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

by Michael Pearce

  “Our friend keeps his feet on the ground,” he said, “in one sense at least.”

  He turned to Hamid.

  “So you watched,” he said. “Tell us what you saw.”

  “The men went on beating the boy until they tired. Then one of the men said: ‘That is our work well done. Let us go now to the bath house and claim our reward.’ ”

  Owen interrupted him.

  “ ‘The bath house,’ you said? The hammam?”

  “Yes, effendi. They said they would go to the hammam to claim their reward.”

  “I don’t suppose,” said Owen, discounting the possibility even before he had said it, “that you followed them to the hammam?”

  Hamid traced a long circle with his toe. Reluctantly he raised his eyes to Owen’s.

  “Effendi,” he said. “I did.”

  “What?”

  “The boy was all right,” Hamid pleaded. “I heard him groan. There was a woman by, with onions, and I said: ‘Stay with the boy. His friend comes shortly with aid.’ ”

  “Hamid!” said Owen, awestruck. “You have done well.”

  “It was all right to leave the boy?” asked Hamid anxiously. “Not to watch?”

  “On this occasion,” said Owen, “it was all right.”

  “He would not have been able to do anything,” Hamid reassured him. “He had been well beaten.”

  “It does not matter,” said Owen.

  It did, however, matter to Hamid.

  “I would not have left him otherwise,” he assured them.

  “On this occasion,” said Owen, “it was justified.”

  Hamid was inclined to pursue the point further but Georgiades laid his hand on the Arab’s arm.

  “Tell us, ya Hamid,” he said conversationally, “what happened at the hammam?”

  Hamid, happier now, stopped tracing patterns on the floor with his toe and looked up brightly.

  “When we got to the hammam,” he said, “the men went in.” “Yes?” said Owen, with sinking heart.

  “I waited outside lest they suspect I was following them.”

  “You did not go in?”

  “Oh no, effendi!” Hamid was shocked. “They would have seen me. Besides, it would have cost two piastres.”

  “So you waited outside.”

  “Yes, effendi.” Hamid beamed.

  “And then?”

  “Then the men came out,” said Hamid, “and went away. But I did not follow them this time.”

  A thought struck him.

  “Should I have followed them, effendi?” he asked anxiously. “No,” said Owen, resigned. “No, Hamid. You had done your best.”

  “Thank you, effendi,” said Hamid, bursting with pride.

  Owen took a deep breath.

  “So you did not see the man they talked with,” he said, more in confirmation than in hope.

  “Only when he came out with them,” said Hamid.

  “You saw him, then?”

  “Yes, effendi?” said Hamid, surprised.

  Owen fought to keep himself in control.

  “What did he look like? What did he say?” he snapped.

  Then, realizing that two questions at a time were probably too much for Hamid, he calmed down.

  “Tell me, ya Hamid,” he said, in as relaxed a tone as he was capable of, “did you by any chance hear him talking with the men?”

  “Yes, effendi,” said Hamid, beginning to worry that he had said or done something wrong.

  “Can you remember what was said?”

  “The men were grumbling. One said to another: ‘Fifty piastres is not enough.’ Another said: ‘He promised us more.’ The man said: ‘That is all you get until I know you have done your work properly. Come to me tomorrow and I will give you the other fifty.’ The men went on grumbling but he would not give them more. ‘We will come back tomorrow,’ they said. Then they went away.”

  Georgiades patted Hamid on the arm.

  “You have done well,” he said, “to remember all that. Has he not?” he appealed to Owen.

  “He has done very well,” Owen agreed, “and shall be rewarded for it. I do not suppose,” he said, looking at Georgiades, “that he also heard where these bad men were going to meet.”

  “At the hammam,” said Hamid promptly.

  “At the hammam? Indeed!” said Georgiades. “And I don’t suppose,” he went on, “that they said when this would be?”

  “Oh yes they did!” said Hamid, confident again now. “At sunset tomorrow.”

  “Would you know the men if you saw them?” Owen asked.

