The labyrinth of osiris, p.26
The Labyrinth of Osiris, page 26
He liked the roof. It was the one part of their new home for which he had come to feel any degree of affinity, particularly at night. By day Luxor could be a dull, monochrome place, the harsh sunlight bleaching away the town’s colour, amplifying its drabness. With darkness, paradoxically, the colour returned: the bright, translucent green of the mosque minarets, the icy striplight-white of the cafés and shops, the garish neon of five-star hotels, a thousand tiny spatters of orange and yellow from the windows and streetlamps and car headlights.
Night transformed the town, cancelling out all the characterless concrete and crumbling architecture, reducing everything to primary colours: clean and bright and simple. Sitting on his crate and gazing out always soothed Khalifa, in the same way that climbing the Qurn and shooting on the police rifle range soothed him. Allowed him to feel, if not better about things, at least not so painfully aware of them.
But now his mobile was ringing and the spell was broken.
He snapped to his feet and fumbled the phone from his pocket, a pulse of anxiety shooting from his chest down to his gut, as it always did these days when he received an unexpected call at an unusual hour. For a brief moment scenarios flashed through his head, dreadful scenarios: sirens, hospitals, running feet, piteous howling. Then he saw the caller’s name and his breathing eased. He sat back down and stared at the phone, rubbing his temple with thumb and forefinger. There was a time he would have been glad of the call, delighted. He owed the man his life, after all; they’d been through a lot together. Tonight his immediate reaction was annoyance that the caller should have rung so late and scared him like that. Annoyance and, also, a dull, weary dread that he was going to have to go through it all again, tell yet another person what had happened and how everything had gone so wrong for him and his family. Relive the whole thing. And then there’d be the embarrassed silence at the other end of the line, the fumbling for words, the blurted I’m-so-sorry-if-there’s-anything-I-can-dos – the reminder, if Khalifa ever needed a reminder, that he had become someone indelibly marked with tragedy. That whatever else he had done and would do in his life, it was this that now defined him.
He dangled the phone, its trill echoing through the hot Luxor night, unable to bring himself to answer, thinking he’d just let it go to voicemail. But then to do so would simply be putting off the inevitable. He couldn’t avoid him for ever, would have to talk to him some time. And he had saved his life, that night four years ago, in Germany, when he’d carried him out of the burning mine. He owed him. Whatever his own personal problems, Khalifa took the debts of friendship seriously.
‘Dammit,’ he muttered.
He allowed the mobile to ring a couple more times, steeling himself, staring across at the Elnas Mosque, the slim spike of its minaret seeming to spear the moon like a needle puncturing a duck egg. Then, just at the point when the phone was about to click over to voicemail, he drew a breath, pressed answer and held the handset up to his ear.
‘Hello, my friend,’ he said quietly.
JERUSALEM
THE MOMENT HE heard Khalifa’s voice, Ben-Roi broke into a broad smile and held up his glass as if toasting the Egyptian.
‘Hello to you too, you cheeky Muslim cunt!’
It was how they always greeted each other, with a cheery insult to their respective cultures, a nod to the first time they had met, when they had argued and very nearly come to blows. Traditionally Khalifa would respond by calling Ben-Roi an ‘arrogant Jew bastard’. On this occasion he merely gave a low hrumph to acknowledge the joke and asked Ben-Roi how he was doing.
‘Great, fantastic. You?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘I didn’t wake you up, did I?’
Khalifa assured him he hadn’t.
‘What’s it been? A year?’
‘At least,’ replied Khalifa.
‘Time flies.’
‘It certainly does.’
‘God knows where it goes.’
Khalifa mumbled something Ben-Roi didn’t catch. He couldn’t be sure, but he got the impression the Egyptian was slightly out of sorts. Softly spoken at the best of times, tonight he sounded positively subdued. Ben-Roi wondered if maybe he should have left the call till tomorrow.
‘How’s Zenab?’ he asked, deciding he might as well push on with the conversation now he’d started it.
