The Mark of the Pasha

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Doing very well, it seems. He works for one of those big banks. “Do you mind working for foreigners?” I said, when he last came down. “I don’t intend to do it for long,” he said, looking at me in a sharp way. I don’t know what’s in his mind. Maybe he’s counting on the old Pasha going. He’s eighty-five, if he’s a day, and cannot go on much longer. And when he does go, I reckon Rashid will sell the estate. And then maybe I’ll have to do what Ziki did,’ he said, ‘get out and find something else.’

  ‘Do you know what Ziki found?’

  ‘I think he worked for a carrying business,’ the overseer said.

  ‘A carrying business?’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘So I gather. Up by the Citadel, somewhere, I think he said. He does a lot of work for the prison.’

  ‘Carrying?’

  ‘Yes. Things for the workshops. Materials. Food too, perhaps. Doing all right, too, he said.’

  ‘Doing so well as to cause him enemies?’ asked Sadiq.

  ‘He didn’t say anything like that!’ said Mr. Iffat, taken aback.

  ‘You see, what happened to him didn’t happen by accident,’ said Sadiq.

  ‘No. No, I can see that.’

  ‘I wondered if someone had had it in for him?’

  ‘Must have done, I suppose. But he didn’t tell us anything.’ A shade of distaste crossed his face. ‘And now the poor bastard is dead. Got a wife and kids, too. And a mother. I’m going to have to tell her.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell her everything,’ said Sadiq.

  ‘No. No, I suppose not.’

  He looked relieved.

  ‘I’ll just tell her he’s gone. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. That’s enough, isn’t it? Enough for any poor mother.’

  ***

  Mention of the carrying business and of the prison was enough to enable the Parquet to track the family down and that evening Sadiq went round to tell the man’s wife. Mahmoud didn’t go with him. He went over to the prison, however, and talked to the driver of Ziki’s cart. There was only the driver. It was a very small business.

  ‘It was built around the single contract,’ Mahmoud told Owen later. ‘The one with the prison. Apparently Rashid—that’s the Pasha’s son—had got it for him. The old ties had carried on even in the city. Rashid was able to push business his way occasionally. But it never amounted to much. The prison contract was the main thing. But Ziki was grateful for that. It made enough for his family to live on.’

  ‘And through it he met other carriers?’ said Owen. ‘And that’s how he got to know Hussein and Ahmet?’

  ‘That’s what his driver said. He didn’t know how well he knew them. He thought maybe he knew them in the way he knew other carriers. They’re quite a fraternity, the carriers of Cairo. They all knew each other. There were places where they would stop and drink tea, several of them together. They would help each other out if there were parcels to be delivered. You know, if one was going to a particular place and the other wasn’t. Messages could be passed on, too.’

  ‘Messages?’

  ‘News, of course. Gossip. But also messages, not necessarily from carriers. Other people used them as a message service, too. If you wanted to get a message to the other side of the city, you might well use a carrier. And, of course, the ones who make the same journey regularly, like Hussein and Ahmet, or like Ziki, tend to be used more, because people know about them and can rely on them. The driver says that a lot of messages have been passing lately.’

  ‘To do with what?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. Ziki kept the message side to himself. But he thinks they’re to do with religion.’

  ‘Religion?’

  ‘That’s why I thought you might like to come with me,’ said Mahmoud.

  ***

  They were going to see the dead man’s widow. She lived in one of the little, cramped streets beneath the Citadel. This was one of the oldest parts of Cairo and it had been one of the most beautiful. There were still beautiful bits, lovely, crumbling old houses with marvelous fretted woodwork, box-like windows protruding over the street until they nearly touched those on the other side, and, when you looked down from the height of the Citadel, dark little gardens filled with cypress and palm. And everywhere minarets: the tower-like ones of Ibn Tulun’s mosque and the fantastic ones rising from the Bab-es-Zuweyla and from the El Azhar, and the green-tiled ones of the En-Nasir mosque.

