The Point in the Market Read online

  Curtis, in the bar, said that at least Owen had something to go on: the arsonist was clearly opposed to the consumption of alcohol and may have had a feeling of antagonism towards foreign soldiers. Didn’t that narrow it down a bit? Yes, said Owen: to about ten million.

  ***

  His thoughts turned back to Georgiades. He could really do with him on ordinary duties just now. Surprisingly, Georgiades seemed to think the same. In fact, he said, the sooner he could get back on ordinary work and out of the world of business, so much, very definitely, the better. Rosa’s speculation was weighing heavily upon him.

  ‘I think about it all the time,’ he said. ‘It’s getting me down.’

  ‘Well, don’t show it’s getting you down,’ said Owen. ‘Otherwise people here in the hotel will be wondering.’

  ‘No, it’s all right,’ said Georgiades. ‘At least from that point of view. They all think I’ve got a big deal in the offing. And I have,’ said Georgiades, sunk in deep depression, ‘I have. Only it’s not the one they think.’

  He had lost weight and was no longer drinking.

  ‘Can’t touch the stuff,’ he said gloomily. ‘Not now.’

  It all added conviction. In the hotel now they were certain that he was on the brink of pulling something off.

  ‘That Greek,’ said Curtis, ‘the one who is a spy: well, he’s about to bring off something big.’ He laid his finger alongside his nose. ‘Really big. You can tell it, you know.’

  Owen was happy that such should be the general impression; and even happier that soon he would be in a position to pull Georgiades out. The middleman who had contacted Georgiades, Iskander, was in the hotel regularly now finalising details. There were mostly financial details and Owen was worried that something might go wrong. He had a financial expert from Customs standing by and Georgiades checked everything with him, nodding his head thoughtfully to all Iskander’s proposals but agreeing, initially, nothing.

  About the actual transferring of the cotton, nothing was said. Iskander would handle all this side. They had a pretty good idea now where the cotton would come from. Nikos had been able to match samples and had established that the cotton Georgiades had been shown had come almost certainly from the estates of the Pasha Ismail. It could, thought Owen, have been any Pasha.

  The Customs and Excise men would be watching the estate closely and any action could be left to them. Nikos, meanwhile, was concentrating on Iskander.

  ***

  Owen had an unexpected visitor. It was Nuri Pasha, Zeinab’s father. As he came in he wrinkled his nose in a faint expression of distaste.

  ‘Austere, dear boy, austere!’ he said, looking round him at the room. ‘Rather too like a barrack-room for me. But then, I suppose the Bab-el-Khalk is a barracks.’

  ‘Not quite, Nuri!’ protested Owen.

  ‘All these new Ministerial buildings are. And so it is important to make one’s own room a small centre of civilisation.’

  ‘This is the other side of civilisation. The necessary underside.’

  ‘I have always preferred the top side, myself,’ said Nuri. ‘Or, at least, the illusion of being on the top side. And so when I was at the Ministry I insisted on furnishing my office myself, and did so most lavishly. If we do not give people the impression of superiority, then how can we expect them to believe in us? Even though the reality, as I, alas, sadly found, may be different.’

  Nuri’s stay at the Ministry of Justice had been regrettably brief. He had been Under-Secretary at the time of a notorious incident, over which he had been obliged by his position to take sides. Unfortunately, he had taken the wrong side: the British side. Ever since, his political career had been blighted, although he lived in perpetual hope of its revival. ‘After all,’ he frequently said, ‘surely loyalty will one day be requited.’ That, however, was not the issue. As always in Egypt, the question was, among several possible winners, loyalty to whom?

  ‘To what, my dear Nuri, do I owe the pleasure of your visit?’ asked Owen, sending for coffee.

  ‘Concern for Zeinab.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Owen, thinking that news of Zeinab’s difficulties must have reached him. ‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that she has been having rather a hard time lately.’

  ‘To be expected, dear boy. To be expected!’

