The Girl in the Nile

by Michael Pearce

  Still keeping her hand on his arm, Zeinab shifted her chair closer to him. Then she slipped her hand quite naturally round him so that it was almost as if she was giving him a sisterly hug.

  Or a maternal hug, Owen suddenly realized.

  “Leila knew how to behave,” said Zeinab softly. “She wasn’t like them.”

  “No,” said the boy.

  “She oughtn’t to have been on that boat. It wasn’t the place for her.”

  “No.”

  “Why was she on it?”

  “It was him,” said the boy. “He made her.”

  “Ah, that’s what it was! Did she talk to you about it?”

  “No, I wanted her to but she wouldn’t. I asked her to but she—she said I was too young and didn’t understand these things.”

  “She wanted to spare you, I expect. I’m sure she knew how you felt about her.”

  Fahid was silent.

  “Did you tell her how you felt?”

  “Yes,” said Fahid. His face began to work. All the calm indifference was gone.

  “She spurned me,” he said. “She told me to go away.”

  “That was not spurning you. She wanted to spare you.”

  “No, no, it was spurning. She—she laughed at me!”

  “Surely not!”

  “Yes. Yes. And then I hated her. I ran away and cursed her. I didn’t want anything to do with her. She despised me and she loved him!”

  “I don’t think she despised you,” said Zeinab gently.

  “She preferred him.”

  “These things happen. But I’m sure she didn’t want to be unkind to you.”

  “She had given herself to him.”

  “But not to you?”

  “No,” said the boy, “although—although I wanted her to.”

  “The others did?”

  “Ah yes,” said the boy, with a dismissive gesture, “but that was not the same.”

  “No, of course not. It’s not the same when you’re not in love.”

  “But she did it,” said the boy fiercely. “She did it with him.”

  “She was in love.”

  “No, she wasn’t!”

  “She preferred him,” said Zeinab gently. “You told me so yourself.”

  “Ah, but that doesn’t mean she was in love with him. She only preferred him because she thought he might be Khedive.”

  “Well,” said Zeinab, “perhaps so.”

  “She didn’t love him,” the boy insisted. “She was very unhappy. Afterwards, she went away by herself. He tried to get her to come down but she wouldn’t!”

  “This was that last day,” asked Owen, “when she was alone on the top deck?”

  “Yes. It was dinnertime and she wouldn’t come down. Narouz went up, I went up—”

  “You went up?”

  “Yes. I thought she might listen to me.”

  “I thought you hated her?”

  “I did, but—but—I wanted to see her.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I said: ‘Come down, Leila, it’s dinnertime.’ But she said she wouldn’t, she would never come down. It was him, you see,” the boy said passionately. “She didn’t want to see him. She felt ashamed. She said she had cheapened herself. She said men were all like that. There was another man she thought had loved her but when it came down to it, all he’d wanted was the same thing. He hadn’t objected when Narouz had asked her to come on the dahabeeyah, he had encouraged her, he had said that sort of thing didn’t matter. But she had said it did matter. But she had gone all the same because he had said it would be better if she did go. But now she was sorry because she knew it wasn’t a good idea, but it was too late.”

  The boy’s shoulders were shaking. Zeinab tightened her arm round him.

  “She did talk to you, then, didn’t she?” she said softly.

  “No,” said the boy. “She told me to go away, that I was like the rest of them, she pushed me away—”

  “Pushed?”

  “I tried to take her hand.”

  “Was that all?”

  “I put my arm round her,” said the boy defiantly. The defiance lasted only a moment. His face puckered. “But she pushed me away!”

  “What did you do then?” asked Owen very quietly.

  “Do?” The boy’s face blinked up at him in surprise. “Do? I came down, of course.”

  ***

  Mahmoud had rung Owen suggesting they meet for coffee. He had spent the whole day interviewing the crew of the dahabeeyah once again and was understandably exhausted.

  “Get anywhere?” asked Owen.

  Mahmoud had been checking whether any of them had seen an unauthorized person on board. All swore blind that they had seen no one.

  “Of course they could just be covering up,” he said, “but I don’t think so.”

  They were sitting in a café at the end of the Mussky, just where the street comes out into the Ataba el Khadra.

  The Ataba was the starting place for most of Cairo’s trams and was in many respects the epitome of all that was modern and ungracious in the city. Somnolent two-horse arabeahs gave way to strident, bell-ringing trams. Sleepy, open-fronted shops yielded place to brazen emporia selling the latest line in European hosiery. And here, instead of doing nothing, which was the usual Cairene pursuit, everyone was hurrying to catch a tram or else touting for business.

  The two chief trades in the Ataba were the selling of pastries and the dissemination of seditious literature.

  As one such disseminator passed him, Owen automatically stuck out his hand. The seller removed the piastres from his palm and replaced them by a whole wad of newspapers and pamphlets.

  He glanced at the top page. Leering up at him was a scurrilous cartoon of Prince Narouz.

  He put the wad on the table and picked up the paper with the cartoon and examined it more closely.