‘She’s … OK.’ The reply was hesitant, evasive almost. ‘Sarah?’
‘We split up.’
There was a fractional pause.
‘I’m sorry. When?’
‘A few months ago.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘Me too. All my fault, of course. I’m an arsehole.’
Ben-Roi thought Khalifa might pick up on this, throw out some witty riposte, but he didn’t say anything. There was another pause, awkward – the Egyptian definitely seemed out of sorts. Away to Ben-Roi’s right the bar door banged open and the two young women who had left fifteen minutes ago came back in, arms round each other’s shoulders. He watched them as they tottered up to the bar and ordered vodka-Cokes, then:
‘Hey, I’ve got some news.’
The click of a lighter echoed down the line, followed by the sound of inhaling breath.
‘Don’t tell me: you made peace with the Palestinians?’
That was more like it! That was the Khalifa he knew and loved!
‘Even better!’ laughed Ben-Roi. ‘Certainly more incredible.’
He let the comment hang, building things up, then: ‘Sarah’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father!’
He said it loud, relishing the announcement. So loud that the barman and the two young women heard him. The barman gave a thumbs-up; the women clapped and shouted Mazel tov. From Khalifa there was nothing.
‘I’m going to be a father,’ repeated Ben-Roi, thinking the Egyptian hadn’t heard him.
‘Mabruk,’ said Khalifa. ‘I am very happy for you.’
He didn’t sound it, his tone flat and expressionless, which surprised Ben-Roi. Needled him, in fact. Khalifa was one of the few people he hadn’t yet told – just about the only person – and he’d been looking forward to his reaction, had had it in the back of his mind from the moment he’d decided to call him. The lack of reaction was … insulting almost. OK, it had been over a year since they had last been in touch – four since they had seen each other face to face – and Khalifa clearly wasn’t in the best of moods, but even so he would have expected at least some enthusiasm on his part. Fatherhood was a big thing, after all, something to celebrate. And Khalifa wasn’t celebrating. Ben-Roi wondered if maybe he didn’t approve of the domestic set-up, of him having a child out of wedlock. Yes, that must be it. Different cultures, different ways of doing things.
‘Obviously me and Sarah not being together any more makes things a bit more complicated,’ he acknowledged, tackling the issue head on, ‘but we’re still close, and, trust me, whatever happens I’m going to be there for her and the baby. And who knows, once he arrives – actually we don’t know it is a he yet, although between you and me I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a boy … Anyway, babies change things, you know that, so maybe once he or she arrives Sarah and I might give it another try, see if we can patch things up, you know, start over, the three of us together …’
He was rambling. Shouldn’t have had the Jameson’s, not on an empty stomach.
‘The point is, I’m not going to be one of these absentee fathers,’ he continued. ‘I’m in for the long haul. The fact that me and Sarah aren’t living together won’t affect anything. This baby’s going to have the best home in the world and the most loving parents. I’m so excited, Khalifa. So excited. I’m going to be a father!’
He could feel his voice starting to crack, his eyes welling up. Definitely shouldn’t have had the Jameson’s.
‘Mabruk,’ repeated Khalifa. ‘I am very happy for you. For both of you.’
The same blank tone, the same absence of emotion. Ben-Roi’s jaw tightened. Miserable bastard, he thought. Here I am pouring out my heart and you can’t even make the effort to sound like you mean what you’re saying. Maybe it is against Muslim principles, but you could at least pretend for the sake of friendship. A fine state of affairs when I get more of a reaction from a barman and a pair of pissed-up dolly birds than from someone whose life I saved.
‘Listen, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to call so late,’ he said, unable to hide the annoyance in his voice. ‘There was something I wanted to ask you, to do with a case I’m working on, but this obviously isn’t the right—’
‘No, no, please, it’s fine. If there is something I can do for you …’
The man sounded borderline spaced, completely disconnected, like he was on drugs. Perhaps he was on drugs, thought Ben-Roi. Was ill or something. Maybe that was the explanation.
