The Mingrelian Conspiracy

by Michael Pearce

  It was not Sorgos, however, who opened the door but Katarina.

  ‘The Mamur Zapt?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Again!’ said Owen.

  ‘My grandfather is not in.’

  ‘That may not be a bad thing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘What sort of visit is this?’ she demanded.

  ‘It’s not matrimonial, anyway.’

  Katarina started to smile, then caught her lip.

  ‘He has been to the bazaars. I am expecting him back at any moment,’ she said. ‘You may come in.’

  All over the floor were papers.

  ‘What are these?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Stories.’

  ‘Stories?’

  ‘I handle that side of the business while my father is away. Are you interested in stories?’

  ‘There is one I especially like. It is one of the Sultan Baybars stories. Its chief character is a man named John. He’s a Europeanized Christian who happens to have studied Muslim law. On the strength of this he wangles his way into being Kadi of Cairo and then from this position as supreme Law Giver he proceeds to subvert all the laws. A sort of Mamur Zapt figure.’

  Katarina giggled.

  ‘I recognize the story,’ she said. ‘Just.’

  ‘Allow for a little subversion,’ said Owen.

  Things were getting promising but just then there were sounds at the door.

  ‘My young friend from the mountains!’ cried Sorgos delightedly.

  Katarina scuttled out, all confusion. Sorgos looked at her retreating back in surprise; then with sudden miscomprehension.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, pleased. ‘I have returned too soon!’

  ‘Not at all! Not at all!’ said Owen hastily.

  Sorgos came into the room. As he stepped forward without his stick he stumbled slightly, overbalanced by the large bag he was carrying.

  Owen sprang forward.

  ‘Let me assist you!’ he said, putting his hand under the old man’s arm and taking the bag from him.

  ‘It is nothing,’ said Sorgos, letting Owen’s arm take his weight, however.

  Owen helped him to the divan and eased him gently down on it.

  Sorgos looked at the bag a trifle anxiously and Owen put it down beside him. It was extraordinarily heavy. But that was not surprising. For Owen had looked inside the bag and seen what it contained. Gold dust.

  Chapter Seven

  Owen took an arabeah at the Place Ataba-el-Khadra and drove down the Musky, the long street which connects the European with the other quarters, until he reached the area of the bazaars. Just before the Turkish bazaar he turned left into the Khordagiya but there the way became so blocked with people, carts, stalls, donkeys and camels that he dismounted and paid off the driver. He was in any case almost at his destination: the goldsmiths’ bazaar.

  The street at that point was lined with the showcases of the goldsmiths hard at work at their smithing in the narrow, dark lanes of the bazaar. For much of the manufacture was actually carried on in the bazaar itself. It was not just a place for selling. The smiths had their workshops in the little, three-feet-wide lanes that ran back off the Khordagiya and in the darkness you could see the flames from their braziers and the little lights of their blowpipes.

  The area was so densely packed with people that it was difficult to move. All of them were Egyptian—the tourists made straight for the Turkish bazaar opposite—and most of them were women, heavily veiled and in featureless black; only, incongruously, their ankles showed beneath their heavy robes. And that, in fact, was the point, for almost every single one of the women wore heavy silver or gold anklets which she was anxious to display. Owen, once, taken by the workmanship, had bought one of them for Zeinab, thinking it a bracelet. Zeinab had patted him on the head and told him to give her the money next time. Between the chic Zeinab and her sisters there was something of a gap, which, she pointed out, despite his efforts, she was anxious to preserve.

  The more ordinary women of Cairo liked to carry their wealth, such as it was, about with them. No keeping it safe in dark corners for them! Perhaps surprisingly, their husbands concurred, feeling, possibly, that in this way at least their wealth was under their eye. Whatever it be, the fact was that almost every woman, except for the very poorest, carried around with her a considerable weight of gold and silver on her feet. And the goldsmiths’ business thrived!

  There they were now, the women, almost indistinguishable as individuals in the shadows in their black, massed in front of the open, glassless cases, inspecting the anklets, bracelets, necklets, talismans, rings and even diadems (when did they get a chance to wear these, Owen wondered?), all in filigree and almost all in unusually pure metal. The women’s tastes ran to the heavy, the solid and the barbaric and the work did not correspond at all to the inclinations of the tourists, who preferred the Europeanized shops of the large bazaars where the work was more delicate if far pricier.

  Owen began to move down the lanes, taking his time, stopping to chat in each workshop. In his tarboosh, and with his dark Welsh colouring, he might well have been an Egyptian; not a policeman, certainly.

  Eventually, he found the one he wanted. Yes, an old man, not Egyptian, not Greek, something in between, Turkish, perhaps, had called asking about gold.

  ‘Funny thing to ask for, isn’t it? That’s why I remember. You’d expect him to go to one of the suppliers. But he didn’t seem to know about them. I didn’t tell him, either—you don’t give all your trade secrets away, do you? Not if you’ve any sense. Maybe he’s thinking of starting a business up of his own; not him, perhaps, but a son, say, or a son-in-law. We’ve got enough people in the trade as it is, we don’t want any more.’ A funny thing to ask for, Owen agreed. Had he said what he wanted it for?