  But in between these large, fine buildings were hundreds of little houses, packed tight together, dilapidated, their plaster pock-marked with age. The streets were often so small that there wasn’t room to drive a cart.

  ‘Ziki kept his up on the Midan. The driver sleeps beneath it. That is, actually, where he reckons he lives. Ziki used to come up each day and tell him where he had to go.’

  They found the house and Ziki’s widow came to the door, carrying a baby and with a small child clinging to her skirts. Inside, there were more children.

  ‘How many?’ said Owen, smiling.

  ‘God has blessed us with five,’ said the woman.

  ‘That is, indeed, a blessing, although when they are small, it may not seem so.’

  ‘It is a blessing,’ the woman agreed. ‘And will be something to remember Ziki by.’

  ‘It will not be easy,’ said Mahmoud, ‘to feed so many mouths when there is no longer a man in the family.’

  ‘Abu will keep driving the cart,’ she said. ‘As long as I tell him where to drive it. He is a good man but—’ she tapped her head ‘—not one of the brightest. He will have to be told. But I can tell him as well as Ziki.’

  ‘You know enough to be able to tell him?’

  The woman nodded her head definitely.

  ‘I know Ziki’s work,’ she said. ‘We built the business up together.’

  ‘What sort of man was Ziki?’

  ‘An ordinary man. Too ordinary to be killed,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘And yet he was killed. Why was that, do you think?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘What does a woman know of her husband in the end? She knows him in the house, she knows him with his children, and she knows him in bed. And sometimes in his work. But who does he mix with when he goes out to the café in the evening? To smoke his pipe and chat?’

  ‘He goes out in the evening, does he?’

  ‘Most evenings. I don’t begrudge him that. He has worked hard all day. He gives me the money I need for the housekeeping. He doesn’t knock the children around. He doesn’t knock me around. He doesn’t drink, and that is a blessing, and an uncommon one around here. He was a good man.’

  ‘You think, perhaps, he made enemies at the café?’

  ‘Or in his work. What else am I to think?’

  ‘You know his work. Is that likely?’

  ‘No. Nor at the café either. But what else is there?’

  ‘These are troubled times,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Could he have got mixed up in the troubles?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, did he not carry messages?’

  ‘He has always carried messages. Everyone does.’

  ‘And he knew others who carried things. Did he ever mention the names of Hussein and Ahmet to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He used to meet them at the café. They played dominoes together. But I have not heard yet that playing dominoes is a dangerous thing.’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘Nor me, either,’ he said. ‘But carrying messages could be a dangerous thing.’

  ‘Carrying a message to say that a boy has arrived from the country? Or that Fatima needs some more cooking oil? Or that a child is sick?’

  ‘Not all his messages were like that. I have heard that some were religious.’

  ‘Religious? Well, he might have carried a message from our sheikh to Sheikh Abbas to ask him to do a funeral for him,
but—’

  ‘Did Ziki take an interest in such things? Was he himself religiously inclined?’

  ‘Ziki? No man less. I have spoken to him about it. “You know where you will finish up,” I said to him, “if you never go to the mosque.” “God cares for everybody,” he used to say. “Yes, but he’s not even going to recognise you,” I said.’

  ‘Did he ever speak of Sayed Ali?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Sayed Ali? Well, there’s a good man. If they were all like him! They don’t make his sort nowadays. Speak of him? Well, everyone spoke of him. Even my husband, who, you would have thought, wouldn’t even have known his name. But, yes, he had spoken of him once or twice lately.’

  ‘What did he say about him?’

