The Women of the Souk

by Michael Pearce

  A short silence followed, and then further blustering. And then they agreed. On the same basis as before, with the same personnel. Selim’s wife was called upon once again. Looking at her broad shoulders and hefty arms, Owen almost thought he could dispense with the men standing by.

  Selim, surprisingly, was showing signs of being the weak link. It was one thing going into the breach himself, it was another letting his wife do that. Fatima, who was now quite enjoying herself, overruled him and Selim went into a sulk, from which he was rescued only by running into Minya, who wanted to dance with him. Fatima, who was there waiting for her further instructions, wanted to dance too, and for several minutes the Bab-el-Khalk was regaled by the sight of one man-mountain and one woman-mountain, skipping in the forecourt. This did have the effect of settling everybody’s nerves and things could once more go ahead.

  No doubt similar things were happening on the kidnapper’s side.

  The parties met and Marie was produced. The only hitch was that, following the intervention of the Khedivial Headmistress, Layla was at first not to be in attendance. However, the kidnappers insisted on sticking by the original terms. Consent was sought from both Layla and the Headmistress and refused by the Headmistress until Layla went and had some bracing words with her, after which the Headmistress backed down.

  Minya, who had hung around after the dancing, hoping for more, wanted to participate too, but this was ruled out by all sides.

  So, in the end, all went ahead as planned. Marie, wan and thinner and very pleased to see Layla but otherwise unchanged, seemed to be holding up. Layla, rebellious beneath a burka, was grimly determined and disposed to tell the kidnappers how they should be doing things. It was, as the kidnappers pointed out, now only a question of cash.

  Certainly, Nikos agreed: but in what form?

  The kidnappers were taken aback. In their hands, that was what they wanted. It was a lot of money and there could be difficulties in raising it at short notice. It was definitely there, the bank assured everybody, but if small notes were required, amassing enough of them would take time. And if, as the kidnappers seemed to be suggesting, payment was to be in coin, that would take time too. (Nikos had been instructed to play for time, which any bureaucrat in Egypt was only too glad to do.) Nikos pointed out that the portage of so many milliemes on the backs of donkeys and camels would also take time.

  Layla, whose nerves, and certainly temper, were wearing thin, flew off the handle and denounced the banks, Nikos and the government for mucking about; the kidnappers expressed their astonishment at finding such perceptiveness and intelligence in a woman. Two of them immediately proposed to her. Layla, growing wilder by the second, bought time by agreeing that there were things to be said for such an idea, but pointed out that because of her age and the new iniquitous requirements of the hated British, forms would have to be filled in and this, too, would take time. And she was not at all convinced the Headmistress would be prepared to agree.

  The kidnappers sensed that they were getting to the heart of power. It was clear that Layla had her finger on the pulse of the great, and must, indeed, be a player of stature herself: a conclusion reinforced by seeing that Nikos was so frightened of her.

  The two kidnappers who had previously offered marriage to her, now carried away by their visions, upped their offer by promising improbable numbers of camels in addition.

  Their leader, whose head was now beginning to swirl with possibilities, began to consider whether, if this girl was so powerful, they might not do better to kidnap her rather than Marie.

  Positions began to wobble.

  Owen, sensing they were now on the brink of something, sent in coffee all round and left them all to sweat.

  The two men who had proposed to Layla were the first to crack. The enormity of what they were proposing struck home and they withdrew their offers.

  Their leader sent a message, scrawled by finger on the coffee grounds of the bottom of a saucer, outlining his new proposals. Only to receive a sharp rebuff from above hidden beneath a slice of Turkish delight, and an injunction to stop messing about and get on with it.

  Nikos declared that they were almost there and that untold riches were ready to pour upon them. Because of their demand for payment in small coins, however, it was taking the bank longer than it had anticipated to amass the money. It was having to send to Sennar to find the necessary milliemes. They were on their way, however, and provided there were no more eccentric provisos imposed by the kidnappers at this late moment, the money would be ready in three days.

  Three days? The kidnappers were aghast. Nikos, however, (having checked with Owen that three days would be enough) was adamant. Did they think that milliemes in this quantity were like grains of sand in the desert, that it was simply a matter of scooping them up?

  Three days it was; and before they could change their mind Nikos adjoined the meeting.

  Marie, tearful at the last, and clinging on to Layla, was persuaded to leave, with Layla, spitting fire, led in the opposite direction.

  Nikos heaved a sigh of relief, although it was uncertain whether this was a natural reaction to a long, hot, arduous day or just relief at getting away from Layla.

  At the meeting afterwards in the Bab-el-Khalk he offered the view that the kidnappers were coming to the end of their tether, although possibly this was more a reflection of his feeling than theirs.

  Owen began to worry whether the three-day time limit to have imposed on himself would be enough, and started contingency planning in case it were not.

  Ali Shawquat had meanwhile been giving music lessons to the el Zaki children, with Aisha in anxious attendance, although at a sensible distance. The boy was taking his teaching very seriously and the children liked his lessons and were making good progress.

  Then, one afternoon, Ali Shawquat announced that he was taking the afternoon off. The children would be resting, as they always did in the afternoon, so their studies would not be affected.

