The Bride Box mz-17

by Michael Pearce

  Mahmoud was just hitting these buffers. Owen, of course, had hit them long before. Shared frustration had brought Mahmoud and Owen together. At the most general level they shared the same aim: justice — although Egyptians defined that differently from the British. Mahmoud, a staunch Arab Nationalist, didn’t believe there should be such a thing as the Mamur Zapt. Nor did the Khedive and nor, officially, did the High Commissioner. It was just that, given the way things were in Egypt, it was handy to have one around.

  Despite all this, Mahmoud and Owen got on very well.

  This morning Mahmoud had been assigned a new case, one which reflected, he suspected, his declining value in the eyes of his superiors. A goods train had come in from Luxor and when the men went to unload it they had been put off by the nasty smell emanating from one of the boxes.

  ‘There’s something dead in that,’ Ali said to Hussein. ‘You mark my words!’

  The box, which was about the size of a small trunk, was sewn into a coarse canvas bag of the sort often used to protect items in transit. You could almost have taken it, but for its rectangular shape, for one of the larger Post Office mail bags.

  When they had lifted it out of the wagon and put it down on the dusty sand, the smell was even more apparent, and after it had been resting there for an hour or two — things did not move fast in Egypt, particularly loading and unloading — it became clear that the package was secreting fluid at one end.

  ‘Don’t like the look of that,’ Hussein said to Ali, giving the box a wide berth and moving on to another one.

  They continued giving it a wide berth and moving on to another one until there were no other ones for them to move on to.

  ‘What about that one?’ said the overseer, going past the box.

  ‘Don’t like the look of it,’ said Ali.

  ‘Don’t like the smell of it,’ said Hussein.

  ‘What?’ said the overseer, taken aback because Hussein and Ali had never shown signs of aesthetic or olfactory discrimination before.

  He went up to the package and sniffed and looked and then he went to fetch the yard supervisor.

  ‘There’s something dead in there,’ said the supervisor. ‘Who’s the package for?’

  He instructed the overseer to read the label. The overseer would have instructed someone else to read the label, since the smell now was quite overpowering. However, neither Ali nor Hussein could read and he knew that the clerk would refuse to move out of his office, so, with the greatest reluctance, he approached the box himself.

  ‘Can’t read it,’ he announced. ‘It’s for a Pasha somebody or other.’

  ‘Look, just find out who it is and then we’ll get them to send someone to come and move it.’

  The overseer reluctantly approached the package again. ‘It’s like I said: you can’t read it. It’s been soiled by … Well, it’s been soiled, anyway.’

  ‘Of course you can read it! Someone must be able to read it!’

  Others were pressed into trying but without success.

  ‘Look, we can’t just leave the box there, not the way it is. I mean, people have to go past,’ said the supervisor.

  ‘And some of us have to go past a lot,’ said Ali and Hussein.

  ‘It’s what’s inside it,’ said the overseer.

  ‘We can’t just leave it there,’ the supervisor said again. ‘We’ll have to move it.’

  But where to? Anywhere else in the yard would just move the problem rather than solve it; and if the package was just moved out of the yard and dumped, as they were tempted to do, this would almost certainly cause trouble too. And plenty of it, if the box did indeed belong to a Pasha.

  ‘We’re going to have to open it,’ said the supervisor with decision. ‘It’s probably a dead dog or something.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ali, more cheerfully now there was a prospect of something happening. ‘Probably sent up from his estate or something.’

  ‘A prize dog!’ said Hussein enthusiastically. ‘A hunting dog. A Saluki maybe. He wanted it sent up to him!’

  ‘And the bastards put it in a box with no air and no water! Just sealed it up and sent it off!’

  ‘A prize dog, too! Now if it had been an ordinary dog-’

  ‘And not a Pasha’s dog. There’ll be trouble over this, you mark my words! He’ll kick their backsides for this!’

