Vertigo Read online

  The man leaned towards him, took him by the shoulder and guided him a couple of paces towards the lift, talking all the while in something close to a whisper. Then he shook Mr Morgan by the hand and left. No sooner had the lift doors closed behind him than Mr Morgan jerked upright like a man who had touched an exposed electric cable and rushed back inside, making straight for the employee in charge of bookings.

  ‘Tariq, prepare me a table with a Nile view and don’t let anybody else in here. We’re shutting up shop. There’s a VIP coming in fifteen minutes. Get going!’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Morgan. How many guests will there be?’

  ‘Two, maybe more.’

  ‘Fine, and the foreigners inside?’

  ‘Tariq, just deal with it. Get rid of them. Tell them we’re closing.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Mr Morgan checked the bar then visited each employee in turn, dispensing instructions left and right. Flowers were put out around the edge of the room, and someone was brought up to clean the floor while he oversaw the positioning of the table and the place settings in person, even testing the chairs. Scent was sprayed and all was ready.

  It was then that Mr Morgan’s eye fell on Ahmed Kamal standing next to Hossam, and the look he gave him suggested he’d found a cockroach in his soup. Interpreting his glares, Ahmed took himself outside, while Hossam mounted the dais where the piano stood.

  ‘I’ll wait for you on the balcony outside. I’ll have a cigarette.’

  ‘If I’m a long time, just go home. It’s obviously someone important and he’ll take his time.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  Ahmed left the bar followed by the foreign lovers, their arms around each other’s waists. Walking out onto the balcony, he placed his camera bag on the ground beside him and pulled a pack of local cigarettes from his pocket. He lit up.

  Ten minutes had passed when the lift doors opened and two men walked out wearing dark suits from which jutted the hungry muzzles of their semi-automatics. With a theatrical flourish the first took up position by the lift door, while the second strode into the bar and peered closely at the features of everyone inside as if anyone with trouble in mind would have a warning sign stamped on his forehead or would stand there grinning, a stick of dynamite in his hand. Even Hossam’s piano received a quick once over. He looked behind the bar and came to a halt beside the specially prepared table. Taking a small microphone from his sleeve he spoke, somewhat facetiously. ‘All well. Security check complete. We’ve caught a terrorist cell and Bin Laden has been apprehended hiding under the table.’

  No one had noticed Ahmed, who was sitting in the far corner of the balcony, the door to which was permanently closed and concealed behind long, hanging curtains. No one ever went there other than staff, putting flowers or changing the bar lights.

  Kristina, meanwhile, was at home, lost in the novel she was reading by the light of the bedside lamp, which was her habit if she had any energy left after a hard day’s work. She had placed little wads of cotton smeared with cream between the toes of her dainty feet, daubed her face with green face cream like a Native American warrior, and, raising her hair into a bun, fixed it in place with a pencil. She was only too aware of the extent to which her appearance contributed to her continued ability to find work. In a man’s world, talent was not enough.

  As well as working nights at the hotel, her mornings were spent translating for a tourism company. Like all the countries that had once been part of the Soviet Union during the heyday of the Cold War before the fall of the Berlin Wall, obtaining a ticket out of that iron cage meant achieving distinction in the arts or excelling at sport, ballet or gymnastics: everyone remembers the Bolshoi Ballet Company or that sensation on the parallel bars, the Romanian Thumbelina, Nadia Comăneci. The majority of families had no choice but to teach their children any skill that might offer them some hope of a better life.

  After the collapse of the Soviet Union the only people spared the resulting economic catastrophe were those with outstanding talents in the arts and sporting world. They began to slip away like columns of ants fleeing a gurgling garden hose for safer ground, and for many the Arab world became their refuge. For the less talented, renting your body out like a car for hire was enough to keep you alive, a pale delicacy for white-robed, potbellied visitors from abroad.

  Luckily for her, Kristina had musical talent in addition to her demure charms and had made her way south with the other white ants, settling in Egypt where she had spent a year and a half working hard to provide her mother and two younger sisters with the bare necessities.

