The Snake Catcher's Daughter

by Michael Pearce

  It was clear that the tip-off had not come from Sheikh Musa. Who had it come from, then? Owen sat back and thought. Was there something after all in Garvin’s supposition that someone was trying to set up McPhee?

  This looked very like an orchestrated campaign. He thought about it a little more and then decided to test if it was by inserting a mild spoke in their wheel. He would excise all press reference to the incident for a week or two. It wouldn’t stop publication entirely since there was a large and thriving underground press in Cairo, but it would force someone’s hand if they were trying to mount a campaign. They would have to take the greater risk of illicit publication, and he could have the printers watched in the hope of picking up anyone new who came into the market.

  It seemed to work, for after about a week the references in the press died down. He waited for the approaches to the underground printers. Then one morning he came in to the Bab-el-Khalk to find Nikos waiting for him.

  “There’s been an attack on a Coptic shop in the Gamaliya,” he said.

  Owen hardly needed to ask where it was.

  “Near the Place of Tombs? Right, I’ll go there.”

  The Copts, the original inhabitants of the city—they had been there long before the Muslims arrived—were Christians, and were usually the first targets of any religious unrest.

  He found the shop easily enough. There was a little knot of people standing in front of it. There was no broken glass. Shops in the traditional quarters, like the houses, did not have glass windows. They were open to the street. Instead, though, there were bits of wood lying everywhere. At night, the shopkeepers drew wooden shutters across their shops and these had obviously been broken open.

  He couldn’t at first make out what kind of shop it was. All he could see, scattered about on the ground, were little gilt cylinders. Puzzled, he picked one up. It had three thin metal rings attached to it.

  “It’s for women to put on,” said the shopkeeper. “It keeps the veil off the face.”

  Seeing that Owen still did not understand—he knew little about technology and even less about female technology—he demonstrated by fitting it on himself. The cylinder went across the nose and the face veil was suspended from it. The rings held the cloth away from the nostrils and the mouth to allow passage of air.

  Owen shrugged.

  “At least with this sort of stuff you don’t get much broken,” he said.

  “It’s not the damage,” said the shopkeeper. “It’s the—I’ll never feel the same again. We’ve lived here for twenty years. We thought we were liked by our neighbours. We thought we liked them. Now something like this happens!”

  “It’s not the neighbours, Guptos,” said one of the bystanders quietly.

  “It’s someone in the Gamaliya,” said the Copt bitterly. “Don’t tell me they came right across the city just to break up my shop!”

  Owen went inside with him. At the back of the shop were some stairs which led to an upper storey. Some children, huddled on the stairs, peeped down at him.

  “It’s the effect on the kids,” said the shopkeeper. “We’ve always let them run around, play with who they like. They’ve got friends…Now my wife is afraid to let them out of her sight.”

  He bent down and began to pick up cylinders from the floor.

  “It’s not the shop I mind about,” he said. “We can always start again. It’s the kids, my wife. How can she go to the suk and look them in the face, knowing what they’ve done? What they could do again? We’ll have to move.”

  Owen looked around. The fittings of the shop were very simple. The walls were lined with shelves, as in a cupboard, on which the goods were stored. There was a low counter at the front on which, when a potential customer inquired, particular items could be displayed; or on which, typically, the shopkeeper would sit when he was not working. He worked on the ground behind the counter. Owen could see some tools scattered among the debris.

  There was not, in fact, a lot of debris. This was not the moment to tell the man he was lucky; but he was. Owen had often seen worse. This did not look like the random, total violence that usually resulted when a mob ran amok. It was something measured, selected, perhaps, to send a message.

  “Why was it you?” he asked.

  “Why is it ever us?” said the shopkeeper bitterly.

  “Are there other Copts in this part of the Gamaliya?”

  “A few. It’ll be their turn next.”

  “There will be men here tonight,” said Owen. “It won’t happen again.”

  “They’ll be here tonight,” said the shopkeeper, “but they won’t be here every night. And it will happen again.”

  He went out of his shop and began to pick up cylinders left lying in the street. The onlookers began to help him. A woman, dark-gowned, black-veiled, came up and unobtrusively placed a bowl of beans on the ground in front of the shop and then went away again.

  Owen crossed to the other side of the street to look over at the shop. His foot caught something in the gutter. It was a cylinder that had rolled across. He bent down and picked it up.

  One or two of the cylinders had rolled their way to this side of the street and a man came across picking them up. He took Owen’s from him.

  “Women’s wares,” he said, turning it over in his hand dismissively.

  An old man, white-galabeahed, white-turbaned and white-bearded, came stumping along the street, supporting himself with a stick. He came to a stop beside Owen.

  “A bad business,” he said, gesturing across the road with his stick.

  “It’s always a bad business,” said Owen, “when neighbours fall out.”

  “Neighbours?” said the old man sharply. “It wasn’t neighbours who did this. Hello, Guptos!” he called across to the shopkeeper. “A bad business, this!”

