Death of an Effendi

by Michael Pearce

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ said someone. ‘In Egypt the excellence of the modern is always crushed by the greatness of the past.’

  ‘In any case,’ said Raoul, ‘it couldn’t be exported, you’d have to get a permit for it. It counts as an antique not a painting.’

  ‘There you are!’

  ‘There are people in Germany who would pay a fortune for this.’

  ‘Change your line of business, Raoul,’ someone advised. ‘Go in for smuggling.’

  ‘What a suggestion, with the Mamur Zapt here!’ Then, in a mock whisper: ‘Come back and talk to me later.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘Let’s get an expert opinion,’ said someone. ‘What does our critic think?’

  Owen examined the portrait.

  ‘It’s in encaustic on limewood,’ he said, ‘and could be from Hawara. The hairstyle and jewellery suggest a mid-Antonine date. There is an interesting mixture of Greek, Roman and Egyptian forms. The portrait bust is Roman, of course; the pose of the human figure is adapted from the Hellenistic Greek; but the context, I would suggest, is entirely Egyptian.’

  Behind the veil he saw Zeinab’s jaw drop.

  ***

  ‘It must be another woman,’ said Zeinab accusingly. ‘You couldn’t have thought that up by yourself.’

  ‘I have to admit there was another woman.’

  Zeinab pulled away from him sharply.

  ‘It was purely platonic,’ pleaded Owen.

  ‘I’ll bet!’

  ‘Nothing physical took place between us. She showed me a few things—’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure!’

  ‘Which, all right, I did find myself responding to—’

  ‘Yes, I expect you would have found that!’

  ‘It’s the kind of man I am: alive to the beauty of form—’

  Zeinab sprang off the bed.

  ***

  Cairo was where the Ministries were, so Cairo was where it would have to be unblocked. The next morning, Mahmoud went in to see his superiors about the obstruction he had encountered in Alexandria, confident that they would take up cudgels on his behalf. To his surprise, he found a distinct lack of interest.

  ‘But this is important! It’s a question of principle! Surely a Parquet officer should not be denied access—’

  But the Parquet, which was usually very strong on principle, especially when it affected its own interests, did not seem anxious to take the matter up.

  Mahmoud went higher, to the Ministry of which the Department of Prosecutions was part.

  ‘There are important legal issues here. It touches on questions of rights—’

  But the Ministry, ordinarily able to detect legal issues in even the most unpromising of subjects, could find none here. As for rights—

  ‘But it is a question of principle!’ said Mahmoud despairingly.

  ‘Principle?’ said the junior Minister doubtfully, as if Mahmoud was introducing some new legal term of dubious validity.

  ‘Not to say the Ministry’s standing!’

  ‘We must judge issues on their merits, not in terms of their effects on the Ministry’s standing,’ reproved the Minister. He had not hitherto been noted for revolutionary pronouncements.

  Mahmoud, stunned, withdrew to regroup.

  ***

  He regrouped with Owen, pouring it all out to him as they sat drinking coffee at a table in the Ataba, the busy square at the top of the Mouski from which the trams and buses departed and where the clanging of the trams’ bells, the whinnying of the buses’ horses and the shouting of the vendors of peanuts, sugar cane, pastries and seditious newspapers drowned the confidences being poured out not just by Mahmoud but by, it appeared, at the tables round about, the rest of Cairo.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Owen. ‘I’ll have a word with Henderson.’

  ***

  Henderson, the Adviser to the Minister of the Interior, was a small, sandy-haired Scot.

  ‘Why?’ he said uncompromisingly.

  ‘It’s to do with Tvardovsky’s death. You remember Tvardovsky? He was the Russian who was—’

  ‘I remember Tvardovsky.’

  ‘Right, well. I’m helping the Parquet in an inquiry into the circumstances in which he died.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Strakhov was a friend of his.’

  ‘Aye, but what’s that got to do with the case?’

