The Point in the Market

by Michael Pearce

  ‘I made up my mind, however, that although I would go to you, I would not tell you, not at once. I would talk to you first and then if it seemed that I could tell you, then perhaps I would. So I did not come to tell you, I came—I came to find out.’

  ‘To find out?’

  ‘I thought perhaps that you felt for me. A little. As a woman. And that if you did, perhaps you could come to this not as the Mamur Zapt but as—as someone outside.’

  ***

  She had poured it out in one continuous, passionate flow and now she sat there quietly looking at him, not exactly defiantly, and certainly not pleading, but as if conscious that she had dared and was now awaiting the consequences.

  Owen took his time about replying. He didn’t want to get this wrong.

  ‘I am glad you have come to me. Not as the Mamur Zapt but as a man. And as a man, may I say that I greatly admire you for the way you have spoken. I hope you will always come to me as to a man. Over Sabri’s death, however, I have to be the Mamur Zapt.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I understand that,’ she said.

  ‘It may make your mind easier to know that on Osman you have told me nothing, or very little, that I did not already know.’

  ‘It does make it easier,’ she said, after a moment.

  ‘The little I did not know relates to the messenger. Can you tell me—you needn’t if you don’t want to—did the messenger come back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is all I want to know.’

  She stood up.

  ‘I must go now.’

  She came towards him holding out her hand.

  ‘We shall not be able to meet again,’ she said, ‘like this. Not when I am a wife.’

  ***

  Owen had tried several times during the morning to ring Lawrence at his office but every time he wasn’t there. He came across him at lunch-time, though, in the Bar of the Sporting Club. He was talking to Curtis.

  ‘Of course, they’re everywhere,’ Curtis was saying.

  ‘Are they?’ said Lawrence. He looked bored.

  ‘Oh, yes. Place leaks like a sieve.’

  ‘I daresay.’

  He saw Owen and greeted him with relief.

  ‘You know Curtis?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Owen could see that he was going to move away and leave him landed with Curtis, so he spoke quickly.

  ‘That message I spoke to you about, has it got through yet?’

  ‘Yes. Even the Turks think it’s barmy.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how barmy they think it. The thing is, it’s got through?’

  ‘And that means there’s a channel of communication by which it can be got through. That’s what I’ve always said.’

  ‘Ah, but now we know the channel.’

  ‘You do?’ Lawrence looked at his watch. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Channel?’ said Curtis. ‘To the Turks? That sounds serious.’

  ‘Not very,’ said Lawrence. ‘Just one of many, if what you say is true.’

  ‘Well, of course, they’re all around—’

  But Lawrence wasn’t listening. He detached himself without even a nod of farewell.

  ‘Funny bloke,’ said Curtis. ‘One to keep your eye on, I think.’

  ***

  Sabri’s son was waiting for him when he got back to the office.

  ‘I have found the man,’ he said: ‘the one who went from the village to the Camel Market on the day before my father died.’

  ‘A villager?’

  ‘He works for the Pasha.’

  Owen nodded.

  ‘You have done well,’ he said. ‘Now, listen. A Greek will come to your mother’s house tomorrow morning. I want you to show him the man.’

  ‘Will he kill him?’ asked Salah.

  ‘No. He is just one who helped to point the knife, not the one who pressed it home.’

  ‘That is enough. I will kill him myself.’

  ‘You will do no such thing. I have need of him. Leave him to the Greek and to me.’

  ***

  In the Camel Market the heat was building up. The few customers had retreated beneath the trees. Most of the sellers of celluloid beads and gaudy cottons had disappeared into their makeshift lean-tos. The dark-gowned, scarred-faced village women squatting beside their pyramids of onions and mounds of grain hunched themselves even more drowsily. From behind the carpeting of the fiki’s booth came a low, somnolent chant.

  Over where the animals were kept there were about a dozen camels kneeling in the shade. Nearby were a few donkeys, with men squatting beside them. The only moving figure was that of the donkey-barber. From time to time he seized one of the donkeys, rather as a farmer might seize a sheep to be shorn, thought Owen, dragged it out to where there was already a large pile of clippings, and set to work.

  The small boys of the Market had stopped pelting each other with camel dung and began to develop a new game, lobbing the dung instead on to the sagging roofs of the lean-tos. From time to time someone would come out and chase them away.

  Georgiades was wandering thoughtfully along one of the lanes of copper pot sellers, occasionally stopping to scrutinise the vessels for washing your hands. He had a friend with him, whom he held in a warm, familiar embrace. The friend looked rather glum.

  Owen continued his slow perambulation round the Market, stopping frequently to exchange a few words with the stall-holders and sellers. Eventually he made his way over to the small boys.

  ‘Found anything this morning?’ he asked.

  They had. They showed him two dead, swollen rats and the gnawed carcase of a young camel, the milky fur still visible in patches. And also another baby, Leila’s, they thought, though one of the boys indignantly denied this.

  They asked him in turn if he had found Sabri’s killer yet.

