The Camel of Destruction

by Michael Pearce

  ‘But who, then, can stop the road?’ Selim demanded.

  ‘There has to be pressure,’ said Owen, ‘political pressure. That’s what Government responds to.’

  ‘Does it have to respond? Can’t it take the initiative?’

  ‘Heavens, no!’ said Owen/Barclay. ‘That’s not the way things work!’

  ‘By “political pressure”, do you mean pressure from the Assembly?’ asked Selim.

  ‘Well…’

  ‘I always thought no one took any notice of them at all.’

  ‘Well, that’s putting it a bit strongly—’

  ‘Would it do any good? I know some politicians. I could—’

  Owen remembered suddenly that Barclay had spoken of Selim as ‘a bit political’. That might mean merely that Selim was, like most young educated Egyptians, sympathetic to the Nationalist movement. Or it might mean something more.

  ‘I think you would need to be careful,’ he said. ‘Politicians use issues for their own purposes and it could recoil on you.’

  Selim, however, looked determined.

  ‘This has to be fought,’ he said.

  ‘Quite agree with you,’ said Barclay.

  ‘It’s not just the mosque,’ said Selim. ‘It’s the whole city.’

  ‘If the road goes through, yes,’ said Barclay.

  ‘Oh, come!’ said Owen. From the Widow Shawquat’s school to the whole city was a bit of a far cry.

  ‘It’s true, though!’ Selim insisted. ‘Its whole character would be altered. The Old City as we know it would disappear. The effect would be to create a completely modern city. It would—’

  The discussion continued over several cups of coffee in the Lebanese restaurant they’d met at earlier. The world of town planning was a new one and in Selim and Barclay Owen had met two enthusiasts. They described at length the tremendous things that might be done—and the terrible things that were likely to be done.

  At last their volcanoes were exhausted.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Barclay gloomily, ‘Public Works isn’t like that.’

  ‘Nor the Ministry of Waqfs,’ said Selim.

  ‘A lot of good people come into the Department thinking it will be,’ said Barclay, ‘and then they’re disappointed.’

  ‘Was Fingari one of those?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Fingari?’

  ‘He was one of yours, I think. Moved to Agriculture about six months ago.’

  ‘Knew him well. No, not really. A bit…’ Barclay hesitated. ‘Well, careerist.’

  ‘Osman Fingari?’ asked Selim.

  ‘Yes.’ Barclay turned to him. ‘On the finance side. You must have come across him.’

  ‘Oh yes. I worked with him on the Bab-el-Azab developments.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said Barclay.

  Owen told him about the suicide. Both men were shocked.

  ‘This is terrible!’ said Selim. ‘I must go at once and pay my respects to the family.’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘Not well. I saw a lot of Osman at that time, though.’ He hesitated and seemed oddly embarrassed. ‘Isn’t there a sister?’ he asked diffidently.

  ‘There is. Aisha. I think she would be glad of a visit.’

  ‘Very sad!’ said Barclay, distressed. ‘We never thought—’

  ‘It seems to have happened rather suddenly. There were no signs when he was with you?’

  Barclay shook his head.

  ‘Not that I saw. Of course, with these things you never know.’

  ‘Pressure?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said so.’ He turned to Selim. ‘Did you notice anything?’

  Selim thought, then shook his head.

  ‘He was very involved in the Bab-el-Azab scheme,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t see any signs that it was getting on top of him.’

  ‘Political pressures?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Why political?’ said Selim, suddenly wary.

  ‘I thought all you bright young men wanted to change the world.’

  ‘Save the world,’ said Selim. ‘Not change it.’

  Chapter Nine

  The coffee-house was in the Ismailiya. Owen was a little surprised. The Ismailiya was the most Europeanized of the quarters and pricey enough to be out of the reach of the ordinary Egyptian effendi, or office-worker, even one of as exalted a rank as Osman Fingari.

  ‘That,’ said Georgiades, ‘is precisely the point.’

