something very bad.”
“No,” said Raf. “They just talked too much.”
“And you killed them?”
Raf shook his head. “At least, I don’t think so. But I got the blame.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t.” Raf smiled. He could remember when he too used to believe in “fair”, right up to the day he’d been driven, aged five, through the gates of a Swiss boarding school. And he’d kept wanting to believe. Making excuses for the arbitrary beatings, cold baths, sly hands, the randomness of lesser punishments… He was seven the first time he ran away. The last time was the day before his eleventh birthday, but that was from a different school. Out of five attempts, three were briefly successful.
In the end, his brain had to admit what his gut already knew: there was no justice, no fairness, only rules. Those who used, twisted or kept to the rules got by, those that didn’t were marked down as enemies of order. It was a very thorough training. “Emotional institutionalization” was how Dr Millbank described it.
And in his own fashion Raf had been keeping to rules ever since. What was his taking the fall for Micky O’Brian but playing to the rules of the world in which he found himself?
“Aunt Nafisa said you were a spy,” Hani said, tugging his sleeve. “Spies kill people. It’s their job.”
“Assassins kill people,” said Raf. “Spies collect secrets.” But Hani wasn’t listening. She was already working out another justification in her head.
“If it was your job that would make everything all right.”
CHAPTER 14
6th July
Lady Jalila rolled sideways off the couch and wrapped her gown tightly round herself. Her stomach was cramping and she wore the tension in her neck and shoulders like a heavy body cast. It hadn’t been an easy final half-hour.
“You know where…”
She nodded abruptly at the slim Greek woman and walked hurriedly from the consulting room to the lavatory next door, squatting just ahead of a spasm that emptied her bowels in a long squirt of almost clear water. That final ritual was as much a relief as it was undignified. Lady Jalila could put up with the anal speculum and lying on her side with her knees pulled up and buttocks exposed as gravity forced water into her colon and out again, emptying her lower gut of faecal matter. She could even stand those five minutes of intolerable pressure towards the end, when a warm herbal infusion replaced cool water and Madame Sosostris locked a crocodile clip round the tube to keep the infusion inside.
It was the uncontrollable gripe in her gut immediately afterwards that upset her. Those few seconds between the couch and the lavatory pan when she feared she might disgrace herself.
As for the rest of it, Lady Jalila made a point of never considering how she looked when she was on that couch or what the Greek woman thought of her endless visits. The beneficial effects of cleansing were too valuable to give up. And though she knew her husband the Minister didn’t really approve for a number of reasons, none of which included the substantial cost of her frequent visits—she could handle him. Literally, if that was what it took.
Better.
Sighing, Lady Jalila squatted again, double-checking that her gut really was empty. It was. As empty as her abdomen was flat and her stomach just slightly, attractively curved. Even her hips looked thinner now that her colon was no longer a sausage stuffed full of poisonous waste.
If only all life’s complications could be flushed out that easily.
Wrapping the paper gown tight about her, Lady Jalila returned to the consulting room of the relentlessly old-fashioned third-floor clinic set between Nokrashi and Rue Tatvig, in a not-at-all-salubrious area of El Anfushi.
She’d been the first to discover Madame Sosostris, back when the herbalist was pulled in for questioning. In those days Lady Jalila had been just plain Jalila, a uniformed recruit in the morales. Recognizing
“No,” said Raf. “They just talked too much.”
“And you killed them?”
Raf shook his head. “At least, I don’t think so. But I got the blame.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t.” Raf smiled. He could remember when he too used to believe in “fair”, right up to the day he’d been driven, aged five, through the gates of a Swiss boarding school. And he’d kept wanting to believe. Making excuses for the arbitrary beatings, cold baths, sly hands, the randomness of lesser punishments… He was seven the first time he ran away. The last time was the day before his eleventh birthday, but that was from a different school. Out of five attempts, three were briefly successful.
In the end, his brain had to admit what his gut already knew: there was no justice, no fairness, only rules. Those who used, twisted or kept to the rules got by, those that didn’t were marked down as enemies of order. It was a very thorough training. “Emotional institutionalization” was how Dr Millbank described it.
And in his own fashion Raf had been keeping to rules ever since. What was his taking the fall for Micky O’Brian but playing to the rules of the world in which he found himself?
“Aunt Nafisa said you were a spy,” Hani said, tugging his sleeve. “Spies kill people. It’s their job.”
“Assassins kill people,” said Raf. “Spies collect secrets.” But Hani wasn’t listening. She was already working out another justification in her head.
“If it was your job that would make everything all right.”
CHAPTER 14
6th July
Lady Jalila rolled sideways off the couch and wrapped her gown tightly round herself. Her stomach was cramping and she wore the tension in her neck and shoulders like a heavy body cast. It hadn’t been an easy final half-hour.
“You know where…”
She nodded abruptly at the slim Greek woman and walked hurriedly from the consulting room to the lavatory next door, squatting just ahead of a spasm that emptied her bowels in a long squirt of almost clear water. That final ritual was as much a relief as it was undignified. Lady Jalila could put up with the anal speculum and lying on her side with her knees pulled up and buttocks exposed as gravity forced water into her colon and out again, emptying her lower gut of faecal matter. She could even stand those five minutes of intolerable pressure towards the end, when a warm herbal infusion replaced cool water and Madame Sosostris locked a crocodile clip round the tube to keep the infusion inside.
It was the uncontrollable gripe in her gut immediately afterwards that upset her. Those few seconds between the couch and the lavatory pan when she feared she might disgrace herself.
As for the rest of it, Lady Jalila made a point of never considering how she looked when she was on that couch or what the Greek woman thought of her endless visits. The beneficial effects of cleansing were too valuable to give up. And though she knew her husband the Minister didn’t really approve for a number of reasons, none of which included the substantial cost of her frequent visits—she could handle him. Literally, if that was what it took.
Better.
Sighing, Lady Jalila squatted again, double-checking that her gut really was empty. It was. As empty as her abdomen was flat and her stomach just slightly, attractively curved. Even her hips looked thinner now that her colon was no longer a sausage stuffed full of poisonous waste.
If only all life’s complications could be flushed out that easily.
Wrapping the paper gown tight about her, Lady Jalila returned to the consulting room of the relentlessly old-fashioned third-floor clinic set between Nokrashi and Rue Tatvig, in a not-at-all-salubrious area of El Anfushi.
She’d been the first to discover Madame Sosostris, back when the herbalist was pulled in for questioning. In those days Lady Jalila had been just plain Jalila, a uniformed recruit in the morales. Recognizing
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