  ‘Well, they deserve kicking! Ignorant bastards! But that’s what they’re like down there in the south.’

  ‘Sudanis, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Hussein.

  ‘Are you going to open that box or not?’ demanded the overseer.

  Not, was the answer they would have preferred. But jobs were jobs and someone had to do it, and if it was a nasty job or a dirty job, it was usually them.

  So … When the cloth covering was cut away and removed it revealed a cheap, gaudily decorated box, painted in all the colours of the rainbow.

  ‘Why!’ said Ali. ‘It’s a-’

  ‘Bride box,’ finished Hussein.

  And when Mahmoud opened the box later, he saw that the bride was inside.

  Bride boxes were perhaps less common than they had once been but no respectable girl, especially in Upper Egypt, would consider getting married without one. In it she accumulated her trousseau and when the great moment came would transfer with it to the bridegroom’s house. She would build it up over the years and as the wedding approached it would become more and more prominent. In the days immediately before the wedding the world would be invited round to gaze and wonder.

  You could buy one in the souk, of course, or have one made especially for you. The painting was done by a separate skilled, or possibly not so skilled craftsman. The craftsman was probably also responsible for the gaudy paintings, usually of trees and reeds, which appeared on the front of houses and showed that the owner had performed a pilgrimage to Mecca.

  The present box was empty except for the person lying there, a young woman. So much could be made out but little more. The corpse had been so distended by the heat and the gases that it was practically unrecognizable. It could not have been in the bride box for more than three days. Otherwise its presence would have become even more unpleasantly obvious. Nor, probably, would it have been there for less than two days. He would check the documentation and see when the box had been picked up.

  Almost certainly it would have come from the south. Mahmoud sighed. That would mean he would have to go down there to make inquiries. Like most Cairenes, especially the educated ones, the proposal of travelling down to the south filled him with horror. It was so hot there, especially at this time of the year. And so uncomfortable, so lacking in normal creature comforts. Like showers, or so he had heard. Mahmoud, though highly intelligent and educated, was not above the prejudices common to the Cairo intelligentsia: that civilization began and ended in Cairo, with a possible branch line to Alexandria. Anywhere else, though, and especially anywhere in the south, was not just beyond the pale of civilization, it was positively primeval.

  Perhaps he could start his inquiries at the other end: with the label and with the man, if only he could make it out, to whom it was addressed.

  He had the body sent round to the morgue for a post-mortem. The box would just have to stay where it was for the time being. If it was taken to the Parquet offices, especially in its present state, he would be highly unpopular. He wasn’t going to send it round to a police station because it would disappear and most likely reappear in the souk, where it would be cleaned up and then used again. People were cheap in Cairo and it was cheaper to leave the bride box where it was and post a guard than try to find space for it somewhere else. But he would take the label and show it to the experts.

  Musa had moved into Owen’s house with Latifa, his wife. She had arrived carrying a bed roll containing all the possessions they would need. They installed themselves in the kitchen, which wasn’t used much. Both Owen and Zeinab were usually out for lunch and in the evening they went round the corner to a restaurant they favoure
d. Owen could usually rustle up a very basic meal if it was required. Zeinab would usually send for one of her father’s cooks. Owen, however, thought that this was excessive and they usually reserved that for a special occasion, when for instance, they had guests. Zeinab had a Pasha’s daughter’s tastes but on an English official’s income. Reason, said Owen, ought to prevail in these things. So it did, said Zeinab; only her reason not his.

  Latifa at once took over responsibility for Leila. This was a great relief to Zeinab, who couldn’t think what she was going to do with her otherwise. It was Latifa who had discovered that Leila really was a Sudani. That explains it, thought Zeinab, who shared the universal Cairene view that all bad things came from the south.

  Not that there was much bad about Leila. For the first day or two she crouched in a corner of the kitchen sucking her thumb. After a few attempts to draw her out, Latifa stopped trying. Instead, she just got on with some cooking. That wasn’t strictly part of the contract but she did it anyway. She said she couldn’t just sit there idle, and anyway, her man needed his meals. Needed them, too, in a way that only she could perform. So she got to work at the centre table, and, over in the corner, Leila sat watching her, and gradually she was drawn in.

