The Bride Box

by Michael Pearce

  It was where Idris, Mahmoud’s friend, now spent most of his time.

  This was where Owen was to meet Macfarlane and the Camel Corps soldiers he had brought with him. They had arrived during the night and now stood beside their camels outside the Muhafaza.

  ‘All right,’ said Macfarlane. ‘Shall we proceed?’

  The soldiers began to slip silently through the empty streets. Everything was dark and quiet. A few doors hung half open in the street and the occasional mashrabiya window – still beautiful, though lined now with sand and dust – leaned out above. As the sun rose and began to reach the streets there was sometimes a flash of blue as it caught one of the old plates embedded in the mud brick of the walls. The old builders had used anything there was to hand and that included the plates brought over the sea from China by the seafaring Muslim sailors.

  The soldiers stopped and then moved forward more cautiously. A whistle blew and the soldiers burst into the large courtyard of the Wakkala. The few men there looked up in shock.

  Over in one corner a group of children, huddled together against the wall, turned towards the soldiers, amazed.

  A tall Arab came out of one of the buildings. Macfarlane went up to him.

  ‘Greetings, Abdulla!’ he said. ‘I see you’re still at it.’

  The children would go back to Atbara and then Khartoum by train, where arrangements would be made to reunite them with their parents. Abdulla would be going to Khartoum, too, only with the Camel Corps soldiers.

  But first, Owen wanted to have a talk with him.

  ‘Slaving is one thing,’ said Owen. ‘Murder is another.’

  ‘Murder?’ said Abdulla.

  ‘Do you not remember Soraya?’

  Abdulla shook his head. ‘I had nothing to do with that,’ he said.

  ‘Did you not speak with her father?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘You tricked him. You spun a web with fine words.’

  ‘He was willing to be tricked,’ said Abdulla.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  Abdulla spread his hands. ‘That a fine future awaited her. If she played her cards right.’

  ‘Not so fine,’ said Owen.

  ‘It could have been fine,’ Abdulla insisted. ‘It was a worthy household. And she was well pleased.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Owen, ‘why did you go to that house? Why did you seek her out?’

  ‘I was asked to.’

  ‘By the lady?’

  ‘By the lady, yes. She had her own designs.’

  ‘Which included you. She knew you of old. You come from her parts. Are you one of her family?’

  ‘Distantly, yes. I was never close.’

  ‘But close enough for her to call on you when she wanted something done.’

  ‘Close enough, yes. And all she wanted was that I should seek Soraya’s family out and speak to the father.’

  ‘And tempt him, yes?’

  Abdulla shrugged. ‘He was willing to be tempted.’

  ‘You succeeded, as she went to the lady’s household. With her bride box?’

  ‘No, no, that was the second time.’

  ‘Since you had succeeded with your honeyed words the first time, she went to you again.’

  Abdulla shrugged once more. ‘I happened to be in those parts.’

  ‘And again you succeeded. And this time she took her bride box with her. Did you suggest that? Was that part of the web you span?’

  ‘It was her father’s doing. He wanted to believe and so he believed.’

  ‘You did not put him straight?’

  ‘Why should I put him straight? The chance was there for her to take.’

  ‘What she wanted was not what the lady wanted.’

  ‘That is no concern of mine.’

  ‘Your job was merely to spin the web and trap the fly. What happened to the fly afterwards was not, as you say, your concern.’

  ‘So,’ said the Pasha’s lady, looking around her curiously, ‘you have made … what is it that the English say? My husband would tell me, but he, alas, cannot be here. “A clean sweep”? Is that the expression? My husband is in prison awaiting trial; the slaver is in some dark hole in Khartoum; and Soraya’s killer is in some slightly less dark cell here in Cairo.’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Owen. They were in his office at the Bab-el-Khalk. He had asked the lady to come and see him before she returned to the estate at Denderah.

  ‘Not quite? What, then, remains? Are you going to put the rest of us in prison, too?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Owen.

  A phrase of Shakespeare’s was running through his mind: ‘All are guilty, all.’ In a traditional society – such as the one, perhaps, about which Shakespeare was writing, and Lear was talking – individual responsibility was diffuse. An individual could hardly ever be taken by himself. He could not be separated from social bonds – the bonds of family, clan, tribe, religion. They all imposed their demands on him. And, conversely, he or she could impose demands on them. Where did responsibility begin and end? With the nexus of which he or she was part? Or with the individual?

  ‘Perhaps?’ the lady repeated, shaken.

  ‘I was thinking of Soraya.’

  ‘But surely there is no “perhaps” about that? Suleiman killed her and has confessed!’

  ‘Not quite confessed.’

  ‘But, surely …’

  ‘He has not denied it. There would be no point. He killed her, all right. But does he see himself as fully responsible? I don’t think he does. He sees himself more as an agent. Of someone else. Of other people behind him, and of other forces and demands.’

  ‘He had accomplices?’

  ‘No. If anything, he was the accomplice. Soraya had been trapped in a web. But the web was spun by someone other than Suleiman.’

