The Donkey-Vous

by Michael Pearce

  It was the only way. They had to meet face to face. Arabs found Englishmen distant anyway: over the telephone they were like aliens from another planet.

  But now they were sitting face to face. Owen was still having difficulty. The problem was not just that Mahmoud had been wounded and offended. He was used to knocks and could shrug them aside. What counted far more was the mood he was in. And just now he was in a particularly bleak mood. Far from shrugging aside the blow he had received, he had brooded on it. And once he had started that, all sorts of other things came in: the iniquity of the British in Egypt, the depressed position of Arabs in the world generally, the general hostility of mankind. The world was set against him, Mahmoud, personally. It was all too big for him and he was too small and it was all unfair.

  When he was like this it was very hard to prise him out of it. He seemed slumped in despair. He seemed hardly to hear what Owen was saying.

  Owen decided he wasn’t hearing what he was saying. How could he break in?

  He looked around him and wondered if he could risk it. If anyone had done it to him he would have run a mile, but Arabs were always doing it, it was the way they operated, their style of relation. Their emotions were always so ready to bubble over that they had to find immediate physical ways of expressing them. If you didn’t express them physically they assumed you didn’t have them. The cold English were cold because they kept their emotions locked up inside them, they didn’t let them out in all the rich variety of the Arab language of gesture.

  Owen made up his mind, leaned forward and placed his hand gently but familiarly on Mahmoud’s own. Mahmoud looked up. His expression did not change, his eyes barely registered Owen’s presence, but he did not remove his arm.

  “I feel for my brother,” said Owen, falling naturally into Arabic. “Let me share my brother’s distress.”

  They used all three languages between them, English, French, and Arabic. Normally, when they were on business, they spoke English, though if they were with French-speakers they would speak French. Between them they used Arabic less, perhaps because it was more intimate. Just at the moment, though, the Arabic phrases came more easily to Owen’s tongue.

  “How can you?” asked Mahmoud. “You are not my brother.”

  He replied, however, in Arabic.

  Owen moved his chair closer to him. Again, it was not a thing he would have done with Englishmen. But Arabs were always doing it. As a conversation progressed and they became emotionally involved, they would move closer and closer until they were almost touching you.

  “I share what you feel. Therefore I am your brother.”

  “No one knows how I feel.”

  “A brother can guess.”

  “They do not trust me.”

  “They do trust you. I was talking to Paul. They had to do this for political reasons which were nothing to do with you. Paul says when this is all over they want you involved again. He thinks a lot of you. He says they all do.”

  “Then why do this to me?”

  “Politics.”

  “Politics! Politics ought not to interfere with personal relationships.”

  “Quite right,” said Owen. “I absolutely agree.”

  “They make too much of politics. They see politics everywhere. You see politics everywhere!” he said to Owen accusingly.

  “But I don’t let it interfere with my friendships.”

  “No,” Mahmoud admitted. “That’s true. You don’t.”

  For a moment he seemed about to soften. Then he suddenly fired up.

  “That is because you think it is all just a game. For you, politics is just a game. For me, it is not a game. No.” He beat his hand on his chest theatrically. “For Egyptians politics can never be a game. The English can afford to let politics be a game because they have won. For the Egyptians—”

  Owen sighed inwardly. Mahmoud was starting off again. However, he kept his hand commiseratingly on Mahmoud’s arm and stared sympathetically into his eyes.

  Mahmoud descended, a little self-consciously, from his high horse.

  “It is pride,” he said. “It is pride.”

  “The Arabs are a proud people.”

  “You forget that!”

  “Other people may. I don’t.”

  “The English do. The English—” Owen thought he was starting off again. However, Mahmoud suddenly became conscious of himself. “The English don’t understand us,” he concluded somewhat lamely.

  “I know,” said Owen soothingly. “I know.”

  Mahmoud looked at him. Suddenly he reached forward and took Owen in both arms.

  “You understand us!” he said. “You are my friend! My brother!”

  He hugged Owen tight. Owen looked surreptitiously up the street. Fortunately no one was watching. At the far end of the street some Arabs were talking animatedly, their arms naturally ’round each other. If anyone did see they wouldn’t think anything of it.

  “I am your brother,” he said to Mahmoud.

  “You are my brother,” said Mahmoud joyfully.

  He released Owen and shouted for more coffee. That was another Arab thing. No friendly exchange, hardly even a conversation, could take place unaccompanied by hospitality. It was what cemented bonds.

  “Well,” said Mahmoud, now completely happy. “How are you getting on?”

  He had forgotten entirely about his woes, could barely even remember that he had been depressed. He was his old, animated self, interested, passionately interested, of course, for Mahmoud never did anything without passion, once again in the case.

  Owen brought him up to date on developments.

  “The dragoman is the key. And from what Berthelot says, there are two contenders: Osman and Abdul Hafiz.”

  “Of the two, Osman is the more likely,” said Mahmoud.

  “He’s more of a rogue.”

