The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Fatima, there is no need for an Englishman to speak for Salah. I will speak to my uncle and—’

  ‘Sabri has already spoken to him.’

  ‘He has already spoken to him?’

  ‘Yes. And your uncle denied him. With hot and foolish words.’

  ‘Fatima, I am sure this is a mistake. I will speak to my uncle and—’

  ‘Yasmin!’ said a stern voice from beyond the wall.

  ‘Come in, Osman Huq!’ called Sabri’s widow.

  ***

  Osman Huq came through the gates.

  ‘Yasmin,’ he said, ‘your aunt—’ He stopped, seeing Owen. ‘Yasmin,’ he said angrily, ‘have you been talking to a man?’

  ‘I have talked to him before.’

  ‘That is no answer! It is improper, immodest of you!’ He looked darkly at Sabri’s widow. ‘Have you no shame, woman, to allow—?’

  ‘It is not her fault,’ said Yasmin hastily. ‘She told me to stay in the house. But when I saw who she was talking to—’

  ‘No, Osman Huq,’ said Sabri’s widow, folding her arms, ‘no, I have no shame. Yasmin used to come to this house as a small girl and she is welcome now as a big one. And I have no sense of shame if she hears me now speaking to a man who helped me when you would not.’

  ‘Uncle—’

  ‘I came about the waquf,’ said Owen.

  ‘The waquf is no concern of yours,’ said Osman Huq coldly.

  ‘Quite right, Uncle—’

  ‘Then whose concern is it?’ asked Sabri’s widow. ‘If it is not yours either?’

  ‘What is right for the boy can be discussed another time.’

  ‘Ah, but, you see, I was discussing it now.’

  ‘Uncle, I am sure there was a mistake—’

  ‘Be silent, girl!’ He faced Owen. ‘Effendi, neither the waquf, nor the boy, nor this woman here, are any concern of yours. It would be best if you left. Now.’

  ‘Well, there, Uncle, I agree with you, but—’

  ‘Girl, will you be quiet!’ shouted Osman Huq furiously.

  ‘But,’ Yasmin continued doggedly, ‘I think it was wrong of you not to give Salah your support—’

  ‘Agree?’ roared Osman Huq, goaded beyond endurance. ‘Think? What do I care if you agree? What do I care what you think? A woman has no business to have thoughts. Much less a slip of a girl! A woman should have the thoughts of her husband and the sooner I get a husband for you—’

  ‘Osman Huq,’ said Sabri’s widow with dignity, ‘it is not for you to say who is welcome in my house. Nor to shout in my yard. I think it would be best if you left. Now.’

  Osman Huq pulled himself together.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Very well. I will remember this. And so will the Pasha. And as for you, Yasmin—!’

  Yasmin hastily scuttled ahead of him as he left the yard.

  ***

  ‘Well, that was telling him!’ said the villagers appreciatively. There was a little group of them gathered behind the wall. Owen saw them as he came through the gate.

  ‘He deserved it. Why couldn’t he speak up for Sabri’s boy?’

  ‘He doesn’t speak for the village these days. It’s all Pasha now.’

  ‘It always was.’

  ‘It’s got worse. Ever since the war started, the Pasha’s had no time for us. His mind is on other things, and where his mind is, so is Osman’s!’

  ‘You’d expect it, wouldn’t you, at a time like this? After all, blood is thicker than water.’

  ‘All the same, he could have spoken up for Sabri’s boy.’

  They saw Owen and invited him to join them for tea. They hadn’t forgotten his intervention on behalf of Ibrahim’s donkey. As he walked along with them he heard some of them talking behind him.

  ‘That girl’s a bit of a handful, isn’t she?’

  ‘A girl of spirit!’

  ‘Maybe, but who would want her for a wife?’

  ‘Perhaps Suleiman would. He’s a fine young man and not married yet.’

  ‘Me?’ said Suleiman, a thin, shy youth. He looked terrified.

