Throwing Sparks (8 page)

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Hundreds of tonnes of cement, steel, wood and breeze blocks, as well as heavy construction equipment lined the shore in readiness for the embankments that would block off the seafront, and an army of workers prepared to start work on construction of the Palace.

The boys of the neighbourhood began to sneak into the construction site to play hide-and-seek, much to the annoyance of the labourers who constantly grumbled in an incomprehensible language. The workers had narrow eyes, broad faces and flat noses, and their spiky black hair stood straight up on their heads like sharp, shiny pins. Their deep-sunk eyes did not light up even when they smiled.

As he went out to wash his dogs and clean whatever bits of refuse had stuck to their coats, Hassan befriended a few of the workers and came back from a grooming session one night howling with dismay.

‘The Koreans are eating the dogs!’ he moaned.

No one believed him and, in any case, people in the neighbourhood were not overly upset by the declining number of dogs; on the contrary, they were glad for the more tranquil nights.

‘The Korean workers catch them and then slaughter them and eat them,’ exclaimed Hassan. ‘I saw them with my own eyes!’ He was filled with mixed emotions since, despite the horrible truth about the dogs, it did at least exonerate his neighbourhood friend from the dog-snatching accusations. ‘We were so wrong about Issa Radini,’ he said.

‘Dogs disappear and other dogs appear,’ one man shrugged. Issa had acquired a bad reputation well before the first Saluki ended up on someone’s plate.

With the dog numbers in decline and the labourers buried in the embankment work, rumours began spreading that they were building a corral for taming wild horses. Many of the people of the neighbourhood fell prey to this rumour and took up new, equestrian-related occupations. All of a sudden there were coachmen and harness-makers, fodder merchants and saddlers. Some people even went off to Sudan or Egypt to learn how to become groomers and trainers, and with the departure of the equestrian hopefuls and their trades, an economic slump struck the neighbourhood.

On their return, the equestrian migrants set up behind the corrugated tin fence that stretched as far as the eye could see and hid everything on the other side, and simply waited for the arrival of the horses to start on their new occupations.

Finally, after three years of continuous construction work, the fence was peeled away and discarded to reveal the magnifi­cent Palace.

Anticipating the imminent arrival of the horses, groups of men took turns waiting along the road leading up to the Palace gates. Every day that passed whittled away a little more of their patience.

The horses finally appeared one day and were installed in custom-built stables. But along with the horses came professional groomers and handlers, and the hopefuls of the neighbourhood were expelled from the approaches of the Palace, moaning and complaining.

Downcast, they resumed their former trades but still lived in their fantasies. Whenever they heard a horse neigh, they rushed over to the Palace, believing their services would now be needed. They returned even more downcast and dispirited.

With the corrugated tin fence gone, Firepit residents would stand in wide-eyed amazement at the dazzling splendour of the Palace. However, that moment of awe was fleeting as a new batch of Palace guards was always there to push them roughly away.

This was how the Palace became the main topic of every conversation in the neighbourhood, fuelling every dream – even though not one of these men had set foot inside it. The closest they ever got was to the wide plaza in front of the Palace, and on the basis of that experience alone they would return with fantastical tales of the strange and the miraculous. They told of prancing horses whose sheer number impeded access to the gates and of gardens lush with trees and fruits never before seen. They described brooks that fed into a stream as wide as a river, which in turn ran through orchards divided into sections with all the varieties of fruit trees planted in neat rows.

This last description was too much for some people. ‘Rivers in the middle of the sea?’ someone cried with disbelief. ‘Are you crazy?’

But they swore to God that the Palace had a river flowing through its grounds and that money worked wonders.

The descriptions of the Palace would have ended there had it not been for a group of boys from the neighbourhood who wormed their way in, determined to bask in its radiance. Some of them were given short-term jobs that ended once they had completed the assigned task.

Then, one day, even that trickle of eyewitnesses dried up when residents of the neighbourhood awoke to discover they were expressly banned from ever setting foot in the Palace plaza. This decree was issued shortly after the Master learned that supervisors had been recruiting local men to do some cleaning jobs, water the gardens and prune the trees. He forbade them to employ anyone who had a national identity card – that is, a local – without his express and personal permission.

The Palace staff and servants were brought in from all corners of the world, while the locals looking for work were stopped from even reaching the main gates. This did not deter Issa. He vowed not only to get into the Palace, but also to take with him whomever he pleased from the neighbourhood.

His words were invariably met with ridicule, which only made him more determined and belligerent. ‘Mock me now,’ he countered, ‘and the only way you’ll enter Paradise is by grovelling on your knees.’

Those were the days before they walled off the shore – before, that is, our yearning to enter the Palace had permeated every fibre of our being. Back then, we had not yet lost our greatest pleasure: simply throwing off our clothes and plun­ging into the deep.

4

Sheikh omar stepped on to the deck of
The Dazzling Beauty
and was assaulted with questions about when the yacht would set sail.

‘Just as soon as I get my instructions,’ he replied curtly, straining to hold himself in check.

He was not accustomed to taking orders. His venerated position as head fisherman had not prepared him for this state of indecision, which was like a slap in the face. Where was his booming voice now? Where was the unquestioned authority of his word among his fellow fisherman after he succeeded his father as their leader?

His father had groomed him for the succession, providing him with advice and a breadth of experience that far exceeded his years, which served him well when he staked his claim to become the leader of the group. Even though his peers thought him too young for the position, he had followed his father’s directives so well that he quickly won everyone’s respect.

