The Mark of the Pasha

by Michael Pearce

‘And their names,’ prompted Owen? ‘Had he been able to find out the names of the two men?’

  One of them was a lowly man, said the driver, not fit to ride in a De Dion. He had been hanging around the Prince lately, doing his errands, and seemed to have come to him with the other man. His name was Ziki.

  And the other man? A different kettle of fish entirely. A man who knew his De Dions. and, apparently, his princes, too. Certainly, he had known the Prince in the past, although he had only recently swum again into view. The prince had greeted him as an old friend and had made much of him. Too much, in the driver’s view; the fellow gave himself airs. But you couldn’t complain, as he was so much in the Prince’s counsels.

  ‘And his name,’ asked Owen?

  The driver had never really grasped his name. The Prince seemed to make a point of not using it, and it was not a thing you could ask. But he must be a Pasha’s son at least, for the Prince to treat him with such familiarity.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Parquet had got its man. Yussef had been arrested. It had happened as Sadiq, the Parquet officer in charge of the case, had suggested it would. The masseurs of Cairo were a tight-knit group, operating almost as a guild. Yussef had come from outside, from Assouan, deep in the south of Egypt, and had been regarded as an interloper. He was a good masseur and, once he had been tried, had had no difficulty in getting patients. But the patients had been private ones. He had found it difficult to get employment at any of the public hammams. Private patients were not easily found, and certainly not so easily found as to make it unnecessary for him to engage in what his fellows discounted as ‘dubious practices.’

  To add to his problems, he had come to Cairo with something of a record. He had been obliged to leave Assouan in a hurry because of an incident that had happened. Someone had died.

  This had not endeared him to his fellow practitioners. In addition to the damage the employment of such fellows caused to the reputation of such an honourable profession, it made the other masseurs rather afraid of him; and therefore not at all unwilling to betray to the Parquet his present whereabouts.

  He was now being held by the police in a caracol down by the Khan-el-Khalil, the great bazaar area of Cairo. Sadiq had at once notified Mahmoud, as he had said he would, and had proposed that they go down together to question him.

  As they were arriving, another arabeah drew up outside the caracol. Out of it stepped Mr. Narwat.

  ‘Another client for you, Mr. Narwat?’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mr. Narwat. ‘And if you are going to interview him, I am afraid I must insist on your doing it in my presence.’

  Sadiq was faintly surprised. He knew by repute of Mr. Narwat and of the fees he charged and had not expected to find him employed by an out-of-work masseur such as Yussef.

  Yussef, it turned out, was also surprised. He was a squat, surly thick-set fellow whom even without knowing his record, many hammams would not happily employ. When Mr. Narwat introduced himself, he viewed him with suspicion.

  ‘Lawyer?’ he said. ‘I don’t have a lawyer.’

  ‘You do now,’ said Mr. Narwat winningly.

  ‘Nor do I want one,’ said Yussef.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Mr. Narwat. ‘But you’re going to need one.’

  Yussef spat on the floor.

  ‘I don’t like lawyers,’ he said.

  ‘Nevertheless…’

  ‘You bugger off,’ said Yussef, turning his back on him.

  ‘I am the Parquet officer in charge of the case,’ said Sadiq, ‘and I would like to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘And you can bugger off, too,’ said Yussef belligerently.

  ‘Your name is Yussef?’

  ‘Who’s saying it’s not?’

  ‘And you were employed at the hammam in Shafik Street?’

  ‘My client does not have to answer that question,’ interrupted Mr. Narwat.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but he is not your client. I distinctly heard him say so. You can proceed,’ he said to Sadiq.

  ‘Just a minute—’ said Mr. Narwat.

  ‘Between the following dates,’ continued Sadiq.

  ‘I don’t know much about dates,’ said Yussef, ‘but anyone will tell you when I was employed there.’

  ‘Yussef…’ began Mr. Narwat.

  ‘And they also knew what happened there,’ said Yussef. ‘I broke his neck.’

