The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (131 page)

“Come on…”
Zara was shaking Raf’s arm.

And as Khartoum’s voice rose to a note as ethereal as waves against rock, then ended abruptly, leaving only silence, Murad said, “We can’t do this.”

“What?”

“We just can’t.” There was a sadness in Murad’s voice, a maturity at odds with the anxious smile on his thin face. This was a boy who’d sat holding his father’s hand while the old man died. A boy who’d insisted on attending not just the funeral of his father, as was expected but also of his brother, after Kashif shot himself through the head. Three times. The funeral of Lady Maryam, who succumbed to the same flu that killed the Emir, he refused outright to attend. And that took a different kind of strength.

“Look at us,” Murad said.

Age was more than a simple sum of years. Into the load went experience and modes of survival. Strength could be learnt and adopted or developed through necessity and nothing tempered it faster than learning to stay alive.

Murad nodded towards the hidden crowd. Then swept his gaze across Hani, Zara and Raf, finally ending with a glance at a mirror which showed a twelve-year-old boy in a tight uniform, stars of gold and enamel across his narrow chest.

“Look at what I’m wearing…”

Murad’s new uniform, identical to one worn by Raf, was based around an Egyptian version of the old British cavalry tunic, borrowed by an earlier Emir and introduced as court dress. No North African or Ottoman regiment had ever gone into battle wearing such clothes. Its use was strictly ceremonial. The only difference was Murad’s lack of shades.

“I don’t support this,” said Murad. “I didn’t think you did.” He looked sadly at Hani reflected in the mirror. “And I don’t want to be part of it. I refuse to become Emir.” Lifting a felt tarboosh from his head, the boy nodded to a guard. The hat Murad held was inlaid with gold thread and seeded around its base with tiny freshwater pearls. Pinned to the front was a priceless diamond spray of feathers. The
chelengk
a recent sign of favour from the Sultan in Stambul.

The guard who reached out to take it retreated at a scowl from Raf.

“You have it then,” Murad said and Raf shook his head.

“Wrong size,” said Raf. “And anyway, it belongs to you.”

“Why?” Murad asked, and everyone looked at Raf.

That was the real question. All of Raf’s life had been leading up to this, it seemed to him. Standing in an alcove off a crowded salon de comeras, off-loading his responsibilities onto a child. Which was one way to look at it. The other was that Raf was trying desperately to do the right thing in a situation where there was no right thing to do.

“This is difficult,” he said.

“Really,” said Hani. And when Raf nodded she sighed. “That was irony,” she said.

Beyond the screen, Khartoum’s voice edged into the silence and soared away, stilling the crowd again.
“Ya bay.”
Raf caught the word in a refrain and lost the meaning as he looked down and saw Murad still waiting for his answer.

“You think it should be me,” Raf said, not bothering to make it a question. They’d been through this. None of them believed there should be an Emir to start with, but that wasn’t really the point. A coup had been averted.

A new era had arrived.

The last of the UN sanctions had been lifted that morning.

Five hundred people were waiting within the salon for sight of Ifriqiya’s child ruler. A hundred thousand filled the streets. Camera crews wandered the Medina recording anything and everything for worldwide syndication. There were two members of the German Imperial Family, a first cousin to the Sublime Porte, the president of the United States, both presidents of Russia and the Prince Imperial of France, despite his recent disgrace. All gathered to welcome Ifriqiya back into the family of nations.

As squabbling, incestuous and venal a group as ever existed.

In thirty years the country hadn’t seen half that number of VIPs. Hell, even one VIP would have been more than Ifriqiya had seen in thirty years. The ice age was over and the state’s political and diplomatic purdah had been quietly brought to an end.

At a high cost, a fact not doubted by any of those who stood in the alcove; although they differed in their understanding as to how high. What they now discussed was, if one were honest, who should be the first to pay.

“The problem,” said Raf, crouching until his face was level with Murad’s own, “is that your father was not my father.”

That got their attention.

“Yes he was,” Murad insisted.

