The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘She had—admired him ever since she had read a report in the newspaper about a speech he had made at a Nationalist meeting. In it he had said everything that she believed in. She had cut the report out and hung it in her copy of the Koran—’

  ‘Well, this is wrong,’ said Mahmoud fiercely. ‘This is wrong, too. She should not have kept it in the Koran. The Koran is a Holy Book. My words are secular, profane. It is wrong to put them together.’

  ‘—and has returned to it ever since,’ continued Aisha. ‘She has followed his career and read everything about him that she could. Even the Law Reports. And then when she heard he was to marry me—well, first her heart was broken, but then she was in ecstasy, for she thought it might be a chance of meeting him. She cultivated my acquaintance—I’m sorry to say I missed this—but it was difficult because I was senior to her. She thought she would never get anywhere. And then this opportunity came along.’

  ‘Opportunity!’ said Mahmoud. ‘It is—is brazen!’

  ‘All she wanted to do,’ said Aisha, ‘was tell you how much she loved you.’

  ‘That is what I object to,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It is quite improper.’

  ‘She didn’t want anything more. She just wanted you to know that she loved you. She didn’t expect anything in return, she knew you were already married and would be true to me—’

  ‘Aisha, I do not think we need to continue with this. She is a very foolish girl.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think you should have said so. Nor quite like that.’

  ‘You should not be defending her, Aisha. She has behaved quite improperly. Immodestly. And you, of all people, my wife—’

  ‘Aisha is being generous,’ said Owen hurriedly, ‘to a very young girl—’

  ‘Her father should reprove her. This is no way for a young woman to behave.’

  Mahmoud, puritanical even by Muslim standards, naturally shy with women, and, despite his zeal for modernising and reform, deeply traditional, was very shocked. It took Owen some time to calm him down. Aisha, meanwhile, remained silent.

  ***

  Once Cavendish had declared the meeting closed, everyone made for the steps leading out into the garden. It had been a long session and by the time it had ended, the heat in the room had risen to intolerable levels. The fans were merely blowing it round and round the room and eventually they had decided to switch them off. After that they had just sweated and sweltered. From time to time fresh jugs of iced water had been brought but moisture dripped out of their bodies faster than it was poured in. Sweat dripped on to the papers and made them sodden. It discoloured the smart tunics of the officers and wetted the chairs behind the knees. It prickled the eyes and made everybody irritable. So when Cavendish at last signalled ‘Time’ they all thankfully left their papers and headed for air.

  It was midday by this time and the heat lay heavily in the garden. Through the trees the Nile sparkled blindingly in the sun but beneath their branches it was cool and peaceful. The bustle of the city seemed far away, its hubbub reduced to a background hum, against which it was just possible to make out the bells of the electric trains and, now, the more insistent clanging of a fire engine going north.

  Suffragis, anticipating the general preference, brought out trays of whisky-sodas stiff with ice.

  ‘Jesus!’ said one of the officers, fanning himself. ‘Another hour of that would have done me!’

  ‘I’m off to the Canal this afternoon,’ said another of the officers. ‘What the hell will it be like there?’

  ‘Hotter in the desert,’ said Lawrence.

  It was an innocuous remark but after the ordeal of the committee room it jarred. It had somehow the air of a put-down: as Lawrence’s remarks often did.

  ‘Very probably,’ said Owen. ‘And that’s why I’m glad I’m not going there.’

  ‘Not even your desert?’ said Lawrence maliciously. ‘To look for Senussi? If there are any.’

  It drew a laugh from two of the officers.

  Owen was irritated.

  ‘They are there,’ he said. ‘The question is what they’re doing there. And how many of them there are.’

  ‘Well, tell us when you find out,’ said the senior officer.

  They all laughed. Owen turned away.

  He fell into conversation with Beevor, the other archaeologist, or ex-archaeologist as Owen supposed he was now. He was older than Lawrence and less bumptious and Owen could get along with him better.

  Beevor glanced at his watch.