  ‘We are all caught in webs,’ said the Pasha’s lady.

  ‘But some of them are of our own making.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ she demanded.

  ‘Both Soraya and Suleiman were caught in a web. But the web was spun by you.’

  The lady stood up to go. ‘These are things easily said,’ she said.

  ‘But not easily proved in a court of law, I know,’ said Owen. ‘Actually, a Muslim court would weigh these things better than an English court. It weighs the influences that had been brought to bear upon an individual, too, before guilt is assigned. And the loyalties that they are obliged to adhere to.’

  ‘How unfortunate, then,’ said the Pasha’s lady, as she turned to go, ‘that, if you are right, and if I quite grasp what you mean, Suleiman would be tried by an English court.’

  Owen rose to show her out. ‘I think you should return to Denderah, lady, with your son. And stay there. And in future take heed of the strings.’

  ‘Strings?’

  ‘The strings that you pull. Lest the consequence affect others than you intend.’

  ‘I know,’ said the Pasha’s lady, laughing merrily. ‘I have just thought of another English expression: lest chickens come home to roost!’

  ‘Bear in mind, lady, that if they did, the person affected might be Karim.’

  The lady stopped. ‘How so?’

  ‘Your husband does not think you are a fit person to be entrusted with his son. If you were removed from the scene, lady, Karim would be handed over to his family. Take heed in future, lady, of the things you do. Or I will see that what he wants comes to pass.’

  A few days later Owen had risen even earlier than usual and was standing on the rooftop of his house, looking down at the nearby public gardens, where the birds were just beginning to stir, and at the Nile curling away beyond them. A solitary felucca was skimming around the bend and from nowhere he could hear the shouts of workmen, perhaps out with the water carts. Already the sun was hot enough for wreaths of vapour to start rising from the water. But here on the rooftop it was cold enough for him to put on his dressing gown. In one of the pockets his hand found a trocchee shell, the one that
had been with Soraya when she died.

  He thought about Soraya. He was still not sure that he had done the right thing about the Pasha’s lady. Why should the rich walk free while the poor, who may merely have been doing their bidding, pay the price which really their masters, or mistresses, should have been paying?

  There had been the problem of coming down firm on one person’s responsibility where responsibility was diffused and spread among many. There had been the needs of Karim. Egypt was a society sympathetic towards the afflicted and the Pasha’s family would not treat Karim harshly.

  But that was not the same as a mother’s love, even if the love was unbalanced and excessive. Karim would be better off with his mother. All the same, Owen was not altogether happy about the way he had caused things to work out. Perhaps he was becoming too preoccupied these days with parental issues. Lately Zeinab had been spending a lot of time with Aisha and there had been much putting of heads together.

  There was the issue of what to do with Leila, too. There was no question of returning her to her father. He would not, in any case, be in a position to support her for quite some time. So what then? Should she stay with them in the house? But there was really no reason why she should now. There was no longer any fear that the slaver might snatch her back. Zeinab, it is true, would miss her if she went. But Zeinab might have other things on her mind soon.

  Fortunately, Musa and Latifa had come up with a suggestion: Leila could stay with them. Their own children had grown up and, as Latifa said, the house felt empty. Leila already looked on them as her parents and would be more than happy. And, as Zeinab said, they would not be far away.

  Leila, actually, was not far away now. In fact, she had come up on to the roof, as she often did these mornings, and was playing with the wooden giraffe that Owen had brought home for her from the Sudan. Zeinab had put a sand tray up there, and Latifa had found a carrot top whose leafy fringe made it a shady palm tree, and the giraffe roamed happily round the sand tray and even out across to Owen on the roof. No, even Miss Skiff would accept that there was no longer any need to worry about Leila.

  Soraya, though … Owen was still wondering if he had done the right thing. He thought he would go and talk with Mahmoud about it again. When they had talked before, Mahmoud had stood out strongly for the judicial process. But then, unexpectedly, Aisha had butted in. Could Mahmoud not think less about laws and more about people, she demanded? Karim, as every parent knew (said rather pointedly) would be better off with his mother, and she would be better off with him. Mahmoud and Owen had both protested, before Zeinab had asked hadn’t the decision already been made? Why were they still going on about it?

  They might go on about it some more that evening, thought Owen, who was still not satisfied and knew that Mahmoud was having lunch that afternoon with his friend Idris, who had just returned from the Sudan. Like Mahmoud, Idris was an idealist and a reformer and would certainly have ideas about the balance to be struck between justice and mercy. Idris would probably have ideas, too, since he had just been in the Sudan, of balances to be struck between traditional justice and Mahmoud’s modern suggestions. Although, according to Mahmoud, Idris was less keen than he had been on putting the world to rights.

  Down on the river there was the splash of an oar. A funny little boat was pulling out to ferry some people to the other side. Why couldn’t they just walk over the bridge? he wondered. But he could see that also in the boat were hens running loose, chicks in a hamper, an old woman with about ten baskets, two small boys and a very, very old man who probably couldn’t walk very far, and Owen thought that occasionally there was still something to be said for the old ways.