The Face in the Cemetery

by Michael Pearce

  She wasn’t there now. However, her things were still scattered about the flat so he decided that it wasn’t permanent. He poured himself a whisky soda, took a shower and then went out on to the balcony, from where he could see right across the Midan to the Nile on the other side. He was watching the amazing sunset when Zeinab arrived.

  She took off her veil and kissed him. Then she helped herself to a drink and came out on to the balcony.

  ‘Something terrible’s happened,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘They’ve taken Alphonse.’

  ‘Alphonse?’ He knew the names of most of Zeinab’s friends but couldn’t remember an Alphonse. He didn’t sound like an Egyptian. Perhaps he was a new artist friend?

  ‘I’d made my appointment as usual, but when I arrived he wasn’t there. Gerard said they had come and taken him that morning. I blame you.’

  ‘Me?’ said Owen, astonished.

  ‘You’re arresting them, aren’t you?’

  ‘Is he German?’

  ‘No, he’s a perfectly normal Levantine. However, he became a German because someone was chasing him for a debt. Or was it a woman who wanted to marry him? Breach of promise—yes, I think it was breach of promise. But he’s not really a German at all and I don’t think you should have arrested him.’

  ‘He’s down on a list, I expect.’

  ‘Can’t you take him off it?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Nikos could do it. Nikos is good with lists.’

  ‘Look, it’s not any old list, it’s a list for a purpose, and its purpose is the identification of German nationals so that they can be interned.’

  ‘But he’s not a German, as I keep telling you. He just became a German, and he certainly wouldn’t have done that if he’d known you were going to arrest him. I told him at the time that it wasn’t a good idea. He ought to have become a Panamanian or something, and then no one would really know what he was.’

  ‘Panamanian wouldn’t do. Panama doesn’t have consular privileges.’

  Under international treaties imposed on Egypt many foreigners had so-called consular rights. Among them was the right to be tried not by an Egyptian court but by a court set up by the consul concerned, usually in another country and at a time far distant; which made possession of foreign nationality in some cases highly attractive.

  ‘If you can get him out,’ said Zeinab persuasively, ‘I’ll see he becomes something else.’

  ***

  Nationality was a loose concept in Egypt. It could be acquired simply by recourse to a local consul, plus, of course, the payment of an appropriate sum; and brothel-keepers and the owners of gambling dens tended to change nationality with astonishing frequency.

  Egyptians were cavalier about nationality partly because there was so much of it about. Egypt was one of the most cosmopolitan countries in the world. One eighth of the population of Cairo was foreign born and the proportion was even higher in Alexandria. Greeks, Italians, French, Albanians, Montenegrins and Levantines of all sorts jostled shoulders in the narrow Cairo streets. The Khedive himself was Turkish. And then there were the British, of course.

  The British kept themselves very much to themselves. They worked alongside the Egyptians, but outside the office they seldom met. A few people—Owen, himself, for instance—had Egyptian friends, and the people at the Consulate, Paul especially, mixed socially with upper-rank Egyptians. But to a very considerable extent the two nationalities kept apart.

  If this was true of the men, and true, too, of the women for that matter, it was especially true of relationships between men and women.

  An Englishman could be in the country for years and not meet an Egyptian woman. He would rarely meet an Italian, Greek or Levantine woman either, since all round the Mediterranean men kept a peculiarly jealous eye on their womenfolk; but in the case of Egyptian women it was even worse. They were perhaps no longer confined to the harem as in the past (only the rich could afford harems these days), but instead were relegated to some dark back room, from which they only emerged heavily veiled and dressed in a long, dark, shapeless gown that revealed nothing of the woman underneath.

  They were never seen in public. If they went out, say, to do the shopping, they would be accompanied by a servant who would zealously defend them against any exchange with a man. If, rarely, they went to some public place such as a theatre, they would sit on separate, screened benches. If their husband received guests at home they would stay out of sight.

  Young men of any kind, not just British, had a hard time of it and possibly would not have survived had it not been for the obliging ladies in the streets off the Ezbekiya Gardens.

  In the case of the British, extra help came annually in the form of ‘the fishing fleet’, as it was known, the arrival of dozens of young women from England for the start of the Cairo season. One effect of this, though, was to reinforce the existing social division between the British and the Egyptians, which was almost complete; and Owen never ceased to give thanks that very early in his time in Egypt he had had the good fortune to meet Zeinab.

  It had come about through a case involving her father, Nuri. Nuri was a Pasha and, like most of the old Egyptian ruling class, French-speaking and heavily Francophile in culture. Partly in reflection of this, and partly, it must be admitted, from his own idiosyncrasy, he had allowed his daughter a degree of latitude quite unusual in Egyptian circles. He saw no objection to his daughter meeting Owen; and, once met, things had developed from there.

  Zeinab had established her independence to such an extent that quite early on she had acquired a flat of her own, where she lived, she assured her father, very much à la française. Nuri, impressed, had acquiesced; not, perhaps, quite comprehending that even in Paris at this time for young women to live on their own was not entirely comme il faut. In this unusual setting it had been possible for the relationship between Zeinab and Owen to develop; and over time it had developed very strongly.

