The Hidden Read online

  It was true that his body was not young anymore. His once-lithe frame was padded with rolls of fat. His moustache was no longer slick and dark, and his white hair fell out daily on his comb. His once-rich dark eyes had paled to a milky, nondescript colour.

  Still, as chief advisor to the king, he commanded respect and fear. Yes, fear. The king and the government of Egypt were like putty in his hands.

  He considered his brilliant powers of persuasion, his calculated finesse in convincing the chief councillor for the fellahin, Youssef Attwara, against allowing tax concessions for farmers. High taxes made the fellahin work harder, and the harder the farmers worked on their cotton plantations, the more money rolled into the coffers of the wealthy landowners—of which he, of course, was one. The fellahin must become more businesslike in their approach to farming, and concessions—tax or otherwise—would only make them lazy. At least Attwara had been intelligent enough to grasp the underlying message he wished to convey. Issawi would hear no more on the subject of rent concessions—or any concessions for that matter—and he had it in his power to ruin the business Attwara had painstakingly built up over many years. Attwara had stopped short of accusing Issawi of blackmailing him. Wise man, Issawi thought, to stop the discussion there and accept the inevitable. He did not like to be crossed. He had achieved all he wanted in his political life, and he wouldn’t let some junior bureaucrat derail his plans. Now he could return to Cairo and report to the king that he had succeeded in stamping out any possible dissent among the fellahin and reassure him that aristocratic wealth would continue to flow in the right direction.

  While he and his entourage waited for their private train to be repaired, he would discuss the continuing problem of the X. His top security men had just arrived. As they walked towards him, he examined their faces and saw concern there. Hilali and Gamal both saluted and stood to attention.

  “What news do you have for me, Hilali?” he asked.

  He listened as Hilali cleared his throat, and he saw dread etched on his face.

  “We need to move fast, sir,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Yes, yes,” Issawi snapped impatiently. “We must not lose any more men to them. What’s your strategy? How much ground force do you need?”

  “Gamal and I have nearly finished fine-tuning our strategy, sir. We’re almost ready.”

  “Well, get on with it,” Issawi said sharply. “You want to move? Then move!”

  Issawi saw Hilali’s eyes flinch, but his posture remained rigid, soldierly.

  “Sir, you must prepare yourself,” Gamal said. “Intelligence has uncovered another plot in which you are the target.”

  Issawi’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

  “We believe it’s only a matter of days before the Group of the X makes an attempt on your life.”

  Issawi’s face was motionless. This news was nothing new to him. He was as hated as he was feared. His life had been targeted before. Now he travelled everywhere in armoured vehicles with a security entourage to protect him. But the way Gamal spoke alarmed him. He was usually practical and unemotional, but for the first time, Issawi saw fear in Gamal’s eyes.

  “Use your networks, Gamal,” Issawi said. “Find out who the masterminds are and exactly what they are up to.”

  “Sir,” Hilali said, “we already have dossiers on five possibles, but there are many branches of this organisation and it’s likely the men at the top are just foils. The real enemy is the X’s huge network of spies on the ground, a massive web of agents, subagents, and counteragents. We’re deep in muddy waters with this one.”

  Issawi stood up and started pacing. The veins on his temple throbbed. “Contact the head of Secret Police at HQ,” he said. “However big this group is, whoever the newcomers are, wherever they hide out, we have the resources available to find them.”

  Gamal leaned forward, his voice lowered. “Sir, we can plan raids, but we do not have the resources to raid the hundreds of addresses this group uses. A lot of their men, we know for certain, are also undercover agents gathering intelligence for the Germans. As I said, we have identified five leaders so far, but this group is clever. They move quickly. They change tack. They slip about invisibly. We have very few photographs of any of them. We think they are using a tagging system, acting on directions, then passing the information on. As soon as one of them passes intelligence down the line, he disappears, changes his identity and his physical appearance. We believe they are running an identification-paper racket, which serves them well, but their primary goal is to take over the government and rule by terror. As you well know, the X is an old network. They’re artful and skilled. We don’t know yet when they are going to act, or how they plan to pull off the assassination. We just know that you are in very grave danger.”

