***
Office work at the Bab-el-Khalk, as at almost all the government offices, finished for the day, because of the heat, at two. Owen, however, frequently went back at the end of the afternoon to see if anything had come in.
Today some things had. There was a letter from the Italian Consul complaining that the recent measures with respect to the guns traffic appeared to have had no effect at all. There was also a letter from the Sublime Porte complaining that the measures were interfering with legitimate traffic from Turkey to Tripolitania. Then there was another letter from the Italian Consul deploring the lack of progress in the investigation into Morelli’s death and asking what was being done to protect Italian citizens; together with a memo from the Khedive’s office protesting about the constant harassment of native-born Egyptian citizens in the so-called interests of security. Finally, there was a memo from the British Financial Adviser pointing out the cost of the recent measures and reminding Owen of the need to hold expenditure back, while at the same time, of course, maintaining the level of his operations.
Owen considered that none of these required any action on his part. He asked Nikos—Nikos never went home; Owen thought it possible that he lived in a filing cabinet—if anything had come in from Georgiades at Luxor. Nikos said it hadn’t.
Owen felt slightly guilty at sending Georgiades to Luxor at this time, just when Rosa was pregnant. The thought suddenly came to him that it might be a bad time for another reason, too: she was a Greek, and therefore a foreigner, like Morelli.
Somehow he had never thought of her as a foreigner. Her family had lived in Egypt since, well, at least, he guessed, since her grandmother’s time. The old lady tended, at home, to speak Greek, whereas the rest of the family, like many Cairenes, switched about constantly from French to English to Arabic to anything else that happened to be handy.
The Greek community had been here so long that it thought itself Egyptian. But then, so did the Italian community. And Morelli had lived here for a long time. ‘One of us.’ That was what people had said about him and that was what he had thought. But it had not saved him.
The war was opening cracks in what had seemed firmly cemented. If Morelli, why not Rosa? If the Italians, then why not the Greeks? Why not anybody? Egypt was one of the most cosmopolitan countries of the world, hospitable, in the past, to almost every nationality. That was one of the things that Owen liked about it, that was one of the reasons why he felt at home. Egypt was getting to be his home as much as it was theirs.
And now this!
It would end only when the war ended. If then. He had a vision of it all breaking apart and falling in pieces. What Trudi had said about Turkey came into his mind: an old order falling and a new order coming into being. She saw the new order. What he saw was the falling apart.
Well, all you could do was try and contain it. And it didn’t help, it didn’t help at all, if, while you were trying to keep the gun powder in the barrel, someone like Kitchener came along and threw a match in it.
He decided to visit Rosa.
***
He guessed that while Georgiades was away she would be staying with her parents. They owned a small shop in the Khan-al-Khalil, selling antiques to the tourists: armour from the crusades, old Persian embroideries and enamels, brass boxes and bowls inlaid with silver, ancient illuminated Korans, amulets and jewellery of all sorts, turquoises—the beautiful pale-blue turquoises that you seldom see in London—by themselves. The shop was not exactly thriving—Rosa’s father being more interested in the goods than in the business—but was doing well enough. It was held together by her grandmother, a formidable old lady who dominated her son and daughter-in-law but had met her match in her granddaughter.
Rosa was there and came out to see Owen, pleased.
‘With Georgiades away, I thought I’d come and see if you were all right.’
‘All right?’ said Rosa. ‘Why shouldn’t I be all right?’
‘Well, you know, with the war on and there being a bit of feeling against foreigners. There was an Italian killed in the Nahhasin.’
‘An Italian!’ said the grandmother dismissively. ‘Well, they’re the ones who started the war, so what did they expect?’
‘You haven’t seen any sign that it might be affecting you?’ said Owen, turning to Rosa’s father.
‘No.’ He hesitated. ‘A little, perhaps.’
‘If they come,’ said Rosa’s grandmother, ‘we shall know what to do.’
‘Abou is here,’ said Rosa, ‘and Thutmose.’
‘Much use they would be!’ snorted Rosa’s grandmother, who tended to feel that way about men in general.
‘If there are any signs,’ said Owen, apparently to Rosa’s father but actually to her mother, who, although never daring to open her mouth at home, could be counted on to act independently, ‘let me know.’
Rosa announced that she had been on the point of leaving to go back to her own home and Owen offered to walk with her. She and Georgiades had a flat up near the Greek Orthodox church. To get to it you went along the Nahhasin and then through the maze of streets to the Khalig-el-Masri.
It was evening now and the city had come to life. All along the Nahhasin men were sitting out at tables. The coffee houses were full. Lights were on in the shops and their owners out on the street to greet their acquaintances. There was a steady throng of people going in both directions, not particularly purposefully but just taking the air, bringing the fodder camels and arabeahs almost to a halt.
As they passed the tables, Owen, almost by habit, listened in on the conversation. For the most part people were talking about their own affairs; no one was talking about the Khedive or his railway. At some of the tables, though, especially those where groups of young men were sitting, the discussion was political. It often was in Cairo.
