The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘There is, but there won’t be for long. Soon all the donkeys in Egypt will be at the Canal.’

  ‘Well, I hope you make your fortune.’

  ‘That will be the day!’ said the donkey-barber.

  They walked along a little together.

  ‘Are you still searching for Sabri’s killer, Effendi?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And have you found him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Perhaps you are not searching in the right place.’

  ‘Is not the Camel Market the right place?’

  ‘It is where he died, certainly.’

  ‘Then—?’

  ‘Sabri was a little man, Effendi. And it was probably a little man that killed him. But these days, although it is the little men who die, it is the big men that appoint their deaths. In the Camel Market as on the Canal.’

  ***

  In the old days before the war, work in the big Government offices would stop for the day at two. It would start early, often at seven, but finish before the heat became too intolerable. These days, however, with the pressure of the war, people often worked through till five or six. This was what Owen normally did, but this afternoon a couple of meetings had been cancelled and he was finding it hard to work in his office because of the heat and he went home.

  He found Zeinab lying listlessly on the bed.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ she said, standing up.

  They took their lunch up on to the roof where it was cooler. A previous owner had created a little garden there. Trellis work covered with runner beans and pots with shrubs provided some shade and there was just enough breeze coming across the roofs to make it pleasant.

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  Zeinab shrugged.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not been out?’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  This was not like Zeinab. In the old days she would have been out doing the rounds of the galleries and dropping in on people she knew.

  Or so Owen imagined. He suddenly realised that he didn’t know how Zeinab had spent her mornings before they had got married. He had gone off to work and had taken for granted that she would be doing something of her own.

  ‘Nothing on in the galleries?’

  ‘Not since the war.’

  ‘What are they all doing?’

  Zeinab had a lot of artist friends. They had to be mildly Bohemian, and either disreputable or relaxed about proprieties, depending on how you looked at it, to allow an independent woman to mix with them.

  ‘Ah!’ said Zeinab.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Zeinab shrugged again.

  ‘Well, they’re not getting commissions. They’re finding it hard to get work to do. And so, well, some of them have gone back to their villages, some have gone abroad, to Damascus or Smyrna, in the hope of finding jobs—’

  ‘Isn’t that difficult? With the Turks there?’

  ‘The Turks don’t bother them. Anyway, it’s all one big area, the Levant. Not exactly a continuation of Egypt, or of Turkey, for that matter, but a sort of common area where frontiers don’t matter.’

  ‘And so that’s where they’ve gone?’

  ‘That’s right. The war’s an irrelevance from their point of view. A nuisance wished on them by others.’

  ‘Hum. And so they’ve all gone, and there’s no one for you to talk to. What about Samira?’

  ‘You’re forgetting. Samira doesn’t talk to me these days.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  Zeinab shrugged once more.

  ‘I can get by,’ she said.

  ‘Staying at home? Isn’t that—’ he tried to remember the expression she had used—‘just another cupboard?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, look, I don’t want you to be shut up. If your own circles have pushed you away, that doesn’t have to be an end to it. Why don’t I introduce you to—’

  ‘A few Mrs Cunninghams? Thanks.’

  ‘They’re not all like her.’

  ‘I know what they’re like. And I think they’re as much in cupboards as I am. I don’t want to spend my time playing bridge. Or going down to the Club. Or taking tea.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what it is. They’re appendages. That’s all they are. They’re appendages to their husbands. And that’s not very different from what Egyptian women are. All right, you’re allowed to see English women, they’re not shut away in some back room. But they don’t have a life apart from their husbands. Sorry, I didn’t quite mean it like that, I meant there ought to be them and their husbands, not just their husbands with them somehow hanging on.’

  ‘Yes, well, I see that.’

  ‘Do you know what I think it is? I think that it’s work. You’re all right, you’ve got a job. If somebody wants something, something to do with work, that is, they’ve got to go to you. They’ve got to admit you’re there. But if you’re a woman, they don’t have to recognise your existence, they can look right past you.’

  ‘Listen, why don’t I have a word with Cairns-Grant? I’m sure he could find a—’

  ‘I want work,’ said Zeinab. ‘But I don’t want it to be a British gift. That’s not right. It’s got to be Egyptian.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Yes, I know. There aren’t any jobs for Egyptian women. So I’m going to do something else. I’m going to go to the university.’

  These were women students at the new university. A few. They had to attend separate classes from the men—you couldn’t have men and women together, that would be improper—and the range of subjects they could do was limited.

  ‘What would you study?’

  ‘That’s a problem,’ Zeinab admitted. ‘There’s only ethics and psychology. And some lectures on hygiene and infant care. But I don’t want to know about infant care. That’s preparing me for motherhood, and that’s a kind of cupboard too. That leaves ethics and psychology. I think I’ll go for ethics.’

  ‘You won’t be able to start immediately. You’ll have to wait for the new academic year.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll fix that,’ said Zeinab, with a flash of her old confidence.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be studying ethics?’

  ***

  ‘All proceeding to plan,’ said Cavendish.

