Dogstar Rising (40 page)

‘You’re on your own,’ said one. ‘We have to stay here.’

‘They are blocking the roads,’ said another. ‘There’s no way through from this side.’

‘We can go round from the other side by car,’ Makana suggested.

Finally, with a reluctant shrug, Ishaq stepped forward.

‘I’ll show you the way.’

Makana waved Sindbad over. As the battered Datsun ground its way towards him, he thought it was a good idea to get going before Ishaq thought the matter through too carefully and changed his mind, but Ishaq dropped into the back seat and stared idly out at the street.

‘It all just got out of hand. These murders . . .’ Ishaq shook his head. ‘It’s a war out there.’

‘Why is it people keep talking about war as though it was inevitable?’ Makana asked.

‘What would you know about it?’

‘Watch your mouth, boy!’ interjected Sindbad.

‘It’s all right, Sindbad.’

‘
Hadir, ya effendi.
’

‘Sindbad,’ Ishaq leaned over from the back seat. ‘I knew I’d seen your face before. You used to box, didn’t you? Heavyweight, right?’

Sindbad mumbled something under his breath.

‘Maybe you have all the protection you need, after all,’ Ishaq said, sitting back.

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Makana.

They drove back towards the riverside and sank into a mass of dense traffic, as if the wheels were churning through thick mud. At the Kit Kat roundabout they turned in again and the streets grew narrow and more crowded as the number of pedestrians swelled. They flooded across the road, reducing the car’s progress to a snail’s pace. A camel being led by the nose overtook them. Loping gracefully along, oblivious to the absurdity of its surroundings. Horns beeped in harmonious disarray while figures wandered back and forth through the headlight beams like a herd of sleepwalkers. Ishaq leaned over the front seat and pointed.

‘Take the next left. It’s on the next corner. You can see it.’

‘Take him back to the gym,’ Makana said to Sindbad as he got out of the car. ‘I’ll walk from here, then come back and wait here for me.’ To Ishaq he said, ‘Try and find Antun. If you do, take him to Father Macarius.’

As the Datsun screeched away, Makana stumbled off over the usual debris of shattered bricks and shredded nylon bags. The street was dark and uneven. A discarded watermelon rind smiled up at him from the dirt. The asphalt, if there ever had been any, had long since been buried beneath layers of mud and rubbish. It had been broken up and ground down by lorries and horse carts and every manner of human transport and footwear, and never replaced. No one really paid much care to an area like this. The politicians and their loved ones didn’t live nearby and few tourists ever ventured here. The houses were unadorned. Ragged scraps of light appeared here and there announcing an opening in a wall was a shop of some kind. Children scampered by. A group of boys were kicking an old football about under a solitary lamppost. Spurts of dust flew up around them. An uneven goal had been drawn on the wall with a stick of charcoal. You could barely see the wall, let alone the goal. Training for a generation of blind footballers.

The café was closed. The name was painted in letters so feint you had to look twice to see them. The metal doors were shuttered and bolted, sealed with a heavy padlock. It was the same hole-in-the-wall café where he had left a ten-pound note for the boy. The same torn note that had been nailed to Sami’s hand. There was no sign of the Omda with the handlebar moustache.

The building where Rocky lived was right across the street. Could Rania be here? Makana had a sense that he was being watched as he crossed and ducked quickly through the open doorway. The threshold was like a heavy curtain, on the other side of which was pitch blackness. The glow from the street behind him revealed only the foot of the narrow stairwell. Up above him faint threads of light filtered under doorways. It was hot and airless in there. Landlords regularly overstepped the building regulations, discarding common sense as they did so. Thus a four-storey building would be pushed up to seven, nine or eleven floors even, as if trying to push the limits of human stupidity, or break the world record for precarious living. Every now and then the earth would give a slight tremor to remind people of their humble place in the scheme of things. Whole buildings came down, walls crumbling as if they were made of brittle clay. Men, women and children crushed in their beds. There would be the usual cries for justice and the blame would be passed, and gradually things would return to normal and people would sleep peacefully again, until the next tremor. At a small window on the second floor he paused and put his head to the opening and breathed deeply. Outside, an eerie combination of shadows and streetlights painted the street in squares of light and dark. Turning back, Makana flicked the wheel of his disposable lighter to reveal graffiti left by tomb raiders: apartment numbers and the names of occupants scratched on the wall with charcoal. The sounds of the street fell away. The excited chatter of televisions played obliviously behind closed doors. People talking, mothers calling to children, an argument between man and wife.