  “Hello, Mohammed!” he said. “A bad business, indeed!”

  The old man limped across and embraced him.

  “There you are!” he said. “A Muslim embraces a Copt! I don’t care who sees me.”

  One or two of the spectators looked uneasy.

  “Not too much of that, old man,” someone muttered.

  The old man whirled on them.

  “What’s wrong with it, hey? He’s one of us, isn’t he? Been in the Gamaliya twenty years! That’s good enough, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes. Just don’t overdo it, that’s all.”

  “You watch out, Mohammed!” someone called out. “It’ll be your shop next time!”

  “Just let them try it!” shouted the old man, waving his stick. “Just let them try it! I’ll soon show them what’s what!”

  “It would be at night, you old fool,” said someone. “You’d be too busy showing Leila what’s what!”

  There was a general laugh, in which the old man joined, and then, still excited, he was gently persuaded on his way.

  “He’s right, though,” someone said. “It ought to count if you’ve lived here twenty years.”

  “Yes,” said someone else, “they ought to have picked one of the other Copts.”

  Chapter Four

  “Hello, Osman,” said Owen. “How is your sister?”

  “Sister?” said the orderly. “I haven’t got a sister.”

  “That’s funny,” said Owen. “You had one last week.”

  Osman shook his head.

  “Not me,” he said. “You’re thinking of someone else, effendi.”

  “I don’t think so. Didn’t you tell Bimbashi McPhee that you had a sister?”

  “No, effendi. It was someone else. I’ve never had a sister.”

  “The one who was possessed by evil spirits? Who was at the Zzarr?”

  Osman swallowed.

  “That wasn’t my sister, effendi. That was…my cousin. Yes, my cousin.”

  “And was she cured?”
/>   “Oh, yes, effendi, thank you very much. She’s quite better now.”

  “Oh good. All the same, these things recur, you know. We’d better take her along to the hospital and get the hakim there to have a look at her.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, effendi,” said Osman faintly. “It’s—it’s not worth troubling the mighty hakim.”

  “No trouble at all,” said Owen briskly. “I’ll arrange an appointment for her tomorrow. Now, what was her name?”

  “Amina,” said the orderly in a whisper. “Yes, Amina. I think.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll arrange that and let you know the time.”

  “Yes, effendi,” said the orderly, worried.

  Owen waited.

  “Or perhaps,” he suggested, “you haven’t got a cousin either?”

  “Oh, no, effendi,” said Osman hurriedly. “I have a cousin. In fact, several.”

  “Make sure,” said Owen, “that it’s the right one who turns up.”

  He turned up at the hospital himself to make sure. Osman looked even more worried; indeed, aghast.

  He had, however, brought a woman with him, heavily muffled in head veil and face veil and dressed in the usual shapeless black of the poor women of Cairo.

  “Greetings, madam,” said Owen cheerfully. “I am sorry to hear about your affliction. But do not worry. The hakim will soon cure you. The treatment may be a bit painful—”

  The woman gave a twitch.

  “—but it won’t last more than a few weeks.”

  The hooded figure gave Osman a look.

  “Now, I just want to put a few questions to you before you go in to the hakim.”

  They would have to be put through Osman, her nearest male relative, but Owen had never yet met an Egyptian woman prepared to stay silent and let the male answer on her behalf.

  “First, how long have you suffered from this affliction?”

  “Six years,” said Osman at random.

  “Six years? Are you sure it isn’t five years?”

  “Six,” said Osman.

  “But you haven’t asked her yet.”

  Osman did so now. The woman muttered something back which sounded suspiciously like “How do I know?”

  “Perhaps it was five,” said Osman.

  “Quite a long time, anyway. So that all the world will know of your affliction. There will be no doubt, then, when I ask people—”

  “Ask people?” said Osman.

  “Your family—”

  Osman nodded but looked grim.

  “The local hakim—”

  Osman winced. This was going to cost him.

  “The neighbours—”

  Osman drew a deep breath. Things were getting out of hand.

  “How sad that you should be so afflicted!” said Owen sympathetically. “And that all the world should know! And what a price you’ll have to pay,” he said to Osman, “to get any man to take her! I’d be surprised if you could get anyone to marry her at all.” There were signs of stirring beneath the shapeless black. “Never mind,” he said encouragingly, “when everyone knows you’ve been to the English hakim to be cured of not being quite right in the head—”

  “Not quite right in the head?” said the woman.

  “Permanently afflicted—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my head,” declared the woman firmly.

  “Hush, woman!” said Osman unhappily.

  “There may be with yours!”

  “Don’t let it worry you, Amina,” said Owen.

  “Amina?” said the woman.

  ***

  Back at the Bab-el-Khalk, severely cast down, Osman was ready to confess. None of his female relatives, the mock-Amina—for whom, win or lose, he had committed himself to buying a necklace—least of all, unfortunately, was possessed or weak in the head. There never had been anyone possessed. It was just a story he had made up knowing the Bimbashi’s interest in such things as Zzarrs.