  It was the Intelligence Committee again and they were back where they had left off at their previous meeting: on the construction of dummy bases.

  ‘Well, is it?’ said Lawrence. ‘I went there and I couldn’t see anything.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ said one of the Army officers. ‘Not if they’re imaginary.’

  ‘They can’t be completely imaginary. Or else the Turks will see there’s nothing there.’

  ‘I thought we were supposed to be building false roads and things?’ said Paul.

  ‘Well, we are. But it takes time.’

  ‘If it takes too much time, it’ll be too late,’ said Lawrence.

  ‘The trouble is, we haven’t got the labour.’

  ‘Of course we’ve got the labour! We’ve got half the bloody Army there, haven’t we?’

  ‘Ah, yes, but they’re all busy building the real bases.’

  There was a little silence.

  ‘What about using civilians?’ said one of the officers.

  ‘There’s the whole Egyptian population in theory,’ said another.

  ‘Yes, but—’ began Owen.

  ‘They haven’t exactly rushed forward,’ said Cavendish.

  ‘Is it a question of wages?’ asked one of the officers.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Owen. ‘The fact is, there’s a deep-rooted reluctance among the fellahi
n to volunteer for anything. It goes back to the time when they were volunteered by the Pashas into working for part of each year on the dams and canals.’

  ‘Well, that’s a poor show,’ said the senior Army representative. ‘Have they no sense of public spirit?’

  ‘I think they would prefer to be working on their own land.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s a war on!’

  ‘I don’t think they see it as their war,’ said Paul.

  ‘Well, we’ve got to do something. We can’t divert soldiers. This is essentially a construction job and we ought to use civilians.’

  ‘They should be good at digging, shouldn’t they?’ said another of the officers. ‘I mean, if they’ve worked on the land!’

  ‘And on the canals,’ supported another officer.

  ‘They could dig trenches as well,’ offered a third.

  ‘Damned useful!’ said the senior officer.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Cavendish, ‘but, just at the moment, they don’t seem very interested.’

  ‘If they won’t volunteer of their own accord…’ began another officer.

  ‘…perhaps someone could do it for them…?’ finished a third.

  ‘Are we talking about forced labour?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that—’

  ‘But, yes, we are!’ said Owen. ‘And I don’t like it. I don’t think it will work. There’s a long tradition of resistance to forced labour in Egypt, going back to the days of the corvée system which existed before the British arrival in the country, and which they abolished as soon as they did. Are you saying we should go back to that?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘This is war time—’

  ‘They would be damned useful—’

  ‘Digging trenches.’

  ‘We could expand the auxiliary Labour corps.’

  There was already an Egyptian Labour Corps serving in the Dardenelles.

  ‘They’re doing damned well!’ said the senior officer.

  ‘Yes, but they’re all volunteers,’ said Owen. ‘Genuine volunteers.’

  ‘These would be,’ said one of the officers. ‘Once they got used to it.’

  ‘It’s going to cause trouble,’ warned Owen.

  He could see, however, that the feeling of the meeting was against him.

  ***

  The big constable caught him as he was about to go up the steps at the Bab-el-Khalk.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘I seek your counsel.’

  Owen stopped.

  ‘Glad to help, Selim, if I can.’

  ‘I am thinking of selling my wife, Effendi.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Selim, that is quite a step—’

  ‘Not really, Effendi, I’ve got two more.’

  ‘Yes, well—’

  ‘You see, Effendi, I need the money.’

  ‘Perhaps if you talk to Bimbashi McPhee he will give you an advance on your pay—’

  ‘No, no, Effendi, I need more than that. And, besides, he’s already given me an advance this month.’

  ‘What exactly do you need the money for, Selim?’

  ‘To make my fortune.’

  ‘Yes, well—’

  ‘No, no, Effendi, this is a good one. Everyone’s doing it.’

  ‘Look, Selim, if I were you—’

  ‘No, no, Effendi, not this time. This is certain gain. What you do is buy something that’s in short supply at the Canal. Then you take it over there and sell it at—oh, Effendi, the prices they say you can get at these new camps! You can’t lose, Effendi, believe me!’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard that before.’

  ‘No, really, it’s just a case of hitting on the right things. Now, Effendi, this is what I wanted to ask you. You know these Australians: what would be the right thing for them? I thought beer. Or perhaps hashish.’

  ‘Go for beer. The Australians have not yet learned the delights of hashish. But—’

  ‘Of course, I could always offer them my wife,’ said Selim meditatively.

  ***

  Mahmoud had invited Owen round to his house that evening ‘for drinks.’ As an afterthought he also invited Zeinab. It wasn’t his first thought because normally in Egypt when you invited a man out, he left his wife behind him. Mahmoud, however, viewed such a practice—and many other practices in Egypt—as not progressive, and Mahmoud was above all progressive. When he looked about him he could see many things in Egypt that he believed to be wrong and he put this down to the country’s being locked into the past: locked by the Khedive and the pashas, but also by the British. He was, therefore, as a good Nationalist, committed to getting rid of both. However, he also wanted, passionately, Egypt to move forward and take an equal place with other, more developed, nations. He recognised that these did some things better than Egypt did; and perhaps—just perhaps—the way they regarded women was one of them. On consideration, then, he decided to invite Zeinab too.

