A Cold Touch of Ice

by Michael Pearce

  Owen wondered if he had ever seen a woman’s face before. Seen, perhaps—in his work he would have seen females unveiled, prostitutes, certainly, but also the women of the humble poor, especially in the villages outside Cairo—seen, but not noticed, as that would have been disrespectful.

  He pressed Mahmoud’s hand.

  ‘You can relax now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ibrahim Buktari, ‘and then you must go outside and receive congratulations.’

  ‘I will come with you,’ Owen said, ‘and you can introduce me to your friends.’

  Out in the courtyard the fiki was just finishing his recitation from the Koran. He gave way to the professional singers, who sang some muweshshas, or lyric odes to the Prophet. And then the band started up.

  Mahmoud waited until the religious singing was over before going forward to greet his friends. To do otherwise would be to treat the verses lightly, which he could not bear to do.

  Now, however, though shyly, he would go among his friends. As a married man.

  By now it was nearly midnight and the party was just warming up. There was no need for alcohol to assist the warming: on occasions like this, thought Owen, Egyptians were self-fuelling. Some of the men began to dance, either by themselves or with another man. The women remained inside, looking out invisibly through the latticed windows.

  At one point the dancers formed a snake. As it wound past him a hand reached out and pulled him on to the end. The hand belonged to Kamal, Mahmoud’s, and Ibrahim Buktari’s, soldier friend whom Owen had met earlier. Kamal looked back over his shoulder and smiled.

  ‘As an individual,’ he said. ‘Just as an individual.’

  Mahmoud did not join in the dancing but stood quietly to one side, smiling. From time to time people brought him presents. Owen remembered his own.

  ‘And also this,’ he said. ‘From Lord Kitchener.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Yes,’ said Cavendish, ‘but are you watching the railways?’

  Owen was not watching anything at all at that moment. Indeed, he was barely conscious, because he had got back from Mahmoud’s wedding party only an hour before, to find waiting for him a message that the meeting had been rearranged for seven that morning; a time decided on, Paul indignantly claimed, less from malice than from consideration. In this heat the rooms would be insufferable by ten o’clock, the time when meetings normally started. And, besides, Cavendish had to get back to Constantinople.

  The French windows, with their shutters, had been left open so that the air, normally still cool at this time in the morning, could freshen the room. Already, though, it was distinctly hot and soon would be hotter. On the other side of the room from the windows, where Owen had been obliged to sit because he had been one of the last to arrive, it was stifling, and, as they seemed to be discussing matters with which he had no concern, such as ‘the situation’ in the Hejaz, he had lapsed into torpor. From which he now awoke with a start. What was this about railways? The remark seemed to have been directed at him.

  What was it Cavendish had said? ‘Watch them.’

  What the hell for?

  ‘Well, yes, they’re the key to it, obviously,’ he tried.

  This seemed acceptable. There were nods round the table.

  ‘The line to Medina is, of course, now complete,’ said the little archaeologist, Lawrence. (And what was he doing here?)

  ‘Which means that they’re within striking distance of Mecca,’ said Paul.

  ‘It’s not Mecca I’m worried about,’ said the Sirdar. ‘It’s Egypt. Now that they’ve got down to Aba-el-Lissan, they can cut across to Akaba in a few hours. And then they’re right on the Canal. On our very doorstep!’

  ‘I don’t think you ought to disregard Mecca,’ said Lawrence. ‘Especially if it becomes a question of mobilizing the desert tribes.’

  The Sirdar snorted.

  ‘Mobilizing the desert tribes? About as much use as mobilizing a bunch of camels!’

  He stared belligerently at Lawrence. Here, at any rate, was someone else who couldn’t see what the archaeologist was doing there.

  ‘The point is,’ said Cavendish, ‘that with the new railway system they can rush troops down from Turkey in a matter of hours and strike at either Mecca or Egypt!’

  They? The Turks? But so far as Owen knew, the Turks weren’t striking at anyone at the moment, with the exception of the Italians in Tripolitania, when they could get at them.