  Issawi ground his teeth and took a sip of water. Even with the ceiling fans whirring overhead, it was still unbearably hot. Trust nobody, he thought to himself. It was a mantra he had lived by his whole life.

  “Where are these dossiers?” he asked.

  “With Operations and our key men.”

  “The men on the ground, who are they?” Issawi asked.

  Gamal paused before he replied, studying Issawi’s face. “Military men, academics, businessmen, traders from all walks of life, as well as thugs and criminals, who’ve all come together with the common purpose of a fundamentalist Nationalist takeover.”

  “How many belong to the X these days, did you say?”

  Hilali studied a notebook in front of him. “We estimate that the Group is now at least five hundred men strong, but in reality, the network is without a doubt much larger than that.”

  Issawi wiped his mouth with the back on his hand. “Damn them all,” he said.

  Hilali went on. “We must use some of our men to go undercover and find out what they are planning. We don’t know how much time we have. Although it could be months, we think it is a matter of days. The most important thing is to break up the networks from the ground up. It’s the networks we need to target. We’ve been watching a few key people.”

  It was Gamal’s turn to speak. He said, “Your engagements, sir? You should cancel your engagements for a while, until we can report back.”

  Issawi snorted. “Impossible. I will not change one thing. I have my security men. I have my armed vehicles, my private train. My family is well looked after. You must order Operations to move in on them immediately.”

  Hilali studied Issawi incredulously. It wasn’t as simple as that. His boss was an arrogant, stupid man who had no right to hold the position he held. Hilali hated him, but he had to earn a living.

  Issawi went on. “Don’t just stand there gaping. How do you propose to organise yourselves?”

  Gamal said, “We’ll step up the undercover operation that we already have in place. We can scour the clubs, the brothels, the cafés, the streets, the addresses we have; tap phones; send in our men and women; but to really be effective, sir, we need more money from Operations.”

  Issawi smiled mockingly. This was one of Gamal’s usual ruses to extract money from Operations, but he wouldn’t allow it. “Impossible,” he said. “That’s exactly what the X wants. They’re not important, Gamal. Thugs like the men in the X have been trying to take over Cairo for decades. Use your men to find out the nature of the plot and report back to me in forty-eight hours.”

  Gamal bowed his head respectfully, but he was seething inside. “Yes, sir.”

  Hilali bowed and saluted, then said, “Lunch has been ordered, sir. I’ll just go and check to see if it’s ready.”

  Issawi went to the window and stared out at the Nile below. The Group of the X did not scare him. He would not be intimidated by a pack of thugs. He would continue to wield his power unhindered.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Aimee clutched the package to her as she walked quickly through the archways of the university to the main streets of al-Azhar. She stopped for a moment to scan the streets for a tram or
a car to take her home. The heat blazed down on her, and she felt stifled in her calf-length English wool skirt and her cream blouse with its innocent collar. Her low feminine shoes, which she’d bought on that trip to London, had been perfectly appropriate at one time for a French bride of Egyptian heritage, but they now felt over-the-top and excruciatingly uncomfortable.

  Her charcoal black hair, which she generally wore long and loose or demurely plaited, felt tight and awkward, pinned as it was at the base of her neck. As she breathed in the heat, she was sure she was breathing white, chalky, poisonous dust into her lungs.

  The loud Arabic voices, piercing the air with their guttural, impatient cries—a thing of joy to her in the early weeks of marriage—now made her body heavy with grief because the sound reminded her of Azi. He’d loved the Arabic language and had been encouraging her to read the new literature coming out of Egypt. With Azi, she had had the opportunity to embrace the language of her early childhood, which had stirred up memories of her time with her aunt Saiza in Alexandria, before Saiza had sent her to France. Now those Arab voices mocked her. They spoke of a life alone in a city she didn’t know.

  As Aimee stood looking for a car to take her home, she observed the crowded streets. The sour odour of mud and under-earth and spice, vegetable peelings, and dank sewage lingered forever behind her nostrils. The vivid blue sky, the place she looked to for answers, never offered her any. She didn’t know what to do now that Azi was dead. As she so often did, she wished she were older, more experienced. She felt as though the whole world was watching her—inquisitive men, desperate children, self-satisfied European women, soldiers, old Egyptian mothers with sagging, greying skin—and all she could do was stare back timidly at them all.