  ‘I think she needs someone who is older. Someone with a bit of weight.’

  ‘To keep her down?’

  They all laughed.

  ‘He’d have a job!’

  ‘How does she come to know Sabri’s woman?’ Owen asked the man beside him.

  ‘Fatima was her wet nurse. The girl’s mother, you see, is Osman’s sister. She used to live here but went in to the city when she got married. Well, after the girl was born, she found she couldn’t give her enough milk so she brought her back out here and looked for a woman. She said that a village woman’s milk would be better than a city woman’s. Sabri’s wife had just lost her child—not Salah, it was an earlier one—so she took the girl on. Later, of course, when she had built up a bit of strength, her mother took her back to the city. But the girl has always remembered the one who nursed her. She comes back to see her every time she’s out here.’

  ‘You would have thought that might have counted with Osman when it came to Sabri’s boy,’ said another man. ‘But it didn’t.’

  They came to a house and trooped into the yard. It was big enough to take them all. They squatted round in a circle while cups were fetched and the kettle on the brazier brought to a boil.

  The men on the other side of the circle were still talking about Osman Huq.

  ‘I’ll bet Osman was surprised when Sabri said the Mamur Zapt would speak for him!’

  ‘He thought it was a lot of old nonsense until Sabri said he was actually going to see him. But when he heard that, I’ll bet he started thinking.’

  ‘He should have started thinking before.’ The men looked at Owen. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to bring it off, Effendi? Get this waquf for Salah?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I think so.’

  ‘It would be good if you could.’

  ‘It’s funny how it’s turned out,’ said another man, musing: ‘that Sabri should get his way in the end.’

  ***

  There was a tap on the gate and the donkey-barber slipped into the yard, to everyone’s surprise.

  ‘Hello, Anji! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I thought you were over at the Canal?’

  ‘And so I was.’

  ‘There aren’t any donkeys here, you know. They’re all over where you’ve just come from.’

  ‘The trouble is, the donkey-barbers are all there too. As I found when I got there.’

  ‘So you’ve come away? That was a mistake!’

  ‘Not as much of a one as you might think,’ said the donkey-barber, grinning. ‘I’ve been working my way back down the road clipping the donkeys before they got there!’

  There was a burst of laughter.

  ‘He’s a wily bastard, that Anji!’

  ‘But what’s all this?’ said the donkey-barber, looking round him. ‘What is happening in the village? The wise sit here, taking counsel with the Mamur Zapt, while Osman Huq, when I go to see him, sweeps me aside with a face like thunder!’

  ‘I’d go and see him tomorrow if I were you,’ said someone. ‘He’s just had a brush with Sabri’s woman.’

  ‘Sabri’s woman?’

  ‘You’ll be sorry you missed it, Anji. It was worth hearing.’

  ‘If she was telling him a few truths, then I’m sorry indeed.’

  ‘What were you going to see him about, Anji?’ asked someone curiously.

  ‘Will you believe it, I was actually trying to do him a favour? Somebody had given me a message for him. Well, he can bloody wait for it now.’

  The discussion moved back to the possible waquf. The donkey-barber listened intently. ‘If the Mamur Zapt can secure that for the boy,’ he said approvingly, ‘then that is good. What this
country needs is education.’

  It was a remark that was widely heard these days and could well have come from Mahmoud or Mohammed Sekhmet. Sabri, too, probably. But to hear it even from a donkey-barber’s lips was a little surprising. Donkey-barbers were not usually so solicitous of the nation’s well-being. He remarked as much to his neighbour.

  ‘Anji is interested in such things,’ the man said.

  ‘From where comes this interest?’

  ‘I do not know. He has always been like that.’ The man smiled. ‘And much good it has done him! He was thrown out of the madrissa for asking too many questions. Or perhaps knowing too many answers.’

  ‘As a boy was this?’

  ‘No, no. He was a teacher.’

  ‘And then became a donkey-barber? That is strange!’