  Aisha was quite happy for him to take the afternoon off. After all, the rest of Egypt was. Young Ali, however, showing unexpected signs of his father’s strict work ethic, felt uneasy about it. He was not just taking the afternoon off, he explained: he had an important purpose in mind. Under Aisha’s gentle persuasion he confessed that he was going to ‘do something’ about Marie. He had allowed her to be taken, he said, and that was not a manly thing to do. (More echoes of his father.) He had failed her once but now he was going to put that right.

  Aisha praised his resolve but urged the necessities for caution. If his efforts were going to bring him up against evil men he should proceed with care. She did not want him, and nor, she was sure, would Marie, to get hurt. And she felt that, given the nature of these wicked men, that was all too likely. Ali Shawquat, moved, kissed her hand and said that he would take every precaution but that this was something he had to do. Would he not take counsel from her husband first? Ali paused. He would have liked to have done whatever he was going to do independent of the advice of others. The trouble was that he couldn’t quite think what he was going to do. Something brave and worthy anyway.

  This idea of consulting her husband was, perhaps, not such a bad idea. Ali was used to forbidding fathers, and so he wasn’t that sure about Mahmoud. He had always been courteous and pleasant to Ali – but he was pleasant and courteous to everybody. Even his wife. Ali, by this time, would have died for Aisha. But he couldn’t quite understand why Mahmoud wasn’t firmer with her. After much thought he had come to the conclusion that his was, perhaps, the modern way. He had noticed that Owen seemed to address his wife, Zeinab, in similar terms. Could this be the modern thing to do? Ali hoped it was. There was too much shouting and too many blows in the Geziret. He wouldn’t, he decided, treat Marie like that.

  He was disconcerted, when finally he plucked up enough courage to call in on Mahmoud at his office, to find him closeted with Owen. This was off-putting. Owen was not just police, he was English. For a moment Ali wo
ndered if Mahmoud was a traitor. Then he recalled being told that he was an ardent Nationalist. How did that square with the two of them being friends? The English were the enemy, surely? His father had told him that repeatedly. Everyone said that! Yet here Owen and Mahmoud were, apparently on the friendliest of terms. Not only that but Owen was married to Aisha’s friend Zeinab, clearly an Egyptian. How could that be?

  Now that he came to think of it, Aisha had not actually said that Owen and Zeinab were married. It was rather that they were close friends. Even lovers? This was bad, and typically English. Zeinab must be one of the women that his father continually fulminated about, immoral, immodest, etc. Ali would bet that she didn’t wear a burka! And then he recollected that he had caught a glimpse of her once, leaving Aisha’s house. She certainly had not been wearing a burka then. But, the troubling memory came to him, she had been wearing a veil. Granted it was one of those slight, filmy ones the sophisticated Cairo ladies wore, the sort that made your knees knock, but it was a veil nonetheless.

  Ali felt that he was floundering in deep waters.

  ‘But I thought you were enemies,’ he said.

  ‘We are, we are!’ said Owen. ‘But also friends.’

  ‘We work together,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Often,’ said Owen. ‘But not always.’

  ‘What happens when you don’t?’

  ‘The country seizes up,’ said Owen. ‘So we have to.’

  Ali shook his head in bewilderment.

  ‘But are you not British?’

  ‘I work for the Khedive.’

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘If you played in an orchestra,’ said Owen, ‘and someone came from another country and asked you to play for them, wouldn’t you do so?’

  ‘It is not the same thing,’ said Mahmoud.

  Owen laughed.

  ‘No, it is not,’ he agreed. ‘Nevertheless, we both play in the same orchestra.’

  ‘The orchestra comes by invitation.’

  ‘So do the British,’ said Owen. ‘In theory.’

  ‘It is a fiction,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘We argue about this between ourselves all the time,’ said Owen.

  ‘But never get anywhere,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The British are still here.’

  ‘My father says the Khedive is a traitor,’ said Ali Shawquat.

  ‘And many would agree with him,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘But some would not,’ said Owen.

  Ali shook his head in bemusement.

  ‘I think I will stick to music,’ he said.

  ‘What was it you came to see me about,’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘Marie,’ said Ali.

  ‘There we are all playing in the same orchestra,’ said Mahmoud.

  Owen said that he would withdraw if it made it easier for Ali to say what he wanted to say.

  ‘It might be better,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But don’t go too far. I want to talk to you.’

  Owen went out.

  ‘Well?’ said Mahmoud.

  It was hard for Ali to put it into words.

  ‘I want to do something,’ he said, ‘for Marie. It is my fault that she was taken. I should have stopped them.’

  ‘How could you?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘I don’t know. And I still don’t know. I thought I would go to them and plead with them.’

  ‘What can you offer them?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ali. ‘I have only music. But one or two of them praised my playing. And I thought, if I went to them, perhaps they would let her go. For the sake of the music.’

  Mahmoud shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so, either,’ agreed Ali sadly. ‘But it is all I can offer. I have no money. And I know that is what they really want. I thought …’

  He fell quiet for a moment, then went on.