  “Oh yes, effendi,” said Hamid fervently.

  “And that other? The one they talked with?”

  “Oh yes, effendi!”

  “Then you have done well!” said Owen, patting him on the shoulder.

  “You have done very well!” said Georgiades. “And I shall speak to the senior orderly about you and he will see that you eat well and drink well tonight. Then tomorrow you will help us and for that you will receive double pay. Which you richly deserve!”

  He shepherded Hamid off along the corridor. A little later he came back mopping his brow.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I feel as if the heat is getting to me. I have this dream: I am the one sane man in a world of madmen. Or vice versa.”

  “For God’s sake don’t let him lose himself,” said Owen.

  “I won’t!” Georgiades promised. “Not till after. Then I’ll let him lose himself quick.”

  “Keep him here overnight.”

  “And all tomorrow as well. I’ve told Osman not to let him go out, not even for a pee. I’ve told Abdul Kassem not to let him out of his sight.”

  Owen went across to the window and pushed open the shutters. The cool night air came in. He kept his face there for a moment.

  “There is a faint chance that he won’t mess it up tomorrow,” he told the shutters. “Only faint. I’ve been in Cairo long enough to know that.”

  “Faint,” Georgiades agreed. “But a chance.”

  Nikos stuck his head in.

  “There’s a message for you to ring your friend in the Parquet,” he said.

  Nikos did not approve of such relations. He was a traditionalist as far as the department was concerned.

  He looked pointedly at his watch.

  “I am going home.”

  “It was a warning,” said Nuri.

  He had asked to see them when they arrived at the house the following morning. Their purpose was really to see Ahmed but Nuri’s man had waylaid them.

  He received them this time in a small downstairs room he evidently used as a study or library. The walls, unusually for Arab rooms, were lined with books, most of them in French. There was a desk with carved ivory paperweights, cut in the figure of nude women. There was a Persian carpet on the floor, and there were two deep, comfortable, leather armchairs.

  Nuri motioned to them to sit in the armchairs. He himself used the high-backed wooden chair at the desk. This gave him the advantage of height. The squat, square form seemed to loom over them.

  “You don’t think it was a student quarrel, then?” said Mahmoud, who had asked for Owen’s company. Owen sensed that Mahmoud found Nuri difficult to handle. They were both Egyptians but different kinds of Egyptian. Nuri was of the old, feudal society, a grand seigneur in a system that had been corrupt for centuries, aware only of the levers of pleasure and power, experienced, cynical, blase, interested, a little, in Mahmoud as a bright, up-and-coming new man, but ultimately dismissive of the powerless. For Mahmoud, Nuri represented everything that stood in the way of a New Egypt: conservatism, venality, a disillusion which cut efforts to reform off at the knees before they even got started, power to block but not to do. There was, too, the social difference between them, which Mahmoud denied but could not help being sensitive to and which Nuri knew how to assert without lifting a finger. Mahmoud had not been at ease on their last visit and he was not at ease now. He needed Owen for assurance, or per
haps it was insurance.

  “No,” said Nuri, “I don’t think it was a student quarrel.”

  “You think it was directed at you?”

  “Of course.”

  He looked at them seriously. He was a different man today, more the elder statesman, less the old roue. Owen suspected, however, that Nuri was a man of many parts.

  “Through striking at my son they strike at me. And they strike,” he said somberly, “where I am most vulnerable.”

  Was this another part, Owen wondered: the loving father? Not entirely, he decided. Nuri genuinely seemed to have a soft spot for the boy; perhaps, in this male-oriented society, because he was a boy.

  “We are doing what we can,” said Mahmoud reassuringly.

  “Yes,” said Nuri sceptically. “And meanwhile?”

  Mahmoud caught the tone and flushed slightly. He and Nuri always seemed to rub each other up the wrong way. Owen thought he saw traces of woodenness beginning to appear in Mahmoud’s face. Nuri was exactly the sort of person he was likely to react against.

