The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘And he said: “Thank you very much, Wajja. The next time you find nothing, perhaps you will tell someone else? Sabri has doubtless gone to find some woman and it is no business of ours.” But the next morning the small boys of the Market came and taunted us from afar, crying: “What manner of men are you, that allow yourselves to be taken sleeping?”’

  ***

  Owen had heard the distant clanging of a bell in the night but it was sufficiently far away to be of no immediate concern and he had turned over and gone back to sleep. The next morning he had forgotten about it but it came back to him when, towards noon, McPhee stuck his head in at the door and said:

  ‘Owen, I wonder if you would mind coming along to my office? This is something for you, I think, rather than for me.’

  In McPhee’s office he found a representative from the Mufti, Cairo’s religious leader, and a smooth young man from the Khedive’s—no, not the Khedive’s now, he would never get used to this new style, the Sultan’s—Office.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘The Mufti wishes to register his concern.’

  ‘And so does His Royal Highness.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What about?’

  ‘The Australians,’ said McPhee glumly.

  ‘Their behaviour,’ said the man from the Sultan’s Office.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. In what respect?’

  ‘Their drinking. And its consequences.’

  ‘There was a fire last night,’ said McPhee.

  It was then that Owen remembered the bell.

  ‘Oh, dear. No one hurt, I hope?’

  ‘There would have been,’ said the Mufti’s representative, ‘but for the grace of God.’

  ‘A liquor house was set on fire,’ said McPhee.

  ‘Another one? There was one the other day.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you think it was the Australians?’

  ‘They were the only ones in it,’ the man from the Sultan’s Office pointed out.

  ‘Muslims don’t drink alcohol,’ said the Mufti’s representative.

  ‘I’m afraid some of them do.’

  ‘It is disapproved of by the Prophet.’

  ‘Of course. The Australians, I’m afraid, are ignorant of this.’

  ‘Could they not be reminded?’

  ‘I will try.’ Honesty compelled him to add: ‘I don’t know how much effect it will have, however. They come from a country where alcohol is not disapproved of.’

  ‘But they are in another country now.’

  ‘That is true; and perhaps they should have more respect for its customs.’

  ‘The problem is, liquor houses are springing up everywhere,’ said McPhee.

  ‘Cannot you do something about this?’ asked the man from the Sultan’s Office.

  ‘I could, of course, restrict the number granted licences. But that would merely drive their customers into the unlicensed ones.’

  ‘If they’re unlicensed, you should close them down.’

  ‘I try to. The difficulty is—’

  They all knew what the difficulty was. It was the capitulations, a system of legal privileges which over the years the Egyptians had been obliged to grant to foreigners. They restricted, for example, the authorities’ right of access to premises owned by foreigners; so that when Owen arrived and demanded entry, he could be denied it until he returned with a Consular representative of the country the owner of the premises claimed to belong to. And when he did return with the Consular representative, he found more often than not that meanwhile the nationality claimed by the owner had changed. It was so frustrating for the police that in the end they usually preferred not to bother.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said McPhee, ‘that there are safety implications.’

  ‘The risk of fire, you mean, like this one?’

  ‘They go up in flames. It’s the spirit.’

  ‘It is not right,’ said the Mufti’s representative, ‘that the lives and property of ordinary Egyptians should be put at risk because of the habits of foreign soldiers—’

  ‘Stationed on our soil against our will!’

  ‘They are defending the country, of course,’ said Owen. ‘However, let us not go into that. What we are all agreed on is that something must be done about the fire.’

  ‘And the drinking,’ said the Mufti’s representative.

  ‘Certainly: if we can.’

  ‘The two go together.’

  ‘The three go together,’ said the man from the Sultan’s Office. ‘There wasn’t a problem before the Australians came.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that I quite agree with you there,’ said Owen. ‘The consumption of alcohol was not exactly unknown in Egypt before the Australians came. And, anyway, are we sure that they alone are to be blamed for the fire?’

  Chapter Five

  ‘It would be a pity,’ said Georgiades, settling back in the soft chair and sipping his gin-and-tonic.

  ‘Yes, well I can’t afford to have you going on like this. There are other jobs I need you on.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, there’s a fire that needs investigating.’

  ‘Fire,’ said Georgiades unenthusiastically.

  ‘Yes. I need you on the streets.’

  Georgiades swirled the ice at the bottom of his glass and signalled to the waiter for another one.

  ‘It would be a pity,’ he said. ‘Just when I’m getting somewhere here.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Really getting somewhere.’

  ‘You said that last time.’

  ‘On the verge, I think I said. And now it’s really beginning to happen.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Owen sceptically.

  ‘Yes. I’ve had an approach.’

  ‘I think you said that last time, too.’

  ‘I said I was expecting one. And now I’ve had it.’

  ‘Really had one?’

  ‘Yes. Swiss, I think he is. If I could let him have some cotton, routed, of course, via Stockholm, he thinks he could dispose of it for me. At a price which would surprise me.’

