The Donkey-Vous mz-3

by Michael Pearce

  French was, actually, the language Zeinab naturally spoke. The Egyptian upper class was thoroughly French in style. The children grew up speaking French and went to French schools; the women took their fashions direct from Paris; the men used French rather than Arabic in their normal intercourse at work. It was customary for wealthy Egyptian families to spend some part of each year in France, either on the Riviera or, more often, since Egyptians were unimpressed by mere sunshine, in Paris. They read French newspapers, went to the French theater, enjoyed French music (not Arabic) and Italian opera, collected French paintings.

  They also brought back to Cairo a taste for French-style conversation and the level of intellectual discussion was much higher among educated Cairenes than it was in the expatriate communities. The bright young men around the Consul-General and the Sirdar were much more at home in these French-speaking native Egyptian circles than they were among the stolid English. Paul was often in despair after another dour evening with the British elite and greatly preferred the company he met at Samira’s. The only drawback was that even at the most elevated levels you were unlikely to meet women on equal terms. The Ministers all preserved their harems. Even a person as free-thinking as Nuri Pasha, Zeinab’s father, would never think of inviting his wife or wives to a gathering such as the present one. It was only in circles where there was a combination of wealthy, relative youth, and a slight Bohemian flavor that women would be present who were at all emancipated.

  Zeinab, who was as strong-willed as her father and as independent as her mother, a famous courtesan who had rejected Nuri’s itself emancipated proposition of a formal place in the harem, found only a few circles in which she was acceptable, so she rather enjoyed social occasions like the present one.

  Madame Moulin, whose shoulders bore, though at a certain remove, some of the burden of the French Presidential mantle, was glad of the opportunity to talk to one of the daughters of France’s dominion abroad. She still considered Egypt part of that dominion, believing the present to be merely a temporary hiccup in the natural process of historical continuity. As with many French people, her imperialism took a cultural form and she was delighted to find so striking an example of exported French culture as Zeinab. Indeed, she was a little daunted, for Zeinab was more Parisian than she was. Her clothes rather exposed the provincial character of Madame Moulin’s own dress and they were worn with an elegance which, Madame Moulin assured her, could be found only in Paris.

  Zeinab appeared to lap this up, though that could well have been just politeness, for Zeinab took all this pretty much for granted. She was, however, intrigued by Madame Moulin’s description of domestic Provencal life, which seemed to her as exotic and, it must be confessed, unsophisticated as that of the Shilluk tribes in the furthermost reaches of the Sudan.

  After a while Madame Moulin beckoned Owen over.

  “You have a beautiful fiancee,” she informed him.

  Taken by surprise at this sudden formalization of their relationship, he found himself falling back on the Charge’s “Naturally. Naturally.” He stole a glance at Zeinab’s face. It was expressionless.

  “I certainly think so,” he said.

  The French made much less fuss about the nature of relationships, whether formal or informal, than the English did. It was part of their general belief that whoever shared the French culture was French. It was quite all right, therefore, for a white to marry a black, or, in this case, a brown a brown.

  “What is important,” declared Madame Moulin, “is character.”

  Zeinab, puzzled, was half inclined to take this as a personal reflection.

  The Charge, overhearing, thought that Madame Moulin was getting at him again.

  She was, however, thinking about the unfortunate Berthelot.

  “He should have been in the Army,” she said, looking at Owen. “It would have made a man of him.”

  Now it was Owen’s turn to feel uncomfortable.

  “ Comment? ” said Zeinab, at a loss.

  “Berthelot!” said Madame Moulin firmly. “This gambling of his. It is weakness of character. It runs in the family. On Moulin’s side. How many times have I told Moulin not to encourage him! But he took no notice. I told him again last year when Berthelot came. ‘To go is to encourage him,’ I said. But go he would.”

  “To Cairo?” Owen hazarded.

  “No, no!” said Madame Moulin impatiently. “To Cannes. Last year. When Berthelot came. He wanted Moulin to go back with him. ‘At your age!’ I told Moulin. ‘You ought to know better.’ ”

  “Monsieur Moulin was going there to play?”

  “What else does one go to Cannes for?” asked Madame Moulin scornfully.

  Nikos knocked on the door discreetly and stuck his head in.

  “He’s here now,” he said.

  “OK, show him in.”

  A stocky, gray-haired figure in a white galabeah but without either turban or fez came into the room. He was carrying a skullcap, which he fingered uneasily.

  “Greetings, Sidky,” said Owen.

  The man looked uneasy at this familiarity with his name but responded with the usual courtesies. Nikos took up position against the wall, from where he could see the man’s face. It was Nikos who had found out the details.

  Owen motioned Sidky to a chair, on which he perched uncertainly, as if the object and situation were new to him.

  “You have good fields, Sidky. What crops! Peas, beans, cauliflowers, pumpkins, mangoes, figs! And the watermelons! I have never seen such big ones.”

  “The earth is good,” said Sidky modestly.

  “It is good because it is well-watered.”

  “Mother Nile has been kind to us.”

  “Such a plot must be highly sought after. Was it always in your family?”

  “Since my great-grandfather’s time. The plots were small then. There was not much on that side of the river then- just the fields along the river and around the villages.”

