The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘You wouln’t think of that, would you? Fodder. Fodder for the camels. Indispensable. An army marches on its stomach, they say, and so do camels. Of course, they can go for a long time without food, everyone knows that. But they’ve got to eat some time. Well, that’s my job, to see there are proper supplies for them to eat.

  ‘And, you see, there was a bit of a problem here. We had set up arrangements, of course, but they were all for supplies to the Canal. That’s what the contracts were made out for. Well, now, suddenly, they had to be switched. I don’t mind telling you it was a nightmare.

  ‘Fortunately, one of our suppliers grasped the situation at once. She—’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Yes. I know it’s surprising, out here in Egypt especially. But one of our suppliers is a lady. And a very resourceful one, too. I must admit I had my reservations when she first approached me. But she impressed me, I have to say she impressed me. The discount she was offering—well, it was irresistible. So, against the advice of some of my colleagues, I must say, I went for her. And I haven’t regretted it.

  ‘When I told her about the need to switch supplies, she was on to it in a flash. She got in touch with her suppliers immediately and the next moment the loads were streaming the other way.

  ‘Not easy, I can tell you. At such short notice. Besides, she had to use donkeys. There weren’t any camels left, you see. The country’s been stripped bare of them. My doing, of course. They were needed at the front. I felt I had to apologise. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll see that the fodder gets through.”

  ‘And she did. Of course, we had to pay a bit extra for it, but that was only reasonable. There were other obstacles she had to surmount and she didn’t charge for those. She told me some of them. When her first caravan got to the other side, that was only the beginning of it. Where the hell was the Camel Corps? I mean, the desert’s a big place.

  ‘Well, as luck would have it, her people ran into someone who could help them. A donkey-barber, coming back from further west, Timbuktoo, perhaps, where he had been, to clip donkeys, I suppose. As it happened, he’d seen the Camel Corps riding out and knew roughly where their detachments had gone. So he was able to point the caravan in the right direction. Very helpful in other ways, too. He stopped with them until they deposited their loads and then came back with them. Clipping their donkeys on the way.’

  ***

  Georgiades was in a state of collapse. His cheeks hung down in great grey pouches, his eyes shifted wearily, sweat ran in streams down his face.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s got worse. She’s upped the ante. They wanted her to switch supplies, you see—the Camel Corps has moved over to the west, God know where, off the end of the world probably. And the contract was specifically with them, you see. I said: “This is your chance, Rosa. No one will blame you. The contract says, supply to the Canal. If they don’t want it there, that’s fine. Do a deal. Terminate the contract—they’ll be glad to. Seize the chance. Take whatever money you’ve got and run.”

  ‘But she hasn’t done that. In fact, she’s done just the opposite. Would you believe it, she’s increased the quantities. More fodder, tons more. The others couldn’t get their act changed in time and she stepped in.

  ‘“Rosa,” I said, “please! Think of our child. Think of our house!”

  ‘“We haven’t got a house,” she said. “All we’ve got is an apartment. But now I’ve increased the contract, I’ll be able to get a house.” She’s probably thinking of the Abdin Palace.

  ‘“The risk, Rosa, the risk!” I said. “Think of the risk!”

  ‘“I am thinking of the risk,” she said. “I’ve put the price up.”’

  ‘Has she actually lost any money yet?’ asked Owen.

  ‘No. In fact, she’s made some. She insisted on part-payment in advance for this latest lot. So she’s actually got quite a bit in hand. But it will go nowhere,’ concluded Georgiades gloomily, ‘when all this collapses about her ears.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what we can do about it.’

  ‘We can’t do anything about it,’ said Georgiades, sunk in despair. ‘We just have to wait for it to happen.’

  He looked round the foyer of the hotel, at all the crowded tables, each with its group of besuited men deep in conversation, heads bent forward confidingly.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ll almost be glad when it does. The sooner I can get away from anything to do with business, the better. What I want to do is get back on the streets. Please put me back on the streets! I want to feel the heat between my shoulders again, I want to smell the peanuts roasting round the Ezbehiyah, the garlic and stale fat and urine of the back streets, I want to see the flies sticking to the candy poles on the stalls, I want to taste the sand and grit in my mouth again. I want to be back.’

  ‘You can be back,’ said Owen. ‘They’re beginning to move the cotton. It’s left the estate and has got to the docks. The Customs men will see it go on board and then we will have him.’

  ‘All over?’

  ‘All over, and hardly worth the effort. All they’ll do is fine him. On this. However—

  ‘There’s one thing more, though, that I want you to do. When you’re saying your farewells to Iskander. Shake him warmly by the hand and thank him and say what a pleasure it’s been working with him. Say that unfortunately he won’t see you for a while because you’ve got to give all your time to something else. Something big, something so big that it’ll make all this—’ he waves his hand at the businessmen in the foyer— ‘look like peanuts. Tell him that there could be something in it for him if things work out as you hope, and that in a week or two he can expect a call.