  Inside, the floor dropped down to a lower level, as in many Egyptian restaurants, and was arranged in alcoves, each with its separate brazier and coffeepot. The lights were low and the furnishings soft. The carpet on the floor was about three inches deep. The fact that it was on the floor and not on the wall was a European touch.

  Georgiades led him down to one of the alcoves and looked around benignly. A waiter came forward, stirred the charcoal in the brazier and settled the coffeepot more securely.

  ‘Who’s paying for this?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ protested Georgiades. ‘This is work. Enjoy it while you can.’

  Some men were singing in a neighbouring alcove. They were singing sentimental Arab love songs. At the end of each verse they burst into maudlin applause. It never ceased to astonish Owen that Egyptians seemed to manage to get drunk purely on coffee.

  ‘This is where Jabir used to bring him,’ said Georgiades.

  ‘I thought Aisha said he came home drunk? Really drunk, I mean.’

  ‘Maybe they went on to a bar afterwards. Or maybe he had enough at lunchtime to last for the rest of the day. Anyway, this is where he used to come in the evenings.’

  ‘Who used to pay?’

  ‘Jesus, this is becoming an obsession with you!’

  ‘No, no. I only meant that it would be a lot for him.’

  ‘I don’t think he used to pay.’

  ‘Jabir?’

  ‘And others. They were all pretty rich.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Owen, ‘that even if he did pay, I can’t see him getting sufficiently into debt to want to kill himself. Not on coffee-bills. Did they do anything else? Gamble?’

  ‘Not here. And not, I think, much if at all anywhere else. They just talked.’

  ‘Talked?’

  ‘Well, you know young men…’

  ‘Coffee? Talk? This is a den of vice!’

  And yet he knew that was how most young effendis spent their evenings. They walked out with their friends, often their colleagues, in their smart dark suits and their red tasselled tarbooshes, and often with canes, short walking canes, and congregated in the cafés and drank coffee.

  ‘It’s not so much what he did as who he was with,’ said Georgiades. ‘These youngsters are rich. Pashas’ sons. Jabir is, well, not a son but the cousin of a son. Fingari must have thought he’d really arrived.’

  ‘And that Jabir was doing it as a favour?’

  Georgiades gave him a side-long look. ‘Well…’ he said.

  ‘He knew,’ said Owen. ‘He knew he was expected to give something in return. The question is what that was.’

  ‘Why did Jabir take up with him again? Because he was now in a position where he could return favours. That means the Ministry.’

  ‘It’s the Ministry of Agriculture, which doesn’t seem a likely place for doing people favours. Unless you’re a farmer.’

  ‘Or a rich, land-owing Pasha?’

  One of the young men in the adjoining alcove got to his feet and staggered towards the toilet.

  ‘Are you sure they’re only drinking coffee?’

  Georgiades beckoned the waiter.

  ‘I feel terrible,’ he said, ‘drained! It’s the work I’ve been doing, all that thinking. Even this excellent coffee is not doing the trick. Do you think you could pep it up wi
th something?’

  ‘A little cognac, effendi?’ suggested the waiter.

  ‘That would do fine. Make it a big one.’ He looked at Owen. ‘I’m only doing it in the cause of duty, you know.’

  ‘Well, that explains the merriment. And perhaps why Fingari came home the way he did?’

  The waiter returned and poured something into Georgiades’s cup.

  ‘The heat will release the aromas, effendi,’ he said.

  Georgiades sat back and sniffed.

  ‘I think I’m catching them,’ he said happily.

  ‘Who does Jabir work for?’ said Owen.

  ‘Does the Trans-Levant Trading Bank mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The name Kifouri?’

  ‘Kifouri?’

  Georgiades waited.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ said Owen slowly. ‘He was one of the businessmen who approached me about Fingari. There were three of them. Zokosis, Kifouri and an Egyptian named Khalil. I thought he worked for the Agricultural Bank.’

  ‘No. Not formally at any rate. He’s not on the Board. He works for this other bank. Jabir seems to report to him.’

  ‘Seems to?’