  The whole of the front page was devoted to an attack on the Prince as a modernizer, a lackey of Great Britain and general betrayer of the Egyptian cause. Even now, it was said, he was working to sign away Egyptian rights under a new secret Agreement which the Khedive was about to conclude with the British.

  The writer was indeed well informed. In reviewing the Prince’s personal morals, or lack of, reference was made to a recent trip by dahabeeyah undertaken for lewd lascivious purposes. The voyage, it added, had ended tragically with the death in suspicious circumstances of a well-connected but foolish Egyptian girl lured on to the boat under false pretenses.

  The article did not say directly that Narouz had a hand in the girl’s death; it did not need to.

  Owen passed the paper over to Mahmoud. Mahmoud read the article and shrugged.

  “It’s come out, then,” he said.

  Owen turned the paper over and looked for its imprint. It had none. “It’s illicit, of course.”

  He could censor only material which was legally published. Illegal publications, with which Cairo abounded, had to be hit at by raiding the printer. It was, however, usually hit and miss.

  “Do you recognize the press?”

  “I don’t; Nikos probably will.”

  He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

  “If they didn’t see anyone,” he said, reverting to the crew of the dahabeeyah, “that probably means there was no one there. You couldn’t hide on board for long. Not without someone seeing you.”

  “The last stop was Luxor. They would have had to have hidden up for nearly a week.”

  “It’s possible. But unlikely.”

  “I agree. But, you see, that raises an interesting question. What if the garotter was not on board at all? What if he knew where the dahabeeyah was going to tie up? What if he was on shore, waiting?”

  ***

  Owen att
ended in person the reinterment of Ali Marwash’s daughter. This was considered a great honor, indeed, almost disproportionately so, since the deceased was only a woman.

  There had already been difficulties over the ceremony which should accompany the reburial. Ali Marwash had wanted another full-scale funeral service but this had been vetoed on the grounds that it would have to take place in the mosque and the body was hardly in a condition for that.

  Besides, there were theological issues. At what point had the body been moved from the tomb? Before the examining angels, Munkar and Nekeer, had concluded their examination or after? In the latter case the soul might have already departed, either to the place where good souls await the Last Day or to the prison where evil souls are confined to await their doom. In each case the prayers would need to be different.

  The issue was carefully weighed and, as is often the case with such issues, not easily resolved. Meanwhile, the girl remained parted from her tomb. Might not the visiting angels grow impatient?

  Agreement was eventually reached on a brief ceremony at the grave followed by a Sebhah at the father’s house. Here there was another difficulty, for Ali Marwash wanted a full-scale Sebhah whereas the local Imam thought that was unnecessary, the deceased having already had the benefit of a substantial Sebhah and, anyway, being only a woman. They compromised on a reduced Sebhah, which, in Owen’s view, was just as well, for a full Sebhah lasted four hours. He had intended going only to the ceremony at the grave but when the palm branch had been broken over the tomb and the fiki had recited the last prayer Ali Marwash had approached him and invited him to be present at the Sebhah.

  Owen felt strongly as a matter of principle that it was important for people like him to join in the activities of the community when asked; otherwise the British would never gain acceptance. Besides, he felt great sympathy with the girl’s shattered parents. He thanked Ali Marwash and said he would be glad to accept.

  Back at the house he squatted cross-legged on a cushion and was fed pastries and sweet cakes while the fiki settled to his work. There was only one fiki; that had been part of the compromise. In a rich man’s house there might be as many as ten. It was the fiki who had participated in the ceremonies on the previous occasion.

  He registered Owen’s presence and turned away slightly. Owen shrugged. He didn’t have to be liked by everybody. He remembered seeing the fiki in the courtyard. On that occasion, as on this, he had seemed to be organizing the proceedings. He was obviously a prominent figure in the neighborhood, although the post of fiki was not in itself especially important.

  The fiki recited several chapters from the Koran and then passed on to the prayers, first taking up the sebhah itself, which was a necklace of a thousand beads. Some of the prayers had to be repeated—as many as a hundred times—and the beads were used for counting the repetitions.

  Owen knew his Koran but not, of course, as well as the other guests, many of whom knew at least the opening Suras by heart, having learned them as children in the local kuttub, or school.

  There were several children in the room and as the evening wore on, and the supply of cakes increased, they became more and more in evidence. When the fiki had finished his recitations and the occasion had turned into a general wake or party, the little boys flitted among the guests, offered sweet-meats by all and sundry.

  Owen overheard Georgiades talking to one of the boys.

  “You look a big chap,” said Georgiades. “Do you go to the kuttub yet?”

  “Oh yes,” said the boy, “I’ve been going for a long time now.”

  “Does the master beat you?”

  “Sometimes.” The boy pointed to the fiki. “He’s my master.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, there’s another master most of the time, but he’s the one I like.”

  “He comes to teach you your Suras, does he?”

  “That’s right. I like him because sometimes he gets us invited to sing at funerals and then we get lots of sweets and cakes.”

  “Did you sing at this funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  “The first time? When the body was carried to the tomb?”