“No.” Raf shook his head. “I’ve known this for days. One of us had Emir Moncef as a father. The other didn’t.” From his pocket, Raf pulled a sheet of paper folded into three and Hani, being Hani, recognized it for what it was. A sanguinity report.

“This is your father’s DNA,” Raf said to Murad as he pointed to a column down one side of the slip. “And this is your own,” he pointed to the next. “And this third one is mine. You can see there is no relationship between the first two and the third. My mother was not your mother and my father was not your father; we are not even cousins.”

“I don’t understand,” said Murad, face crumpling. “Who are you then?”

“My mother once told me my father was a Swedish hiker. That’s probably as true as anything else she ever told me.”

The boy nodded, a movement so small as to be almost imperceptible. And then, meeting Raf’s eyes, he nodded again, his second nod firmer, more confident.

“Give me that printout,” he ordered.

Without a word Raf handed Murad the DNA results. Instead of looking at them, the boy ripped them in two, did it again and then one more time, struggling in his final attempt.

“You’re my cousin,” he said in a voice that allowed no room for argument. Only Murad’s eyes, made larger than ever by sadness, betrayed him.

“And your bodyguard,” added Raf. “Should you need one.”

Hani raised her eyebrows.

“I thought you might enjoy living in Tunis,” Raf said. He didn’t quite glance at Murad as he said this but Hani scowled anyway. And he got the feeling she might have stuck out her tongue, if Murad hadn’t been watching. “Or we could commute between here and El Isk,” added Raf, “if that works better for everyone…”

Zara’s face was unreadable.

Beyond the screen, Khartoum fell into expectant silence and the guards around the edges of the alcove strained forward as if they might toss Murad’s group into the waiting hall themselves, so worried was Major Gide’s expression.

Hani, Zara and Raf began to move. Only to stop when Murad held up his hand.

“I go up there alone,” he announced. That wasn’t how it had been planned or practised in dry run after dry run, but Murad’s voice was firm as he stepped through a gap between wall and marble screen. “It’s my responsibility.”

“And us?” Hani asked. “What are we expected to do?” There was hurt in her eyes and her chin was up. Had Murad not been on the point of walking out in front of the world, he’d have had a serious fight on his hands. One look at the boy’s face showed he understood that.

They were children, Raf reminded himself, balanced on the cliff edge of puberty, behaving as adults because that was what politics required of them. In a different world there might be other answers and other systems that worked better. But they were here, in the salon de comeras in Tunis. And it was all the world they had.

“Well?” said Hani.

“You come with me,” Murad said, compromising. “When we get to the two steps you stop and I’ll stand at the top.”

Hani considered this.

“No,” she said, “you walk ahead when we go out but I climb the steps and stand just behind you.”

Murad sighed.

“And us?” Zara asked.

Hani and Murad looked at each other.

Raf and Zara went first. Walking through the silence beneath infinitely repeating
muqarnas
vaulting, inset with imported roundels of flying babies. Although the cherubim had the wooden rounds to themselves, an elegant script edged the space where ceiling and tiled wall joined. It said what the
Fatiha
always said, words that had echoed across the sands of North Africa for centuries.

Bringing war, civilization, coffee and the veil. Poetry and bloodshed. Algebra, an understanding of the physical working of the human body and civil war. No worse or better, in Raf’s opinion, than the beliefs it replaced or competed against.

Although maybe the words were more beautiful.

“In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate…”

They walked in silence, Zara staring straight ahead.

Her parents were sitting near the front but by a sidewall. A position chosen to reflect Hamzah Effendi’s vast fortune whilst not ignoring the occasionally dubious nature of its gathering.

Hamzah smiled, proud and slightly disbelieving.

Zara stalked by without noticing.

Two rows ahead, Koenig Pasha, whom Raf still thought of as the General, sat beside Tewfik Pasha, whose ghost of a beard and moustache were now almost manifest. The Khedive and the General had been busy ignoring each other ever since His Highness decided to dispense with the General’s position as Iskandryia’s governor. Suggesting they sit side by side had been Raf’s way of breaking the ice. Just ahead of them, assorted
uber
VIPs squatted the front two rows, except for three seats left blank on the right; one should have been Hani’s, but obviously she wouldn’t be needing it.

