Bec sucked at her teeth, crossly.
“Sarah?”
She was the only one Ka was really bothered about.
“Of course I can swim. My father was a fisherman.”
“So?” His father had kept camels and Ka hated the animals and they hated him. He never rode when there was an option to walk.
“So I can swim,” said Sarah. “Okay?”
“Well, I can’t.” Saul’s voice was getting angry.
The picture shifted and tightened, an overlay of wavy lines hanging ghost-breath in front of Ka’s eyes. Some spoke of height, being set tight to the edges of scars and cliffs. Others mapped the river. It took Ka a while to realize that these indicated depth, but that was because his attention was on something else.
Sarah volunteered to get the boat.
“Turn your backs,” she demanded, waiting until they had. Beneath her vest and combats she wore nothing except a ragged thong cut high at the hip. A Norwegian nurse had given the thong away, along with the rest of her spare clothes the day before returning to a family farm outside Namsos. The new owner died of a gut shot. Sarah had swapped the thong for a half packet of Cleopatra and an amulet from the person who owned it after that.
“Be back soon . . .”
Ka heard the slight splash, as they all did: but he was the only one able to watch as Sarah struck out across the dark expanse of water, head bobbing and legs kicking to the side. Except it wasn’t her head he watched but her back and buttocks, flesh thinned by hunger and endless marches that trailed the Ragged Army up and down the river.
Fifteen minutes later, Sarah was on her way back, puffing slightly but happy. Although what the others saw was a boat that glided towards them as if by magic.
“Turn round,” she demanded, scrambling up the bank and into her dusty clothes, ignoring the water that ran down her legs and between her small breasts.
“What’s with you?” Saul demanded.
Ka jumped.
“You’re standing weird . . .”
“I was listening,” Ka said hastily and regretted it the moment Saul asked him the obvious question.
“To trucks,” said Ka.
Which got their attention. Zac went fly-catcher, mouth hanging open, Bec looked round and even Sarah shot him a sideways glance as she squeezed water from heavy black braids. That was when Ka remembered he wasn’t going to mention the government.
“Blue hats?” Saul’s voice was raw.
“No idea,” said Ka, although he had. There were blue hats, militia and regular government troops. Plus two open trucks full of nasrani wearing black uniforms and swirling face paint. “But I don’t plan to hang round to find out.”
“You just going to run away then?”
Ka stepped back. “Which is more important?” he asked Saul. “Staying here or going to turn off the Nile?”
“We can do that later,” Saul protested.
“What if we’re dead?” Ka said. “Who’ll go then?”
The deck of the tiny felucca had been bleached white from a lifetime’s sun, the sky sail was rotten and the sycamore sides were warped. Cracks above the waterline had been ignored but any gaps below were stuffed with rope and crudely gummed over, both inside and out, with dollops of bitumen.
“It looks great,” Ka told Sarah.
Together they launched her boat, then stood back, up to their hips in the wide river as Zac pulled himself up over the side. Bec followed, hooking her dress above wide hips to keep it out of the water. Ka guessed she knew she wasn’t wearing any pants.
CHAPTER 9
7th October
The earlier collective gasps of a city in orgasm were silent, although the crunch of exploding fireworks still tripped car sirens, providing a counterpoint to the dogs that found themselves tethered for the evening.
October 7 was Ashura, tenth day of Muhram and the date of El Iskandryia’s biggest fireworks display. A night when rockets rose so often from parties along the Corniche that they ceased to attract the eye; and only the grandest waterfalls of silver sparks raised even slight interest. At midnight, having fasted for two days, the city turned its attention to feasting.
Cafés spilled out onto pavements, restaurants were overbooked months in advance and only money or influence could get you a late table.
Heading west on Boul Isk, a dining car swayed over rails beaten silver with use and water slopped from a carafe. In a kitchen so small that the evening’s menu was limited to only five dishes, a sous chef dropped his steamer of asparagus . . .
But all of that was only background. Maxim’s was still the only place to dine at the end of Ashura. A single restaurant car with, bizarrely enough, its own liquor licence; crowded out with people who mattered. Which, in Zara bint-Hamzah’s considered opinion, meant monied and stuck up, as opposed to her dad, who was just obscenely rich.
As of that morning, Zara’s hair was blue, almost purple; cut extra short, like a stevedore’s, in solidarity with the dock strike in Tunis. Needless to say, the razor cut cost more than any stevedore earned in a week.
It did, however, suit her, now that a month of dieting had given Zara back her cheekbones. And she understood the absurdity of her unstinting support for lost causes. Zara shrugged, then sighed, then shrugged again.
The final shrug was to annoy her mother.
Zara was dressed head to toe in a very grown-up Atelier Azzedine creation that revealed almost no flesh while clinging tightly to every curve. The gown had been worked up from a single sketch, then cut and corrected on the body of an appropriate house model. A notoriously slow and expensive way to work.
The honeymoon might not have happened, but Zara still appreciated her father letting her keep his present. Another of his surprises, altogether more unexpected, sat in her Gucci bag. The new Amex was not a top-up job, like the one that held her six-monthly allowance, nor a secondary card drawn against one of her father’s banks. This was different, tied blind into a megainterest account in Zurich. Just how mega only made sense once Zara had called Switzerland, read off the account number and had someone tell her just how many dollars sat with the gnomes.
So she was both beautifully dressed and absolutely terrified. Because what her father had promised her, right after she nearly got murdered that evening in the warehouse, was her own flat . . . So she no longer had to live at Villa Hamzah.
Instead, he’d kept her at home and given her a one-off, nine-digit payment in US dollars, made to an account in a city where women having capital was obviously not against the law.
And for Zara, the real problem was not that her father had given her so much money, not even that he’d obviously changed his mind about letting her live alone, it was that she could no longer get close enough to him to find out why.
Later, was all he could say, when things are sorted out.
Taking a single caper from a nearby bowl, Zara sucked out the salt and reduced the flower bud to pulp with her tongue. She was reaching for another when a waiter materialized at her shoulder.