Sharko leaned both hands against the desk, his entire weight on his wrists.
“But what exactly are you talking about? Some kind of virus?”
“No, not a virus. Specialists tried to study the phenomenon. All sorts of rumors began circulating. Nationwide food poisoning, eating unripe beans, gas seepages from basements. A virus would have explained a lot, but the way it had spread didn’t correspond, and again the medical tests turned up nothing. So they soon shifted to something else. They started suspecting the Israelis of poisoning the water in the schools or of secret biological warfare. They even considered ‘aftereffects’ of the Iran-Iraq War. Nothing was too irrational. And still the medical tests revealed absolutely nothing. And nothing could explain why the phenomenon mainly affected girls.”
“So then what?”
“A group of psychiatrists suggested it was some kind of mass hysteria.”
“Mass hysteria?”
The doctor pointed to a book with an English title.
“I had a bit of an interest in such phenomena. They’ve been around for a long time. In most cases, a few dozen people in the same place would suddenly come down with feelings of unease, pain, nausea, pruritus, or skin eruptions. Such things were already being recorded a thousand years ago. In 1999, in a school in Belgium—not that far from you—some forty students were hospitalized after drinking lemonade, though there was no evidence of intoxication. In 2006, a hundred students in the Vietnamese province of Tien Giang came down with digestive illnesses. I could cite tons of cases. Gulf War Syndrome, which affected American GIs in 1991. A few weeks after they returned home, these soldiers began experiencing memory lapses, nausea, and fatigue. At first they suspected contamination by neurotoxins, but in that case, why would their wives and children, who had remained on American soil, have come down with the same symptoms, at the same time, and throughout the country? It was a veritable collective hysteria that cut across the United States.”
“Was Boussaina Abderrahmane affected by the thing that happened in Egypt?”
“Yes, along with six other girls in her class. In their case, it was the aggressive form of the hysteria that got them. Vulgar language, thrown chairs—according to their teacher, they had become like wild animals. They even attacked another girl, with whom they usually got along fine. Why should this hysteria sometimes unleash such violence? Unfortunately, we don’t know. Could it have been stress caused by overly strict teachers? The students’ poor living conditions? Their lack of education? Whatever the case, it happened. Truly happened.”
Sharko was seething. What he was hearing went beyond all understanding. Collective hysteria… He showed the photos of the other victims.
“And what about them? Did you know them too? Did Mahmoud Abd el-Aal ever mention them?”
“No. Don’t tell me that—”
“They were also killed, at the same time. Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
Sharko put the photos back in his pocket. It was likely the police had done everything possible to keep the news from getting into the press and causing widespread panic. For his part, Inspector Abd el-Aal had been professional and prudent, safeguarding his information and avoiding leaks. Taha Abou Zeid stared in front of him for a moment, then shook his head.
“The incident itself lasted only a short time, but Boussaina bore its traces forever. It was as if there had been a permanent change in her behavior. She experienced regular episodes of aggression. Her parents kept bringing her in, because she was pulling away from her schoolmates emotionally, growing more solitary, and clearly wasn’t happy. They chalked it up to adolescence, or her difficult environment. But… it was something else.”
“What?”
“Something psychological, which affected her deep down. But I didn’t really have the psychiatric skills to get to the bottom of it, and then she was murdered.”
“And what about her classmates?”
“The violent episodes stopped, and there were no particular problems afterward.”
Sharko let out a prolonged sigh. The farther he went, the more walls he ran up against. Could the killer have specifically targeted those girls affected by that mass hysteria? Could he have concentrated on the most extreme cases, the ones who’d remained symptomatic? And if so, why?
“Was this incident generally known?”
“Of course. It was taken up by every scientific community that had anything to do with social or psychiatric phenomena. It would have been hard for the Egyptian government to keep a lid on something that huge. There were even articles in the Washington Post and New York Times. Look in any archive—you’ll find them.”
So the killer could have found out about this from anywhere in the world. And by digging a little, reaching out to the right people, he could easily have gotten the addresses of the affected schools. Here, in Ezbet el-Nakhl. Then in the Shubra quarter, and Tora.
Little by little, the puzzle was taking shape. The killer had struck in areas far enough apart so that no pattern would emerge, and yet patterns were exactly what he was looking for. Why wait a year? So that the episodes wouldn’t be quite so present in people’s minds, and neither the police nor anyone else would make the connection. He had been careful to separate his crimes from the wave of mass folly, and when Mahmoud Abd el-Aal had finally established the link, they’d done away with him.
This case defied all logic. Sharko thought of the film Henebelle had found in Belgium, and also of the mysterious Canadian contact. Ramifications extended around the world like the tentacles of an octopus. Had foreigners come here to learn about the phenomenon and find the girls touched by the wave? The inspector decided to try his luck.
“I suppose Abd el-Aal must have already asked you, but… do you recall anyone coming to ask you about the mass hysteria or about Boussaina before she was killed?”
“It’s all so long ago.”
“I saw boxes of medicine when I came in, stamped with the symbol of the French Red Cross. Do you work with them? Do you come into contact with a lot of foreigners? Have any Frenchmen been here?”
“It’s funny… I can recall the Egyptian policeman so well now. I think he was like you. The same questions, the same persistence.”
“Just someone trying to do his job.”
The doctor gave a sad smile. He must not have smiled very often here.
“Those medicines come from all over, not just the French Red Cross. We’re an Egyptian aid organization dedicated to promoting communities, personal wellness, social justice, and health. We get support from all over, including the Red Crescent, the Red Cross, and many other humanitarian agencies. Thousands of people have been through here—volunteers, visitors, politicians, and curiosity-seekers. And if I remember correctly, 1994 was also the year of a major conference of the SIGN alliance, the Safe Injection Global Network. Thousands of researchers and scientists were pouring through the streets of Cairo.”
Sharko noted the information. Possibly the beginning of a lead. One could easily imagine a volunteer or humanitarian organization staff member on a trip to Cairo at the time of the murders. Easy for him to gain access to the hospitals and patients’ addresses. It might turn up something, but going back fifteen years through the morass of administrative red tape promised to be no cakewalk.
Everything was starting to fall into place. Back then, an Egyptian cop had sensed the involvement of a foreign killer, who had come to Egypt under cover of an association or conference. That explained the telegram to Interpol—Abd el-Aal was trying to find out if the killer had struck somewhere else in the world. The telegram must have triggered his execution. Which suggested that someone on the inside with access to the information—a policeman, soldier, or upper-level functionary—had been involved.