The Bride Box mz-17

by Michael Pearce

  The soft padding of the donkey’s feet and the slow, regular movement was quite soporific. He felt himself nodding off, and jerked himself awake.

  The clerk, he saw, had bent so far forward over the donkey’s neck that he looked in danger of falling off. He was almost certainly asleep. Mahmoud wondered whether to wake him but decided not to. It would pass the night more quickly for him and, on the whole, it looked as if he was not going to actually fall.

  Just as Mahmoud thought that, the clerk did fall, but forward over the donkey’s neck. He gave a start and raised himself. When Mahmoud looked again he was inclining forward once more.

  Mahmoud himself must have dozed off because when he next took stock of his surroundings, the moonlight had become a drabber grey. He fancied he could see touches of dawn in the sky. He suddenly realized that he was very stiff and more than a little sore. This was the longest ride he had had on a donkey for many years, if ever. And he hoped it would be as long again before he had another one!

  The next time he looked up he saw palm trees and buildings. He made out the black water tank of the railway station. Camels. People. Far more camels and people than when he had left, surely?

  Owen found the omda hoeing a piece of land at the end of the town. He looked up when he saw Owen and wiped his forehead.

  ‘Effendi!’ he said, pleased to stop.

  ‘A question,’ said Owen, ‘about Soraya’s bride box. It was, we all agree, sent after her. But where to? It is said that it was sent to the Pasha’s lady’s house, and that she was angered when she saw it arriving. But I have just been speaking with Mustapha, and Mustapha says that it was the slaver who came for Soraya. And that when Mustapha asked him if he should send the bride box with her, the slaver laughed and said: “Why not?” The slaver said he knew of someone who had his eye on Soraya, and Mustapha understood that Soraya was going to him. And so he sent the bride box. But what happened then? Because the next thing we hear is that Soraya is again with the Pasha’s lady. And so is her bride box. Does this man exist? And if not, why should the slaver say he did? And how comes it that then Soraya and the bride box go to the Pasha’s lady’s house?’

  The omda scratched his head. ‘I know not,’ he said.

  ‘The men who came for Soraya’s box — were they the slaver’s men? Or the Pasha’s lady’s men?’

  ‘The slaver’s men, surely.’

  ‘And yet the box turned up in the lady’s house. Did Soraya know that it was going to the lady’s house, or did she think it was going to a man the slaver knew of?’

  ‘I do not think she thought she was going back to the lady’s house. She thought, and Mustapha thought, that she was going to a man the slaver was acting for. “Leave it to me,” he said, “and I will arrange all.” We all thought that she was going to her marriage. The slaver spoke so. And she herself believed it, so when Mustapha spoke to her about it, she said she would not go to him unless she thought him worthy. And Mustapha was angered and wanted to beat her, but we restrained him.’

  ‘And yet she finished up at the Pasha’s lady’s house?’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘I find that hard to understand.’

  ‘It must be a trick. Men such as the slaver are full of tricks.’

  Mahmoud had ridden into Denderah just before dawn. He had discharged the lady’s guide, the station clerk, and the donkeys and then snatched some sleep for himself. Only a little, for there were things to do. But he was good at waking himself up and midway through the morning he went to find Owen. He met him just coming back from talking to the omda. They walked back together to the station, where the stacks of gum arabic were growing all the time, and then out behind the station to what had been, when Mahmoud left, a vast, empty square but which was now brimming with people and camels and donkeys. Some stalls had been set up selling tea and Owen and Mahmoud ordered some from one of them. The man brought it to them sitting on the ground.

  They had information to exchange. Owen needed to know about the guns and Mahmoud brought him up to date with the failure to identify any of the Pasha’s men — but also the possible lead with Suleiman. Owen shared with him the conflicting information about the destination of Soraya’s bride box.

  In both cases the exchange brought about a switch in thinking. Mahmoud realized that he would have to go back to the Pasha’s estate and the lady’s house; Owen, who had been intending to return to Cairo, thought that in the light of what Mahmoud had told him about the guns — and what he had learned at the temple — he would stay on in Denderah for another couple of days, at least until the caravan had arrived bringing its miscellaneous cargoes.