There was one table, for instance, at which almost a dozen men were sitting, all young office effendis by the look of them, where discussion was particularly passionate and Nationalist newspapers much in evidence, and words like ‘capitalism’, ‘imperialism’ and ‘Capitulations’ (the system of commercial and legal privileges that foreigners in Egypt enjoyed) came spilling out into the street, where, beyond the circle of light, children played and Amina sat listening, rapt.
She turned her head as they approached and Owen wondered if she would spit at Rosa, in which case he would speak to her; but she didn’t. It wasn’t, perhaps, quite the same. Trudi was obviously foreign, clearly, with her blondeness, incongruent. Rosa was darker and, although not in the birka, in a long dark dress and something which came over her head and half covered her face; if not Arab, then, arguably, decently Egyptian.
They passed the coffee house where Morelli had died. The usual people were sitting at the usual tables. Mahmoud was among them. As they walked past he happened to look up and saw them. He jumped to his feet and rushed across. He embraced Owen and greeted Rosa respectfully but with real pleasure.
‘You must come in!’ he insisted. ‘Both of you. Aisha would be so pleased.’
Owen saw that, now that he was married, Mahmoud’s life was changing.
Inside the house, too, things were changing. Aisha came confidently forward, clearly with the intention of joining them. Even more surprisingly, Mahmoud’s mother came in too, sitting, however, somewhat shyly on a divan at the outskirts.
The two younger women sat together and began an increasingly animated conversation. Owen and Mahmoud chatted about general matters, by common consent avoiding anything to do with work; but then the conversation drifted towards the subject of the current state of things, the ‘feel’, as it were, of the city. Owen spoke of his sudden worry about Rosa, and others like her; and mentioned, as an illustration of what he thought was a different attitude coming into being, Amina’s gratuitous spitting at Trudi.
‘That was wrong of her!’ said Mahmoud, shocked.
<
br /> ‘You ought to speak to that girl, Mahmoud,’ said his mother, who had been quietly following the conversation. ‘She’s running wild.’
‘I will,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But perhaps it would be better if Fahmy did.’
Fahmy, he explained, had taken the girl in when her grandmother had died (her parents had died some time before) and given her lodging at the ice house. Owen realized suddenly that they were talking about the domino-playing friend of Morelli.
‘He would take anybody in,’ said Mahmoud’s mother. ‘He’s much too soft-hearted, that man.’
‘It was good that he took Amina in,’ said Mahmoud.
‘Yes; but see how she repays him! She never does anything about the house. She’s always out!’
‘She goes with Mustapha and the donkey,’ objected Mahmoud.
‘Yes, but when Mustapha and the donkey come home, she stays out. Late at night, hanging around the Nahhasin.’
‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘I saw her, on the way here.’
‘Always hanging around the men,’ said Mahmoud’s mother tartly.
‘I don’t think she’s that kind of girl,’ demurred Mahmoud.
‘She was just listening,’ Owen felt obliged to say in her defence.
‘Yes, but it’s the people she listens to—Ishmail and Ali and Abbas and that idiot Habashi, who would be better off doing his work at the Ministry than always sitting around a table talking!’
‘It is true that they are not the wisest of men,’ said Mahmoud.
‘What sort of nonsense does the girl pick up? And, anyway, it’s not true that’s she’s not hanging around the men. Look at the way she’s carrying on with Kamal!’
‘Kamal doesn’t even know that she’s there!’ declared Mahmoud.
‘That makes her behaviour even worse. He’s quite out of her reach. And if she makes such a fool of herself over him in public, who else will want to marry her?’
‘Suleiman wants to marry her.’
‘Suleiman!’ Mahmoud’s mother was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘I’m not sure she wouldn’t do better to stick to making sheep’s eyes at Kamal!’
***
Owen was sitting in his office at the Bab-el-Khalk when an orderly came and said that ‘one’ wanted to see him. An effendi, asked Owen? No, said the orderly, with the lordly gesture of disdain of someone secure in the hierarchy, a man of no account.
Owen rose from his desk. If it had been an effendi he would have received him in his office; but for other people he went down to the courtyard. He had found that ordinary Egyptians were often intimidated by the huge building, with its tall pillars, its multiplicity of doors, the uniformed orderlies sometimes waiting to greet them, by the anonymity and impersonality of it all, and simply froze. By the time they got to his office they were incapable of saying anything.
In the courtyard, often squatting together in the dust, they felt on equal terms and were better able to communicate what it was that they had come to say.
He wondered who it was; possibly the driver, returning in the hope of more beer. Or maybe someone not to do with the case at all.
In fact, it was the Morellis’ foreman. He stood diffidently in the shadow, his fingers plucking worriedly at the embroidered edge of his galabeah. Owen led him away to a quiet, shady corner, away from the stream of orderlies going in and out of the gates, and they crouched down together.
‘Effendi, I don’t know what to do.’
‘Be easy,’ said Owen, supposing he was talking about the discovery at the warehouse. ‘It was not your fault.’
‘It is not that, Effendi. Except that one thing leads to another.’
‘What is it, then?’
The foreman hesitated.
‘Effendi, I have always been a true servant.’
‘And for that the world commends you.’
The foreman sighed.
‘That is not what it is doing at the moment,’ he said.
‘It is not? How can that be?’