  ‘They’re working on some ikon. Down in one of the churches. Or so he said. “In that case,” I said, “you’ll not be wanting brick, you’ll be wanting dust.” No, he said, he’d prefer brick. “Well,” I said, “you’re probably not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that what you really need, if it’s an ikon you’re talking about, is dust. In any case, dust is all I can let you have. I get plenty of that left over. But if you’re talking about material to work, well, I only get as much as I need. You’ve got to pay cash.” Well, he went away, but then he came back and said he’d like dust. I sold him some but then he wanted more and I said, I haven’t got any more, not for a week or two, that is. And he said, it’ll be too late then. So I said, you’d better go and ask someone else, then. And that’s what he did, I think.’

  ‘Can you sell dust?’

  ‘Oh yes. There’s some people who want it. But what would be the point of selling it, if he’s only just bought it? And bought it from the likes of me? I mean, we’re not going to let him have it cheap, are we? I wouldn’t say we’re making a fortune out of it, but it’s not in our usual line of business and you naturally charge a bit extra. He ought to go direct to a supplier. But then, if he did that, they’d always be able to undercut him, wouldn’t they? If he was trying to sell it on!’

  Owen agreed it was a funny business and asked how much dust the old man had purchased.

  ‘How many ikons is he doing?’ he said. ‘This seems a lot, if there’s only one.’

  ‘And he wanted more! “You’d better check your particulars,” I said. “With gold, you want to get it right.”’

  ‘You certainly do,’ agreed Owen. ‘Did he say which church it was?’

  ‘No. It’s down in the Babylon somewhere.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Owen. ‘The Babylon?’

  ***

  Owen had arranged to meet Georgiades in the old Greek cathedral. Arriving a little early, he climbed up to the roof to orientate himself. Babylon was spread out below him. Right at his feet were the vineyards which sheltered
the seven ancient churches; and, at this height, the walls of the Ders, the fortified precincts, were plainly visible. At ground level it was sometimes difficult to distinguish them. Within the walls the people were going about their daily business: the little boys to school, the women to the pumps and wells for water, or perhaps making an early visit to the suk, the men to the little shops and workshops often set in recesses of the walls to begin their day’s work. Beyond the houses in one direction he could see the Nile, and Roda Island, with its Nilometer, and the ferry crossing the river, and on the other side the village of Gizeh and the pyramids. Turning round, he could see Saladin’s great aqueduct stealing along the sandhills of the Fustat until it reached modern Cairo with its minarets and domes and Saladin’s Citadel on its rock.

  It was against the Muslim invaders that the Copts had built the Ders. For the Copts had been here before the Arabs, before even the Romans. They were the original inhabitants of the place and had clung on to their identity despite successive waves of invaders. Was there not a lesson here for Sorgos, Owen wondered?

  If there was, he was not sure that he liked it. For the Copts had survived by going underground: underground literally, beneath and behind their great walls, but underground in other ways too, burying themselves in the general population, distinguishable by their clothes and their features, but never seemingly asserting themselves. If there was a nationalism here, it was a secret, covert one, though perhaps none the less tenacious for that.

  Owen preferred to look at the Ders from up here. At ground level he had too much of the feeling of being in a ghetto. You were too conscious of the walls barring out the rest of the world. And everything seemed somehow underground. It was an effect, perhaps, of the architectural search for shade, but it made everything dark, claustrophobic.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs. Georgiades emerged, breathing heavily.

  ‘Grandmother’s pleased,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pleased at me coming here,’ he said. ‘To the cathedral. She thinks there’s hope yet.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a grandmother.’

  ‘Not mine, Rosa’s. She used to come here regularly when the family first came to Egypt. They lived down here for a while before moving up to the city.’

  He came across to the parapet and stood beside Owen. The catheral was built into a bastion of the old Roman fortress.

  ‘It’s the vineyards, too. Like home, she says. Greece.’ He bent over the parapet.

  ‘It’s over there,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘Al-Mo’allaka? The church where they’re restoring ikons?’

  ‘Yes. You can’t really see it from here.’

  ‘I’ve been there, I think.’

  ‘If you had, you’d remember it. Shall we take a look?’ They went back down the stairs and out into the cloisters.

  Within a few yards Owen lost his bearings. Cloisters became tunnels, tunnels, dark alleyways and then cloisters again. They went through underground arcades where the shops were illuminated only by candles. Eventually they emerged into sunlight, the sunlight of a small palm-tree court with a fountain in its middle. From one end of the court a staircase led upwards. Al-Mo’allaka, the Hanging Church, was at the top of that.

  The church got its name not from the fact of being actually suspended, but from its having been built high up in one of the ancient gateways of the old Roman fort. To reach it you had to climb up the staircase. At the top was a kind of atrium and the church opened off this.

