The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Still working on him?’ Curtis gave him a broad wink. ‘No need to tell me, old chap. I know how it is. Once you’ve got one, you pretty soon get the rest of the ring.’

  ***

  ‘What she needs is a good hiding,’ said Garvin. Garvin was the Commandant of the Cairo Police and one of the old school.

  ‘Maybe. But what she’s going to get is a full-blown court appearance.’

  ‘Do her good,’ said Garvin unpromisingly. Owen had always known that this was going to be difficult. ‘Scare the silliness out of her.’

  ‘Or encourage it. What she wants, she says, is to be made a martyr of. Then everyone will see how the British treat Egyptians.’

  ‘One of those, is she?’ said Garvin. ‘She sounds a right little pain in the ass. I don’t know why you’re spending time on her.’

  ‘She’s had enough time spent on her already,’ said Owen. ‘I don’t want to see any more.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that I can help you,’ said Garvin. ‘And I’m not sure that I want to. It sounds as if a court appearance might do her good.’

  Owen sighed inwardly. Really, Garvin was getting very conservative these days. There had been a time when he had had a pretty good feeling for the way in which Egyptians would take things.

  ‘It seems a bit excessive, that’s all. A minor. First offence.’

  ‘The court will take that into account, I daresay,’ said Garvin. ‘Why don’t you leave it to them? It’s a mistake being too soft. Especially with the young. It only makes trouble for later. And, by God, there’s plenty of it around these days. I don’t know what’s come over the young.’

  ‘That’s more or less what her father said.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Garvin indifferently.

  ‘Yes. I like her father. Very capable, too. I saw him in action the other day at a fire.’

  ‘Fire?’ said Garvin.

  ‘Yes. He’s Head of the Fire Brigade.’

  ‘Mohammed Sekhmet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, he’s all right,’ said Garvin, sitting up. ‘Known him for years. It’s his daughter? Why the hell didn’t you say?’

  ***

  ‘Georgiades has been in,’ said Nikos, looking up from his desk.

  ‘Yes, I asked him to look in. He’s made some actual contacts now and I wanted you to check them out.’

  ‘One of them’s Swedish. I don’t have anything on him. He never stays in the country long, just in and out. I’ve passed his name on to London. They may have something on him.’

  ‘He’s the potential buyer, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the potential seller?’

  ‘He’s not really the seller, he’s just a middle man. His name is Iskander and he sets up deals in commodities: grain, tobacco, sugar, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Cotton?’

  ‘Not up till now. But of course it’s only now, with the new wartime regulations, that it’s become worth it.’

  ‘Do we have any idea where he’d be getting the cotton from?’

  Nikos shook his head.

  ‘It will be a Pasha. But we don’t know which.’

  The Pashas, the big landlords of the country, with their vast fields of cotton, were the ones whom the authorities found difficult to regulate. With the farmers of the Delta there was no problem. Their crops were small and easily accounted for. But on the huge estates of the pashas there was always scope for some part of the crop to go missing.

  ‘Can we find out?’

  Nikos thought.

  ‘You could ask Georgiades to press Iskander. He won’t get the identity of the Pasha but he might get the part of the country. Tell him to ask about the quality of the cotton, what its characteristics are. He could ask for a sample.’

  ‘Right,’ said Owen, ‘I’ll do that.’

  As he went out, Nikos said, ‘Georgiades wasn’t looking too well.’

  ‘It’s all that damned drinking he’s doing in the hotel!’ said Owen uncharitably.

  ***

  Owen had a message from someone he knew in the Parquet, suggesting that they meet for a coffee. He guessed that the invitation was not accidental and wondered what it was that Mahmoud wanted to see him about.