  As they were drinking the tea, Owen heard himself hailed. It was the clerk’s brother, Babikr, and he was moving a slip of paper.

  ‘For you, Effendi! For you!’

  It was a reply to his cable to the Sudan Slavery Bureau. It read:

  Abdulla Sardawi known to us. Bugger! Thought he’d retired.

  Will keep an eye and nab on return to Suakin.

  Macfarlane.

  Afterwards, Mahmoud wandered off around the square and Owen went back to the railway station. A train had just come in but it was the passenger train from Luxor, not a goods train and had no effect on the great wall of gum arabic sacks that had sprung up.

  Not many people got off the passenger train. This was not yet the tourist season and there were few visitors for Denderah: one or two Levantines in suits, merchants, perhaps, taking advantage of the great cross-over of goods, and a family returning to Denderah to be met by a great gang of relatives. Come for a wedding, perhaps? Or a funeral?

  But there was also a tall, thin man in a white suit, a European of sorts. He wore a straw hat, pulled forward over his face against the sun, and dark sunglasses that he kept pulling off to see better. What he seemed to be looking at were the sacks of gum arabic, which he scrutinized very closely.

  Some time later Owen had the feeling that he was being watched. This was something about which you developed a sixth sense if you were a Cairo policeman, and Owen, almost as a matter of habit, moved away into the shadows where he was less obvious.

  Then he looked around himself. At first he couldn’t spot who had been watching him, but he was sure someone had been. And then he caught sight of him: it was the tall, thin European who had got off the train.

  To the best of his knowledge Owen had never seen the man before, so why he should be watching him, he couldn’t think.

  The man moved away and Owen almost forgot about him. But not quite.

  Sometime later he felt the man’s gaze on him again. He was standing by some camels and he slipped behind him and looked back. It was the man again, the same man. And he was definitely watching Owen. When Owen passed behind the camels the man began to search around for him.

  Owen showed himself and walked off. A little later, he looked back — and, yes, there was the man again.

  Who was he? What was he doing? And why should he be watching Owen?

  He didn’t look, from his clothes, as if he was from Denderah. The train had come from Luxor, but this man looked as if he had come straight from Cairo.

  And that put another complexion on it. There were plenty of people in Cairo with something against the Mamur Zapt. But why come down to Denderah to attack him? In Cairo it could be done more easily and less obtrusively. And who was it, anyway? Owen began to run through the list — the rather long list — of those who might have a score to settle.

  Owen began to stalk the stalker. It wasn’t easy to do it without being observed. There weren’t that many Europeans in the crowd thronging the square. But one of the few was the man he was trying to keep an eye on, and he stood out as much as Owen himself did.

  At first the man seemed nonplussed when he lost sight of Owen, but after hovering about uncertainly for a moment or two he seemed to shrug and move away. Owen followed him as he went through the bales of gum arabic. He seemed to be checking numbers as much as their condition. But then
a train of camels moved between them and he lost sight of the man.

  It left Owen with a feeling of discomfort and puzzlement. He hadn’t expected this, not out of Cairo.

  SEVEN

  Owen had called Nikos, the official clerk, and told him to find out what he could about the trader, Clarke, and one day a fat, slovenly dressed Greek came up to the warehouse from which Clarke operated when he was in Cairo.

  He wasn’t in Cairo very often, the clerk in the warehouse explained to the Greek when he inquired. In fact, he had just missed him. He travelled a great deal, mostly in Upper Egypt, visiting suppliers of gum arabic and seeing how the trees they harvested were doing that year. He liked to see the stocks before buying them, and then he often accompanied the caravan to Denderah from where they were distributed throughout the Sudan and Egypt and often, these days, abroad. He always took particular care when the gum was going abroad as he wanted to be sure that it was not adulterated on the way. Quality, Clarke had emphasized, was important in foreign markets. And the Sudanis — and indeed anyone who lived in Upper Egypt — were not wholly to be trusted. Clarke Effendi was always having trouble with someone or other. He had often said to Fuad, the clerk in the warehouse, that unless you stood right over them, they were always up to something. So Clarke Effendi was often away standing right over them.