  ‘I must get back,’ he said. ‘I don’t like being out of the office now, with the attack so imminent.’

  It had hung over them all morning, a constant background assumption, colouring anything they talked about or did. It was affecting them all, making them all jumpy.

  Lawrence came up again. He couldn’t seem to leave Owen alone. Maybe that was his form of the general edginess.

  ‘Any progress,’ he asked, ‘with your spy?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘There needs to be. I’ve just heard about another leakage.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Cavendish, joining them.

  ‘I was just telling Owen. There’s a real problem with his security arrangements. My informants on the other side have just told me of another leakage.’

  ‘Place leaks like a sieve,’ said one of the officers.

  ‘You’re going to have to pick up some of these spy Johnnies, Owen,’ said the senior officer.

  They seemed to be all on to him this morning. Suddenly he thought that this was how it must have been for Zeinab. Perhaps it was that thought, or maybe it was just the heat and the general tension, that made him snap back.

  ‘Are you sure that’s the problem?’ he said belligerently.

  ‘I don’t quite—?’

  ‘The spy Johnnies. Are you sure that’s where the information is coming from?’

  ‘Well, where the hell else is it coming from?’

  ‘There was a meeting the other evening. Pashas, mostly. I had an informant there.’ Lawrence wasn’t the only one who could have informants. ‘They spent the whole evening talking about group dispositions. Turkish, largely, but British too. Very knowledgeably.’

  ‘Well, doesn’t that just prove—?’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ He turned to Lawrence. ‘You’ve been getting information in, right? And, no doubt, making reports. Who sees the reports?’

  ‘I bloody do,’ said the senior officer.

  ‘And—’

  ‘Well, H.Q., of course—’

  ‘Look, Owen, if you’re suggesting—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Owen!’

  ‘We’ve got security arrangements,’ said the senior officer. ‘Even if you haven’t!’

  ‘Hold on a moment!’ said Cavendish. He turned to Lawrence. ‘The information that’s been getting across is top level, as I understand it?’

  Lawrence nodded.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  ‘The sort of information that would be at Headquarters?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lawrence. ‘But that only means that there must be a spy—’

  ‘Does it?’ said Owen. ‘Who else is on the circulation list? Apart from H.Q., I mean?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘The Sultan’s office?’

  ‘Got to keep him informed,’ said the senior officer. ‘Damn it, it’s his country.’

  ‘I think I see what Owen is getting at,’ said Cavendish.

  It might even be true, thought Owen.

  ***

  As he and Paul were leaving, one of the officers fell in beside them.

  ‘Damned disturbing, Owen!’

  ‘Place leaks like a sieve!’ snapped Owen.

  ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. Well, yes, it does. Probably. Got to see to it. But, no, that was
n’t what I meant. It’s these damned Pashas. Damned security risk. What I was wondering was, can’t you just lock them up?’

  ‘No,’ said Paul. ‘They rule the country.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But that’s in theory—’

  ‘To lock them up would be foolish,’ said Paul. ‘It would set the whole country against us. They may not love the pashas but they wouldn’t take kindly to us locking them up. No,’ said Paul, ‘we’ve got to do it a different way.’

  ***

  ‘Paul,’ said Owen, after the officer had left them, ‘what would that different way be?’

  ‘Well, you know. Keep them on our side. By massaging them in the right way.’

  Owen was silent for a moment. Then he said:

  ‘Paul, Zeinab was at a party this week.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘It seemed to have been laid on for Faruq’s benefit.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Yes. With Zeinab as the main attraction. Prize, you might say.’

  ‘Really?’ said Paul cautiously.

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure I like it.’

  ‘Zeinab can look after herself.’

  ‘Up to a point.’

  ‘You’ll just have to see it doesn’t go beyond that point.’

  ‘Paul, this is Zeinab. My wife.’

  Paul was silent. Then he said:

  ‘It needn’t actually come to anything. But as long as he thinks it could come to something, he’ll stay here. And this is where we want him: in Cairo and not in some place where others might get to him.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s my wife.’