  Even that, Owen pointed out, was untrue. He had not made the story up. Someone else had; and given it to him to use to entrap the Bimbashi.

  Osman was silent. The worried lines on his forehead, however, indicated that he could see big trouble ahead.

  “So who was it who spoke to you, Osman?” asked Owen pleasantly.

  Osman took a deep breath.

  “Effendi, I do not know.”

  “What a pity you do not know!” said Owen. “It could have saved you a lot of distress.”

  “A man spoke to me in the suk,” tried Osman bravely.

  “Whom you did not know and whom you could not recognize if you saw him again.”

  “That’s right, effendi,” said Osman thankfully.

  “And out of the goodness of your heart you decided to entrap the Bimbashi?”

  “Well, it wasn’t just out of the goodness—” admitted Osman.

  “How much did they pay you?”

  “One hundred piastres.”

  Owen looked at him severely.

  “I will give it back, effendi,” said Osman despondently.

  “But how will you give it back, Osman, if you don’t know the man and would not recognize him if you saw him?”

  “Perhaps I would recognize him,” said Osman, “and I might see him in the suk.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I will do, Osman. You have raised your hand against the Bimbashi and that is a serious offence, for which I am going to send you to work in the gangs mending the levees along the river. However, I shall postpone your departure for a week or two and if meanwhile you should happen to see the man who spoke to you and are able to point him out to me I might be prepared to take things no further. Oh, and, Osman, no one need know that you had pointed him out to me.”

  Osman looked at him thoughtfully.

  ***

  Where, Owen asked himself, could he find out if another Zzarr was being held in the immediate future? It was not something he could discover through his usual intelligence sources. Why was that, he wondered? He suddenly realized that all his sources were to do with men. The Islamic world was severely bifurcated between a public world and a private world. The public world was occupied only by men. This was the world he knew and his agents were concerned with. It was a world rather like that of the army, in which all the players were men and all the initiatives were masculine.

  Women belonged to the other world, the private world. They existed behind walls, behind closed doors. When they emerged into the public world, they carried the walls with them in the form of their black, shapeless garments and heavy veils. The Zzarr was part of that private world. Worse—from his point of view—it was part of a subdivision of that world, a sub-division from which men were excluded. There was another world within the private world which belonged to women only.

  It would be no good asking his agents. They were all men. Nor could he ask the orderlies. The Zzarr was something women kept from their husbands. They might have a vague idea, but it would be at the level of rumour and gossip. He could not even go to Sheikh Musa. The religious authorities took care to keep their distance from such things. They were obliged to tolerate but could not recognize.

  He remembered, a few months before, witnessing one such women’s ceremony. It had taken place in a mosque, now abandoned but to which women still came for their own special purposes. The purpose of this particular ceremony had been to establish whether a child would grow up dumb. Mothers came and held their babies to a special part of the wall. If they cried—and they usually did, their mothers made damned sure of that—prospects were favourable.

  The religious authorities knew very well that such practices went on. They did not condone them but knew they could not stamp them out. They were part of an incredibly resilient female underworld.

  About which Owen knew virtually
nothing. That was all right, people were entitled to their secrets and he wasn’t one to go prying into them like McPhee. Mamur Zapt he might be, but he had a decent British sense of reticence.

  On the other hand, he wanted to get in touch with the person who ran the Zzarr; the witch, or whatever she was. Witch! Owen winced. That would look good in the newspapers: Mamur Zapt out hunting for witches! He could write the editorials himself.

  Yes, the fact was, he had a gap in the information system. His informants were all men. He needed to have some women.

  But how could he find them? Women were kept well away from him, why, he could not think, and the only one he knew at all well was Zeinab. He could ask her, but she was not exactly a person he could employ as an agent. It wasn’t just that she would be certain to take a line of her own, never mind what the instructions were. The problem was that she was a member of Cairo’s social elite and had far more in common with sophisticated Parisiennes than with her sisters in the suk.

  He could ask Georgiades’s Rosa, even though she was still only about fifteen. She was as sharp as a knife, an implement which she had made clear she was ready to use should her husband step out of line. Georgiades had been a changed man since his marriage. The trouble with Rosa, though, was that she was Greek. There was certainly a very strong Greek female culture. Unfortunately, it was not the same as the traditional one of the suks.

  There was a nice girl he had recently met. In fact, she was the one he’d gone to the abandoned mosque to meet. The problem was that she was too nice. She was much too kind and gentle.

  That could not be said of another of Owen’s acquaintances. That gipsy girl was just the sort of person he needed. Unfortunately, she had left town in a hurry a few weeks before, just ahead of the police.

  No, it wouldn’t do. He would have to recruit women by the ordinary means. Nikos handled all that side. Nikos? Women? That wasn’t going to work. He would have to put aside the issue of recruiting women for the moment.

  But what about the Zzarr? He mentioned it tentatively to Zeinab.