the water with a syrupy plop.
My mouth made sounds without words, without meaning. Maybe he understood and maybe he didn’t, but Youssef answered anyway. “It was Ismail. Amm Attia saw. He had Sabah with him, but I don’t think she wanted to be there.”
Sudden, implacable rage. I saw it in my mind, as clear as if it had been a TV program. My Sabah, my sun and stars, once resplendent in leather and moonlight, dragged kicking and screaming by the hair by her brute of a brother. My friend. Her brother. My friend. “Benjamin?”
“He is alive, for the moment,” said a deep voice from some ways behind me. I turned to find the porter sitting in his wicker chair. He had dragged it against the stone steps where it was invisible to anyone coming down. Even at a distance I could see his fingers trembling as he rolled the cigarette and licked the paper. His left eye was a swollen red mess.
I rushed over and came to my knees at his feet, fingers probing the old man for further damage. “What happened? Are you well?” I was shaking him now, on the verge of tears. He put down the cigarette and took my head between his palms. His good eye softened. The warmth of his hands was reassuring in the crisp cold of the early morning and I felt myself relax against my will. He held me for a few more moments without uttering a word.
When he finally spoke, it was with measured calm. He’d sensed my fragile state; I’m sure, and acted accordingly. “I’m fine and Benjamin is too, praise God,” he said, picking up the cigarette once more. “Ismail came last night looking for him. He had men and gasoline and Sabah. Youssef had left not long after you did.