The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog mz-2

by Michael Pearce

  “That’s right. She’s moved, but not far. Still within a stone’s throw of the Scentmakers’ Bazaar.”

  “She could still be important.”

  “Yes. So I’ve set this boy up with a regular income. He’s keeping an eye on her. Debit the Curbash Compensation Fund with a few more milliemes.”

  The Mamur Zapt winced.

  Eventually Owen had to summon Yussuf.

  “Yussuf,” he said, “things can’t go on like this. You’ll have to sort things out between you and your wife.”

  “I have no wife,” said Yussuf obstinately.

  “Yes, I know all about that,” said Owen, “but it won’t do. We haven’t had any decent coffee for days. Besides, it’s depressing everybody.”

  That was true. Yussuf’s unhappiness had spread a cloud over the whole orderly room. Normally it buzzed with cheerful conversation. The orderlies didn’t do a lot of work but they did do a lot of talking, and their general cheerfulness had a lifting effect on the corridor as a whole. Owen would hear them as he sat at his desk; and if by some incredible chance all the bearers at once were sent out with messages and the orderly room fell empty he was at once conscious of a gap. Since Yussuf had fallen out with his wife, however, the sounds from the other end of the corridor had become more subdued. At first the other orderlies had merely seized upon it as an excuse for extra banter. Gradually, however, they had all been infected by Yussuf’s low spirits and now the orderly room was an oasis of gloom.

  Even McPhee, the Assistant Commandant, had noticed it and that morning he had come along to see Owen.

  “We can’t have this,” he said. “It’s depressing everybody. You’d better have a word with him. I’d do it myself but he’s your bearer.”

  Although, strictly speaking, the bearers were not assigned to individuals and worked as a pool, carrying messages for anybody in the building, in practice they identified themselves with particular people. When Owen had first arrived in the building Yussuf had decided, unilaterally, to be his bearer and now it was a source of great pride to him that he was the one who carried the Mamur Zapt’s messages. Owen did not in fact have many messages-he preferred to use the telephone-and Yussuf had time on his hands. It had seemed to him a natural extension of his duties, and somehow consistent with Islamic notions of hospitality, to assume responsibility for seeing that Owen was properly supplied with coffee. The same generous spirit had seen him extend his service to the rest of the corridor, and now the whole floor depended on it. When the service faltered, therefore, everyone along the corridor was afflicted; and Owen, as the person responsible in custom for Yussuf, was seen as the man to put it right.

  What precisely he could do about it was not immediately clear since even the Mamur Zapt’s writ did not normally extend to the domestic relationship between man and wife. The consensus along the corridor was that Yussuf’s wife was all right really apart from her inability to produce any children and that this was the root of the trouble. The other bearers took the traditional view that the right thing to do was for Yussuf to get rid of her and find another one; but for reasons known only to himself Yussuf was reluctant to do this. A refinement was therefore suggested, namely that he should keep his first wife and merely add a second. Here too, though, there were difficulties. Yussuf couldn’t afford it and his first wife wouldn’t allow it. She had marched indignantly out when the proposal had been put to her and the matter had remained unresolved ever since.

  “I have no wife,” Yussuf repeated obstinately.

  “Then it’s time you did,” said Owen. “Either take Fatima back or find yourself another woman.”

  Yussuf was silent.

  “Fatima has faults,” Owen pursued. “No woman is without faults. Nor no man either. You yourself, Yussuf, are not without blame. Fatima has been a good wife to you. For the sake of that, take her back.”

  Yussuf stared straight in front of him. He gave no sign of having heard.

  “You have shown her you are a strong man, one who must be obeyed. If she didn’t know that before, she will know it now. She has learned her lesson. Be just as well as strong, O Yussuf.”

  Owen had fallen into the familiar rhetorical style of the Arab. It was partly the language itself that suggested it. When he had first come to Egypt Garvin had insisted that he stay with an Arab family perfecting his Arabic. Owen had a facility for languages and had learned his lessons well. He spoke Arabic now without strain and from the inside, not needing to translate, thinking in the Arabic mode.

  Yussuf stirred, responding, possibly, to the familiar patterns.

  “She has done wrong,” he said.

  “Indeed she has,” Owen agreed hastily. “But now she knows better.”

  “She should acknowledge her fault.”

  “And probably wishes to,” said Owen, hoping that Yussuf’s wife was not as formidable as his sister.

  “She has not said so.”

  “Well,” said Owen, “you can hardly expect her to.”

  “She will have to say so before I take her back.”

  “Do not be too hard,” Owen counselled. “The wise man is merciful as well as just.”

  “If she acknowledges her fault,” said Yussuf, with the air of one making a great concession, “then I will take her back.”

  Owen praised Yussuf’s justness and mercifulness, wondering, however, whether such an acknowledgement could be secured.

  “There will have to be someone to go between you,” he said.

  Yussuf was prepared to accept that.

  “Though not Soraya,” he added darkly.

  “Who is Soraya?”

  “My sister.”

