by Denis Pitts
“Hello, blue eyes,” a voice said. “We’ve missed you.” Sergeant Fahmy tightened his grip on the boy’s neck and ear. He brought Jean-Paul’s face against his.
There was a look of ecstatic delight in his cruel brown eyes.
*
The daily routine in the prison did not vary greatly.
At sunrise each morning, the bolts which had held the heavy metal doors shut since the previous sunset would be slid open noisily by a shouting guard, and the men would file, blinking at the fierceness of the sun, from the main building into a long and narrow courtyard.
For the first thirty minutes of the day, the courtyard was a confusion of men, a loathsome acre of human degradation in which, on one side of the courtyard, three thousand men fought to squat over a trench a hundred feet long and six feet deep. The trench had been dug fifty years before, when there were fewer than five hundred men in the prison.
Equally, there had been little change over the years in the supply of fresh water for the prisoners. It is a requirement of the Moslem faith that a man shall be clean before prayer. On the opposite side of the courtyard there were twelve taps from which water flowed sparsely, especially in the heat of summer.
These same three thousand men were expected to wash their hands, heads and bodies thoroughly before the muezzin called them to the center of the courtyard for their morning address to Allah.
It was after this that they would witness punishment, usually a bloody and noisy affair involving the thrashing of the victim with a six-foot malacca cane.
The prisoners would stand sullen and silent, indifferent to the screams of the victim. The longer the punishment, they reasoned, the shorter their meal-break.
As the road gangs were manacled together, the gates would be opened and the streetsellers allowed to swarm in, selling yesterday’s stale hamus, bottles of sickly-sweet gazzuza, and heavily scented cigarettes. The sale of khif and ghat, those mind-softening drugs, common throughout Egypt, was openly encouraged.
The rules were quite simple. The prisoner bought his own food, as much as he liked, as long as he paid for it from his own funds. He could earn barely enough on the chain gang to afford bread and perhaps two or three packs of cigarettes a week. But little more, and the authorities preferred it that way.
Those who thrived were the ones with relations, preferably rich, outside the jail. It was a savage, brutal system, quite logical in the Moslem scheme of things, in which the poor found themselves enslaved literally by their own poverty and in which even the smallest wealth became a strength. It was Allah’s will and it was accepted as such by governor, guards and prisoners alike.
Master-servant relationships flourished in that prison, and the price of a man’s soul became little more, oftener than not, than a scrap of hard-baked bread covered with caraway seeds.
No prison in the world is without some form of such hierarchy among its prisoners; but here, where supervision ended with the sunlight and the crashing of bolts, it was quite acceptable and understood by all concerned.
For a handsome bribe, paid to the governor and shared proportionately down through the ranks of the guards, a prisoner could have his own cell with locks inside the doors. For a truly massive bribe, he could have his own suite of rooms and even his wives and servants in residence.
Those without the means to bribe slept on a concrete floor on either side of the foul-smelling open drain that was the night latrine for seven hundred men.
These men were the hopeless ones, for whom there was no more than a blanket, a piece of floor and little else but khif, ghat and a resignation that Allah would provide.
The death rate among these men was high. The killing diseases were dysentery and tuberculosis in particular, but many more, their brains affected by bilharziasis and other organisms, went mad and destroyed themselves against the prison walls.
It was among these men that Jean-Paul lay, managing somehow to live without help from the outside — except for an occasional pound note from Mr. Kokkinos (who also enclosed several of his latest books) and managing to preserve a notion of self-respect.
He stayed aloof, away from the beggars and the petty thieves. He could, without too much trouble, have lived in something akin to luxury, had he allowed the sale of his body — eagerly sought by several of the more affluent prisoners.
Eight months after his imprisonment, there was a new arrival at the gates of the jail. The weekly police truck which brought the new prisoners from Cairo was followed by a limousine. It was driven by a chauffeur. A policeman sat beside him.
The man who sat in the back seat was small and rotund, with wiry black hair, heavily flecked with gray. He was dressed in an expensively cut black suit, a collar that gleamed in the morning light and a gray silk tie.
He climbed out of the car and stood in the courtyard peering around him through heavy horn-rimmed spectacles, and there was a look of supreme contempt on his face.
The escorting policeman opened the trunk of the limousine and brought out two large suitcases made of soft leather.
The man in the suit handed him a sheaf of Egyptian pound notes. The prison guard groveled obsequiously nearby and had his hand stuffed equally with the green money. It was a scene which reminded Jean-Paul of the grand hotels of Port Said.
The guard clapped his hands at two attendant prisoners and led the diminutive man into a suite which had been newly painted, stocked with expensive furniture and even curtained with thick, printed cotton.
Jean-Paul was newly arrived back with the chain gang, and watched the event with curiosity. As the guard unlocked the fetter from his ankle, he asked: “One of us? Or one of you?”
“He’s one of you, boy. You don’t read the papers. Hanif Razziz, the banker. Lebanese. You know the guy. Twenty years they gave him for twisting four million pounds from the Ministry of Defense. Lot of rich pickings there. Mind you, they call it twenty years. Much more like three the ways things are going in this country.”