  ‘Well, perhaps it is. But I was sad to see it. There’s no need for her to cut herself off. Or to be cut off.’

  ‘Quite so!’

  ‘She does feel it.’

  ‘I’m sure, dear boy, I’m sure!’

  ‘Some of the blame, no doubt, lies on her side—’

  ‘She always was intransigent, dear boy.’

  ‘But I do feel that the way her family and friends have shut her out—’

  ‘Not her family. I can assure you. At least, not her father.’

  ‘But her family at large—’

  ‘Millstones, dear boy, I have always felt them to be like millstones. Hanging round your neck.’

  ‘Could they be persuaded, do you think, to take—?’

  ‘A more civilised view? I think they could. And should,’ said Nuri firmly.

  This was going rather well. If Nuri really was prepared to do some work on the family—

  ‘I said as much to Samira only this morning.’

  ‘Yes, well, Samira—’

  ‘Wishes Zeinab nothing but good, I assure you.’

  ‘Well, I know, but—’

  ‘I am afraid that Zeinab left with the wrong impression after that gathering the other night.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. Faruq is really a very agreeable fellow—’

  ‘Wait a minute….’

  ‘One must build bridges. Bridges to the future.’

  ‘Bridges to the future?’

  ‘Well, you know, dear fellow, with the Turks only on the other side of the Canal—’

  ***

  Owen knew only too well. Nuri, like the other Pashas, was hedging his bets. But surely not at the expense of his daughter?

  ‘Nuri, I don’t think she cares for him, you know.’

  ‘But surely that can be altered?’

  ‘Nuri, she is my wife!’

  ‘Well, yes, but—’

  He could see it all now. Zeinab would be the bridge by which the family secured its interest. Either way. Whether the Turks came or not. If the Turks came, then they were obviously banking on Faruq’s pro-Turkish sympathies being rewarded, opening up benefits to those he favoured. But even if they didn’t come, Faruq still had every chance of the succession, and the benefit might still come flowing.

  It was the age-old trick, in England as in Egypt, wherever there were monarchs: get your woman into the king’s favour and so tilt the cornucopia in your direction. Nuri’s ancestors had practised it for centuries, and now Nuri was doing exactly the same.

  ‘One must be civilised,’ said Nuri.

  ***

  ‘Sabri?’ said the man at the bank. He hunted through the ledgers. ‘Yes, he does have an account here.’

  ‘Did, I think,’ said Owen. ‘Can you tell me anything about him?’

  ‘As it happens, I can,’ said the man. ‘And that is because he made such a nuisance of himself the first time he came here. And, indeed, every other time, but now we’ve got used to it.’

  ‘Nuisance?’ said Owen.

  The man shrugged.

  ‘Well, you know these simple villagers,’ he said. ‘They get a fixed idea about something and after that you can’t unfix it. This Sabri, for instance: I mean, he’s just a simple villager,’ said the banker, a man of the city, an occupier of an office and wearer of a tarboosh, a Copt, like Nikos, and therefore not simple at all. ‘He shouldn’t be using a bank like ours. But he insisted on it. He came in one day and said he wanted to see the boss. �
��Boss,” he said, “I’m handing over to you a lot of money and I want you to look after it.” “Certainly,” says the manager. “How much?” And when Sabri tells him he laughs and says: “That’s not a lot to me, Mr Sabri. In fact, I don’t know that you’d be advised to bank with us at all.” But Sabri insisted. “No,” he said, “I want a proper bank. Because this is going to be a proper thing.” And he made such a fuss about it that in the end the manager said okay.

  ‘But that’s when the problem started. “Let’s have a specimen signature,” we said. “What?” said Sabri. And then it turned out he couldn’t write. “I’ll make a mark,” he said. Now you can’t have a customer making marks at a bank like ours, so we tried to tell him he’d be better off somewhere else: the village money-lender, or something. “No, thanks,” he said. “You don’t know our money-lender. You’re the people I want.”