  “The other water that builds a plot is the sweat of the men that work it. For many years now it has been your family’s sweat that has watered the fields.”

  “True,” assented Sidky.

  “Then why do you wish to sell your land now, Sidky? It is good land and you are not a poor man.”

  Sidky seemed troubled. He stared at the ground and fumbled with his skullcap. After a while he raised his head and looked at Owen.

  “It is good land,” he said, “and my family’s land. I had not thought of selling it. But one came to me and said, ‘That is good land and I will pay you well for it, Sidky.’ ‘That may be,’ said I, ‘but you will not pay me what the land is worth to me.’ ‘I wouldn’t be so sure, Sidky,’ the man said; and he named a figure which took my breath away.”

  “Who was that man, Sidky?”

  “You know the man,” said Sidky, glancing at Nikos. “Otherwise I should not have told you. Izkat Bey.”

  “Did he tell you what he wanted the land for?”

  “He wanted to build there.”

  “Building is fine,” said Owen, “but it seems a waste of such good land.”

  “That is what I told him. ‘If you want to build,’ I said, ‘there is plenty of land for that. Try Rhoda Island.’ I know about the island,” Sidky explained, “because my camels carry rubble for the building works there. That is why I am rich. It is not the farming. Farming is an honest trade and my fields yield well, but there is no money in it. With the money I made from farming I bought camels and with the camels I carry rubble. That is how to make money.”

  “And you have made enough money to be able to move away from your village and into the city.”

  “I sometimes think that was a mistake. My wife tells me it was. She preferred the village. She would still like to go back there. And perhaps we will one day.”

  “It will not be the same. Especially if Izkat Bey builds on your land.”

  Sidky shrugged. “I am getting old now,” he said. “My days of working are past. We have
not been blessed with sons, so there is no one to work the land after I am gone. It would have to be sold anyway. My daughters’ husbands could work the land but they are not that sort.” Sidky stared sadly at his cap. “I have three daughters,” he said to Owen. “Three!”

  “Three!” said Owen in commiseration. “And no sons?”

  “No sons.”

  “For a man such as you,” said Owen, “the dowries expected would have been considerable.”

  “They were,” Sidky agreed fervently. “And still they expect more! It is my daughters now. ‘Our children will need providing for,’ they say. ‘Sell the land! Then after you have gone you will know that your grandchildren and their children and their children’s children will be able to hold up their heads with honor.’ ”

  “Honor is not just how much money you have.”

  “Try telling them that!” The wrinkled face broke into a smile.

  “How many grandchildren have you?” asked Owen, laughing.

  “None so far.”

  Nikos disapproved of this levity.

  “Have you any idea what is to be built?” he asked.

  Sidky shook his head.

  “No,” he said.

  “Izkat Bey already has a fine house. Surely he does not need another?”

  “A man like Izkat Bey needs a grand house in the city. This is too far out.”

  “Then what does he intend?”

  “In this he speaks for others.”

  “What do they intend? To build and sell?”

  “No. I asked him that. They wish to build and keep.”

  “And you have no idea what they wish to build and keep?”

  “I know only that it is good that it is by the river.”

  “Why is that?” asked Owen. “I could understand if they were going to keep and farm. But to keep and build!”

  Sidky hesitated.

  “They spoke of coming and going by water. They said it would be more secret that way.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Nor I,” said Sidky, “but I do understand the money they have offered.”

  When Sidky had left, Nikos came back into the room.

  “I do not understand,” he said. “Are they going to build a brothel? Someone like Izkat Bey? With the Khedive behind him?”

  “The Khedive is not interested in brothels,” said Owen, as the glimmerings of an idea came to him.

  It was still early in the morning and the stonework of the terrace was deliciously cool to touch. In another twenty minutes or so the sun would come creeping over it and then the stone would warm very quickly until by midday it would give your hand quite a burn if you touched it. Just now, though, the sun was on the other side of the Street of the Camel, warming up the inferior donkey-boys opposite.

  There was, of course, no one on the terrace but from inside the hotel came wafts of coffee as breakfast was served to the early risers. There were few street-vendors in evidence yet- the snake charmer had arrived but had not yet let the snake out of its basket-and the arabeah-drivers were still asleep in their cabs, but the donkey-boys, the superior ones on this side of the street, were already stirring.

  A heavily laden forage camel came along the street and stopped beside them. Two of the donkey-boys helped the driver to release its load and then, as the berseem fell to the ground, took forks and spread it for the donkeys.

  One of them looked up at Owen standing on top of the steps.

  “I wouldn’t stand there if I were you,” he said. “You might disappear!”

  The donkey-boys fell about laughing.

  Lucy Colthorpe Hartley came out of the front door of the hotel.

  “Hello,” she said. “You do start early!”

  “So do you, Miss Colthorpe Hartley.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping too well,” she said.

  “How is your mother?”

  Lucy made a grimace. “She’s rather shattered, poor dear. The doctor gave her some pills last night to help her to sleep but they didn’t work, not for a long time. She was tossing and turning half the night. I thought she’d never get to sleep. I knew there wasn’t much point in me trying to go to sleep so I did get up.”