  “Did you have anything in mind?” Owen asked Nuri. He thought it best to intervene.

  “I hoped you would have something in mind,” said Nuri. “Haven’t you?”

  “That depends,” said Owen.

  “Really?” said Nuri. “On what?”

  Instead of answering, Owen said: “You could always get him a bodyguard.”

  “I have suggested that. He won’t have it. For some strange reason he confuses a bodyguard with a nursemaid.”

  Owen could just imagine the touchy Ahmed’s response.

  “It is difficult being a rich man’s son,” Mahmoud put in unexpectedly.

  Nuri looked at him quickly.

  “Yes,” he said, with a slight touch of surprise as if he had not expected Mahmoud to be so perceptive, or sympathetic. “Yes, I am inclined to forget that.”

  He turned to Owen.

  “Couldn’t you put a man on him?” he asked. “Unobtrusively, I mean?”

  Uncomfortable visions of Hamid danced before Owen’s eyes.

  “It wouldn’t necessarily help.”

  “If it’s a question of money-?” said Nuri.

  “It isn’t. It’s a question of men.”

  “As I said,” Nuri picked him up with a flash of his old self, “it’s a question of money.”

  Owen laughed, as he was expected to.

  “You might do better than me,” he said. “Still, I’ll think about it.” “At least he wasn’t badly hurt,” said Mahmoud.

  It was meant encouragingly, but again it came out awkwardly. Nuri looked at him.

  “This time,” he said.

  “Will there be a next time?” asked Owen. “If you’re right about it being a warning?”

  Nuri was amused.

  “Will I heed the warning, you mean?”

  “If you did, there might not be a next time.”

  “True,” said Nuri.

  “What exactly are you being warned to do or not to do?”

  This time Nuri laughed right out. He put his hand on Owen’s arm. “Not to meddle, mon cher. ”

  “And are you meddling?”

  “Of course!” said Nuri, with all his old ebullience. “Of course!”

  Ahmed, however, was far from ebullient. He lay in a dark room, the shutters drawn, with a single sheet over him because of the heat and a Coptic nurse- female, and therefore borrowed from the European hospital-in attendance. He was lying on his side with his back turned towards them and remained like that when they came in.

  Mahmoud went round to the other side of the bed, drew up a chair and sat down facing him, like a friendly doctor, and began questioning him about what had happened. At first Ahmed replied only in faint monosyllables but gradually, as he became involved in the recitation of his wrongs, his voice took on greater strength and he began to reply at more length, sitting up in the bed so as to emphasize his points indignantly. The sheet slipped off his shoulders showing the purple bruises on his back.

  Owen had seen the doctor’s report. There was nothing broken, no damage apparent other than severe external bruising. And all the bruises were on his back and limbs. That was unlikely to be an accident, Owen thought. The men had been instructed to give him a good beating and no more. His face was untouched.

  But Ahmed’s back was not the only thing bruised. His pride was very much dented. He could hardly bear to talk about the blows. Indeed, Mahmoud found it very hard to get him to say anything precise about the incident at all. He denounced his friend for deserting him, complained about the slowness of the police in coming and their general lack of interest when they got there, and criticized the hospital for its reception of him and treatment afterwards.

  Mahmoud broke through the flood of rhetoric eventually: Did Ahmed think that the attack might be a warning?

  Ahmed stopped in mid-flight.

  “A warning?” he said. “A warning?” He seemed to freeze. “Why should it be a warning? Why do you ask me if it was a warning?” He regarded Mahmoud suspiciously.

  “I thought-” Mahmoud began. But Ahmed interrupted.

  “It is not a warning,” he said. “How could it be a warning? It was a criminal attack.” His voice rose. “A criminal attack! That is all!”

  “What was the point of the attack?”

  “To rob me!” Ahmed cried excitedly. “Yes, to rob me! They were thieves! Robbers!”

  Had they, in fact, stolen anything from him?

  “How do I know? No, they took nothing! Perhaps the police stopped them! My friend came back in time! How do I know? Why do you ask me these questions?” he shouted.

