The Women of the Souk Page 17

‘The boy pines for her. As well he might, for she is a beautiful girl, but a rich one, and there is no hope for the boy, as he is but a poor nay player.’

  ‘He is a good nay player, you have not said that!’

  ‘Let me say it now. For that touches on the very thing I wanted to ask you as men of experience and wisdom, chosen in the Geziret as elders. We have a poor boy and a rich girl, the one a nay player and the other a woman from a family of standing: can we bring the two together? Or are they doomed forever to be apart? Can wealth match itself with poverty, a Kewfik with a Kauri, people of one blood with people of another? Questions difficult enough: so I thought I should seek help. And I put them to the Old Woman of the souk, for I thought surely she will know. But when I spoke with her, she answered in riddles. “Listen to the music!” she said. Now I ask you: what did she mean? For I am lost.’

  There was a silence.

  Then the man who had spoken before said again: ‘He is a good nay player. I know the boy.’

  ‘But would you let him be your guide?’

  ‘He is just a boy. A good boy, but still just a boy.’

  ‘Would you follow him?’

  ‘He is just a dreamer.’

  ‘Who knows how he may grow up?’

  ‘He has got a long way to go before I would follow him!’

  ‘What about his father? Is his father a good man?’

  ‘You know his father: Shawquat?’

  ‘I wouldn’t follow him!’

  ‘No one is asking you to. The question is about the boy.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s about the music. “Listen to the music.” That is what the Old Woman said.’

  ‘How will this help you? Music is music, and we are talking of leadership and counsel.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go to a boy for either of these!’

  ‘Nor to his father. If that is what we are talking about.’

  ‘But that is not what we are talking about. “Listen to the music,” the Old Woman said. Not “listen to the men”!’

  ‘How can you listen to the music and not to the men?’

  ‘Sometimes the music knows more than the men!’

  ‘I think that is nonsense!’

  ‘No, it makes a sort of sense. It sees deeper than men do.’

  ‘You’ve lost me!’

  ‘And I can see how that could be so. For doesn’t the man make the music?’

  ‘Sometimes he makes deeper than he knows.’

  ‘Well …’

  The discussion continued to go round in circles.

  ‘I think the Old Woman is a bit cracked.’

  ‘But sometimes she speaks sense. Otherwise why did we ask her to help us?’

  ‘She’s quite good when she’s got her feet on the ground.’

  ‘But how do you know when she’s got her feet on the ground?’

  ‘I’ve always thought the Old Woman was a bit overrated.’

  The conversation went on for some time. It remained inconclusive.

  Layla was giving the seniors the benefit of her views.

  ‘As a strategy,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t completely daft. They hadn’t got much to go on,’ she said, ‘only that Richard loved music. He probably sang himself.’

  ‘They probably sang together,’ suggested someone.

  ‘They probably did,’ said Layla. ‘Or would have, if there had been someone else around. Only there wasn’t. Remember, he’s been locked up. In a cold prison cell. Probably for months, if not years. And he would be getting pretty bored. So when someone outside started singing, he might well be tempted to join in.’

  ‘They could sing a duet. Or maybe a trio if there were three of them. Which there could be if one was playing the music. A lute, or something.’

  ‘A harp, perhaps?’

  ‘Or a drum to get his attention.’

  ‘It could have been a drum. Or maybe Blondel – he was the minstrel – did it all on his own. Playing and singing and walking round castle after castle, in the sun and the sand. And then on to the next one.’

  ‘With never a response – it must have been pretty depressing. Because, remember he was doing this for years and years. And getting nowhere.’

  ‘He must have loved Richard very much.’

  ‘He did. There was probably a bond between the two of them, the King and his minstrel!’

  ‘As well as all the bonds of fealty and loyalty – those bonds were very important in the Middle Ages—’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read that bit, too!’

  ‘—until one day—!’

  ‘How would they hear each other, locked up like that?’

  ‘Open the window. They could always open a window!’