Above him a door opened and closed abruptly. Makana heard the sound of someone moving upwards in the darkness and then stop. For a time there was nothing but the muted sounds of life from the apartments around him. He waited, sensing that the person above him was waiting for him to do something, but what? Slowly he took a step upwards, and then another, feeling his way as carefully and as quietly as possible. There was no inside edge to the stairwell, nothing to stop him falling if he put a foot wrong. He stopped and pressed himself back against the wall as something swooped down on him. A heavy object struck the edge of the staircase just above his head. There was a crash as it exploded, showering him with bright dust and small chunks of concrete. Then he could hear the sound of someone running upwards and he began to move again, this time with less caution. With one hand scraping along the wall, he felt his way, a blind man racing through a tunnel. His eyes were adjusting to the dark and he could make out a faint glow from high up where he guessed the stairs gave onto the roof. Makana moved quickly, climbing the last three flights as fast as he could, stumbling a couple of times, scraping his hands and banging his knee painfully, until finally the dark enclosed space gave way to the open air.

Breathing heavily, Makana stepped cautiously up onto the roof. It was a relief to be out of the choking confines of the stairwell and out into the cool night air. He looked around him but could see nothing but shadows. There was no light up there save for the faint glow that filtered up from the street and surrounding buildings.

The stairs carried on up into the sky, a hopeful, if crooked chart of the building owner’s projected ambitions, aimed at the stars and cut off abruptly in mid-air. He circled around trying to avoid tripping over the clutter of junk: television antennae, buckets and planks of wood, old car wheels, broken bicycles, chicken wire, paint hardened in pots, bags of cement turned to solid rock by the rains. Like a distant oasis the skyline of downtown Cairo glowed in the distance, announcing the eternal life of neon-strip signs championing airline logos, cigarettes, soft drinks. Modern idols begging for worship. Beyond lay the soft domes and lean Ottoman minarets of the citadel which floated above the city in a bowl of light, like a looming spacecraft from another age.

On the far side of the roof he could make out some kind of flimsy construction. It wasn’t uncommon for people to build shacks on rooftops. The shortage of housing, funds, available space, forced people to make do. These would not have been out of place in a shanty town. On closer inspection Makana could see that for what they were they were fairly robust. A sound brought him to a halt. Something, or someone, was moving around inside. There was a scrabbling about that made him think of rats at first, but this was bigger. His next thought was a dog. Then it hit him. Moving in closer, he examined the hastily nailed-together planks, sheets of plywood. All the material appeared to have been assembled haphazardly from a variety of sources. It was solid enough though, with a roof of zinc sheeting. At the level of his head a series of openings ran along at regular intervals. As he approached these the stench hit him. Standing on tiptoe he could peer inside. The commotion inside increased in intensity, like animals in distress sensing danger.

‘It’s all right,’ he said softly into the opening. ‘I’m going to get you out.’

Easier said than done. The door was reinforced as well as bolted in two places. Makana rattled the heavy padlocks, increasing the alarm within. He would need tools to get it off. Moving around the roof in search of a lever of some kind, Makana discovered there was no perimeter wall around the edge. No doubt the owner had decided it wasn’t worth it. When he had the money he would simply construct another floor. Makana peered down into a narrow cut created by the awkward angle between this building and the next. Some miscalculation by a surveyor had left a couple of metres to waste. Or perhaps it had been left on purpose, as a thoroughfare designed by the municipality. In which case another planner had truncated this scheme by placing another building at the far end. As he peered over, sliding one foot carefully towards the edge, he was met by a rotting stench of drains and bad water.

