The Women of the Souk

by Michael Pearce

  ‘What did he mean?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘Oh, he didn’t think music was real work. Not real men’s work. And, besides …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He wanted me to walk in his footsteps.’

  ‘At the stables?’

  ‘Yes. And not only in the stables. More broadly.’

  ‘More broadly?’

  ‘My father wanted to build another Egypt. A bigger, better Egypt. One free from the Pashas. And from the British. But I was not interested in these things. All I was interested in was music and my father said to my mother: “Look what he has turned into! This is no boy of mine!” “His aims are different from yours,” my mother said, “that is all.” But although she spoke for me, her heart was half with my father. They both wanted to build a better Egypt. She worked for that, as well as he, and they were both disappointed that I did not care as much as they did about big things. But actually, I do care about them. They are what I want to put into my music.’

  There was a movement beside them. Someone had come to stand by them at the table. It was the awalim.

  ‘Are you troubled, brother?’ she said to the boy.

  ‘I’m all right,’ said the boy.

  ‘He is with friends,’ said Aisha.

  ‘He carries a big trouble with him,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘I know,’ said the awalim.

  ‘Your music will heal him,’ said Aisha politely.

  ‘It hasn’t healed me,’ said the awalim.

  She went back on to the platform and resumed her singing. Only now she was not singing the same songs. Instead of the songs of lovers, they were songs of old heroes. The audience began to clap out the rhythm. Mahmoud and Aisha clapped with them; the boy listened, rapt.

  ‘Was that what you wanted to do?’ asked Aisha, in a pause. ‘Make music like that?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ whispered the boy. ‘Yes.’

  The awalim brushed past them on her way out.

  ‘Was that the music you came to hear?’ she asked. ‘Or the other sort?’

  ‘Both,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The good thing about music is that there is room for both, and more.’

  ‘Well, you do ask for a lot from your evening out!’ said the awalim.

  The awalim bowed her head in acknowledgement.

  The boy sat on, as if stunned.

  Aisha leaned forward.

  ‘Are you looking for work?’

  ‘Work?’ he said, as if waking from a deep sleep.

  ‘I have three small children, and I would like the two eldest to have music lessons.’

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘Four and three.’

  ‘That is very young.’

  ‘You told me that you yourself started at three.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  Aisha laughed.

  ‘I am not expecting you to turn them into playing like yourself. I simply want them—’ she hesitated – ‘to be touched by music, so that it will live inside them and grow inside them – perhaps this is not simple after all!’

  ‘It is not. It is the most wonderful thing anyone can do. It is not work, it is – it is a privilege!’ He stopped. ‘But I don’t think I can do it, I don’t know how to. Music, yes, of course. I know about that. But teaching it is a different thing. Especially in ones so small …’

  ‘I am sure you could manage it. They are not difficult children and I think they like music. They like it when I sing to them. They even like it when their father sings to them.’

  ‘The less said about that the better,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘I think it is in them. But how do you take them further? What is the next step? That I don’t know.’

  The boy was thinking.

  ‘It may not be best to start with the nay. It is, as you say, a difficult instrument to learn. Perhaps I could bring along a tabl – a small drum, boys usually like that. And maybe a sagat – girls like that, it’s like castanets, but, really boys like it as well. I will bring along a selection, and I will play my nay and they can accompany me. Yes! They would like that. And it builds up a sense of rhythm, which, of course, they will have naturally.’

  ‘There!’ said Aisha. ‘You do know something about it! I’m sure you would be good at teaching. And they would love it.’

  ‘I could try, couldn’t I? I mean, I would like to try. It must be a wonderful thing to help children to start. It would be such a privilege to open out a world – yes. I would really love to do that.’

  ‘Good. Then you can come round to our house and start tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Now, about money.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want any money! It is such a wonderful thing to do.’

  ‘We must give you some money. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. Just a little. Not enough, I’m afraid, to make you rich.’

  ‘I don’t want to be rich! I just want to be happy in what I’m doing, and to make other people happy.’

  ‘Well, that’s very nice. All the same …’

  ‘I suppose,’ said the boy meditatively, ‘I could save up and then the Kewfiks might look more favourably on me.’

  ‘Look we weren’t thinking of quite that amount of money!’

  ‘No, no, of course not. But over time it would build up, and then perhaps they’d let us marry.’

  ‘Perhaps. But don’t bank on it,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘You should certainly try!’ said Aisha severely. ‘How else are you going to get anywhere? I remember when Mahmoud and I got married he had no money at all.’

  ‘And still haven’t,’ said Mahmoud.

  One of the principal duties of the Mamur Zapt was to keep his eye on the Cairo gangs. They were different from the gangs in other places, in Chicago, say, or in Sicily, in that they were almost exclusively politically driven. Making money was a by-product but not their main point. That was where the Mamur Zapt came in. His was an essentially political appointment. Both the British and the Khedive saw his main function as the preserver of order. The British Army, as an army of occupation, saw that as their function too. This created a tension between the military authorities and the civil ones. In the eyes of the Consul-General, who administered Egypt on behalf of the English Government, the British Army was best kept out of it. They were too heavy-handed and as likely to cause trouble as to prevent it. That was the view of the Khedive, too. He disliked both authorities, the civil and the military: at a pinch though, he preferred the civil one. In his early years he had seen British soldiers marching through Cairo and didn’t want to see that again. The British were there, he continually pointed out, only by virtue of treaty. And treaties were two-sided. His interpretation was that the British had come to Egypt by invitation; and politeness, if nothing else, required that they shouldn’t throw their weight around too heavily.