  They met in a café in the Ataba el Khadra, the big square which was the starting point for most of Cairo’s trams, both the new electric ones and the old horse-drawn buses mostly used by black-gowned, heavily veiled women with huge baskets, and humming with people at any hour of the day or night. The tables of the cafés covered the pavements and sprawled out over the road and were always full. The road itself was jammed with pedestrians and vendors selling things to them: peanuts and sugar cane, pastries and seditious newspapers. If you couldn’t find a particular Nationalist newspaper that you wanted—unlikely in Cairo—you could always find it here. The cries of the vendors mingled with the shouts of frustrated arabeah drivers, the bleating of sheep, the clanging of the bells of the trams, and, from time to time, the despairing notes of the handbell at the front of a fire engine desperately trying to force its way out of the fire station at the corner of the square and through the packed throng.

  Mahmoud jumped up from a table and greeted him warmly, throwing his arms round him in the ebullient Arab fashion.

  ‘You are well, yes? And Zeinab?’

  ‘Well, too, God be praised. And you yourself? and Aisha?’

  They sat down and chatted. This was a favourite rendezvous for them both: Mahmoud, because it was on neutral ground and did not imply Parquet recognition of the office of Mamur Zapt (the Parquet refused on principle to accept that there should be such a thing as the Sultan’s Secret Police, much less a British-headed Secret Police), Owen because he liked the buzz of the cafés.

  Eventually Mahmoud got round to it.

  ‘You are interested in one of our cases, yes?’

  ‘The murder in the Camel Market, yes.’

  ‘We have put Hassan Marbri on to it. He is a promising young man but this is his first case.’

  ‘He seems to have made a good start.’

  ‘You think so?’ Mahmoud was pleased. He identified totally with his work at the Parquet and couldn’t bear any falling short.

  ‘Yes. Although I think that he may not have realised that the Bedawin were likely to move away.’

  Mahmoud did not take this up. Instead, he said, ‘We gave him this case because we thought it was uncomplicated.’

  Owen could guess now what lay behind the meeting. It was the point Marbri had picked up. Why was Owen interested? The Mamur Zapt normally confined himself to cases with a political aspect. But anything that was political in Cairo was highly unlikely to be uncomplicated. The Parquet, anxiously watching over its own, had been concerned.

  Owen’s acquaintance with Mahmoud was long-standing and their relationship good; not only good, close. He would have to tell him the truth.

  ‘The man who was killed was one of mine,’ he said.

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘One of mine in a very minor way but still mine.’

  ‘I see.’ Mahmoud began to back off. He didn’t want to know anything about the clandestine side of Owen’s activities. Too often they had a Nationalist target; and Mahmoud himself was a strongly committed member of the Nationalist Party. ‘Do you want us to leave it all to you?’

  ‘No. It may be nothing at all to do with the work he did for me. Which was, as I say, very minor. It would be better to treat it as an entirely normal case, to be investigated entirely in the normal way.’

  Mahmoud relaxed.

  ‘If you think so,’ he said.

  ‘We could, perhaps, share what we find out.’

  ‘Well, certainly.’

  ‘All I want to know is who killed him. And why. And then, well, if it’s nothing to do with me, I’
m happy to leave it entirely to Marbri.’

  ‘Well, that is as it should be,’ said Mahmoud, satisfied.

  He said something else but Owen was unable to catch it because of the particularly violent clanging of a bell in the street right beside them. A fire engine had come to an absolute stop.

  ‘Make way! Make way!’

  A gap opened. The driver was about to move into it when an arabeah darted into it ahead of him.

  ‘This is foolishness!’ cried the driver of the fire engine angrily.

  The people at the nearest tables gave him sympathetic support.

  ‘How would you like it if it was your house?’ they shouted to the arabeah driver.

  Some firemen sleeping on the pavement in front of the fire station jumped up and ran down into the road.

  ‘Get out of the way, you stupid bastard!’

  Two of them caught the horses’ heads and pulled the arabeah to one side.

  ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’ cried the arabeah driver.

  One of the firemen went up to him and told him. The driver began to climb down out of the arabeah. The arabeah’s passenger joined his shouts to the exchanges.