  ‘All she’s got to do is keep him dangling. And any woman in Cairo can keep a man like Faruq dangling.’

  ‘Why don’t you get some other woman to do it, then?’

  ‘Because he’s taken a fancy to Zeinab. And not to someone else. Look, I know she’s your wife. If I thought any harm would come to her, I wouldn’t contemplate this for a moment. But it’s the way things have turned out, and from my point of view they’ve turned out fortunately. Zeinab is a mature woman and she’ll be able to see that it doesn’t come to anything. And meanwhile Faruq stays here. Where we can keep an eye on him. Otherwise he’d be off to the Riviera.’

  ‘I’m just telling you that I don’t like it.’

  ‘Look, all she’s got to do is carry on what she’s doing.’

  ‘She’s not doing anything.’

  ‘That’s fine, then.’

  ‘It’s just that he keeps coming.’

  ‘Tell her to keep fending him off, but not too irrevocably.’

  ‘I’m not telling her that!’

  ‘Just keep on doing as she is doing.’

  ‘Paul, he’s next in line to the throne. Do you know what he said? He said: “I’m asking now; later I’ll tell.”’

  ‘He’ll tell nobody. We’re the ones who do the telling. And later he’ll have moved on to someone else, anyway. He doesn’t stay with a woman for long.’

  ‘Yes, but meanwhile—’

  ***

  He was a bent old man in a white, short-skirted galabeah, with the skirts tucked up to reveal thin, bird-like legs burnt black by the sun. He fingered the cotton carefully, almost lovingly, pulling the individual hairs out of the ball and smoothing each one gently between forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Afifi,’ he said.

  ‘Afifi? What’s that?’

  ‘It’s the kind of cotton,’ said Nikos. ‘There are three main kinds in Egypt. Afifi is one. The others are “Jannovitch” and “Abassi,” running from brown to white.’

  ‘Brown. Okay, so this is afifi. Does that help?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Georgiades. He’d brought the sample in that morning. ‘It’s all afifi from here to the Delta.’

  ‘But it’s not all the same,’ said Nikos. ‘It varies in stiffness and smoothness—the silkiness of the feel—and also in length of thread and in the twist of the spiral. And in about a dozen other things. To a man like Zaghlul, here, the differences stand out a mile.’

  ‘Can he tell where it comes from?’

  ‘That,’ said Nikos, ‘is the question.’

  Zaghlul took up another ball and broke it open. This time he sniffed it and tasted it. He took one of the lint hairs and stretched it, testing it for tension.

  He did this with several others of the balls Georgiades had brought. Then he laid several of the hairs in a line on Nikos’ desk and stood looking down at them, nodding thoughtfully.

  ‘Well?’

  The old man picked up one of the threads, then laid it down again.

  ‘Not Delta,’ he said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Definitely not Delta,’ he said. ‘With the Delta, you can taste the dampness. And smell the sea.’

  He picked up another thread, and then a group of them, held them together and sniffed.

  ‘Drier,’ he said. ‘You smell earth.’

  He sniffed again, then looked at some of the unopened balls and then touched them delicately.

  ‘But what earth?’ he said to himself, frowning.

  He went back to the sample Georgiades had brought, bundled it all together and then raised it to his face, pushing his face into it, looking, smelling, tasting, feeling, but now all together.

  His face cleared.

  ‘There are three estates,’ he said. ‘They lie along the river. One belongs to the Pasha Selim Rokani, the other to the Pasha Ismail, the last to the Pasha Abd es Salah Maher. It comes from one of them.’

  ‘If we brought you a sample from each,’ said Owen, ‘could you match it with this?’

  ‘The fields lie next to each other. The pollen drifts across, so it would be hard. But bring me not one sample from each but four samples, from different parts of the estates, and then perhaps I can tell you.’

  ‘Let it be so,’ said Owen. ‘And tell your clients,’ he said to Georgiades, ‘that you can proceed.’

