The Spoils of Egypt

by Michael Pearce

  ‘We were moving the sarcophagus,’ he said. ‘It caught my hand.’

  ‘That all?’

  Owen saw a momentary flicker of relief on Tomas’s face.

  ‘It’s enough, isn’t it?’ said Idris. ‘I’ve lost my hand.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Tomas. ‘It will be all right in a week or two.’

  Idris shook his head.

  ‘Not this,’ he said. ‘Not this!’

  Tomas made him lie back against the wall.

  Mahmoud came out of the colonnade.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘It’s your man, Idris. Abu’s cousin. He’s had an accident.’

  ‘Accident!’ said Mahmoud, and went over to the recumbent man.

  ‘Abu?’ said Miss Skinner. ‘The man who was killed?’

  ‘That’s right. They came from the same village.’

  The man came running back with the first-aid kit. Someone produced a bowl of water. Tomas began to wash the wound gently. Idris lay back taut-faced.

  ‘I can see the bone,’ he said.

  ‘I will cover it up,’ said Tomas. ‘Tomorrow I will take you to the hakim at Luxor.’

  He applied a dressing and then began to bandage. When he had finished, the arm looked as if it had been mummified.

  Idris looked at it as if in disbelief.

  ‘This is the end for me,’ he said. ‘I won’t be able to work.’

  ‘You’ll be able to work,’ said Tomas. ‘You’ll be able to work in the fields as before.’

  ‘There’s no money in the fields.’

  ‘There will be money for you.’

  Idris suddenly brightened.

  ‘How much?’ he said.

  Owen saw Tomas talking to Parker. Parker was offhand, impatient. He tried to move away. Tomas refused to be shrugged off.

  He suggested something to Parker. Parker shook his head. Again he tried to move away. Tomas put out a hand and detained him.

  Parker turned on him furiously. Tomas did not give way. For a moment the two men stood toe to toe.

  Unexpectedly, it was Parker who appeared to yield. He stepped back, shrugged and turned away. The shrug was one of concession.

  Tomas went back to Idris.

  ***

  ‘How did it happen, Idris?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘It tilted,’ said Idris. ‘I had my hand behind it and it got trapped.’

  ‘How did it come to tilt?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Idris. ‘The weight, I suppose. Those things are heavy.’

  ‘Did someone tilt it?’

  Idris looked at him, startled.

  ‘It was Ismail,’ he said. ‘He was on the other side. But he wouldn’t have—he’s a mate.’

  They found Ismail loading something on to the cart. Mahmoud beckoned him over.

  ‘How did it happen, Ismail?’ he said.

  Ismail was upset.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘As God is my witness! I wouldn’t have hurt Idris for anything. He’s my mate. We’ve worked together a lot on this job. I wouldn’t have hurt him for anything!’ He was almost in tears.

  ‘How did it happen, then?’

  ‘I was on the lower end, trying to lift. Only it was too heavy for me. Musa had to help me. He could see I had a job on and he came over to lend me a hand, which was decent of him. Those villagers don’t usually stir a finger—’

  ‘Villagers? He’s not one of your men, then?’

  ‘No. He’s from the village. Which was why I was surprised. But I was glad of his help, I can tell you. Those things are heavy. Too heavy, I suppose. We ought to have had another man on it. But there you are, you don’t think of these things until it’s too late. Anyway, it just tilted, you see, as we lifted.’

  He burst into tears.

  ‘How was I to know Idris had his hand there?’

  Musa was short and dark-skinned. He listened to Mahmoud impassively.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it tipped over a bit as we got a lift on it. It wasn’t done right, you see. The other man should have had his hands up supporting it as we lifted. They shouldn’t have been down there! Those men don’t know what they’re doing.’

  ‘It was his fault, then?’

  Musa looked Mahmoud straight in the eye.

  ‘Yes!’ he said.

  ***

  ‘You can’t pretend it’s my fault,’ said Parker. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Three accidents,’ said Mahmoud, ‘within the space of a month!’