  ‘Jabir doesn’t officially work for the bank. He meets Kifouri regularly, though. They have lunch together. You remember Fingari’s friends who used to lunch at that Greek restaurant? I got to know one of them—we had lunch together, as a matter of fact—and he pointed them out to me.’

  ‘So you think Jabir might be working for Kifouri on this?’

  ‘He might. There are other possibilities. He doesn’t work for anyone all the time. He doesn’t have a regular job at all. He stays on the fringe of things and, well, fixes. That’s his job. He’s a fixer.’

  ‘Who else does he fix for?’

  ‘His uncle, principally, Ali Reza Pasha. He’s a businessman with interests in sugar, gum and property.’

  ‘And cotton?’

  ‘He has estates in the Delta.’

  ‘So he might have an interest in the Ministry of Agriculture?’

  ‘He might. I’ve asked Nikos to see if there’s anything in Fingari’s files.’

  ‘It would be interesting to know if he’s got anything to do with that deal we can find out so little about. Anything that connects him with the Agricultural Bank?’

  ‘Not directly. But he knows Jabir, who knows Kifouri, who knows Zokosis. Does that count?’

  ‘Who knows me,’ said Owen. ‘Does that?’

  ***

  ‘Nothing!’ said Nikos. ‘His name doesn’t appear at all.’

  ‘That may only mean,’ said Georgiades, ‘that he prefers to work through people like Jabir and Kifouri.’

  ‘There are an awful lot of names that don’t appear,’ said Owen, ‘especially in connection with the Agricultural Bank. I was hoping Fingari’s lunches might throw some of them up.’

  ‘I’ve been through all the names,’ said Georgiades, ‘and they’re all officials or directors or sidekicks of directors of the Agricultural Bank. All quite proper.’

  ‘Fingari worries me,’ said Owen. ‘He drinks coffee, chats with the boys and goes home in the evenings; he goes out for lunches but they’re always working ones. This decent life is sickening.’

  ‘It’s always the quiet ones who commit suicide,’ said Georgiades.

  ‘You’re going to tell me next that, appearances to the contrary, he was working so hard that things genuinely could have got on top of him.’

  ‘Well…’ Nikos spread his hands.

  ‘And yet somehow, in that decent, God-fearing life, he acquired, on a civil servant’s pay, enough money to refurbish his house on a grand scale!’

  Georgiades perched himself on Nikos’s, that is, Osman Fingari’s, desk.

  ‘The deal with the Agricultural Bank is still in the offing,’ he said, frowning. ‘It wasn’t concluded by the time he died. So the money wouldn’t have been for that.’

  ‘It was for something else,’ said Nikos, ‘to whet his appetite.’

  ‘The money started coming,’ said Owen, ‘after he resumed his acquaintance with Jabir.’

  ‘Which brings us back to the Pasha. Perhaps. He would only be interested in something big. Like this Agricultural Bank deal. Could he be going to lend the money himself, do you think?’

  ‘No,’ said Georgiades instantly. ‘Pashas don’t lend money. They borrow money. They never have it themselves.’

  ‘All right. So who was going to lend it? That bank you were talking about?’

  ‘The Trans-Levant?’ Georgiades shook his head. ‘Too small.’

  ‘In my experience,’ said Nikos, ‘banks are like Pashas; they never have money themselves, they always borrow it. From other banks.’

  ‘So somewhere in this chain, Ali Reza stands to make a lot of money. How? Through commission? What for? Setting it up? Through others?’

  ‘There’s nothing to connect him directly to Osman Fingari,’ said Nikos.

  ‘Nor to the Agricultural Bank. Where does he come in?’

  ‘It’s not in the files,’ said Nikos. ‘I’ve been through them all now. I’ve checked all the names Georgiades gave me. All those people he had lunch with. There’s nothing which doesn’t quite properly have their name on.’

  ‘And nothing else which, well, raises any questions?’ asked Owen.

  Nikos shook his head.

  ‘Not that I have been able to discover. It’s all either Agricultural Bank working papers or ordinary office routine. The working papers, apart from some drafts he was working on, are all papers in normal Board circulation, that is, as public as these things usually are. The routine stuff is—well, routine.’