‘You OK, Khalifa?’
Silence.
‘You OK?’ he repeated. ‘You don’t seem … I mean, I don’t want to make a big thing of it, but I’m about to have a baby and I get the impression you’re not particularly pleased for me. Not even particularly interested.’
There was another soft rasp as the Egyptian pulled on his cigarette. When he spoke again he sounded genuinely apologetic.
‘Forgive me, my friend. I am interested. And happy for you. Really happy. To have a child is a wonderful thing. It’s just that …’
Another rasp, another exhalation. Ben-Roi’s annoyance gave way to a vague rumble of concern.
‘Just that what?’
In the back room the football commentary was ramping up again, accompanied by shouts of ‘Go, Katan!’ and ‘Cross it!’
‘Just that what, Khalifa? Is something wrong?’
Glasses clinked at the bar, accompanied by a renewed explosion of giggling. Dire Straits seemed somehow to have morphed into Britney Spears’s ‘Toxic’.
‘Khalifa?’
‘Cross it, fuck sake!’
‘Khalifa?’
‘Actually yes, something is wrong. Something …’
A muffled choke echoed down the line, which Ben-Roi might have taken for a sob had it not been for all the ambient racket. The rumble of concern grew stronger.
‘What’s happened? Tell me, Khalifa.’
There was yet another pause – it was like the conversation was on some sort of time delay – then the Egyptian started to explain, something about a boat, an accident. His voice was lost in a sudden, deafening eruption of cheering from the back room as Maccabi Haifa finally got the ball in the net and brought the scores level. Ben-Roi held a hand over one ear and ducked his head down almost to the level of the tabletop, trying to block out the noise.
‘I’m sorry, I missed that. What did you … ?’
Everyone was bellowing and shouting, even the girls.
‘Khalifa, I’m sorry, I can’t—’
One of the young men came leaping down the steps into the bar and charged the length of the room pumping his fists in the air. Another followed, and then another, the three of them doing an impromptu conga, which made the girls scream with delight. Ben-Roi waved a hand, trying to get them all to quieten down, but to no avail. With no sign of the celebrations diminishing, he told Khalifa to hang on, stood and went outside, pulling the door to behind him.
Suddenly everything went very quiet.
‘That’s better,’ he said, pacing down the deserted street. ‘It was all kicking off in there, I couldn’t hear a bloody thing. Now what were you saying? What’s happened?’
This time Khalifa’s voice came through loud and clear. It stopped Ben-Roi in his tracks.
‘My son died. There was an accident on the Nile and my son Ali was killed. I’ve lost my little boy. Oh God, Ben-Roi, I’ve lost my little boy.’
LUXOR
EVEN NOW, ALMOST a year on, Khalifa wasn’t even close to coming to terms with what had happened. Couldn’t imagine a time when he ever would come to terms with it. He’d lost his eldest son, his golden boy. How could you ever rest easy with that weighing on your heart?
They’d been at it for months apparently, ever since they’d found the skiff abandoned in a reed bank. Ali and a group of his friends, invincible fourteen-year-olds on the lookout for fun and adventure. They had patched the boat up, filched one oar from a felucca-yard down by Karnak, fabricated another from some old scrap wood, started taking it out on the Nile. Nothing too daring at first: a splash up and down the eastern shoreline, a hop across the narrow channel to Banana Island where they would build camps and eat sweets and smoke pilfered cigarettes. All perfectly harmless.
As time had gone on, however, they had grown bolder. Once they had persuaded a motorboat owner to tow them all the way up to the Nile road bridge so they could drift the ten kilometres back downriver; another time they had paddled around to the far side of Banana Island and out to the buoys marking sand bars to the west of the island.
On the night of the tragedy, six of them, including Ali, had set off on their greatest adventure yet, a voyage right the way across the river to the far shore and back again.