  ‘I really must insist—’

  ‘Is this man employed by you?’ Mahmoud asked Yussef.

  ‘Employed?’ said Yussef, astonished. ‘Me? Look, I don’t employ anybody. I’m a free man and I treat other people as free men. I’m not one of those people who own others. Nor would I want to be.’

  ‘I would advise you, I really would strongly advise you—’ began Mr. Narwat.

  ‘Piss off!’ said Yussef.

  ‘You heard!’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘In my client’s interests—’

  ‘He is not your client,’ said Sadiq. ‘He has several times said so. In view of that, Mr. Narwat, I must ask you to withdraw.’

  ‘Well!’ said Mr. Narwat.

  Mahmoud accompanied him out.

  ‘Are you sure you’re backing the right horse?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Mr. Narwat.

  ‘The Khedive is taking a personal interest in this case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Not surprisingly, since it concerns him. And he has the support of the Parquet and of the Ministry of Justice. Not to mention the British. Are you wise to allow yourself to be associated with a group which has attempted to blow up the Khedive and also clearly been responsible for a murder committed by this man?’

  ‘My duty as a lawyer—’

  ‘Just think about it,’ said Mahmoud.

  He smiled and patted Mr. Narwat on the shoulder.

  ‘Oh, and just think what you will say when the Parquet formally asks you to divulge the name of the person that has employed you.’

  ‘I have a duty of confidentiality—’

  ‘Just think about it,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But think very hard.’

  ***

  He went back in to where Sadiq was questioning Yussef. Yussef was being surprisingly forthcoming.

  ‘I don’t give a toss now,’ he said, ‘now that I’ve got the money.’

  ‘It won’t do you much good,’ said Sadiq.

  ‘Ah,’ said Yussef, ‘but that’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point, then, Yussef?’ asked Sadiq, surprised.

  ‘Ah!’ said Yussef.

  ‘Is it that it will do someone else some good?’ asked Mahmoud.

  Now it was Yussef who looked surprised.

  ‘You’re a sharp bugger, aren’t you?’ he said to Mahmoud.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I’m not telling you,’ said Yussef. ‘Otherwise you might take the money back.’

  ‘We might not want it back,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Not if you were helpful enough.’

  Yussef looked tempted, then shook his head.

  ‘Na-ow,’ he said. ‘I know you lot. I wouldn’t trust you an inch.’

  ‘We might find out anyway,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Now that we’ve found you, we’ll go back to everyone who knows you. And if we find out that way, then you certainly won’t keep the money. Who is she?’

  Yussef looked staggered.

  ‘She?’ he repeated. ‘You crafty sod. How did you know?’

  ‘We know quite a lot about you, Yussef.’

  Yussef looked worried.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you lot blundering in and making a mess of things.’

  ‘We don’t need to blunder in. Not if you tell us what we have to know.’

  Yussef hesitated.

  Mahmoud and Sadiq waited.

  ‘All rig
ht, then,’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s for my mother.’

  ‘Your mother!’ said both Mahmoud and Sadiq, amazed.

  ‘Yes. I want her to have this money. And not all in one go, or else she’ll give it all to the mosque. I want it in dribs and drabs, when she needs it, like, and I’ve set this up. So she’ll be all right no matter what happens to me. I’m in for it, anyway, and would be, some time or other, even if it wasn’t for this. So I’ve to think ahead, and now I have done, and set it up. You see, there’s no one else that’ll look after her. Now that my father’s gone. Not that he would have done anything for her. A right old bastard, he was. That was why I killed him.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘Yes. One day he went too far. He always used to beat her. Used to beat me, too, but I could stand it. She couldn’t. And one day he went too far when he was beating her and I heard something snap. I was a masseur, right? And I knew what it meant. So I got hold of him—he was a big man, but I’m bigger—and I said: “That’s enough!” “I’ll bloody kill you!” he said. “You won’t,” I said.