  Owen hesitated. He had come determined to get Georgiades back on normal duties. The job was taking too long. It had been wished on him by the authorities in England. Some of Egypt’s cotton crop was escaping local controls and being sold in Europe and Owen had been asked to investigate the Egyptian end. Important, no doubt; but was it important enough to justify lying up one of his best agents? Still, if Georgiades was just about to get somewhere—

  Georgiades took the glass from the waiter, tasted it and then put it down for the ice to work.

  ‘Mind you,’ he continued, ‘any price would surprise me. I wouldn’t know a good one from a bad one. But Rosa says it’s all right.’

  ‘Rosa?’

  ‘Yes. She follows these things, you know. I think she gets it from her grandmother. Her business sense. Her parents certainly haven’t got it. Nor me, neither, unfortunately. Anyway, what she says is, accept the other offer—’

  ‘Other offer?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you about that? Sorry. Well, I’ve had two approaches. One wants to buy from me, the other to sell to me. Rosa says, accept the offer to sell to me—she says the price is right, it’s lower than the other one, apparently that’s important, Christ, I don’t understand these things—and then sell it on to the Swiss. At the price he said.’

  ‘Yes, well, look, I don’t know that I wanted you to get as far as actual dealing—’

  ‘That’s what I said to her. I’m just there to catch them, I said, not to try and make my bloody fortune. “Make your fortune as well,” she said, “on the side. It’ll set us up for life.” But I don’t know. Frankly, this kind of thing terrifies me. Anything to do with money. I give my pay to her each
week and let her get on with it. She seems to have an instinct for it. But I reckon it’s best if she leaves me out of it. I always get these damned things the wrong way round, you know, think the selling price is the buying price, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Look, never mind the deal, just keep them dangling for a while—’

  ‘Yes, that’s what Rosa says. She says the Swiss price will go up and the Egyptian price will go down.’

  ‘Never mind that. If you’ve got both a potential seller and a potential buyer, we’re beginning to get somewhere. Can you let Nikos have the details, so that he can do some background digging? And, meanwhile, I suppose you’d better stay on here—’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Georgiades, giving the ice in his glass a swirl.

  ***

  That afternoon Owen went to the Parquet offices in the Ministry of Justice and asked if he could see their file on Sabri. Caught off-guard, for they were not used to visits from the Mamur Zapt, they could think, on the spur of the moment, of no reason why he shouldn’t, so he was taken into a small room and the file laid before him.

  There was as yet little in it: the formal notification from the Police of the body’s having been found, a note assigning a Parquet officer to the case, together with a signed slip indicating that he had taken up his duties, and an initial medical report recording that the deceased had died of stab wounds inflicted from behind. There was, disappointingly, no account of the Parquet officer’s visit to the Camel Market.

  He concentrated on the medical report. ‘Inflicted from behind.’ That made it less likely that Sabri had died in a quarrel. As the result of one, possibly, but not in one. There was, too, no mention of other knife wounds such as would probably have been the case in a knife fight. This was only an initial report and he would have to await the final one, but if there had been other wounds they would probably have been mentioned.

  Or perhaps they might not have been. The report was scribbled and showed every sign of having been written in a hurry. He wondered whether to ask Cairns-Grant to take an interest in the case.

  The door behind him opened. He had been half-expecting that. The Parquet guarded its territory jealously and although the Mamur Zapt was in principle a colleague, he was one whom the strongly Nationalist Parquet preferred to keep at a distance.

  ‘Can I help you?’ said a voice.

  It was a slightly nervous young man in the usual dark suit of the Parquet.

  ‘Hassan Marbri,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘I have been assigned to this case.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said again.

  ‘Probably not at the moment. You’ve only just started, haven’t you?’

  ‘You are taking an interest in the case?’

  ‘A limited one.’

  The lawyer hesitated.

  ‘May I ask the motive of your interest?’

  Owen knew what was worrying him. The Mamur Zapt normally dealt only with cases which had a political dimension.

  ‘It is merely that at the time of his death, the deceased was working for the Government—he was delivering camels to the Army. Supplies just want to be sure that this wasn’t a factor in his death.’

  ‘It’s hardly likely, is it?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. The requisitioning of domestic animals is highly unpopular in the countryside.’

  ‘Yes, but the camels wouldn’t have been requisitioned, would they? They’d have been bought, somewhere over in the west.’

  ‘Almost certainly. This is just a routine check.’ If the Parquet guarded its territory, so did Owen, and he didn’t think it politic to reveal that Sabri had worked for him. ‘However, it has to be made.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  The young lawyer seemed relieved.

  ‘By the way,’ said Owen, ‘there wasn’t a report of your visit to the Market. You have made one?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Hassan Marbri, ‘to pick up the body. It’s still in draft,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Did you look around?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘The body had been hidden beneath the carpeting of a fiki’s booth.’

  ‘But he hadn’t been killed there. Or had he?’

  ‘There was blood on the carpeting.’

  ‘Anywhere else?’