It had been planned meticulously. For weeks they had been hoarding food and drinks and cigarettes to sustain them on their epic journey; on the chosen night each boy had claimed to be going to a sleepover at one of the other boys’ so as not to arouse parental suspicion. They had rendezvoused after dark at a small inlet well south of Luxor, loaded the boat, taken a vow of eternal friendship in case of shipwreck or enemy attack – a playful gesture that in the event had proved agonizingly prescient.
And then they had pushed off, feeling like the greatest explorers that had ever lived. No lifejackets, of course, but then they could all swim, so why would they need them?
They had suffered an early setback when, barely on to the river, the boat had sprung a leak. They should have turned back immediately, but they had been anticipating the adventure for so long, were so excited and pumped up about the whole thing, that they had ploughed on regardless, two of the boys bailing with plastic pots while the others propelled the boat with the oars plus a pair of wooden planks they had pressed into service to give them extra momentum.
After the unpromising start, things had got back on track and, with the leak under control and the Nile flowing slow and calm, they had made it all the way out to the middle of the river without further mishap.
Then, however, everything had started to unravel.
In the first of the series of random events that would combine to shunt an innocuous situation inexorably towards tragedy, a police motor launch, patrolling well south of its normal remit, had spotted the skiff, swung past and ordered them back to land.
The other boys had been all for waiting for the launch to disappear and continuing their adventure. Ali – son of a policeman – had insisted they comply with the order. (How many times had Khalifa berated himself for not teaching his boy to be more disrespectful of authority?)
And so they had turned – with disappointed groans and much playful ribbing of Mr Goody-two-shoes-always-do-what-I’m-told – and started back the way they had come. Only to discover that the current, which had been perfectly manageable on the way out, was for some reason much more aggressive in the opposite direction.
‘It was like the river didn’t want to let us get back to shore,’ recalled the one boy to have survived the tragedy, and from whose testimony the story had slowly been pieced together. ‘The current kept pulling us north and pushing us back towards the middle. Every inch was a fight.’
The makeshift oar had snapped in half; one of the wooden rowing planks had been dropped and swept off into the night. The leak had rapidly worsened, shipping water faster than the bailers could empty it. By the time they had dragged themselves half the distance back to the east bank, the skiff was effectively unmanoeuvrable and the boys were all exhausted.
Which was when they spotted the barge.
At first they weren’t alarmed. It was a long way away, well over a kilometre, a distant black scratch on the moon-silvered surface of the river, and although it seemed to be heading directly for them, well out of the normal shipping channel over by the western shore, none of them doubted that its forward lookout would spot them in time and signal an adjustment in course.
The adjustment never came. As the current swept them north, and the barge held its relentless line south, the boys started to grow worried, and then scared. They began shouting and waving their arms, trying to warn the barge away, at the same time furiously splashing at the water in an effort to claw themselves out of its path.
To no avail. The skiff swept downriver, the barge ploughed up, the two of them locked into a seemingly irreversible trajectory, the distance between them growing narrower by the second.
‘Like two trains running towards each other on the same track,’ was how one eyewitness on the shore described it.
‘We just sort of froze,’ said the survivor. ‘We could see the barge getting closer, but it was like it was all happening in slow motion, in a dream. I remember Ali shouting we should all jump overboard, but we couldn’t move. Right up to the last minute we thought they’d see us and change course.’
Eventually the barge’s forward lookout did spot the skiff, alerted by a horn blast from the police motor launch which had come back to make sure the boys had done what they were told. The lookout had screamed at the wheelman who had frantically spun the rudder in an effort to avert collision, but by then it was way too late, less than a hundred metres now separating the skiff and the towering scalpel of the barge’s prow.
According to one of the river police, at the last moment the boys had all stood and wrapped their arms around each other, as if by sheer force of friendship they might hold a thousand tonnes of metal at bay (to his dying day that image would haunt Khalifa, six terrified children bonded in a final, hopeless embrace).