  ‘And I killed him. Pulled his neck out, just like you do with chickens. Of course, that meant I had to get out, which I did. But that meant I had to leave her without anything much, and I didn’t like that, because she always used to stand up for me. That’s usually how she got her beatings. So I said: “I’ve got to go now, but one day I’ll make it all right for you.” So when this bloke came along, I thought this was my chance.’

  ‘When this bloke came along?’

  ‘That’s right. Funny that was. He was in a car, see. A big, posh car. Now, I don’t hold with cars, and I don’t hold much with the people who drive them, either. They’ve always got more money than is good for them. So when he knocked Ali over, I went up to him and said: “I’m going to stretch your neck.” And he looked at me, as cool as you like, and said: “No need to.” He looked at Ali. “He’ll be all right,” he said, and gave me some money. “That’ll see to him,” he said.

  ‘Then he turned back to me. “You seem an amiable fellow,” he said. That was the way he talked. All la-de-dah. But nasty “You’re right,” I said. “And to show you, I think I’ll tie your neck in a knot.” “That’s no way to get on in the world,” he said. “I can show you a better.”

  ‘Well, I didn’t take to him, and that’s the truth. I wanted to have nothing to do with him. But he looked at me, as cool as you like, and said: “Come with me, my man.” My man! That’s what he said. If that wasn’t enough to make me want to wring his neck…

  ‘He just looked at me and said: “You’re a brute. And I could just do with a brute.” “You’ll have to do without me,” I said. “Oh?” he said. And named a sum.

  ‘When I got my breath back I said: “What do I have to do for this?” “Wring a neck,” he said.

  ‘Well, I thought about it. It was a lot of money. A lot! So I said: “Tell me about it.” But he wouldn’t tell me about it at first, he asked me lots of questions. And when I said I was a masseur, he said: “That’ll do very nicely.” And he upped the money.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ he said. ‘He offered me the money, and I took it. And I’ve arranged things so that it will all go to my mother.’

  ‘And Ziki?’ asked Sadiq.

  ‘Ziki?’

  ‘The man you killed.’

  Yussef shrugged.

  ‘He’s dead,’ he said.

  ***

  Owen meanwhile had been talking to Ziki’s widow. He found her not at her house but up outside the prison talking to the carter.

  ‘Effendi?’

  ‘We have talked before.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  He looked at the cart.

  ‘You still have the prison contract, then?’

  ‘We do, God be praised.’

  ‘You have had it a long time.’

  ‘Not long. It came to us after Ziki was released from prison.’

  ‘As a reward?’

  ‘It was said that it was out of kindness, but Ziki said it was for keeping his mouth shut.’

  ‘About what?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘There was some foolishness. The Pasha’s son was part of it, and so was Prince Hamid. Ziki was not part of it but they used him and he knew things. The prison contract was to stop his mouth. The Pasha’s son arranged it with the Palace.’

  ‘With the Palace?’

  ‘There was someone there who could arrange such things. He worked on the purchasing side and had been, well, one of those who were with Prince Hamid.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘Asif.’

  It was the name that Owen had paused over when Nikos had presented to him the list of the people who had been part of Prince Hamid’s group.

  Owen nodded.

  ‘And he arranged it?’

  ‘Yes. The Pasha’s son went to him. It was in the days when the Pasha’s son smiled on us.’

  ‘And did he not continue, then, to smile?’

  ‘We heard nothing of him for months. And I said: “He has forgotten us.” But Ziki said: “Perhaps it is better thus.” For he had not liked some of the things he had been called on to do when he was with them. And we thought no more of it. But then the Pasha’s son came to him again. And this time Ziki did not want to go with him. “Last time,” he said, “it was prison. What will it be this time?” And he tried to say that to the Pasha’s son, and the Pasha’s son was angry. “You are part of my design,” he said. “What do you think I got you the carrier business for?” He said it would go hard with him if he did not do as he was told.

  ‘So Ziki began to work for him again. But he did not like it. And one day he came to me and said: “This is terrible. I cannot do as he asks.” Nevertheless, he had to do it. He was, you see, still a bound man to the Pasha. Bound in his heart, although he had left him years before.