  ‘That you are ready to proceed,’ amended Nikos. ‘That gives us time to make suitable arrangements.’

  ***

  Mrs Sekhmet, forgetting all propriety, spoke first.

  ‘Effendi,’ she pleaded, ‘set not your face against her!’

  ‘Effendi,’ said Mohammed Sekhmet, ‘if you were now to wash your hands of her I would understand. Nevertheless—’

  ‘She is young,’ broke in Madame Sekhmet, ‘and foolish—’

  ‘What has she done now?’ said Owen resignedly.

  ‘Nothing!’ cried Madam Sekhmet. ‘Yet they have arrested her!’

  ‘She has done something,’ said Mohammed Sekhmet. He sounded defeated. ‘But now she must abide by the consequences.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the Bab-el-Khalk. One told us and we came running, but she had already been delivered.’

  ‘And so, in our distress, we turn to you!’

  ‘Again!’ Mohammed Sekhmet shook his head. ‘Wife, this cannot go on!’

  Owen sent to the door and told Nikos to have the girl brought.

  ‘Do you want the policemen, too?’ asked Nikos, getting up from his desk.

  ‘Might as well. Then we can hear both sides.’

  There was, however, only one side. Yasmin denied nothing. She accepted that she had chained herself to the Abdin Palace railings.

  ‘Like the British women?’ said Owen, remembering the end of their previous encounter.

  ‘We can learn from our enemies,’ said Yasmin.

  Mohammed Sekhmet groaned.

  ‘Why did you chain yourself to the railings?’

  ‘To protest.’

  ‘I’m sure of that. But over what particularly?’

  ‘Conscription,’ said Yasmin. ‘Conscripting Egyptian men to fight in the British Army.’
/>   ‘They’re not exactly going to fight. It’s into the Labour Corps.’

  ‘It’s as good as fighting. They’re going to dig trenches which will be used against their brothers.’

  ‘Yasmin, you know nothing of this. Be silent!’ ordered her mother.

  ‘How can I be silent?’ demanded Yasmin. ‘When I see injustice being done?’

  ‘Injustice is always being done,’ said Madame Sekhmet, ‘and it is not for us to try and alter it.’

  ‘That is not so, Mother,’ said Yasmin defiantly. ‘And it is not,’ with a touch of glee, ‘what my father has taught me!’

  ‘I?’ cried Mohammed Sekhmet.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Yasmin. ‘Have you not always told me that I must stand up for what is right?’

  ‘Yes, but not like this!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Owen hurriedly. ‘Now let’s get straight what actually happened.’

  He looked at the police officers. They were the same two as before.

  ‘Well, Effendi, it was like this. Abou and I were just walking across Abdin Square, and had stepped aside—yes, Abou?’

  ‘It was very hot.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Abou. And we stepped aside for a moment to talk to the men at the Palace Gate. And one of the guards came up and said. “That bloody girl is back.” And I said: “Oh, ho, she’s up to her tricks again, is she?” And he said: “No chance of anything like that, mate; she’s chained herself to the bloody railings.” So Abou and I went along to see.

  ‘And I said: “You can’t do that sort of thing here.” And she said, “Why not?” And I said, of course she couldn’t do that here, it stood to reason she couldn’t.’

  ‘Breaking the law.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Abou. I told her she was breaking the law. “What law?” she said. Well, Effendi, at the time I couldn’t for the life of me think which law. So I said: “Never mind that. You’d better come along with me.” And she said: “Certainly, officer.” And I said: “All right, come along, then.” And she said: “I can’t.” And I said: “Why the hell not?” And she said: “Because I’m chained to the railings, you dumb oaf.”’

  ‘Yasmin!’

  ‘And I said: “Right, I’ve got it now. I’m charging you with being abusive to an officer of the law in pursuit of his duties.” “Okay,” she said. “Fine.” “Where’s the key?” I said. “Here,” she said, and showed it me. Before dropping it down the front of her burka.’