  Lately, however, they had begun to notice just how much time. They were both now over thirty and were becoming aware that many of their friends, even those as young as themselves, were getting married. They wondered whether they should do so too.

  Here, though, they came up against that division between Egyptian and British, a division that was not just social but brought with it all the extra baggage that went with nationality: race, religion, customs, expectations and assumptions. And this was especially true when one of the nations concerned was an occupied country and the other the country that was occupying it.

  It was not actually forbidden for a member of the Administration to marry an Egyptian, but there was a kind of invisible wash of discouragement. It manifested itself in all kinds of ways: questions about whether it would be possible for a person holding a post like Owen’s to be seen to be impartial if he were married to an Egyptian (no one else in Egypt thought the British were impartial, anyway); sudden shyings away in the Club; the frown of the Great (which was one of the things Owen had against Kitchener).

  On Zeinab’s side, too, there were all kinds of cuttings-off: political separation from her artist friends, many of whom would see her as having gone over to the enemy; social repudiation by many of the circles in which Nuri moved and which she had grown up in; and, perhaps above all, an alienation from Egypt itself and a mass of Egyptians actually unknown to her but from whom she was reluctant to distance herself.

  And yet, in the end, it was the walls inside themselves, not the obstacles outside, that were the problem. Or so they were coming, tentatively, to think. But those, argued Owen, were things they could do something about. They could try to work themselves through them. And somehow, by what chain of reasoning they were not entirely clear, this had led to their decision to move into a new apartment together.

  Zeinab, Owen knew, remained far from convinced about it; but then she had a lot m
ore to lose. Owen himself, aware of the extent to which she felt herself vulnerable and exposed, was beginning to think they ought not to leave things like that for too long. Whatever their doubts about themselves, they ought to resolve things one way or the other.

  And, besides, he was coming to think, might not this be their chance? Surely, with Kitchener out of the way and everyone’s minds on the war, a private exercise of discretion—well, yes, you could call it that—might go unremarked; or if not quite unremarked, at least without having the same degree of significance attached to it as in more normal times.

  ***

  Still unhappy about the issue of service rifles to ghaffirs, he rang up the Ministry and asked if he could see a copy of the inspector’s report.

  ‘By all means,’ said the Egyptian civil servant he spoke to. ‘It’s rather a good one, actually.’

  And when it came round, Owen could see why people were impressed. It was immensely thorough. The inspector had visited lots of districts—Owen recognized the references to Minya—and gone into great detail. Certainly, from what he said about Minya, he appeared to have a good grasp of the nature of the ghaffir’s work and the sorts of local problems that he faced. The analysis was respectable, the arguments well set out, and the conclusions appeared to follow from the arguments. The only thing was that they were daft.

  He rang up the Ministry again and got the same obliging Egyptian as before.

  ‘About the report,’ he said. ‘Do you think I could have a word with your inspector?’

  ‘Fricker Effendi? Certainly.’

  He hesitated, however.

  ‘Is there some problem? My interest is of a departmental nature. I have already spoken to McKitterick Effendi about it.’

  ‘No, no…It’s just that, well, Fricker Effendi is no longer available.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ The official hesitated again. ‘As a matter of fact, I understand that you are holding him.’

  ‘I am holding him?’

  ‘Yes. He has been taken into internment.’

  Chapter Three

  A little to Owen’s surprise, for he had not expected it so soon—indeed, he had not really expected it at all—he found next day on his desk the copy he had asked for of the mamur’s report on the German woman’s death. When he looked at it, however, he was less surprised. It was perfunctory in the extreme, merely reporting the death of a foreign national, female, and the discovery of her body in one of the graves of a local excavation.

  The report had been sent, as was customary, to the Parquet, which was responsible, in Egypt, for investigating all deaths in suspicious circumstances, and a Parquet official had scrawled ‘Noted’ on the copy and initialled it before sending it on to Owen.

  Owen wrote back asking to be kept informed of further action in the case.

  He was out of the office for the next two days—taking more wretched people into internment—and when he returned he found a further communication from the Parquet. All it consisted of, however, was his own letter returned to him with, at the bottom of the page, in the same negligent handwriting as that on the mamur’s report, the words ‘Referred to the Department of Antiquities’.

  Owen picked up the phone.

  ‘Why the Department of Antiquities?’ he demanded.

  There was a little pause.

  ‘Wasn’t it something to do with an archaeological site?’ said the voice on the other end indifferently.

  ‘It was to do with a body. Found on one.’

  ‘The Department of Antiquities handles anything to do with desecration of sites—’

  ‘And the Parquet handles anything to do with bodies.’

  ‘Not old ones, not archaeological ones.’

  ‘This is a new one. Not archaeological.’

  ‘Are you sure? It was found—’

  ‘If you look at the report you will see that the mamur refers to the body of a German national. Were there German nationals in Egypt in Pharaoh’s time?’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Perhaps it had better be looked into,’ said the man unwillingly.

