The Camel of Destruction

by Michael Pearce

  ‘And all these good people are prepared to lie in its way,’ said the Mufti. ‘There are a lot of them, don’t you think? But then, you politicians don’t care about numbers.’

  The Ministers, mindful of their voters, were not so sure.

  ‘But, Mufti,’ said one of them diffidently, ‘I still don’t see what this Camel is.’

  ‘It is not so much the Camel itself as its path. Which happens to go in a straight line from the Bab-el-Azab to the Bab-el-Futuh. Right through the Old City with all its mosques. I am sure, gentlemen,’ said the Mufti sweetly, ‘that you understand now the special significance of our blessed Sheikh.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Ministers did understand the significance of the Blessed Sheikh. A day or two later it became known that the road was not going to be proceeded with.

  The fact that the Mufti had come out so strongly against the road and the scale of the support had also impressed the British. The word jihad, or holy war, was suddenly on people’s lips. The Consul-General shook his head and Paul went out among the foreign bankers with a long face muttering the word ‘risky’. He did not go into details; simple repetition of the word, which seemed to have awful significance for bankers, was enough.

  Support for the project crumbled. The Khedive was furious. What were the British there for, he demanded? If it wasn’t to make sure that the banks got their cash, what was it? Why didn’t they get on and use those expensive soldiers?

  The bankers didn’t care to hear it put quite so plainly and war would clash with the Army’s Sports Day, so confrontation was postponed.

  This suited the Nationalists, except the more militant ones. Unusually, however, they found themselves rallying to the support of the Khedive. Roads were plainly progress. The Khedive, wrong-headed though he was on most things, was right on this. Modernization was what the country needed. The fact that the British were opposing it was surely guarantee enough of its being in the country’s interests.

  Barclay bought Owen a drink. Even Selim, whom they collected from his work on the little sparkling, blue-tiled mosque, was tempted to join them in it, though in the end he stuck to coffee. He intended, he confided, to go and see Aisha’s parents afterwards.

  They parted outside the Fingaris’ door. As Owen turned away he found Ali watching aghast.

  ‘You are too generous, effendi!’ he wailed. ‘I know the British say you should give your adversary a sporting chance but this is ridiculous!’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ said Owen, feeling it incumbent on him to set Ali’s overheated mind at rest.

  ‘Well, at least it’s not Jabir,’ said Ali, when eventually he became reconciled.

  Owen caught him by the shoulder.

  ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘You spoke of him yourself, effendi!’ cried Ali, alarmed.

  ‘I know I did. What do you know of him?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about him, effendi,’ said Ali, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Aisha has already rejected him.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Owen, ‘but how do you?’

  ‘I heard her rebuff him, effendi. He went to her house. She would not even give him admittance. But he is a nasty man, effendi. Afterwards he went back and spoke with her brother. “I will have her,” he said, “one way or another. You go back and command her.” “She does not love you,” Osman said. “What has that got to do with it?” asked Jabir. “You are her brother. She is yours to command.” “She will not,” said Osman. “You see she does,” said Jabir, “or you know what will happen.”’

  ‘How did you hear all this?’

  ‘I happened to be standing by,’ said Ali. ‘They sat outside at a café.’

  ‘Did you think Jabir might wish to use you?’

  ‘Effendi!’ said Ali, shocked. ‘How could you think a thing like that!’

  ‘Has he used you before?’

  ‘Effendi! Well, perhaps occasionally.’

  ‘With Aisha?’

  ‘She would not receive his letters. Afterwards, he would blame me and beat me. So I refused to take them. Well, until he offered me more money. Effendi—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was not the beating that I minded but the way he did the beating.’

  ‘What way was that?’

  ‘As one might beat a dog if one especially wished to hurt it.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I think Aisha did, too, and that is why she would not have him.’

  ‘That day, when he spoke with Osman, what else did he say?’

  ‘I could not understand. They spoke in riddles.’

  ‘Did you learn what it was that Jabir threatened?’

  ‘No, effendi. But Osman protested and said they were two different things. And Jabir said that to him they were the same, and that if Osman did not do them both he would betray him. And Osman said he could do the other thing but not this thing, and that this thing was small and the other big. But Jabir said that this thing was big to him and he would have it so.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Jabir left.’

  ‘And Osman?’

  ‘He put his head on his arms and wept.’

  ***

  ‘Anything I can do to help,’ murmured Jabir politely. ‘Where shall we start?’

  ‘How about when you first met up with him again after he had left College? You were working for a bank then, I believe?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘The Trans-Levant. Which concerned itself largely with property speculation.’