  Kristina’s first encounter with Hossam came during a meeting convened by the hotel’s events planner and director of artistic talent. Hossam had stared at her from behind his spectacles like an X-ray machine until the meeting came to an end, giving him an opening for some hackneyed conversation.

  ‘Is this your first time in Egypt? Do you need anything? I’m at your service. You don’t owe me a thing: we’re fellow artists … No, no, no, you’ve got to haggle for prices … You don’t know the traders here. When work’s finished I’ll show you a really cheap place so you don’t get ripped off. Let me take you home; you’re still new here. I’ll treat you to an Egyptian meal you’ll never forget. It’s called fuul. No: fuul. Fuul, not “fuel”.’

  Though the events planner had had to convince him to help complete the procedures for her residency permit, Hossam had gravitated towards her without so much as a push, like a peasant stumbling after the nadaha’s siren call.

  The silence in the room was broken by the ringing of her mobile phone.

  ‘Are you still awake?’

  Hossam’s English was excellent since he’d spent a year working at the Cataract Hotel in Aswan. Now he had even started learning Russian.

  ‘And are you still at the hotel?’

  ‘An important guest’s on the way. I’m calling to tell you I’ll be late.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be at home if you want to drop by. There’s food in the fridge.’

  ‘Are you going out tomorrow at the usual time?’

  ‘Eight o’clock.’

  ‘If I’m there next to you could you wake me? There’s something very important I have to say to you.’

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Nothing like that. I miss you, that’s all, and I’ve got something for you as well …’

  ‘Miss you too. So what have you got me?’

  ‘Not over the phone.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll wake you tomorrow when I get up. Take care.’

  ‘OK, bye.’

  Hossam hung up, the ghost of a smile on his lips, his hand feeling in his breast pocket for the small box inscribed with the name and address of a Downtown jeweller.

  As he took his place at the piano the lift doors parted and out walked Asim el-Sisi (see, I told you he’d be called Asim), the same pinstriped individual who had spoken to Mr Morgan fifteen minutes earlier. This time, however, he seemed to be playing a subordinate role, lengthening his stride to make way for the person behind him.

  Mr Morgan approached the lift, his hand, as usual, thrust forward at least an hour and forty-five minutes before the actual handshake, and was finally put out of his misery by the emergence of Muhi Zanoun.

  In 1956, Muhi Zanoun had been nothing more than an average young man of twenty-six, son of Attallah Zanoun, the oldest manufacturer of plaster in Old Cairo and owner of a workshop on the main road in front of which lay scattered Roman and pharaonic columns, ceiling mouldings, statues of angels and fountains. A true artist, his father had learned his craft from a Greek who had refused to pass on his knowledge until Attallah had sworn never to reveal the secrets of his trade. Then the Greek passed away and Attallah inherited his private workshop. He was as slender and tall as a palm tree, with kindly features and an innate intelligence that, despite his lack of an education, was clearly evident in his craft and business dealings.

  Life had given Attallah his trade and his son Muhi: his
wife Nagiyya died before she could give him any more children, carried off in the 1947 cholera epidemic brought to Egypt from India by British soldiers stationed at the Tal el-Kebir barracks from where it had spread like the wind to the rest of the country. Muhi had grown up without a mother or siblings. Though he helped out, his fingers had not inherited his father’s skill and he confined himself to pouring the plaster mix, cleaning the moulds and selling the goods. Deep down he knew he wasn’t cut out for the business.

  Then the foreigners and Jews began their flight from Egypt, abandoning the great downtown department stores of Omar Effendi, Benzion, Sidnawi and the like to Nasser’s nationalisation that gradually transformed them from grand commercial enterprises into low-cost chain stores. But the stores weren’t all they left behind: they had also abandoned their graves. Everyone who lived in Old Cairo knew those imposing marble sepulchres, watched over by dolorous angels, virgins and saints; the final resting places of the Roman Catholics and Jews in the Seven Churches neighbourhood, which had been spiritually nationalised when the last visitors abandoned them and returned home in the wake of the Tripartite Aggression by British, French and Israeli forces against Egypt in 1956. The poor and hungry began poking around the tombs, carrying off the marble and statues in order to sell them. Among these tomb raiders none grew richer than Muhi Zanoun himself, the most energetic and insatiable practitioner of this new profession; the Howard Carter of Old Cairo.