  ‘And, meanwhile, there’s a small thing he could do for you. You’d appreciate it if he could pass on a message for you. To a gentleman he knows at Ossawa.’

  ***

  Lawrence was sitting alone in the bar. He looked up at Owen as he came in but without enthusiasm.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He didn’t offer to buy him a drink. This was less lack of sociability, Owen thought, than self-sufficiency. Lawrence always gave the impression of being sufficient to himself. He had few friends—Paul was the person who came closest—and made few efforts to acquire any.

  Owen didn’t buy him a drink, either.

  ‘Things quiet at the office?’ he said.

  ‘They’ll stay quiet now. The Turks have tried it on and failed. Now they’ll sit back. We’ll sit back, too, because no one on our side has thought what to do next. Sometimes you despair.’

  ‘What would you do next?’ asked Owen.

  Lawrence looked at him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. He was silent for a moment. Then he said:

  ‘You were right about the Senussi. Not that it’ll make much difference in the end. They’ll make a nuisance of themselves over in the West but they won’t come deep into Egypt. They’re desert people. Egypt is a hell of a place for desert people.’

  ‘There’s a lot of desert in Egypt,’ objected Owen. ‘It’s mostly one narrow fertile strip down the Nile.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s that fertile strip that makes the difference. In the desert there’s no fertile strip, and people have to live with that. It makes them different mentally.’

  ‘Bleak,’ said Owen.

  ‘You could say that. I don’t know that I would,’ he shrugged. ‘But it’s among the desert men that the next bit of the war out here is going to be fought. There’ll be a standstill on the Canal. The action will have to take place somewhere else.’

  ‘That’s what you would do next?’

  ‘If I had any say in it.’ He finished his glass and put it down. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking of going over there and taking a look.’

  Good luck, thought Owen. The Empty Quarter, or wherever Lawrence thought he was going, could stay empty as fa
r as he was concerned. Like Georgiades, Owen was a man of the city.

  ‘When are you going?’

  ‘A week or so.’

  ‘I wonder if you could do something for me before you go. Your people on the other side. At the Turkish headquarters.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d just like to know if a certain message comes through.’

  ‘What’s the message?’

  ‘That the next phase of the battle is likely to be a British invasion across the Red Sea.’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’

  ‘By boat. After all, that is something we have got.’

  ‘No one in their right senses has ever contemplated such a thing! Nor would they.’

  ‘I know,’ said Owen.

  ***

  One of the orderlies came along and said that a woman wished to see him. A few moments later she was shown in. She wore the usual dark heavy veil which concealed her head as well as her face, and the usual dark shapeless gown. Owen was surprised to see a woman unaccompanied but took her for a widow and greeted her as such. There was a giggle from behind the veil.

  ‘It’s me,’ said Yasmin.

  ‘What are you doing here? On your own?’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone to know, so I told my uncle that I wanted to collect some things from home. I shall collect them, only I wanted to call in here first.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Yasmin. ‘I wanted to see you.’

  ‘But—?’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Well, no. I’m just a bit surprised that’s all.’

  ‘I thought you’d like to see me.’

  ‘Well—’

  What was she up to? Surely she wasn’t flirting with him?

  ‘I like seeing you. You’re the only one who really talks to me.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice, but—’

  ‘I’d like to talk to you more often.’

  ‘I would like to talk to you, too, but—’

  ‘Would you?’ said Yasmin. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘You’re not just saying that?’

  ‘No. However,’ said Owen firmly, ‘I think we have to face the probability that we won’t be able to.’

  Yasmin seemed to acquiesce, although he couldn’t really tell, with her so inaccessible behind the heavy veil. She sat silent for a moment. Then she said suddenly:

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Married? Yes.’

  ‘To the Lady Zeinab?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They told me you were. She is the daughter of Nuri Pasha, isn’t she? I’m against the Pashas. I’m against all privilege.’

  ‘I don’t think Zeinab feels very privileged just at the moment. She’s working at the hospital.’

  ‘Nursing?’

  ‘Administration, more.’

  ‘I wish I could work,’ said Yasmin. ‘Work properly, I mean. At something real, something important. Something that would make a difference.’

  ‘You should continue with your studies.’

  ‘Perhaps. However, they’re not going to let me. I am going to get married.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘To a sixty-year-old farmer!’ said Yasmin bitterly. ‘Osman has already arranged it. And after that there will be no more talk, no more books, no more learning. There will be work, all right, though. In the fields and in the kitchen. For ever and ever and ever.’

  ‘Yasmin, I do not think such a life would be right for you.’

  ‘Nor do I. But what can I do about it? It’s all gone wrong, wrong!’

  ‘I’ll speak to your father again.’

  ‘He won’t listen to you. You’re on the wrong side. There are so many wrong sides in Egypt and you’re on practically all of them.’

  She was silent again.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve told me all this,’ said Owen. ‘But it wasn’t what you came to see me about, was it?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Sabri was like an uncle to me,’ said Yasmin, ‘but Sabri’s wife was like a mother. I do not remember him from the time I first went to the house. I was too small. I remember him only from the times I used to visit there when I occasionally came back to the village. And then he was like an uncle. He spoke to me courteously and with respect; but we were not close.