  ‘What sort of family is she from?’ Latifa said to Owen. ‘She don’t know nothing!’

  So Latifa set about teaching her.

  ‘Her mother dead,’ she said to Owen the next day. ‘No time to teach. Sister not know much more than she. What sort of family? And now the new wife sit on her ass all day and try look pretty! But what her father doing? Musa like that and he out of the door! But with new wife, that all he think about. But what about children? Hah! Want get rid of them. They mean nothing to him. Hah!’ she finished, with disgust.

  Fortunately, Musa wasn’t like that. He took his time with Leila, not forcing things, after the first attempts, but content, like Latifa, to wait. And gradually Leila got used to him and occasionally ventured a word when together they were cutting up the onions for Latifa. She even helped Musa to polish the brass and copperware that had never been polished before. Musa let her help him, although, really, he believed that this was a job for a man. It needed the strength and stamina of the ex-soldier — the way he did it.

  ‘Like buttons, like belt,’ he said. ‘Polished till you can see your face.’

  Owen was glad to have him in the house. He didn’t think that the traders would really go to the trouble of snatching Leila back but all the same, the possibility worried him. He would be glad to hand the problem over to …

  And that was the problem: to whom? Paul had come back to him asking him to stay with it until his boss had made up his mind. He was thinking about it. There were aspects beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. Chief amongst these was that His Majesty’s Government was anxious, as always, to cut costs — and among the costs they were thinking of cutting was that of the Slave Bureau in the Sudan. The slave trade was dead and buried, surely? The Bureau was no longer needed, surely? And still less any possible corresponding unit in Egypt, where the slave trade was even deader.

  Or so it had seemed. Until this.

  What his boss really wanted, said Paul, was for someone to quickly wrap the whole thing up. Then they could go away and forget about it. Just get on with what they had been doing. Carrying through the cuts.

  ‘He thinks you might be the man to do it,’ said Paul, ‘especially as it has, in a way, landed in your lap.’

  ‘That was just fortuitous,’ said Owen.

  ‘Things that land in your lap fortuitously,’ said Paul, ‘have a way of staying there.’

  ‘I have a lot of other things in my lap at the moment,’ said Owen. ‘Things with the potential to turn into hot potatoes. Political things. Which is my job.’

  ‘And you think that this is not political?’ said Paul neutrally, gazing away into the distance.

  Owen went to the Central Station at Pont Limoun, taking Leila with him. He wanted to go over it again with her. He also wanted to talk to some of the people. In particular, he wanted to talk with Fraser.

  On their way they passed the goods platform. The bride box was still standing there.

  Leila pulled at his hand. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘that’s Soraya’s box!’

  TWO

  ‘And Soraya is …?’ prompted Mahmoud.

  As soon as Owen had established from the guard who it was that had posted him beside the box, Owen had sent for him and Mahmoud had come running.

  ‘My sister,’ whispered Leila. ‘My big sister,’ she had added after a moment, proudly.

  Mahmoud looked at Owen. Owen knew what he was thinking. The obvious thing to do was to get Leila to identify the girl who lay in the box, but he shrank from that.

  ‘Tell us about your sister,’ said Owen.

  On that subject the hesitant Leila was forthcoming. Her sister was bigger than her, a lot bigger. She had looked after her when their mother had died, had stood up for her against the new mother. And against their father. To such an extent that her father had hit her. Their new mother had hit her too and said that she couldn’t have her in the house and that she would have to go. And, soon after, she went.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Mahmoud.

  Leila didn’t know. But the next day her box was taken away so Leila presumed she had gone to get married.

  Had Leila gone to the wedding feast?

