancient as the elaborate laws governing hospitality.

Time given was what was on display.

In Isk, just as in Tunis, Marrakesh or Fez, ceremonial food required preparation: the more preparation, the greater the respect being offered to guests. Tradition also demanded that ingredients be divided into small portions, wrapped in filo or hidden beneath pastry in pies, rolled in crushed nuts or stuffed into vegetables that had been lovingly hollowed out or cored. Food bought at a stall or fast-food joint was different. No one expected Burger King to be anything other than cheap, swift and anodyne. But in the home, it was almost an insult to offer guests food that looked as if preparing it took anything less than total commitment.

Served with the roast kid was a silver-edged clay bowl of saffron rice, plus a dish of red couscous, a chicken tajine where the juices had been sweetened with honey and reduced to a sticky syrup, fried red mullet with marjoram, and fresh matlou bread, which Lady Nafisa asked Raf to break and portion out in order of precedence. Hani got her chunk last, being both female and a child.

All the recipes chosen were classically Tunisian: which was to say that they were really from Andalusia, carried to North Africa when the defeated Moors finally retreated from Spain in the fifteenth century. Except that Andalusian cookery had originated in North Africa in the first place, having been taken to Spain several centuries earlier by the armies of Islam. Its complexity of flavour a response by Islamic cooks to the new ingredients they suddenly found surrounding them.

Lady Nafisa had decreed the cuisine be Megrib to remind everyone of Ashraf’s heritage. And every dish relentlessly reinforced the fact. Even the fried
brieks,
small paper-thin pastries stuffed with vegetables, eggs or chicken, were a Tunisian staple. Raf’s aunt was making sure Hamzah appreciated exactly what he was getting. A genuine Berber princeling, a real bey.

If Hamzah hadn’t decided to talk up his own end of the bargain, then disaster wouldn’t have struck; but he did and so it began, with a compliment from the girl’s father.

“She’s a good kid,” Hamzah said firmly.

“Dad.”

“She doesn’t make a fuss. Doesn’t cry over stupid things.” He paused. “Actually, she doesn’t cry at all. Gets wound up occasionally, like girls do. Usually over animals or children. Stuff that can’t be changed…”

Zara snorted.

“You don’t agree?” Raf asked. “That things can’t be changed?” He only meant to make conversation but it was obvious from Madame Rahina’s sudden silence that she didn’t think he’d like Zara’s answer.

“What’s to agree?” said Zara. Her slate-grey eyes came up to meet his and for the first time that afternoon she didn’t blink or look away. “And what does it matter if I believe things can be changed or not? In Iskandryia, daughters don’t have opinions… Or rights.”

“Zara.” Her father sounded more concerned than angry.

“No rights?” Raf’s voice was gentle. “Why not?”

“Tradition,” said Zara bitterly. She stood up from the table. “You see Dad’s case over there?” The briefcase was Calvin Klein, black crocodile skin. “That contains ten per cent of my dowry. You get a further fifty per cent when we marry, minus whatever your aunt’s already had for expenses. The remainder you don’t get for twelve months.”

From the surprise on Raf’s face it was obvious he hadn’t known money was involved at all.

“Twelve months…?”

“Apparently that’s meant to stop you beating me.” Zara stepped away from the bench. “Well, for the first year, at least…” She turned to her father. “I’m sorry. I need to get some air.”

“Go after her,”
Raf’s aunt hissed as Raf stood watching Zara go.

“And say what?”

“Anything you like.” Lady Nafisa was almost shaking with fury. “All girls get nervous before their wedding. Make something up. Tell her whatever she wants to hear.”

Raf nodded, “Okay,” he said. So he did.

As soon as Raf saw Monday morning’s newsfeeds, he tried to ring Zara. But she wouldn’t take his calls. Raf knew she was at Villa Hamzah because the butler who answered made no pretence of her being anywhere else. The girl just didn’t want to talk to him.

He kept calling and by that evening the butler could recognize Raf’s voice without him having to give his name. But she still wasn’t taking his calls.

“No luck,” said Raf and tapped his watch strap, breaking the connection. He was in the
qaa
, his back to a wall. And it was obvious from the anger twisting Lady Nafisa’s face that she’d dearly have loved to have him lifted bodily, carried to the edge and tossed to the flagstones below. Hani had been slapped and sent to the haremlek for nothing more than being there when Lady Nafisa finally and completely lost her temper. So far, Lady Nafisa had tried ordering and begging, now she was trying moral blackmail.

