The Hidden (28 page)

“It’s not true. It’s not true,” Aimee murmured to herself almost inaudibly. She tried to fathom what she was hearing, but all she could feel was a pulsing denial in her heart.

“The Frenchman,” Rachid continued. “Alexandre Anton was his name. He was Virginie’s brother. She introduced them. Her brother, Hezba’s lover, your father, had an evil face. He was as dark
as an Arab, a Frenchman with some Egyptian blood in him. He was a trickster, a rogue who passed himself off as one of our people. Your father, Hezba child, the Frenchman with the evil face and the look of an Arab, spoke Hindi and French and Turkish and Arabic as fluently as the natives.”

The light grew dull. A cloud travelled across the sun, and the air was thick and sticky. Aimee stared at the little book of snaps, trying to understand. Rachid continued to sway back and forth, his eyes clamped tightly shut, hot tears slipping out nonetheless, chanting a strange unintelligible gibberish, a soft, sad refrain.

She scrambled up away from Rachid and headed towards the house. Saiza called for her as she pushed past armchairs and low tables and flung aside dividing curtains, running for the door.

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Cairo, September 11, 1919

There are reports of more bloodshed in Cairo. The people are fed up, and it seems that things will only get worse. The war and the British have pushed them to their limits. There is no food for anyone except the wealthy. In Minya, our people eat well, but I am scared for my real home, my birthplace.

The palace is still in mourning for my maman. What will they do when the people loot the great houses of the city? Where will my family hide? Where will they run?

I am scared for Virginie. If she has sense, she will leave soon, join her husband in Malta, then return to France. Here in Minya, we have been spared the bloodshed, but it will lap against our doors before too long. It is only a matter of days now. I can feel the mounting tension in the air. The people have waited long enough, and the government has done nothing to assuage their suffering. The people hate Papa. They
blame him for the grip of the British. I hate Papa for basking in the glory of power without lifting a finger to help those less fortunate than himself. He has no right. He was born of the earth. He has a duty to help the fellahin. I despair of all this injustice.

I can hear al-Shezira’s men standing guard outside. I am in solitary confinement in a room with only a small window overlooking the Nile, a mattress, some cotton sheets, a low table, a jug of water, and a prayer mat. It is usually one of the resting rooms used by the servants here at Minya, but now it has been cleaned out to be used as a punishment room for wayward wives. I have been here for a few hours. I don’t know why I am here. What has al-Shezira got in store for me this time? Where is Alexandre? I have heard nothing, but I have to trust him. Al-Shezira’s men bring me food and coffee and then escort me to the walled garden. There I see my husband. He smiles at me and welcomes me to him. I want to ask him why I have been put in solitary confinement, but I stay quiet.

“Are you well rested, Hezba wife?” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

I look around the garden, unaccustomed to being here. I see two men I do not recognise, standing by a small flat-roofed kiosk. A fire has been lit, and on a slab next to it are three knives. The men are busy methodically heating the knives over hot coals, unaware of the presence of their master nearby.

What is going on? I feel a scream ready to explode at the base of my throat. I shiver and wait breathlessly for al-Shezira to make a move.

Al-Shezira smiles and claps his hands. In the sunlight I notice once again just how grotesque he is. He has grown fatter, and his belly hangs low. His face is bloated. His hair has all but disappeared, and his moustache appears quite white against the dull mud-brown of his skin.

“Bring the servant,” he shouts in the direction of the men in the kiosk.

Rachid is brought forward. His head hangs against his chest. His hands are tied behind his back. Two men stand on either side of him.

Al-Shezira walks towards him and forces his chin up with the end of a stick. Rachid looks at me, and I see his eyes glaze over with resignation and sorrow.

“Take a look at my wife, Rachid,” al-Shezira says. When Rachid does not respond, he throws away the stick and pinches Rachid’s chin hard, his long ugly nails drawing blood from his poor hairless jaw.

“Take a good look at her,” he snarls. “She may not be beautiful, but she is mine.”

My poor eunuch does not answer.

“Do you understand, Rachid?”

