The Mark of the Pasha

by Michael Pearce

  And now there were alarmed cries: the other cars were coming.

  ‘Get back! Get back!’ shouted Owen, leaping to his feet.

  He saw Garvin running forward.

  And then, suddenly, there was McPhee, on the track beyond them, waving some coloured material, a shirt, perhaps, ripped off someone’s back.

  Miraculously the drivers saw him. They were unable to stop, but turned off into the desert and ran past him and the stationary car and the mass of people.

  The people were not all round the car. Some of them were round the man who had originally run out on to the track. They were beating him up.

  Garvin, already busy with the injured, looked up and saw Owen. He pointed to the man at the centre of the mob.

  ‘Get him away!’ he shouted. ‘Get him away before they kill him!’

  Owen shouldered in, grabbed hold of the man, and pulled him out.

  Where could he take him?

  He saw his driver and shouted to him: ‘Get the car!’

  The driver was already running.

  Some of the mob had run after Owen and were still striking at the man, and at him.

  Suddenly Zeid was there, beating off the blows, forcing away the men.

  The boy was there, too, open-mouthed.

  Zeid caught Owen’s eye and pointed.

  His car was coming towards him with a speed at least equal to that the cars had shown on the track.

  Owen hustled his captive into a seat. Zeid piled in on top of him. With a roar of its engine the car began to pull away, people still beating at its sides.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said Zeid, looking over the back of the car to where the boy was clinging.

  ***

  Owen got the car to drive over to the other side of the circuit. They all got out.

  ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ he said to the man.

  He wasn’t really a man, just a boy. He might even have been a student. He was weeping.

  ‘That was not what I meant!’ he sobbed. ‘Not what I meant at all!’

  ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘I wanted to stop the cars. They are a blasphemy and an abomination. You bring them over here. But we don’t want them and we don’t want you.’

  ‘Have you seen cars before? You could have got yourself killed.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind being killed,’ said the boy defiantly.

  ‘Indeed, you may have killed others.’

  The boy began to weep again.

  ‘That was not what I meant!’ He rocked to and fro. ‘As God is my witness! That was not what I meant at all. I meant only to strike a blow.’

  ‘Against whom?’

  ‘The English,’ the boy said. ‘All those who bring wicked things to Egypt.’

  Zeid touched his forehead.

  ‘He’s magnoum,’ he said. Crazy.

  ‘What are you going to do with him, sir?’ asked the driver.

  ‘Take him back to the Bab-el-Khalk. Let Garvin handle this.’

  If no one had been hurt, he would probably let him go. If anyone had been injured or killed, however, he would pay the price. Any penalty the courts might impose seemed, though, a little beside the point.

  ‘He’s a nutter, sir,’ said the driver, starting up the engine.

  Maybe.

  ‘Were you alone in this?’ he asked.

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘Did you speak to your Sheikh?’

  The boy seemed startled.

  ‘I always speak to my Sheikh,’ he said. ‘He is a holy man.’

  ‘Did you speak to him on this?’

  The boy closed his lips firmly.

  He might well have done, but probably only in generalities. And it was probably only in generalities that the sheikh had answered him. There were two sorts of sheikh. There was the local chief, to whom people, particularly out in the countryside, owed allegiance; and there was the religious leader, these days, out in the villages, likely to be elderly and set in his ways. He offered some sort of guidance to the village youngsters but it didn’t take them far when they moved to the town, as so many of them did now. In the city they lost their bearings and, with their background religiosity, which was the only scheme of values they had, they were easy prey for the radical speakers who knew how to fan simple religion into simple politics.

  Yet they weren’t all like that. The other boy, Salah, for instance, still perched precariously at the rear of the car, who wanted to be a mechanic, was someone who appeared to have no problem about embracing the modern world, or at any rate, its technology.

  ‘Did you see the De Dion?’ he asked Zeid.

  ‘I think so,’ said Zeid. He looked back at Salah. ‘He said it was.’

  ‘It was a De Dion,’ the boy called from the back. ‘But it didn’t look like the same one. The one here was a racer. The other one was a tourer. Modified,’ he explained.

  ‘Modified?’

  ‘To make it suitable for ordinary use. The racer is stripped down and powered up. The other one is built up to make it more comfortable. More seating, luggage space, that sort of thing. But it still looks like a racer. To some people,’ he added disdainfully.

  ‘So this isn’t the one we’re interested in?’

  ‘Not unless it’s been very stripped down. Of course, he might have two of them. Once you’re a De Dion man, you’re a De Dion man.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be very expensive?’

  ‘Oh, incredibly,’ said Salah.

  ***

  Zeinab’s would-be helper, Miriam, had not yet, however, cleared all the hurdles in her advance to office. There was still her family to be considered. In practice, this meant her brother, who had become head of the family after the death of her father.