But now, instead of giving orders he was following them, reduced to a mere link in a chain of petty managers under the Master’s thumb. Disgusted with his situation, Sheikh Omar did not feel he had a shred of self-respect left. On any given day, he found himself tolerating things he would never have dreamed of putting up with even hours earlier. He blamed Issa Radini for the humiliation he now endured and no words were vulgar enough to curse that man.

Another guest asked him when they would set sail.

‘Just as soon as I get my instructions,’ he repeated, sighing with exasperation.

‘And when do you get your instructions?’ persisted the guest.

Sheikh Omar detected a hint of insolence. ‘If
the Master heard you talk like that, he’d soon make sure you never asked another question.’

He left the deck and returned to the captain’s cabin, closing the door behind him and shutting out the sound of the tinkling laughter and bubbling conversations of men and women mingling together as light music played in the background.

It was hard to believe that the scene on the boat was taking place. Women without abayas or modesty revealed their alabaster endowments with such nonchalance. Servants scurried with bottles of every shape and colour to fill glasses with liquor, while dancers swayed provocatively to lessen the boredom of the long wait. The dancers stopped only after being told to conserve their energy for the long night ahead.

This display of flesh and decadence upset Sheikh Omar intensely. He muttered under his breath as he moved among the mingling guests with his head down and his eyes averted. At times he even stopped up his ears with his fingers and barricaded himself inside the captain’s cabin. His demeanour was openly disapproving except when the Master was on board. Sheikh Omar would then feign enjoyment and sway to the tunes of old favourites played by the musical ensembles that animated Palace parties.

He had recently been promoted to captain of
The Dazzling Beauty
and also supervised game-fishing expeditions. This was as a result of the successful hunting trip in the Guinean jungle that he had organised the previous summer and for which he could thank his old friend, Uthman Kabashi. After cancelling the contracts to supply the fishermen with boats and before setting sail for Port Sudan, Uthman had commended him highly to the Master, planting the idea that Sheikh Omar should be given the responsibility of organising hunting exped­itions in and around Sudan.

The submissive life he now led daily had all but destroyed the man of his youth. Sheikh Omar found solace only in people who, like him, had deep roots in a purer and simpler past and with whom he could share the shame of being sullied, at the end of their lives, with such dishonourable tasks.

Given the security hiccup with the would-be gate-crashers at the previous New Year’s Eve party, this year’s venue had shifted from dry land to the open sea aboard
The Dazzling Beauty
. Guests, screened in the Palace lobby to avoid letting on board anyone deemed undesirable by the Master, gathered on the yacht early to secure the best spots.

The yacht was anchored across from the recently built golf course that covered an entire islet.

Before the Palace was ever built, there were many such islets. In our teens, we would head to them to catch our breath after a long swim or to fish from their rocky reefs. Every evening as the last rays of the dying sun cast their shadowy beams on the islets, we hurried to end our games and head back to shore, guided by the feeble light from our homes. We stashed freshwater and tinned food on the islets so that there was always something to eat and drink for whoever swam there next. We did this in a spontaneous and uncoordin­ated way; it was like an unspoken agreement among us. Unwittingly, we were perpetuating the ancient mariners’ practice of providing succour to anyone stranded at sea.

Generally speaking, the islets were visited only by strong swimmers and fishermen. For the small group of us who were able to swim to them, the islets became the markers by which we measured our long-distance ability, the sites for many of our games and our fishing grounds. The narrow passages between the dense coral reefs became denser the deeper one went, and by laying out our nets close together along those passages we would easily trap entire schools of fish.

We also swam out to the islets whenever we needed to hide or take refuge after a fight. The islets had been there since time immemorial, and their deep crevices had lain undisturbed by the crashing of the waves and the comings and goings of humans through the ages. According to the old fishermen’s tales, which still filled us with wonder in those days, anyone who fell into one of the crevices would never again be seen.

Issa claimed he had spent two days and three nights inside one of the crevices, hiding from his father. Whether he did or not was debatable, but he certainly emerged more scurrilous than ever. And something did happen out there that would change all our destinies.

Issa had stolen all of his grandmother’s savings, which she had set aside for the Hajj pilgrimage that year, and used the money to buy himself a donkey to go rabbit-hunting in the wadis east of Jeddah. His younger sister discovered the theft and told on him to their father, Abu Issa, who swore that Satan himself had not conceived the kind of punishment he would inflict on his son.

When Issa realised he had been found out, he abandoned the donkey and made himself scarce.

Abu Issa retrieved the donkey, sold it for piastres at the souk and, returning home, became determined to teach his son a lesson he would never forget, a punishment that would for ever impress on the boy the fate reserved for thieves. He settled on the idea of sending his mother on the Hajj riding his son’s back. This thought appealed to him so much that he laughed all the way home, tickled merely by the picture of his mother sitting astride Issa’s shoulders, her legs dangling off his back.

However, by the time he reached the house, the idea had lost some of its appeal and he wondered whether, rather than carrying her on the Hajj, Issa should just be made to bend over and walk back and forth between the house and the municipal parking lot with his grandmother on his back.

In the end, he thought better of that too, and decided Issa should simply carry his grandmother one trip the length of their street. Issa’s father settled contentedly on this punishment.

When Issa came home, his mother warned him his father was furious, especially since the money for the donkey had not even come close to the original amount Issa had pinched. His mother, known as Umm Issa, suggested that it might be better to wait for his father out in the street rather than confront him in the house so that a neighbour might take pity on him and come to protect him from his father’s wrath.