  ‘So you’re quite right,’ said Cavendish, addressing Owen. ‘The question of the railway system inside Egypt becomes of considerable importance.’

  Inside Egypt? What he meant, presumably, was that if there was a railway line going from east to west, instead of from north to south, following the line of the coast as opposed to the line of the Nile, as did most transport systems in Egypt, then it would be much easier for the Turks to get troops across Egypt to Tripolitania.

  Certainly true; but so what? There was no such railway line and little prospect of one being built. The government hadn’t got enough money, for a start. And the army wouldn’t let them if they had. And what, incidentally, was all this stuff about troops on the Canal? It sounded like the usual alarmist phobia that the army engaged in from time to time. Turkish troops on the Suez Canal? That would mean war; not between Turkey and Italy but between Turkey and Britain. And there was surely no chance of that. Daft! He went back to sleep.

  The meeting came to an end and everyone went out on to the Agency lawn for some fresh air. Servants brought lemonade. Owen had been drinking lemonade all night and felt in need of something stronger. He thought he might go down to the Club for a drink before lunch.

  ‘Damned amateurs!’ said the Sirdar, standing beside him. He was looking at Lawrence. ‘What does a fellow like that know about mobilization?’

  ‘Or me either,’ said Miss Bell, suddenly appearing alongside.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Miss Bell!’

  ‘It’s a fair point,’ she said, ‘although Mr Lawrence is, I understand, a military historian as well as an archaeologist.’

  The Sirdar snorted again.

  ‘In any case,’ said Miss Bell, ‘the point is not our military expertise—we leave that to you, Sirdar!—but the fact that we have both just come back from the Sinai and can tell you what’s happening there.’

  ‘I’m not saying your information isn’t useful, Miss Bell—’

  She laughed.

  ‘I hope so. But information has to be professionally appraised, doesn’t it, before it’s really of much use. Which doesn’t stop us, Sirdar, from having opinions of our own.’

  ‘That young man’s got too many opinions of his own,’ said the Sirdar, looking at Lawrence, who was talking to Paul.

  It was an opinion with which Owen was inclined to concur. The archaeologist seemed to set himself up as an expert on so many different things; military tactics, Egyptians, the East. But what did he know about the East? He could only have been out there for a year or so. Intelligent, admittedly. Paul would have had nothing to do with him if that hadn’t been so. But with the intelligence was a touch of intellectual arrogance, which always rubbed Owen up the wrong way, especially when he thought that it was at his expense. The memory of that half-contemptuous smile when he had got it wrong about the college at Oxford still rankled with him.

  ‘He’s a clever young man,’ said Miss Bell. ‘I think.’ She looked up at Owen. ‘But cleverness isn’t everything, is it?’

  He took her to lunch at the Sporting Club.

  ***

  On the great wooden doors of the warehouse, in large, sprawling, black letters, were the words:

  ITALIANS GO HOME!

  The words were written in Arabic and badly written at that. No bazaar scribe’s lettering this, thought Owen, but daubed by the hand of some illiterate.

  ‘There!’ said
the Signora fiercely.

  She had sent for Owen immediately.

  ‘Not for the Parquet,’ she had said bitterly. ‘The Parquet is Egyptian.’

  It was still early in the morning. The foreman had found it there first thing when he had arrived to open the doors. Shocked, he had run for the Signora. She had summoned Owen and he had gone at once. The porters were only just arriving. They stood in the street, embarrassed, their faces averted.

  Abd al Jawad, Morelli’s old friend, hurried up. He stopped, appalled.

  ‘Signora—!’

  He tried to wipe the writing away with the skirt of his galabeah.

  ‘Perhaps you should leave it,’ said the Signora. ‘So that it would remind me of what people think.’

  ‘It is not what people think,’ said Abd al Jawad. ‘It hurts me to hear you say that, Signora.’

  Along the street came another of the friends, Hamdan. He was carrying a bucket and brushes. Abd al Jawad and he began to scrub vigorously at the graffiti.

