Arabesk (90 page)

From time to time, there would be a flash that lit the darkness of some bar and another photograph would appear, apparently showing him snuggled up with the daughter of a German industrialist or American banker.

The inevitable result of this was a letter from his mother. Handwritten, sealed with wax and sent through diplomatic channels. Lady Maryam’s lament was always the same. At her age and in her state of health, how could he… The woman, needless to say, had the nerves of a trained killer and the physical constitution of a battle-hardened commando. Only her age was against her.

Kashif Pasha’s replies were as ritual as his mother’s complaints. The whey-faced teenager in the photograph was the daughter/niece/lover of some man he barely knew and had certainly never shared his bed. It was doubtful if Lady Maryam believed this, but then she knew far less about her son than she imagined.

His preferences had been formed early, one Saturday in early January while his mother was away, sometime between the calls to prayer at dawn and noon. That was when he’d first noticed Sophia, a barefoot Sudanese maid maybe two years older than he. He wasn’t even aware of having seen her before until she came into his room to sweep up and found him still half-asleep in a
bateau lit.

Her hurried apology got lost beneath his demand that she open his curtains, which were both long and heavy. Kashif had just been moved into a new suite of rooms, one fitted out in the English style, so that he would not disgrace himself by exhibiting unfamiliarity on arrival at his new school outside London, a city chosen largely because his father had wanted Paris.

“Open them all,” Kashif’s twelve-year-old self had demanded. “That’s an order.”

With reluctance, the girl (whose name Kashif was only to ask a week later) left the safety of her doorway and yanked back the nearest curtain, though it was embarrassment not anger that made her movements so abrupt.

“And the next window and the one after that.”

Sophia went along the wall as instructed, pulling back curtains originally sewn by the venerable Paris textile house of Nobilis Fontan, until Kashif had an uninterrupted view of a courtyard outside. One so large that a regiment could have assembled there.

“Excellency…” Sophia’s curtsy was made clumsy by her dash for the door.

“All the curtains,” Kashif demanded, nodding to the only window that mattered, a small one set high in the wall over his head. To get there Sophia would have to step onto his
bateau lit
and reach up. Kashif watched her face darken as she realized it. She had keloid scars on her cheeks, the way Berber women in the south had tattoos beneath their eyes. Scars, a face far finer than his, and huge, doubtful eyes.

“That window too please.” Kashif was suddenly polite. As for the first time he understood that she might refuse. If that happened, Kashif wasn’t sure he knew what to do.

“Excellency.” Sophia gave something that was half nod and half shrug, accepting the inevitable. Three steps took her to the bed and then, as Kashif watched from the corner of his eye she stepped up onto his mattress, revealing a dark flash of calf. For a moment she fought for her balance, then did what he’d only half believed she might, stepped clean over him and reached up, her fingers tugging the curtain.

He expected her to step down immediately and run from the room but she remained where she was, staring up as if at some vision. And although she wore no pants there was little for Kashif to see. A dark gash for her sex, a curve of bare buttock, more shadow than flesh. Heavy legs. An ankle showing some kind of insect bite.

He was still considering this when Sophia stepped down and gestured towards the bigger windows behind her. All of them revealing the same miracle. For the first time in Kashif’s life and, for all he knew, the first time in history, fat flakes of snow had begun to fall on the city of Tunis.

Kashif Pasha smiled.

“Here you go.” He slipped a red chip into the hand of the girl who’d earlier brought him a cigar and dropped another two into the waiting fingers of the croupier. Tipping so much to Michelle was an extravagance and, from the hastily controlled expression on the face of his facilitor, Georgian van Broglie, not quite how 30/54 liked its patrons to behave.

Kashif Pasha’s smile grew broader. Next time the cigar girl would come to his suite of her own accord, never realizing she’d been bought, in advance, for far less than he would have paid.

“And this belongs to you…”

Georgian van Broglie prepared to bristle at the indignity of being tipped, something she’d stopped needing the moment she got put on a cut of the house percentage. And found herself instead holding a business card. The card was just that, a rectangle of thick paper made from wood pulp, its china-clay surface embossed with a small logo. Below the logo, which managed to combine a torque wreath with an old-fashioned propeller was the address of a private airport, one of Long Island’s finest.