  As she waited for a car to take her home, she stopped in the shadows of the al-Azhar mosque and the elegant stone houses built by the Europeans.

  “A ride, Madame?”

  A cab driver peered out of the car window at her. She nodded and climbed in, sliding the parcel onto her lap. Sinking low in her seat, she fanned herself against the heat. They drove along wide boulevards, tree-lined streets, and darker filthier harets crammed with people, goats, and donkeys, until at last they came to the Sharia Suleyman Pasha. When the driver stopped, Aimee thrust some coins in his hand and got out. Holding the parcel carefully against her, she walked towards the tiny haret, the alleyway that led to the courtyard at the side of her house. Samir, her neighbour’s thirteen-year-old son, was standing against the door to the courtyard staring at her inquisitively with his huge black saucer eyes. Aimee was fond of him and touched his cheek as she went through the gate, then climbed the steep stone steps to her front door.

  On the hall sideboard was a newspaper. The headlines blazed with ominous reports about the war, fatal predictions, and sensationalistic news. And there was a letter addressed to her. She recognised Saiza’s handwriting. Good. It would be news of her aunt from Alexandria, where she was recuperating from an illness. She picked up the letter and pushed open the sitting-room doors. The balcony doors were open. Amina, her housekeeper, must be somewhere nearby. Aimee sat down in one of the rattan chairs on the balcony and stared at the street below. Men in long jalabas were smoking on street corners, European women were marching purposefully to their club or to some war meeting, and newly arrived uniformed soldiers were getting their bearings. She watched, momentarily entranced by the cacophony of noise and the sunlight. The parcel the professor had given her sat on her lap. She did not want to open it, not yet. Instead, she tore open her aunt’s letter. When she had read it, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she put the parcel aside, got up, walked to the study, and retrieved the invitation to the literary launch that the professor had mentioned. She examined it. It seemed disrespectful to Azi to go out socially so soon, but he would want her to be happy. And the professor was probably right. No harm could come of going to Zaky Achmed’s literary evening. She would take Sophie, her school friend, with her. She returned to the balcony to retrieve the parcel. The rough string encircling it was begging to be pulled and the brown paper wrapping removed. She burned with curiosity. If there was something sinister in it, perhaps the police ought to know? Any information could help. Anything at all. The dull brown wrapping paper felt soft and cool as she ran her fingers over it.

  Then she started to loosen the string excitedly like a child on her birthday. Inside was a notebook with a battered leather cover, the type that could slide easily into a large pocket. Inside the front cover of the notebook was a white label, gone to a decaying shade of yellow with the passing years, with tiny neat words scrawled in Arabic in an unfamiliar hand. She flicked through the pages, her heart in her throat. It was a journal, but whose?

  She peered more closely at the flowing script. Then her heart began to beat wildly, and she held the journal to her chest. The words read The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira, Cairo, 1919.

  Maman, she said to herself. Her diary. And Azi had had this in his possession. Why had it been tied up in a parcel, hidden away in his office?

  Aimee flicked through the book. What secrets did Maman reveal in this little notebook? How strange to be holding the diary Hezba had written twenty-one years before. Aimee had known vaguely that the journal existed. Aunt Saiza had told her about it, but she had said it had disappeared. All Aimee had of her mother was a single photograph in an ornate frame in her living room.

  She looked over at it. There she was, a defiant-looking Hezba wearing silky loose trousers and a little waistcoat. Aimee stepped closer and studied the photograph. What turmoil there was in those soulful black eyes. This burning connection between them was like gossamer on the wind, barely visible but always there, haunting her.

