The Mark of the Pasha

by Michael Pearce

  He wandered on into the harara. The harara was the main room where baths were taken and the body massaged. It was filled with steam and for a moment he stopped because the heat was so overwhelming. Around the room men were lying on marble slabs, as in a mortuary thought Owen, then stilled the thought quickly.

  They were being worked on. Attendants in loin-cloths stooped over them, bending, pulling, and twisting this limb and that. From time to time there was a loud crack.

  The cracks were particularly frequent, in fact, they seemed a necessary part of it, when they were working on the neck. The head was twisted first this way and then that and each time the neck gave a loud crack.

  But that was nothing, thought Owen, compared with what they did to the feet. The soles of the feet were rasped with heavy rasps, like cheese or breadcrumb graters, made from Assouan clay and shaped like crocodiles. He supposed that if you walked barefoot much of the time, or, maybe, in sandals your feet might become so hard that they needed rasping.

  He thought he might forego this part and went over to where there were some smaller rooms with tanks of water into which you could plunge. Near the tanks a man was standing with loofah and soap. Owen was seized, soaped and scrubbed, and then had water poured over him. Getting into the tanks was optional. Steam was rising from the tank nearest him and the water appeared to be boiling. As he watched, a pink, lobster-like figure emerged from the bubbles like Venus emerging from the sea. Well, not quite like Venus: it was a short, fat, flabby man, who stood for a moment, gasping, while the attendant poured cold water down his back.

  ‘One of these days,’ said the man, ‘this is going to do it for me!’

  Owen thought he would forego that bit, too.

  The attendant wrapped them both in towels and they went to the beyt-owwal, where they lay on couches, this time with cushions, drinking coffee and talking. From time to time a lawingi would come in and rub someone’s feet or knead their bodies.

  Owen asked his neighbour if he came here often.

  ‘Most days,’ said the man. He shrugged. He said, that his wife complained he smelt of hilba and that she sent him to the baths to get rid of it.

  ‘You can’t,’ said a man near him. ‘It’s inside you.’

  Hilba was a strongly smelling, auburn-coloured substance which many Egyptians consumed in large quantities for its alleged curative properties. It dyed their palms red and made their bodies exude a distinct smell. Odeur d’arabe, some of Owen’s sniffy Egyptian friends called it, and they shunned it like the plague.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ asked someone.

  ‘Well, she’s a Christian, you see,’ said Owen’s neighbour, ‘and doesn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ said someone. ‘Why don’t you get another wife?’

  ‘I was thinking of that. Several of them,’ said Owen’s neighbour, roaring with laughter.

  The men fell to discussing the different smells of people. Armenians, they thought, smelled of pastrami and Italians of camomile. Greeks, they thought, smelled of garlic and brilliantine, and when they sweated, their arm-pits smelled of yoghurt.

  Owen hadn’t noticed this and made up his mind to check when Georgiades was next in the room. He wondered uneasily what he himself smelled like.

  ‘One thing you can be sure of,’ said the m’allim, who had been listening with interest. ‘My baths will clean anything. Inside or outside. And afterwards you will be as fragrant as a lily.’

  ‘Now, why hasn’t my wife noticed that?’ asked Owen’s neighbour.

  ‘How do you think the Khedive smells?’ asked someone.

  ‘French?’ suggested someone.

  ‘Or English.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said someone else. ‘I’ll bet he doesn’t smell of hilba!’

  They seemed in no hurry to go. Owen remarked as much to the m’allim when he went to collect his valuables.

  ‘Oh, they like to put the world to rights,’ said the m’allim.

  ‘There are worse ways to do that,’ said Owen, ‘than sitting in a hammam talking.’

  ‘That’s just what I say!’ said the m’allim. ‘You’d do better to come here than get up to some of the things you get up to, I say.’

  ‘Ah, but you don’t have people like that, do you?’

  ‘You’d be surprised!’

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ said Owen, ‘a friend of mine was supposed to be passing on something to someone here the other day. You don’t know if he did, do you?’

  ‘What was it?’ asked the m’allim.

  ‘A parcel, probably.’

  ‘Someone else was asking that.’

  ‘Probably someone else from our office. We’re a bit anxious about it and wanted to be certain that it had been passed on.’

  ‘I think someone came for it.’

  ‘Carriers?’

  ‘Yes. Sort of.’

  ‘Water cart, probably?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what it was.’

  ‘That’s all right, then. As long as it was the parcel we’re talking about. You don’t remember the person who brought it in, do you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  Owen slipped him some money.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ said the m’allim. ‘He was an effendi. Like yourself.’

  ‘Young and handsome?’ said Owen, smiling.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And smelling of hilba?’

  ‘Attar of roses, I think,’ said the m’allim.

  ***

  Outside, as Georgiades had told him, were the beggar-boys.

  ‘Effendi, Effendi!’ they cried, as soon as they saw him. ‘Bakhshish!’

  Owen stopped.

  ‘Bakhshish,’ he said, ‘has to be earned.’

