The Mamur Zapt and the return of the Carpet mz-1

by Michael Pearce

  Owen enjoyed it. He lived alone, and in the evening, when he was not at the club or at the opera, he would often sit in a cafe. When he had first come to Egypt he had done it deliberately, often going to a cafe with his Arabic teacher after a lesson to drink coffee and to talk. His teacher, the Aalim Aziz, had instructed him in far more than the language during those civilized discussions of all aspects of the Arab past and present, discussions which continued late into the night and usually finished with everyone in the cafe involved.

  In his first six months in Egypt Owen had gone to Aziz for instruction every day; and afterwards, when by usual European standards he spoke the language well, he would still meet him at least twice a week, not so much now for formal instruction as to continue discussion with one who had become a friend. Even now, when his work tended to isolate him, he still met Aziz regularly.

  Having acquired the taste for cafe society, Owen kept it. Indeed, it was one of the things that made him prefer Egypt to India. Unlike many English Arabists, he was a man of the city rather than the desert. It was common among the British in Egypt to regard the urban Egyptian as a corrupted, degenerate version of the more sympathetic traditional Bedouin. Owen, on the other hand, was more at home with the young, educated, urban Egyptian, with people like Mahmoud.

  He was waiting for Mahmoud now. After their experience that morning at the barracks, he had been anxious to contact Mahmoud at once to apologize. But when he had rung up Mahmoud to suggest a meeting he had found him off-hand, unwilling. Owen had pressed, however, and in the end, reluctantly, the Egyptian had agreed.

  They had arranged to meet in the cafe that evening. Instinctively Owen felt that to be better. If they had met at the Bab el Khalk or at the Parquet he had a feeling that Mahmoud would have retreated into his shell. In the more natural atmosphere of the cafe they might do better.

  But when Mahmoud arrived, the strategy did not seem to work. Owen apologized for the morning. Mahmoud brushed it aside. It was nothing, he said. How had the interview with the sergeant gone? When Owen told him, he brushed that aside, too. He hadn’t really expected anything different. Owen had done what he could, and he, Mahmoud, was grateful. The man was coming out on Thursday and couldn’t really be expected to talk. It was not Owen’s fault.

  Which was all very well, but Owen knew that things weren’t right. When they had first met, and throughout the whole of the day they had spent together, they had got on unusually well. Owen had taken an immediate liking to the Egyptian and he felt that Mahmoud had taken a liking to him. He had found himself responding sympathetically to the Egyptian and understanding what he was after without it needing to be spelt out, and he had felt that Mahmoud was reading him in the same way. This evening, though, there was none of that. Mahmoud was unfailingly courteous, but something was missing. The outgoing friendliness that had characterized him previously seemed to have gone.

  In the time that he had been in Egypt Owen had got used to the way in which Arab relationships varied in intensity. Arabs seemed to blow hot and blow cold. They invested their relationships with more emotion than did the stolid English and so their relationships were more volatile. Owen could understand this; perhaps, he told himself wryly, because the Welsh were not altogether dissimilar. Perhaps, more particularly, his own intuitive nature made him especially sensitive to such things.

  In an effort to put Mahmoud more at ease, he switched into Arabic. Mahmoud switched back into English.

  The conversation was at the level of exchanging commonplaces. Owen knew that when Mahmoud had finished his coffee he would go.

  Some shoe-boys were larking about near their table. One of them threw a brush at another. The brush missed and fell under the table. The boy scurried to retrieve it and almost upset their coffee. They grabbed at the table together and cursed simultaneously. The boy fled laughing, chased by a furious waiter. Owen smiled, and thought he saw an answering flicker on Mahmoud’s face.

  Deliberately he moved his chair round so that he sat beside Mahmoud, closer to him. Arab conventions of personal territory were different from European ones. What to an Englishman seemed keeping a proper distance, to an Arab seemed cold and unfriendly.

  “Your day has been hard?” he asked sympathetically.

  At last he got a real response.