  Their father had worked all his life in a humble capacity at the Abdin Palace. That meant there was always money coming in; not much, but enough for him to be able to send his son to college and to give Miriam something of an education at a good school. The family had never been rich, just not badly off, but the father’s job had had one great benefit; it had enabled him to plug into a useful system of patronage. Through his Palace connections the father had been able to find his son a job at the Palace, a lowly one, it is true, but nevertheless a job.

  Patronage might get you a job but you still needed brains to get on. These Miriam’s brother had and he had risen quite quickly to achieve the position of Deputy Controller of the Household. He was able now to live in some style, and the style was Western. He was Western in his clothes—he always wore a neat dark suit—and in his habits. He often went out in the evenings to a club and sometimes to the theatre. And his friends were as often European as they were Egyptian. He had acquired something of a name for introducing Western practice into the Household’s accountancy.

  This did not, however, mean that he was at all in favour of his sister adopting Western practice, too. She was younger than he was and he had never really thought much about her. On the whole he had assumed that she would be much like their mother and do as she had done; that was, stay at home and mind the house.

  When, therefore, Miriam had put her plans to him he had been—well, yes, quite shocked, and had dismissed them on the spot, putting his foot down, in her view, quite brutally. This had only stiffened her resolve. He had found, to his surprise, that she did not take the words he had uttered as the last words on the subject. She had argued back and gone on arguing.

  He had found this rather difficult. He wasn’t used to argument in the family; in fact, he wasn’t used to dissent at all. He had never much noticed her before. He supposed he loved her in a vague, unnoticing kind of way. He had never quite realised how old she was getting. Twenty-three, was it? Twenty-four? She really ought to have been married by now. In fact, she ought to have got married years ago—fifteen was t
he age when quite a lot of women got married.

  His heart smote him. This was bad. He really ought to have done something about it. It was his charge and he had neglected it. There had been so many things to take responsibility for when his father had died and somehow, among them all, he had neglected her. And now, good heavens, she had missed her chance. It was his fault. He was to blame.

  So now, when she started talking about what she was going to do with her life, he felt himself in, really, rather a quandary. She was quite right. She had to do something. And marriage now—! But was it quite out of the question? He would have to pay, and probably a lot, that was clear. But it was his fault, he should have thought of it earlier, so maybe it was right that he should. It would still take a bit of negotiation, though, and that would take time, which was the one thing he was short of…

  But this rubbish about going to work in an office, that really was nonsense! What did she think she was going to do? What could she do? Had she asked herself that?

  Typing. He was taken aback. He hadn’t known she could type. When had she learned that? Had she gone to one of those places where they specialised in that sort of thing? A business school? But they were for men. Surely she had not been—

  He really had not been performing his duties! He must take himself in hand, he told himself sternly. It was all very well concentrating on his work but there were other things too. His family—had he done enough about them? What would his father have said? Care for the family was his sacred duty and he had let it slip.

  She had taught herself? She hadn’t gone anywhere? Well, that was a relief! At least she had not made an exhibition of herself in public. Even so, typing! What might that lead to? He must put his foot down. He would put it to her clearly…

  But still she went on arguing! She wasn’t accepting what he said, and this too, was wrong. He was the head of the household now and what he said, went.

  But it didn’t.

  The fact was, she had been badly brought up.

  But who had been responsible for bringing her up? He had!

  She would be working, she said, for a woman. Well, that was something. But then another thought: how could that be? How could there be a woman in a position to have others working for her? A Pasha’s daughter? Well, that, too, was something. But, wait a minute, the Pasha was that old reprobate, Nuri. He wasn’t going to let her have anything to do with him, not on any account. He wouldn’t let her even set foot in his house—

  She wasn’t going to set foot in his house. She was going to be working at the hospital.

  And so it went on. To everything he said she found an answer.

  His head was in a whirl. How had it come to this? It had got to this because he had not been giving sufficient attention. Well, he would put that right. He would put that right immediately.

  What she needed was a bit of discipline. He knew what some of his colleagues would say. A good beating, that’s what she needs, they would say.

  But somehow he shrank from that. One thing his father had given him was a strong sense of justice. Justice was what moved him most, he often said to his friends. It was, after all, what had led him to involve himself in those things three years ago. And it would not be just to beat his sister for what was really his fault.

  Besides, when he had hinted, even just hinted that this could be what her intransigence might lead to, she had flown off the handle completely. Just try it, she had said! You lift a finger against me and I shall walk out!

  ‘Where to?’ he had said derisively.

  ‘I’ll find a flat,’ she had said. ‘Don’t forget they’ll be paying me.’

  The very thought was enough to send his brain reeling. What would his father say? He had left him the family as his sacred trust and now the family was collapsing. To have a sister leave the family home and set up on her own was unthinkable, quite unthinkable! How would he be able to face his friends, his colleagues? How would he be able to walk down the street?