  ‘He said it suited him and was what he wanted to do.’ The man smiled. ‘And that it was a job from which no one could dismiss him. He is a card, that man!’

  Owen looked up and saw that the donkey-barber was watching him.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said, with a mischievous grin, ‘since you are in the mood to do good, do you think you could put in a word for me at the Camel Market?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Owen. ‘I will tell them that if they seek a man who flies eagerly from where the work is, it is to Anji that they should turn.’

  The group roared with laughter.

  ‘In that case,’ said the donkey-barber, pretending to be cast down, ‘perhaps I shall not ask that the word come directly from the Mamur Zapt’s own lips but will make it my own. I shall say to all those I meet with on the road that they must get their donkeys shorn before they arrive at the Canal. By order of the Mamur Zapt.’

  ***

  Salah was jealously guarding his horse beneath the lebbek trees.

  ‘I have seen he has had water, Effendi,’ he said importantly.

  ‘That is good, for I have a long ride back.’

  Salah held the horse’s head for him.

  ‘Will you come again, Effendi?’ he said, almost wistfully.

  ‘No doubt. But perhaps I will see you in the city if you go to the great madrissa there.’

  ‘I would like that.’

  He walked along beside Owen as he rode to the end of the village.

  ‘Anji is here,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He says that soldiers will come to the village shortly and take all the men away.’

  ‘Not all.’

  ‘He says the omda will choose. And he says that when the turn comes, I must go into the desert and hide. For the omda will choose me.’

  ‘You are too young.’

  ‘Nevertheless, he says, the omda will choose me. For he will do what Osman bids him, and Osman does not like me.’

  ‘That is possible.’

  ‘It is because of my father. But Anji says, why should the sins of the father be visited on the child? And he bade me make sure I hid myself.’

  ‘It might be wise to do as he said.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As the boy walked along beside him, some of the flies gathered thickly on the horse’s flanks flew on to him, dotting his white galabeah and turban with black spots.

  ‘I would not mind fighting,’ the boy said. ‘But Anji says the men are wanted not to fight but to dig. Anyway, he said, it would be foolish to fight, for it is not Egypt’s quarrel, and we would be firing on our brothers.’

  He was silent for a moment, and then he said: ‘I would not want to dig. Digging is slave’s work. That is what my father used to say. He said that all in Egypt are slaves to the land, and it is the Pasha’s land, not theirs. He said that that was not for him, nor for me, either. That is why he wanted me to go to the madrissa in the city. “The madrissa costs much, but it buys freedom,” he said. “And that is right, for freedom should have a high price.”’

  ‘We will see if we can pay that price.’

  ‘I said to my father: “Father, I would prefer to ride with you among the Bedawin.” And he said, no, that it had been right for him, because he could not go to the madrissa, and there was no other way out; but it would not be right for me. “To think that freedom lies among the Bedawin,” he said, “is an illusion. For they are as bound as we are. They belong to the past. The world has moved on, and nowadays it is the effendi in the great offices who are the free men.”’

  ‘I said: “I would not like to work in an office, Father.” And he said: “Did I not say that freedom had a price?” He said that these days the Bedawin amounted to nothing, that no one in the desert could ever amount to anything. Even the Senussi, he said, amounted to nothing. They fought bravely against the Italians, he said, and they even managed to hold them; but the Italians were the future and they could not hold out against that. And it would be the same again now, he said. Their tents would cover the land but the British would prevail.’

  ‘It is not necessary for you to go into the great offices,’ said Owen. ‘The freedom that the madrissa gives is the freedom to choose.’

  Salah thought about it.

  ‘I will go to the madrissa, then.’

  ‘I will see to it quickly. It would be well if you were away from the village when the soldiers come.’

  ***

  Further along the river bank a fire was blazing. They were probably burning the husks, thought Owen. He could see a number of men there throwing things into the flames. It would be hot work on an afternoon like this.