  ‘With Fatima it was different. I had taken her milk and looked to her as to a mother. It was as my mother that I always went to see her whenever I returned to the village.

  ‘But as I grew older I became more aware of Sabri. At first he was just a man across the room in the darkness and I paid him no attention. But gradually I began to listen to him. I could not help it because he was always talking. And Fatima talked with him. This surprised me because no one talked in my own house, nor in Osman’s house, nor in any of the other houses I knew. I daresay the men talked when they were with other men, but that was always outside the house. What surprised me was that Sabri and Fatima talked as equals; and also what they talked about.

  ‘They talked about the world. Everyone else I knew talked only about things that were near, about the village, about the harvest. But Sabri and Fatima talked about what was right and what was wrong.

  ‘At first I did not understand much of it. But then I began to realise that often he was talking about the Pasha. Now Osman, too, often talked about the Pasha but in his house, my mother’s house, the Pasha’s word was law. It was: “He will want this” and “He had said that.” And there was no questioning. Whereas in Sabri’s house there was always questioning. And much criticism of the Pasha.

  ‘And so I gradually began to learn about ideas and how they have an existence of their own apart from things. In time I met other people, especially through the school, and learned from them, and eventually I began to find a path on my own. But I knew that I owed it to Sabri. To Fatima also, but chiefly to Sabri.

  ‘And then one day I heard that he was dead. The next time I was in the village I went to see Fatima, but now I found her different. She was bitter against Osman and against the Pasha. There had always been bad feeling between Sabri and Osman, going back to the time when Sabri announced that in future he was going to ride with the Bedawin. Osman said: “The village is your place, and the Pasha your master.” But Sabri said: “The Pasha is not my master. The time of the Pashas has gone.”

  ‘I used to hear both sides. In my uncle’s house I heard his side, in Fatima’s, Sabri’s. And I suppose I increasingly inclined to Sabri’s side because that fitted in with what I was hearing and reading elsewhere. But it was all…unreal to me. It was something only that I heard about and read about.

  ‘But then Sabri died and I felt Fatima’s bitterness and I knew that was real. At first I could not understand it. “Why are you so bitter against my uncle?” I demanded. But she would not tell me, she said these things were not for me. And then I was angry, and I thought she was blaming my uncle without cause.

  ‘But then one day I heard my uncle speaking to a cousin who was steward at another of the Pasha’s estates, the main one where the Pasha himself lived, at Ossawa. They were talking about Sabri’s death. And my uncle said: “It was necessary.”

  ‘How could it be necessary, I asked myself? Necessary? And I waylaid the cousin afterwards and said: “What does this mean? Why did Sabri have to die?” And he would not answer, and said it was none of my business. And I pressed him and at last he said that those who served the Pasha had to serve him for good or ill. And he would say no more.

  ‘I went away by myself and thought about what he had said. I talked to others in the house. They told me that just before he died Sabri had been to see Osman. You know that already, and that it was about Salah. But as I went on thinking, it seem
ed to me that it could not have been just about Salah that they spoke, that Sabri must have said something else, something that troubled Osman greatly. For he at once sent a message to the Pasha at Ossawa, which he surely would not have done had it just been about Salah.’

  ‘You have reasoned admirably,’ said Owen, ‘as I would have expected. Did you reason further?’

  ‘Yes. I asked myself what the message could have been.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Sabri was your man. He told Osman he was going to see you. He had just come back from the West. I think he brought news of the Senussi. Which Osman knew the Pasha would not want you to hear.’

  ***

  ‘And so you decided to come to me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ said Owen surprised.

  ‘No. Not at first. At least, it wasn’t like that. At first I was very confused. Osman is my uncle, I have known him since I was a child. I could not believe that—that he had done a thing like this. I kept going over it in my mind, going through my reasoning again and again. It is just thought, I said to myself. It is not real. And I tried to put it away, but it would not go away.

  ‘I wanted to talk to someone but there was no one I could talk to. My mother? But I have not talked to her for ages and she would not understand. My father? My father is greatly stricken lately, he is not the man he was—perhaps it is I who have stricken him—and he would find it hard. Fatima? She is the one I would normally go to, but she is just the one I couldn’t go to on this. And then I thought of you. You seemed to understand me. At least you listened to me.

  ‘But then I thought, he is British, he is an enemy! I cannot go to him! Osman, even if he has done wrong, is on our side.

  ‘And then another, horrible, thought struck me. Perhaps he did this because he is on our side. Am I now to go to the British and tell them?

  ‘But then I thought of Sabri, and it felt as if my heart was tearing itself apart. How could I think of sides when it was Sabri? What side was Sabri on? He was on your side and against the Pasha, yes but he was not really on your side, he was on his own side, or, perhaps, Egypt’s side against the both of you. And I felt as if it was not just my heart that was being pulled apart but also my mind. I had to have someone to talk to; so again I thought of you.