  ‘Well, it went on and on, but in the end we agreed. The trouble was, it happened the next time he came in. And the next. The people at the windows didn’t know what to make of him. He would come in and sit himself down on the floor and when at last someone asked him what he wanted, he would say: ‘I’m Sabri,’ as if that explained it all. And then whoever was dealing with him would have to go through it all, signature, mark, that sort of thing. So finally we got it that he always went to the same man, Zeki, one of our oldest clerks, who didn’t come all bright and bumptious over him. In fact, he used to go out for coffee with him. You wouldn’t believe that, would you? You wouldn’t believe a manager like ours would even agree to a thing like that, would you? But he did. Mind you, Zeki has been here with us for about a hundred years now, and, to be frank, it doesn’t make much difference if he goes out for coffee, for all the good he does here—’

  ‘Can I have a word with Zeki?’

  ‘Go out for coffee with him, if you like. But it’s only the pavement restaurant round the corner.’

  The restaurant consisted of a large tray with the food heaped in the middle and bread stuck on spikes around the sides. Customers sat on the ground and helped themselves, and the proprietor went round with a long-sprouted coffee pot and poured coffee into little enamel cups. It was the sort of place where Sabri would have felt at home and Owen guessed that was why Zeki had taken him there.

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Zeki, ‘he came from the country and it was difficult enough being in the city without all the extra fuss of being in a bank. But he wasn’t stupid. Oh, no! That’s the mistake these young effendi make in the bank. They think everyone who’s not like them is backward. But Sabri was a very intelligent man. I used to like talking to him. You could always learn something from him, about conditions in the village, or even further afield, what the cotton crop would be like, you know, all that sort of thing, which is actually quite useful to us in the bank.

  ‘I used to go back and tell it to Mr Ventezi—he’s the manager here—and Mr Ventezi would say: “That’s good information, you pay for the coffee.’’ But Sabri would never let me. “You are a poor man, as I am,” he would say.’

  ‘When I got to know him, I would say: “If you are so poor, why bring your money here?” And he would say: “It is for my boy.” He told me all about his son and his hopes for him. “He is intelligent,” he said, “and capable of great things. But for that he must go to the madrissa. Intelligence without learning is like water poured on the sand.”

  ‘One could not help warming to him. I looked forward to his coming. And in my way I tried to help him. “Sabri,” I said, “this money is much to you and hard earned. But it is not much when it is set against the costs of a great madrissa. I fear it will not be enough.”

  ‘He used to go silent then. “What you must do,” I told him, “is go to your Pasha. Ask him for money to send your boy to school. It is the sort of thing Pashas often do.” “Not our Pasha,” he said. “Our Pasha is mean and greedy and takes rather than gives.” And he would not go to him.

  ‘But this time I pressed him harder than usual. “If you will not ask him for money,” he said, “ask him for his word. There are waqufs for bright boys and I can tell you where to go. But you will need support and that is where your Pasha comes in. His word could secure your son a place and money and it will cost him nothing.”

  ‘Well, at first he would not. “He doesn’t like me,” he said. “He knows I am not easy under his yoke.” “Nevertheless, go to him,” I said, “and speak mildly. For the money you have put aside for your son is not enough.”’

  ‘And did he say he would?’

  ‘I had to reason with him for a long time. But, yes, in the end he said he would.’

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time Owen reached the village it was already mid-morning. The heat lay on the village in an almost palpable layer, subduing everything. A few dogs lay in the shade, their tongues lolling out. A few naked children played quietly in the shadows of the walls. In the houses women had already begun to prepare the mid-day meal and thin smoke climbed up from the yards and lay languidly in the air. The birds had mostly fallen silent. Only the doves in the lebbek trees maintained their low, continuous background purr.

  Owen rode up to Sabri’s house and dismounted. The boy, Salah, came out and took the horse’s head.

  ‘I will take her into the shade, Effendi,’ he said, ‘and give her some water. She will be ready when you need her.’

  First, though, he went back into the house and returned with his mother.