  ‘I thought if I went to them and offered myself, that would, perhaps, satisfy them.’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘I know that too, deep down,’ said Ali, ‘but what do I do?’

  ‘You know who they are and where they are,’ said Mahmoud. ‘You could tell me.’

  ‘And what would you do? Tell the Mamur Zapt?’

  ‘If you don’t want me to, I won’t.’

  ‘He would put them in prison,’ said Ali.

  ‘And would free Marie,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘They are my friends,’ whispered Ali. ‘They were my friends. I cannot betray them.’

  ‘Are you not betraying Marie if you don’t?’

  ‘What shall I do?’ said Ali desperately. ‘What can I do? What ought I to do?’

  ‘That is what you must decide.’

  ‘If I went to my father, he would say: “They are ordinary men from the Geziret. You must go with them. Not with a daughter of the Kewfiks.”’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think I will go to them and say: “Release her or I shall tell.”’

  ‘And what will they do?’

  ‘They will kill me.’

  ‘How would that help Marie?’

  ‘I don’t know, but – but it is the right thing to do.’

  ‘I don’t think it is the right thing to do.’

  ‘You do not live in the Geziret.’

  Mrs Shawquat had not seen her son for some time and was worried.

  ‘You have frightened him away with your roughness,’ she said to her husband.

  ‘The boy would take fright at his own shadow,’ Shawquat replied. ‘He is no boy of mine.’

  ‘I wish you had told me before that you would not own him,’ his wife replied with spirit. ‘Then I could have found someone else!’

  ‘Perhaps you did find someone else,’ Shawquat said. ‘And that is why I have a boy like him.’

  ‘He takes after me. He has brains.’

  Shawquat snorted.

  ‘He is a waster,’ he said. ‘He will never come to anything.’

  ‘His talents are different from yours.’

  ‘Talents! Is that what they are? He keeps them well-hidden!’

  ‘He has not been here for over a month. And he has been going around with bad men who will do him harm. You must speak to him.’

  ‘What good would that do? He goes his own way and will not listen to me.’

  ‘That is because you speak to him so roughly.’

  ‘I speak to him as I am. And he has been my son long enough to know how I am.’

  ‘You must try again. Or he will slip from us.’

  ‘He has already slipped. Nevertheless, I will speak to him.’

  If he could find him, Shawquat thought. He had not spoken to him for weeks. He had a moment of misgiving, that was not right. It was not as it should be. The boy should come home at night. Not forever listening to or making music. What good would that do in the world? How would it help Egypt? He, himself, Shawquat, devoted his life to doing things for Egypt, while the boy did nothing. He knew that they talked about the boy in the stables, mocking him, no doubt. And if you mocked the son, you mocked the father. People would see the son and say: ‘Is that your new Egypt?’

  He had wanted a son who would stand by him, and help him bring change to Egypt. There were, Allah knew, so many things to be done. And perhaps now, more than at any other time, they might be achieved. Shawquat had worked for them all his life, first as a trade union organiser and then on his own.

  He had gathered a small group around him and now they were beginning to get somewhere. Others were beginning to join him, even if his son wasn’t. He had the Kewfik boys with him, and would soon have the Kauri boys. And others. He was sure there were many who felt like him. They would stand up at the right moment. And the moment would be soon!

  But there was so much to do. How would he find time when his wife was pressing him to spend time talking to his son? Had he not talked enough to his son?

  But the boy would not listen. He did not share his father’s plans and hopes. He did not
care, that was the nub of it. He did not care enough about Egypt. All he cared about was playing the nay. His wife should speak to the boy about that. It was not for him to speak to the boy about things he had so often spoken to him about, it was for the boy now to listen.

  Things were at last afoot. If the lads would stop fighting and killing each other and concentrate instead on killing the enemy. The British did not fight each other, did they? But the Egyptians did, all the time. How could you make progress when people were forever standing aside or fighting their friends?

  People talk of peace, and so they should: peace was right. But only if it was a good peace: a peace that would enable you to build a new Egypt!

  Things were beginning to move, he could feel it in his bones. The lads were coming together.

  Except …

  What was this about the Old Woman of the souk? Getting in the way? She and the other women? What did they know about it? Listen to them and you would never get anything done. They sat back on their arses and worried about their sons! They were just getting in the way!

  Even his own wife, who had once stood shoulder to shoulder with him throwing stones at the British, who had worked tirelessly with him for a better Egypt, who he had always believed thought exactly as he did – now even she was talking of the Old Woman of the souk, who was riding around on her donkey getting in the way of all the good things he was doing. This was not a matter, he told her, for women. And she told him to his face that quarrelling was for women too, that often only they could put it right. Foolish talk – women’s talk!

  And now the boy. Instead of binding to his father, as all boys would naturally do, he was moving away from him. And turning to a Kewfik daughter, of all things! What had the Kewfiks ever done for the Shawquats? What had they ever done for Egypt? They had not put in, they had only taken out. They had enriched themselves at the expense of others. The Pashas were all the same, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.

  Those kidnappers were on the right lines. Take the money from the Pashas and use it for the Egyptians as a whole! That was what it was all about. They and he were working on similar lines.