  All right, he was much to blame, but how could she even think of doing something like that? What had got into her? His mother had been too soft with her. What she needed was, yes, a bit of discipline. Her head was full of fantasies. She needed to have them driven out.

  And then the thought came to him. Was not that exactly what would happen when she went to this office of hers? He knew about work and the workplace. They wouldn’t put up with any nonsense from her. Wouldn’t they do it for him? Knock some sense into her head? Not actually beat her, no, they wouldn’t do that and that was not what he wanted. But they wouldn’t tolerate any of her nonsense and would send her packing. She would come running home with her tail between her legs. And then she might be prepared to listen to him. She might even be willing to let him fix up a marriage for her. That would be the best solution and maybe this job would bring her round to seeing that.

  ***

  Owen had a new man on the case, or, rather, not a man but a boy: the boy, Salah. When they had got back to the Bab-el-Khalk he had taken Salah aside and offered him a huge sum to come and work for him. Not too huge, actually, for it was the equivalent of two pints of beer a week. But to Salah it was huge and it would mean, moreover, that he was staying close to his beloved cars.

  His task was to find out who owned the De Dion that had brought the ‘strangers’ to the Water Depot. Owen thought he would be better at this than Georgiades or Zeid since they couldn’t tell one car from another except by its colour. Besides, a boy would attract less attention than a man—there were always lots of boys hanging around in Cairo—and would be able to worm himself in through the back entrances of the Automobile Club and the Palace in ways that they could not.

  ***

  Mahmoud el Zaki, too, had now been formally assigned to the case and was familiarising himself with its details in his usual thorough way. He had been to the Sharia Nubar Pasha and to the barracks to study the bomb. He had not yet interviewed Ahmet and Hussein, the drivers of the water-cart, but he and Owen had worked out a strategy which might enable them to do so with better profit.

  ***

  Owen took Zeid with him down to the Water Depot. They parted company. Zeid went off to drink tea with the water-cart drivers, who were just coming back from their morning shift. Most of the carts had returned now and their drivers had gone over to lie in the shade of the office building. Owen went in to see Babikr, the Depot Manager. After a while they emerged and stood for a moment chatting in the shade.

  ‘You see,’ Owen said to the Depot Manager. ‘They could have put other people in danger as well. Your men, for instance.’

  ‘My men?’

  Owen stepped close to Babikr and lowered his voice; but not to the extent that the drivers lying nearest them in the shade could not hear.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a good look at the bomb now. It’s a bit of an amateur contraption and could have gone off at any time. Even here.’

  ‘Here?’ said the Depot Manager.

  ‘Yes. Because that’s where it was put in the cart.’

  ‘They couldn’t have known!’ said Babikr positively.

  ‘Well—’

  ‘You don’t mean that they did know?’

  ‘I am afraid they did know. They’ve told me.’

  ‘Who would have believed it! Ahmet and Hussein! But perhaps—’ clutching at straws ‘—they did not know what it was?’

  ‘I am afraid they did. You see, just before they ran from the cart, they had done something under it. Primed it so that it could explode.’

  ‘May God forgive them!’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been just the Khedive who was killed if it had gone off. It would have been the people standing nearby. Women, children—’

  The Depot Manager looked distressed.

  ‘Who could have believed it?’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Ahmet and Hussein!’

 
; ‘Yes, I know, I was surprised, too. But what makes it worse, you see, is that it could have gone off here. The people they worked with. Their mates!’

  ‘I cannot believe… But perhaps it wouldn’t have gone off? They hadn’t primed it?’

  ‘We-ll, as I told you it was a bit of a contraption. Not an expert job. It could have gone off at any time.’

  ‘But perhaps they didn’t know that?’

  ‘Someone did. The person who made it.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t have been Ahmet and Hussein—’

  ‘No. But it was in their cart. And the people who put it there must have been told what to do. And how to set it up. It had to be done very carefully.’

  ‘But perhaps that was not Ahmet and Hussein?’

  ‘Who was it, then?’

  ‘Someone must have come in.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At night.’

  ‘Is there no watchman?’

  ‘Of course there is. And the place is kept locked.’

  ‘Perhaps the watchman was sleeping.’

  ‘But Ali’s a good man! He wouldn’t have—’

  ‘There is another thing: suppose men had come in at night. In the dark. How would they have known which was the cart to put it in? Dozens of carts? All in rows? All exactly alike? Does it not have to have been Ahmet and Hussein?’

  The Depot Manager was silent.

  ‘Or,’ said Owen, ‘one of the other men who work here?’

  ***

  The watchman lived in a ramshackle hut on the edge of the Depot. When they got there, he was out. He had gone down to the river, said his aged wife, to fetch water.

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ she asked fiercely. ‘How else am I going to do my cooking?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with that, Mother,’ said Owen hastily.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: why does the man have to do that while the woman sits on her ass at home?’

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘I’ll tell you why. Because I’ve got a bad back, that’s why!’