  ‘No, they couldn’t! There weren’t any windows. Not windows like we have.’

  ‘Just a space in the wall!’

  ‘Well, that would make it easier to hear, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Anyway, one of them heard and sang back, Richard, I imagine. And then Blondel sang back. A sort of duet, yes, if you must, Esmeralda.’

  ‘Or a trio, if there were three of them!’

  ‘The point is,’ said Layla, ‘that it was through Blondel doing this that they found out that Richard was inside—’

  ‘Pining away, with only a rat to keep him company.’

  ‘All right, Esmeralda!’

  ‘It’s a lovely story!’ she sighed.

  ‘But it’s not true!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It could be.’

  ‘Think of it,’ said Layla, ‘as a strategy.’

  ‘But there aren’t any castles for us to sing outside. And if there were, Marie wouldn’t be inside them!’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a castle. It could be any old place.’

  ‘There would be no point in us singing in any old place!’

  ‘We would have to sing in some place where she was likely to be.’

  ‘But we don’t know where she is likely to be!’

  ‘We know it’s somewhere in the Geziret.’

  ‘We don’t even know that, really.’

  ‘I suppose I could ask the Mamur Zapt,’ said Layla, confident in her new contacts. ‘He doesn’t know precisely, but he’s probably got some idea. Which is more than we have. We could ask him for a start if he thought she was still in the Geziret.’

  ‘So we go round the Geziret singing, do we? Bloody hell!’

  ‘We’ll have to have an excuse. Or else they’ll be jumping on us before we even start.’

  ‘Still hoping, are you, Esmeralda?’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m just pointing out that if we go round the place singing, a group of posh girls, all nicely dressed up, they’ll wonder what the hell is going on.’

  ‘Clap us in prison, most like!’

  ‘Anyway, we ought not to be singing. We ought to be playing our nays.’

  ‘But I can’t play the nay!’

  ‘It’s got to be something meaningful. I mean, meaningful to Marie. That’s why it has to be the nay – I’ve got it. Why don’t we get that dopey nay player of hers to do it? She’d recognise him.’

  ‘But would he do it?’

  ‘We could twist his arm.’

  ‘He’d probably do it for love of her, the dope.’

  ‘But where the hell is he? He’s not at home, I know that.’

  ‘He’s staying at the el Zakis’, he’s been teaching music to their children. Our cleaner knows the Shawquats and Mrs Shawquat was telling her about it.’

  ‘Staying at the el Zakis’? You mean the Mahmoud el Zakis? The one who’s in the Parquet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I can find that out pretty quickly. My dad’s in the Parquet and I know he knows Mahmoud, because I heard him saying so only last week. But how the hell does he come to have a nay player staying with him?’

  ‘They’re very fond of music, the el Zakis. And not only of music, of the Marie kind of music. Traditional. Not my kind of music, of course, but it’s bearable. And just the sort of stuff Mar
ie and her nay man would like. Myself, I prefer—’

  ‘Yes, we know what you prefer. But that wouldn’t help us: Marie would probably spit if she heard that outside her window. But she wouldn’t spit if it was that dopey nay player, and she’d recognise him all right.’

  At first, Owen dismissed the idea out of hand.

  But then he ran into strong internal opposition at the Bab-el-Khalk. Partly because it was an alternative to them walking round the streets themselves; partly because it appealed to that romantic streak in Arabs which is never far under the surface; partly, in Owen’s and Mahmoud’s view, because it was a tempting alternative to Ali Shawquat’s resolution to go to the kidnappers personally and plead with them, and to the strong probability that they would cut his throat; but chiefly, it was down to an unexpected intervention from Mahmoud’s wife, Aisha, who apart from not wanting to lose a good music teacher for her children thought that it would work wonders for Ali Shawquat personally.

  ‘It’s just what he needs,’ she said. ‘Something to restore his belief in himself.’

