24

“People in the shadows wallowing in their ill-gotten gains: they’re the perfect customers for a man like me whose wealth is others’ secrets.”—Murad Kashef

I relaxed in my seat while the host described my political and military career to TV audiences, as she did every week. I kept a restrained, dignified, yet confident smile on my face. Most of her account was fiction, but people believed and liked it, even though my true story was more powerful. People love those who deceive them. Even the “major general” she used to address me was an exaggeration. I was a brigadier general when I left the service. So many other faces had resurfaced from the past and now peered at people through their television screens. Why shouldn’t I stake a place for myself in that window so that people could see me too? After my return to Egypt, I learned not only how to play by the rules of the game, but how to bend them in my favor. True, I wasn’t an independent player and I didn’t make the decisions anymore, but I raked in money from the game that involved excavations into ancient files and ledgers. And there were so, so many of them.

I reiterated my fictions in my interviews. I departed from the script sometimes, but they liked my delivery. I’d written legends in the CVs I gave to show hosts, and I’d had journalists write lengthy articles about me in exchange for generous fees willingly covered by my current bosses. They appreciated the value of manufacturing a solid past to back me up if I was to serve as a bogeyman or make my weekly television appearances as security expert-cum-strategic analyst-cum-veteran politician, as they chose to remake me when I returned to life in Egypt. I was controlled by others now. I didn’t have the right to choose my own path, or else I’d lose everything they gave me in the blink of an eye. Yet I was lucky. If they hadn’t taken me in, I’d have been living the rest of my days alone in my apartment, begging for handouts. On the other hand, if I’d thought of striking out on my own, outside their umbrella, I’d have met my maker in a freak traffic accident or by involuntary suicide.

Thanks to their intervention, I received a full pardon from the sentence that had been handed down against me in absentia. Now I was the deputy chairman of a political party. True, it was a political party that few had heard of and whose members could be counted on a single hand. It was still official, and it was my passport to appearing on Channel One and writing a daily column for al-Jumhuriya newspaper called “Mr. Citizen.”

I hailed a taxi. “Zamalek,” I told the driver as I settled into the seat.

I gave him directions to my new address at the end of Abul-Feda Street at the northern tip of the island, where I’d rented a tiny ground-floor apartment. To think that I’d once lived in the Lebon, the grandest residence in the whole of Zamalek. Oh, to be middle-aged and over the hill! Visions from the past flashed before me unbidden, just to make me more depressed. As we passed the Revolutionary Command building near the Gezira Club, I recalled the military tribunal I was brought before shortly before I fled the country. Every detail was as clear as though it had happened yesterday: the suit worn by the former chief of intelligence, General Salah Nasr. The somber tie he never changed. His insistence on polishing his shoes to a gleam so they’d shine behind the brass rail of the defendant’s box. The rail was low enough for the presiding judge to see our faces clearly even when we were seated. My ears still buzzed with the whispered pleas of Salah Nasr and his aide Brigadier Hassan to retract my confessions. “It’s just a storm in a teacup,” they said. I almost laughed out loud right there in the courtroom. They didn’t have a clue that they were the biggest sacrificial sheep in history since the one slaughtered by the Prophet Ibrahim. I also lost my temper with them once: “Yes, the field marshal’s dead. But life goes on even if it’s sick, broken, and beaten.”

As we swung through the roundabout, the faces of my former supervisors flickered before my eyes. I paused at the image of Shams Badran and recalled his last words to me before I fled to London. Some days after my arrest he sent me a lawyer with the message, conveyed orally: “Confess a little and you’ll gain a lot. Only Salah’s head is going to fly.”

I did confess, thinking they now saw me as a witness for the state, but then the former defense minister sent me a second message—typewritten this time—saying, “When you see its teeth, don’t think the wolf is smiling. Be careful! Sincerely, Shams.”

To my surprise, it was Abbas Mahalawi who offered to get me a travel permit. I’d asked Badran to arrange to take me with him, but he left me in the lurch. I have no idea how Abbas got the permit, but he smiled when he handed it to me together with a special passport. I soon understood why. I was to divorce Nadia. I signed a twenty-thousand-pound check, handed it to him with one hand, and took the exit papers with the other. Once in England, I handed him the divorce papers and took the check back. It was a win-win battle. The only loser was Nagwa. I divorced her a month after Abdel-Hakim’s suicide. I was afraid of the scandal if news of that marriage came out, and was worried that it would be used against me after everybody turned against us. It was a pity, because at the time she was pregnant with my only son. At least I’d done right by him. I managed to get him enrolled in the Military Academy. He was going to graduate in a couple of years. I was living my youth again through him. It was beautiful to see history repeat itself after fifty years.

