The Snake Catcher’s Daughter mz-8

by Michael Pearce

  They stopped to look. Cairo was a great place for street entertainment. There were dancers, jugglers, acrobats, snake charmers, of course, poets and singers. There were also the Mohabazin. These were small groups of actors who played in the streets and specialized in scurrilous farce. They were a kind of living Punch and Judy, often taking family life as their subject but also, not infrequently, offering a political commentary on the state of the nation and the ways of the great which was usually ribald and sometimes true.

  There were, he could now see, two actors apart from the bagpipes player. One, whom he had not seen at first, was sitting on a chair. The actor, who was standing and doing most of the talking, was flourishing a big stick.

  “Oh ho!” said Selim, “it’s the police this time, is it?”

  The man with the stick strutted round and banged a few people with it. He was evidently a Selim sort of policeman. The crowd responded with repartee and jibes and some lively exchanges developed. Selim was splitting his sides some time before Owen got the hang of what they were saying. The ‘policeman’ was affecting to be a great hero; the crowd, egged on by the facial expressions of the man sitting on the chair, voiced doubts.

  The policeman took their remarks as aspersions on his virility and responded indignantly, using the stick now to indicate his physical capacity. Female members of the audience were invited to put the matter to the test. They replied with derision, one lady producing a matchstick which was compared delightedly with the policeman’s big stick. The policeman, hurt, announced that he was going home.

  As he went, heroism and virility oozed away with every step until, after much hesitation, he brought himself to knock timidly on his front door, whereupon his wife came out in true Judy fashion and belaboured him thoroughly with his stick. “Very good!” said Selim. “Oh, very good!”

  The man with the bagpipes made a collection while the actors prepared for the next piece by putting on different garb. It mostly concerned the man on the chair and did not amount to much: a tarboosh on his head, a red jacket with yellow pipes, which might have belonged to a bandsman, and a rag round his neck which conceivably represented a tie.

  The bagpiper gave a skirl on his pipes and the next skit began. It had a different theme and centred this time on the man in the chair. He began turning round on his chair and pretending to peep at something over his shoulder. The peeps became longer and his eyes seemed about to pop out of his head. Affecting shock, horror-and delight-he covered his eyes with his hand and turned hastily away; only, a second or two later, for his head to swivel round once more and his eyes to pop again.

  After the process had been repeated several times, the figure began to show signs of mounting sexual excitement. When he spun round now, he rose halfway up the chair and made exaggerated pelvic thrusts. He pantomimed heat, mopping his brow, loosening his tie and undoing his jacket.

  It was not enough. He called for drink. The bagpipes player proffered him a bowl and he drank from it greedily. Evidently, it was alcoholic liquor, for he began, very funnily, to suggest growing intoxication. The crowd was in stitches as he swayed about, nearly falling off the chair, getting into a tangle with his tie and missing his buttons. Finally, highly excited by whatever it was that was behind him, he tried to take off his trousers-Selim liked this bit especially-tripped himself up over the legs, collapsed in a heap on the chair and promptly fell asleep.

  The other actor and the bagpipes player seized the chair and held him aloft; and it was only then that Owen realized whom the figure on the chair was intended to represent: McPhee.

  The next morning, Owen sat in his office thinking about it. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have bothered him. People were entitled to their bit of fun, after all, and the Cairo poor didn’t get much of it. A little ridicule was healthy; not so nice, perhaps, when it was you that was being ridiculed but basically something that anyone in office ought to be tough enough to put up with. He was pretty sure that the Mamur Zapt figured in the Mohabazin’s repertoire.

  It meant, however, that his efforts to contain the episode through his control of the press had failed. Perhaps they were bound to. Owen had no illusions about the limits to his power in that respect. Things would always get out in the end. The most you could hope to do was to delay them.

  That was what he had tried to do; that, and put a spoke in their wheel if there genuinely was somebody who was running a campaign against McPhee. Was that the case? Did the fact that the McPhee story was now being played on the streets mean there was somebody deliberately trying to put it about?

  He wasn’t sure. There was a gap between the culture of the written word, written though it might be in popular newspapers, and the life of the streets. Many people, perhaps most people, in Cairo could not read. The people who were inflamed by what they read in the newspapers were mostly students. It was they who came out on demonstrations. The ordinary Cairene-in-the-street went along to see the fun but unless religion came into it was not much involved.

  Religion did come into it here, or could come into it if they weren’t careful. But no one was going to get a fit of religion from watching one of the Mohabazin’s plays. So even if someone was putting it about, was it worth bothering with? A little ridicule didn’t hurt anyone and McPhee had bloody asked for it.

  However, there was Garvin’s point. There were, all told, only a handful of British in Egypt. The country was ruled, in effect, by a very tiny group of men. It was in a way a bluff; and it worked only as long as the bluff wasn’t called. All right, there was an army offstage, but it was the fervent intention of every member of the Administration that that was exactly where it should stay. Bluff was the thing on which the Administration really depended; the kind of bluff that allowed three foreigners to run the Police Force and maintain order in a country the size of Egypt.