  The track turned inland from the river, however, and there were two fields in between him and the pyre when he passed it. Ahead of him he could see some palms and a small, disused white building, an old shrine perhaps.

  He was just entering the palms when Yasmin stepped out onto the track in front of him.

  He brought his horse to a halt and then, as she went on standing firmly in his way, dismounted.

  ‘I wish to have words with you,’ said Yasmin.

  She led him under the trees and they sat down on a low wall in front of the shrine.

  ‘Why are you interested in Sabri?’ she said abruptly.

  ‘I was there when he was found.’

  Yasmin made an impatient gesture.

  ‘And he was coming to see me when he died,’ said Owen.

  ‘To report?’

  Owen considered.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Sabri did not exactly report.’

  ‘He was one of your men, though?’

  ‘Up to a point. If he came across any information that he thought would interest me, he would come to me.’

  ‘And you would pay for it?’

  ‘If I thought it was worthwhile. Or, rather, if my man thought it was worthwhile. I never spoke to Sabri myself.’

  ‘But he was your man?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘One of your spies!’ she spat out.

  Owen sighed.

  ‘Why do you sigh?’ said Yasmin, after a moment.

  Owen did not reply at once. The he said:

  ‘The world thinks that Egypt is full of spies. People think, for instance, that you are a spy.’

  ‘Me?’ said Yasmin, astonished.

  ‘And, in a way, you are. Or would be if you could. You would pass information to the Turks, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I certainly would!’

  ‘But you’re not really a spy. You’re like everyone else in Egypt, you’ve got all sorts of loyalties.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ said Yasmin. ‘You, for instance. Your loyalty is to the British.’

  ‘Of course. But not just.’

  ‘Who else are you loyal to?’ said Yasmin sceptically.

  ‘Egypt.’

  Yasmin flushed.

  ‘You are mocking me!’

  ‘No, I’m not. I live her
e and I work here and I want what is best for Egypt.’

  ‘You want what is best for Britain!’ said Yasmin.

  Owen sighed again.

  Yasmin was silent for quite some time. The horse found some grass beneath the trees and moved away. On the river bank the fire was still blazing. Above them the doves cooed and gurgled.

  ‘It is true,’ said Yasmin suddenly, ‘that in Egypt we are pulled in all sorts of directions. Especially a family like mine. And especially at the present time. We are Turkish-Egyptian. My mother’s family came here from Turkey with the pashas and has remained true to them ever since. Osman works for the Pasha Ismail and the men of the family have always worked for him or his forebears. My mother, too, would stay true to them. She would like Egypt to return to being part of the Ottoman Empire.

  ‘But I would not. I would like to see the British out of Egypt, yes, but I would not like to see the Turks back in their place. I want Egypt to stand on its own feet, to be Egyptian.

  ‘My father would like that, too, but he would like to go back to the old days of the Khedive. Turkish-Egyptian, but not Turkish. And go back, too, to the old Muslim certainties.

  ‘My brother is like him in that, only somehow it always comes out worse in him. But he is not like me, he follows my mother, staying true to her side of the family. So we are all pulled in different ways.’ Yasmin shrugged. ‘Like Egypt.’

  ‘That is true. And so we all have to make accommodations. My friend, Mahmoud, for instance, who has views very like your own—’

  ‘Your friend, Mahmoud? Well, yes, I suppose he is your friend. But how can he be your friend,’ she broke out, ‘when you are English?’

  ‘We have been friends for a long time.’

  ‘He may be your friend,’ said Yasmin, bitterly, ‘but he is not mine. Why is he so severe on me?’ she demanded. ‘I am on his side!’

  ‘He believes you are still too young for political activity. And, don’t forget, he knows the costs.’

  ‘I think he is down on me because I am a woman. I tried to speak with Aisha about this but she just laughed and wouldn’t talk about it.’

  Yasmin continued to brood.

  ‘Why is he so severe? You are not severe.’

  The fire on the river bank was beginning to die down. The flames had given way to a thick, grey smoke.