T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

They walked the dusty lane and through the gates with the Islamic quarter-moon on one side, a Coptic cross on the other. It had to come, he knew. He was here and this was Egypt. It had to come. Wynn felt Sybel cast darting glances his way, knew she was trying to gauge how close he was to the edge. So he asked the old man, as casually as he could, “My parents’ funeral was like the one we just saw?”

“Oh no, sir. Nothing like. Bigger. A funeral for royals. But not together. First your mother. Then your father nine days later.”

Sybel tried to interrupt, “We don’t need-”

“We’re here,” Wynn cut her off. “Let him speak.”

“Your mother went fast. Very fast. Three days in the hospital, then gone. The day you leave for America, that night she goes. And why to stay? Her children are safe, she can leave. Your father, he sleeps for eight days, he wakes, he asks for his wife. He hears. He asks for his children. He hears this, then he sleeps again. And does not wake any more.” The arms raised theatrically. “The crowds, sir. Twice they come, for wife and husband both. Miles and miles of people. All the old city was shut down.”

“Thank you.” It was all a vast exaggeration, of course, an old man’s gift of a memory born out of respect and not reality. “I am most grateful.”

It was not Wynn who was affected by the visit to his parents’ tomb, but Sybel. He stood before the dusty waist-high structure, already tilted by roots growing from two sheltering olive trees, and felt nothing. There were names, but in Arabic, and two crosses, one upon each door. He stood with Nabil and the old man as Sybel knelt in the dust. All the way back to the car and during the drive to the American University, her shoulders trembled under the impact of suppressed sobs.

They used the university’s back entrance, on the Kasr El Dobra. As soon as they entered the administrative building, Sybel excused herself and vanished. Nabil led them down a long hall and out into a side square. Before them powered a domed Ottoman villa whose second floor was flanked by the broadest mashrabiya Wynn had ever seen. The old man wheezed himself down into a leaf-strewn chair. The sounds of traffic rose from beyond the cover of trees and high stone fencing. Wynn moved closer to where Nabil stood and said, “Tell me what I see.”

The Egyptian nodded toward the residence with its striped facade of white-and-black marble. “This was the university’s original building, a palace built in the 1870s for one of Sultan Ismail’s ministers. The man was apparently very busy with things other than affairs of state, for he soon moved the ministry out to make room for his expanding harem. Forty years later it was purchased by Dr. Watson, a Presbyterian missionary.”

Vague recollections of flying paper airplanes out an upstairs window came and went. “Where was my father’s office?”

“On the second floor, there on the corner. Your mother’s was around the back, overlooking the inner courtyard.”

“You knew me?”

Nabil looked at him for the first time. “I do not expect you to remember, Congressman. I was ten years older, and a nobody. Just the son of the college gatekeeper. You were the son of the great Doctors Bryant.”

“My parents helped you gain a place at the college?”

“First at the English school, then here. Your parents were known for their habit of enriching everyone they met. This was the name they made for themselves, why you are made so welcome here today. Your mother, she was known by the staff as the Saleh , the one who offers comfort.”

“And my father?”

“Upon my return from America this week, my father asked what I thought of you. I said, you are your father, only asleep.” Nabil’s gaze was flat and oblique as rain-washed obsidian. “Your father was the most awake man I have ever met.”

Another wave of exhaustion struck Wynn, and suddenly he was no longer able to accept more memories, his or anyone else’s. “Our hotel is that way?”

“Two blocks over, by the river.”

“Tell Sybel I’ve gone back to get some sleep. It’s either that or fall on my face at the conference.”

Wynn awoke to utter dark and the softest tapping. He crossed the room, and opened the door to admit both light and his sister. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight.”

“You let me sleep through the conference?”

“Does it matter?” Sybel swept past him, turning on the overhead light as she did. She opened the balcony doors, filling the room with noise from the street below. “I came by earlier. You might as well have been in a coma. I thought it best to let you rest up for tomorrow.”

“Just a minute.” He stepped into the bathroom, washed his face, and tucked his shirttails into his wrinkled trousers. He reentered the room to find Sybel seated behind his desk. That had always signaled a serious confrontation, preparing the ground, setting up her defenses behind the safety of a desk or table or something. Her back to the wall, her words carefully prepared.

Strangely enough, his traditional responses did not kick in. Wynn walked over, seated himself directly before her, and waited.

“There is a second conference,” Sybel began. “A secret one. It takes place tomorrow in the Baramous Monastery at Wadi Natrum.” She waited, steeled for all the reasons he might have for not going.

“This was why you brought me, wasn’t it.”

“The conference that started here tonight is on third-world debt. Important, but ultimately its most vital function is to act as a cover for tomorrow’s gathering.”

“People coming here are under threat of attack?”

“This idea of Graham’s has galvanized a lot of interest. But international financial reform is a dangerous topic these days.”

He repeated the words. Spaced them out. As though saying them more slowly would help him understand. “International financial reform.”

“The only way financial reform will work is if a majority of nations act together. Up to now, this has been the political out. If America got serious about financial regulations, the big money would simply go somewhere else. Graham found a way of making this matter to everybody. Rich and poor nations alike.”

“That sounds impossible.” The instant he spoke, he regretted the words. So before she could erupt, he said, “All right.”

“You’ll go?”

“I’ve come this far. I might as well.”

“But you won’t commit .” Bitter. Still looking for an argument.

Normally that needling aggressive tone was enough to have him ranting. Their pitched battles were the stuff of legends. But not this night. Wynn leaned his arms upon the desk, closing the gap, entering her space. Asked softly, “Tell me what you remember.”

“What?”

“You knew an entirely different world here than me. You were, what, eleven when we arrived?”

“Twelve. You’d just had your first birthday.” She worked that over, the mental gears shifting reluctantly. “It had such an impact on me, coming here. I hardly spoke at all that first year. And never smiled. The sofragi thought I was partly mute. You remember that word?”

“The servants,” Wynn recalled, words rising from dim recesses. “ Khadema and Dahdah , I remember those too.”

“Dahdah was your nanny. She adored you. Everybody doted on you, the son our parents never thought they’d have.” It disarmed her, this unexpected change, his sudden willingness to speak of their shared beginnings. Her mind was locked now on her own internal vista. “I remember how shocked I was by the ugliness of everything. The buildings were just thrown up, many didn’t even have plaster, just raw bricks with straw hanging from the mortar. And of course the traffic was so frightening. Father was busy with. . everything. Mother took me under her wing. Never pressing, just bringing me along. Letting me sit in her classroom or her office, talking if I wanted to speak, letting me be silent when I wanted. Which was most of the time.”