  Owen thought that rather a pity as she had seemed very competent, quite capable of sorting out both Yussuf and his wife. However, this was a point Yussuf stuck on, so in the end it was agreed that they would ask Leila, the wife of the senior bearer. Privately Owen intended to make sure that she was given a very strong briefing beforehand. For the moment, however, it looked as if the matter was on its way to being resolved.

  “Fatima will know,” he said to Yussuf, “that she has a husband who is just as well as strong, merciful as well as just.”

  “She is a fortunate woman,” Yussuf agreed.

  “And you will take her back.”

  Yussuf hesitated.

  “It-it may not be so simple, effendi.”

  “Why not?”

  “Effendi-”

  “Yes?”

  “I have already pronounced the divorce,” said Yussuf with a rush.

  Under Islamic law it was possible to divorce by simple declaration. The husband merely had to say, in the presence of witnesses, “I divorce thee.”

  “Did anyone hear you?”

  Yussuf hung his head.

  “Yes, effendi.”

  It transpired that the whole street had been summoned to hear the declaration.

  “That is a pity. However, you can revoke your word and take her back.”

  It was allowable under the law for a husband who changed his mind to receive his wife back without ceremony. Twice.

  Yussuf’s head dropped even lower.

  “Effendi-”

  “Yes?”

  “It was the triple vow.”

  If the words were spoken once, or even twice, the woman could be taken back. When the words were spoken for the third time, however, the divorce was irrevocable. And that applied whether the words were spoken on separate occasions or all together. Thus if a particularly irate husband pronounced the words three times in the heat of the moment the divorce was permanent and could not be reversed.

  “You said it three times?”

  “Yes, effendi,” said Yussuf unhappily.

  “That’s all right,” said Zeinab, “it happens all the time.”

  “They say it three times?”

  “Yes. And afterwards they’re sorry. It’s too late then, of course.”

  “He’ll have to marry someone else.”

  Zeinab
curled her legs up under her on the divan. “Why?”

  “Because we can’t go on like this. It’s affecting everybody.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean, why does he have to marry someone else? I would have thought it mightn’t be too easy. You say he’s got a bit of a reputation as a skinflint.”

  “I didn’t say that. His sister did.”

  “Well, she should know. If it’s true, he might find it difficult to get anyone to agree. Mothers are not going to let their daughters go to someone who’s mean with money. A bit of beating is all right, you can put up with that, but if a man is tight with his money there’s always trouble in the house. Besides, there’s nothing in it for the family.”

  “I would have thought a family would have been only too glad to get an unmarried daughter off its hands.”

  “Not if they’re going to come back again immediately because their husband is forever divorcing them.”

  “Yussuf’s not like that.”

  “It’s the money, you see,” explained Zeinab, who tended to take a very practical view of these things. “A lot of families will say that as soon as he’s got the dowry you’ll get the girl back. And then you’ll be worse off than when you started. You’ve still got the girl but you haven’t got the money.”

  “Perhaps he’d be willing to take someone without a dowry. In the circumstances, I mean.”

  “Him? Yussuf? Not if what his sister says is true.”

  “If I leaned on him.”

  “That might help,” Zeinab conceded.

  “I could even pay the dowry.”

  “I’d watch that if I were you. Otherwise they’ll all be doing it.”

  “There are lots of poor families.”

  “If you were prepared to pay the dowry-”

  “It might be worth it.”

  “What I can’t see, though,” said Zeinab, “is why bother with all this? Wouldn’t it be simpler just for him to marry Fatima again?”

  “He can’t. That’s the whole point. He’s used the triple vow.”

  “But that’s no problem. I’ve told you. People are always doing it.”

  “But-”

  “There’s a way round.”

  “There is?”

  “Yes. It’s simple. What you’ve got to do is to get her to marry again. You go to a friend, or if you haven’t got one there are people who specialize in it, and then you get them to marry her on condition that they divorce her immediately afterwards. Once that has happened you’re free to marry her again.”

  “The triple vow doesn’t apply?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Seeing that Owen was having difficulties in getting used to the idea, she took him by the hand and pulled him down beside her on the divan.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “In fact, it’s quite common. Men are always divorcing their wives and feeling sorry afterwards. So there’s got to be some way round it.”

  “It happens all the time?”

  “Sure,” said Zeinab, snuggling down. “All the time.”

  And then the trouble started.

  The first sign was slogans daubed on the wall of a kuttub, a religious school where small children went for their first instruction in the Koran. The slogans were in ill-formed, illiterate script and Owen at first put it down as the work of children; not the children who went to the kuttub, who were infants, but older youths.

  “It’s the youths,” he said to the Moslems who complained. “I don’t know what things are coming to. Children have no respect for their elders nowadays.”

  That at least they could agree with and went away shaking their heads, believing it to be merely another instance of the general moral decline which was overtaking the world. But when the slogans appeared on the wall of two mosques and camel dung was dropped on the entrance of one of them they were very angry and came back to Owen and said that these were godless young and should be put down. The connection with sectarianism was made gradually and only came after a succession of similar events. Women going to the mosque had their veils snatched off; a Moslem water-seller was set upon and beaten; Moslem stalls in the market were upset; and during the evening call to prayer a bell had been rung loudly.