  This was where Owen came in. He was, in theory, an appointment of the Khedive and not of the British, and was therefore, in theory, answerable to him and not to them. It was a fiction that both sides, at different times, found convenient. He could be disowned by both. On the other hand, he could appeal to either, switching shelter as was convenient. You had to have a certain skill to operate with two masters. This skill Owen had in abundance.

  The great fear of both the Khedive and the Consul-General was that the country would begin boiling over from below. It was the duty of the Mamur Zapt to prevent this. Owen sometimes wished that this part of his role had been explained to him before he took up the job.

  But there he was, in the job, and so far, surviving. The art was never to let things get to a head. Which was why he watched developments in the souk or in the club so carefully. And particularly among the young. Egypt had a lot of young, and, like the young generally, they had a lot of volatility. So maybe what happened in the Scentmakers’ Bazaar was worth paying attention to. And it was particularly worth paying attention to when they took on a Nationalist tinge.

  And, sooner or later, they almost inevitably did. Stone throwing i
n the Scentmakers’? Kids’ stuff. But when the kids became students it was no longer quite kids’ stuff. And when the students became stablemen it was even harder.

  In the confined space of the stables the heat was overwhelming. So was the smell. The horses were no longer in there but had left huge quantities of dung behind. The men had been sweeping it up and had shovelled it into a large pile. They were waiting for someone to come with the cart and then it could be taken away. In the meantime, they sat in the yard drinking the strong, bitter black tea of the Egyptian peasant. They offered some to Georgiades, which he accepted gratefully.

  ‘Where’s Abdullah?’ someone asked. ‘I was expecting him to come and tell us what to do next.’

  ‘He’s talking to Shawquat.’

  At the mention of the name, Georgiades pricked up his ears.

  ‘He’s always talking to Shawquat!’

  ‘I wish he would talk to Abdullah and talk some sense into him. We really ought to have a go at the Kauris. It’s four now. That’s no joke! We ought to go after them. Teach them a lesson. Otherwise they’ll walk right over us!’

  ‘Aren’t they doing that now?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over Abdullah. He used not to be like this!’

  ‘He listens to Shawquat too much.’

  ‘Why should he suddenly start listening to him? He never listens to me!’

  ‘He thinks he has the ear of the mighty.’

  ‘He’s too ready to listen to the mighty. What good has it ever done him? Or us?’

  ‘Ah, but it will some day.’

  ‘Sure it will! But meanwhile four of our mates have got killed.’

  ‘Wait, he says. Until we can all act together.’

  ‘The Kauri boys aren’t waiting, are they? No, instead, they’re getting stuck into us!’

  ‘Soon, he says, soon!’

  ‘Oh, yes? And what is “soon”?’

  ‘Bokra,’ said someone. ‘Tomorrow – if tomorrow ever comes!’

  ‘Let’s not hang about, let’s get started ourselves.’

  ‘We’d be on our own, Shawquat says. And then they’d wipe us out.’

  ‘And, meanwhile, we are being wiped out! By the Kauri boys!’

  ‘Shawquat says to wait until the others come in with us.’

  ‘That’s what the mighty tell him, is it? You know, if I had the ear of the mighty, as he says he does, I’d be tempted to spit into it!’

  ‘The thing is, we’re held up because of that girl.’

  ‘What the hell has she got to do with it?’

  ‘The Kauris think they can make some real money out of her.’

  ‘Is any of that money likely to come to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can forget about that, then.’

  ‘The Kauris would make a difference if they came in with us. There’s a lot of them. Shawquat says it would be stupid to move without them.’

  ‘Do you know what I think? I think the Kauris are more interested in the money than they are in Shawquat and his big plans!’

  ‘He says it’s only a question of waiting for a day or two.’

  ‘He says!’

  ‘It’s very near, he says. On the brink. And then we can all get going. Together. And that’ll give us a better chance of success than if we do it on our own.’

  ‘Us and the Kauris? Working together? I’ll believe it when I see it! Look, I think we’re wasting time. Let’s get on with it.’

  ‘Give them a couple of days.’

  ‘They’ll want more.’

  ‘Tell Shawquat to tell them they can’t have more.’

  ‘Unless they cut us in.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘That’s an idea,’ someone said.

  ‘It is.’

  There was a general murmur of assent.

  ‘Tell Shawquat to talk about that!’ said a new voice.

  Owen, meanwhile, was sauntering through the Ezbekiya Gardens. It was afternoon and the only other people there were nursemaids with their charges. They were gathering round the bandstand, where a band was beginning to warm up. It was an Egyptian band which blew and blasted, not quite in the manner that the fastidious Mahmoud and Aisha would have liked but in a jolly way which appealed to the children clustered around.