  ‘Okay,’ said one of the boys resignedly. ‘Behind the hammam, then.’

  ‘Not in that way,’ said Owen. ‘That is a bad way.’ He took out a coin and balanced it in his fingers. ‘I give this,’ he said, ‘for information.’

  ‘You want to know who goes to the hammam?’

  ‘That’s right. This person came last week. He was an effendi, like me, and was carrying a package.’

  ‘Someone else asked us about the package.’

  ‘That’s right. And you told him that you had seen men come out carrying one.’

  ‘That is true, Effendi.’

  ‘What I want to know about is the man who carried it in.’

  ‘An effendi, you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We didn’t really notice him.’

  ‘Like me. And smelling of roses.’

  ‘I think I remember,’ said one of the boys.

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Richer than you, Effendi.’

  ‘Very probably. But what makes you think so?’

  ‘His clothes, Effendi.’

  The boy made a gesture with his hands which somehow conveyed comfort, display, casual affluence.

  ‘And the way he walked,’ said another boy.

  ‘How did he walk?’

  ‘As if he didn’t see us.’ The boy lifted his nose into the air as if he was disregarding a bad smell.

  ‘As if we were ants,’ said someone else.

  Owen nodded. These were the things they noticed. What in England would be registered as class. In Egypt it wasn’t quite class but a different kind of superiority.

  They gave him a description of the man’s face, too, but there was nothing that made it different from any other face. What had stood out for them, and what they kept returning to, was the assumption of superiority. It wasn’t just that he was a nas taibene, a phrase which might be applied to any well-to-do person, a banker, say, or a big shopkeeper. It was more than that.


  ‘The son of a Pasha?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Could be,’ said one doubtfully.

  ‘More than that,’ said another.

  ‘More than that?’

  The boy lost confidence.

  ‘Not all Pashas are…like this, Effendi,’ he said hesitantly.

  Some Pashas were little more than crude farmers. This one was evidently not like that.

  Owen had one last question.

  ‘Has he been to the hammam before?’

  There was doubt about the answer. The boys confessed.

  ‘We think so, Effendi. But then he wasn’t carrying a parcel and there was nothing to mark him.’

  ‘Except his clothes,’ one of the boys murmured.

  ‘Has he been more than once?’

  Again the boys looked at each other. Then two or three of them nodded.

  Owen gave out some coins and then held up a handful more.

  ‘These, too, will be yours,’ he said, ‘if you run to the Bab-el-Khalk when he comes again.’

  ***

  Zeid, meanwhile, had been nosing about the Palace. He had not been able to get inside but had watched the servants as they came and went and had identified the places they went to after leaving. He found that some of them liked to frequent a particular café, where they sat and smoked bubble-pipes to relax after the day’s work. There was a mechanic among them who worked on the Palace cars. Most of them belonged to the Khedive but one or two belonged to particular princes. Not just the cars belonged to the princes; so did their mechanics, and Zeid soon learned that in the Palace ownership was guarded jealously.

  A mechanic who worked for a prince worked for that prince and none other, and on his car and no others. Zeid learned, too, that this applied in other areas as well. Each prince was surrounded by his own retainers, who were blindly loyal to him alone. Among other things they guarded their prince’s confidentiality and wouldn’t answer questions about him or his doings.

  To his surprise, Zeid found this was generally true of the Palace servants. Although they let slip the occasioned remark about what went on in the Palace, they were in general astonishingly reticent. Zeid worked out later that this reticence had something to do with the fierce-faced men he had previously run into at the Palace, the ones who so ostentatiously fingered the daggers at their belts.

  Zeid realised that it was not going to be as easy to penetrate the Palace as it was to get into virtually any other institution in Cairo. He pondered this for some time and then came to Owen with a proposal.

  Boys, he pointed out, could get in where grown men couldn’t; and a boy like Salah, street-wise and besotted with motor cars, might well be acceptable where he himself wasn’t.

  They had a word with Salah, and the next day he presented himself at the Khedive’s garages, having in some miraculous way by-passed the Palace’s defences en route.

  For a long time he hung around doing nothing, just gazing wide-eyed at the cars inside. Gradually he crept forward and put the occasional question. Since he was so knowledgeable, the men began to answer them. When they needed a particular tool, he knew exactly which one it was and put it in their hand almost before they recognised their need. Since he was so willing and so admiring he soon became part of the furniture.

  He particularly admired the drivers. The drivers were exalted beings, even more exalted—in their opinions—than the mechanics. They, too, appreciated being appreciated and Salah took to sitting down beside them when they had their cup of tea. Gradually he became part of their circle, too.

  Some time later, when the conversation was especially relaxed, he dared to confess his ambition: he wanted to become a driver, too.

  They fell about laughing.

  ‘Look, sonny,’ they said, not unkindly, ‘this is not an ordinary job. It’s a big job. It requires skill.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Salah.

  ‘And judgment. And experience. It’s not something that anyone can do. You’ve got to work up to it.’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Salah. ‘When I watch you, I see what had gone into it.’