  “I was thinking of his background. Do you remember? We looked it up. He was at El Azhar. That could be significant.”

  The great Islamic university was a hot-bed for nationalist movements, particularly, of course, those with a religious inspiration. Hot-beds, too, Owen frequently thought, produced hot-heads and there were plenty of those at El Azhar. Half the terrorist clubs in the city were based in the university.

  “I thought we were going to get an identification,” Owen said. “That strawberry-seller. He and the flower-seller between them.”

  “It’s not so much that they know something,” said Mahmoud, “it’s that they’ve seen something. It’s a question of getting it out.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to have another go at them. It’s about all we’ve got to go on. But I wanted to consult you before trying myself because I’m not sure how to set about it. If they’re all over the place like they were last time I’ll never get anywhere. You’re better with them than I am. You know how their minds work.”

  Mahmoud was pleased.

  “I’m not sure they have any,” he said. “Still, why don’t we try? Why don’t we have another go.”

  Owen noticed he had said “we.”

  “Yes!” said Mahmoud, firing up with enthusiasm—this was the other side of his slump into depression—and eager to start at once. “Let’s go! Let’s go now!”

  ***

  The street was brimming. As well as the usual hawkers of stuffed crocodiles, live leopards, Nubian daggers, Abyssinian warmaces, Smyrna figs, strawberries, meshrebiya tables and photograph frames, Japanese fans and postage stamps, sandalwood workboxes and Persian embroideries, hippopotamus-hide whips and tarbooshes, and Sudanese beads made in Manchester and the little scarabs and images of men and gods made for the Tombs of Pharaohs but just three thousand years too late; as well as the sellers of sweets and pastry and lemonade and tea who habitually blocked up the thoroughfare; as well as the acrobats and tumblers
, jugglers and performing ape managers; as well as the despairing arabeah-drivers and the theatrical donkey-boys and the long line of privileged vendors stretching the whole length of the terrace—a swarm of Albanians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Georgians, and Circassians had suddenly arrived in front of the hotel to show off their boots.

  They were very proud of their boots and had come along, in traditional national dress with a few props such as guns, daggers and swords, to exhibit them to the tourists to be photographed.

  The Kodaks had for once deserted the little white donkeys with their red saddles and blue brocade and strayed out into the street in pursuit of the boots. This had, naturally, brought all traffic to a stop. Equally naturally the traffic was the last to find this out. People continued pushing and shoving, arabeah drivers continued to urge their reluctant animals forward, various other animals wandered about in bewildered fashion and the only motion discernible on the Street of the Camel was general swirl.

  One consequence of this was that most ordinary trade had come to a halt. The tourists on the terrace were too engrossed by the spectacle in the street to pay any attention to the vendors thrusting their wares through the railings at them. A temporary truce was forced on the vendors; and so when Owen and Mahmoud managed to struggle through the crowd and finally reach the strawberry-seller and flower-seller they found them unoccupied.

  “By Allah, it is good to see you!” said the strawberry-seller warmly.

  The flower-seller inquired after their fathers. Owen’s was dead but he refrained from mentioning the fact as he did not want to encourage a diversion. The diversion came anyway because when Mahmoud in turn inquired after the fathers of the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller he was answered at great length, the scope of the reply extending, so it seemed, to the health of the entire village.

  Midway through Owen lost track. The heat, the noise, the press of people and the avalanche of detail sent him into a daze. At some point they all sat down in the dust, the better to consider—surely Owen could not be hearing correctly?—the flower-seller’s account of the diseased leg of one of the village camels. Sitting might have been more comfortable had it not been for the fact that the pressure of the crowd was forever making people fall over them. Not that that disturbed anyone.

  The recital went on for hours, or so it seemed to Owen. The crowd was still as thick, more tightly jammed if anything. For some time he had been conscious of an approaching wail and thump. The wail ceased to approach and continued to sound at intervals forlornly. A wedding must have got stuck in the crowd. The tourists on the terrace above were still disregarding the vendors and following the Balkan display of boots. The vendors, discouraged, turned to the nearer spectacle and formed a little ring around Owen and Mahmoud and the flower-and strawberry-seller and listened rapt to the tale.

  Owen abandoned all hope of getting anywhere.

  Mahmoud, however, worked patiently on, bent courteously forward to catch the strawberry-seller’s words, offering little suggestions now and then which blocked off a detour or returned after a diversion. And gradually, very gradually, he brought the conversation around.

  Owen came to with a jolt when he realized that they were talking now about Moulin.

  “His wife is here,” said the strawberry-seller.

  “Is she?” said the flower-seller. “I thought she had gone.”

  “Not that one. Another one.”

  “Has he two wives, then?”

  “If he has, this is the senior one. She has gray hair and a straight back.”

  “I have not seen her.”

  “She does not come out on the terrace.”

  “What does she do, then?”

  “Sits inside, I suppose. Perhaps she stays in the harem.”

  “Has he any sons?” someone asked from the outer circle.