  A little later, the music would take a different turn, as would the gardens. Blinds would be pulled back on the upper floor of the buildings which surrounded the gardens, to reveal bulky ladies who leaned out of the windows and dangled scarves to attract the attention of passers-by. The passers-by were usually, at this later hour, British soldiers who frequented the squalid bars on the ground floors of the buildings. To provide for them there was a different kind of music. Much of the music was provided by the soldiers themselves. They played old favourites of the English music halls, sometimes on battered pianos, sometimes on instruments the soldiers had brought themselves. It was a favourite place for off-duty soldiers to gather over beer.

  There was also – a great attraction – an all-female band. A European band, which deepened the attraction even more. The girls were reported to be either white slaves or freed white slaves, and they brought to their listeners the sounds of home. Not always English homes. Mixed in were the sounds of the Estaminets and also the sounds of the popular cafes of Rumania and Russia and unknown countries of central Europe. The music could be best described as a lively mix. Again, it was not music of the sort to appeal to Mahmoud or Aisha, whose French-based tastes were more sophisticated and, anyway, included the more traditional native Egyptian songs.

  Owen stopped near the all-girl band.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ they chirruped cheerfully.

  He waved back.

  ‘Not today, darlings!’

  ‘Oh!’ they wailed in pretend disappointment.

  ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Any time! Here, or upstairs?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to encourage pure maidens like you to give way to temptation.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a pity!’

  ‘What was the question you wanted to ask? It doesn’t sound very interesting.’

  ‘It’s to do with that girl who was kidnapped.’

  The girls in the Ezbekiya knew all the gossip of Cairo; and about girls who disappeared.

  ‘Lucky her!’ someone sighed.

  ‘Not so lucky, I suspect. I want to find her.’

  ‘She wasn’t one of us?’

  ‘No. But she was interested in music.’

  This caught their attention.

  ‘She had a boyfriend who played the nay.’

  ‘Not our style, darling!’

  ‘I know. But they used to hang about in music venues. I thought there might be a chance that you had come across them.’

  ‘Give us more information.’

  Owen described Marie and young Shawquat.

  ‘We’ll keep our eyes open for them,’ they promised.

  ‘Is there money in it?’ someone asked.

  ‘There could be. But the main thing is that she is a nice girl and I don’t want harm to come to her.’

  ‘We’ll look out for her. But if she has been kidnapped, we wouldn’t see her, would we? They’ll have her locked up.’

  ‘The thing is that I think some of the men who kidnapped her might be interested in music too. They had picked out the boy when he was still at school.’

  ‘Like that, were they?’

  ‘No. Not necessarily. I have no reason to think they were. I think the pair were genuinely interested in music.’

  ‘Where did they hang around?’

  ‘In the Geziret. It’s not far from here. And you know the music connection …’

  ‘We need more to go on.’

  ‘I’ll try and find it. Just keep your ears open, will you? I think these people will be the sort who would talk.’

  ‘Do they play? Musicians who play, often do. It goes with the drink.’

  ‘Is she talking about us?’ a fr
esh voice asked.

  There was a general laugh.

  ‘Surely not!’ said Owen. ‘But the Ezbekiya is a place where people gather. And someone might say something.’

  ‘If they do, we’ll let you know.’

  ‘It’s the girl,’ said Owen. ‘That is why I came to you. I thought you might be inclined to help.’

  ‘We are, love, we are!’ they assured him. ‘But I don’t think it’ll help much.’

  Coming out of the Gare Centrale, on his way into the Geziret, Mahmoud was nearly knocked over by an arabeah rushing to deposit its passengers. It reminded him of that earlier occasion when the child had been knocked over and he had picked the child up and taken it home to its mother. That was not far from here. He was on his way now to follow up the stabbing of the Kewfik stableman, and since that meant visiting the Kauri boys, he had arranged to join up with Owen, who would be coming from the Ezbekiya.

  As he was going through the Geziret a woman dashed out of one of the houses and gave him a pastry she’d warmed from her oven. He recognised her. It was the woman whose child he had picked up. In the Geziret you didn’t forget things like that. He thanked her courteously – Mahmoud was always courteous – and asked how the child was. The mother replied that he was getting better every day. Mahmoud gave thanks to Allah and asked her if she would join him in eating the pastry while it was still warm. They squatted down by the communal tap to eat it.

  She asked him what he was doing in these parts and when he told her that he was following up a case of a stabbing, she nodded her head.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that would be Hamid. He worked at the Kewfiks’ stables, which are nearby, and there had been a quarrel between him and one of the Kauri boys, who also worked nearby.’

  Mahmoud said that it was a pity that such quarrels had to end in a death and the woman agreed, but said that it had always been so in the Geziret. It had been so in her father’s time and in her father’s father’s. But this killing of Hamid was bad because there had been no real reason for it. There had, indeed, recently been talk of peace, of the two sides, the Kauris and the Kewfik stablemen, coming together. And many in the Geziret had rejoiced. But some had not and had spoken bitterly against it. And a group of them had been speaking like that when Hamid had chanced to walk by.