The Lost Army of Cambyses (13 page)

It was by now late afternoon and the sinking

sun was casting dappled patterns across the

uneven pavement. She gazed around her, taking in

the police emplacements along the embassy wall, a

beggar squatting at the roadside, a man pulling

a cart piled high with watermelons and then,

glancing down at the map, set off.

Oates had explained that this part of Cairo was

known as Garden City and as she navigated her

way through a maze of leafy avenues she realized

why. It was quieter and more sedate than the rest

of the metropolis, a faded remnant of the colonial

era, with large dusty villas and everywhere trees

and flowering shrubs – hibiscus, oleander,

jasmine, purple jacaranda. The air echoed to the

twitter of birds and was heavy with the scent of

mown grass and orange blossom. There seemed to

be few people around, just a couple of women

pushing prams and the odd suited executive.

Many of the villas had limousines parked in

front of them and policemen stationed at

their front doors.

She walked for about ten minutes before she

reached Sharia Ahmed Pasha, on the corner of

which stood her father's apartment block, a turn-

of-the-century building with huge windows and

intricate iron-work balconies. Once it must have

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been a cheerful shade of yellow. Now its exterior

was grey with dust and grime.

She went up the front steps and pushed open the

door, stepping into a cool marble foyer. To one

side, sitting behind a desk, was an old man, pre-

sumably the concierge. She approached, and after

a confused conversation conducted in sign lan-

guage, managed to convey who she was and why

she had come. Muttering, the man came to his

feet, removed a set of keys from a drawer and

shuffled over to a cage lift in the corner, pulling

back the doors and ushering her in.

The apartment was on the third floor at the end

of a silent, gloomy corridor. They stopped in front of

the door and the concierge fiddled with the keys,

trying three in the lock before he found the right

one.

'Thank you,' said Tara as he opened the door.

He remained where he was.

'Thank you,' she repeated.

Still he showed no sign of moving. There was an

embarrassed silence and then, realizing what was

expected, she fished out her purse and handed him

a couple of notes. He looked at them, grunted and

shuffled away down the corridor, leaving the keys

in the door. She waited till he had gone, and then

turned and stepped into the apartment, taking the

keys and closing the door behind her.

She was in a dark, wood-floored vestibule, off

which opened five rooms – a bedroom, a bath-

room, a kitchen and two others, both piled high

with books. All the windows were closed and

shuttered, giving the place a musty, abandoned

feel. For the briefest moment she thought she

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could sense a lingering odour of cigar smoke, but

it was too intangible for her to be sure and after

sniffing the air a couple of times she dismissed it.

Probably just polish or something, she thought.

She went through into the main room, switch-

ing on the light as she went. There were books and

papers everywhere, piles of them, like drifts of

leaves. The walls were hung with pictures

of excavations and monuments; in the far corner

sat a dusty cabinet full of cracked earthenware

pots and faience
shabtis.
There were no plants.

Like somewhere that's been preserved for

posterity, she thought. To show how people lived

in a different time.

She wandered around, picking things up, peer-

ing into drawers, seeking out her father. She found

one of his diaries from the early 1960s, when he

had been excavating in the Sudan, his small,

precise writing interspersed with fading pencil

drawings of the objects he had been unearthing. In

one of the rooms she discovered some of the books

he'd written –
Life in the Necropolis: Excavations

at Saqqara, 1955–85; From Snofru to Shepseskaf

– Essays on the Fourth Dynasty; The Tomb of

Mentu-Nefer; Kingship and Disorder in the First

Intermediate Period.
She flicked through a photo

album – pictures of a large sandy trench which, as

the album progressed, got deeper and deeper until,

on the last pages, the outlines of what looked like

a stone wall began to emerge. There seemed to be

nothing in the apartment but his work. Nothing

that spoke of warmth or love or feeling.

Nothing of the present.

Then just as she was starting to feel oppressed

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by the place, two surprises. Beside her father's bed

– hard, narrow, like a prison cot – she found a

photograph of her parents on their wedding day,

her father laughing, a white rose in his buttonhole.

And in the dusty cabinet in the living room,

wedged between two earthenware pots, a child's

drawing of an angel, the edges of its wings marked

out with silver glitter. She had made it years ago at

nursery school, for Christmas. Her father must

have kept it all this time. She took it out, turned it

over and read on the back, in her spidery child's

writing: 'For my daddy'.

She stared at it for a moment and then,

suddenly, uncontrollably, began to cry, slumping

down onto a chair, her body racked with sobs.

'Oh Dad,' she choked. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'

Later, when the tears had slowed, she collected

the photo from the bedroom and put it in her

knapsack, along with the drawing. She also took a

photograph of her father standing beside a large

stone sarcophagus, flanked by two Egyptian work-

men. (She remembered him explaining to her as a

child that the word 'sarcophagus' came from the

Greek for 'flesh eater', an image that had so dis-

turbed her she had been unable to sleep that night.)

She was just debating whether to take a couple

of his books as well when the phone rang. She

paused, uncertain whether or not to answer it.

After a moment she decided she ought to and went

through into the living room, hurrying over to the

desk on the far side, where the phone was sitting

on top of a pile of manuscripts. Just as she reached

it the answering machine clicked on and suddenly

the room was full of her father's voice.