  ‘Even so, as time went on, he became more and more unhappy. His heart rebelled. And one day he said to me: “Let us sell the business and go to Assiut, and I will find work there.” But I counseled him, God forgive me, to wait. “Wait until the Pasha’s business is done,” I said. “And then he will go away as before and leave us alone.”

  ‘And Ziki did as I advised. But he said: “Ill will come of this.” And I said, “Never mind that, as long as it does not come on us.” But Ziki said, “I know too much. He will not try to shut my mouth with gold this time.”’

  ***

  Mahmoud told Owen that Mr. Narwat had decided to withdraw from the case.

  ‘He is no longer going to represent Yussef?’

  ‘Nor Hussein and Ahmet. He senses, I think, which way the wind is blowing.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Owen, and went to see Hussein and Ahmet. This time he had the two water-cart drivers brought in together.

  ‘Ziki is dead,’ he said. ‘You are not. This is because you are safe in prison.’

  ‘Ziki is dead?’

  They had not known, and the news shook them.

  ‘Those who know too much,’ said Owen, ‘have their mouths stopped. You, also, know too much.’

  He let them ponder it.

  ‘He will do to you as he did to Ziki. Unless you tell me what I want to know.’

  ***

  Zeinab had been disturbed by what Zaghlul had said when he saw her in the hospital. ‘A woman!’ he had registered, with horror. She had been surprised at this. Zaghlul was a cultivated man, quite Westernised, she had thought, one of those whom Mahmoud would have considered ‘modern.’ She knew him slightly—he had never been an intimate of her father, but they had met occasionally at functions, and she had always felt that she got on with him. But she did not like this.

  Over the next day or two she had found herself thinking about it increasingl
y. If Zaghlul, the astute, sophisticated leader of the Wafd party, the man who, her husband assured her, could still become the next Prime Minister, thought like this, how would others be thinking? If they thought the same, how would she fare in this new Egypt that they all thought they would be building?

  Since their dinner with Mahmoud and Aisha she had been thinking a lot about politics and the future of their country. She had never thought about it much before, assuming, supreme realist that she was, that things would go on much the same. The assumption of Mahmoud and Aisha that things would not go on the same had rather intrigued her. It had made her consider where she herself stood.

  And where did she stand? She wasn’t quite sure. Of course she was Egyptian. But she didn’t seem to be Egyptian in quite the way other people were. In the way that Mahmoud and Aisha were, for instance. They felt passionately about Egypt. They identified, yes, that was it, they identified themselves with Egypt much more than she did.

  She knew that this was partly, probably, largely, to do with her upbringing. She had been brought up in a Pasha’s household and the Pashas had always been somehow distant from the rest of the population. It was a question of lords and serfs. But it was more than that. The Pashas, with their wealth and freedom, had always looked outwards. And usually they had looked to France.

  Not so much to England. Perhaps they had fewer illusions about the British, since they were dealing with them on a day-to-day basis. In a way they despised them. They considered them, with their heavy boots and stiff manners, inferior culturally to themselves and certainly to the French. It was to France that the Egyptian ruling class looked for their culture, their clothes, and their entertainment. It was to Cannes, not Blackpool, that they went for their holidays (understandably); Paris, not London, that they looked for their styles.

  Nuri, intending the best for his daughter, had brought Zeinab up like this. The result was that she shared the cosmopolitan outlook of the privileged Egyptian rich and had never been greatly in touch with what went on below. She, like the Pasha class as a whole, had grown away from Egypt; and what she was suddenly coming to realise was that this might do her, and them, no good.

  But this separation was not a complete thing. In many ways she still felt intensely Egyptian; particularly when it came to injustices inflicted on Egypt by other countries. So she was quite drawn to the vision Mahmoud painted of an independent Egypt staying true to its roots but going its own way. That was how she saw herself, too: independent, going her own way, but still somehow true to herself as an Egyptian.