  Aunt Saiza had told her little about her mother when Aimee had been a child, but what she knew had stayed with her, harnessing her to her past like the pulsing cord connecting babe to mother. Saiza said that Aimee’s grandfather had called Hezba “Fire,” an apt name since she had been so passionate and determined, as though a permanent fever burned through her. Their father had always favoured Hezba, and Saiza had been jealous of his love for her. Aimee examined the photograph carefully, though she was familiar with every intimate detail of it already. Aunt Saiza had told her that Hezba had had black eyelashes, soft caramel skin, and fleshy legs, and that she could often be seen running frantically to her papa with arms outstretched. He would dance her on his knee. Papa Sultan had been a formidable man, and Hezba had loved him the most out of all who lived at the sarai, the royal palace near the Nile. Hezba loved his long dark moustache hanging low over his fine jaw, his broad sweep of jet-black hair, his twinkling chocolate-coloured eyes, and his scent, which was a mix of starched cotton and pipes and perfumed kisses.

  Hezba had loved pulling his moustache, making him wince and laugh. His other children would form a line to see him. One by one he would pat them, kiss them, and then send them away, but she was always allowed to linger. Saiza had told her all this with bittersweet regret, but Saiza had loved Hezba. Everyone had loved Hezba Sultan.

  Aimee stared at the uneven walls of her home and the little sitting room with its European-style furniture. Aunt Saiza had spoken of the palace’s gold couches, marble staircases, and ornate architecture, of the cool, shuttered quarters of the harem, where the eunuchs served coffee to the harem girls in Ethiopian silver coffeepots, and the girls exchanged secrets and laughter, their bare arms jangling with jewelled bracelets as they walked the corridors arm in arm.

  She shifted uncomfortably as she recalled the stiff aprons of her convent years and thought about the chasm between her mother’s life and her own. As she flipped through the journal again, a photograph and some folded pages with strange typewritten words slipped out. Her eyes narrowed as she studied them. The photograph drew her attention first. It was of a beautiful woman, an Egyptian, dressed in modern-day clothes, with a cocky half smile on her lips. It wasn’t Hezba. The photograph was recent, n
ew. Aimee didn’t understand. She turned the photograph over, and her stomach lurched when she saw Azi’s handwriting. She recognised his rich penmanship and the sepia-brown ink he loved to use. And there was a name: Fatima and an exclamation mark and a date, two months previous. Her heart sank. She steadied her breath and stared at the photograph, staring so hard she made herself dizzy, trying to understand, trying to remember. This woman. Who was she? Fatima? She and Azi had known no one called Fatima, and she certainly didn’t recognise her. She turned her attention to the typewritten pages, hoping they would provide clarification, but they were filled with words in a language she didn’t understand And then she started reading her mother’s diary.

  The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

  Cairo, August 1, 1919

  The beatings are getting worse, but Habrid’s brutality serves no purpose. I won’t be stopped. He can beat me raw, but he will never crush me. I am a seventeen-year-old woman, not a child, yet he treats me like one. He has no right. After his latest beating, I immediately defied him, marching straight into Papa’s library, and stole a new journal for myself, the one I am writing in now. I am ecstatic that I have these beautiful new scented and blank pages to write on. I went there, unaccompanied, of course, because even Rachid would not be a party to my deception. I stole the blank journal openly, hoping to be caught. I want the whole palace to know that Habrid, the head eunuch, is an animal who deserves to be strung up like the lowest, commonest criminal, and that he has reduced me to stealing. He told me he had orders to keep an eye on me, that Maman wants me beaten, as a lesson. Papa would never order such a thing, but he is away, busy with government affairs, and chaos has once again descended on the palace. Habrid ripped the pages from my last journal, shredded them in front of me, and then ordered the shreds burned. After that, he took me to the solitary room and thrashed me twenty times with a wet rolled-up cotton sheet. I’m convinced Habrid is in league with my husband, al-Shezira. With great lacerations on my skin from the thrashing, I am no longer attractive. This is how they want me, scarred, unloveable, and beaten into submission. Al-Shezira and Maman think that if Habrid beats me, I’ll grow tired of speaking my mind and I’ll repent and become a good servile wife. Al-Shezira is a fool. They want me to be true as a woman. But I will always disappoint them. I know I am being watched. I feel their eyes on me. I hear the whispering among the eunuchs and servant girls. I can hear Maman’s words, can see her face as she shames me, but she does not see what I see. Her world is jewels and low couches and delicious food and excursions. She thinks I am a shameful girl for looking at her with questioning eyes, for wanting to read the works of modern Egyptian writers, for the rumours she hears about me, rumours I cannot stop.