Hani paused, her small fingers hovering in midair. A matrix of fine wires across the back of her hands ended in finger thimbles. Every time her hands flicked across the invisible keys of her imaginary keyboard, words got added to a processing package installed on her laptop one floor up in the haremlek. Very clever but not madly practical because Hani relied on seeing a screen to write.
All the same, it was kind of Hamzah Effendi to send her a present. Hamzah Effendi was Zara's father and Zara was the girl her Uncle Ashraf should have married, the one everyone thought . . .
If only.
Hani kicked her heels against the legs of a silver chair and sighed. Another four paragraphs and she'd let herself go down to the kitchen to make coffee.
At first the Sultan was perplexed by this answer. And then, after consideration of the mullah's open disrespect, he determined to remonstrate with the man when they next met, famous sage or not. At about this time the visit from the Indian ambassador was cancelled and so the Sultan needed no advice from anyone after all.
Many months later, as fig leaves began dropping and the stars grew cold the Sultan sat down to supper and no sooner had he picked up his goblet than an assassin leapt upon him. Immediately, Mullah Bahaudin, having entered the dining room at this exact moment, jumped upon the assassin and wrestled him to the ground.
"O Mullah," said the Sultan, "It seems I am indebted to you in spite of your earlier rudeness."
Mullah Bahaudin smiled. "O Sultan," he said sweetly. "The courtesy of those who know is to be available when actually needed, not sit waiting for emissaries who will never arrive . . ."
Hani flicked her fingers over a nonexistent trackball to shut down her laptop and pulled off her gloves. She would write the rest of Bahaudin's story, particularly the bit where the Mullah met a miracle worker who could walk on water–but to get things right she really did need a screen.
"Okay," Hani said, slipping down from her chair. "I'm off to make some coffee." She left her comment hang in the air, a fact that seemed to escape both Uncle Ashraf and Zara. "Anyone like some?" Hani asked loudly.
"Donna can make it," Raf replied.
It was the wrong answer.
"Just look at this," said Donna, waving one heavy hand at her television, as she insisted on describing the kitchen newsfeed.
"Disgraceful. You could get twice the zest out of that."
On screen a plump boy in a chef's hat was discarding half a lemon.
"Now he's adding cream," Donna said, with a disgusted shake of her head. "Cream." The old woman loved watching the German channels for their sheer outrage.
When Hani said nothing Donna switched her attention from the recipe for Schwetche Kuchen to Hani's face and jerked her head upwards, through the ceiling. "Still arguing?"
The child nodded.
"About you?"
Hani looked at her. "What do you think?" Everyone in the house knew what Hani thought. She refused to go to school in New York and she didn't want a tutor at home. Hani was beginning to wish she'd never taken those tests.
"Zara just wants to get rid of me," Hani said. "They both do."
"That's not . . ." Donna sighed. "Sit down," she said in a voice that allowed for no argument.
Frying last season's almonds in a drizzle of olive oil and grating rock salt over the top, Donna tipped the result onto a single sheet of kitchen paper, which she screwed into a ball to remove most of the oil. "Eat," she told Hani, when the tapas was ready.
Hani did what she was told, sipping at a glass of red wine Donna had placed beside the plate of almonds.
"Now you listen to me," said Donna. "It's your birthday. You mustn't be upset on your birthday because it makes for bad luck. And this isn't really about you . . ."
"Yes it is."
"No," Donna said firmly. "It's not . . ." She sighed and took her own gulp of Hani's wine. "It's about something else. Something grown-up. You know what I'd like to do with those two?"
"What?" asked Hani, suddenly interested.
"Ahh," the elderly Portuguese woman shrugged in irritation. "No matter. You're too young to know about these things . . ."
Although if Donna's solution was anything like that of the madersa's porter, then Hani had a pretty good idea already. Khartoum's suggestion involved bricking Uncle Ashraf and Zara into a room with a bed and not letting them out until they made sheets.
Hani wasn't sure where the bricks or sheets came into it, but she got the general point.
"You want more birthday cake?"
"Not really." Hani shook her head. "I came to get coffee."
"Caffeine darkens the skin," said Donna crossly. Her own face was as brown as the inside membrane of a walnut and almost as crumpled.
"It's for His Excellency."
The Portuguese woman looked doubtful.
"Papers." Hani announced before she was even through the marble arch into the qaa. Zara and Uncle Ashraf would have had to be deaf not to hear Hani coming, she'd stamped so hard on her way up.
On Hani's tray were a collection of afternoon papers, three tiny mugs of mud-thick coffee, and the plate of baklava Donna had insisted she take. Most of the papers blamed Thiergarten for the attack on Emir Moncef. Only one chose Washington over Berlin. And that one was more concerned with the miracle of the Emir's survival.
"The Enquirer," she told her uncle, dropping it onto his table and using it as a mat for his coffee.
Pope To Make Boy Saint?
The Emir of Tunis had been saved from death by a child's power of prayer; the Enquirer was quite categoric about that. An unnamed source close to Emir Moncef had confirmed how, in the absence of serum, the Emir's youngest son had prayed over the unconscious body of his father, refusing to leave Moncef's bedside until the Emir finally awoke.
Missing from the story was the obvious fact that Pope Leo VII was unlikely to beatify, never mind canonize, a minor Islamic princeling (even assuming the mufti in Stambul was willing). Also missing was the fact that, far from being a hero, Murad Pasha had found himself in deep disgrace. In fact the beating he received for not obeying an order from the Emir left the boy unable to sit for three days.
Raf skim-read the story, shifted his cup to reach the end, and tossed the lies to the floor, narrowly missing Ifritah, Hani's grey cat.
"Uncle Ashraf!"
"It was an accident," Raf said firmly, and went back to work.
A fine-tooth comb, plus instructions on the correct way to lift potential evidence from pubic hair.
A Miranda card, one side listing Inalienable Rights, the other Rules of Plain View.
Two dozen unused postmortem fingerprint cards, both left and right.
Vacuum-packed latex gloves, eight pairs.
A booklet in Spanish on Vucetich's system of fingerprint classification, stamped LAPD not to be removed.
A foldout chart of poisons, arranged by the time in which they begin to react. Starting with ammonia, reaction time zero, and ending with stibine, three days to three weeks . . .
One single sheet of 80gsm A4 paper of the kind used in police stations across North Africa. On it the translation of an Ottoman wedding certificate typed on a manual typewriter, which suggested a fear of leaving electronic footprints. The names had been filled in but the dates left blank.
Polaroids, two, of a young man standing by a Jeep.