*
“Becker.”
“What is it?”
The boy had been asleep in the courtyard. During the heat of the summer, Jean-Paul preferred always to be outside, able to look up at the crescent moon and to smell the sweet clean air which came in from the desert.
“Speak French, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Come.”
“Where?”
“Come.”
He was led, treading his way carefully across sleeping prisoners in the courtyard and in the corridor that led to the privileged wing of the prison. The guard opened a door and let him into the new man’s suite.
Razziz sat at a desk in the corner of the room. He was wearing a heavy brocade dressing gown and was writing in a ledger. He stayed like this for some time, then finally looked up at the boy.
Jean-Paul stood in the shadows.
“Come into the light,” he was told. The guard pushed the boy forward and Jean-Paul staggered toward Razziz.
“Not too near,” said the banker. “You smell.”
He looked the boy up and down slowly. Jean-Paul’s shaven head was caked with dust from his day’s work. His galabia was filthy. His feet were black.
Razziz grimaced at the sight.
“You speak French, they tell me?”
“Yes.”
“Any other language?”
“Greek, Italian, some English.”
“Your crime?”
“Desertion from the Nasser Youth Brigade.”
“Sentence?”
“Ten years.”
“Hard or soft?”
“Hard labor.”
“Desertion? At your age? Ten years. Half my sentence. I must be lucky.”
Razziz looked hard at the boy.
“Did you desert?” he added.
“Yes,” said Jean-Paul.
“You are surprisingly honest for an Egyptian.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are an Egyptian, aren’t you?”
Razziz was looking at the boy’s eyes. Jean-Paul’s fair hair was growing out fractionally.
“No.” There was defiance in the boy’s voice.
“Interesting. Just what are you, then?”
“I don’t think that matters.”
For all the filth on his face and head, and for the gross indignity of the prison garb which he wore, Jean-Paul stood erect and gave nothing in the way of the groveling which, he assumed, the other man expected from him.
“Can you read and write in those languages you speak?”
“Yes.”
“You are not a very respectful boy, are you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am offering you a position, boy, and I would expect at least the courtesy of your calling me ‘sir.’”
“What position?” Jean-Paul was astonished at his own temerity.
“I am a businessman. I have many affairs to attend to. I need a person in this prison who can be trusted both by myself and by the prison staff. I need someone who can deliver messages of a verbal nature to parties outside this prison. That could be you.”
“How would you trust me?”
‘That is the problem. You have no family?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah, you said ‘sir.’ Getting interested, are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No family, so that we could have no hold on you through them. Therefore, Becker, this is what I will do. First, I will ask my lawyers to start making representations to have your sentence reduced to, say, five years. I will deposit a nice sum of money in a bank which will be available for you on release. It will gather interest and you will leave jail quite wealthy, young man — and with a lot of experience gained from me.”
Jean-Paul thought quickly.
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Then you will move into this suite immediately.”
The boy looked at him blankly.
“It’s all right, boy. I look for a runner and a secretary, not a lover. You will have your own bed in a separate room in this suite. And food. Good food.”
Jean-Paul continued to stare. For months now he had been summoned to the rooms of the privileged prisons in that jail. He had been prodded and patted, stripped by the guards and examined by men, their eyes filled with a curious longing.
“Perhaps it would be better if I described you as an apprentice, eh? An indentured merchant banker.”
The boy smiled faintly.
“All right, my boy?”
“Very good, sir.”
“That’s better.” Razziz grinned broadly. “Now go collect your things and come back here. Shower next door and we will arrange some clothes for you.”
The banker turned to the guard.
“The filth that boy is wearing. For God’s sake burn it. And see that he eats well before he moves in. And remember — he works for me now.”
*
The luxury in which Hanif Razziz lived was not reflected in the room given to Jean-Paul. It was very small, with a wooden bench for a bed and a straw-filled cover. There was no other furnishing.
Jean-Paul was happy there, especially to be away from the stench of the public ward, the snoring, the gropings and the blank misery of the Hopeless Ones.
He was given trousers and white shirts and a pair of sandals; for Razziz made it clear that this was a business and he wanted his assistant to look businesslike. Jean-Paul could shower as often as he wished, and Razziz encouraged this, again because he was a fastidious man and did not like any reminder that they were in a prison.
Jean-Paul learned quickly of the power of money. His new master used it with admirable skill, placing exactly the right amounts in exactly the right hands. This suite of rooms had been personally organized by the governor of the prison, who visited Razziz regularly, often bringing with him a bottle of whiskey or a box of Razziz’s favorite scented cigarettes. Sometimes they played chess or backgammon. On other occasions they would talk about politics or the world at large.
Jean-Paul was detailed on such occasions to sit on a low stool at the end of the room, often far into the night, on call to pour more whiskey or to hand around sweetmeats prepared by the banker’s personal chef in the adjoining kitchen.
It was by listening to conversations between the two men that the boy became aware of the growing hostility between the two Western powers of Britain and France and Nasser’s Egypt. He understood that Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal, whatever that meant, and that the other powers were preparing for war.