  Mahmoud looked round at him.

  “Not as hard as yours yesterday,” he said bitterly. “Although perhaps you did not find it so.”

  Owen knew that Mahmoud was referring to the students.

  The remark surprised him. He knew, of course, that this kind of political policing was resented by Egyptians, but had thought that as a member of the Parquet Mahmoud must have come to terms with it. He wondered suddenly what Mahmoud’s own political position was. A bright young Parquet lawyer on the rise might well have political ambitions; and if he did, they might well be on the Nationalist side.

  “I was not involved directly,” he said slowly, “although of course I knew of it.”

  “Perhaps I should not have spoken,” said Mahmoud.

  “No, that’s all right,” said Owen. He smiled. “It’s just that I am trying to think of an answer.”

  He pondered for a moment and then decided to go for honesty.

  “The answer is,” he said, “that I did not find it hard. It was regrettable, certainly, but a necessity. Given the situation in Egypt. Of course, you may not want to grant the situation. I would understand that.”

  A little to his surprise, Mahmoud seemed to find the answer satisfactory. He relaxed visibly and waved to the waiter for more coffee.

  “I appreciate your answer,” he said. “And in case you’re wondering, let me tell you I personally am not a revolutionary. Nationalist, yes, reforming, even radical, yes; but not a revolutionary. I would like the British out. But meanwhile…” He sighed. “Meanwhile, for you and for me, there are necessities.”

  He paused while the waiter filled their cups.

  “However,” he said, “I must tell you I would not want to grant the situation.”

  “That,” said Owen, “I can quite understand.”

  He brooded a little.

  “I can understand,” he said presently, ‘‘a bit at any rate, because I myself am not English.”

  “Not English?” said Mahmoud, astonished.

  “Welsh.”

  “Welsh? Pays Galles?”

  Owen nodded.

  “I have never met anyone from Wales before,” said Mahmoud. “You probably wouldn’t know if you had. They’re very like Englishmen. Smaller, darker. Not enough to stand out. But there is a difference. In the part of Wales I come from,” said Owen, “most people do not speak English.”

  “Vraiment?”

  Mahmoud hesitated.

  “But-you speak English very well. How-?”

  “We spoke both Welsh and English at home,” said Owen. “My father normally spoke English. He wanted me to grow up to be an Englishman. My mother spoke Welsh.”

  “And she wanted you to grow up to be a Welshman?” asked Mahmoud.

  “Probably,” said Owen, laughing. “She was hopelessly romantic. She wanted Wales to be an independent country again.”

  “And that seems romantic to you?”

  “In the case of Wales, yes.”

  Mahmoud considered.

  “In the case of Egypt, too,” he said at length. “Romantic. Definitely romantic.”

  Their rapport quite restored, they continued happily drinking coffee.

  At the other end of the cafe a party broke up with the usual prolonged Arabic farewells. Most of the party went off together across the square, but one of them made his way along the pavement in their direction, skirting the gambling and waving aside the shoe-boys. As he passed their table his eye caught Owen’s. It was Fakhri.

  He stopped in his tracks.

  “The Mamur Zapt?” he cried. “And-” taking in Mahmoud-“the Parquet? Together? There must have been a revolution! And no one has told me!”

  �
��Come and join us,” Owen invited, “and we’ll tell you.”

  Fakhri dropped into a chair.

  “I don’t want to interrupt you,” he said, “unless you’re talking business.”

  “Business and pleasure. Mostly pleasure.”

  “Ah,” said Fakhri, waving a hand back at the dispersed party. “Like me. Pleasure and business. Mostly business.”

  “What is your business?” asked Owen curiously.

  “He has not heard,” said Fakhri sorrowfully.

  “Fakhri Bey is a distinguished editor,” said Mahmoud.

  “Oh, that Fakhri!” said Owen, whose own business was to know the political press. “My apologies. I read your editorials with pleasure. Sometimes.”

  “I am afraid you may not read tomorrow’s with pleasure,” said Fakhri.