  ‘Well, you know, everyone is saying that the dear man is going to stand up. And come forward and denounce the evil ways of the time. “Stand up?” I said. “The dear man has been bed-ridden for years! He can’t stand up.” Ziki got annoyed with me. “Be quiet, woman!” he said. “What do you know about it? He is going to say that the British must go.” “British must go?” I said. “And what will happen to us then? What will become of your work? What we do for the prison gives us nine tenths of our money!” “There will still be prisons,” he said, “even when the British go.” “Well, the next time you see Sayed Ali,” I said, “—and that won’t be soon, if you carry on the way you’re doing, not going to the mosque and such—you can ask him what will happen to the prisons if the British go? We’ll all be out of work.”’

  ‘If he knew such things,’ said Owen, ‘might it not be that he carried messages to or from Sayed Ali?’

  ‘About what? Ramadan, or something? Look, the Sheikh doesn’t need advice from the likes of my husband—’

  ‘To say, perhaps, that he was going to speak out, and to gather themselves in readiness?’

  The woman stopped her flow.

  ‘Well, that is possible,’ she admitted.

  ‘But you don’t know that it was so?’

  ‘No.’

  As they were leaving, Mahmoud turned back.

  ‘Didn’t I hear that your husband has taken to going to the hammam?’

  ‘And a very good thing, too,’ said the woman. ‘“Not before time!” I said to him. “And if you were as pure inside as you were outside—”’

  ‘“Oh, shut up, woman!” he said.’

  ***

  In the café men were sitting smoking bubble pipes and playing dominoes. They didn’t seem to be doing anything else, apart from chatting. How the patron made a living Owen could not see, but, then, he never could. Egyptians did not go to cafés to consume things. They even brought their own pipes with them. Perhaps the landlord supplied charcoal but he supplied little else. The men didn’t seem to buy beer, they went to lower establishments for that. There was some desultory drinking of tea and coffee but for the most part the clients just sat. It was a café used almost exclusively by working men, tired after their day’s work and sapped of energy.

  They looked a little curiously at Mahmoud and Owen as they came in but then went back to their pipes. After a while the patron came out from behind the counter and poured Owen and Mahmoud their coffee from a copper vessel with a long spout. They sat sipping it and watching a game of dominoes at the next table.

  The game finished and while the players were setting up the dominoes for the next game one of them stood up and wandered over to where another group was playing.

  ‘I wondered where those dominoes had got to,’ he said. ‘You must have got hold of them already when we came. I’d rather play with these than the ones we’ve got.’

  ‘These are your favourites, are they, Riki?’ said one of the players. ‘I’ll remember that; and look at them carefully when I’m playing with you!’

  They all laughed.

  As he was going back to his own table his knee accidentally caught Owen and Mahmoud’s table spilling some coffee. He apologised at once and went to the counter for a rag, came back, and mopped it up himself.

  ‘Sorry about that!’ he said.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ murmured Mahmoud, waving a depreciating hand.

  The man took the rag back to the counter.

  ‘Not seen you here before,’ he said, as he came back.

  ‘Just been calling in on Ziki’s widow,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Bad business that. Who would want to do a thing like that?’

  ‘I can’t understand it, either,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Ziki wasn’t the kind of man who would get involved in trouble.’

  There were grunts of agreement from the men round the tables.

  ‘Although you never know who you might come up against in that sort of business.’

  He was watching the men carefully but no one responded.

  ‘I don’t know how his wife will manage,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, she’ll manage, all right,’ said one of the men. ‘She knows as much about the day-to-day running of the business as he did. Probably more, since he’s taken lately to getting himself involved in other things.’

  ‘Ah, that’s it!’ said Mahmoud. ‘I’ve been wondering. He’s seemed a bit different lately. Probably got too much on his plate. What’s he up to, then?’

  ‘It’s this Sayed Ali business.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Mahmoud, as if it explained everything. ‘But, you know, that surprises me. I wouldn’t have thought he was the man to get himself involved in that.’

  ‘No. I know what you mean.’

  ‘One mustn’t say these things, not with him so recently—. But I wouldn’t have thought he was much of a religious man at heart.’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t!’