  The fire engine moved on past, the driver leaning across to add his voice to those of his colleagues. It succeeded in forcing a way through the crowd and turned up one of the side streets.

  The firemen let go of the arabeah’s horses and moved back to speak to its driver. He changed his mind and climbed back up into his seat and gave his horses a sharp cut of his whip. Startled, they plunged ahead and nearly into a huge porter singlehandedly carrying a piano across his shoulders. As he turned round, the end of the piano hit the arabeah. The passenger inside gave an anguished cry. The watchers at the end of the tables cheered.

  Eventually the arabeah managed to get away. The tables settled down, and the firemen returned to their positions on the pavement. It was the kind of event seen many times a day in the Ataba; one of the reasons, indeed, why the tables were always crowded.

  ‘There do seem a lot of fires these days,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘It’s the heat, said Owen. ‘Everything’s as dry as tinder.’

  The incident, though, had recalled something to his mind. He told Mahmoud about Yasmin.

  ‘I’ve got Garvin to agree,’ he said. ‘He’s prepared to drop proceedings if the Parquet is.’

  ‘I don’t think there will be any doubt about that,’ said Mahmoud drily. ‘Not if she’s being proceeded against for distributing material sympathetic to the Nationalist Party.’

  He said he would see to the formalities himself when he got back to his office. Then, seeing that Owen still looked doubtful, he said: ‘What’s the matter? There’ll be no problem. I’m sure they’ll agree to it.’

  ‘They may agree to it,’ said Owen. ‘But will she?’

  He told Mahmoud about his interview with Yasmin.

  ‘A foolish girl!’ said Mahmoud. ‘Her father should speak to her.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said Owen. ‘I think he’s tried.’

  He was in the middle of telling Mahmoud about Mohammed Sekhmet when the idea came to him. He broke off.

  ‘Do you think I could speak to Aisha?’ he said.

  Mahmoud, old friend of Owen’s though he was, was taken aback. One thing you did not do in Egypt was ask to speak to another man’s wife.

  ‘In your presence, of course,’ said Owen hastily. ‘You see, I think she could be just the person to help. The girl is still at school. At the Sanieh, in fact. Wasn’t that where Aisha was?’

  She had been. And not very long before, either. Mahmoud had married Aisha straight from school, only a few months ago.

  ‘The girl might listen to her,’ said Owen, ‘even if she won’t listen to anyone else.’

  ***

  As he was going home that evening he heard a loud burst of drunken singing. It came from the Wagh el Birket. He hesitated for a moment and then turned up the Sharia Bab el Bahri towards it. A group of drunken soldiers was standing in front of one of the houses. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were singing loudly. Owen could make out the words. Fortunately no one else could.

  The soldiers hitched themselves drunkenly together and staggered down the street towards him. Some of them were clutching beer bottles. One of them threw an empty bottle away and it broke into pieces against a wall.

  Owen had no intention of interfering. Whether he had authority to do so was questionable. The Mamur Zapt’s writ did not extend to the military. But whether he had authority or not, Owen wasn’t daft enough to get involved. He was dressed in mufti and they were unlikely to be inclined to listen to any civilian; or anyone in uniform, for that matter.

  They weaved out of sight. The Military Police would soon pick them up. Unless they were too busy with all the others.

  The soldiers were Australian and had ‘wounded’ stripes on. Not too wounded, presumably, although he was not going to be too disparaging. They had probably come from Gallipoli. Well, good luck to them.

  All the same, something was bothering him. He knew what it was. It was that such behaviour was very unusual in Cairo streets. Muslims didn’t get drunk. Well, that wasn’t completely true. Working men, in the city as in the village, liked a pot of marissa beer. Selim, the big constable at the Bab-el-Khalk, liked several. But they very rarely got drunk, and then only at parties or family celebrations, weddings, for instance. Most Muslims didn’t drink at all.

