“I am certain that I am,” she said, lifting her glass for another sip of tea.
I glanced around the bar, but there was no one in earshot.
“My rates, Madam Fouad…”
She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Are unimportant.”
And that was that. There was some more small talk, and when prompted, she handed over a faded photograph showing her husband, Ossie, in traditional Egyptian garb. Maybe it had been taken at a party somewhere. He was darker than she, but a good-looking man, all the same, sporting a small dark beard. I studied the photograph, then slipped it away inside my jacket. She fixed me with that deep gaze of hers, and I found myself wanting to help her in any way I could, whether she was half-crazy or not… or whether I was half-crazy too. She stood, apparently satisfied that our business was done for now.
“Madame Fouad,” I said. “How will I…?”
“I will be in touch with you,” she said, then turned, heading for the exit. She dealt with the check on the way out with a flash of gold.
I sat there for a while longer, savoring the amber burn in my glass while I worked out what my next move would be. She hadn’t given me a whole lot to go on, and I hadn’t even thought to get her first name.
–
The light fell golden across the spans of the 25 July Bridge. The early-evening muezzin calls floated above the city, urging the faithful to prayer. Boats cruised up and down the stretch of brown-green water before me, tinged brassy with the fading sun. I walked past the rank of black-and-white taxis, their drivers waiting to haggle with the well-to-do tourists, looking for three, four times the going rate, heading away from the Gizera Sporting Club, up toward the bridge.
I had two choices. It was either the City of the Dead or the Khan el-Khalili, where the stallholders would be starting to set up for the evening’s trade. But the Khan was no ordinary souk. You could get just about anything you might want at the Great Khan, if you knew where to look, and me, I knew where to look.
I might just have given Madame Fouad’s statement more pause for doubt; but to be honest, I needed the work. The flash of gold goes a long way to shutting up that little voice in the back of your head, and in Cairo the dead are as much a part of everyday life as the living. Look at the City of the Dead. The locals have taken up living among the tombs and mausoleums. Not only among, but inside them too. The dead have a life of their own in Egypt, and had since the dawn of time. It was a part of their culture. And I thought I could live with it, especially if someone like Madame Fouad was footing the bill.
So, I stood there on the banks of the Nile, the wash of garbage and traffic wrinkling my nose, the shouts and car noise swelling around me, and the only question running through my head was where I should go first. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I should have listened, but there’s so much noise in this grand old city that sometimes you don’t know what might be the little bit that counts.
A little way up the street, I hailed a cab. He wanted too much, clearly taking me for a foreign tourist, and I walked away. I fared a little better with the next one. He only wanted double the standard rate, but this was Zamalek, so I agreed and climbed into the front seat next to the driver as was the custom. In my Western garb I was going to stand out anyway, but anything you could do to mark yourself as not too removed could only help.
The driver was good at what he did. Meandering in and out between the trucks and buses, his hand pressed flat against the horn. Sometimes I really wished drivers in Cairo would use their lights in the burgeoning dark or late at night, but I just had to trust to the fact that this cab was probably more valuable than the driver’s life. It was in his own interests to keep us in one piece.
On the way, I pulled out the faded photograph and studied it. A good-looking Egyptian guy looking like he was out of his proper time. I hadn’t heard of Ra Industries before, as far as I could remember. Ossie was a common enough Egyptian diminutive, but Seth, now that was different. Maybe their parents, like so many others of their class, had had them schooled abroad, wanting them to move above and beyond their roots. Sometimes a name is a simple enough step upon that path. I slipped the photograph back into my inside pocket and tried to avoid watching the near misses as we weaved in and out of the traffic. Maybe, just maybe, Madame Fouad had been speaking metaphorically. That didn’t make sense though, at least not then.
My driver dropped me at the Midan Hussein and I left him there with a quick shukrun. I could have entered the Khan farther down Al Azhar Street, but I liked the long walk up Muski, past the perfumers and the costumes and the bits and pieces designed to trap the unwary tourists. The scents, the sounds, gave me a transition into that canvas-covered other world that is the Khan proper. My goal was farther north, but walking up past the twinned mosques, past the goldsmiths and copper shops of al-Muizz li-Din Allah took me away from modern Cairo, into another time and another place. Everywhere there was noise; the hawkers, the touts, the blare of radios and other music. Everywhere was the smell of another era, another reality. It was almost as if I had stepped into another age.
I had a couple of contacts in the Khan. One was back in the narrow winding streets that sold antiquities, real and fake, but my main guy, Ismail, plied his trade up in the street of coppersmiths. Keeping one eye open for pickpockets, I headed in that direction, pushing past the streams of native Egyptians and tourists both. I was looking out for familiar faces, too-signposts to the subtle trade that might be going on around me, beneath the veneer of market commerce. I’d learned the faces, the ones that mattered, but on that evening, most of them were strangely absent.
I stopped in front of Ismail’s tiny store, peering inside at the shelves of burnished copper, the piles of pots and jugs stacked haphazardly in the front. There was no sign of him. But then, as if he sensed my presence, a stained curtain twitched in the back, and a familiar pockmarked face peered out.
“Zhaik, Zhaik, it is you, my friend. You come to see me.”
I glanced up and down the street, then grinned. “Ismail, you old crook. How are you?”
A big yellow grin greeted my statement. “Allah willing, I am well, Zhaik.”
“And business?”
Ismail rocked his head from side to side. “Ah, you know.” He came to the front of the store and peered round the corner. He glanced across at the stall across the street with narrowed eyes, tossing his chin at the stallholder opposite. The man gave a quick nod, and after a quick glance up and down the street, Ismail beckoned me inside.
Behind the stained curtain sat a simple table and a couple of chairs. A dirty stove sat with a pot of tea upon it. Ismail pulled down a couple of tea glasses, wiping them with the hem of his robe as he gestured to one of the seats. He planted the glasses down, pushed a bowl of white sugar lumps into the center, and reached up to turn on a radio that sat atop a battered fridge in the corner. Satisfied, he poured two glasses of tea and sat, pulling his off-white galabiya around himself.
“So, Zhaik,” he said, suddenly all business, peering across at me with yellowing, watery eyes.
“I’ve got a new case,” I told him. I dug into my pocket and drew out the photograph, slipping it across the table so he could see it. Ismail picked it up and peered down, his eyes narrowing. He shook his head.
“You’re sure?”
He slid the photograph back. “Yes. I am sure. Aiwa.”
I slipped the picture away again. “Well, his wife says he’s gone missing.”
Ismail shrugged, as if this was no news, something that happened every day, and he was right.
I leaned forward. “No, there’s something about this one,” I told him. “You should see the wife. We find him, and I think it’s going to be worth the effort.” I rubbed my thumb and first two fingers together in front of his face.