  “The students?” Owen shrugged.

  “Quite so,” said Fakhri. “Let us forget about them.”

  He and Owen both waved for more coffee simultaneously.

  “At least what you say,” said Owen, “will be less predictable than what I read in al Liwa. ”

  Fakhri made a face.

  “They say everything at the top of their voice,” he said. “There is no light and shade.”

  “What’s happening at al Liwa,” asked Owen, “now that Mustafa Kamil has died?”

  Mustafa Kamil, the brilliant young politician who had built up the National Party virtually from scratch, had died a month or two previously, from a heart attack.

  “They have not sorted themselves out yet. All the top posts keep changing, the editorship among them.”

  “The complexion of the paper doesn’t, though,” said Owen.

  “It could. It depends on who wins control of the party. If it’s el Gazzari it will become very religious. Crazily so. If it’s Jemal it will go in for heavy doses of revolutionary theory.”

  Owen sighed. “Neither will make it more readable,” he said. “They lack your touch.”

  Fakhri tried not to look pleased.

  “See how expertly he works,” he said to Mahmoud. “This is how the Mamur Zapt gets the press eating out of his hand.”

  “The Egyptian press,” said Owen, “is the most independent in the world. Unfortunately.”

  They all laughed.

  A boy went past sprinkling water to keep down the dust. Fakhri pulled his legs back hurriedly. For a little while there was the lovely, distinctive smell of wet sand.

  “How is Nuri Pasha?” asked Fakhri. “I called on him two days ago to express my sympathy but his Berberine told me that he was talking to you.”

  “He is well,” said Mahmoud.

  “Praise be to God!” said Fakhri automatically.

  He hesitated.

  “And how are you getting on-?” He broke off. “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask!”

  His laugh allowed the brush-off; but he cocked his head attentively, inviting information.

  Owen decided to play.

  “We hold the man, of course,” he said.

  “Ah, yes, but-”

  “Those behind?”

  Fakhri nodded.

  “Not yet.”

  Fakhri affected, or showed, disappointment.

  Owen decided to try a move of his own.

  "The attempt did not come as a surprise to you,” he said, more as a statement than a question.

  “No,” said Fakhri. “It did not.”

  “Denshawai?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just Denshawai?”

  Fakhri looked surprised.

  “So far as I know,” he said.

  “The reason why I ask,” said Owen, “is that he doesn’t seem to have been directly involved.”

  “More directly than he likes to pretend now,” said Fakhri.

  “OK. But surely a minor figure?”

  “The civil servant responsible was only a minor figure and he was the first to be shot.”

  “I always thought that was in the heat of the moment when the sentences were first announced,” said Owen. Then, after a pause: “You said ‘first’?”

  “Yes,” said Fakhri, “I did.”

  “You think there are more to come?”

  “All Cairo,” said Fakhri, “thinks there are more to come.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  “I really must go,” he said, getting to his feet. “I have to see the first copy as it comes off the press.”

  “I shall read it tomorrow with interest,” said Owen.

  ‘‘If I were you,” said Fakhri, “I would read tomorrow’s al Liwa also. I think you will find that full of interest, too.”

  CHAPTER 5

  When Nikos arrived in the office the next morning he found Owen already there, finishing a memo. It read:

  The Mamur Zapt has received unconfirmed reports of a disturbing increase in the number of thefts from military installations in recent months. These include thefts of guns, ammunition and other equipment which could be used for offensive purposes. Clearly there could be serious implications for civil security if these got into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, such thefts are treated purely as an internal matter by Military Security and not reported to the Mamur Zapt, with the result that he has been unable to investigate the possibility of links with known terrorist organizations or establish whether a pattern is emerging. No analysis has been made by Military Security. In view of the possible threat to civil order and the likelihood that senior civil and military personnel could be at risk, it is recommended that:

  1. an independent investigation be carried out as a matter of urgency into current security at military installations.

