The Snake Catcher's Daughter

by Michael Pearce

  “I’ve no time for that superstitious stuff,” she said dismissively. “Women are never going to get anywhere while they go on believing that sort of rubbish.”

  ***

  “Gareth,” said his friend, Paul, the ADC, “does the name Philipides mean anything to you?”

  They were at a reception at the Abdin Palace. Owen, splendidly uniformed, had just mounted the grand staircase lined by the Khedival royal guard, even more splendidly uniformed and carrying lances. Owen did not greatly care for such occasions—for one thing, they served only soft drinks—but he was here at the express invitation of His Royal Highness the Khedive and one did not disregard such invitations. The British were punctilious in observing the forms of Khedival rule. Substance was another matter.

  The Khedive, too, was punctilious over observance of the forms. They were all he had left.

  “I think he does it just to provoke,” said Paul. “This evening, for instance: why so splendid an occasion just to mark the arrival of the Turkish ambassador?”

  “Past relationships, I suppose,” said Owen. The Khedive had once been a vassal of the Sublime Porte and Egypt was still, in the view of Constantinople, part of the Ottoman Empire.

  “Past,” asked Paul, “or future?”

  “No chance,” said Owen. “We wouldn’t let him.”

  “Quite so,” said Paul. “But he does love to raise the spectre.”

  He had taken Owen by the arm and led him behind some potted palm trees; and it was then that he asked about Philipides, and whether any of it made sense.

  Owen nodded.

  “Good. Because it didn’t to me.”

  “And now it does?”

  “I have been brushing up on past history. At the C-G’s request,” Paul said with emphasis.

  “Why is that?”

  “He thinks it’s going to come up again.”

  “The corruption business?”

  “The Garvin business.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Miscarriage of justice. They were convicted only on Garvin’s word.”

  “There was a police officer—”

  “One of Garvin’s subordinates. Coerced, so they claim.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “We don’t know. All we know is that the Parquet wants formally to reopen the whole affair.”

  “Philipides is out,” said Owen.

  “Yes. Early. I don’t know if that’s cause or result. Possibly it’s just the pretext. Anyway, someone’s using it to have a go at Garvin. And what we are beginning to think is that it’s not so much Garvin they want to have a go at, it’s us.”

  “Garvin just a pretext, too.”

  “Exactly. So, old chap, the Consul-General would like you to take a look.”

  “Have you tipped off Garvin?”

  “He’ll soon find out. But we can’t ask him to handle this. He’s a material witness. Besides—”

  “Yes?”

  “This really is political. It really is.”

  Paul caught someone’s eye and went across to shake hands. “Cher ministre,” Owen heard him begin. Then he, too, began to do his duty, circulating less among politicians and diplomats—that was Paul’s patch—than among senior civil servants and Pashas. They were all, of course, Egyptian, but the language spoken was not Egyptian Arabic. Nor, significantly, was it English. It was French. The Egyptian elite’s cultural allegiance was to France. It went to France for its education, its reading, its clothes and its vacations. It spoke French more naturally than it spoke Arabic.

  When he was with Zeinab they habitually spoke French. Zeinab’s father was here now on the other side of the room with a circle of his cronies. He extended a hand to greet Owen as he arrived.

  “My dear boy,” he said. “So nice to see you! You know everyone, don’t you?”

  They were all Pashas; like him, hereditary rulers of vast estates. Nowadays they were deeply into cotton and international finance (borrowing, mostly). They looked outward to Europe, where they spent most of their time, adjusting to the loss of power which had come with British rule. They supplied most of the Khedive’s cabinet but their capacity for action, or, indeed, inaction, was severely constrained now by the presence of British Advisers at the top of each Ministry. Nevertheless, Governmental posts were much sought after, not least by Nuri, Zeinab’s father, and his cronies. They belonged, however, to a previous generation; a fact to which they were by no means reconciled.

  They were all known to Owen, except one.

  “Demerdash Pasha,” introduced Nuri, with a wave of his band.

  The Pasha bowed distantly.

  “Captain Owen. The dear boy has a tendresse for Zeinab,” he explained.

  “How is Zeinab these days?” asked one of the other Pashas.

  “The Mamur Zapt,” he heard another one amplifying for the benefit of the newcomer.

  Owen saw the impact.

  “Mamur Zapt?”

  A little later he found an opportunity to speak to Owen.

  “I knew your predecessor,” he said.

  “A friend?”

  “We worked together. A true servant of the Khedive.”

  “As I aspire to be,” said Owen.

  The Pasha looked puzzled.

  “How can that be?” he said.

  One of the other Pashas linked arms with him affectionately.

  “Demerdash Pasha has been away for a long time,” he said with a smile.

  “And where have you been spending your time, Pasha?” asked Owen.

  “Constantinople,” the man said shortly.

  “Demerdash Pasha is a great friend of the Turks,” said one of the other Pashas.

  Demerdash turned on him.

  “I am not a great friend of the Turks,” he said sharply. “I was there because the Khedive asked me to be there.”