“Yes, master,” he says.

“Ah,” al-Shezira says mockingly. “I don’t think you do, Rachid. You are devoted to your mistress, are you not?”

“Yes, master.”

“Devoted enough to be her aide, to help her defy the orders of the palace.”

“Yes, master.”

“You poor eunuch. You like to help my wife, don’t you, Rachid?”

“Yes, master.”

“And you do exactly as Hezba asks, don’t you, Rachid?”

“Yes, master.”

“She has a lover, does she not? A man in Cairo who pleasures her, who defiles all that is proper. A man who finds his way into the harem of the Cairo palace.”

“Yes, master.”

“It was not hard to find out about her infidelities. I have my spies, and I know what is going on. I also know you help her, don’t you, Rachid. You have helped her become the depraved creature she is.”

“Yes, master.”

“Take a last look at your heart’s desire, Rachid, because you will never see her face again.”

I see in Rachid the look of an animal the moment before death. In his wide-eyed stare, I see that he knows his world is coming to an end.

“Men, do as I have ordered,” al-Shezira shouts. His servants step forward, raise their white-hot blades, and lunge at my eunuch, gouging his eyes until blood runs thickly down his face.

“No!” I run forward to try and stop them, but another eunuch appears and holds me back. I cannot watch what is happening. My stomach jumps into my mouth, and my eyes sting with rage. My jaw is locked with hatred, and my ears ring with the hysterical, demented screams echoing off the palace walls. I struggle violently as I watch the bloody tears slipping down Rachid’s face, his contorted hands and legs, the flash of the knives. Then I hear a different scream, a female sound, haunted, possessed, the most heartfelt sound I have ever heard. I realise it is coming from my own lungs. I never knew I had so much rage inside me. I collapse on the paving stones and splutter for breath before my hysteria rents once more from my throat.

I am thrown back in my rooms. I hear Rachid whimpering with pain in the gardens below, and then I hear nothing. As night comes, I watch the stars twinkle in the sky in a stunned trance. There is something so beautiful about them. Though I try to count each one, it is hard through the veil of tears. At least the counting distracts me from my breaking heart. Rachid, my darling servant, my only friend, is gone, dismissed, blinded by al-Shezira. What will become of him?

Rachid, sweet Rachid, a boy who never hurt a living soul, has been wrenched from my life, and now I will never see him again. My tears splash against my wrists and fall in great salty pools on the stone floor. I don’t look at the stars anymore. I curl up, hugging my knees, and sob so violently, I feel my body will break in two. The night stretches out before me like a great expanse of nothingness. How can I help him? I
don’t know what to do. And with this I sob some more. It’s all my fault. I will never forgive myself for the pain inflicted on him. The next day I hear the whisper of gossip on the breeze. I am insane, they say. I will be sent away, locked away in a sanatorium to grow old alone. Rachid is already gone, but I don’t know where he has been sent. I cannot find a trace of him. No one will tell me. They are all afraid of al-Shezira. I am desperate, desolate, and pulsing with hatred. Every last pleasure in my life has been ripped from me. When I think of the torture I witnessed, I know there is only one thing left to do: to seek my revenge and wait for no one, not even Alexandre.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Aimee had to find Farouk. If one person could help her understand her past, it was he. He was a journalist with access to volumes of newspaper archives. Surely something must have been written about al-Shezira. She wanted to see hard facts, evidence of al-Shezira’s cruelty, anything that might shed light on this man.

The air was filmy and the light was fading as she made her way to Bulac, where the offices of the
Liberation
were located. If Farouk was not at his office, she would go find him in Zamalek or on his houseboat. She nudged her way past the street sellers, child beggars, and women with shopping baskets on their heads until she was standing on the street where the
Liberation
’s offices were located. She stopped, wiped the perspiration from her forehead, inhaled deeply, and pushed the door open. She walked down the long dusty corridor. The main door to Farouk’s office was not closed. She walked in, feeling vulnerable, impulsive, out of her league. A young man, about her age, told her that no one from the paper was around to help her at the moment, but if she wanted to wait in a small room next to the main office, someone would be returning soon. She heard the young man speaking on the telephone, telling someone on the other end that a young lady was waiting; then she heard him hang up. He came out to tell her he had to run some errands.