  2. the Mamur Zapt be informed within twenty-four hours whenever a theft of arms occurs and given a full account of the circumstances in which the theft occurred.

  3. Military Security be instructed to supply the Mamur Zapt with a complete list of thefts which had occurred over the past year.

  “What’s all this?” said Nikos, reading it through. “ ‘Unconfirmed Reports?’ Where did you get all this stuff from? It’s not come through the office.”

  “No,” Owen agreed.

  “Of course, you’ve a right to use alternative channels,” said Nikos huffily.

  “I haven’t been using alternative channels,” said Owen. “I made it up.”

  “You what?”

  “Made it up. To fix that bastard, Brooker,” Owen explained.

  “It isn’t true?”

  “Now look what you’ve done!” said Georgiades, who had come into the room at the same time as Nikos. “You’ve shocked him! Poor, innocent soul!” he said to Nikos, resting a fatherly hand on him.

  “Never mind my innocent soul!” snapped Nikos. “What the hell is going on?”

  Nikos rarely swore.

  “I’ve told you,” said Owen reasonably.

  “You’re doing this just to get even with Brooker?”

  Owen nodded. Since coming to Egypt he had discovered that he had something of a bent for administrative politics.

  Nikos took a moment to gather himself together.

  “All right, then,” he said, dumping the day’s newspapers on Owen’s desk.

  “I hope you know what you are doing,” he said, as he went out.

  “So this is how one gets to be Mamur Zapt!” said Georgiades. He shook his head, marvelling. “Ah, what a thing it is to lack scruple! I’ve often wondered what it is that’s been holding me back.”

  He followed Nikos off down the corridor chuckling.

  Owen turned his attention to the newspapers. Every morning when he got in he read them all: all the Arabic ones, all the French ones and all the English ones, that is. Georgiades read the Greek ones and Nikos the Coptic, Armenian and Italian ones. Owen’s legal adviser read the Turkish ones, which were especially important. Another experienced man read the Jewish ones.

  Nikos also read the London Times, the Morning Post and the Illustrated London News, although Owen assured him they were of no help at all.
/>   Owen read for “feel” only. The papers would be read again, more thoroughly, by the censors, who would pick up cases where action was unavoidable and alert him to anything he had missed. Owen himself seldom remembered detail. His concern was rather to take the political temperature of the city.

  To do that meant taking several temperatures, not one. Cairo was a polyglot city of many communities. The bulk of its population, as elsewhere in Egypt, spoke Egyptian Arabic. But there were also sizeable communities of Greeks, Italians, French, Syrians, Armenians, English, Jews and Turks. The Turks had an importance out of proportion to their numbers because until recently they had supplied the ruling class and occupied most of the administrative and military positions. The language of administration, and certainly of the law, tended, however to be French, although English was taking over. French, too, was the language of upper-class Cairenes, reflecting their many links with French culture and society. Well-to-do Cairenes sent their children to French schools. Their wives looked naturally to Paris for their fashions. They themselves not only spoke French but thought French.

  To move with ease in Cairo society you really needed a command of three languages: Arabic, French and English. The polished young men about the British Agent managed this without difficulty. Many of the other British administrations were fairly at home in Arabic at least. Only the Army, lacking both Arabic and French, was completely isolated linguistically; linguistically, and therefore socially.

  Owen’s own Arabic was excellent, his French fair only, though a girl in Alexandria the previous year had improved it considerably.

  He read over the Arabic papers, keeping an eye open especially for anything that would support what Fakhri had said the night before. He found nothing to suggest that Fakhri’s foreboding was generally, or even widely shared. However, that did not make him discount Fakhri’s words altogether. The Egyptian might well be reflecting faithfully the views of the part of upper-middle-class Cairene society with which he was familiar. Such people might well see themselves as potential targets for attack and he might well be registering accurately their apprehension. So long as such views were restricted to them Owen did not mind. What would concern him would be if they showed signs of spreading to other people. Put ideas in people’s heads, Garvin might have said, and there’s always a chance that they will act on them.