  The Greek said that things were not that different in Cairo. The clerk agreed and said that he personally had to keep a sharp eye on the men who worked in the warehouse. Clarke Effendi had enjoined him to keep a particular eye on stock loss through pilfering.

  ‘Of gum arabic?’ said the Greek, surprised. ‘Wouldn’t that be hard to steal?’

  ‘No, no, not gum. That is in great slabs and would not be worth the effort. But Clarke Effendi also trades in other things and they are more stealable. Trinkets for the bazaars. Jewellery for the unwary. And, of course, trocchee shells.’

  ‘Trocchee shells?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ It was big business. Shells from Egypt and the Sudan went all over the world. He, the Greek, would be surprised at the places the shells went to: Europe, Italy, especially, America — New York was the place — and even India and China. Clarke Effendi was always saying that he ought to pay a visit to the Far East. A visit, he claimed, would certainly double sales there. But so far he had not gone.

  They went round the corner to continue their chat over a cup of coffee. The Greek was good at chatting. His big, brown, sympathetic eyes invited confidences. That was why Owen employed him. Georgiades was his name.

  He gave confidences in return. Mostly about his wife, whom he loved dearly but who terrified him. She was a business woman. Well, yes, that was unusual, but she was an unusual woman. A whiz at figures. That sort of thing always made Georgiades himself uneasy. She played the Cairo Bourse, the Egyptian Stock Exchange. When Georgiades had first found out, he had been paralysed with fear and demanded that she stay at home like a decent woman and look after the children.

  ‘On your money?’ she had said. ‘We couldn’t even afford to buy them shoes!’

  This, unfortunately, was true, and he had agreed to let her continue. But only for a short while and with the tiniest of sums. And never, never, never was there to be any risk.

  ‘Sure, sure, sure!’ said Rosa, but the Greek was not entirely convinced that she followed his instruction. (‘Women are like that,’ said Fuad.)

  Anyway, the children always seemed to be well off for shoes, so Georgiades thought it best not to enquire too closely. And then there was the question of the house.

  ‘House?’

  They had just, at Rosa’s insistence, moved into a yet bigger one. Georgiades had torn his hair.

  ‘But the cost!’ he had wailed. ‘How do I find the money?’

  ‘I’ll find the money,’ said Rosa.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I’ll double the trade.’

  Georgiades didn’t know what this meant but he didn’t like the sound of it.

  ‘Is there not risk?’ he had asked timidly.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Rosa. ‘But I’ll cover that with a reverse trade.’

  Georgiades didn’t like the sound of this, either. In fact, it terrified him.

  And the warehouse clerk, too. ‘May Allah preserve you!’ he gasped.

  Georgiades hoped he would but rather doubted it. ‘I shall end up in prison!’ he had wailed.

  ‘You will, but I won’t,’ said Rosa cheerfully. ‘It’s all in your name, so I’ll still be able to look after the children.’

  ‘The wickedness of women!’ cried the warehouse clerk, his sympathies totally engaged.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Georgiades, ‘she takes on riskier and riskier things! Arms, for instance …’

  ‘Ah, well,’ said the warehouse clerk, ‘that’s where the real money is.’

  ‘And even’ — Georgiades leaned forward and whispered — ‘slaves!’

  ‘That’s where the money is, too,’ said the clerk. ‘Or so people say,’ he added hurriedly.

  He wouldn’t say any more, but Georgiades was satisfied for the time being. He went back to the Mamur Zapt’s office at the Bab-el-Khalk and told Nikos. Nikos thought it was coming along nicely.