“Anytime you’re bored, feel free to call that number. One of my pilots will take you, plus family or friends, anywhere you want and bring you back again, when you want. Caracas, Bombay, Hong Kong…”

Her stunned expression was worth the gesture. Besides, Kashif gave good odds she’d never take up his offer. That card would remain in her wallet and get shown to friends, both social and business, while his jet would remain on the ground, fuel unused. So far no one had ever taken him up on a flight. Something about the very extravagance of his gesture prevented them.

Georgian van Broglie was still stuttering her thanks when someone knocked at the door. “Excellency, I’m sorry…”

Outside, in the panelled expanse of lobby stood an officer from the NYPD and beside him, looking flustered, the casino’s head of security, all cropped hair and diamond earstud. Accompanying them was a small man with the smell of a lawyer.

“Kashif al-Mansur?”

No sooner had the uniformed officer spoken than the small man put up a hand. “Not in here,” he said firmly and glanced at the head of security as if expecting the man to toss the officer onto the street. “This casino is on tribal land. You know the rules.”

“What’s the problem?” Kashif’s voice was calm, with an easy familiarity that didn’t reach his eyes.

“There’s been a complaint…”

“Outside,” insisted the small man, managing to look apologetic and determined at the same time. The officer got the determination, Kashif got the apology.

“A photographer alleges…”

Before the small lawyer had even relaunched his protest Kashif Pasha was holding up a white booklet. He put it half an inch from the officer’s face. “Do you know what this is?”

The man shook his head. They both knew that was a lie.

“It’s a
carte blanche
,” said Kashif Pasha, flicking to the first page. The photograph showed a man younger by four years, a little less worn, his cheeks less full; the beard was the same though. “Total diplomatic immunity,” Kashif explained, though this was unnecessary. The words were written in several languages across the top of each page. “You have a problem, take it up with the embassy.”

“The embassy is in Washington.”

“So take a plane. Or even better don’t bother. I’m leaving New York in about…” Kashif Pasha checked his Rolex, which looked silver but was actually platinum. “Thirty minutes. Everything I need to do here I’ve done.” Rubbing his fist absentmindedly, Kashif rechecked the time and smiled past the officer at the snow falling onto 54th Street beyond.

Saturday 5th February

Once in a time when animals still talked and djinn walked
the earth quite openly, the Sultan of Bokhara sent for a mullah living in a distant village. His message was simple.

“Come at once. I need advice.” For the Sultan expected the arrival of an Indian ambassador and the Mullah was…

A rumble in her tummy made Hani suck her teeth in sudden irritation. Now someone was bound to offer her food.

“Hungry?” Ashraf Bey’s question came from across the
qaa,
a reception room that occupied almost all of the first floor of the al-Mansur madersa: the mansion His Excellency shared with his young niece, his Portuguese cook, a Sufi porter and the woman Iskandryian gossip still assumed was his mistress, wrongly as it happened.

In summer the
qaa
was open to the elements along one side but now was winter and the arches overlooking the central courtyard were closed off with specially cut sheets of glass. A small fountain played in the middle of the
qaa
floor, carved, five hundred years before, from a single block of horsehair marble.

Silver balloons floated from this because today was Hani’s tenth birthday. Although Khartoum, who was friends with the cook but tended to disagree with her on almost everything as a matter of principle, insisted it was Hani’s eleventh. Largely, Hani suspected, because Donna insisted it wasn’t.

And as no one could actually find a birth certificate for the child and Hani had been born elsewhere, the question remained open. Lady Nafisa might have been able to provide an answer but Hani’s aunt was dead. Something else for Hani to feel guilty about.

“Hungry?” Raf repeated.

“No,” said Hani. “Not really.”

The mullah’s reply to the Sultan was equally simple. “I am unable to attend, O King, as I rely for life upon the sweet air of Qasr al Arifin and have no way to bring this with me in storage jars.”