  “You are a friend of Egypt, mon cher,” said Nuri.

  “Yes,” said Demerdash, “a friend of Egypt. But of Egypt as she was and not as she is.”

  “Oh la la,” said Nuri, and led him away.

  “Just the same as he used to be,” said one of the other Pashas, watching them go. “He doesn’t give an inch.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” said another Pasha.

  “That remains to be seen,” said the first Pasha.

  The group broke up with Nuri’s departure and Owen continued his circulation. Some time later, however, he found himself standing next to Nuri and Demerdash at the buffet table. They were talking to someone who had, apparently, just returned from the Sudan.

  “And how were things down in the Bahr-el-Ghazal?” asked Demerdash.

  The other man shrugged. “Hot,” he said.

  “What about women?”

  “All right.”

  “That was where the best slaves came from,” said Demer-dash. “Beautiful black ones.”

  “None of that these days. They’ve got rid of slaves.”

  Demerdash made a gesture of dismissal.

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “You’ve got to be careful.”

  “The British!” said Demerdash scornfully.

  “All the same—”

  “Don’t tell me you spent that time there without sampling at least a few little négresses.”

  “What’s that?” said Nuri.

  Demerdash turned to him.

  “Il me dit qu’il a passé six ans au Sudan sans une seule petite négresse!”

  “Impossible!” said Nuri.

  The table bowed under the weight of food. There were gigantic Nile perch with lemons stuffed in their jaws, pheasants cooked but then with their feathers replaced so that they looked as if they had just wandered off an autumnal English field, ducklings shaped out of foie gr
as, huge ox heads from which the tongues, cooked, lolled imbecilely.

  Paul regarded these latter with disfavour.

  “Exactly like a Parliamentary delegation,” he said sourly.

  ***

  The reception finished about eleven. The night was still young by Cairo standards and many of the guests went off to revel less stiffly in more congenial places. Owen decided to walk home. The other side of rising with the light was that he declined with the light, and midnight always found him totally stupid.

  Besides, the night was the best time for walking in Cairo. The city was at its coolest then. Shadow veiled the strident and the angular and cooperated with the moon to emphasize the soft shapes and arches. The lower level of the city disappeared and you suddenly became aware of the magical beauty of the upper parts of the houses, with their balconies and minarets, the fantastic woodwork of the overhanging, box-like meshrebiya windows, and the grotesque corbels which carried the first floor out over the street. Higher still and the moon revealed more clearly than in the day the delicacy of the domes and minarets of the mosques and the slender towers of the fountain houses. Everything was silvery. The moon seemed even to strike silver out of the fine, tight-packed grains of sand of the streets.

  As Owen set out, an arabeah drew up alongside him. He waved it away but it stopped just in front of him determinedly.

  “Hello!” said a soft female voice, which somehow seemed familiar. Suddenly he remembered.

  “You again!” It was the girl he had found in his bed. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to be nice to me. And I want to be nice to you.”

  “Sorry,” said Owen. “I’m well supplied, thanks.”

  “It’s not like that,” she said.

  “What is it like?”

  “Why don’t you come home with me and find out?”

  “Sorry.” He shook his head. “Someone is expecting me.”

  “Zeinab’s not the only girl in the world. And, anyway, she’s not expecting you. She’s at Samira’s.”

  Owen stopped, astonished. How did a girl like this know about Samira, the Princess Samira? And how did she know about Zeinab, for that matter?

  “You know Samira?”

  “As well as I know you. Surprisingly well.”

  Owen considered the matter. He was intrigued.

  But then, he was intended to be intrigued.

  “No, thank you,” he said, and walked on.

  Later, he was sorry. Plums, after all, do not grow on every tree.

  ***

  Owen went down to the Gamaliya next day to see that things were all right. He found the shop open and the Copt busy behind the counter. The shelves, though, were half empty.

  “A lot missing?” asked Owen, indicating the shelves with his hand.

  “No, no. I’ve just not put them up. I have to take them down at night, you see, now that the shutters have been broken. It’s not worth it. The women know what they want and can always ask for it. I keep the stuff inside now.”

  An idea came to Owen.

  “Do you talk to the women?”

  “Of course.”

  “And sometimes, perhaps, you overhear things?”

  “Perhaps,” said the Copt, slightly bewildered.

  “Did you know about the Zzarr?”

  He caught the look before the Copt’s face became studiously blank.

  “Zzarr? I don’t think so.”

  Owen smiled.

  “I think so,” he said.

  The Copt shook his head.

  “The reason I am asking,” said Owen, “is that I think the Zzarr could have something to do with the attack on your shop.”

  The shopkeeper looked surprised.

  “How could it?”

  “Just believe me, that I think it could. Now, what I’m trying to do is stop it happening again. So I need to know.”

  “I know there was a Zzarr,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s about all I know. Honestly!”

  “Where was it?”

  “It was in the house over there.”

  “Show me.”

  The Copt called into the house and a woman appeared. She was dressed in black like the other women in the street and veiled like them. The Copt told her to look after things while he was gone. He said he wouldn’t be long.