  Parker shrugged.

  ‘Sites are dangerous places,’ he said. ‘These things happen. Tough, but there it is.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have been lifting such a big load.’

  ‘Look,’ said Parker, ‘have you seen these men? They’re as strong as donkeys. If you look out of your office in Cairo some time you’ll see men carrying pianos. By themselves.’

  ‘I am one of “these men”,’ said Mahmoud in a fury.

  ***

  Miss Skinner asked Owen to interpret for her. She asked Idris about Abu’s family.

  ‘They are well,’ said Idris. ‘And, of course, with the money—’

  ‘There was some money?’

  ‘Oh yes. Ten pounds a year. Ten pounds! Tomas says I will get money, too,’ said Idris happily. ‘If I get ten pounds I will put it towards buying a buffalo and then I shall hire it out and won’t have to work so long in the fields.’

  ‘Is it enough,’ asked Miss Skinner, ‘enough for Abu’s family to live on?’

  ‘Barely,’ said Owen.

  ‘Then I will make it up,’ announced Miss Skinner. ‘Can you tell me how I should go about that, please?’

  Mahmoud joined them and went over the incident again quietly with Idris. Idris, however, was no longer much interested. His mind was full of the money that would be coming to him. Small though it was, it represented escape, or partial escape, from the fields. He looked upon it as a windfall beside which the injury to his hand was nothing.

  ‘But then,’ said Miss Skinner, as they walked across the courtyard, ‘he at least has his life. Abu and Rashid lost theirs.’

  She stopped and faced Mahmoud.

  ‘Mr el Zaki,’ she said, ‘you are going to do something, aren’t you? You’re not going to let them get away with it?’

  ‘There is not enough evidence to convict,’ said Mahmoud, shaking his head. ‘However…’

  ***

  ‘My report is an internal matter only,’ said Mahmoud. ‘However, you will receive notice of the charges.’

  ‘Charges!’ said Parker, thunderstruck.

  ‘If, as I expect, we decide to prosecute.’

  ‘Look,’ said Parker heavily, tapping Mahmoud on the chest with his forefinger, ‘there’s no court in the world, not even in Egypt, which would accept a charge of negligence based on that evidence.’

  ‘Who said anything about negligence?’

  ‘Then what—?’ Parker stopped, caught off-balance.

  ‘You have clearly breached the terms of your permit,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and I shall recommend that your licence to excavate be withdrawn.’

  ‘What!’ Parker’s voice rose in a shout. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Your licence restricts you to excavation in two places: the sanctuary and the North-East Court.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘There is evidence of excavation in at least one other place. A breach has been made in the wall of an inner chamber: the chamber, of course, into which Miss Skinner so unfortunately fell. The breach was made recently: in fact, during your occupancy of the site. It can only have been made by you.’

  ***

  Miss Skinner, intent as ever, watched the last package being loaded on to the cart. Tomas made sure it was fastened correctly and t
hen signalled to the driver. The cart rumbled off in a cloud of dust.

  Through the dust Owen could see the guide approaching with the riding mules. There were four of them: one each for himself and Mahmoud and the other two—?

  ‘You will, after all, have the pleasure of my company,’ said Miss Skinner.

  Chapter Eight

  Back in his office, Owen found that little had occurred in his absence. The heat inhibited crime as it did any other kind of activity. The city seemed positively deserted. The poor were asleep and the rich on holiday.

  Most well-to-do Cairenes took their families to Alexandria for the summer, where they could enjoy the cool sea breezes of the coast. Many British, including the Consul-General, did likewise. For a month or two it was as if the centre of gravity of Egypt had shifted northwards.

  So it was perhaps not surprising that the only thing which seemed to require Owen’s attention should emanate from Alexandria. Fortunately, it was extremely minor: a request from some Italian businessmen to be allowed to erect a statue of Dante in one of the squares.