  ‘Not that I could see. But by the time I got there, the ground had been badly scuffed up. It’s a Market, after all.’

  ‘Did you call in the trackers?’

  ‘Trackers?’ said the lawyer, looking on him in surprise. ‘In the city?’

  ***

  There was something familiar about the man Nikos showed into the office. Owen was sure he had seen him before but, for the moment, couldn’t quite place him.

  ‘Mohammed Sekhmet,’ said Nikos.

  He was a short, middle-aged man wearing the red tarboosh of the Egyptian functionnaire, Government employee, which he took off on entering, in deference to British custom, to reveal close-cropped grey hair. The face wasn’t Arab; Turkish, Owen fancied.

  ‘I have come to thank you,’ he said, ‘for releasing my daughter.’

  ‘Daughter?’

  ‘Yasmin.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Owen had released Yasmin the day before. ‘No thanks are needed,’ he said. ‘She is young and would be better under the eye of her father.’

  Mohammed Sekhmet sighed.

  ‘Do not think she has not been under the eye of her father, Effendi. When she goes out, it is always with a servant beside her. Even when she goes to school. But, Effendi, the school is big and there are many gates. Too often, at the end of the day, the servant waits at the appointed gate but she does not come. She has left by another. And then she goes off and does such terrible things!’

  ‘Well, well, the young are often rebellious.’

  ‘Effendi, I was not rebellious. I did what my father decreed. But the young these days—there is a different spirit to the age!’

  ‘The world changes.’

  ‘I know, I know. That is what my daughter says when I chide her. She looks on me, I fear, as one that belongs to the past. I cannot get near her.’

  ‘It is a common story.’

  ‘But how will the story end, Effendi? That is what worries me. For once you have set your foot on a path, you have to follow where it leads.’

  ‘We shall have to see that she doesn’t go down the path. She is still young, and we must help her to find other paths.’

  Mohammed Sekhmet sighed again.

  ‘We have tried, Effendi, her mother and I. We try all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps this will bring it home to her.’

  Even as he spoke, Owen, remembering his exchanges with Yasmin, had his doubts.

  Mohammed Sekhmet looked at him.

  ‘It has to come to this, Effendi, does it?’ he said quietly.

  ‘To the court, you mean? Well, that is what I have to think about. I could, I think, get her let off with a caution, although I would have to speak to the Police and to the Parquet about it. But would she heed the warning?’

  Mohammed Sekhmet’s face looked wretched.

  ‘I wish I could say that she would, Effendi, but I cannot.’

  ‘Is there someone that she might listen to? At her school, perhaps?’

  ‘Effendi, I have spoken to the headmistress many times about my daughter and I have always found her just and helpful. But now she has to think of the other pupils. One bad date can infect the rest.’

  ‘Has she expelled her?’

  ‘She is thinking of doing so. And I cannot blame her.’

  ‘I will speak with her. Perhaps she may know someone.’

  Mohammed Sekhmet bowed his head in acknowledgement and then sat for a while looking down at t
he floor. Then he raised his eyes.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said quietly, ‘all my hopes were in her. Her brother is afflicted and the ability is lacking. All he will ever be able to do is work with me at the Fire Brigade.’

  And now Owen knew why his face had seemed familiar. He was the senior fireman who had so intelligently diverted the hoses at the fire Owen had witnessed the other day and driven the spectators away to safety.

  ‘If he grows up to be as worthy a man as his father, why should one ask for more?’

  Mohammed Sekhmet flushed slightly.

  ‘But in my daughter, Effendi, the ability shines out. My wife said: ‘It is time for her to marry.’ But I said, no, she has a rare quality that must not be denied. Let her go to the madrissa, and then on to the great madrissa, and then perhaps she will be able to serve those around her as God bids us to do and as her father, imperfectly, has tried to do.’

  ‘Those were wise words.’

  ‘No, Effendi, they were not. They were foolish, vain words. It was presumptuous in me. I aspired too highly for her, and now I am justly punished.’

  ‘No, no, no, no.’

  ‘Yes, Effendi, yes! I thrust her forward, when I should have waited for God to raise her if He thought fit. For God sees into the hearts, and perceives what man does not. He perceived the spirit of rebellion in her which I had made myself blind to.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Effendi, I and my family have always seen life as service. In my case it was service to the Khedive, in the case of my wife and her family, service to the Pasha. But now my daughter raises her voice against Khedive and Pasha! Where will this end? For the rebellious spirit there is no end, there is just the rebelliousness that goes on and on, tearing down all it meets until it tears apart the world! And that is my daughter, Effendi. Effendi, what shall I do?’

  ***

  There were two of them, desert men from the Red Sea hills, with short-skirted galabeahs and heavy tribal scars on their faces. They bent down over the place where Sabri’s body had been found, almost as if they were dogs sniffing, and stayed there for some time. Then they began to circle out from the spot, their eyes fixed on the ground.

  One of them called to the other and they bent down over something. Then they began to move again, this time in a series of zig-zags across an imaginary line leading out from the fiki’s booth.