  But one of the men was McPhee. And was McPhee the sort of man who could maintain the bluff convincingly? Not on present form. Garvin was right. Credibility was all.

  Or was it? Hell, what did it matter if McPhee had become a bit of a joke? He was in danger of taking it all too seriously. It was this damned heat. You lost perspective. He decided he would go out for a coffee in an attempt to regain it.

  He took the papers with him. As he went out, Nikos clapped another one on top of the pile.

  “What’s this?”

  “ Al-Lewa. ”

  “I’ve got it already.”

  “You haven’t got this one. This one is the one that actually came out this morning.”

  “ ‘Actually came out’? You mean it was not the one I approved?”

  “Take a look,” said Nikos. “I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  The article took up most of the front page. It was an attack on the Cairo Police Force. It began with general charges of inefficiency and incompetence (plenty of examples, including, yes, the one about the whole Police Force out one day recently looking for, wait for it, a donkey!) and then moved swiftly to the suggestion that this was the fault not of the ordinary constable (fine, upstanding, brave, true, diligent, conscientious to a fault, decent, highly moral-Selim?) but of his superiors, in particular those who had been imposed on the Police Force from overseas.

  It was not just that they were corrupt, though there was abundant evidence of that, some of it going back a long time (earrings), some of it more recent (jewels given to whores), nor just that they were personally immoral; it was that they had been imposed by powers overseas for a purpose. That purpose was the systematic repression of the population. It was hardly surprising, then, that the police paid so little attention to crime; they had other jobs to do.

  So far, so fairly normal (for Al-Lewa). The next bit was the new departure. This was the sharply personalized form of attacks. There were detailed references to the bizarre, eccentric behaviour of a senior member of the Police Force, culminating recently in open affront to Egyptian womanhood and natural religious feeling (was this part of a deliberate attempt to subvert what had for cent
uries been the country’s orthodox religion?). There were references to the concupiscence of another senior figure, who had for long maintained one whore and who had recently been seen visiting another.

  The most detailed reference, however, was to a third (yes, yet another!) even more senior figure whose practices were so blatant that a case he had been involved in had recently been reopened by the Parquet. Al-Lewa would not prejudice possible judicial review based on the Parquet’s findings but it would venture to suggest that the world would be shocked by the naked political manipulation that would be revealed. At least injuries done to the original native Egyptian incumbents would be exposed.

  And that, really, was the point. A perfectly acceptable system had been set aside at the behest of a foreign power. Perfectly capable, decent men had been superseded. What was required was a return to old virtues. Only then would the Police Force be able to lift its head again with pride. But that would require the wholesale and immediate departure of the present holders of office.

  “There you are!” said McPhee triumphantly, back in the office. “A return to the old virtues. Exactly what I’ve been calling for.”

  “And the old personnel,” Owen pointed out.

  “Well-”

  “That doesn’t mean you. It means Mustapha Mir and Philipides.”

  “Old virtues!” said Garvin contemptuously. “Old vices, more like: bribery, corruption, personal favour, brutality, flogging-”

  “It’s not Al-Lewa’s usual line,” said Owen thoughtfully. “They’re a radical paper. They don’t usually go for old virtues. They’re in favour of new ones.”

  “Well, I can see that,” said Garvin. “That call for efficiency, for instance.”

  “I don’t think their efficiency is quite the same as yours.”

  “Efficiency is efficiency,” said Garvin. “And, talking of efficiency, how does it come about that they’re able to publish something like this? I thought you approved everything beforehand?”

  “I didn’t this.”

  “So how come?”

  “They inserted it afterwards.”

  “Well, you’ve got them, then, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I’ve got them. Only-”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “I’m surprised. They don’t usually carry things this far. They huff and puff and hint and push things just about as far as they think they can go, but they don’t usually cross the line. And they don’t openly disobey by inserting things afterwards. It’s not worth it, you see. They know I’ll ban the paper for a spell. They’ll lose readers, lose influence. People will read other papers. Their rivals.”

  “Radical papers aren’t really interested in sales.”

  “Don’t you kid yourself. They’re interested in sales, all right. They want to spread their gospel.”

  “So why run the risk by doing this?”

  “Why, indeed? It’s hardly worth it, is it? Not just for merely another attack on the British.”

  “It’s not just another attack, though, is it? It’s a very specific attack; on us.”

  “On all three of us,” said Owen. “And now I’m beginning to wonder. Maybe the McPhee business is not an isolated event, after all. And maybe, the girl in my bed, the diamond, the necklace, are part of it, too. They’re all bound up together; bound up with reopening the Philipides case as well.”

  “They’re trying to get us out,” said Garvin, “all three of us. That’s the game. That’s what it is all about.”

  “If that’s the game,” said Owen, “it’s a daft one. If we went, the Administration would just put three other Britishers in.”

  “ Al-Lewa would hail it as a triumph.”

  “Maybe they would. But I don’t think they’re behind this. It isn’t their sort of thing.”

  “Maybe it’s about time you found out who is behind it,” said Garvin sourly, “instead of spending all your time drinking coffee in cafes and generally sitting about like a lemon.”