  Owen stopped for a moment in the doorway to let his eyes get used to the darkness. The church was lit by old hanging lamps and the light that came from their tiny flames was hardly enough at first for him to be able to make anything out. But then he saw the antique columns of marble taken, so Georgiades said, from some Roman temple, which broke the space up into the traditional three parts of a Coptic church: the place of the women, the place of the men, and the place of the priests. Gradually he became aware of the old barrel roof, bolted to open woodwork like the timbers of a ship: and then of the low Moresco arches, outlined in ivory, which led to the sanctuary. His eye came back to more marble, that of an incredibly finely carved pulpit, very long and narrow, standing on delicate marble shafts. Only very slowly, because of the darkness of the wood, did he become aware of the backdrop to everything, a screen which, unusually, ran right round the church and which seemed, unbelievably, to glow in the darkness.

  He went forward into the church and saw that the screen was covered with golden ikons. The gold caught the light from the swinging lamps and seemed both to absorb and reflect it, to take it into itself as a kind of inner energy and then to release it again, slowly.

  Georgiades touched his arm. At first he did not see, but then Georgiades pointed and he realized that over in a corner a man was working on one of the ikons.

  They went across. The man looked up. Owen couldn’t see him well but saw enough to know that he was not an Arab. Or a Copt, for that matter.

  ‘Fine work!’ said Owen.

  ‘Just the finishing touches,’ said the man. They spoke in Arabic but although the man spoke it well, it was not his first tongue. ‘We do most of the work in our workshop out the back.’

  ‘You have a lot of work here, then?’ The man nodded.

  ‘We are working on five. Just restoring, of course.’

  ‘Difficult, with the materials. Is that real gold?’ The man smiled.

  ‘Dust,’ he said, ‘fixed with paint. I wouldn’t try to get it off.’

  ‘Still,’ said Owen, ‘not cheap!’

  ‘We’re the ones who are cheap,’ said the man, cheerfully, however.

  ‘Even you have to be paid for, though.’

  ‘There is a cost,’ the man agreed.

  ‘I didn’t know the Church was that rich,’ said Owen.

  ‘Oh, this kind of thing isn’t paid for by the Church. It’s financed by donations.’

  ‘And someone has given the money for you to do these?’

  ‘Enough for five of them only, unfortunately.’

  ‘Well, I suppose the cost adds up. I mean, the dust by itself…How much dust would you need to do a job like this?’

  ‘Very little,’ said the man. ‘That’s why it’s not worth your trying to take it off!’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘I’ll have to find some other way of getting rich.’ They stood watching the man for a little while.

  ‘The workshop’s out the back, if you’d like to put your head in.’

  Owen followed Georgiades down the stairs and out into the court with the palm trees and the fountain. A high wooden trellis of fine old meshrebiya work divided off a small garden at one end, on the other side of which were what looked like low cloisters. A man was working in one of them.

  ‘Just been talking to your mate upstairs,’ said Owen.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  The man stayed bent over his work. It was another ikon and he was gently brushing the face. Out here in the daylight the ikon seemed flatter, had lost its glow.

  ‘Difficult work,’ said Owen.

  ‘Not when you know how.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but it’s the knowing how! Not many people with your skills, I fancy.’

  ‘Not many,’ said the man, ‘but too many.’

  ‘Too many for the jobs available?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Churches aren’t the best customers. Still, from what your mate was saying, someone else is paying this time.’

  ‘Lucky for once.’

  ‘A sick patron?’

  ‘A dead patron. This was a bequest.’

  ‘Ah, so there won’t be any more when it’s finished?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  They watched for a while and then turned away. Back up in the church a priest was lighting candles. />
  ‘The bequest? All very fine, but it won’t buy salvation. Not by itself, that is. God isn’t bribable. Though Arturos probably thought he was. He certainly thought everyone else was.’

  ‘It’s a genuine bequest, then?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘The church has actually received the money?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And decided to allocate it to restoration of the ikons? Or was that Arturos’s idea?’

  ‘Ours.’

  ‘Ah! A considerable sum?’

  ‘Considerable in Arturos’s eyes.’

  ‘Enough to restore five ikons?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘The materials are costly,’ Owen observed.

  ‘We’re used to tight budgeting.’

  ‘And Arturos himself, what sort of man was he? Interested in the Church?’

  ‘When he thought he was going to die, yes.’ Owen laughed.

  ‘A lot of us are like that.’

  ‘Everyone is like that,’ said the priest.

  He walked with them to the door. In the court everything was still. Even while they had been inside, it had grown appreciably hotter.

  They heard the tap of boots on the atrium, unusual in a world of slippers and bare feet. A man appeared at the top of the staircase.

  ‘One of the workmen?’

  ‘A friend of theirs, I think.’

  First, the boots, and then the face; Owen recognized the man who had run after Sorgos on the night of the boisterous public meeting in the Der.

  ***

  ‘It must be,’ said Nikos. ‘Nicodemus said that Herbst-Wickel was insisting on payment in gold. It must be for the explosives.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Georgiades; ‘it’s not for the ikons. The amount they need is nothing like the amount he’s getting.’

  ‘It’s got to be the explosives. What else would he want gold dust for?’