  It came home to him how such behaviour must appear to Egyptians: to the austere Mahmoud, for instance, or the strict Mohammed Sekhmet. And there were many like them. They were, in fact, in the majority. The Wagh el Birket was hardly typical of Cairo but even here people averted their eyes and walked past uncomfortably.

  Perhaps he had dismissed a little too easily the representations of the Mufti and the Sultan. In this at least they were probably speaking to their people.

  He went along the street to the house outside which the soldiers had been standing and from which they had probably emerged. And, yes, it was a liquor house.

  He went in. A man came up to him.

  ‘What would you like, Effendi!’

  ‘I’d like to speak to the manager.’

  ‘He is, alas, not here.’

  ‘Right. I’ll wait.’

  He soon appeared.

  ‘Are you the owner?’

  ‘Not I, Effendi.’

  The owner was someone else. He was Maltese. And tomorrow he would be Greek, and the day after, Italian. It was the old Egyptian story.

  But old stories can have a new twist, and Owen knew what this one was. It was the influx into Egypt of thousands of newcomers bringing with them different customs, different assumptions, differing values. Bringing with them, too, the money that could create suppliers to meet their needs. Places like this liquor house, for example. The Egyptians liked the money, but they didn’t like what it was doing to them.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Salt,’ said Owen’s orderly, preoccupied. ‘I’ve got to go out, Effendi. We’re still two rotls short.’

  ‘Salt?’ said Owen. ‘What do you want salt for?’

  ‘Ahmed is making up a load, Effendi, which his cousin is going to take up to the Canal and sell. They say you can make ten piastres a rotl there. We’ve already got twenty rotls, so that will be…What will it be, Effendi?’

  ‘Two hundred piastres. And twenty, if you get another two rotls. But, look, are you sure they want salt?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Effendi, everyone wants salt.’

  ‘You don’t think they’ll have some already?’

  ‘Oh, no, Effendi. There are so many men there. They’re bound to run short. And if they don’t want it, Ahmed’s cousin can always sell it to the Turks.’

  ***

  It seemed to Owen that everybody wa
s doing it. Go into the bazaars and the talk was all of the great rewards to be had from selling to the Army at the Canal. In the souk the stall holders calculated the benefit of the higher prices at the Canal and contemplated moving. In the orderly rooms of the Ministries others besides Owen’s orderly were discussing speculative ventures. And at the tables of the cafés in the Ataba el Khada young effendi from the Credit Lyonnais, the Banque Ottoman, and the other great commercial enterprises nearby gathered every evening to assess the ways in which a private piastre might be turned to their advantage.

  Nor was activity confined to the theoretical. Every morning lines of people taking things to the Canal straggled out of the city in the direction of the Ismailiya road, some on camels, some on donkeys, most on foot. The loads they bore were often bizarre, testifying more to the Egyptian experience of tourists and their eternal optimism than to perceptions of economic or military reality. There were columns of tarbooshes nodding gently from the backs of donkeys, brightly coloured balloons floating eerily above the backs of camels, men festooned with brushes and covered with leather belts and braces and whips; knick-knacks from the bazaars, oleographs straight from the railings in front of the hotels; ostrich feathers and birds in cages. It was as if all the street sellers of Cairo had suddenly decided to transfer themselves and their wares elsewhere. The effect was as of a carnival procession.

  Some of the traffic was less speculative. The Camel Market was now serving as a collection point for the camels and donkeys coming in from all over Egypt. So great were the numbers that the Bedawin had not been allowed to return to the west but were being used to bring the animals in. They despised the work but the money was good.

  From the Camel Market the animals were despatched to the front, travelling in great herds along the Ismailiya road. It was there that one morning Owen found someone he knew.

  ‘Hello, Effendi!’ said the donkey-barber.

  ‘Why, hello! You have taken your friends, then, at their word.’

  ‘If the mountain will not come to Anji, then Anji must go to the mountain,’ said the donkey-barber, grinning.

  ‘I would have thought there was still plenty of work for you in the Market,’ said Owen.