The Spoils of Egypt

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Shame, Miss Skinner! There are eminent English archaeologists working in the service, too!’

  ‘And are there Frenchmen working in the Ministry of Finance?’

  ‘We work a lot in French,’ said Paul truthfully but evading the point. ‘Egypt’s links with France go back to the time of Napoleon.’

  ‘The first of the spoilers!’ declared Miss Skinner. She waved a hand at Owen as she moved away. ‘I’m so looking forward to tomorrow!’

  ‘What’s this?’ said Owen.

  Paul looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I was hoping you’d come round for a drink.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And bring Zeinab.’

  ‘Certainly. But why particularly bring Zeinab?’

  ‘Miss Skinner would like to meet her.’

  ‘She’s never heard of Zeinab. Unless you’ve been telling her!’

  ‘She wants to meet an Egyptian woman. An ordinary Egyptian woman.’

  ‘Well, Zeinab’s not exactly ordinary—’

  ‘She’s the nearest I can get. You won’t believe how difficult it is in Egypt to meet an ordinary woman.’

  ‘I’ll see if she’s free,’ promised Owen.

  ‘I’m trying to get Miss Skinner’s mind off antiquities. The Woman Question is my big hope.’

  ‘Just a minute: antiquities. One of Miss Skinner’s hobbyhorses doesn’t happen to be the export of Egypt’s treasures, does it?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Paul, ‘I believe it does.’

  Monsieur Peripoulin bestowed a fatherly pat as he went past.

  ‘A useful meeting!’ he said. ‘At last things are beginning to move.’

  ‘That meeting,’ said Owen, ‘it wouldn’t have anything to do with Miss Skinner’s being here, would it? The fact that you called it, I mean?’

  ‘It’s been in our minds a long time,’ said Paul.

  Some time later in the evening Owen came upon Miss Skinner and Abu Bakir having an earnest chat in one of the alcoves.

  ‘I was just explaining to Mr Bakir,’ said Miss Skinner, her face slightly flushed, ‘that my friends and I are very concerned about the fact that so many of Egypt’s remarkable treasures are departing her shores.’

  ‘And I was explaining to Miss Skinner,’ said Abu Bakir, smiling, ‘that many of us in Egypt are concerned about that also.’

  ‘True,’ said Owen, ‘very true.’

  ‘Mr Bakir was explaining to me the Nationalist position.’

  ‘Not just the Nationalist position,’ said Abu Bakir quickly, his smile disappearing. ‘It is one, I believe, that the Nationalists share with the Government.’

  ‘Although, as you were saying, the vested interests of the big landlords make it very difficult to get anything through the Assembly.’

  ‘I was giving Miss Skinner some of the political background,’ Abu Bakir explained.

  I’ll bet you were, thought Owen.

  ‘There are political difficulties, it is true,’ he said out loud, ‘but I think we’re beginning to face them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘Monsieur Peripoulin was telling me about some meeting you had had recently.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Owen. ‘a very important meeting.’

  ‘Meetings are all very well,’ said Miss Skinner, frowning, ‘but it’s the action that results from them that is important. I understand, for instance, that there is a widespread evasion of the controls on the export of antiquities. What is being done about that?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Abu Bakir, ‘but that is just where we are taking action. The Mamur Zapt—Captain Owen here—is about to take steps to stamp that out.’

  ‘Are you?’ said Miss Skinner, beaming. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. I shall follow what you do with great interest.’

  ***

  Owen was sitting in a café in the Ataba-el-Khadra watching the world go by. The Ataba was a good place for that because it was at the end of the main street, the Muski, which connected the old native city with the new European quarters. The square was, moreover, the main terminus for nearly all of Cairo’s trams.

  At any hour of the day and deep into the night the Ataba was a tangle of trams, arabeahs—the characteristic horsedrawn cab of Cairo—great lumbering carts carrying stone, great lumbering camels carrying forage for the city’s donkeys and horses, native buses, of the opensided ass-drawn variety, motor-cars (a few; tending towards the stationary) and sheep.