Raf stood back to let Zara go first and the look she gave him was hurt and slightly disbelieving. There were tears in her eyes. Although once she realized he’d noticed, she started to scowl.

“What have I done now?” Raf whispered.

“How could you say that to Murad?” she said. “And how long before Hani realizes that if you’re not Murad’s half brother, then you can’t be…”

“Her uncle?” Raf asked.

Zara’s nod was abrupt.

“What will you tell her?” she demanded.

A smile just wide enough to create laughter lines lit Raf’s face. “I’ll tell her the truth,” he said, leaning close. “And then swear her to secrecy.” Behind him Raf could hear a double shuffle of footsteps where the aisle started at huge double doors neither Murad or Hani had actually passed through.

“The truth being what?”

“That I
am
her uncle,” whispered Raf, “but Murad is not her cousin.” He took Zara’s hand and though it lay slightly unwilling in his own, she didn’t try to remove it.

Who had gone to whom with what, Raf had found impossible to discover from the secret files. Somewhere in the mix was the Emir, his mother and Bayer-Rochelle, who’d been working on cerebral transplants, the operation that killed Emir Moncef and left Eugenie de la Croix with a dead commander, international pressure to open labs that could not possibly be revealed to the world and a frightened Swedish hitchhiker as his replacement.

Obvious really, when one thought about it.

And Lady Maryam hadn’t been the only woman Eugenie had refused to let see the ersatz Emir. Raf’s mother had been the other.

He spoke quickly and very quietly, always aware of the footsteps getting closer. Khartoum, who still stood at the front, both silent and watchful in a simple woollen robe, watched Raf and Zara with interest; when he saw Raf had noticed, the old man flicked one hand in quick greeting and smiled.

“Eugenie knew this?”

“Of course.”

As Murad and Hani reached Micki Vanhoffer, the large American burst into tears and wrung Carl Senior’s fingers until he almost joined in. “They’re going to get married,” she told the Japanese ambassador sitting next to her, who only stopped being appalled when Carl Senior leaned over his wife’s ample lap to explain that this wasn’t likely to happen for some years yet, if at all.

“Okay?” Hani demanded.

Murad nodded.

She could hear her cousin humming softly as he climbed first one marble step, then another, stopping at the point where his proclamation would begin. It took Hani a second or two to recognize the tune.

Emir Murad al-Mansur, Ifriqiya’s ruler and bey of Tunis was humming the chant from “Revolt into Nakedness,” street song of North Africa’s disposed. The new Cheb Rai/Ragged Republic version obviously.

He’d managed to find it that morning on his radio.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to the Pathology Guy for information on human decomposition. Hassan in Tunis for taking me up onto the roof of the souk to look at the Great Mosque of Zitouna. Aziza and Hafida, cooks from the Maison Arabe (Marrakech) for not laughing too much at my attempt to make chicken tagine. Antony Bourdain for writing the best insider book on kitchens ever written (plus some seriously sick/slick crime novels). The Yugoslav girl with no knickers in the kitchens at Oslo airport for giving me the idea of the knife. And the soldier on the train outside Palermo who insisted on showing the backpacker opposite his scars.

A tip of the hat to the usual lunchtime crowd, including Kim Newman, Paul McAuley, China Miéville, M. John Harrison and Pat Cadigan (all of whom I’d happily buy in hardback). New Scientist again, obviously enough, for the usual reasons. Farah Mendlesohn, for providing supper every time I finish a script. JJ for commissioning the Ashraf Bey novels in the first place. Juliet Ulman for buying the books in the US and for arguing (very calmly) about point of view.

Finally, thanks to Moritz, for letting me steal his name on a couple of occasions. (The deaths were nothing personal…)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship, Jon Courtenay Grimwood grew up in Britain, the Far East and Scandinavia. Currently working as a freelance journalist and living in London and Winchester, he writes for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the
Guardian
… He is married to the journalist Sam Baker, editor of
UK Cosmopolitan
.

Visit the website
www.j-cg.co.uk
.

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