Hani paused, her small fingers hovering in midair. A matrix of fine wires across the back of her hands ended in finger thimbles. Every time her hands flicked across the invisible keys of her imaginary keyboard, words got added to a processing package installed on her laptop one floor up in the
haremlek
… Very clever but not madly practical because Hani relied on seeing a screen to write.

All the same, it was kind of Hamzah Effendi to send her a present. Hamzah Effendi was Zara’s father and Zara was the girl her Uncle Ashraf should have married, the one everyone thought…

If only.

Hani kicked her heels against the legs of a silver chair and sighed. Another four paragraphs and she’d let herself go down to the kitchen to make coffee.

At first the Sultan was perplexed by this answer. And then, after consideration of the mullah’s open disrespect, he determined to remonstrate with the man when they next met, famous sage or not. At about this time the visit from the Indian ambassador was cancelled and so the Sultan needed no advice from anyone after all.

Many months later, as fig leaves began dropping and the stars grew cold the Sultan sat down to supper and no sooner had he picked up his goblet than an assassin leapt upon him. Immediately, Mullah Bahaudin, having entered the dining room at this exact moment, jumped upon the assassin and wrestled him to the ground.

“O Mullah,” said the Sultan, “It seems I am indebted to you in spite of your earlier rudeness.”

Mullah Bahaudin smiled. “O Sultan,” he said sweetly. “The courtesy of those who know is to be available when actually needed, not sit waiting for emissaries who will never arrive…”

Hani flicked her fingers over a nonexistent trackball to shut down her laptop and pulled off her gloves. She would write the rest of Bahaudin’s story, particularly the bit where the Mullah met a miracle worker who could walk on water—but to get things right she really did need a screen.

“Okay,” Hani said, slipping down from her chair. “I’m off to make some coffee.” She left her comment hang in the air, a fact that seemed to escape both Uncle Ashraf and Zara. “Anyone like some?” Hani asked loudly.

“Donna can make it,” Raf replied.

It was the wrong answer.

“Just look at this,” said Donna, waving one heavy hand at her television, as she insisted on describing the kitchen newsfeed.

“Disgraceful. You could get twice the zest out of that.”

On screen a plump boy in a chef’s hat was discarding half a lemon.

“Now he’s adding
cream
,” Donna said, with a disgusted shake of her head.
“Cream.”
The old woman loved watching the German channels for their sheer outrage.

When Hani said nothing Donna switched her attention from the recipe for
Schwetche Kuchen
to Hani’s face and jerked her head upwards, through the ceiling. “Still arguing?”

The child nodded.

“About you?”

Hani looked at her. “What do you think?” Everyone in the house knew what Hani thought. She refused to go to school in New York and she didn’t want a tutor at home. Hani was beginning to wish she’d never taken those tests.

“Zara just wants to get rid of me,” Hani said. “They both do.”

“That’s not…” Donna sighed. “Sit down,” she said in a voice that allowed for no argument.

Frying last season’s almonds in a drizzle of olive oil and grating rock salt over the top, Donna tipped the result onto a single sheet of kitchen paper, which she screwed into a ball to remove most of the oil. “Eat,” she told Hani, when the tapas was ready.

Hani did what she was told, sipping at a glass of red wine Donna had placed beside the plate of almonds.

“Now you listen to me,” said Donna. “It’s your birthday. You mustn’t be upset on your birthday because it makes for bad luck. And this isn’t really about you…”

“Yes it is.”

“No,” Donna said firmly. “It’s not…” She sighed and took her own gulp of Hani’s wine. “It’s about something else. Something grown-up. You know what I’d like to do with those two?”

“What?” asked Hani, suddenly interested.

“Ahh,” the elderly Portuguese woman shrugged in irritation. “No matter. You’re too young to know about these things…”

Although if Donna’s solution was anything like that of the madersa’s porter, then Hani had a pretty good idea already. Khartoum’s suggestion involved bricking Uncle Ashraf and Zara into a room with a bed and not letting them out until they made sheets.

Hani wasn’t sure where the bricks or sheets came into it, but she got the general point.

“You want more birthday cake?”

“Not really.” Hani shook her head. “I came to get coffee.”