  “If he has, I have not seen them.”

  “There is that young one with the bulging eyes.”

  “Ah yes, but he is not a son.”

  “He is very like a son.”

  “I don’t think the old man has any sons.”

  “No sons! Then there will be no one to mourn for him after he is gone.”

  “Or inherit.”

  “It is very sad if a man has no sons.”

  “The one with the bulging eyes,” said Mahmoud, coming in quickly to cut off a potential diversion, “was he there that day, the day the old man disappeared?”

  “Yes, he was there,” said the flower-seller. “He came out on the terrace.”

  “Ah yes, but that was later. After the old man had disappeared.”

  “He didn’t come out before?” asked Mahmoud.

  “No.” They were quite sure on the point. “He always comes later. The old man sits there first by himself.”

  “All alone.”

  “Yes, all alone.”

  “He has no sons, you see,” offered one of the outer-ring.

  Mahmoud, foreseeing another diversion, carried on hastily. “He might not have been lonely. He would have spoken to people.”

  “Not many,” said the strawberry-seller doubtfully.

  “He spoke to the dragoman,” said Mahmoud.

  “Yes, but that was only that day.”

  “Perhaps he spoke to him at other times, not on the terrace?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If the dragoman was a friend of his, he will grieve for him.”

  “That is true,” they assented.

  “I must speak words of comfort to the dragoman,” said Mahmoud. “Which dragoman is it?”

  “Abdul Hafiz,” said the strawberry-seller.

  “No, no,” said the flower-seller. “Osman.”

  “It was definitely Abdul Hafiz. I remember, because I was surprised that he should come and talk to Farkas.”

  “Why should that be surprising?” asked Mahmoud.

  “Because Abdul Hafiz thinks that Farkas is ungodly.”

  There was a general chorus of assent.

  “That’s why I think it was Osman,” persisted the flower-seller. “He talks to Farkas.”

  “I know. If it had been him I would not have been surprised. But I was surprised. That was because it was Abdul Hafiz.”

  “Are you sure that wasn’t another day?”

  “What wasn’t another day?”

  “That—”

  “Where is Farkas?” asked Owen.

  They looked around.

  “He is not here,” they said.

  “I know that.”

  “He hasn’t been here for some time.”

  “Perhaps he’s getting some more stock,” someone suggested. They all laughed.

  “How long has he not been here?” asked Owen. It sounded a flower-sellerish sort of question. Perhaps the disease was catching. They understood, however, without difficulty.

  “He hasn’t been here for several days.”

  “Can you remember when he was last here?”

  “Was it by any chance,” said Mahmoud, “the day that we last spoke with you? Was that the last day he was here?”

  They thought before replying, understanding the point of the question. Then they looked at each other.

  “Yes,” they said together.

  ***

  A flock of turkeys had been infiltrating its way through the crowd. One of them came to the strawberry-seller’s basket and sampled his wares. The strawberry-seller leaped up with a shout and belabored the turkey, which turned and scuttled off into the crowd. A series of indignant shouts marked its passage. There was a sudden fierce blare of hautboys as it came up against the wedding. Panicking, it turned and rushed back the way it had just come, pecking everything and everyone in its path.

  The crowd broke apart. Somebody fell on to the strawberries. The strawberry-seller started beating him. Another turkey
appeared, closely followed by another. Owen jumped for the steps, narrowly missing the snake charmer. Mahmoud leaped up beside him.

  Two frightened turkeys ran past the bottom of the steps. Bedlam broke out as they reached the donkeys.

  There was a sudden fanfare as the wedding minstrels, profiting by the gap the turkeys had made, reached the steps. Behind them, wavering uncertainly between two giant camels, came the bridal palanquin. There was a loud jingle of bells as the first camel went past.

  “By God!” said the blind snake charmer, alarmed. “There it is again!”

  Mahmoud turned in a flash and ran down the steps.

  “You said that before when I was making them play again the disappearance of the old man with the stick. What do you mean, father? There is what again?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The bells,” said the snake charmer.

  “Yes,” said Mahmoud. “I hear them too. Was it like that on the day the old man was taken?”

  “Yes,” said the snake charmer. “Yes. I think so.”

  “He came down the steps. With difficulty—one was assisting him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you heard the bells?”

  “Yes. I cried out to the old man to warn him. I thought he might be knocked down. But one told me to be quiet.”

  “Was it the one who was assisting him, the one from above?”

  “I do not know. I cannot remember.”

  “And then the wedding camel moved on and the old man was no longer there. Is that right?”

  “That is right.”

  From further along the street came a confirming tinkle.

  “Another man was taken later,” said Mahmoud. “An Englishman.”

  “I know him,” said the snake charmer. “He speaks strangely and is the girl’s father.”

  “That is right.”

  “She gives me a piastre. Every time she goes in, every time she comes out. She did not give me a piastre that day. I did not mind because I knew she was troubled.”

  “She grieves because she has lost her father.”