a certain bank they will go with him. It made him a rich man.’
‘What about Professor Serhan, was that professional rivalry?’
‘Serhan?’ Behind the glasses the twin buttons seemed to glow with fury. ‘The man is an idiot. His vanity eclipses his stupidity. He steals most of his ideas.’ Hilal was working himself into a frenzy. He wheezed and puffed on his cigarette as if determined to choke himself to death on the spot. ‘Intellectually, that door you came through is superior to him. He has the brains of a small child and that’s being unkind to children.’
‘He was instrumental in opposing your professorship. Yet, you were friends when you were students, I understand.’
‘When one is young, the putty is still unformed. It is easy to form acquaintances which, in the course of time, prove themselves to be errors.’
‘Would it be possible for me to look through Meera’s things?’
‘Is that really necessary?’
‘I think it might help at this stage.’
‘Very well. Maysoun will show you.’ He raised his voice and the sister appeared in the doorway clutching her hands together. After another long moment’s hesitation she turned and led the way to a narrow doorway off the hall. She opened it with an air of cautious ceremony as if half expecting to find her sister still sitting there, working away. It was a simple study. Half the size of her husband’s room at the other end of the apartment. It contained bookshelves along one wall and a desk over which hung an old Metro Cinema poster of Laurence Olivier in Hamlet.
‘Did she ever mention that she was planning to leave the country?’
‘Leave?’ Tugging a white handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and burying her nose in it, she said, ‘Never. I mean, she talked about it. Who can live in this country?’
‘In her place you would have left already?’ Makana brought his eyes away from the books to the woman in the doorway.
‘If I had the chance I would leave tomorrow.’ She sounded a resentful note.
He went back to the shelves in front of him, asking casually, ‘How did the family take to her marrying him, I mean, Doctor Hilal being a Muslim?’
‘Of course, it’s not the same, but it’s what happens. Anyway, she always did as she pleased, and expected the world to arrange itself around her.’
‘It can’t have been easy for you.’
‘It wasn’t. Many people refused to have anything to do with her, but what can you do? We are a family.’
‘Of course.’
Maysoun sniffed. ‘His faith was not the problem. It was politics. For years we begged her to get him to moderate his views. You cannot reason with fanatics. What’s the point of antagonising them? He lost his job. Her career was ruined.’ She buried her nose in the handkerchief and blew hard. ‘I asked her to tell him to apologise. He refused. Too proud. And now look.’
‘You blame him for her death, but Meera believed in him. She supported his ideas.’
‘Ideas!’ Maysoun clutched her handkerchief fiercely. ‘What do ideas matter? They are nothing but the fruit of man’s vanity.’
With that she spun on her heels and disappeared down the hall. Makana turned his thoughts on the person who used to inhabit this room. It was the study of a dedicated academic. Meera had obviously read widely, in English, Arabic and French. There were shelves weighed down with theory and others crammed with dog-eared novels. They were used up like old rags that had been through the ringer too many times, corners bent and pages yellowed, spines cracked open to reveal the wonders they contained. The mystery that was Meera threaded its way through all of this. He flipped through some of the books on the shelf finding her name in journals and anthologies, the author of papers on Thomas Hardy and George Eliot. A wave of sudden familiarity washed over him as he recalled Muna’s study at home, and that in turn brought back Damazeen. Could he be telling the truth? Could Nasra still be alive?
His concentration broken, Makana returned the book he was holding to its place and turned his attention to the desk. An antique writing bureau with a carved back. It had a number of small drawers and cubbyholes. It wasn’t in mint condition. Was anything in this tired city? Everything seemed exhausted and on its last legs. The varnish was scratched and in a couple of places the elegance of an arch was curtailed abruptly where a mishap of some kind had chipped