  Quite why there should be so many sheep in the Ataba was a mystery. Certainly the Arabs were very fond of their fat-tailed Passover sheep and shopkeepers liked to keep one tethered outside their premises, to eat up the garbage, it was claimed; but why so many should be wandering loose in this most hazardous of places was hard to comprehend.

  You would feel something nudging your knee and look down and there would be a sheep painted in blue stripes and often with a child’s shoe hanging round its neck on a cheap silver necklace.

  The answer lay, perhaps, in the fact that despite the trams and despite its proximity to the new European quarters the Ataba remained obstinately part of the native city. The people you saw were the ordinary people of Cairo: blue-gowned labourers, veiled women in black, office workers in suits and tarbooshes, the red, pot-like hat of the educated Egyptian, shopkeepers in striped gowns and tarbooshes but with a turban bound round the tarboosh.

  The hawkers, too, of whom there were very many, were ones who served the ordinary Egyptian rather than the tourist. Instead of the souvenir-seller and dirty-postcard-seller of the great hotels you saw the brush, comb and buttonhook-seller, the pastry-seller, the lemonade-seller and the water-carrier.

  It was two different worlds and despite the incessant clanging of the trams and the shouts of the street vendors Owen on the whole preferred this one to the hotel one.

  He had been visiting the fire station on the Ataba and afterwards had adjourned with the chief, as was proper after transacting business, to the coffee house. They sat there now benignly watching the mêlée in the square.

  ‘So what would you do,’ asked Owen, ‘if you wanted to get out and your way was blocked?’

  ‘I would ring my bell and shout.’

  ‘But nearly everyone else in the square is ringing a bell and shouting,’ Owen pointed out.

  ‘I would exhort them,’ said the Fire Chief.

  And by the time you got anywhere, thought Owen, half the city would have burned to the ground.

  ‘Is there no other exit?’

  The Fire Chief pushed back his tarboosh and scratched his head.

  ‘Well—’ he was just beginning, when on the other side of the square there was a fierce squeal of brakes and a tram-bell started jangling furiously. An arabeah veered suddenly and there were agitated shouts.

  A crowd seemed to be gathering in front of one of the trams. It looked as if there had been an accident.

  A policeman somewhere was blowing his whistle. Owen could see him now pushing his way through the crowd. The crowd, unusually, parted and Owen caught a glimpse of a still form lying beside the tram.

  It seemed to be a woman, a European.

  He got to his feet. The Fire Chief, used to dealing with accidents, fell in beside him. Together they began to force a way through the crowd.

  Even in that short time it had grown enormously. It was now well over a hundred deep. Traffic everywhere had come to a stop.

  Some of the other trams had started ringing their bells. People were shouting, sheep bleating. As ass began to bray. It was bedlam.

  The whole square now was an impenetrable mass of people. Owen looked at the Fire Chief and shrugged.

  Over to one side was a native bus, totally becalmed. The driver had given up, laid his whip across the backs of his asses and was waiting resignedly. His passengers, content to watch the spectacle—all Cairo
loved a good accident—chattered with excitement.

  The Chief laid his hand on Owen’s arm and nodded in the direction of the bus. They made their way towards it.

  The bus was one of the traditional sort and was basically a platform on wheels. From the corners of the platform tall posts rose to support a roof. The sides were open and the wooden benches faced towards the rear.

  The Chief put his foot on the running-board and jumped up. The next moment he was shinning nimbly up one of the posts and clambering on to the roof.

  Owen followed, less nimbly. For an instant one foot hovered desperately in the air. Then someone caught hold of it and gave a heave, the Chief caught his arm, and he levered himself up on to the roof.

  He could see now right across the crowd. There was a little space beside the tram where some arabeah drivers and the conductor of the tram were holding back the crowd. The driver had collapsed against the side and was clasping his head in his hands, his face turned away.

  The crowd by the tram suddenly eddied—a horse, it looked like, had objected to being hemmed in—and Owen caught another glimpse of the woman.

