‘Oh?’
‘Karim.’
Ali Maher’s face fell. ‘Do not speak to me of Karim. Please!’
‘I have to. We have to.’
‘My family will take care of him.’
‘Will they?’
‘I shall tell them to. I have enough authority left to command in this.’
‘And your wife — will she do as you tell her, with respect to Karim?’
Ali Maher frowned. ‘She will have to.’
Owen shook his head. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said.
‘She will have to do as my family ordains.’
‘But will she?’
Ali Maher did not reply for a moment. ‘She is difficult, I know. Headstrong.’
‘What if she doesn’t do as they decree?’
Ali Maher made a little gesture of hopelessness. He was silent again for a moment, then declared: ‘It is her fault. All her fault. If she had not given birth to a monster-’
‘I don’t think she has,’ said Owen. ‘Although to you it seems so.’
‘The boy has his qualities,’ Ali Maher conceded. ‘But …’
‘Would it not be best to leave him with her?’
‘No!’ said Ali Maher vehemently. ‘She is not to be relied on. She is herself not right in the head. Look how she sent that girl to me!’
‘Girl?’
‘The one in the bride box.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘To be revenged on me! For the failure of her own marriage. Oh, I know her tricks! At heart she is still savage. This is one of her Sudani pranks. The bride box, don’t you see? Bride box. And the dead girl inside. It was a sign. Oh, I know her signs. It was to tell me that all I did ended in death.’
‘She sent the box to you? With Soraya inside?’
‘Of course!’
‘Not Suleiman?’
‘Suleiman only did her bidding.’
‘He was that faithful a servant to her?’
‘He is from her tribe. From her family. So he would do as she required. Now do you see why I cannot leave Karim with her? If I am in prison, what might she do to the boy? She loves him, yes, but it is a mad love. It is sometimes like that with these woman who bear monsters. Their love is all the fiercer because they have brought forth a monster. How can I hand him over to her?’
‘But you did hand him over to her!’
‘I was a fool. I thought that while I was there in the background I could watch over him from afar. I couldn’t bring myself to be closer. I had wanted a boy so much. And then to find … this! So I had to put him away. And she seemed to love him — she did love him! So I thought it best … But now to have this … this crazed prank! Her mind has gone, it must have! How can I hand the boy over to someone like her?’
‘You are a faithful servant of the lady,’ said Owen.
‘I hope so,’ said Suleiman.
‘Even though she sometimes asks hard things of you?’
Suleiman looked startled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is so.’
‘Take the boy, for instance. Karim. She expected your help with him.’
‘And rightly so. Was he not my mistress’s son?’
‘Nevertheless, afflicted as he was, it cannot always have been easy.’
Suleiman shrugged. ‘In my country,’ he said, ‘it is the custom to treat the afflicted as one of the family.’
‘The family, then, was yours, as well as hers. And his?’
‘That is so, yes. That is how we see it.’
‘When he was a child it was easy. Easy still, although growing more difficult, when he was a youth. But when he grew to manhood, and began to feel manly needs, then it became very difficult.’
‘That is so, yes.’
‘For her — and perhaps for you?’
Suleiman did not reply.
‘Especially when Soraya came into the household.’
‘That girl was a trouble maker!’
‘She answered to Karim’s needs, though. And all might have been well, had she been content.’
‘She was treated well. Too well, in my opinion. It made her forget who she was.’
‘And she raised her eyes too far.’
‘Too far, yes,’ agreed Suleiman.
‘So what was to be done?’
‘The lady sent her away — rightly so.’
‘But it did not work out.’
‘It should have worked out,’ said Suleiman. ‘It was the right thing to do.’
‘And the wrong thing to bring her back?’
‘The wrong thing, yes. The boy pined, and the mother’s heart was torn.’
‘And Soraya had brought her bride box.’
‘She should have been sent away immediately!’
‘But she was not. Until it became too late.’
Suleiman said nothing.
‘Something had to be done,’ said Owen. ‘Did the idea come from her or from you?’
Suleiman just shook his head.
‘I don’t think it would have come from you,’ said Owen. ‘It was not your place. You merely did — faithfully — as you were told.’
There was a long pause, and then Suleiman said, ‘I do not know how it came about.’
‘Soraya was sent home again. Her bride box, too. You were charged with seeing to it.’
Suleiman did not speak but inclined his head.
‘But Soraya never got home.’
‘Men fell upon her.’
‘So you say. But no men have been found. The men who were carrying the bride box were sent away. Leaving you, Suleiman.’
Suleiman bowed his head again. ‘I must answer for it,’ he said.
‘You must certainly answer for what you did. But is it right that you alone should be blamed?’
Suleiman looked at him.
‘When you were merely being faithful.’
Suleiman was silent for a long time. Then he said: ‘It is my place to be faithful.’
‘And there was much to be faithful to. The family, for instance: what was best for the family? And you could not leave out the master’s family. Duties are owed there, too. And there, it seemed, the duty was clearer. The master’s family was a great one. There might be a place for Karim in it. But not for Karim and his son, if son there should be. Lest the son should be like him. Was that how it was reasoned?’
‘It may have been.’
‘Or perhaps it did not even need to be reasoned. It just had to be understood. And someone like you, Suleiman, who had been in the family for a long time, understood that very well.’
‘It may have been so.’
‘The lady did not need to spell it out. Perhaps she did not even need to speak. You knew what was expected of you, and, as a faithful servant, you carried it out.’
‘It may have been so.’
‘Did she speak of it?’
Again there was a long pause.
‘Perhaps,’ said Suleiman. ‘But I do not recall.’
Mahmoud received a letter from his friend Idris. It was postmarked Suakin, Sudan. The ‘Sudan’ was heavily underlined by Idris and there was a big examination mark beside it.
Dear Mahmoud,
As you will see from the postmark, I am in one of the outer rings of hell, recognizable by the heat. It is much, much hotter than even Upper Egypt. My brains are fried to a cinder. My sap is dried up. Beneath this huge open sky, with nothing between me and the sun, I shrivel.
The heat! The flies! The stink of trocchee shells on the beach when I go there in search of air! The lack of anyone to talk to.
And so I talk to you, or, at any rate, write to you. Do please write back to me, so that I will know that there is life beyond the grave! At the moment, as I dwindle, I fear that everything outside me dwindles. Hopes, ambitions, ideals are the first to shrink.
As you see from the postmark — and, yes, they do have a post office, where the pilgrims go to get their documents stamped and everyone else to pay their taxes — I am in Suakin, the City of the Dead, as they so rightly call it. Once it was a big, thriving city, the main port on the coast, through which all the pilgrims passed on their way to Mecca, but the ships got bigger and the water needed to be deeper, and so the whole city had to move further up the coast and became Port Sudan. The houses now are empty. Only the mosquitoes and the flies now wing their way through the deserted streets. Only the occasional stray dog searching for offal. And behind the dog, me.