  ‘Investment,’ said Jabir, ‘investment.’

  ‘And Osman Fingari had just been appointed to the Ministry of Public Works. Which was very convenient.’

  Jabir looked at him warily.

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yes. He was responsible for planning matters in the part of Cairo in which you were interested.’

  ‘We have interests everywhere.’

  ‘The Bab-el-Azab. Did you approach him over that, I wonder?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I certainly don’t remember doing so.’

  ‘That is strange, because the Trans-Levant was buying up property in that area and seeking permission to develop.’

  ‘Ah, but that would have been someone else.’

  ‘You didn’t approach Osman Fingari to, let us say, make things easier?’

  ‘I wasn’t involved in that project at all.’

  ‘That, too, is strange, for someone who knows you, remembers you as active in it, too.’

  ‘Not very active.’

  ‘Very active,’ said Owen, ‘or so this person says.’

  Jabir shrugged.

  ‘Be that so or not,’ said Owen, ‘the application was approved. By Osman Fingari.’

  Jabir shrugged again.

  ‘And this is where I’m hoping you will be able to help me: was the Bab-el-Azab project before Tufa or after?’

  ‘Tufa?’ said Jabir.

  ‘You remember Tufa? It was a question of enclosing land from the desert, at a nominal price because it was to be used for industrial development. Again you approached Fingari, and again he approved.’

  ‘I don’t remember approaching him. We handle a lot of projects.’

  ‘You might remember this one, because you approached him again. After he had moved to the Ministry of Agriculture. This time it was over registering a change of land use.’

  ‘I believe I recall something now. Wasn’t it to do with water?’

  ‘I am so glad you remember. You see, there is a record of your presence at a meeting where the application was discussed.’

  Jabir smiled. ‘Are you not making a mystery of something innocuous, Captain Owen?’

  ‘Is financial deception innocuous, Mr. Sabry?’

&
nbsp; ‘All businessmen try it on, Captain Owen. That is all I plead guilty to.’

  ‘Ah, but look at it from the other point of view, Osman Fingari’s. There are rules in such matters for public servants.’

  ‘The most he could be condemned for is the indulgence of a friend.’

  ‘Not quite the most. Did not money change hands?’

  ‘You would have to prove that, Captain Owen.’

  ‘More to the point, you could, if required.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow you.’

  ‘Was not that the object? To put Osman Fingari in a blackmailable position? So as to be sure he would do as he was told.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You wanted his connivance over something rather bigger: the deal with the Agricultural Bank.’

  ‘You make me sound very sinister, Captain Owen.’

  ‘I think you are sinister, Mr. Sabry. You very deliberately set about catching your friend in the meshes of a carefully prepared net. You trapped him over Tufa and I suspect that when we have finished our investigations we shall find that you trapped him over Bab-el-Azab, too. And this was done so that you could wedge him in over the deal with the Agricultural Bank. But that, actually, is not the worst of it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Having trapped him, you tightened the screw, and you did that not because it was necessary but because you wanted to.’

  ‘He was dragging his feet.’

  ‘A little. Others were pressuring him, too. But that does not explain why you deliberately did it to the point when he broke.’

  ‘Everyone puts pressure on.’

  ‘But not everyone enjoys pressing to the point of destruction.’

  ‘How was I to know he would commit suicide?’

  ‘Because you knew he had nearly done it before. You knew Osman well, Mr. Sabry. You knew how weak he was and the extent of your own influence over him. You had tormented him at school and you had enjoyed the tormenting. When the chance came again, you enjoyed that. He was your bird, Mr. Sabry.’

  ‘Bird?’

  ‘Don’t you remember the incident of the bird from your schooldays? It had a damaged wing and your schoolfriends urged you to kill it. So you did, but not quickly.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Was Aisha going to be your bird, too, Mr. Sabry?’

  ‘Aisha!’

  ‘I think she was, only she knew it and would not have you.’

  ‘What has Aisha got to do with it?’

  ‘When she rebuffed you, it made you ugly inside. You had to work that out of you. You went back to Osman. You knew he was there and trapped and that you could do what you liked with him. You tightened the screw until he screamed and then tightened it again. He screamed again and then you tightened again. And then he died.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him,’ said Jabir hoarsely.

  ‘I think once you had started tightening and he had started screaming you could not stop,’ said Owen.

  ***

  ‘He had, you see, two agendas,’ he explained; ‘the one set by his employers and his own. His employers admit the pressure but say, naturally, that it was never intended to go so far. When he gave the last twists he was acting on his own.’