  Owen found it hard to take such incidents seriously.

  “These things happen all the time,” he said sceptically when Nikos came in to report them.

  “And people don’t notice them. But now they are. That’s the difference.”

  Nikos also brought in some leaflets which his agents had confiscated.

  “This is a difference too,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had ones like this for quite a while.”

  The leaflet accused the Moslems of kidnapping children and using them for ritual purposes. Afterwards, it was alleged, the victims were placed in the children’s brothels in which Cairo abounded. There was, of course, no point in trying to check the veracity of the allegations. The matter was mystic as much as factual, drawn from deep-lying sub-strata of racial prejudice and religious fear. Similar accusations were made at different times against all the churches. They surfaced at intervals, burned hot for a time and then slipped back underground, to be stored again in layers of social and religious memory.

  If there were leaflets there was organization. And if there was organization there was money. And if there was organization and money, then there was design and planning. The incidents were not spontaneous. They were part of a pattern. He had hoped that the affair of the dog and the death of the Zikr were isolated instances, that with the death of those responsible the matter could end there.

  It looked as if it was only beginning.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Moslem response was not long in coming. Fighting broke out in one of the markets, two people were stabbed and a third sprained his ankle when a stall of onions collapsed. The stab wounds were presented to Owen when he went down to inspect. Both victims were brought to him limp in the arms of their supporters and their condition appeared dire. However, closer inspection suggested that the volume of groans was in inverse proportion to the extent of the damage and Owen soon pushed them away. More important was the fact that one was a Copt and one a Moslem, which gave hope that, honour being satisfied on both sides, the exchanges might not be carried further. He lectured all sides sternly, posted a constable conspicuously, and went back to his office relieved that matters were no worse.

  Over the next few days, however, there were a number of such incidents and some of them did not end so happily. There were other stabbings, some of them serious. Attacks on individuals became so frequent that there were notably fewer people on the streets after dark than was usual. Gangs of youths gathered outside shops. At first they contented themselves with shouting insults and throwing stones. Then one gang went further. It broke into a shop and wrecked it, terrifying the owner. After that, such attacks became the pattern and often, now, the attackers were not satisfied with merely terrifying the owners, they beat them up as well. One gang set fire to a shop after wrecking it and then that too became a feature of the attacks.

  Similar incidents occurred all over the Old City and the manpower Owen could command was stretched to its limit. McPhee had all the ordinary police out in support and Garvin brought in extra police from the country districts around Cairo.

  “We need more,” said Owen. “It’s still growing. That won’t be enough.”

  “It’s got to be enough,” said Garvin. “There aren’t any more.”

  “Can’t you transfer some from Alexandria?”

  “What happens if it spreads there?”

  “It would be better to have city police. They’re better at this sort of thing.”

  The country police were sufficiently confused simply by being in a big city, without adding in all the complex requirements of urban policing under riot conditions.

  “Can’t you grow your own?” asked Garvin. “Take more people onto your payroll?”

  “Haven’t the money,” said Owen, rememberin
g the Curbash Compensation Fund with bitterness. “I spoke to you about that.”

  “I suppose I could try again,” said Garvin. “There might be some spare cash floating around since it’s getting near the end of the year.”

  He rang back later.

  “No chance,” he said. “They’re up to their eyeballs in balance sheets, especially with Postlethwaite looking over their shoulder, and won’t even listen to me.”

  “They’re all bloody Copts in the Ministry of Finance, that’s the trouble,” said Owen.

  The pressure now, though, seemed to be coming from the Moslem side. Crowds gathered outside the main mosques and there were huge demonstrations; spontaneous, according to the Moslems, organized according to Owen.

  “Osman?” he asked Georgiades.

  Georgiades nodded. He had been out on the streets all day and his face was running with sweat.

  “Yes,” he said. “Osman. Plus money.”

  The following evening there was a particularly ugly incident, although this time, against the tide, it appeared to be the Copts who were responsible.

  It took place not at the Blue Mosque but further along the street in front of the great Mosque of el-Mouayad. Some Moslem students who had been visiting the mosque were set upon as they left by a much larger gang of Copts and in the fracas at least one of the students appeared to have been killed. Owen was unable to check every incident himself and sent one of his men over. The agent, a good one, reported that the affair wasn’t quite as dramatic as first accounts had suggested and had been on a far smaller scale, but that students had definitely been involved and at least one of them appeared badly hurt. The involvement of students was something that Owen had been hoping to avoid. The students of el-Azhar, the great Moslem university of Cairo, were only too ready to take to the streets in defence of religion or, indeed, anything at all, and once they were participating it would be very difficult to keep the matter localized. His worst fears were realized when the next day word came from Georgiades that a monster procession was being formed which would march from the gates of el-Azhar through the Old City to converge on the Mar Girgis, where a demonstration was planned.