  ‘Getting there, getting there,’ said Owen. He looked back across the empty lanes of the shopping part of the Market to where Georgiades was examining the kohl bottles. ‘In fact, you might be able to help me,’ he said. ‘You see that man with the Greek? He came to the Market on the day before Sabri was killed. Do you remember him?’

  Oh, yes, they thought. They knew everybody who came to the Market, especially strangers.

  ‘And do you remember who he talked to?’

  ***

  ‘What is the donkey-barber,’ said Anji philosophically, ‘but a flea? A flea on the skin of history. The donkeys follow the great tides of history; and he follows the donkeys. The donkeys go to the wars, and he goes with them. They return, and he returns. And then, while they wait in the outer courts, he waits with them. He is never a man of the inner courts. Nor is he a warrior. He is just a man of the donkeys. As the donkey is a part of history, so is he; but only as the donkey is a part of history.’

  ‘You are too modest,’ said Owen. ‘The flea does not shape history.’

  ‘Nor, alas, does the donkey-barber.’

  ‘Does not he sometimes take messages while he goes with the donkeys? And might not they sometimes shape history?’

  The donkey-barber looked at him sharply, then smiled.

  ‘Not the kind of messages a donkey-barber would take!’

  ‘Again, you are too modest. What if the messages were to the Turks? Or, say, the Senussi?’

  The smile faded.

  ‘The Turks? The Senussi?’

  ‘Telling them, perhaps, that the time had come.’

  ‘Time for what?’

  ‘Invasion.’

  ‘Invasion!’

  ‘Might not that shape the course of history?’

  ‘It might if it were true!’

  ‘In fact, it didn’t and won’t. But that is not the fault of the donkey-barber.’

  ‘You make too
much of the donkey-barber,’ the man muttered.

  ‘I do but say that he is more than a flea. Although, like the flea, there comes a moment when he must be picked off the skin.’

  ‘It has come to that, has it?’ said the donkey-barber.

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen. He nodded to Georgiades, who had come up behind the donkey-barber while they had been talking. Georgiades closed in.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said the donkey-barber resignedly, as he felt Georgiades’ hands upon him, ‘it has come to that.’

  ‘However,’ said Owen.

  ‘However?’ said the donkey-barber, with a glint of hope.

  ‘Why should the fleas suffer while the great go free?’

  The donkey-barber shook his head.

  ‘I am not saying anything,’ he said. ‘I am just a passer of messages.’

  ‘Again, you are too modest,’ said Owen. ‘Do not fleas sometimes bite?’

  ‘Not this flea!’

  ‘And take blood?’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Sabri’s blood.’

  The donkey-barber was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It had to be someone used to animals who could go among them at night and not disturb them too greatly; and yet it was not the Bedawin. It had to be someone who knew the Market, knew it well enough to be able to work by night; and yet it was not someone of the Market, for I had eliminated all those. It had to be someone who was there that night. It had to be someone with a reason.’

  ‘What was my reason?’

  ‘It was less yours than the Pasha’s. He knew that Sabri was going to tell me that the Senussi were going to invade and he did not want it to get to me. He sent to you because he knew you were here, where Sabri would be spending the night, and would do his bidding.’

  ‘This is but supposition,’ protested the donkey-barber.

  ‘I have the man who brought you the message,’ said Owen, looking across the Market to where the Market constables were holding Georgiades’ friend. ‘And I know the message.’

  The donkey-barber was silent.

  ‘And so I ask again,’ said Owen: ‘should the flea suffer while the great go free?’

  ‘If you already know so much,’ said the donkey-barber, ‘he will not go free.’

  ‘Your word would make the lock more certain.’

  The donkey-barber shook his head.

  ‘I will say nothing.’

  ‘Do you so love the Pasha?’

  The donkey-barber’s eyes flashed.

  ‘I do not love any Pasha,’ he said. ‘Much less this one.’

  ‘And yet you do his bidding,’ Owen pointed out.

  ‘I do not do his bidding. I killed Sabri because—because it had to be done.’

  ‘If you are not the Pasha’s man, whose man are you?’

  The donkey-barber did not reply.

  ‘The Turks’?’

  ‘I am no man’s man. And yet I serve the Turks, yes. In this. They recruited me to carry messages. They knew I did not love the British, that I hoped for an end to British rule. And so I worked for them and did what the Pasha commanded. But not because he commanded. Nor because I love the Turks. But because a Turkish victory will see an end, not just to the British but to the Khedive. And to the rule of the Pashas. It is Egypt I fight for, the Egypt of the fellahin.’

  ‘You think the fellahin would be free if the Turks came?’

  ‘Not perhaps at once. We would have to fight for that, too.’

  ‘You fool,’ said Owen. ‘Sabri thought like you. He wished to see an end to the Pashas. He looked beyond the rule of the British and of the Khedive to a time when the fellahin would not be bound to the land but would be their own masters, a society for which he hoped to prepare his son. He was one of your own; and yet you killed him.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time that Owen had got back from the Camel Market and seen that the donkey-barber was lodged in the cells at the Bab-el-Khalk, it was already quite dark. Before going home he checked at his office to see if anything had come in in his absence. It had, and he sat and worked at it at his desk until quite late. When he looked at his watch it was past midnight. He jumped up with a guilty start. Zeinab would have been home long before. He shoved the papers away in his desk, put out the light and went out.