  No, she hadn’t, and she had been rather disappointed at that. Usually when someone got married there was singing and dancing and feasting; the whole village was involved. But there had been nothing like that this time. When Leila had got up in the morning, Soraya had disappeared — without even saying goodbye to her, which Leila found odd and which had made her feel sad.

  Had her parents said anything?

  No, just that she had gone and that she wouldn’t be coming back. When Leila had asked where she had gone to, her new mother had said, ‘A long way away.’ Leila had been sorry about that because she had hoped she would go on seeing her sister. Indeed, she confided, she had half hoped that Soraya would take her with her and that she could stay with her permanently. She had even suggested this to her father but he had just laughed. And, soon after, she had been sent away herself.

  ‘Tell us about that,’ said Owen.

  A man had come and gone off with her father and they had been drinking. She always knew when her father had been drinking because when he came back he was red in the face and shouted a lot. This time, he had come into the house and shouted for her new mother and when she had come out they had sent Leila off and her father had fetched more beer. When Leila had returned some time later they had been still drinking, her new mother, too, and Leila had gone to bed. Well, not to bed, because they didn’t have one. In the house it was too noisy and they had shouted at her to keep away. So she had curled up in a corner of the yard and slept there. And in the morning her father had woken her and said that she was to get ready. ‘There’s no need for her to get ready,’ her new mother had said. ‘She doesn’t have a box; she can go as she is.’ And, later in the morning, a man had come for her.

  ‘Was this the white man?’ asked Owen.

  ‘White man?’ said Mahmoud.

  No, just an ordinary fellah, like the fellah in the village, only he didn’t come from the village, or not their village at any rate. The man had come and taken her to a place outside the village where the white man was waiting. He had looked her over carefully and then nodded, and then she had been led to where a group of children were waiting with other men.

  ‘A group of children?’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Yes.’

  How many?

  Leila had a problem with that. She thought about fifteen.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘They had all started walking.’

  ‘This is a bad family,’ whispered Mahmoud. ‘They drink, and they do not fear God.’

  Mahmoud, a good Muslim, never drank.

  ‘And they beat their children. And — I th
ink you are right — they sell them as slaves. What sort of people are these?’

  ‘Worse,’ said Owen. ‘What did they do to the sister?’

  ‘You think they killed her?’

  ‘I think they might have done. Were they going to sell her, too? And did she stand up against it? It sounds, from what Leila says, like she was the sort of girl who might. There could have been blows.’

  Mahmoud nodded. ‘That does not sound unlikely,’ he said and sighed. ‘It sounds as if I’m going to have to go down south,’ he said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Owen.

  They solved the problem of identification by getting Leila to describe the clothing her sister normally wore. There wasn’t a lot of it, even when you took into account what had been in the bride box. And then Mahmoud had taken a less soiled piece of the clothing the woman in the box had been wearing and showed it to Leila.

  ‘Like this?’

  Leila had nodded. She didn’t really understand the purport of the questions but they were making her uneasy. Mahmoud had thought it best not to go on.

  ‘The body will keep,’ he said to Owen, ‘now that it’s in the mortuary. I’ll get somebody from down there to identify it.’

  But where was ‘there’? The little girl had said Denderah. That was certainly a place, and they would try it. It was also on the main line to Luxor. It was where she could have got on the train. And possibly where the bride box had been put on, too. If it was, there would be a record of some sort of it. The Egyptian bureaucracy was not always efficient but it was always there. Even in such a one-horse town as Owen suspected Denderah was.

  It would especially have been recorded if it was addressed to a Pasha, if for no other reason than that if you got it wrong, thunderbolts would fall.

  But this was another thing that they both found puzzling: that the body should be boxed up and sent, as it apparently had been done, to a Pasha. Wasn’t that the last thing you would do if you murdered somebody? Suppose, for instance, that Owen’s theory was correct and that Soraya had been killed by a bunch of slave traders: would they want to draw attention to themselves? It was, surely, the last thing that they would want to do.