The Snake Catcher's Daughter

by Michael Pearce

  If, that is, he was responsible to anybody, which Consul-General, Khedive, Khedive’s Ministers, Opposition Members, Nationalists, British Government, Commander-in-Chief (British) of the army (Egyptian) and Garvin sometimes felt inclined to doubt.

  All crime other than political was the responsibility not of the police, under the French-style system of law which operated in Egypt, but of the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.

  “You’re not suggesting the Parquet handle this?” said Garvin, aghast. “Investigating a British officer? A member of the Administration? Oh dear, no!” He shook his head. “I don’t think we could have that. It would set an undesirable precedent. The C-G wouldn’t like it. The people at home wouldn’t like it. Goodness me, no. They wouldn’t like it at all.”

  “We are not investigating McPhee, surely!” Owen protested.

  “Well, perhaps not directly,” Garvin admitted. “It’s more the circumstances.”

  “I don’t call that political.”

  Garvin raised his eyebrows.

  “Setting up a member of the British Administration? Not political? If that’s not political,” said Garvin, “what is?”

  ***

  “No, really, Owen, he’s determined to get rid of me!” said McPhee heatedly. “He’s been out to get me ever since they transferred him from Alexandria. I was in charge when he arrived, just temporarily, of course, and he didn’t like the way I was doing things.”

  “Well—”

  McPhee held up his hand.

  “I know what you’re going to say. Perhaps we weren’t the most efficient of outfits. But is that so bad, Owen, is it really so bad? People knew where they were. They knew what to expect. A way that is traditional, Owen, is a way that is invested with a lot of human experience. You discard it at your peril.”

  “True. On the other hand—”

  “I know what you are going to say. Not all tradition is good. The courbash, for instance.”

  “Well, yes.”

  The courbash was the traditional Egyptian whip. One of the first acts of the British Administration had been to abolish flogging.

  “Well, of course, I’m not against abolishing the use of the courbash. It was a humane measure carried out for humane motives. But not all reform is like that. Sometimes it’s carried out for piffling, mean little reasons. To improve efficiency, for instance. I ask you, where would we be if everything we did was subjected to that criterion?”

  Not here, thought Owen. Neither you nor, probably, I.

  “It’s so meanspirited. He looks around at the richness of life and then talks about efficiency!”

  “He’s got to run a police force, after all.”

  “But why doesn’t he run it in a way people want?”

  “What do they want?”

  “Humanity,” said McPhee, “not efficiency.”

  “I dare say. Look, I don’t think he’s particularly out to get you. In fact, it’s the other way round. He thinks somebody is trying to set you up and he wants to stop them.”

  “Who on earth would want to set me up? Garvin apart, that is.”

  “You’re a senior figure in the police. Lots of people. People you’ve arrested.”

  “They don’t blame me. The common criminal is a decent chap.”

  Owen sighed.

  “In Cairo, at any rate,” said McPhee defensively. “Anyway, he doesn’t blame me, he blames fate.”

  “You don’t think he might personalize fate a little?”

  “No one’s out to set me up,” said McPhee firmly. “It’s just another of Garvin’s fantasies.”

  “Some things do need explaining, though. How you finished up in the snake pit, for instance.”

  “I don’t think that was anything to do with the witch,” said McPhee.

  “Witch?”

  Oh dear, thought Owen.

  ***

  “Osman told me,” said McPhee.

  “That there was going to be a Zzarr?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he invited you to it?”

  “No, no. Quite the reverse. He didn’t want me to come. In fact, he was most unwilling to talk about it.”

  “But he did?”

  “I prised it out of him. He had come, you see, to ask me for time off. To prepare for a ceremony, he said. Well, naturally, I asked what sort of ceremony. To do with a female cousin, he said. A circumcision, I asked? At first he said yes, but then it transpired the girl was twenty so I knew he couldn’t be telling the truth. In the end I got him to confess. It was a Zzarr. His sister was suffering from a mild case of possession. At least, that’s what they thought. A Zzarr, I said! My goodness me!” He looked at Owen. “They’re immensely rare, you know. I’ve heard of them before and, indeed, once I nearly came upon one. So when I heard about this one I was tremendously excited and demanded that he tell me where it was being held.”

  I’ll have a word with Osman, Owen said to himself.

  “It was in one of those houses on the edge of the Gamaliya, a big old house with both an outer courtyard and an inner one.”

  “Could you show it me?”

  “Well, I suppose I could. But I’d rather not. They placed me on my honour, you see—”

  “They also drugged you.”

  “Well…I’m not sure they did. Someone did, certainly. But not them. I was there on a basis of trust. Which was mutual.”

  “You made a bargain with them?”

  McPhee hesitated.

  “Well, not initially.” He looked uncomfortable. “There was, I’m afraid, an element of deception. On my part. I told them, you see, that it was a police raid. I pretended to have men with me. I demanded to see what was happening. They said it was out of the question. Very well then, I said, I will have to call my men. There was a bit of humming and hawing but eventually they said I could take a look through a window. I did and, my goodness me, Owen, it was fascinating! A ring of women, robes, candles, dancing—”

  “And then?” Owen prompted.