  ‘But, anyway, I don’t know how much of a religious thing it is,’ said someone else.

  ‘No? But Sayed Ali—’

  ‘Oh, he’s religious all right. But he’s a hundred if he’s a day. Doesn’t get off his bed these days. Someone else is doing all the work.’

  ‘Well, I hope they are. If only to spare him. You don’t want care at his time of life,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘Why’s he doing it, then?’

  ‘Is he doing it?’ asked someone who had not previously spoken.

  ‘What do you mean, Ibrahim?’

  ‘Well, my wife’s friend’s cousin goes to help in his house and she says that these days he doesn’t know much about what’s going on around him.’

  ‘His thoughts are all on Eternity, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, so they should be.’

  ‘Yes, but, wait a minute,’ said Mahmoud, ‘didn’t you say how busy Ziki has been, with all the things he’s been doing for him?’

  ‘Ah, but that’s not for the dear man himself.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. There are some people around him.’

  ‘There usually are,’ said Mahmoud. ‘When you start getting old. And usually it’s not religion they’re interested in. It’s money. Not in his case, of course,’ he said hastily.

  ‘No. These men have already got plenty of that. So my wife’s friend’s cousin says. You don’t buy clothes like that at the tailor’s in the souk, she says. And there’s one that comes smelling of—’

  ‘Yes?’ said Owen.

  ‘Milk and honey and—’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Roses. That’s what she says. Smells like a Pasha’s garden. That’s what she says.’

  ***

  Nikos, as far as Owen knew, had no existence outside the office. He was always there before anyone else in the morning and stayed on alone after everyone had gone in the evening. Owen suspected that when the day was done he climbed into one of his filing cabinets and stayed there until the next morning.

  All Egyptian life was in his filing cabinets. His records were immense, comprehensive and exhaustive;
and only Nikos had access to them. This, of course, made him indispensable, and the Copts had learned over the centuries, under a succession of nominal rulers, how to make sure that they could not be done without. It was, thought Owen, the bureaucratic instinct, distilled to a quintessence.

  But it was also very useful.

  Nikos came in the next morning with a smile of satisfaction, rare for him—he didn’t believe in giving secrets away—and put two large files on Owen’s desk. Owen looked at him questioningly.

  ‘They are?’

  ‘The Hamid circle.’

  ‘Prince Hamid? The De Dion owner?’

  ‘And owner of much else besides.’

  Owen looked at the bulky files.

  ‘Give me the essence,’ he said.

  ‘A man, as I think I said to you, of enthusiasms. His first enthusiasm was for night clubs and all that went with them: drink, drugs, gambling, and women. And, of course, ultimately venereal disease. This rather shocked him as he had thought that as a member of the royal family he was immune to such things. His father put him right. The disease was, in fact, unusually intractable and he spent a prolonged time in a French hospital.

  ‘From this he emerged a more sober man, but still one given to enthusiasms. His next enthusiasm was for learning and he wanted to go to a university, preferably a French one. His father, however, in view of his previous history, was not having that. Cairo it was to be, where his father would keep an eye on him.

  ‘But what was he to study? El Azhar was clearly not the place for him. He had never shown the slightest interest in religion and the Khedive, who had a say in the education of royal princes, was totally opposed to it on the grounds that it was a dangerous thing for princes to meddle with. I tell you this because later Hamid appeared to have changed his mind.

  ‘What, then, was he to study? The only thing that appeared to interest him was driving cars, so it was agreed that he should go to the College of Engineering. Actually, it was only the driving that interested him and at the end of his first year he had to drop out.

  ‘By then, though, he had made some student friends. They were, of course, radical like all students at the time. You may wonder what a member of the Khedive’s family was doing with radical friends. I think it was because he was a bit against his father, and the Khedive, and authority in general at the time and they played on this. Might he not, with his name, his influence and his talents have a significant part to play in the revolution that they were sure was going to come? Even—dare they whisper it—as leader?