  Although his father had refused to have anything to do with wealth built on disinheriting the dead, he was eventually persuaded to let Muhi use a corner of his warehouse for selling marble. When the old man finally passed away, his son took over the business, his first act being to end the production of plaster and specialise in marble.

  As time went by he had acquired a small crane, a saw for cutting stone, a fleet of trucks and a wife called Thoraya. She was rich, the key to opening trade links with her father, Fathi Qandeel, one of the biggest marble traders in the neighbourhood, and the most effective way to ward off his rivalry. Although this wife, who conformed to the stock image of the rich man’s daughter in Egyptian films, soon realised that her husband had married her purely out of concern for his business interests, she still preferred to live with him under these conditions than become a divorced woman. Her father, after all, was top dog no more. During a couple of happier interludes in the marriage she bore him two sons, Said and Kamal. She knew all about her husband’s adventures with his secretary and with Nawal, the wife of his friend Mamoun, just as she knew the size of the massive diamond ring that would come her way at the start of each new fling, a mute profession of regret proffered with eyes downcast because he knew that she knew. It was as though they had an unspoken agreement based on mutual interest, and they never argued much. She knew she was frigid in his arms and could never satisfy him, while he was aware that she was the mother of his children and he could never do without her.

  His ambitions would not let him rest until he’d become the biggest marble trader in the neighbourhood of Shaqq el-Tiban. His big break came when he got the job of installing the marble fittings in a palace owned by a powerful figure in the revolutionary regime. He cultivated a firm friendship with this individual, a man of unlimited power who took advantage of Muhi’s money and his desire to ingratiate himself with the leaders of the Revolutionary Command Council and its successor, the Socialist Union, and persuaded him to get involved in an arms deal to supply the army, which was then at war.

  Thus began the third chapter of Muhi Zanoun’s life, which started with him travelling to arms-exporting countries, gradually transferring responsibility for running the marble factory to his sons. He spent seven years on the road, adding Russian and English to the Italian he had picked up selling marble to Italy, and befriending heads of state, ministers and businessmen, all of whom were showered with a lavish generosity that contained more than a hint of the desire to humble its recipient and leave a trail of favours owed. It was a time of wild nights, gifts and encounters without end.

  Said, his son, had joined him as an assistant in the arms deals that propelled Muhi to the very summit and which opened innumerable doors, though Muhi still preferred to hide from the media, lest, like a fat fly sitting on a windowpane in broad daylight, he became too easy to swat. The skill was to work in the shadows. An official had only to look at Muhi bey’s card and all obstacles disappeared: everyone knew he had political and financial backing.

  Thus did the Zanoun empire come into being, a vital organ in the body of the old regime, which was inherited by the new rulers along with their luxury cars, palaces and servants, while the poor denizens of the tombs that Muhi and his ilk had stripped to cover themselves in riches looked on.

  Five minutes before the lift doors opened Ahmed had stubbed out his second cigarette, removed his camera from its bag and trained it on a party now floating on the Nile down below, the blasting music no more than a murmur. A few bodies in gleaming robes danced back and forth, flashing their teeth to charm their audience while at their centre sat the heavily perspiring groom and his exhausted bride. One of the guests had taken his girlfriend away from the clamour and was busy murmuring sweet nothings in her ear, a rose clutched in his hand.

  He panned over the October Bridge with its lovers and tissue sellers and on to the hotel opposite where couples made love with their windows open to the river so that they could tell their offspring that their seed had been sown on the banks of the mighty Nile.