  The smell of fried onions drifted up to them. It didn’t come from the hotel but from further along the terrace where, squatted in a circle down in the street, the donkey-boys were having their breakfast.

  Lucy turned and faced him.

  “Are you getting anywhere?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered honestly.

  She sighed.

  “I’m not blaming you,” she said. “I know it’s hard. Still it’s puzzling. Is there anything in this Senussi business?”

  “There may be.”

  “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the thought of-well, that they may not be amenable to reason.”

  “I don’t think you need assume that.”

  “If they were terribly fanatical-”

  “They may not be Senussi. And even if they were, that doesn’t mean they’re not amenable to reason.”

  “It’s the way they’ve played with poor Monsieur Moulin, first agreeing, then not agreeing.”

  “There could be a lot of reasons for that.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked along the terrace. The vendors were beginning to appear. Some of them, noticing her interest, showed their goods half-heartedly in her direction.

  “I come out here every morning,” she said, “while I’m waiting for Mummy to come down to breakfast. Of course Daddy gets down about an hour later. I like to come out here, though, while it’s still fresh and cool. It’s one of the nicest times of the day in Egypt. That and the evening. It doesn’t feel the same now, though. I keep telling myself that when Daddy gets back it will be the same again, but I don’t think it will. I don’t think it ever will.”

  She turned to go back into the hotel. Owen went in with her, looking for Mahmoud. He was anxious to make things up. He didn’t feel himself to blame, not in the least, but he knew from experience that he would have to make the first move. It was harder for Mahmoud to unbend, perhaps because his Arab pride was involved, than it was for Owen. He knew he would only have to make a conciliatory sign and Mahmoud would come down at once from his high horse.

  Mahmoud, however, was nowhere to be found. It was unlike him. Usually he arrived at the job early and stayed late. Perhaps he was working somewhere else.

  Owen needed to talk to him anyway. He had become convinced that a possible key at least to Moulin’s disappearance and perhaps to Colthorpe Hartley’s, too, lay in the unidentified dragoman. He had felt, especially in the conversation with the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller, that he was on the verge of getting somewhere. There was already a difference between their account of what happened on the terrace and that of the filthy-postcard-seller, and he felt that given a little more time he might be able to expose it and drive the postcard-seller into a corner. However, he didn’t want to go in too hard, as that would confuse the strawberry-seller and flower-seller and scare the filthy-postcard-seller; but nor did he want to go in too soft as, judging by the previous conversation, it would be only too easy to get lost in the labyrinthine confusion and vagueness of the vendors’ responses. What he needed was some guidance from Mahmoud and Mahmoud was nowhere to be found.

  He went back to his office and tried ringing Mahmoud in his. Mahmoud was “out.” There was something funny about the reply. Owen hoped that didn’t mean the Parquet was getting uptight about the situation.

  On the whole the Parquet got on fairly well with the British Administration, but it was more independent than the other Departments and Ministries. Since the law was essentially French and based on the Napoleonic Code there was less opportunity for the British Adviser to exercise influence and the Minister in charge, an Egyptian, had correspondingly more autonomy.

  The Minister of Justice was, therefore, a politically
sensitive appointment. The Khedive used it to test out the limits to which the British intended to use their power and the more extreme British saw it as an organizational anomaly which needed removing. Something like the kidnapping could easily bring things to a head.

  The kidnappings could easily bring a lot of things to a head. The Army, for instance, was eager to challenge the authority of the civil administration. A Senussi threat, with its suggestion of military danger, could provide the pretext for the exchange of a military for a civil administration. Owen didn’t think there was a Senussi threat, not on that scale, anyway, but that’s not how it would be seen either among the British community in Egypt or in Whitehall. The civil administration would have to show that it was on top of things.

  He, the Mamur Zapt, would have to show that he was on top of things. And he bloody wasn’t. He was far from being on top of things. In fact, he couldn’t even think how to start so far as these damned kidnappings were concerned. What was it Mahmoud had said? That usually there was some loose thread. You could pull it and out would come all sorts of other things which you could follow up. In the end one of them would lead to a solution.

  But where were the loose ends here? That bloody dragoman.

  Where the hell was Mahmoud? He needed to talk to him. The telephone rang.

  “What are you doing?” asked Paul. “Stewing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too. We had the Sirdar here the whole of yesterday morning. And then the Khedive rang saying he wanted to give the Old Man an audience that evening! Evening! The Khedive doesn’t normally give audiences in the evening. He doesn’t do anything in the evening, very sensibly, and nor do we. The Old Man was very cut up about it.

  Still, he thought he’d better go. It was the same thing. SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.”

  “Look-”

  “I know, I know,” said Paul soothingly. “It’s a hot day and you’ve been working bloody hard and the fact that you haven’t got anywhere isn’t your fault, etc., etc. Anyway, I wasn’t talking about that. Well, not directly. The point is, the Army must be fobbed off. Otherwise we’ll all be kicked out and that wouldn’t do at all. So-you’re not going to like this, but it had to be done, and I’m just ringing up to tell you it’s being done-we have to offer up a sacrifice.”