  “Then all the candles went out. There was a great hubbub and lots of people came jostling me and told me I had to leave. And then the priestess came out—”

  “Priestess?”

  “Aalima. The witch. Well, I call her a priestess because, really, it was all most religious. It does have a religious basis, you know, Owen, there were religious sheikhs there, not in the Zzarr itself, of course, but in the courtyard outside—”

  “The Aalima?” prompted Owen.

  “A most striking lady, Owen, most striking. Well, at first she absolutely refused. Said it was completely out of the question. And then I said that in that case I would have to arrest them.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Causing a disturbance. The sheikhs didn’t like that, I can tell you.”

  “The sheikhs? You threatened to arrest the sheikhs?”

  Oh Christ, thought Owen.

  “It was a bluff. And then I cunningly said that all I wanted to do was make sure that nothing untoward was happening, so I would be quite satisfied if they just brought me a chair and let me watch for a bit and satisfy myself on that score. In the end they agreed, provided I just listened—the music was marvellous, Owen, cymbals, you know, dubertas, timbrels. I agreed, of course, but then—”

  He looked shamefaced.

  “I peeped.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I did. And, you know, Owen, it was most interesting, for what I saw—”

  “How did you come to get drugged?”

  “They brought me drink. They brought everyone in the courtyard drink. It was part of it, you see—”

  “Who brought you drink?”

  “A most charming girl. Dressed in white virginal robes—”

 
“Yes, yes. Was she part of the, well, witch’s entourage?”

  “Yes. She came out with the bowl and took it round.”

  “She gave everyone a drink?”

  “Yes. Which is why, Owen,” McPhee said with emphasis, “the drug must have been administered on a different occasion.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, I can’t actually think—” McPhee admitted.

  “Unless, of course, she put something special in just before she got to you.”

  “Oh, no, Owen. Really! A girl of integrity.”

  Owen was beginning to see an argument for Gavin’s position.

  “And then you fell asleep?” he said.

  “Yes. You know, Owen—”

  “Yes?”

  “I was very tired that night. You don’t think I could have just fallen asleep in the ordinary way and that afterwards someone administered—?”

  “While you were asleep? That strength? No,” said Owen.

  “You see, I feel sure the lady was genuine.”

  “Well,” said Owen soothingly, “perhaps, in her way, she was.”

  McPhee looked pleased.

  “You think so? I must say, I’ve had doubts myself. Could it be a genuine survival, I’ve asked myself? Or—”

  “I shall want to know about the people in the courtyard,” Owen said.

  “Hangers on,” McPhee said, “excluded from the real mysteries.”

  “All men?”

  “Yes. They’re fascinated, too, of course. Can’t keep away. But frightened! The Aalima is a pretty compelling figure.”

  “Could you identify any of them?”

  “I might be able to recognize them. They’ll be local, of course.”

  “If you could just give me a start…”

  McPhee nodded.

  “I’ll do my best. But, Owen,” he said sternly, “there must be no messing about with the ladies. The Zzarr is a remarkable institution. It is, I am sure, pre-Islamic. I wouldn’t be surprised if it owed something to the Greek mysteries. I thought I caught some Greek words. Some Roman influence, too, perhaps. After all—”

  “Yes?”

  “Bacchantium instar mulieres vidimus.”

  “Quite,” said Owen.

  ***

  “I protest,” said Sheikh Musa.

  “I quite agree,” said Owen heartily, “and I join myself in your protest.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the Sheikh, “you’re the man I’m protesting to.”

  “If the subject of your protest is what I think it is,” said Owen, “the deplorable assault on the Bimbashi a couple of nights ago, then we are on common ground.”

  “It’s not the assault I’m bothered about,” said the Sheikh. “It’s his presence there in the first place.

  “At the Zzarr?”

  The Sheikh winced.

  “We don’t like to use that word. The ceremony, you know, is not entirely regular. It’s not something that’s, well, officially recognized. We know it goes on, of course. There are people who, not to put too fine a point on it, are drawn to such things. I dare say you know the kind of people I mean?”

  Owen, thinking of McPhee, said he did.

  “I wouldn’t want to encourage them by letting them think they have my approval. So I would prefer, if you don’t mind, not to use the word. To do so would be to admit that I know about such things.”

  “Well, yes, but…then why are you here?”

  “I have come to lodge a formal protest at Bimbashi McPhee’s presence.”

  “At what?”

  “An unspecified event in the Gamaliya district.”

  “You can’t protest at his presence if you’re unable to say what he was present at!”

  “From my point of view,” said the Sheikh, “the protest is the important thing, not the event.”

  “I see.”

  “There’s a lot of feeling in the Gamaliya about the incident.”

  “I see.”

  “Which might boil over.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  The Sheikh looked surprised.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just wanted to lodge a protest, that was all.”