  All this Ahmed saw through his lens, recording whatever merited recording, the images destined for the hard drive of his computer sitting at home. He had many pictures of Nile boats and their lovers, as well as a not inconsiderable number showing newsworthy events like the presidential motorcade, a picture of the prime minister at his son’s wedding, fist-fights and traffic accidents, him posing with Lebanese songstresses and, last but not least, the most famous picture of them all: the photo with Amr Diab, which occupied a place of honour on his bedroom wall. The star was clutching a microphone in one hand while his other hand rested on the shoulder of Ahmed Kamal who was grinning from ear to ear – his eyes tight shut.

  Inside the bar, Mr Morgan shook Muhi Zanoun warmly by the hand, demonstrating his respect for the latter’s business partners by enthusiastically belittling Palestinian claims for Egyptian sympathy while endorsing the belief that Egypt’s armed forces were the shield of the nation. Muhi Zanoun assented, extricated his hand from Mr Morgan’s grasp and with a broad, unflustered stride entered the bar flanked by his secretary Asim el-Sisi and the bodyguard who’d been standing by the lift doors. A few minutes later he was relaxing at his table, scrutinising his mobile phone and placing his delicately framed glasses on his nose.

  The lift doors opened once more, and Hisham Fathi emerged, a large fly on the windowpane of the regime. Hisham was another heavyweight businessman who had spent most of his life selling cars and contracting, until a rising market had transformed him into one of the fattest cats curled on the thick rug of the economy.

  He was one for the ladies, a skirt-chaser as they say, an enthusiasm that had evolved to the stage of videoing his bedroom exploits for posterity. With ladies who agreed, he would arrange an urfi marriage; otherwise he’d secretly squire women that friends had managed to persuade, all dancers and actresses, a car of the latest model waiting for them when their contract with him expired. He took a close interest in his phosphorus levels, which he topped up with imported vitamins supplemented by little blue pills, prawns and lobster, all to keep him performing at his best.

  A drunkard of the first order, he was plump, touchy and handsome, with aristocratic Turkish features, his upbringing a world away from Muhi Zanoun’s hardscrabble background. He had inherited his fortune from his father, which, aside from their rivalry over the stock market and certain shareholdings, formed the basis of the mutual aversion that characterised their relationship.

  Thus far, the regime’s serene calm remained unruffled, but when Hisham Fathi st
arted to feel that others were benefiting from his business more than him and decided to initiate a gradual divestment of their holdings, using the stagnant market and financial mismanagement as a pretext, he placed himself under the microscope. His phone calls were tapped and everything he said at work and at home, even to his lovers, was noted down. He received his first warning in the form of an actress who accused him of sexual assault, and then a charge of possessing illegally imported liquor, an attempt to show him the red light, but the clash only brought out his stubborn side. He assumed his business empire would shield him from the authorities, especially now that they had revealed their true face.

  But the blow, when it came, was severe.

  When the police raided his villa for the first time and discovered his collection of homemade movies he remembered something he had said to one of the sluts while on camera and realised how dangerous it was for him, which had only served to increase his confusion and agitation. Then he’d received the call from Muhi Zanoun’s secretary summoning him to an urgent meeting, and so here he was.

  Hisham Fathi stepped out of the lift talking into his mobile phone and paused by the entrance to the bar. He was dressed in a suit of pale yellow with a striped blue tie, a gold watch with a crocodile-skin strap about his wrist. He cut an elegant figure, a streak of white standing out like a piano key against his soft black hair. He considered this white hair one of the secrets of his appeal, a point of view not shared by Egyptian soap operas, whose actors never grow grey. An actress can come down with kidney failure, malaria or fever, indeed can be shot right between the eyes and her make-up will remain intact, even as she lies on her deathbed.

  Hisham deliberately stretched out his conversation, taking pleasure in keeping his adversary waiting. It was a tactic he always used with his workers and acolytes, not to mention in his love life, and now he had been called to a meeting by Muhi Zanoun it seemed more appealing than ever, aware as he was of Muhi’s links with the regime. Deep down, he knew that he had grown tired of taking on his masters and so he felt a little like a son who has been thrown out of the family home and now waits for his father to call him up and ask him back.