  During the long, increasingly painful ride back to Denderah, Mahmoud had had the time to do more thinking. At first the thinking had been to do with the case. He had built so much on what he had seen as the near certainty of the clerk being able to identify the men who had come to the railway station carrying the bride box. And now it had all fallen apart! He went over it in his mind. What had gone wrong? Had the clerk simply been mistaken? Or had the men not come from the Pasha’s estate as they claimed? Had it all been an attempt to mislead, to put an investigator on the wrong track? But from the clerk’s account of what they had said, that seemed unlikely. He was back to the clerk again and the question of his reliability.

  He went over it again and again, getting nowhere. His thoughts just went round and round. Had they ganged up on him as an outsider? The city man who’d come to put the fellahin right? Was that how they had seen him? In a way, he could understand it if they had. But if they had, they were being unjust. He wanted to help them. He was bringing law into lives where the only law was that laid down by the Pasha. Backwardness. His thinking began, in the heat and his fatigue, to fall into familiar patterns. A man like Mustapha, for instance, selling his own children into slavery!

  It was poverty, of course. Living in Cairo, Mahmoud was used to poverty. But what he was seeing in the south was something new. The complete poverty in the houses! The absolute lack of possessions — beds, even. Eating off the floor! The very water they drank had to be carried from the well or from the river. Even the smallest necessity cost labour.

  And even though the men worked hard in the fields, back-breaking work under the sun, much of the work, the work that made everything run, was done by women. Not much scope for a life there, he thought.

  He thought of Soraya seizing a few moments to put together the things for her bride box. Every single thing had had to be created in the few moments spared from the ordinary labour of the house and the village.

  And then he thought of the way in which those few things had been tipped out on to the sand and scattered casually across the desert. Life, he thought, for people like Soraya, was pitiless. Cruel.

  The thought revived the anger that burned within him when he thought of Egypt and what Egypt had come to. He was not, he thought, a bitter man but he felt bitter when he thought of how the ordinary people of his country struggled. Of the fellahin, who formed the great majority of the Egyptian population, struggling under the oppression of the Pashas. Of Egypt as a whole struggling under the rule of foreigners. Who were the British to rule his country?

  As a young boy, still at school, he had vowed to right his country’s wrongs. And there were so many of them — and not just due to the British. Many were due to Egyptians themselves.

  A lot of Egyptians, especially the young, though
t like this. And so there was a revival of political activity, a growing feeling of the need for reform. Which is what Mahmoud, in a way, had decided to devote his life to.

  Sometimes, as he never seemed to get anywhere, he felt discouraged. Why not do as others in the Parquet did and concentrate on getting rich? If you were a lawyer, there was every chance of doing that. His father would have wondered at Mahmoud. He had stinted himself to pay for his son’s education, scrimped and saved so that his son would be able to do better than he had. And now his son, just when he was getting there, was addressing himself to other things! Mahmoud would have liked to debate this with him but his father was dead. But in a way he did not need his father there. He knew what he would have said.

  And then there was the question of what Mahmoud’s own children would say when they grew up. What would they say when all he could deliver to them was a country that could not even rule itself, that put up with the injustices and iniquities of life under the Pashas. Still! His heart burned with shame.

  As he had ridden back to Denderah, his whole body aching from his long day in the saddle, his heart swimming from the sun, he had castigated himself more and more. The identification parades had been an utter failure. He had thought it would be easy. The clerk would identify the men and that would be that. But it had not turned out like that. Things weren’t so simple. He blamed himself for thinking that they should have been.

  And the country, too, of course. He blamed Egypt for being as backward as it was. That was the root of all the problems.

  But then he came back to himself again. What had he done about that? Where had his political commitment got him? All the work he had put into political activity, meetings, lobbying? The Pashas were still where they had been, the British still ruled, Egypt was still … well, Egypt!

  He felt utterly drained. He had failed again. It was all failure. Everything was failure.

  Owen could have told him he was always like this. When he started on a new case, he always hit it with enthusiasm, drive. But if things went wrong, or got stuck for some reason, his thoughts would go round and round. He would get more and more depressed, feel dragged down. It would happen when he felt tired, or felt that he should have succeeded and hadn’t. There was a pattern to it.