  Something about her seemed familiar.

  And the next moment he had slid to the ground and was fighting his way through the crowd towards her.

  ‘Make way! Make way!’

  Someone looked up at him and took it into their head that he was the doctor.

  ‘Make way for the hakim!’ he shouted. ‘Make way!’

  Others took up the shout.

  ‘The hakim! Make way!’

  The crowd obligingly parted and hands tugged him through. He arrived dishevelled beside the tram and looked down. There, lying so close to the tram that she was almost beneath its running-boards, was Miss Skinner.

  ‘I did not see her!’ said the driver tearfully. ‘I did not see her!’

  Somebody had stuffed a jacket under her head and a water-carrier was tenderly, uselessly, splashing water on her face.

  There was no blood.

  ‘Get an ambulance!’ said Owen.

  The cry was taken up and passed through the crowd and at its back someone ran off into the café. But the Ataba was totally jammed and the ambulance, like the fire-engine, would be unable to get through.

  And then, over the heads of the crowd, something was being passed, and there, scrambling over people’s heads and shoulders, nimble as a monkey, was the Fire Chief.

  A stretcher was passed down and, a moment later, the Chief arrived.

  He dropped down on his knees beside Miss Skinner.

  ‘God be praised!’ he said.

  ‘Be praised?’ said Owen harshly.

  ‘She is not dead.’

  The Chief seized a water-skin from the carrier and squeezed some of the water out on to Miss Skinner’s face.

  Her eyes opened. For a moment they remained unfocused. And then the sharp look returned.

  ‘What is going on?’ demanded Miss Skinner.

  ‘An accident,’ said Owen. ‘You’ve had an accident. Just stay there for a moment. You’ll be all right.’

  Miss Skinner’s eyes closed again. The Fire Chief dexterously wedged the stretcher under her. Cooperative hands hoisted it into the air. It was raised head high so that it could be passed back over the crowd.

  As the stretcher lurched upwards Miss Skinner’s eyes opened again.

  ‘Accident?’ she said sharply. ‘That was no accident! I was pushed!’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Look,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘I know a push when I feel one.’

  She was sitting in a chair in the hotel lounge. Owen had suggested she remain in bed but Miss Skinner thought that was no place for a lady to receive a gentleman. She had made an appointment with Owen for six o’clock, taken a slightly extended siesta, and now here she was, not quite recovered—there was a nasty bruise on her face—but inclined in no sense to take this lying down.

  ‘In the crowd,’ murmured Owen, ‘so easy to mistake—’

  Miss Skinner made an impatient gesture.

  ‘A push is a push,’ she said firmly.

  ‘So many people,’ said Owen, ‘perhaps carrying things. A porter, maybe. A package sticking out.’

  ‘A hand,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘gave me a deliberate push.’

  Owen was silent. An image of the Ataba came into his mind. So many people milling about, jostling each other in the crowd, hurrying to catch a tram. The easiest thing in the world to bump into someone, collide. But a deliberate push?

  ‘Let me see, Miss Skinner: you were standing precisely where? Near where I saw you, obviously, but, just before you fell, precisely where?’

  ‘I had been looking at one of the boards—’

  ‘Ah, so you had your back towards the traffic, then?’

  ‘—but it was not the one I wanted and I had just turned away. I was looking for the one to the Zoological Gardens and this one, I remember, was for the Citadel. There! That will help you to place it.’

  ‘Thank you. That is very precise. You had turned away, then—?’

  ‘—and was about to move on to the next one when it happened.’

  ‘That, again, is very precise, Miss Skinner. “About to move on.” You had not, then, moved?’

  ‘A step, perhaps.’

  ‘Or two. But still very close to the Citadel board. And in the middle of the street.’

  ‘Along with everybody else,’ said Miss Skinner defensively.

  ‘Of course. No criticism implied. But you were in the middle of the street and could very easily have been bumped into.’