  TWELVE

  The pavement restaurant was a popular one. It was a centre of activity, with a large crowd gathered round it. Mostly, of course, positioned where it was, they were Kauri boys, and so when a dark-suited, befezzed Effendi joined them, they eyed him askance. They cleared a space for him at the tray, however, and he sat down. When the cook came up, the Effendi pointed to a cut and the cook stabbed it with a spike and plunged it into the fat.

  ‘And what brings you here, Effendi?’ asked one of the men squatting nearby. ‘You’re not from these parts.’

  ‘Just passing through,’ said the Effendi. ‘But when I saw the company, I said to myself: “They look as if they know what they’re doing. The food must be good here!” And suddenly I felt – you know how you do sometimes – really hungry.’

  ‘In that case you have come to the right place!’

  There were mutters of agreement.

  ‘But as to what I am doing, you may not believe it, but I’m hard at work.’

  ‘It looks as if you’ve found the right job.’

  ‘I think I have. But I’m on my feet a lot.’

  ‘So what is it? Go on, tell us.’

  ‘I’m following up a story.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the cook, ‘you’re a newspaperman, are you?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said the newcomer, ‘but I’m still working on the story.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mahmoud, for it was he, ‘it starts like this. Some men were sitting at a pavement restaurant very like this one, in fact, and a man went by. And the men at the tray looked up at him and said: “What’s he doing here? He is not one of us.” “He goes by here every day,” said the cook. “Nevertheless,” said the someone, “he is not one of us.” “He is just going about his business,” said the cook, “what’s wrong with that?” “I don’t like his business. So let’s kill him.” “Kill him,” said one of the men at the tray. “What for?” “I don’t like his face.” “Well, that’s not much of a reason. I don’t like yours, but I’m not going to kill you for that!” “Ah, but he’s an enemy.” “How can he be an enemy, when he walks past every day and never gives anyone a bad word?” “Well, maybe he’s not an enemy. But it were good if he were one. So let us kill him.”’

  There were cries of protest from around the tray.

  ‘That’s unreasonable!’

  ‘Would not his brother seek to avenge him?’

  ‘He would.’

  ‘Then that would be a foolish thing to do.’

  ‘It would,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But that is what the man would have us do.’

  ‘He is a fool, then!’

  ‘Not completely; for he wants to cause mischief, and that he will certainly do.’

  ‘Who is this man?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘Because you sit near him.’

  ‘Who are you?’ a man said, beginning to stir. ‘Are you a Kewfik?’

  ‘I am neither a Kewfik nor a Kauri and I tell you the story so that you may see it as a man from outside.’

  ‘I don’t like this story! It is a bad story.’

  ‘It is a bad story about bad men.’

  ‘We should not listen to him,’ said one of the men, beginning to get up.

  ‘Sit down! The story is not finished yet.’

  ‘We have heard enough!’

  ‘Did you not like the story? Is that because you know the men? Recognise yourself?’

  ‘I have heard enough,’ said the man, pulling out a knife.

  ‘No knives at my table!’ said the cook, striking the man hard with a hot ladle.

  The man yelped and dropped his knife.

  ‘Are you the one who killed Hamid?’ demanded Mahmoud.

  The other men jumped up.

  ‘They are the three,’ said Mahmoud.

  THIRTEEN

  The Shawquat house had been unusually quiet for over a week. Mrs Shawquat’s husband had been away on business for several days. What business it was she didn’t like to ask these days. Certainly it was not at the stables where he always used to work and where, to the best of her understanding, he was supposed to be working still. But Shawquat came and went and was a pain when he was about the house so she was usually quite glad of his absence.

  But Ali was a different matter. Of her four children, he was her only son, which was a source of grief to her and chagrin to her husband. She had always felt closest to him and many were the battles she had fought on his behalf. She had thought at one time that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and take up a political line of some sort. But he had shown little sign of that, preferring to spend his time at the college, which in Mrs Shawquat’s mind was good. She had always supported his father in his political activities and had looked forward to doing the same for their son. His father had expected him to take that path, looking to him to engage in struggles for the ordinary man. She wouldn’t have minded him becoming a stablehand like his father, as it was honest work. It would do, she supposed, although she would have liked him to aspire higher. But all he did was make music, which was not so good – certainly not in his father’s eyes, but also not in her own eyes, if she were honest.