  ‘Here,’ said the foreman, ‘you’re not going to let them do all the work!’

  Several of the porters moved forward. Abd al Jawad stopped them.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is better if we do it. For if you do it, they will say that you did it only because you were bidden.’

  ‘I did not hear what Abdul said,’ said one of the porters, ‘and I am doing it unbidden.’

  Others joined in, not just the porters but people from along the street, shocked, silent. Around the corner came the third of the friends, Fahmy, the one who owned the ice house. He was leading a donkey. Across its back were some saddlebags and in the bags were some large cans.

  ‘This will take it off,’ he said.

  The foreman unlocked the doors and two of the porters brought out ladders. The writing soon began to disappear.

  Hamdan looked over his shoulder at the Signora.

  ‘Do not harden your heart against us,’ he pleaded.

  The Signora went across and touched him gently.

  ‘Why should I harden my heart against my friends?’ she said.

  Fahmy wept quietly.

  ‘What is the world coming to?’ he said. ‘That men should do such things?’

  When the work was finished, the Signora went into the house and the servant brought out orange juice.

  Abd al Jawad sipped it.

  ‘It is from the tree in your garden,’ he said.

  ‘Sidi always said they were the best oranges,’ said Fahmy, ‘and, by God, he was right!’

  ‘The lemons will soon be ripe,’ said the Signora. ‘When they are, you must try them.’

  ‘He always used to bring the first,’ said Hamdan.

  ‘And so will his widow,’ said the Signora.

  The friends, their faces working, went back to their businesses. The porters, subdued, began to occupy themselves in the warehouse. The Signora led Owen into the inner courtyard.

  ‘They will not frighten me out,’ she said.

  ‘Who are you speaking of, Signora?’ asked Owen. ‘The foolish people who have done this, or the people to whom you have been paying “protection”?’

  She did not reply at once. Then she said:

  ‘Shukri has sent me a message. He says he is starting coming again. When he comes,’ she said defiantly, ‘I will pay. One must live.’

  ***

  To his great surprise, he came across Trudi von Ramsberg watching the guards being changed outside the Abdin Palace.

  ‘Well, I am a tourist,’ she said defensively. ‘And, anyway, I like their hats.’

  Their hats were certainly splendid. There were the crimson tarbooshes of the Sudanese, which, set upon a man always well over six feet tall, and dressed in a uniform of startling blue, looked very fine indeed; and there were the hats of the two men from the Camel Corps, standing sentry at the gate on their camels, their great cocks’ plumes nodding in the wind.

  On the far side of the square the guard which had just been relieved was disappearing into the Abdin Barracks, leaving behind them a splash or two of camel dung dark against the blinding whiteness of the square.

  Squares were not where you stood in heat like this, and Owen proposed a coffee up one of the darker, cooler side streets. He chose a traditional Arab coffee house with its main room half underground and a stone bench running round the wall inside. There were one or two men sitting there and he felt a flicker from them as he and Trudi entered. He was a little surprised. This was on the edge of the sophisticated Ismailiya Quarter and although the café was a traditional one, he would have expected them to be relaxed about the presence of Europeans. Or was it that Trudi was a woman?

  Trudi caught the flicker too.

  ‘The people are different in the desert,’ she said.

  ‘Unspoiled?’

  ‘That’s just romantic nonsense,’ she said dismissively.

  ‘I thought you were a romantic?’

  ‘Not that kind. I told you there were two kinds. I’m the other kind, the rebellious kind.’ She looked at the other men in the café. ‘If I were them I’d feel rebellious.’

  ‘Against Europeans?’

  ‘Not just Europeans.’ She waved a hand in the direction of the Palace. ‘Them too. The old order.’

  ‘You want to bring in a new order?’