  ‘Because that was the kind of guy he was?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You’ll never convict him,’ said Georgiades positively. ‘Pressure isn’t a crime.’

  ‘Blackmail is. Offering inducements is. I’ll get him on those.’

  ‘Will you be able to prove it?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Owen drily, ‘how cooperative his employers are. So anxious are they to dissociate themselves from Jabir’s acts that they are providing me with all sorts of details about his activities.’

  ‘Who were his employers?’ asked Georgiades.

  ‘There were several groups interested in the deal going ahead.’

  ‘The Agricultural Bank?’ suggested Georgiades.

  ‘Yes, but Jabir didn’t actually work for them directly. Nor, incidentally, did he work for the Khedivial Agricultural Society, which was also interested in the deal going ahead. But he did work for interests outside the Society, a small group whose leader was Ali Reza Pasha. Ali Reza had excellent contacts with Ministers—and so was able to arrange Osman Fingari’s transfer—which was probably why the Trans-Levant secured him as an ally. They worked together on the deal and Jabir was the go-between.’

  ‘The Trans-Levant, then.’

  ‘Yes, but it, too, was acting as an agent. Behind it there was a big international bank which sniffed opportunities in Egypt. What it was really interested in was the deal with the Agricultural Bank. It wasn’t fussy, though. It was also attracted by the prospect of financing the road. It hesitated between the two. The extra deal on the new seed tipped the balance in favour of the Agricultural Bank. Then when that looked like falling through, it swung the other way.’

  ‘So there was a degree of urgency over the deal,’ said Georgiades.

  ‘Yes. And I think Fingari knew it could swing the other way and was trying to hold on until it did. He was a Nationalist, you see. He was suspicious of the Agricultural deal because he thought it would be at the expense of the fellahin. On the other hand he was in favour of the road because, well, that was modernization, that was progress.’

  ‘So he wasn’t just venal?’

  ‘Oh no, he had his ideals, too.’

  Georgiades hesitated.

  ‘I think I would tell Aisha that,’ he said.

  ***

  A thing then happened which was to Owen, still, obviously, innocent in the ways of the financial world, surprising. The deal on the road having fallen through, the big international bank announced that it was once more interested in lending to the Agricultural Bank.

  ‘You’re not going to let it go ahead, are you?’ said Owen, outraged.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Paul, ‘and tap it for some more if we can. Lenders are scarcer than borrowers. Especially in Egypt just at the moment.’

  Paul was now reconciled to Owen, having heard that the sum he had raised from the Khedivial Agricultural Society had been paid straight into the Public Accounts and that the Head of Audit had personally approved the large transfer into Owen’s hospitality budget which had made possible his convivial evening at the opera.

  Nikos went into a state of deep shock.

  Yussuf was overjoyed and went to the Agricultural Bank as soon as it resumed lending. On his way home, however, Satan tempted him and he determined to divorce his existing wife and embark on a more stirring existence with someone younger. As soon as he reached home he informed his wife, in accordance with Islamic law, that she was henceforth divorced.

  ‘Oh, am I?’ she said. ‘In that case you had better pay me back my dowry,’ fairly confident that he could not.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Yussuf, counting out seven pounds from the money he had just received.

  He then approached the father of an attractive girl he had seen.

  ‘A bit out of your reach,’ the father said. ‘Her dowry is twelve pounds.’

  ‘Only twelve-pounds?’ and Yussuf counted it out.

  When he asked his new bride to let him have back the £12 so that he could buy seed, she refused, knowing that he had divorced his first wife and guessing that he would soon tire of her.

  Sure enough, it was not long before he was regretting his decision. He divorced his new wife and went back to his old one and asked her to marry him again.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘but now you owe me five pounds. Her dowry was twelve pounds and mine was only seven pounds.’

  ‘All right,’ said Yussuf and let her have the £5, which was, as it happened, all that he had left of the sum he had borrowed from the Agricu
ltural Bank.

  Both wives then lent out their money locally at a handsome rate of interest. They were not alone. A surprising number of fellahin had gone down the same slippery path as Yussuf.

  The result was a considerable transfer of wealth from the fellahin to their wives. Not long after, it was estimated that the fellahin women had become creditors to three-fifths of the debts of the fellahin. The Agricultural Bank was a poor second.

  Which left Owen even more puzzled about the ways of the financial world.

  He himself, however, had his own difficulties.

  ‘Still no money?’ said Zeinab’s father, Nuri Pasha, affecting surprise. ‘With all your opportunities? What have you been doing?’

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