“Someone will be here soon, Madame, to help you,” he said. Once the young man left, Aimee got up to have a look around. She went through to the larger office and stood there observing how the room was laid out. On a desk were a typewriter and telephone, notepads, maps, boxes of pencils, old theatre ticket stubs, and a large black folder. Musty, yellowing back copies of the
Liberation
were piled high.

She knelt down and flicked through them, slipping back through time, ten, twenty years as she did so. She yanked the bottom copy out from under the pile, saw the date, the year of her birth. She scanned the headlines: riots, demonstrations, arrests, murders, general unrest, strikes, looting, the burning city, history before her.

“Two minds that think alike, Madame.”

She felt a heavy lifeless hand on her shoulder. She could smell the whisky and stale cigarettes, the voice was hard, nasty. She held her breath, hardly daring to look up.

“I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, scaring a young girl like you, but I can tell you are up to no good. That lets me off the hook, don’t you think.”

She turned and recognised the moonface, shiny dome, and whitish hair, the smirk, and the moist red lips. It was Mahmoud, the man Farouk had told her was the leader of the X.

“You know me, Madame?” he asked, smiling demonically, walking over to Farouk’s office door. In the few seconds it took him to lock the door, Aimee knew she was going to die.

“Do you speak Arabic?” he said, folding his arms across his fat belly.

“I am French,” Aimee said coldly.

“And what would a little lady like you be doing here in the offices of the
Liberation
rifling through newspapers? Tell me that and I might feel generous and let you go.”

“I—I.”

Mahmoud lurched towards her angrily. “Well?”

She was suddenly rigid with terror. She could see Mahmoud was losing patience. He walked over to her and pushed her slightly so that she fell back into the armchair behind her.

“I was waiting for the editor to return,” she said.

A deep, ugly laugh rasped in Mahmoud’s throat.

“Really?” he snarled. Aimee could feel his dirty sneer on her, his leering eyes travelling beneath her clothes and up into the most intimate regions of her body. She needed to try to pacify him, put him off guard. She glanced around the room, desperate for some sort of weapon.

“I don’t want to cause trouble, Monsieur. Please just let me go,” she said in a soft, pleading voice. She even tried to force a weak little smile. Without warning, he lunged at the desk and wiped it clean with his arm, upending chairs and smashing furniture as he did so.

As he turned to her next, he saw her reaching for the walking stick propped up near the chair. Understanding what she planned to do, he launched himself at her like a maniac. Grabbing her chin, he held it so tightly between his fingers that her eyes almost popped out of her head.

“You’re coming with me,” he said, running his large hand over her face and hair. “And if you give me any trouble, I might just have you for myself; you’re pretty enough.”

“Where are you taking me?” Aimee cried out tearfully as he pulled her up out of her chair.

“To pay a little visit to someone who really wants to meet you.”

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Minya, September 15, 1919

Monday has arrived—the Monday al-Shezira is supposed to be holding his conference, the Monday warned me about. I am distraught with the events of the past few days. Al-Shezira calls me to his rooms. I know it is my turn to be punished. His hatred of me is now so obvious. He doesn’t even try to hide it in front of others. I am certain he wishes to be released from this marriage, but he has a duty to my papa, having accepted his bribe. Now that he has discovered my infidelity, there is a rumour that he is concocting the most vicious punishment for me. I am terrified but don’t know what to do.

His servants drag me from solitary confinement and prepare me for him. Their faces are cold masks that convey no feeling or warmth. I hold my breath and pray. I can smell death in the air. It lingers in my nostrils like the dug, overturned earth after a funeral. As I walk from my rooms to my husband’s quarters, I hear the sounds of music, clapping, tabla playing, laughing, and the stamping of feet. The music gets louder as I walk. Though it is a celebration of a birth in the palace—a new son for al-Shezira—the palace smells of death because life here is so joyless.