  ‘I want them to bring in a new order,’ she corrected. ‘Bring it in for themselves. As they’re doing in Turkey. Do you know Turkey?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve just come from there. And what is happening there at the moment is rather exciting. There’s a new movement called “the Young Turks”—it’s not what they call themselves, it’s what others have called them. Anyway, the thing is that compared with the old politicians, they’re young; instead of the old order they want a new one. And what is exciting is that they’ve just been invited into the government, so they’ll have a chance to do something about it.’

  ‘Army people, aren’t they?’ said Owen sceptically.

  ‘Some of them.’

  ‘How radical will they be?’

  ‘It’s different in countries like Turkey. Often the army is the only career open to a bright young man.’

  ‘And you really think they’re going to change things?’

  ‘They need to,’ said Trudi. ‘The Ottoman Empire is about the most moribund institution on earth!’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘Except for the British Empire, she thinks, but politely doesn’t say!’

  ‘The trouble with us Europeans is that we always intervene to prop up the old orders.’

  ‘Whereas what we ought to be doing is bringing in the new?’

  ‘That sort of thing.’

  Owen sipped his coffee.

  ‘I don’t know that we “ought” to be doing anything,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Trudi, ‘that’s where I’m different from you. I want to do something.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘But just at the moment, the thing I particularly want to do is get to the bank.’

  ***

  Owen was on his way to the Abdin Barracks, at the Sirdar’s request. As he was going in, he met Kamal coming out and they stopped for a moment to chat about the wedding.

  ‘Who is it you’re coming to see?’ asked Kamal.

  ‘Bimbashi Grenville.’

  ‘I’ll take you to him.’

  He led Owen along a corridor and stopped outside a door.

  ‘This is the Officers’ Mess,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find him there.’

  Owen held the door open for him.

  Kamal smiled.

  ‘There are two Officers’ Messes,’ he said gently, ‘one for the British officers, the other for the Egyptians.’

  He made a little gesture of farewell with his hand and turned away.
<
br />   Grenville was in there. Owen knew him but not well. He was standing at the bar but came across to Owen as soon as he saw him.

  ‘What would you like?’

  They settled down with their drinks in one of the alcoves and then Grenville fished a piece of paper out of his pocket.

  ‘The Old Man thought you ought to see this,’ he said.

  It was another of the threatening letters. And in the same careful bazaar letter-writer’s handwriting.

  ‘For some reason they’ve picked me out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t make too much of it. There are plenty of others.’

  ‘There are?’

  Grenville seemed slightly dashed.

  ‘I thought, you know, that as no one else in the Mess—’

  ‘It’s just that they hadn’t got round to targeting the army before.’

  ‘Oh. The Old Man thought, you see, that this might be a new development—targeting officers individually.’

  ‘You’re way down the list.’

  ‘Oh. Like another?’

  ‘Let me.’

  Owen had honorary membership of all the Messes.

  He brought the drinks back and put them on the table.

  ‘This was the first one, was it? You’ve not had any before?’

  ‘I’ve been away for two years. Only just got back. Been in the Sudan. Actually,’ said Grenville, ‘thought that might be something to do with it.’

  The Sirdar came into the Mess.

  ‘Hello, Owen. Worrying thing, this, isn’t it? Going for my officers.’

  ‘Owen says we’re well down the list, sir.’

  ‘Members of the Administration in general have been receiving letters,’ said Owen.

  ‘Don’t like that!’ said the Sirdar. ‘Ought to have been the army! Damned insult, targeting civilians first.’

  ‘Have you yourself received any letters, sir?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Get them every day,’ said the Sirdar dismissively.

  By the time Owen left the barracks it was nearly two o’clock and Abdin Square was at its hottest. The dung he had noticed earlier had already dried hard. The air above the square quivered and on the opposite side to him, next to the Palace, it grew a kind of fault line which then dissolved into spiralling fragments. The fragments came together and formed momentarily a picture of a river. That, too, broke up and then the only things left on the whiteness of the square were the dark figures of the ice man and Amina and the donkey, plodding towards the barracks on their errand of mercy, leaving a trail of drips behind them from the melting ice, which disappeared even as Owen watched.