  Owen, glad to be back in Cairo and feeling benign to all the world, even, this morning, the Finance Department, was about to accede to this request when his eye caught a scribbled note in the margin from the Consul-General no less: ‘Suggest you go and see them.’

  Well, this was all right, too. A quick trip up to Alexandria, snatch some of the sea breezes, catch a late train back… Perhaps even go to the Opera?

  He suggested it to Zeinab.

  ‘Travelling all day there and all night back? On a train? In this heat?’ She shook her head. ‘Not even to go to the Opera.’

  So he went alone, sitting comfortably by himself, watching the green fields and brown earth of the delta go by, with the fellahin stooping in the gadwals and the little boys perched on top of their buffaloes.

  Alexandria was noticeably fuller of visitors than it had been even a few days ago, but with its wide streets, open squares and French-style parks and public gardens it seemed easily able to accommodate them all.

  It was indeed a European, not an Arab, city. The streets were well laid out, with the houses, in this part of the city, well apart. Broad, open lawns stretched up to sunny walls covered with a blaze of creepers. The gardens were open to the street in front. All was well watered and to Owen’s eye, still adjusting from the harsh glare of the desert, almost stridently green.

  His arabeah pulled up outside one of the houses. A short, plump Italian in a dark suit and a red fez rushed out, took both his hands in his and drew him into the house and through into an inner garden.

  Two men were sitting at a table drinking lemonade. They jumped up as they saw him and came towards him with effusive Italian warmth.

  ‘So good of you! So good!’

  Their French was better than their English. In Alexandria English took third place to French and Italian. Owen had no Italian, so after a moment or two’s exploring they all shifted naturally into French.

  ‘You have not been to Italy?’

  Owen had to confess that he hadn’t.

  ‘Ah, you should!’

  ‘I should, too,’ said one of the men, laughing.

  ‘You are not…?’ said Owen, surprised.

  ‘I’m Italian all right,’ the man said, ‘but I’ve never been in Italy. I was born in Alexandria.’

  ‘He’s an Alexandrian,’ said one of the others. ‘I am, too, but not from birth. Not quite. My parents came here when I was three years old.’

  ‘But you are still Italian?’

  ‘Italian and Alexandrian.’

  They seemed happy to be, proud of being, both. Italian was what they thought of themselves as, but Alexandria was where they had always lived and where they expected always to live.

  ‘You shift your roots,’ said one of the men, ‘and then you grow them again. You still remember your roots but now they are in different soil.’

  Owen suddenly thought that that was his case, too. It was over twelve years since he had last been in England, but he still thought of it as home. In fact, he had no home there. His parents were dead, his relatives few and scattered. He no longer kept in touch with them. Egypt was his home, if he had one, the place where he had put down roots.

  But you never quite shook your origins off. You took, as one of the Italians said, bits of your home country with you.

  ‘Opera,’ said Owen.

  Their faces lit up.

  ‘Verdi.’

  ‘Puccini.’

  He told them he had seen the current production of The Mastersingers at the Zizinia.

  ‘Hmm.’ They weren’t too sure about that. ‘But tonight there is Tosca!’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘Well, perhaps I shall see it,’ he said.

  ‘In that case we shall see you,’ they said, pleased.

  But opera was not the only thing the Italians had brought with them to Alexandria. The restaurants were Italian, Italian was the language of the shops. And if intellectual allegiance in Cairo was owed to France, in Alexandria, so the Italians claimed, it was owed to the country of Michelangelo, Da Vinci and Bernini.

  Hence Dante.

  ‘A tribute,’ they said, ‘to the great poet of the Mediterranean.’

  They wished to erect a statue in one of the squares.

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ they said. ‘About six feet high. Standing on a simple block. Well done, of course.’

  And they would pay for it. That, Owen thought, was probably the clincher. The British Administration in Egypt, like the British Government at home, was not against art, even on occasions for it, provided that somebody else paid.