  The more he thought about this, the more he liked it. It would neatly solve the problem—he still, despite himself, felt it to be a problem—of allowing Owen to talk to his wife. By shifting the whole thing to the plane of the modern, where it was permissible for men to talk to other men’s wives, he could smooth over all awkwardness. Not only that, it would help Aisha. Mahmoud was anxious that his wife be modern, too. Although not too modern.

  The house was an old, dilapidated one just off the Sharia-el-Nahhasin and for years, ever since his father’s death, Mahmoud had lived in it alone with his mother. Now, as was the custom—in Egypt, after marriage, the wife moved to the mother-in-law—Aisha had moved in and already the house felt different.

  It was only a few weeks since Owen had been there and already he could see changes. The main reception room, on the first floor, had been spruced up. There was a new, brighter carpet on the wall. A particularly worn divan—the whole house had always seemed rather worn, running down as Mahmoud’s mother had grown older—had been replaced by a new one. There were new leather cushions on the floor. There were bowls of sweet pea flowers everywhere. The house seemed to have come to life.

  Aisha had changed, too, even in the few weeks since he had last seen her. She had grown plumper, rounder. Well, perhaps that was not surprising: girls did change a lot at that age. Or could that plumpness possibly be—? Surely not. He could sense Zeinab taking it in and felt uneasy.

  Aisha had changed in other respects as well, coming forward confidently to greet them, unveiled, her hands outstretched. She knew Owen quite well, of course, or, at least, more than she knew any other man apart from her father and her husband. Even so, when he remembered how shy she had been only a short time ago, at the time of their marriage—

  She sat down on one of the divans, Zeinab beside her, and Owen sat a proper distance away, on another. Mahmoud, a modern man this evening, fetched drinks. Lemon juice. A strict Muslim, he meant something different by drinks than what Owen did.

  ‘Yasmin?’ said Aisha. ‘Yes, I remember her. She was in the year below me. She was always in trouble.’

  ‘Well, she’s in trouble again.’

  He told her what had happened.

  ‘The thing is, she’s got caught up in the system. Quite unnecessarily. They ought not to have made so much of it. But with all this business about spies—’

  ‘Spies?’ said Mahmoud. ‘A school girl?’

  ‘Yes, I know. But, you see, now that she’s in the system, unless we can do something, she’ll never get out. It seems ridiculous, but that’s the way—’

  ‘Well, of course, if I can help,’ said Aisha, ‘I’d be glad to. But what is it you want me to do?’

  ‘Have a word with her. You see, she won’t listen to me. Or her father. Or the headmistress. Anyone in authority. But I thought that perhaps she might listen to you.’

  ‘
I doubt it,’ said Aisha. ‘Unless she has changed greatly. Well, I’m willing to talk to her. Or, at least, I might be. But what is it you want me to talk to her about?’

  ‘Well, some sensible advice—’

  ‘I’m not sure that she wants to listen to sensible advice. And what seems sensible to you may not seem so to her.’

  ‘Well, that’s the problem—’

  ‘Or me, either,’ said Aisha, ‘if by that you mean trying to persuade her to give up political action which to me, frankly, seems quite legitimate.’

  ‘I don’t know that I do mean that. Just political action that is likely to get her into trouble.’

  ‘What was she doing, exactly? Distributing political leaflets? Well, we’ve all done that.’

  ‘Aisha!’ said Mahmoud, shocked.

  ‘Well, we have. When I was in the seniors we were passing them round all the time. I used to daub slogans on the walls.’

  ‘Look, it’s because you daubed slogans on the walls that I thought she might listen to you,’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes, but what is it exactly that you want me to tell her?’

  ‘Not to make a martyr of herself. She is determined that it should go to court. Then everyone will see, she says, the oppressiveness of the system.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘That is foolishness,’ said Mahmoud. ‘She is too young. A child. She does not realise the damage she will do to herself. It will affect her chances for life. For marriage, a career, if that’s what she wants, and it sounds as if she might. She is too young. Let her leave politics until she is older.’

  ‘Well—’ said Aisha.

  ‘I was thinking of her family as well as her,’ said Owen. ‘Her father came to see me.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d tell her that,’ said Aisha.

  ‘But why not?’ said Mahmoud, turning to her. ‘Surely she must recognise the duty she owes to her father?’

  ‘Well—’ said Aisha. ‘What do you think?’ she said to Zeinab.

  Zeinab took time to consider. She wasn’t quite sure what she thought. Her own upbringing had been so different from that of Yasmin, or Aisha, for that matter. In the larger household of a Pasha, fathers were remote figures and the question of the duty you owed them was invested with less intensity. And, besides, Nuri had not been exactly an ordinary pasha. He was an enthusiastic Francophile and when Zeinab’s mother had died, he had brought his daughter up as much in French style as in Egyptian. He, too, in his way, was a moderniser.