do so. The cross-eyed Aziza was the sharpest tool in the box. Her voluptuous elder sister was as slovenly as she was lazy and wouldn’t lift a finger if she wasn’t forced to. And at the ripe old age of eleven, her little brother Saif was already a veteran delinquent. He’d already been through Makana’s belongings and deemed there to be nothing worth his time to be found. Aziza guarded the place with a fierce sense of propriety. She cleaned up without being asked. In return Makana would slip her some money when her mother and siblings were not looking.
‘If a stone accidentally fell on his stupid head while he was sleeping, would I go to prison?’
‘He’s your uncle. He’s family.’
‘There’s no law that says you can’t hate your family.’
Makana had to concede she had a point. No doubt Bassam would sooner or later get bored with life on the riverbank and decide to go home to get his wife back, or, failing that, find some other idiot to marry him.
‘He says we should throw you out and move in here ourselves.’
‘Does he?’
‘Will you kill him now?’ Aziza sat up eagerly. Makana shook his head as he went into the kitchen to make coffee.
‘Go home. I have work to do.’
Grudgingly, she got to her feet and walked towards the door. ‘Well, if you find me dead tomorrow don’t come complaining to me.’
Makana listened to her go, singing to herself softly, the wooden boards creaking under her feet. It was impossible for him to look at her and not think of his own daughter, Nasra. How old would she have been now?
Hardly a day went by when he didn’t think back to that night on the bridge. He played it out in his mind over and over. It seemed to him that he was compelled to keep asking the same questions again and again. Their lives had been in danger. There had been no other option but to flee, he knew that. But could he have played it differently? And if he had done, would they still be alive now? These were questions to which he knew he would never find answers.
The last rays of light were draining from the sky as he climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Makana threw off his jacket and lit a cigarette before settling down into the old armchair to watch the sun going down. This was his favourite time, when the fury of the day had worn itself out and the world seemed to roll onto its back and breathe a sigh of relief before the evening started in earnest. Up on the bridge the familiar honking of horns heralded the sunset, punctuated by the occasional bleating of a musical interlude on a siren. It was always impossible to tell the jokers from the real thing, an ambulance on a hopeless mission to get through the gridlock. He finished his coffee and lit his second cigarette as he turned his attention to the letter Faragalla had given him.
In another life one might have resorted to sophisticated forensic techniques to search for fingerprints, or even DNA identification, but no such technical option was open to him. There was also no telling how useful it would be since he had no idea how many people had already touched the letter. Which meant, finally, that the only clues he could hope to find would be in the content of the letter itself. By now the light had almost gone. He moved over to the large table that stretched along one wall and constituted his office. Switching on the desk lamp he rummaged around in a drawer for a large magnifying glass. The letter was clearly printed not on a simple office printer but with ink and typeface. Putting aside the magnifying glass Makana dug about for a copy of the Quran and looked up Sura number 53: Surat al-Nejm. The Star. Here he read:
The Unbelievers follow vain conjectures and the whims of their own souls, although the guidance of their Lord has long since come to them.
Have you considered him who turns his back upon the Faith, giving little at first and then nothing at all? Does he know, and can he see, what is hidden?
The stack of reference books and encyclopaedias he had accumulated over the years from a variety of bookshops and the second-hand stalls around Ezbekieh market now formed a pillar by the side of the table. Here he learned that the star