The boy was free to come and go as he liked. His principal task was to cycle to the airport each morning and fetch the morning papers just as soon as they arrived from Cairo.
Razziz was an insatiable reader of newspapers, especially the financial journals from London and New York. He would mark items in every paper with a number of colored pencils, and Jean-Paul would duly cut them out and paste them on cheap writing paper and then file them in a large green metal cabinet.
Sometimes he would be sent racing into Port Said to send cables to addresses all over the world. There was always a sheaf of cables addressed to Razziz at the Post and Telegraph Office, and these he would bring back with equal speed.
On one occasion, Jean-Paul journeyed six times into the town in one morning. Razziz was leaping up and down with excitement at every message he brought.
“Go back, go back quickly and get this off,” he shouted, scrawling a new message on a blank telegram form.
Standing over the telegram operator on the final visit, with a written order from Razziz that read: “If they come back with a price of less than 120, sell urgent, tell them sell urgent ... If they come back with a figure of more than 130, then buy urgent, that is message to them ...”
Jean-Paul bought urgent and made his master wonderfully happy.
Razziz was quick to appreciate Jean-Paul’s grasp and intelligence. He began to explain to him the intricacies of the international stock market. He brought him more and more into his confidence. The boy was given sheets of graph paper, and one of his daily tasks was to chart the market progress of twelve companies in which Razziz had a special interest.
He even began to point out factors which the banker had not noticed.
“Well, well, well,” said Razziz one morning, putting down the Wall Street Journal. “Your excellent advice on General Motors last week saved me fifteen thousand dollars. Well, well, well, who would have thought the great international banker, head of the Razziz Investment Trust Incorporated, would be thanking a gutter urchin for advice.”
Razziz stopped suddenly and put his arm around the boy.
“Oh, Jean-Paul,” he said. “Forgive me. You are not a street urchin, you are my personal assistant, see?”
One day, Jean-Paul who had remained carefully deferential to the banker lest he be sent back to the public ward of the prison, dared to ask the question that had puzzled him from the beginning.
“Sir, why do you stay in prison?”
The banker’s face suddenly contorted with mirth.
“Why do I stay here? When I could get out quite easily? I mean, after all, I could be doing my business from a luxury hotel; after all, I did have a suite at Shepheard’s in Cairo when they arrested me. Why here? I’ll tell you.
“You see, bankers like me make enemies — very easily. I have made a lot of enemies in the last year or so, see. That’s why I asked to stay in prison in Port Said and not in Cairo. Enemies. It’s safe here, see?”
He burst into a fit of laughter and clapped the boy on the back.
“Safe in prison, see?”
*
For several weeks there had been a growing sense of unease in the prison, and there was constant talk of war. The chain gangs were diverted from the usual road and canal work and dispatched to the seafront of Port Said and the adjacent Port Fuad. There they filled thousands of sandbags and built blockhouses along the length of the beach, watched with only vague interest by t
he bikini-wearing wealthy of the city, few of whom really thought that war would actually break out.
Throughout the day, the prison loudspeakers played roaring exhortations by Nasser, interwoven with martial music. The prison guards, who until now had been armed only with vintage anti-riot shotguns, were paraded in the courtyard and issued with Russian-made machine guns. They then spent much of their day in noisy practice in the nearby desert.
On Jean-Paul’s journeys into town, he saw more and more evidence that something was about to happen. Concrete machine-gun emplacements were under hasty construction at every major intersection. The army was everywhere; his old Youth Brigade marched continually through the streets with picks and shovels.
Rumors flitted through the town, growing with each telling. The Israelis had been defeated; Tel Aviv had been razed to the ground; the Russians were in Cairo with ten thousand tanks; British frogmen had been seen in the harbor; there was a French submarine hiding in the canal.
But these were mild in comparison with what was to come. The newspapers reported the Russian crushing of the Hungarian uprising; but only briefly, drawing the inference that this was the beginning of a major war against the imperialist British and French.
London, they said, had been bombed and the American navy had fought a massive sea battle with the British and French, a few miles off Alexandria.
Jean-Paul called on his old friends. They were all in various stages of panic and confusion.
Fatima was in her bed-sitting room sewing sovereigns into the lining of a vast corset. A cheap suitcase lay packed on the floor. She was streaming with sweat and her pudgy hands were shaking so much with fear that she had problems holding the needle.
“Oh, leel boy, you are safe. Ees good,” she warbled. “I must go. Enough war, enough soldiers, enough dirty dancing, home now to Alexandria and nice house with my sister, a clean lady. You come any time. Forty-three Pharos Street, near the monument.”
She waddled across the room to take another gold coin from an open drawer in her dresser.
When she turned, Jean-Paul had gone.
He found the Scottish ladies arguing fiercely. Miss McCrae was walking agitatedly up and down the room.
“You listen to every rumor in the bazaar, Mary, that’s your trouble,” said Miss McDougall. “There won’t be any invasion. That nice Mr. Eden has too much sense to waste the whole British army on this wee town.”