  He said he did not think there would be any problem.

  ‘Order?’ asked one of the Italians tentatively. ‘Public order?’

  ‘Order? A statue of Dante? I don’t see why.’

  ‘Oh, good, then.’

  They parted, the Italians saying they would look out for him at the Zizinia that night.

  ***

  In fact, he met someone else there he knew: Carmichael, the man from Customs.

  ‘Hello,’ said Carmichael, ‘come down to see us again?’

  ‘Not this time,’ said Owen. He told Carmichael about the statue.

  ‘Ah!’ said Carmichael. ‘The statue! Been a lot in the papers about it.’

  ‘Really? Well,’ said Owen, looking around him and fired for the moment with enthusiasm for things Italian, ‘it seems a nice idea.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carmichael, a little doubtfully. Then, more positively—he was, after all, an opera-goer himself—‘yes.’

  He was, however, also a member of the British Administration.

  ‘Of course, the Moslems don’t think so.’

  ‘Don’t think so?’

  ‘No. They’re opposed to it. As a matter of fact, they’re dead against it.’

  ‘But why? A statue of a poet—?’

  ‘A heathen statue. That’s how the clerics see it. And then, of course, the Nationalists have jumped on the bandwagon. Another foreigner. Whose country is this? Why should a foreigner be honoured? Etcetera, etcetera. It’s a real cause célèbre down here, I can tell you.’

  ‘I see,’ said Owen, who now did.

  ‘Glad you’re handling it. Rather you than me, old man.’

  In a box opposite he saw the girl he had met in the Customs, the one in the green coat with the apegod. It was just a glimpse as she disappeared into one of the enclosed harem boxes. The Italians were as jealous of their women as the Moslems were.

  He saw her again, however, at the interval. She was standing with an elderly, grey-haired man and also with one of the Italians he had spoken to that afternoon, who caught his eye and waved him over.

  ‘Signor Seppi. Francesca.’

  ‘We’ve met,’ s
aid the girl.

  ‘Captain Owen. The Mamur Zapt.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the girl. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Again he felt the cool touch of her hand.

  ‘Captain Owen is supporting us over the statue.’

  ‘I am sympathetic,’ said Owen. ‘That, however, is all.’

  The man looked at him wryly.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘You have found out.’

  ‘I am still sympathetic.’

  ‘We shall keep working on you.’

  ‘I can see that you like to combine business with pleasure,’ said Francesca, looking around her.

  ‘I always come to the Zizinia when I am in Alexandria.’

  ‘And I always go to the Opera House when I am in Cairo.’

  ‘You are often in Cairo?’

  ‘Business. I go to the Museum regularly.’

  ‘Francesca handles that side for me,’ said Signor Seppi, looking at her fondly, ‘now that I can no longer get around.’

  He was, Owen now saw, older than he looked. He had one of those fine Mediterranean faces which seemed to remain young, but the body was frail and the hands old and mottled.

  ‘Francesca never ceases to amaze me,’ said the other Italian. ‘Such energy! In this heat!’

  ‘She is a son to me,’ declared the old man, ‘and has been since Paulo died.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave you to run the business on your own, could I?’ said the girl, touching him gently on the arm.

  ‘I admire your determination,’ said Owen. ‘It cannot be easy in a country like this.’

  The girl shrugged.

  ‘Roberto had built up the business. And then Paulo. All I had to do was to carry it on.’

  ‘All the same…’

  ‘She is a true Italian,’ said Signor Seppi, ‘like her mother. In our part of Italy there is a saying: “When the men die, the women have to do the work.”’

  ‘I deal mostly with Europeans,’ said Francesca. ‘Pashas as well, of course, but I don’t usually deal with them directly.’

  ‘You have Pashas among your clients?’

  ‘Increasingly.’

  ‘She deals only with the best,’ said Signor Seppi proudly.

  ‘Buying or selling?’ asked Owen.

  The girl looked at him sharply.