  ‘We think Strakhov might know something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, hell, until we’ve talked to him, how can we know?’

  ‘Aye, but you must have something in your mind. This laddie of yours may have been friends with half the population but that doesn’t mean they’re all connected with the case. We must have something more to go on.’

  ‘There could be a security issue.’

  ‘Aye, well, yes, there could. But—’

  ‘Tvardovsky had radical sympathies.’

  ‘I see. And put his money where his heart was?’

  ‘To some extent, apparently, yes.’

  ‘Now, pardon me, was that in this country or in another?’

  ‘He financed the seamen’s home of which Strakhov was the manager.’

  ‘Aye, I see the connection. But now, have you anything to link the home with what you might call an issue of security? In this country?’

  ‘Well, no, that’s what we want to talk to Strakhov—’

  ‘Aye, but is it anything more than a wee wonder in your head?’

  ‘Not at this stage, no, but—’

  ‘Have you any charges which you wish to bring against Strakhov?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You see, if there was, it could override. But as there’s not, well, sorry, laddie, but we are unable to accede to your request.’

  ‘But, Jesus, you’re holding him on grounds of security!’

  ‘Aye, but that’s not security in this country. It’s security in another country.’

  Owen retired, fuming.

  ***

  ‘But at least you’ve got something,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Another country? That sounds like extradition proceedings.’

  He bustled off, terrier-like, to gnaw at this new bone.

  ***

  As Owen was making his way through the tables, a voice hailed him.

  ‘Captain Owen! What a pleasure! You are well, I hope?’

  It was Mirza es-Rahel, the journalist he had encountered at the hotel in the Fayoum.

  ‘And how are you getting on with your investigations?’

  He made a gesture with his hand and Owen dropped into the seat opposite him.

  ‘Slowly.’

  The journalist laughed.

  ‘Well, it is not surprising. In a thing like this you come up against interests at every turn. As, of course, Mr. El Zaki has found in his efforts to get access to Strakhov.’

  ‘You know about that?’ said Owen, surprised.

  ‘It is our business to know about such things.’

  Owen wondered for a moment if it had been Mahmoud who had tipped him off but then decided it couldn’t have been.

  ‘You are well-informed,’ he said.

  ‘We intend to make a big thing of Strakhov, Captain Owen. It raises important issues.’

  ‘It does?’

  ‘The incarceration of an individual, even a foreign individual, incommunicado and without access to lawyers—it is not good enough. Captain Owen! Allow this to happen and what happens next? Are any of us safe? No. No, this raises questions that go deep and wide, and we shall see that they are asked!’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see Al-Liwa making such a principled stand, Mr. es-Rahel.’

  The journalist looked slightly discomfited.

  ‘Actually,’ he said,
‘why should I hide it from you, Captain Owen, when in this we are on the same side? We do have a particular interest as well. Mr. Strakhov, at the time when he was so outrageously seized, was acting as an intermediary between us and Tvardovsky in a matter of very considerable importance.’

  ‘You and Tvardovsky?’

  ‘Yes. The fact is’—again the journalist looked slightly embarrassed—‘Tvardovsky had offered us financial support—’

  ‘When you say “us”—?’

  ‘The Nationalist Party.’

  ‘The Nationalist Party? Tvardovsky offered the Nationalist Party financial support?’

  ‘Do not sound so surprised, Captain Owen. We are a perfectly respectable political party. The government parties get offered support all the time!’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Owen shook his head. ‘And you were prepared to take it?’

  ‘Well, why not?’ said the journalist defensively. ‘We have need of money like any other party.’

  ‘Yes, but from a foreign financier! The Nationalist Party above all? I am surprised at you, Mr. es-Rahel!’

  ‘It does sound odd, I agree,’ the journalist admitted, ‘and at first we were inclined to reject it out of hand. But when we talked to him we became convinced that he was sincere—sincere in his commitment to our ideals, I mean. And, in fact, it was not as bad as it sounds. Most of the money was given for a specific purpose. There was a project in the Fayoum that he wanted our support for—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Owen. ‘Who was supporting whom?’