  ‘Perhaps it had. And the Consulate notified.’

  ‘The German Consulate has been closed,’ said the man triumphantly.

  ‘But another Consulate will have taken on the job of looking after the interests of German nationals remaining in the country.’

  There was an audible sigh.

  ‘Please continue to keep me informed,’ said Owen.

  ***

  In the shops at least there were signs that there was a war on. The prices of all imported goods rose sharply. The rise in the price of petrol didn’t affect many people since there were still very few cars in Egypt and only the rich had them. But the rise in the price of paraffin was a different matter. The poor used paraffin for both heating and cooking (wood had been scarce in Egypt for years) and were hard hit.

  The rise in the prices of imported goods Owen could understand, but those weren’t the only prices that rose. The cost of flour and sugar went up too and they were things that were produced locally. He had only just seen sugar cane growing in huge quantities down by Minya. He couldn’t understand it and nor could the ordinary Egyptian. The newspapers were full of complaints and charges of profiteering.

  They were talking about this one evening in the Officers’ Mess at the Abbassiya Barracks. The regiment was leaving for Europe the following day and Owen had been invited for a farewell drink.

  ‘It’ll mean problems for you,’ said his friend, John, one of the Sirdar’s ADCs and someone who had been a useful contact at Army Headquarters.

  ‘Why him?’ asked one of the other officers.

  ‘Because the man in the street will become restive, and he’s the one who will have to keep order when we’ve gone.’

  ‘Thank you for pointing that out,’ said Owen. ‘However, in one way things should become easier: there’ll be fewer drunken soldiers around.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said someone, laughing, ‘but the Australians will be here instead. Or so the rumour goes. You might do better to come with us.’

  There was a general laugh.

  ‘Where do you stand, actually, Gareth?’ asked John curiously. ‘You’re on secondment, aren’t you?’

  Owen had served with the British Army in India before coming to Egypt.

  ‘It started as secondment,’ said Owen, ‘but then I applied for a transfer. And after that it became permanent.’

  ‘So, strictly speaking, you’re a civilian now?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Yes, but with your experience—’ said John.

  ‘You were up on the North West Frontier, weren’t you?’ asked one of the other officers.

  ‘For a while, yes.’

  ‘Just the sort of man we need.’

  The thought had occurred to Owen, too.

  ***

  The Parquet official had obviously taken heed of Owen’s observation—perhaps it was the mention of the Consulate that had done it—for in the mail the next morning was a copy of the letter he had sent to the mamur at Minya. It asked him to supply further details of the ‘incident’ in the cat cemetery. In particular, it asked for details of any damage to the site—a thrust at Owen, this?—but also the cause of death.

  ***

  McPhee’s mind, too, seemed to have been on the cat cemetery that morning—possibly because he and Owen were on their way to intern some other unfortunates—for, as they were passing the House of the Kadi, just after noon, he glanced at his watch and said:

  ‘Shall we go in? And have a look at the cats?’

  ‘Cats?’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes. They bring the offal just about now.’

  They went through an ancient ornamental gateway into a beautiful old enclosed courtyard. Sure enough, a serv
ant was just emerging from the Chief Justice’s house carrying a large bowl. He threw the contents on the ground and at once dozens of cats emerged from all corners of the courtyard and began to tuck in.

  ‘It used to be a garden,’ said McPhee. ‘The Sultan Baybars set it aside specifically for the use of cats. Over the centuries the garden was built on, but the custom of feeding the cats has survived. Only now, it’s the Kadi that does it.’

  ‘The Kadi feeds the cats?’

  ‘That’s right. I think the Prophet was fond of cats, or perhaps he said he was, once.’

  They turned back and through the gateway.

  ‘I know this is Muslim,’ said McPhee, ‘but am I fanciful, do you think, to see a continuity from that cemetery in Minya? That was Pharaonic, of course, but often later practice has its roots in some earlier custom, and it would not be surprising. What do you think?’

  Owen had absolutely no opinion on this at all and they continued on their way up the Darb el Asfar.

  They had almost reached the Bab-el-Foutouh when McPhee said:

  ‘You know, Owen, about that business at Minya: there are a lot of things that trouble me. That poor woman, of course, and how she landed up there. Horrible! Just think of how her husband must feel! And then those brigands. You really would have thought that the local police would have eliminated them by now. And then those shots! Surely, arming the local ghaffirs is not a sensible way of dealing with such problems. I really do feel you should speak to someone.’

  ‘I have.’

  He told McPhee about his conversation with McKitterick.

  McPhee listened intently.

  ‘Have I understood you correctly, Owen? The ghaffirs are being issued with new service rifles, brought together and trained to operate as some kind of independent force?’

  ‘An independent army, I called it.’

  ‘But under whose command?’

  ‘The Ministry’s, apparently.’

  ‘Owen, I find this rather disquieting. Does the Sirdar know? What does he, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Egypt, think of another army operating independently in the country?’