“You’ve ruined her. You know that, don’t you?” Fury and three arguments had worn Nafisa’s voice to an ugly rasp. The first had begun as Madame Rahina stormed out, dragging Zara behind her. The second took place the following day, when Raf angrily told his aunt there were no circumstances under which he would marry the girl. And finally there had been today’s, the third and worst.

Raf skimmed the evening paper she’d just handed him. The compulsory box-out on page two featured General Koenig Pasha’s new crackdown on smuggling, with separate pix showing the young Khedive, the General and sunrise over Western Harbour. General Koenig Pasha’s was the biggest picture by far. The rest of the paper was filled with what interested Lady Nafisa.

“Oil heiress jilted…” The story wasn’t going to go away. That morning’s Zaghloulist tabloid had been more upfront, less pleasant.
Dumped dumpy
read the kindest comment. Above it an unflattering and outdated grab showed Zara in a voluminous swimming costume, aged about fifteen, all expanding chest and puppy fat. The fact she no longer looked anything like that was nowhere mentioned.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Lady Nafisa asked furiously.

Raf sighed. Her question was entirely rhetorical. He’d tried several times to explain himself but Lady Nafisa wouldn’t even let him reach the end of a sentence.

“She’s disgraced,” said his aunt. “Unmarriable. You think anyone in El Iskandryia wants your cast-offs?”

“She’s hardly a cast-off,” Raf said angrily. “Besides, her father’s worth millions.”

“Billions,” Lady Nafisa corrected him without even thinking about it. “That’s not the point. No one who matters will marry her now.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to marry
someone who matters…”
Raf said between gritted teeth. He put as much scorn into the words as possible. “Maybe she doesn’t want to get married at all.”

“That’s not how life works,” said Lady Nafisa. “You know nothing about it.”

“No.” Raf tossed the paper onto the marble floor. “You’re right, I don’t. But I don’t like what I’ve seen so far.”

“And I suppose you prefer prison?”

“To this?” said Raf. “Yes, I do.”

That wasn’t entirely accurate. There were brief moments when Raf looked out along the heat-hazed sweep of the Corniche and El Iskandryia felt bizarrely like home. But liking or not liking Isk wasn’t Raf’s big problem. His problem was Hu San and Wild Boy. They would be looking for him and when those two went looking, they found… All Raf had going for him was they didn’t yet know where he was or who he’d become. Which meant Raf needed to keep on being Ashraf al-Mansur the way he needed to keep breathing. And, unfortunately, it looked like the two states were inextricably linked.

Disappear into the night?

That was a definite possibility. Isk was full of foreigners running bars, brothels and dubious businesses, doing the work pure-born Iski regarded as beneath them. The only flaw there was that Lady Nafisa would undoubtedly call the police. It didn’t matter what version of the truth she told them. She was
someone who mattered:
they’d find him.

Killing her or staying close were his safest options, maybe his only options. Either way, he kept ahead.

“Ashraf?” The question was a whisper.

He spun, fast. “How the fuck did you…”

Wide-eyed, Hani held up her hands so he could examine the grease smeared across her palms, then lifted her arms to show the oil smeared down the front of her flannel pyjamas. “It’s a bit slippery,” she said seriously. “It gets easier when you’ve done it a few times.”

Like using the glass sword in
Dragon’s Bane III
or writing your own level for
Imperial Assassin.
Hani didn’t really distinguish between what she did on screen in her nursery and what she did in life, it was all real. Sort of…

Raf said nothing. Telling the child that climbing wires was dangerous wasn’t his job and besides, judging by the stubborn glee in her eyes it would have been pointless anyway. The danger was precisely why she did it.

“You off to feed Ali-Din?” he asked eventually.

Hani looked at him with a new respect. “That too,” she admitted. “But I also came to see you.”

“Well, here I am,” said Raf.

“They work like speaking tubes,” Hani said, pointing towards the lifts. “Stand at the top and you can hear everything…” She paused to consider what she’d just said. “That’s why we should whisper…”

“I’m whispering,” mouthed Raf and Hani giggled.

“Stupid.”

“Yep,” Raf glanced round the silent
qaa.
“You’re probably right.”

“Why were you in prison?”

To answer or not to answer. “For killing someone.”

Hani looked appalled, shock swallowing her small face as she struggled for something to say. And then she relaxed slightly. “They must have done something very bad.”