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'Hello, this is Michael Mullray. I'm away until

the first week in December so please don't leave a

message. You can either call me on my return or,

if it's university business, contact the faculty direct

on 7943967. Thank you. Goodbye.'

She stopped, startled by the sound, as though

a part of her father was not properly dead

but remained suspended in some sort of electronic

limbo, neither in this world nor fully departed

from it. By the time she had regained her

senses the machine had beeped and started

recording.

At first she thought the caller had hung up, for

there was no voice from the other end of the line.

Then she caught the faintest hiss of susurration,

no more than a rumour of breath, and realized the

caller was still there, just not speaking. She took a

step towards the phone and reached out, but then

snatched her hand away again. Still he didn't hang

up – she knew instinctively it was a man – just

waited, breathing, listening, as if he knew she was

in the apartment and wanted her to know that he

knew. The silence seemed to go on for an age

before eventually there was a click and the

metallic whirr of the machine resetting itself. She

stood frozen for a moment and then, gathering up

her things, hurried out of the flat, slamming and

locking the door behind her. She felt suddenly

menaced by the building: the gloomy interior, the

creaking lift, the silence. She moved quickly down

the corridor, wanting to get out. Halfway along

something caught her eye, a large beetle sitting on

the clean marble floor. She slowed to look at it,

only to discover it wasn't a beetle at all but a

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heavy nub of grey cigar ash, thick as a back-

gammon counter. She began to run.

The lift wasn't there and rather than wait for it

she took the stairs instead, leaping down them two

at a time, desperate now to get back out into the

fresh air. She reached the bottom and turned

the corner into the foyer, but suddenly her way

was blocked. She cried out, startled. It was only

the concierge.

'I'm sorry,' she said, breathing hard. 'You

surprised me.'

She handed him the keys and he took them. He

said something, his voice low, gruff.

'What?'

He repeated himself.

'I don't understand.' Her voice was beginning to

rise. She was desperate to get out.

Again he spoke, jabbering at her, and then

reached into his pocket. She had a sudden

irrational fear he was reaching for a weapon and

when he whipped his hand out again and up

towards her face she arched back away from him,

raising her arm protectively. It was only an

envelope. A small white envelope.

'Professor Mullray,' he said, waving it in her

face. 'Come Professor Mullray.'

She stared at it for a moment, breathing hard,

and then laughed. 'Thank you,' she said, taking

the letter. 'Thank you.'

The concierge turned and shuffled back towards

his desk. She wondered if she was expected to give

him another tip, but he didn't seem to be expect-

ing one and so she hurried straight out of the front

door, turning left and heading down the street,

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enjoying the space around her and the warmth of

the open air. She passed a couple of schoolchildren

in starched white shirts, and a man in uniform, a

kaleidoscope of medal ribbons on his chest. On

the other side of the road a gardener in overalls

was watering a row of dusty rose bushes with a

hose.

After twenty metres she looked down at the

envelope in her hand. Instantly the colour drained

from her face.

'Oh no,' she whispered, staring down at the

familiar handwriting. 'Not after all this time, not

now.'

The gardener stared after her and then, leaning

his head to one side, began talking into his collar.

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12

N O R T H E R N SUDAN, NEAR THE

EGYPTIAN BORDER

The boy emerged from the tent and started run-

ning, sprays of sand kicking up beneath his feet, a

herd of goats scattering in front of him. He passed

a burnt-out campfire, a helicopter covered in

netting, piles of crates, before eventually coming

to a halt in front of another tent, this one set

slightly apart from the main encampment. He

pulled a piece of paper from his robes and, draw-

ing back the flap, stepped through.

A man was standing inside, eyes closed, lips

twitching as he recited silently to himself. His face

was long and thin, bearded, with a hooked nose

and, between his eyes, a deep vertical scar, the

damaged tissue smooth and shiny as if the skin

had been polished vigorously. He was smiling

slightly, as though in rapture.

He went down on his knees, placing his palms

on the ground and touching the carpeted floor

with his nose and forehead, oblivious to the boy,

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who remained where he was, watching, a look of

awe on his face. A minute passed, two, three, and

still the hook-nosed man continued his prayers,

bowing, rising, reciting, the rapt smile never leav-

ing his face. It looked as though he would never

stop, and the boy appeared to be on the point of

leaving when the worshipper lowered his head to

the floor one last time, muttered amen, stood and

turned. The boy came forward and handed him

the piece of paper.

'This came, Master. From Doktora Dravic.'

The man took the paper and read it, his green

eyes glowing in the semi-darkness.

There was something threatening about him, a

rumour of suppressed violence, and yet, strangely,

a gentleness too in the way he laid his free hand on

the boy's head, as though to reassure him. The boy

stared at his feet, afraid and adoring in equal

measure.

The man finished reading and handed the paper

back.

'Allah, blessed be his name, gives, and Allah,

blessed be his name, withholds.'

The boy continued staring at the floor.

'Please, Master,' he whispered, 'I do not under-

stand.'

'It is not for us to understand, Mehmet,' said the

man, raising the boy's chin so that he was looking

into his eyes. The boy too had a deep scar down

the centre of his forehead.

'We must simply know that God has a purpose

and that we are a part of that purpose. You do not

question the Almighty. You merely do his bidding.