  ‘He would give financial support; what he wanted from us was moral support.’

  ‘Moral support!’

  ‘Support at grass level. As a party, we have strong popular support, although it is in the interests of the British, Captain Owen, to deny that. What he wanted us to do was mobilize the fellahin in that area behind the project. That was important because what he envisaged was a giant cooperative scheme to develop the Fayoum. There would be co-ownership of the land and all profits would either be ploughed back into the project or else distributed to members. And membership—a feature which particularly pleased us—would be confined to those who actually worked the land. What the scheme seemed to offer was a different approach from the one that the British are foisting upon us. You can see why we were so interested. And why the loss of Tvardovsky was such a blow to us.’

  He looked at Owen.

  ‘Tvardovsky and Strakhov. Both of them. It makes you think, Captain Owen. Or so I hope.’

  ***

  ‘Crackpot!’ said the Financial Adviser, as Owen stood beside him at the bar. ‘Completely crackpot!’ He put his glass down on the counter. ‘Or else very clever. I told him it was crackpot when he came to see me that day beside the lake. “Look,” I said, “you know these men. They’re capitalists. They live on the return they make from their investments. Do you suppose for one moment that they’re going to support a scheme like this? With nothing in it for them? In fact, with them being cut right out of it? It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas!”

  ‘Well, he laughed then, and said: “They’re not turkeys, Mr. Allen, they’re crocodiles!” “All right, then,” I said, “so you’ve got to give them a bit of bait.” He looked at me for a moment quite startled, and then he said, very seriously: “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re right.” And then he laughed and said: “Live bait. That’s what they’ll want, isn’t it?” And I said: “I don’t know about that, but I do know that if you put something like this to them they’ll throw it straight out of the window.”

  ‘So he said: “What about the government, then? Would it throw it out of the window too?” “Look,” I said, “it’s not us here that you’ve got to worry about. Who knows what daft things we might agree to? Look at that Light Railway project that you’re so interested in, who would have thought we’d have done something like that? It’s not us you’ve got to worry about, it’s the people back home. The House of Commons is full of Liberal free-traders at the moment and they’d think we’d gone mad if we put a thing like this to them. Cooperation? Co-ownership? Jesus, these blokes couldn’t even cooperate to buy themselves a drink. Yes, thanks, I will have one.’

  He took a large sip.

  ‘Crackpot,’ he said, ‘completely crackpot!’

  ‘But clever, I think you said?’

  ‘Well, possibly. You never know with people like that lot at the lake. It doesn’t pay to be too naive. They don’t always show their hand. In fact, sometimes they show you something else. Deliberately. So that you won’t spot what’s going on.’

  ‘And you think this scheme may have been something like that? A sort of blind?’

  ‘I think it might.’

  ‘The Nationalists seem to be taking it seriously.’

  ‘Yes, well, they would.’

  ***

  Along the bar Owen spotted Paul, his friend, the Consul--General’s aide-de-camp, who was, in fact, the man he had come to the Sporting Club to see. He pushed his way through the crowd towards him.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said, when Owen had finished. ‘It sound as if the Ministries are playing silly buggers. I’ll have a word with the Old Man.’

  ***

  The Khedivial Sporting Club, or the Gezira, as it was known, was on an island and to get to it from the city you had to cross an iron bridge and then go down a thick avenue of lebbek trees. It wasn’t far but just far enough to make it advisable, in the heat, to take an arabeah, one of the horse-drawn native carriages. Owen had taken one to come over but now, as he came out of the club and looked along the rank, there was not one to be seen. He decided to walk back up the avenue and then look out for one when he got to the bridge.