I met my former boss, the ex-defense minister, in London. In fact, I lived with him for several months. That was as long as we could stand each other. When I reproached him for abandoning me in Egypt, he invented some feeble excuses. He continued to treat me like I was his underling even though, at the time, I was his partner in a small grocery story we opened on the outskirts of London. I’d learned that he had managed to smuggle out a lot of important documents and records on some senior officials. After weeks of snooping around the house, I discovered the hiding place. I stole them before parting ways with him for good. I knew he’d never report me. Thieves don’t go to the police when their stolen goods are stolen. Anyway, he’d lost all his teeth and claws. He was now a tame old goat whose only concern was to have a pasture to eat and sleep in every day.

I don’t like talking about my life in exile. After my return from London in the mid-1980s, empty-handed, my savings nearly depleted, I did the rounds of old-time friends and acquaintances: former officials, pensioned-off generals, and the like. I wasn’t entirely without resources. I had a weapon that was hard to argue or haggle with: ancient records and documents revealing those people’s origins and how they made their wealth. One day, I received a phone call. That led to a meeting with an important official who told me that certain people were keen to meet me. They’d been keeping tabs on Badran and found out I’d stolen the documents he’d smuggled out. The official’s functions reminded me of the powers I used to have in the sixties. Titles had changed, but that was all. And why should I care? What mattered to me now was money and getting my old life back.

A couple of days later, a large black car drew up below my balcony, which was close enough to the ground that I could make out the men inside. I went out, climbed into the back seat, and off we set off toward eastern Cairo. We arrived at the building I remembered so well. It always seemed deserted when you entered it, but if you pushed open any of the closed doors, you’d find a hive of activity on the other side. Behind one of those doors, I was given a friendly welcome that conveyed an undercurrent of menace. I detected it easily, having packaged messages that way myself in my day. I’d actually expected a worse reception. I’d also already decided to agree to whatever conditions they set. So, after hearing their generous offer, I accepted it immediately.

They had not forgotten my services to the country, and now it was time to put the past behind us, they said. The presidential pardon, revoking the prison sentence that had been handed down to me in absentia, was a down payment on the great bond of trust established between us that day. My instructions were clear: keep a safe distance from those still in the seats of power. Don’t mess with them. At least not until their turn came, which was not for me to decide. It did not have to be spelled out that, if I made a wrong move, my employers could silence me instantaneously and bury me alive, together with my secret documents and tapes.

When asked to explain my “technique” with personalities who were no longer in the public eye and who now wallowed in their illicit fortunes, I said that such people were perfect customers for a man such as myself, whose wealth was secrets. I would wangle an introduction to a target, work my way closer to him, then whisper a well-chosen word or two in his ear to terrify him out of his wits. Some time later, I would send him an envelope containing some of the dirt I had on him. It could be all the information I had, but he would have no way of knowing that. He’d always suspect that I had more. I made a mint this way. Sometimes I’d even partner up with a former target to use the same technique against others who threatened him or stood in his way. Everything in Egypt had a price.

My new bosses gave me the green light to continue my game. What did they want in return? I asked.

“Nothing. Except from now on we’re the ones who are going to choose your customers.”

That was fine by me. Under the new rules of the game, I was merely the cat’s-paw in their games with others. What did I care, as long as I could make money? That was my right after the long years of drought, jobless and on the run in London from a ten-year prison sentence in connection with a case of “the deviation of duty within the intelligence agency.” In those days, the vile Abbas Mahalawi was on his way up again, this time in the NDP. It was probably his third ascent in his sparkling career. On his way up, the bastard acquired a reach long enough to get to me in London and keep me out of work and housebound. I’d thought we’d settled our scores when I divorced Nadia, but he obviously wanted me out of the way for good. But now I was back. His wings needed some trimming first: his turn had come in my game of secrets excavated from a buried past.

As much as I enjoyed this scheme that I was now pursuing for others, I never forgot Abbas Mahalawi. I’d been keeping tabs on him for the past four years. Recently, I’d learned that they had dispensed with his services, along with other members of the NDP’s old guard. Obviously they were clearing the way for the party’s new secretary-general and his younger coterie. But some of those old-timers had roots that had sprawled widely and deeply into the Egyptian soil over the last couple of decades. They’d amassed untold fortunes, making them the de facto rulers of Egypt. However, the winds had clearly shifted. I asked my new employers if I could have Abbas Mahalawi as a “customer” now that he’d been promoted into the shadows. They greeted my request with indifference mixed with an element of surprise, as though shocked at my desire to flagellate a dead man. How could they know I’d been waiting for this moment for ages? I knew for certain that the Mahalawis’ combined worth was in the hundreds of millions. I wasn’t going to let them wallow in it alone. I was going to get my share, and I didn’t have the slightest doubt I could. I could probably get it all with the documents I had. Nadia would be my key. She would hate herself if she knew the truth about her family, while Abbas and Zeinab would lay their fortunes at my feet to keep that truth from passing beyond my lips.

“Where to in Zamalek, sir?”

The taxi driver’s question pulled me out of my reverie. I looked out of the window to get my bearings and said, “Take the next right and drop me off at the Heart of Palm.”