  “Yes. But I might have done anyway because my uncle is Ali Marwash’s cousin.”

  “There were several of you from the kuttub, were there?”

  “Yes. We had to leave the kuttub early. The funeral was brought forward.”

  “Oh?” said Georgiades, surprised. “Why was that?”

  “I don’t know. It was going to be later but then the fiki came in and told us we had to leave at once.”

  “Which is your kuttub?” asked Georgiades, with a sudden interest in his voice.

  “It’s in the fountain house.”

  “Near the Souk Al-Gadira?”

  “That’s right,” said the boy. “Do you know it?”

  “Very well,” said Georgiades, looking at Owen. “Very well.”

  ***

  “It is strange how the threads of our lives are intertwined,” Owen said to Ali Marwash. “Do I not remember seeing your daughter’s procession on the day she was first taken to the Place of Tombs? I was searching for those very guns at the time. It was near the Souk Al-Gadira.”

  He mentioned the date.

  “Why, yes,” said Ali Marwash, “that was the day. It may have been so.”

  “It was late in the morning, shortly before noon.”

  “That would be about right,” Ali Marwash agreed.

  “I remember it,” said Owen, “because I was a little surprised. Was it not early for a funeral?”

  “It was brought forward,” said Ali, “by order of the Imam. Why, I don’t know.”

  ***

  “Hurry is the curse of the age,” Owen said to the Imam, “and what does it profit us? We but hasten to our graves.”

  “True,” said the Imam, much struck. “Very true.”

  “Take this poor girl, for instance. Was there any need to hurry her to the tomb? Might not the seed of all that later befell her lie in that very despatch? For surely God does not like the unseemly.”

  “Was she hurried to the tomb?” asked the Imam.

  “Was not the funeral brought forward?”

  “Was it? I don’t remember.”

  “You did not order it to be brought forward?”

  “No,” said the Imam, “why should I do that? These things, as you properly remarked, should not be hurried. The funeral, I now remember, was indeed brought forward. But that was nothing to do with me. I was just told about it.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The fiki, I think.”

  ***

  “I knew I’d seen him before,” said Georgiades. “It was when I was checking up at the kuttub. I saw him talking to the master.”

  “Nikos said there was a fiki there who was organizing things.”

  “Quite a lot of things. More than we thought.”

  “How did he do it? He would have had to move fast.”

  “Yes. He must have got the funeral procession on the road immediately he heard you were searching that area. Tacked a couple of spare donkeys on the back, I expect. Then, when he got to the school, he collected the arms—”

  “How did he do that? Wouldn’t the kids have seen him?”

  “He probably sent them out to play. Anyway, he loaded up the donkeys and rejoined the procession—”

  “I saw that procession. It passed just by us. Right under our noses!”

  “—and went with it to the Place of Tombs. If the donkeys were at the back it would have been easy to drop them off somewhere and then go back for them.”

  “He wouldn’t have had time. He had to go on to the house.”

  “It wouldn’t have taken him long, though I agree he had to hurry. In fact, that probably explains it. Why he dumped the guns in the gir
l’s tomb. He didn’t have time to look for anywhere else. He probably just dropped behind and said he’d catch up. And then he had to work very fast.”

  “That might explain the body, too.”

  “Yes. He started putting the guns in and then he found there wasn’t enough room. He had to choose between the guns and the girl. Well, the guns were important and the girl was only a girl—that’s how he would see it—so out she came.”

  “He couldn’t leave her, though.”

  “No, he had to get rid of her in a hurry. How he hit on that other tomb, I don’t know. Perhaps he saw it had recently been disturbed and reckoned it would be quicker to get into. He didn’t have much time.”

  “It was smart work.”

  “He’s a smart bloke.”

  “Well, we’ve got him now. And with any luck we’ll get his friends, too, and put a stop to arms smuggling for a year or two at least in this part of Cairo.”

  Georgiades grunted agreement. They walked on in silence for some way. Georgiades, however, was still thinking over Owen’s remarks. “More than that, perhaps,” he said, “more than that. We’ve been assuming he hit on the other tomb by accident. But suppose it wasn’t accident? Suppose he knew about it already?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Suppose he did?” Owen said to Mahmoud. “I don’t see where that gets us.”

  “I do,” said Mahmoud, springing to his feet. “I do.”

  They were sitting in a café outside the Law Courts. Although it was noon the café was three-quarters empty. Most other lawyers had finished for the day and gone home for their siesta.

  Not Mahmoud, however. He never took a siesta and was always mildly surprised that the rest of the world could bear to take the time off work.

  He didn’t take lunch, either. They were merely drinking coffee.

  It had been stiflingly hot in the Courts that morning and when he had come out to meet Owen his face had seemed lined with fatigue.

  Now, however, he was pacing about excitedly, oblivious of the other patrons of the café, most of whom, admittedly, were lawyers and used to Mahmoud’s eccentricities.

  “I do,” he said, almost jumping with pleasure.

  He strode round the table and came face to face with Owen.