  It was dark in the corridor and dark on the stairs but he found his way down to the orderly room, where there was a single light on and an orderly curled up asleep on the floor behind the desk. Owen didn’t disturb him. The door was locked so he went out of a side one.

  The courtyard was bright with moonlight and he was about to make his way across it when he heard something move in the shadows further along the wall.

  He stayed for a moment where he was and then heard the movement again.

  It would probably be beggars but he would make sure.

  He went quietly towards the noise, keeping to the shadow of the wall. He couldn’t quite make the movements out. It didn’t sound like beggars.

  He saw there was only one man and was about to step forward when the man moved out into the moonlight and he caught sight of his face.

  It was Yasmin’s brother.

  He saw Owen at the same moment and gave a startled exclamation.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Owen, and caught him by the front of his coat.

  He tried to break away but tripped over something and stumbled and by the time he had recovered Owen had him in an arm-lock.

  He pushed him against the wall and ran his hand over him. He didn’t seem to have a weapon.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Owen said again.

  His foot caught against something. He kicked it out into the moonlight. It was a broken box which seemed to contain straw and wood shavings. Owen felt around with his foot. There were other bits of wood and something which seemed like paper. Then his foot touched something hard and he heard the liquid move in it and a moment after smelled paraffin.

  ***

  ‘It would not have burned,’ said Owen later, when he had got him in one of the cells.

  ‘No?’

  ‘This is the Bab-el-Khalk. The walls are made of stone.’

  ‘Not have burned?’

  The man seemed puzzled.

  ‘Stone.’ He saw the man’s vacant face and suddenly realised that he was mentally retarded. ‘Stone,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t burn. Not easily, at any rate.’

  ‘Everything burns!’ said the man angrily.

  ‘Not stone. Not the Bab-el-Khalk. It’s not,’ he said carefully, ‘like a liquor house.’

  ‘No.’ The man seemed to accept this. ‘It’s the alcohol,’ he said, after a moment. ‘That’s what burns.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the sin.’

  ‘Sin?’

  ‘Sin burns easily too.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He suddenly became angry again.

  ‘They come to our country and riot and blaspheme. They do not heed the Prophet’s injunctions. They smoke and they drink and they drag us down. They must be swept away. That’s what he said.’

  ‘He? Osman?’

  ‘Not swept away, I thought. Burned. That is what you do with bad things. Things you do not want. You burn them. Fire cleans all.’

  ‘But why did you want to burn the Bab-el-Khalk?’ And then he realised. ‘Was it me you wanted to burn?’

  The man stared at him in puzzlement.

  ‘You?’

  His face frowned in concentration.

  ‘Yes, you!’ he shouted.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Yasmin! You were dallying with her, treating her lightly!’

  Owen shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is
not true.’

  But the mind had already lost its focus.

  ‘They come to our country like locusts,’ he said, almost inaudibly, more to himself than to Owen, ‘and devour our substance. They treat our women with disrespect. They dishonour us daily in the streets. Everywhere is looseness and sin.’

  The voice died away and then after a moment it came again, more strongly.

  ‘It must be burned,’ he said. ‘All must be burned.’

  He was not seeing Owen now, he was looking past him.

  ‘Fire!’ he said. ‘It is beautiful.’ He was speaking dreamily, almost ecstatically. ‘It sucks us in and purifies us. It destroys the husk and frees the spirit. I have seen them, you know,’ he said to Owen, confidingly. ‘In the flames. You see them dancing. Dancing, dancing.’

  ***

  The Sekhmet family was devastated. Mrs Sekhmet collapsed at the arrests of her brother and her son. Selim had done his checking and found that Fahmy had been seen beforehand hanging around the other places where there had been fires too. Mohammed Sekhmet felt the blow just as keenly but for him, once he had recovered from the shock, there was an added burden: the disgrace. For a man like him it was unbearable. He at once resigned his position and although Owen tried to dissuade him—as did, Owen learned later, a little to his surprise, Garvin—he couldn’t be persuaded to change his mind.

  ‘They could not trust me now,’ he said. ‘With such a family as I have, I cannot even trust myself.’

  In time the pain gave way to bewilderment.

  ‘I cannot understand it,’ he said to Owen. ‘My family has always been loyal. I have always been loyal. Without loyalty, what is there?’

  The issue, though, was not loyalty in itself but, in the new situation brought about by the war, loyalty to whom? The Sekhmet family had kept their loyalty but found it dividing under them. What had been single and simple had become several and under the new pressures the different constituents had pulled the Sekhmets in different directions. Osman had retained the habitual family loyalty to the Pasha and followed him in his rediscovery of his Turkishness, but Mohammed, whose loyalty had always been to the Khedive rather than to the Pasha, had remained true to the sovereign.