  Over to the north-west a circle of white palings marked the race track. There must be a meeting this afternoon for already the carriages were drawing up. Separated from the race course by a sandy road were the football, cricket and polo grounds. There must be a polo match on this afternoon, too, for grooms with strings of ponies were making their way in that direction.

  The first part of his walk took him across the golf course. Some men were playing at the hole nearest him. There was a sudden flutter of wings and an outraged cry from the men and then one of the big, scavenging hawks of the city rose steeply, something white clutched in its claws.

  ‘God damn it!’ said one of the men. ‘That’s the second ball I’ve lost this week!’

  However, such things were in the normal course of events on Egyptian golf courses. Another ball was produced and play resumed.

  Out here in the open it was very hot and although it was only a couple of hundred yards, he was glad when he reached the shade of the lebbek trees.

  There was a steady stream of people coming down the avenue towards him, some on horseback, some on bicycles and many, including whole families, in carriages. For Wednesday afternoon at the Gezira was one of Cairo’s social occasions.

  Among the riders were several men dressed for polo and usually with a groom beside them leading a string of ponies. One of them hailed him.

  He looked up. It was Prince Fuad.

  The Prince dismounted, gave his horse to the groom and then came across to him.

  ‘Hello, Owen,’ he said. ‘Not staying for the match?’

  ‘Not this afternoon,’ mumbled Owen, almost guiltily. ‘Work to do.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  The Prince fell in beside him and began to walk back up the avenue.

  ‘Busy then,’ he said. ‘This Tvardovsky affair?’

  ‘That and some other things, yes.’

  ‘Damned nuisance,’ said the Prince. ‘I see that now. At the time, I thought: body, mess, must clear it up. Get it out of the way. That’s the thing to do with bodies, isn’t it? In this heat. Get them out of the way. When you’re dead, you’re dead. No use going on about it. Best get them unde
rground. Trouble is, even when they’re underground, they leave mess behind them, you’ve still got it to clear up. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Clearing it up.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘How are you getting on? Looking into background, that sort of thing? Going through his effects?’

  ‘Someone else had done that.’

  ‘They have?’ Prince Fuad looked slightly dashed. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘I daresay you’ll chase them up.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  They walked a little way in silence. The Prince seemed to be deliberating.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said. ‘The thing is, something of mine may be among his papers.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Some share certificates. Got my name on them. Belong to me. I was wondering—if you came across them, I’d like them back.’

  ‘If they belong to you, then you can certainly have them back.’

  ‘Got my name on them. That’s the important thing. At least, that’s what Tvardovsky said. “Your name’s an asset,” he said. “It’s worth money.” “Not enough,” I said. “The bank’s not willing to lend any more.” “That’s because you go about it in the wrong way,” he said. “You tell me the right way, then,” I said, “and I’ll change overnight.” “Just let me borrow your name for a bit,” he said, “that’s all.”’

  ‘He bought some shares in your name?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What did he want to do that for?’

  ‘Because he thought that at the last moment they might restrict the offer to native Egyptians. That’s what they’d done before, you see, with another company he was interested in. The Fayoum Light Railway. Well, I think he wanted to make sure this time. “You see,” he said, “you’re an Egyptian.” “I am,” I said, “and much good it’s done me so far.” “Things are about to change,” he said. And then I shut up because I thought he was about to start again.’

  ‘Start again! On what?’

  ‘This damned project of his. Completely lunatic, if you ask me. The great Fayoum cooperative! I mean, I’m all for peasants working together, that’s what peasants should do, but you’ve got to have someone telling them what to do or you’ll never get anywhere. “You should see them on my estates,” I said. “A bunch of idle sods! Always off in the shade. The only way you can get them to work is by putting a boot up their backside.” “But that’s because they’re working for you,” he said. “What if they were working for themselves?” “I don’t want them to work for themselves,” I said. “I want them to work for me!” He laughed and then said: “Well, Prince Fuad, I think it may be best if we restrict your contribution to lending us your name.”