  Chapter 10

  Commotion in the Bab-el-Khalk. Cries in the courtyard, activity-unusual, this-in the orderly room. Owen, in his office, heard the agitated slap of slippers coming towards him. It was late in the afternoon and he was the only senior Effendi in the building.

  “Effendi, there is a snake in the orderlies’ lavatory.”

  “Has it bitten someone?”

  “No, effendi, but Suleiman wants to use the lavatory.”

  “Tell him to use another one. Oh, and send for the snake catcher.”

  Doubt.

  “Effendi-?”

  “Yes?”

  “Abdulla is in hospital.”

  Abdulla was the usual snake catcher.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He has hurt his back.”

  “Send for another.”

  “We have, effendi. We sent for Ibrahim and he’s not there.”

  “Surely there must be someone else? What about my snake catcher? He’s a good one.”

  “Yes, effendi, but Farouz knows him and says he is visiting his son today.”

  “Well, wait a minute, there’s one in the Gamaliya. Abu, his name is. Try him.”

  Later.

  Commotion again.

  “What the hell is it this time?”

  “Effendi, he’s sent a woman.”

  “What woman? Oh, Jalila. She’s all right. What’s the matter?”

  “She’s a woman, effendi.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Does it matter? As long as she gets rid of the snake?”

  “Oh, yes, effendi”-chorus-“it wouldn’t be right at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “What would a woman know about it? Catching snakes is a man’s job.”

  “She can do it. I’ve seen her.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “She would be frightened, effendi.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. I’ve seen her get into a tank of snakes.”

  “She might get hurt.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. I’ve seen her, I tell you. She knows all about it.”

  “Effendi-”

  He decided he’d better go down. It was indeed Jalila. She was looking defiant.

  “I can do it,” she said. “I often help my father.”

  “Helping is one thing, doing another.”

  “Why can’t he come himself?” asked Owen.

  “He’s-he’s not well.”

  “He’s dead drunk,” said one of the orderlies.

  “He can’t come. He’s sent me.”

  “He doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Effendi,” appealed Jalila desperately, “we need the money.”

  “The Rifa’i wouldn’t like it,” an orderly said.

  Owen thought that was probably true.

  “Is he really drunk?” he asked Jalila.

  Jalila hung her head.

  “Yes, effendi,” she said miserably. “He always is these days.”

  “It’s shame,” said one of the orderlies. “Shame at having a daughter like this.”

  Jalila looked at him savagely.

  “Can’t he be woken up?”

  “No, effendi,” said Jalila sadly. “When he’s like this he sleeps for a day and a night.”

  “Perhaps we’d better leave it till tomorrow,” said Owen.

  “Effendi, Suleiman-”

  “You can’t have it both ways,” Owen snapped. “If you won’t let her do it, you’ll just have to manage without.”

  “It would be all right if her father was here,” someone muttered. “No one minds her helping.”

  Owen suddenly had an idea.

  “Very well. Fetch him!”

  “Fetch him?”

  “Carry him if necessary.”

  Abu was fetched. He arrived slung unceremoniously across a donkey and snoring loudly.

  “Right. Put him down.”

  Abu was dumped in the courtyard. Owen
bent over him. The stench of alcohol rose up and hit him in the nose.

  “He’s out for the count, all right,” he said.

  “Effendi,” said Jalila in despair, “believe me, he won’t wake up-”

  “Never mind that. You get on with it.”

  “Get on with it?”

  “He’s here, isn’t he? Right, well, you’re helping.”

  Jalila looked at him doubtfully.

  “Go on. Get on with it.”

  Jalila picked up her bag and set out across the yard to the little, square mud-brick building which was the orderlies’ lavatory.

  The orderlies watched interestedly.

  “Rather her than me.”

  “It’s fortunate it’s only a woman.”

  Beside the lavatory was a heap of rags which got up as Jalila approached.

  “Who’s that?” said Owen.

  “Nassem. He cleans the lavatory.”

  Jalila spoke to him and they went round to the back of the lavatory. A moment later Jalila reappeared following a trail which led to a hole in the large whitewashed wall which surrounded the courtyard. On the other side was a piece of wasteland. Owen, guiltily, was reminded of his garden.

  Jalila put her bag down and stood for a moment looking around her carefully. A large crowd had gathered, most of them orderlies from within the building, in the hope of seeing something interesting, like the hunt going wrong.

  Jalila’s eye lit on a small heap of crumbled masonry. She approached it carefully and then squatted down to think. Owen could see what the problem was. The snake was down the hole under the masonry and Jalila couldn’t get at its tail. Snake catchers liked to approach from the rear and seize the tail. That way it couldn’t twine round something and hold fast.

  Jalila went back to her bag, put her hand in and pulled out a snake. She held it for a moment or two in her hand, stroking the back of its head gently with her finger. Then she put it down on the ground in front of the hole. It found a warm brick and settled itself comfortably in the sun.

  Nothing happened for about a quarter of an hour. Then something stirred in the hole. A little dark head appeared. It hung there uncertainly for a moment or two and then slid out.