  ‘Maybe when you’re a bit bigger,’ they said kindly.

  ‘There’s obviously a lot to learn,’ said Salah. ‘I just wanted to make a start. Maybe as a first step I could become an assistant.’

  ‘Well, we don’t really have assistants.’

  ‘Maybe you should. It’s a big job, after all. And it’s not right that men of your stature should be doing the polishing. I would polish until it shone.’

  ‘Yes, but polishing is one thing, driving quite another.’

  ‘Oh, I can see that.’

  ‘First things first. Can you even drive?’

  ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ said Salah.

  ‘Yes, but what did you learn on. Not a car like these. Some of these cars here have got a lot of power under the bonnet. Do you know what speed that Brazier goes at?’

  ‘Sixty,’ said Salah.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s a lot to handle.’

  ‘What about the De Dion?’ asked Salah. ‘Even more?’

  ‘Well, you could argue about that. The point is, a big car like this could run away with you. You’ve got to be able to control it. And that requires—’

  ‘Experience. Judgment,’ said Salah. ‘Maybe I could work up to it.’

  ‘Not a chance. You could do something to it while you were working. Do you know how much these things cost?’

  Of course Salah did.

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘You’ve got to be rich to own a Brazier,’ said Salah wistfully. ‘Or a De Dion.’

  ‘Really rich!’

  ‘But you don’t have to own it to drive it,’ said Salah. ‘Look at all of you!’

  ‘Ah, well,’ they said, laughing. ‘There you are!’

  They noticed he had his eye on the De Dion and one afternoon one of the drivers said:

  ‘Come on, sonny. I’ve got to drive it round to the front of the Palace. You can sit beside me.’

  Scarcely daring to breathe, Salah sat beside him.

  When they got to the front of the Palace, the driver said: ‘Right, son. Now you’d better hop out!’

  ‘Thanks, Naguib!’ breathed Salah.

  When Naguib brought the car back to the garage, all dusty, Salah took the duster from him and polished the De Dion until he could see his face in it.

  The next day Naguib took him with him again. The De Dion was in and out several times that day and each time, when it was required, Naguib took Salah, and each time, when it came back, Salah polished it until it gleamed.

  The day after that Salah was in the garage wheeling a tyre when a man came in and went over to Naguib.

  ‘I’m going to take her out this afternoon,’ he said. ‘See she’s all right for petrol, will you?’

  Salah was intercepted by one of the drivers as he moved towards him.

  ‘Hey, sonny, what do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m going to ask him if he’ll take me on as an assistant driver.’

  ‘No, no, no! Prince Hamid doesn’t want to be bothered by the likes of you.’

  ***

  ‘Prince Hamid,’ said Owen: ‘what do you know about him?’

  ‘He’s the son of Farukh,’ said Nikos. ‘One of the Khedive’s brothers. A junior son. One of several.’

  ‘Have we come across him before?’

  Nikos frowned.

  ‘About two years ago I think there was something—’

  He went to the filing cabinet. Nikos’ files were the wonder of the world; or, at least, of the small part of the world that the Khedive’s intelligence system encompassed.

  ‘Yes. Actually, three years ago. He was one of a small group of students whom we picked up. They had
formed a club we didn’t like.’

  ‘Why didn’t we like it?’

  ‘Ottoman sympathisers.’

  Owen nodded. It would have been during the War. With the Turks just across the Suez Canal they had been looking out for possible internal sympathisers.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing much. We took them in and held them for a little while and then released them.’

  It was what they had been doing at the time. Cairo had abounded in political ‘clubs’ ever since he could remember. Many of them were student societies. Usually they just confined themselves to debate but occasionally they went further.

  ‘What did they call themselves?’

  ‘The Vengeance Society.’

  That would have been why they had been picked up. There were so many societies that you couldn’t bother about them all and you usually went for the ones whose titles indicated a possible propensity for violence.

  ‘And did they satisfy their desire for vengeance?’

  ‘Not from what I can see. But they liked to talk about it.’

  That, of course, was why they had been released. He must have judged that despite the ominous title, the main product of the club had been hot air. Much fiery talk, little fiery action: that was how Cairo had been at that time. Students were always like that so you didn’t take it too seriously.

  All the same, it was uncommon for a prince to be involved in one of the clubs. Not, perhaps surprisingly, since, while the political clubs might favour revolution, the Khedive’s family certainly didn’t.

  ‘It was reported to the Khedive, I presume?’

  You usually did that when the Royal family turned out to be involved in something. They preferred things to be hushed up and had their own ways of disciplining.

  ‘Yes. It was definitely reported. Wait a minute: there seems to have been some problem about it. Because I have a note here as a follow-up that the Khedive came back and said he wanted us to take action. But then maybe he had second thoughts, for there’s another note saying he’s decided to handle it himself after all.’

  ‘Perhaps Hamid didn’t like the way the Khedive started off and there was a bust-up?’

  ‘Or perhaps the Khedive’s brother intervened. Anyway, whatever they did, seemed to have worked, for we haven’t heard of him since.’