It was as he was turning away that something hit him. Hard. If he hadn’t been moving it would have knocked him out cold. Instead, the blow aimed for his head glanced off his shoulder. Still, it was enough to send him staggering back. He could hear a grunting, wordless sound, like a man in pain. The second blow hit his outstretched arm, sending a ringing numbness through his left side. Trying to evade the blows Makana found himself being pushed backwards towards the edge of the roof. He tried to straighten up, but his assailant was too strong. The next blow struck his side. His foot tripped over something and as the other man drew back his weapon, a length of wooden scaffolding, Makana scrabbled about on the ground until his hands found a weapon. An old tin that must have once contained paint that had long since been hardened by rain and sun. It weighed a couple of kilos. He swung it while trying to straighten up, hearing the satisfying crack of the heavy tin hitting home. There was a wild scream, but the man responded by throwing himself at Makana with renewed fury. This time the wooden spar hit him high up in the chest and pushed him backwards. There was no barrier, nothing to stop him. He scrabbled blindly, clutching only handfuls of air. His right foot skidded over the edge. The night spun around him as his arms flailed wildly and he toppled with a cry into the dark void.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

A dead man falling, Makana thought. There were seven floors of empty space beneath him. Lighted windows flared like brief matches as he fell past them. He braced himself for impact, for unimaginable pain. He could hear a voice, vaguely similar to his own, yelling. Nobody falls seven floors and walks away unscathed. Then, before he had time to think any further thoughts, he plunged into a soft, spongy mass. A sticky, moist hand closed around him, then he was sinking, no longer falling. Confused, Makana scrabbled about hopelessly. The stench filled his throat, so strong he could not breathe. Something sharp dug into him. Wet plastic stuck to his face, suffocating him even as it sucked him down, pouring in on top of him, burying him alive. Years of accumulated rubbish, tossed out through kitchen windows without a thought, had produced a layer of decomposing matter – vegetable, animal, mineral – all wrapped in plastic and about two floors deep. Alive, too, by the feel of it. Something was moving about under him. Fighting panic, Makana kicked frantically to roll clear of the mess, to breathe, to stay afloat. He floundered in the dark until eventually he managed to roll himself into a corner where there was a lighted window. He banged on the glass as loudly as he could. It was like floating on soft mud that might at any moment give way, leaving him to plunge even deeper into the bowels of this creature. Something scampered over his leg. He shouted and banged more frantically. A light came on. Shouts of alarm, children crying.

‘
Ya Allah!
’ a woman implored. ‘
Iblis
,
the devil himself is out there!’ The howling children joined in the hysteria. ‘
Allahuakbar
!
’ they all chimed together.

Makana was afraid he might pass out from the stench of putrid gases. He was clinging to the window sill to stop himself drowning in the muck.

‘Police! Open this window!’

The voice of authority had a sobering effect.

‘What did he say?’ the woman asked.

‘Police. I think he said,’ replied her husband.

‘Police? How can the police be out there?’

‘Do I know? Stand back, woman, let me open it.’

There were cries of alarm as the rot and bits of blackened waste matter tumbled into their kitchen, along with a tidal wave of cockroaches, worms, and finally a strange man smeared in all manner of nasty material fell through the window. Something jumped nimbly off Makana’s back and bounded across the floor.

‘A rat!’

‘Quick, kill it! Where did it go?’

Makana struggled to his feet and stood brushing the rubbish off, checking himself for bites. His whole body itched and he fought the urge to retch. Banana peels, bones, bits of rind, along with all manner of unidentified decomposing matter tumbled off him to the floor. The man and his wife stared at him in horror. The child was busy chasing the rat through the house, hammering the walls with a broom.