  The nurse gave Mahmoud a reproachful look and came forward. Ahmed threw himself back on the pillow and glared at them angrily.

  Mahmoud patiently began again.

  “He did think it was a warning, didn’t he?” said Owen, as he and Mahmoud walked back beneath the pepper trees.

  “He wasn’t sure,” said Mahmoud. “But the possibility was enough to scare him silly.”

  Someone else thought it was a warning, too. Shortly after Owen got back to his office he received a phone call from Ahmed’s half-sister, Zeinab.

  “Have you heard?” she asked. “My brother has been attacked.” “Yes,” said Owen. "I’ve just been to see him.”

  “Oh.” Then, after a moment: “He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “He’ll be all right in a day or two.”

  “Good,” she said, relieved.

  Owen was quite pleased that she looked to him for reassurance. “It’s linked with this, isn’t it?” she said.

  He wondered what she meant by “this.” Her father or the grenades? Or both? The Nuri case was slipping into the background so far as he was concerned. It would have to wait till after the Carpet. “I expect so,” he said.

  “Why would anyone want to attack Ahmed?” she asked. “Him of all people?”

  “Why of all people?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Because he’s not worth attacking, I suppose.”

  “Your father thought it might be intended as a warning.”

  He heard the quick intake of breath.

  “To him,” Owen said.

  There was a little pause. Then she said: “I thought it was a warning, too. To me.” She laughed a little shakily.

  “Because of last night? I doubt it. Unless they had advance knowledge. The attack on your brother happened at about the same time.” “That’s what I worked out,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” said Owen. “If there was a message, it was meant for your father.”

  “Thank you!” said Zeinab tartly. “That is very reassuring!” “Sorry!” Owen apologized. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “No.”

  He tried again.

  “Do you think your father was right? That it was a warning? Directed at him?”

  “He’s usually right in such matters,” she said.

  “I don’t suppose you�
��ve any idea,” said Owen casually, “what might have prompted such a warning?”

  “No. He’s always up to things.”

  “That’s more or less what he said. Only it’s not very helpful.”

  “It might be protection,” she offered.

  “That’s what we thought.”

  “He is always getting demands for money. Usually he knows who to pay and who not to. Perhaps he got it wrong this time.”

  “You wouldn’t know who’s been doing some asking recently, would you?”

  “No. Tademah?”

  “I’ve looked through some of the letters he’s received recently. Nothing from Tademah among them.”

  “Wasn’t there?” She sounded surprised. “I thought there was,” she said.

  “Not among the ones I was shown,” said Owen, remembering suddenly who had shown him them.

  “Well, I’m not sure,” she said, “but I thought there was. Perhaps it’s just that they were on my mind. But it would fit, though, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Owen. “It would fit.”

  The hammam, like all the old hammams, had a facade of red and white stone. With its complex panelling and its fantastic arabesques it looked very like a small mosque, Dervish perhaps, except that its entrance was unusually narrow and had its door recesses painted green. If it had been a bath for women it would have had a towel hung across the sunken entrance.

  Owen ducked down and entered a pleasant, spacious room with several broad, marble-topped couches on which patrons were sitting in various stages of undress, already embarked on the main purpose of their visit, which was not to bathe but to chat. Owen went over to one of the couches and began to undress. An attendant brought him towels and clogs and stood by to receive his clothes and valuables. Owen wound one of the towels about his waist and the other around his head and went through into the next room.

  This was the first of the warm chambers and in the winter when the Cairenes thought it cold, bathers would undress there and not in the outer room. Today, however, it was empty and he went straight on into the main bath room.

  This was a large, square room with a marble-paved depression in the middle in which there was a beautiful fountain of white marble. From it shot a high jet of very hot water, all around the depression, at the sides of the room, were low, marble-covered couches. The couches were set back in Moorish arches which pointed in to carry the central dome, and there were other, smaller domes directly above the couches with little glazed holes in them through which the light came.