  “Normally she doesn’t mind,” he said to Owen. “It’s just that now—”

  The house was only about a couple of hundred yards away. Owen knocked on the door. No one responded.

  “I think it’s empty,” said the Copt.

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “A Mr Abbas, I think. He lives in the Gamaliya somewhere.”

  There were still some policemen about. Owen set them to work finding out where Mr Abbas lived—it was simply a question of knocking on people’s doors and asking, someone was bound to know. He himself went to a café to wait. The Copt, he sent back to his shop.

  Eventually, one of the constables returned. Or rather, two of them returned. One was the man who found out; the other was Selim, who had now, on the strength of past glory, appointed himself Acting Sergeant, still, unfortunately, unpaid.

  Mr Abbas owned a large store off one of the suks. He came out to meet Owen and then invited him into his office to take tea. They sat on a low leather divan and the tea was served on an equally low table, about six inches high. Courtesy demanded that it was some time before they got down to business, but eventually they did.

  “My house, indeed,” said Mr Abbas blandly, “and sometimes I let it. But a Zzarr! Oh dear, I had no idea.”

  “They gave no indication of their purpose?”

  “Well, of course, I don’t handle it myself—”

  The person who did, an agent who managed several properties, lived on the other side of the Gamaliya. It was another hot day and by the time Owen had reached him, his clothes were wet with perspiration. He was received again with courtesy and tea; and again given the run around.

  “Well, of course, I had no idea what they wanted it for. A celebration of some sort, I believe they said. Too large for their own house so they wanted to hire a bigger one.”

  “Do you have their names?”

  The agent spread his hands regretfully.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said.

  That was unlikely, Owen remarked.

  “They pay the money first,” the man said, smiling.

  Owen got nowhere. He walked back to Bab-el-Khalk with Selim, dripping.

  “The Gamaliya’s a no-good place, effendi,” said Selim, commiserating. “Now, over by the fish market, where I live—”

  Owen stopped in his tracks.

  “Selim,” he said, “are you married?”

  “Well, yes, effendi,” said Selim, taken aback. “There’s Leila, and there’s Aisha, and there’s—”

  He began, however, to look troubled.

  “Effendi,” he said hesitantly, “I don’t think they’d be good enough for you. Not yet. I mean, I’m trading up. In a bit, I’ll divorce Aisha, and then I’ll look out for someone a bit classier. In fact, I know a girl already who would do. She would just suit—”

  “No, no, no, no!” said Owen hastily. “Not that at all.”

  He explained what he wanted.

  Selim listened carefully.

  “Well,” he said, “Aisha’s the one. She’s a bit of a bitch, that’s why I’m thinking of getting rid of her. Nag, nag, nag all the time, just come back late and you’re in trouble. But she’s got a good head on her. Mind you,” he looked worried, “it could give her ideas, she would start getting above herself—”

  “There would be money in it,” said Owen. “For you.”

  “Well, in that case—” said Selim, brightening. He thought it over. “Yes,” he said, “Aisha’s de
finitely the one. She could say she was possessed by an evil spirit, all right. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth…”

  Chapter Five

  Garvin asked Owen if he would drop in on him before he went home. It was a request and courteous, so Owen knew that Garvin had found out that the Philipides business was about to be reopened.

  He found him not sitting behind his desk, as was usually the case, but standing by the window, looking down through the shutters into the courtyard; as if he had just seen some donkeys there to which he took exception.

  He was a big man, well over six feet in height and with huge broad shoulders. Despite twenty years of Egyptian sun, and Egyptian malaria, his face was fair and ruddy as if he had just arrived from English fields. The impression caught a truth about the man. Garvin came from one of the old English country families, no longer property owning but still country living. His father, a youngest son, had been a clergy-man, but a clergyman of the ‘squarson’ sort, both squire and parson. Garvin had been brought up in the country and, though a university man (Cambridge), his pursuits were those of the country squire: riding, shooting and fishing. And, of course, hunting.

  But there was another side to the man which the bluff exterior concealed. Garvin was no fool. He had spent two decades in the country and knew his job back to front. He knew it at all levels, too. He spoke Arabic like an Egyptian and was as familiar with the patois of the Alexandrian seafront underworld as he was with the slow rhythms of the fellahin in the fields around Cairo. Because of the time he had spent in the provinces before coming to the city, he was intimate with the background of family feuds and alliances which the fellahin carried with them when they migrated to the city. The Cairo poor were still villagers at heart; and Garvin knew them as he knew his own face in the mirror.

  Yet he had been to Cambridge, too, and this gave him entry to an inner club from whose members the rulers of Egypt and India and, indeed, England were almost exclusively drawn. Mixing on equal terms with the British elite, inevitably he mixed, too, with the Egyptian elite. He knew the political preoccupations of both.

  Garvin was, then, a formidable operator. He knew Egypt from top to bottom; and behind the frank, open face and the honest blue eyes was a political mind of no mean order. He played bridge regularly with the Consul-General and the Financial Secretary. Garvin was a great card player.