  ‘We are honoured, Effendi,’ she said. ‘You are most welcome.’

  ‘The honour is mine,’ said Owen.

  She led him into the small courtyard and they sat down on the earth. She was unveiled and received him boldly. Behind her, though, in the doorway of the house, was another woman, and she was veiled.

  There was a kettle already on the small brazier and she offered him tea.

  ‘Salah is well?’

  ‘Salah is well and confined to the village,’ said the woman pointedly.

  ‘Perhaps that is best. Yet here in the village there will always be foolish people ready to egg him on.’

  ‘So?’ said the woman, looking at him sharply.

  ‘Sabri wished him to go to school in the big city.’

  ‘He paid money for it: but it is not enough.’

  ‘So I understand. I have been speaking to a man at the bank. However, he said there was a possibility of his being able to benefit from a waquf.’ A waquf was a charitable bequest. ‘All that would be necessary would be that someone should speak for him.’

  ‘Sabri told me.’

  ‘The man at the bank said that he had counselled Sabri to go to the Pasha and ask for his word in support.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he do it?’

  ‘He spoke to Osman Huq,’ said the woman bitterly, ‘and much good it did him.’

  ‘Osman Huq? The Pasha’s man?’

  ‘The Pasha’s man. We see no Pasha here. Osman is the Pasha’s face.’

  ‘And he denied his support?’

  ‘He said that before the Pasha would do things for Sabri, Sabri must do things for the Pasha. But he had always turned his back on the Pasha, so why now should the Pasha help him? Sabri said—and it cost him much to say this, he told me after—that when the boy had been to the school, he would be able to serve the Pasha better.

  ‘But Osman said the Pasha did not want service of that sort. What he needed was men who worked in the fields, and that was where Salah ought to be. To aim otherwise was to nourish the spirit of discontent. A similar spirit, he said, to the one that existed in his father!’

  ‘This made Sabri angry and he said: “If you will not speak for me, there are others who will.” And Osman taunted him and said: “Not in the village, there aren’t!” And Sabri said: “The Mamur Zapt will speak for me.” And Osman laughed, and said: “You foolish man! Why should the Mamur Zapt speak for the likes of
you?” And Sabri said: “I go to see him, and when he hears what I have to say, he will look kindly on me.”’

  ‘He told Osman that, did he?’ said Owen.

  ***

  The veiled figure in the doorway came out into the yard.

  ‘Salaam Izayek,’ said Owen politely.

  ‘And to you, salaam,’ returned the woman automatically.

  He recognised the voice.

  ‘What is this man doing here?’ demanded Yasmin, turning to Sabri’s widow.

  ‘We have been talking about Salah,’ said Sabri’s widow, surprised.

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘He is the Mamur Zapt.’

  ‘Then why is he here?’

  ‘He has been good to Salah.’

  ‘Do not trust him.’

  ‘Yasmin, I have spoken with this man before and since Sabri’s death he has helped me greatly.’

  ‘Beware of him. He is English and his interests are not the same as ours.’

  ‘There are interests which cut across divides,’ said Owen, ‘and one of them is seeing that a child gets the education that it deserves.’

  ‘I know the kind of education that you think we deserve,’ said Yasmin. ‘It is the one that takes us away from our people.’

  ‘Yasmin, you are older than Salah and have had the chance to make up your own mind. Let Salah be given that chance too.’ He turned to Sabri’s widow. ‘The man at the bank said that he knew of a waquf that would serve. All that would be necessary was that someone should speak for Salah. If the Pasha will not, then I will. If, that is, you wish it, for I know that you have misgivings.’

  ‘Sabri would have wished it.’

  ‘Sabri is gone. It is for you to decide.’

  ‘Sabri would have wished it more than anything else in the world,’ she said.

  ‘Fatima, do not listen to this man. Do not take his money.’

  ‘It is not my money,’ said Owen. ‘It will come from the Ministry of Waqufs. All I will do is speak for Salah.’