  ‘I think I would have noticed if an arabeah had hit me,’ said Miss Skinner tartly. ‘That is, of course, before I was hit by the tram.’

  ‘I was thinking of a person, Miss Skinner. Perhaps running for a tram.’

  Miss Skinner sighed.

  ‘A collision is not like a push. This was a push. A definite push.’

  ‘Perhaps as they collided with you they put out a hand—’

  ‘No one,’ said Miss Skinner, her voice beginning to rise, ‘collided with me or bumped into me. What happened was that someone put a hand out and gave me a deliberate push just as the tram was approaching.’

  ‘But, Miss Skinner, why would anyone want to do that?’

  ‘You tell me. You’re the policeman. If, indeed,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘you are a policeman!’

  Owen could not see it. An accidental collision, a stumble, a trip, yes. But not a push. Not a deliberate push.

  ‘A sheep, perhaps?’ he ventured.

  ‘A sheep?’ said Miss Skinner incredulously.

  ‘They nudge you,’ Owen explained.

  ‘Look, Captain Owen,’ said Miss Skinner in rising fury, ‘this was not a nudge, nor a bump, nor a jostle. This was a push. A hand. In the small of my back. Just when a tram was coming. I have been assaulted—criminally assaulted—and I demand that you take action to find out who my assailant was and to see that he is punished. At once!’

  ***

  The arabeah-drivers, while waiting for custom, liked to gather round a pavement restaurant near where they parked their cabs; round, because what the restaurants consisted of was a large circular tray with little pegs round the edge on which the customers stuck their bread. In the middle were lots of little blue-and-white china bowls filled with various kinds of sauces and pickles and a few large platters on which lay unpromising pieces of meat.

  The customers squatted round in the dust. They did not consist entirely of arabeah-drivers. The restaurant served as a social centre for that part of the Ataba and people dropped in and out all day, drawn by the smell of fried onions and the constant Arab need for sociability.

  It was natural for Owen, beginning his inquiries with the arabeah-drivers, to migrate in that direction and soon he was part of the squatting circle d
ipping his bread with the rest of them, his inquiries now part of the general conversation.

  ‘Why was she catching a tram anyway?’ asked one of the arabeah-drivers. ‘She ought to have been using an arabeah.’

  ‘That’s right. She wouldn’t have had to have wandered round, then. She could have just signalled to us and we’d have looked after her.’

  ‘Particularly if she was carrying things. Much more sense to take an arabeah.’

  ‘Was she carrying things?’ asked Owen.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just that if she was—’

  ‘I thought she was carrying something,’ said one of the other drivers. ‘One or two small things. Perhaps she had been shopping.’

  ‘You saw her, then?’

  ‘I saw her go down. She certainly seemed to be carrying something.’

  ‘How did she come to go down?’ asked Owen. ‘Was she wandering about in front of the tram or something?’

  ‘No, no, she was round the side.’

  ‘What did she do, then? Walk into it?’ asked one of the drivers.

  ‘Must have.’

  ‘She ought to look where she’s going, then.’

  There was a general laugh.

  ‘Maybe it came up behind her,’ suggested Owen. ‘You know, alongside her. She was standing a bit too close and it just caught her.’

  ‘It’s easily done, I suppose.’

  Owen turned to the driver who had thought he’d seen her carrying something.

  ‘Didn’t you say you’d seen what happened? Was that how it was?’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t really see it happen. I just saw her go down. I had just cut across in front of the tram—plenty of room, a couple of metres at least—and of course I was looking out to my left and I glanced along the side of the tram and she was already falling. It must have happened just at that instant.’

  ‘Was she falling into the tram or away from it?’

  ‘I don’t know, it was all over in a flash. But I saw she’d gone down as I stopped and ran over to her.’

  ‘Was she all covered with blood?’ asked someone with relish.

  ‘No, she—’

  The driver launched into his tale, which he told with gusto but without the kind of detail that interested Owen. After a while he stood up and slipped away. He would come back to the restaurant the next day and the days after. If anything new emerged it would certainly be retailed to him.