‘Effendi, there is a word going through the streets and around the coffee houses: it is that the Signor himself bespoke the guns that came to his house.’
‘That is most unlikely. Why should he do that?’
‘Effendi, that is what I said. The Signor was a just man, I said. He would not want to have anything to do with that. No, no, they said, he was an Italian, wasn’t he? And I said, what of that? And they said, well, then, he was buying arms to send to the Italians in Tripolitania.’
‘That is utter nonsense!’ said Owen. ‘Have not the Italians enough arms of their own? It is the Turks in Tripolitania that need arms, not the Italians.’
‘That is what I said, Effendi. But they would not have it so. “Blood is thicker than water,” they said. The Signor was an Italian and it was only to be expected that he should seek to aid those of his blood.’
‘It is complete nonsense.’
‘That is what I said, Effendi; but such is the word.’
‘But what grounds are there for speaking such a word? There must be grounds; otherwise the word is but wind, and bad wind at that.’
The foreman hesitated.
‘Effendi, once the Signor spoke of arms.’
‘Well—’
‘At night. In his warehouse.’
‘Who to?’
‘That is not known, Effendi.’
‘At night? In the warehouse? With the doors barred? How then was he heard?’
‘I do not know, Effendi. I know only that such is the word.’
‘Who was it who heard him?’
‘That I do not know either, Effendi.’
‘And nor does any man. At night? With the doors barred? How could a man be there to hear? This is foolish talk.’
The foreman shrugged.
‘Nevertheless, it bears heavily upon me, Effendi,’ he said quietly, and looked down into the sand.
‘Why should it bear upon you, Abdul?’ said Owen, after a moment.
The foreman raised his head.
‘Because they say I work for those who serve the enemy. Effendi, I have always tried to serve the Signor and Signora truly; and when the Signor died, I thought: it is now that the Signora needs me most. But now, Effendi, I do not know. What if the word were true? I am like everyone else, I am on the side of those who hold true to the Prophet. But, Effendi, even if the word were not true, what am I to do? For I have a family, and children who go to the local kuttub, and this place and these people are all I know.’
‘You have been true and should remain true.’
‘That is what I would wish. But, Effendi, I have to be able to hold up my head among men, and at the moment I cannot. First, that other thing, and now this. I am torn, Effendi. The Signor and Signora have always been good to me; and shall I return evil for good? But—’
His voice died away and he stood looking down into the sand.
‘What is it you want from me?’ said Owen.
‘I do not know,’ confessed the foreman, ‘except that I come for help.’
Afterwards, Owen sat in his office, thinking. Another victim of the war. He passed the foreman’s story, for what it was worth, on to Mahmoud.
Chapter Eleven
The next morning a bearer brought Owen a note from Mahmoud asking him to come and see him in his office that afternoon. It was the office bit that was unusual. Normally they met at coffee houses or in some other neutral place. Mahmoud never visited Owen at the Bab-el-Khalk; nor did he invite Owen to his office at the Ministry of Justice. This was because he refused in principle to accept the legality or propriety of any such post as Mamur Zapt or Head of the Secret Police; much less that it should be occupied by an Englishman. There must be some powerful reason for this departure from custom.
When Owen entered Mahmoud’s office he was taken aback to find it
full of children. After a moment he took in that they were all boys and that they were all dressed in the same school uniform of the rather good boys’ school in the Quartier Rosetti, the more well-to-do and Europeanized quarter that adjoined the Nahhasin.
Mahmoud was looking severe.
‘This is the Mamur Zapt,’ he said. ‘Tell him what you have told me.’
There was a moment’s awed silence. Then one of the boys said in a whisper:
‘I don’t recognize the Mamur Zapt.’
‘You don’t recognize the Mamur Zapt?’
‘I think it wrong that the Khedive should make use of Englishmen,’ said the boy defiantly.
Mahmoud sighed; his own positions rising up against him again.
‘Very well, then: repeat what you have told me.’
The boys looked at each other.
‘You have already told me; now tell me again.’
They hesitated. Then one of them said in a rush:
‘It wasn’t Abou’s fault.’
‘Nevertheless it was Abou that did it,’ Mahmoud observed.
‘We had all agreed. It just happened that Abou was the one to carry it out.’
‘I thought of it,’ said the one who had spoken first, with pride. Owen had worked it out now. This was the boy who had daubed the words on the door of the Morellis’ warehouse.
‘It was a foolish and cruel thought,’ said Mahmoud.
The boy tightened his lips stubbornly.
‘So it is not just that Abou alone should be punished,’ said one.
‘No,’ agreed Mahmoud: ‘nor that Abou alone should be the one to apologize.’
‘Apologize!’
‘Never!’
‘To a foreigner?’
‘One should always apologize for cruelty,’ said Mahmoud quietly, ‘never mind to whom it is done. But especially if the person is a defenceless widow.’
Several of the boys looked troubled at this. The first boy, Abou, however, remained firm.
‘She is our enemy!’
‘Talk to the elders in the Nahhasin. Talk to Fahmy and Abd al Jawad and Hamdan; and then call her our enemy.’
A Cold Touch of Ice Page 14
