Free Egypt by Nick Drake Page B

something: did he tell you where he was going last night?’ I said, despising myself.
    She shook her head.
    â€˜He never told me anything,’ she replied. ‘He thought it was better that way. It wasn’t. Not for me, anyway.’
    We sat in silence for a moment.
    â€˜This new child will never know his father,’ she said, as she looked down at her belly.
    â€˜I will care for it as if it were my own,’ I said.
    Kiya was rocking back and forth, as if trying to console the unborn child in her belly for the loss of its father. Then she suddenly looked up.
    â€˜You argued with each other that night, didn’t you?’ There was still nothing accusing in her voice. Only sorrow.
    I nodded, relieved to confess it. She looked at me with the strangest expression, a mixture of pity and disappointment; but before I could say more, suddenly the door opened, and their daughter appeared. Her cheerful, delicate face was quickly wide-eyed as she absorbed the strange atmosphere in the room. The sight of the child instantly released Kiya’s tears. She threw her arms open, and the child ran into them in confusion and distress, while her mother sobbed, grasping the little girl as tightly as she could.
    I stood outside in the futile sunlight, feeling as empty as a clay vessel. I began walking without direction. Every street vendor’s cry and call of laughter, every snatch of birdsong, every friendly shout from neighbour to neighbour, reminded me I no longer belonged to the land of the living, but had become a shadow. I found myself eventually facing the glittering imperturbability of the Great River. I sat down and stared at its perpetual waters, green and brown. I gazed at the sun, shining as if nothing had happened. I thought of the God of the Nile, in his cavern, pouring out the waters of the Great River from his jugs. I thought of the long futility of the impossible days ahead. And I felt a new coldness take possession of me: a single-minded impulse, a purity of intention, like a blade of hatred. I would find Khety’s killer. And then I would kill him.

10
    The stench from the garbage and mess in the street alone could have killed a mule. In the sowing season of peret the heat can be sweltering, and in the overcrowded slum on the wrong side of the city, far from the river and its graceful breezes, nothing stirred. All the passageways seemed to lead back into each other, going nowhere. I stood in the shadows on the street corner, and watched. It was late morning; people evaded the heat of the sun as if it were deadly. Old men and women dozed and muttered in grim, dark doorways. Street dogs lay on their sides in the dust, panting. Emaciated, filthy cats stretched out in whatever shadow they could find. Young mothers lazily fanned themselves, while their kids played in the rubbish and dirt that had piled up everywhere, and in the squalid streams that meandered thickly down the alleys. And occasionally young Nubian men–most no more than kids, but already tall and striking in their looks–sauntered past, roving the shadows, watching everything, guarding their territory.
    This was one of the slums’ streets notorious for the opium trade, where the low-level gang boys would sell to the more desperate addicts–those who dared to come here, despite the dangers, driven beyond fear by obsession. The slums were populated by immigrants from Punt and Nubia, originally drawn to Thebes by the lucrative southern trade routes that brought gold and copper, ebony, ivory, incense, slaves and rare animals–leopards, giraffes, panthers, little brown monkeys, ostriches–from beyond those lands. Others were drawn by the dream of a better life; the lucky ones ended up labouring on big construction projects, or being employed for their prized skills in metalwork. But in these years, the last royal constructions had been completed–such as the Great Colonnade Hall, inaugurated under