  ‘So you’ve not got anywhere?’ asked Georgiades.

  ‘You could say that,’ Nikos admitted. It was not like him to be so humble. ‘Except…’

  ‘Except?’

  He laid a file on the desk before Owen.

  ‘You wanted to know about Tufa,’ he said.

  ‘Tufa?’

  ‘Fingari’s diary,’ said Georgiades. ‘His name was on the page with Jabir.’

  ‘Only it’s not his name,’ said Nikos. ‘It’s the name of a place.’

  He opened the file. Inside was a single sheet of paper, an application to register a change of land use.

  ‘It’s the name of the village where the land is.’

  Owen read through the application.

  The parcel of land referred to was some distance away from the village of Tufa and had previously been classified as waste land of poor quality, suitable only for industrial use. The extension of a neighbouring irrigation scheme, however, had brought the possibility of regular supplies of water and raised the prospect of using the land for cultivation. The application was for the land to be regarded as suitable for first class agricultural use.

  Owen looked at it blankly.

  ‘What’s this got to do with Jabir?’

  ‘On the face of it, nothing,’ said Nikos. ‘But he presented the case for the application. There is a record of a meeting at which he was present.’

  Owen turned the page over.

  ‘I’ve checked all the details,’ said Nikos. ‘Everything is as it says. Look, here’s the Water Board certificate.’

  Which was, presumably, why Osman Fingari has signed his name neatly in the box marked ‘Approval’.

  ***

  ‘Zeinab? My dear boy, I’m delighted!’ said Nuri Pasha. ‘Always wanted to marry her mother. Asked her lots of times. She wouldn’t have it, though. A Pasha to marry a courtesan! She said it would damage my reputation. My dear, I said, you don’t know my reputation!’

  He chuckled and stretched his hand out for another thin cucumber sandwich. The suffragi standing behind him hastily moved round and edged the plate forward.
He touched the silver teapot inquiringly.

  ‘I think so,’ said Nuri, ‘I think so.’

  Nuri, a great believer in things European, since the Europeans had come to control the country, was an enthusiast for English tea. He drank it, however, in the French way, without milk. English by adoption he might be; France, though, as with most of the Egyptian upper class, was ingrained in him.

  He sat back in his chair.

  ‘A beautiful woman, you know!’

  His eyes looked wistfully out over the immaculately kept flowerbeds as if there, in the distance, in the rose garden, perhaps, or among the bougainvillæa, he might still hope to see her. His intoxicated pursuit of her had been one of the great court scandals of thirty years before.

  ‘Zeinab takes after her, of course.’

  A frown came over his face.

  ‘In some ways, that is. Beautiful figure, beautiful. A real credit to her mother. A little on the thin side, perhaps, but then, I always like them thin. Unusual, that. Egyptians like them fat. More to get hold of, I suppose. But not me, no.’

  He frowned again.

  ‘It’s the face, though.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Owen, moved to protest on behalf of his beloved.

  ‘A real Bedawin face. Don’t know where that comes from. Not her mother, who had a most delicate, soft, round face. My grandmother, I think. It was always said that my great-grandfather had taken a Bedawin. Well, it’s all right, I suppose, only the face comes out like a hawk.’

  Nuri helped himself to another sandwich and considered the matter.

  ‘Plenty of fire, of course. That goes with it. I like a girl with spirit. Her mother had that, of course. My goodness, yes!’

  It was said, indeed, and not just by Zeinab, who made the point regularly to Owen, that the real reason why Zeinab’s mother had refused Nuri was that she wished to keep her independence.

  To do him justice, it was a reason that Nuri might have appreciated. He certainly appreciated it in Zeinab, allowing his daughter a licence which was as great an affront to polite society as his devotion to her mother had been.

  ‘Mother and grandmother,’ decided Nuri. ‘Both sides. That explains it. But as to money,’ he said, darting a sudden swift look at Owen which had everything of the hawk in it and nothing of the soft and delicate, ‘that, my boy, is a bit difficult.’