  She was proud of his talent for music. It was not, perhaps, the talent she would have chosen; but when it became apparent that Ali was strongly gifted in this way, she encouraged him, as mothers do. She was not above going down to the playground after school and listening to him on his nay like the older children and, increasingly, quite a few of the men too. The Headmaster had told her that such a gift was bestowed by God and not to be neglected and she had always surreptitiously encouraged it.

  Her husband, however, had not. He was a practical man and thought music just a pastime and not a very fruitful one at that. The technical school was where he’d trained his son’s sights. But there he had been disappointed. Ali was as little interested in the technical school as he was in politics. To his father he seemed a loss all round.

  Disputes in the Shawquat household grew sharper as Ali set aside his father’s wishes and spent every free hour practising on his nay. Mrs Shawquat urged him to at least go some way to meeting his father halfway but met defeat. He tried – she was sure, despite what his father said, that he tried – but some force kept pulling him back in the old direction. The rows became even fiercer. Ali showed his father’s obduracy in sticking to his guns. He spent more and more time out of the home altogether.

  And then there was the question of this girl! How Ali had fallen in with her, Mrs Shawquat did not know! She belonged to a different sphere. Shawquat had told his son that; and his wife had, for once, shared his views enough to reinforce the lesson. But to no avail.

  Now Ali did not come home at all and his mother grieved. She continued to fight his battles but with an increasingly sinking heart. When would it end? Where could, as the senior Shawquat demanded of h
er, it end?

  She knew, too, that things were uneasy at the stables. The Kewfiks were not at all happy about Shawquat’s politicising. In fact, it had been something of a relief when the old man fell sick and went into hospital. It had given the Shawquat family a brief respite. But she had known it would not last. When old Kewfik got out of hospital he was sure to turn on the man he saw as nothing but a troublemaker. And then where would they be?

  She had said this to her husband when he got home, and Shawquat said that the job was not important. It was the work, by which he meant the political work, that counted. He had taken up with some new people whom he was sure would look after him. His work with them was growing. When she asked him what it was, he said it was raising money for the cause. What cause was this? The same cause as it always had been: building a better Egypt.

  And now a chance had come up that would give the work an added impetus.

  There was every possibility that a new alliance could be made locally, one which would create a new force in the land. Or, at any rate, in Geziret. ‘Start small, build big!’ he had always said to her. He had put his heart and soul into it, and now it appeared to be coming to fruition! And just at this time, when he was at his busiest, when he needed every moment, his wretched son had become a distracting nuisance and was causing trouble!

  Worse than that: he was creating trouble with the Kewfiks, of all people. The very people who had the power to crush him, to end his hopes, all he had been working for. All his work over so many years looked like it would come to nothing, and all because of his son, he repeated to himself in anguish. Because of his own son!

  Everything seemed suddenly to have turned against him. For one thing there was the matter of the powder. Shawquat had suddenly come upon a large new supply, one which could transform the finance – and prospects – of the great cause that he was working on. He had assured the people he worked for that there was enough to enable them to lift their efforts to a whole new level. It would open up – well, who knew what it could lead to? For years he had laboured in obscurity; now, suddenly there was the chance to work on a big scale – who knew, perhaps even a national one! The delicate alliance that he had built up so carefully, and in the face of so many difficulties, between the Kewfiks and the Kauris would seal it. The two sides together were surely big enough to become a force on the Cairo streets and hence in the city itself. His backers were excited, as new possibilities came within their reach. The vision he had for an independent Egypt was suddenly almost inconceivably close. What had been a dream was now a very possible reality. All this seemed to open up with the new supplies of the drug.