  Owen understood. The Sheikh was anxious to guard his back in terms of relations with his flock.

  He thought for a moment.

  “I don’t know that I can accept a formal protest,” he said. “If there wasn’t an event, there can’t have been a presence at it.”

  “Oh!”

  “I don’t think I could offer an apology. Formal, that is. However, I might be willing to issue a general statement deploring recent events—unspecified, of course,—in the Gamaliya. Would that help?”

  “From my point of view, yes.”

  “And from my point of view? Would that be enough to head off trouble?”

  “I doubt it,” said Sheikh Musa.

  Owen felt like kicking McPhee’s backside.

  ***

  Owen still had hopes it would all quietly fade away. The heat would surely dissuade potential troublemakers from causing a riot and by the time the hot spell was over, with luck they would have forgotten about it. As for Garvin and McPhee, Garvin would soon be departing on leave. He usually liked to return to his old haunts at Alexandria and go duck shooting. With luck, he would return in a less savage frame of mind. Perhaps McPhee, too, could be induced to take a break: go and look at some of the monasteries in Sinai, for example. In heat like this people tended to get things out of perspective.

  He had better watch that this didn’t happen in his own case. Perhaps he should take a holiday, too? The trouble was that Zeinab would insist on going to Paris. She regarded everywhere else as boringly provincial. The Government, on the other hand, insisted that its employees take their leave locally. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be best not to take a holiday. Besides, if Garvin and McPhee were away, someone had to look after the shop.

  However, he must certainly guard against getting things out of perspective. He ought to take it easy for a bit. Working on this theory, he stepped out of the office midmorning and went to his favourite café, taking the next day’s newspapers or, at least, the Arabic, French and English ones with him. He could always pretend that it was work. One of the Mamur Zapt’s duties was control of the press, a necessary function (in the view of the British) in a city of more than a dozen religions, a score of nationalities, a hundred different ethnic flavours and over a thousand sects, half of which at any given time were at the throats of the other half. To this end, he received advance copies of all publications.

  Control, though, was another matter. Debate in the Arab world tended to be conducted at voice top anyway, and in the press the normal temperature was feverish. Cairo had taken to newspapers late but with gusto and there were hundreds of them. Each faction had at least two newspapers (two, because any group in Cairo could be guaranteed to split at least two ways) and they vied with each other in the extremity of their views and the vehemence with which they expressed them. Even the weather reports were fiercely disputed.

  How to distinguish the normal incandescent from the potentially explosive? Owen usually did not try. After a year or two’s experience he developed a sixth sense which alerted him to passages likely to bring rival communities to blows. The rest he left well alone, on the assumption that readers were more interested in the violence of rhetoric than in the violence of action: an approach, however, which his superiors did not always understand.

  The real value of the newspapers (to Owen) was that beneath the hyperbole it was sometimes possible to detect new concerns and growth of feeling. They were sometimes, despite everything, a useful source of intelligence. Another, of course, was the gossip of Cairo’s café culture. What better, then, than to combine the two? Where better for the Mamur Za
pt, the Head of Political Intelligence, to sit than in a well-populated Arab café with all his intelligence material to hand? So, at least, argued Owen; and turned to the sports pages.

  He became aware of someone trying covertly to attract his attention. It was a man at an adjoining table. His face seemed familiar, although it took a little while for Owen to place him. Not one of his agents but a man who sometimes gave his agents useful information. A Greek, with the dark suit and pot-like red tarboosh of the Effendi, or office worker.

  “Have you heard about Philipides?” he said.

  “Philipides?”

  “He’s coming out tomorrow.” Misunderstanding Owen’s puzzlement, he said: “It may not be in the Arab papers. It’s in the Greek ones.”

  “What’s special about Philipides?” asked Owen.

  The man smiled, obviously thinking Owen was playing with him.

  “The Mamur Zapt, of all people, should know that,” he said.

  He put some milliemes out for the waiter.

  “Garvin ought to be interested,” he said. “Or so they say.”

  He went off through the tables. Owen sipped his coffee and searched his memory. The name meant nothing to him.

  On the other side of the street he saw someone he knew and waved to him. The man waved back and came across. His name was Georgiades. Another Greek, but this time definitely not an Effendi. No tarboosh, an open-necked shirt, casual, crumpled cotton trousers held up by a belt over which his stomach bulged uncomfortably. He pointed proudly to it.

  “See that?” he said. “Another notch! Rosa’s cutting down on the food. It’s been a struggle for her. All Greek women are taught to fatten their husbands up but she’s decided she’s had enough. It’s fattening the goose for killing, she says. She and her grandmother are at loggerheads again over it.”

  He sat down at Owen’s table and mopped his brow. There were dark patches of sweat beneath his armpits, on his chest, on his back and even on the thighs of his trousers.

  “Does the name Philipides mean anything to you?” said Owen.

  The Greek thought for a bit, then nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Owen, “but someone’s just told me the Mamur Zapt, above all, ought to know. Above all. That’s why I’m wondering.”